Hold The Fireworks

https://popularresistance.org/hold-the-fireworks/





By John Kiriakou, Consortium News. July 6, 2022


From the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade to the persecution of whistleblowers, this July 4th exploded with reasons not to celebrate.

A friend of mine is one of the producers of the annual July 4 celebration in Washington, D.C. Every year he gives me VIP tickets to watch the performances on the west lawn of the Capitol. I get to see A-list music stars and then the city begins its legendary fireworks display, featuring pyrotechnics from the biggest employer in my hometown of New Castle, Pennsylvania, Pyrotechnico, formerly Zambelli Fireworks. No Chinese fireworks for us!

Most Washingtonians end the evening feeling energized and patriotic. I left this year feeling disgusted and angry. News flashes about shootings during the 4th — a deadly one in a Chicago suburb that reportedly killed six people and wounded many others, followed by the wounding of two police officers in Philadelphia — confirmed my sense of so much going wrong. I know I’m going to take some heat for my “un-American” thoughts after this Independence Day. But I can’t help it.

I can’t celebrate a country this year where the highest court in the land sets society back a century with rulings so out of the mainstream of society that they harken back to the Dred Scott decision.

Newspapers on the morning of July 4 told the story of a 10-year-old pregnant rape victim who, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, was denied an abortion and told that she would have to carry her rapist’s baby to term. Her parents had the wherewithal to take her to neighboring Indiana for an abortion. It’s not that Indiana is in any way a progressive state. It’s just that the legislature there hasn’t banned abortion yet. That’s supposed to come in the next couple of weeks.

I can’t celebrate a country this year where police try to pull over a driver for a traffic offense, he leads them on a chase and then they shoot him 60 times. Not six times. That would be bad enough. They shot him 60 times. They fired 90 shots. Have we learned nothing as a nation from George Floyd, Breona Taylor, Stephon Clark, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner or any of the other African-American victims of police violence? Will this never stop?

I can’t celebrate a country this year where whistleblowers who tell the public about the crimes that the government is committing in their name find themselves in prison suffering under conditions one would expect in a banana republic, a tin horn dictatorship or a Soviet gulag.

Drone whistleblower Daniel Hale should be celebrated.

His heroism should be taught in schools. Instead, he’s in a maximum-security penitentiary that also holds some of the most dangerous and notorious criminals in the world. Joshua Schulte is in a prison unit in New York that does not even meet the most basic level of human decency. And Julian Assange can expect no better if and when he is extradited to the United States.

I can’t celebrate a country this year that sends unaccountable billions of dollars to a government in Ukraine known widely for its corruption, while the United States has underfunded schools, an embarrassment of a healthcare system and a national infrastructure in shambles.

I want my children and my children’s children to have the best of everything, including education and healthcare. We can certainly afford it as a country. So why throw away our money on unnecessary (and illegal) wars, aid to Israel that is used to prop up an apartheid regime and a bigger overall military budget than the world’s next nine largest countries combined?

I can’t celebrate a country this year where nearly half the population supports a man with an obvious mental illness to be our once-and-future president, a man who has divided our country like no other president in generations, a man who has taken his responsibility to the country so lightly that he recently told an associate, “Why can’t people realize what you guys realize about me, that I’m playacting and full of it at least 50 percent of the time?” Hanging the vice president of the United States, encouraging insurrection and supporting a coup are all just hilarious, aren’t they?

I can’t celebrate a country this year where the corrupt political duopoly is so entrenched that they work together to force third-party candidates off the ballot. A friend of mine, Matthew Ho, is the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate in North Carolina.

He received a text message last week saying, “Hi Matthew. My name’s Drew and we’re texting you because your name was listed on a petition submitted to help place the Green Party and its candidates on the North Carolina ballot in 2022 and 2024. We just wanted to confirm whether you signed this petition.”

When he confirmed that he had, indeed, signed the petition, “Drew” texted again.


“Thank you for confirming. If the Green Party is on the ballot it will give Republicans a huge advantage that will help them win in North Carolina in 2022 and 2024. In past elections, we’ve seen that the Green Party takes votes away from Democrats, which helps Republicans win. With abortion rights in the balance, we can’t afford to give Republicans more of an advantage. Are you interested in asking the elections board to have your name removed from this petition?”

Matthew said no, he did not want his name removed from his own election petition. But “Drew” was persistent.

“I understand this seems like a lot of effort, but we want to make sure the Democratic candidates have the best chance to win this November and this could make a big difference. Would you be willing to have your name removed?” Matthew asked, “What organization is this?” “Drew’s” answer was “the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.” In the end, the Democrats were successful in throwing Matthew off the ballot. That’s not democracy. And the Republicans do exactly the same thing to the Libertarian Party.

I could go on, but I’m starting to really make myself angry. I’m going to write some checks to the Green Party, the National Abortion Rights Action League and a small charity that puts Palestinian students through medical school. I’m tired of the propaganda being force fed to the American people. In the immortal words of Howard Beale, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

No To NATO In Madrid

https://popularresistance.org/no-to-nato-in-madrid/





By Ann Wright, Popular Resistance. July 6, 2022


NATO’S Summit in Madrid and Lessons of War at the City’s Museums.

I was one of hundreds who attended the NO to NATO peace summit June 26-27, 2022 and one of tens of thousands who marched for NO to NATO in Madrid, Spain a few days before the leaders of the 30 NATO countries arrived in the city for their latest NATO Summit to map out NATO’s future military actions. March in Madrid against NATO war policies.

Two conferences, the Peace Summit and the Counter-Summit, provided opportunities for Spaniards and international delegations to hear the impact of ever-increasing military budgets on NATO countries that give weaponry and personnel to the war mongering capabilities of NATO at the expense of health, education, housing and other true human security needs.

In Europe, the disastrous decision by the Russian Federation to invade Ukraine and the tragic loss of life and destruction of large parts of the industrial base of the country and in the Dombass region is seen as a situation precipitated by a US sponsored coup in Ukraine in 2014. Not to defend or justify the Russian attack on Ukraine, however, NATO, the US and the European Union’s endless rhetoric of Ukraine joining their organizations is acknowledged as is the often-cited Russian Federation’s “redlines” of its national security. The continuing large-scale US and NATO military war maneuvers, creation of US/NATO bases and deployment of missiles on the border with Russia are identified as provocative, aggressive actions by the US and NATO. Ever more powerful weapons are being injected into the Ukrainian battlefields by NATO countries which could inadvertently, or purposefully, quickly escalate to the disastrous use of nuclear weapons.

In the peace summits, we heard from people directly affected by NATO’s military action. The Finnish delegation is strongly opposed to Finland joining NATO and spoke of the relentless media campaign by the government of Finland that has influenced traditional No to NATO Finns to acquiese to the government’s decision to join NATO. We also heard by zoom from speakers from Ukraine and Russia who both want peace for their countries not wars and who urged their governments to begin negotiations to end the horrific war.
The summits had a wide-range of panel and workshop topics:

Climate Crisis and Militarism;

The War in Ukraine, NATO & Global Consequences;

The New Lies of the Old NATO with Ukraine as Background;

Alternatives for a Demilitarized Collective Security;

Social Movements: How Imperialist/Military Policy Affects Us on a Daily Basis;

The New International Order; What Kind of Security Architecture for Europe? Common Security Report 2022;

Anti-Militarist Resistance to Wars;

NATO, Armies and Military Spending; Women’s Unity in the Struggle Against Imperialism;

Women’s Unity in Conflicts and Peace Processes;

Stop Killer Robots;

The Two-Headed Monster: Militarism and Patriarchy;

and Perspectives and Strategies of the International Peace Movement.
The Madrid Peace Summit ended with a final declaration that stated:


“It is our obligation as members of the human species in order to build and defend peace 360º, from north to south, from east to west to demand our governments give up militarism as a way of dealing with conflicts.

It is easy to establish the connection between more weapons in the world and more wars. History teaches us that those who can impose their ideas by force will not try to do so by other means. This new expansion is a new expression of the authoritarian and colonial response to the current eco-social crisis, because wars have also led to violent expropriation of resources.

NATO’s new security concept called NATO 360º radius, calls for military intervention by NATO anywhere, anytime, all around the planet. The Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China are singled out as military adversaries and, for the first time, the Global South appears within the scope of the Alliance’s intervention capabilities,

NATO 360 is prepared to intervene outside the imperative mandates of the UN Charter, as it did in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. This violation of international law, as we have also seen in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has sped up the pace at which the world becomes insecure and militarized.

This southward focus shift will bring about an extension in the capabilities of US military bases deployed in the Mediterranean; in the case of Spain, the bases in Rota and Morón.

NATO 360º strategy is a threat to peace, an obstacle to progress towards shared demilitarized security.

It is antagonistic to real human security that responds to the threats faced by the majority of the planet’s population: hunger, disease, inequality, unemployment, lack of public services, land grabbing and wealth and climate crises.

NATO 360º advocates increasing military spending to 2% of GDP, does not renounce the use of nuclear weapons and thus encourages the proliferation of the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.”
NO TO NATO international coalition statement

The NO to NATO international coalition issued a strong and extensive statement on July 4, 2022 contesting NATO’s Madrid summit strategy and its continuing aggressive actions. The coalition expressed “outrage” at the decision of NATO’s heads of government to further increase confrontation, militarization and globalization instead of opting for dialogue, disarmament and peaceful co-existence.

The statement states that “NATO propaganda paints a false picture of NATO representing the so-called democratic countries versus an authoritarian world to legitimize its militaristic course. In reality, NATO is stepping up its confrontation with rival and emerging superpowers in pursuit of geopolitical hegemony, control over transport routes, markets and natural resources. Although NATO’s strategic concept claims to be working toward disarmament and arms control, it is doing just the opposite.”

The coalition statement reminds that NATO member states combined “account for two-thirds of the global arms trade that destabilizes entire regions and that warring countries like Saudi Arabia are among NATO’s best customers. NATO maintains privileged relationships with gross human rights violators like Colombia and apartheid state Israel… The military alliance is abusing the Russia-Ukraine war to dramatically increase the armament of its member states by many tens of billions and by expanding it’s Rapid Reaction Force on a massive scale…Under the leadership of the US, NATO applies a military strategy aimed at weakening Russia rather than bringing a swift end to the war. This is a dangerous policy that can only contribute to increase the suffering in Ukraine and can bring the war into dangerous levels of (nuclear) escalation.”

Addressing nuclear weapons, the statement notes that: “NATO and the nuclear member states continue to see nuclear weapons as an essential part of their military strategy and refuse to comply with the obligations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. They reject the new nuclear ban treaty (TPNW) which is a necessary complementary instrument to free the world of genocidal weapons.”

The international NO to NATO coalition “rejects NATO’s further expansion plans which are provocative. Any country in the world would see it as a violation of its security interests if a hostile military alliance would advance towards its borders. We also condemn the fact that the inclusion of Finland and Sweden into NATO, is accompanied by the acceptance and even support of Turkey’s war policy and human rights infringements against the Kurds. The silence on Turkey’s violations of international law, invasions, occupations, looting and ethnical cleansings in northern Syria and northern Iraq bears witness to NATO’s complicity.”

To underscore NATO’s expansive moves, the coalition said “NATO invited several countries from the “Indo-Pacific” to its summit with the purpose to strengthen mutual military ties in what is framed as meeting “systemic challenges” that would emanate from China. This regional military build-up is part of NATO’s further transformation into a global military alliance that will increase tensions, risk dangerous confrontations and can lead into an unprecedented arms race in the region.”

NO to NATO and the international peace movement “calls on social movements such as trade unions, environmental movement, women’s, youth, anti-racism organizations to resist the militarization of our societies that can only come at the expense of social welfare, public services, the environment, and human rights.”

“Together we can work for a different security order based on dialogue, cooperation, disarmament, common and human security. This is not only desirable, but necessary if we want to preserve the planet from threats and challenges posed by nuclear weapons, climate change and poverty.”
The irony and Insensitivity of the Photo of NATO wives in front of the famous Picasso painting “Guernika”



On June 29, 2022, wives of NATO leaders had their photo taken in front of one of the most famous 20th century paintings, Guernica, created by Picasso to express his outrage over the Nazi bombing of a Basque city in northern Spain, ordered by General Franco. Since then, this monumental black-and-white canvas has become an international symbol of genocide committed during wartime.



On June 27, 2022, two days before the wives of NATO leader would have their photo taken in front to the Guernika painting, Extinction Rebellion activists from Madrid had a die-in in front of Guernika—portraying the reality of the history of Guernika ..and the reality of the deadly actions of NATO!!
Museums of War

While in Madrid, I took advantage of going to some of the great museums in the city. The museums provided great history lessons that are relevant to today’s international situations.

As war in Ukraine continues, some of the massive paintings in the Prado Museum provide a glimpse into the wars of the 16 and 17th centuries-brutal for the hand-to-hand combat as conflicts raged across the continent. Kingdoms fighting other kingdoms for land and resources.

Wars that ended in victory for some countries or in stalemates between other countries..with tens of thousands killed in the miscalculation of hoped for victory that never happened and instead a settlement after all the deaths.

In the Regina Sophia museum, not only is there Picasso’s world famous war painting of the 20th century- Guernika that was used as a background by the NATO wives, but in the upper gallery of the museum is a powerful gallery of 21st century resistance to the brutality of authoritarian governments.

On display are hundreds of hand-embroidered cloth panels with the names of the 43 students murdered in Mexico and hundreds of persons who have died on the US border. Videos of resistance are played in the exhibit including videos of resistance in Honduras and Mexico which has resulted in legalized abortion, while in the same week, the US Supreme Court struck down woman’s reproductive rights in the United States.
NATO in the Pacific Adaptations of the Official RIMPAC logos to better describe the effects of the massive RIMPAC war practice.

In the Naval Museum of Spain, paintings of naval armadas, huge fleets of ships sailing into battle off Spain, France, England reminded me of the massive Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) war maneuvers that are taking place in the waters around Hawaii from June 29-August 4, 2022 with 26 countries including 8 NATO members and 4 Asia countries that are NATO “partners” sending 38 ships, 4 submarines, 170 aircraft and 25,000 military personnel to practice firing missiles, blowing up other ships, grinding across coral reefs and endangering marine mammals and other sea life to practice amphibious landings. Painting by unknown artist of the 1588 Spanish Armada.

The museum paintings showed scenes of cannons fired from galleons into the masts of other galleons, sailors jumping from ship to ship in hand-to-hand combat remind one of the endless wars humanity has waged on itself for land and riches. The extensive trade routes of the fleets of ships of the Spanish kings and queens evoke the reminder of the cruelty toward indigenous peoples of those lands who mined the riches of silver and gold in Central and South America and the Philippines to build the remarkable cathedrals of Spain-and today’s cruelty of wars waged on Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Ukraine. And they are also a reminder of the current day “Freedom of Navigation” armadas that ply through the South China Sea to protect/deny resources to an Asian power.

The museum’s paintings were a history lesson in imperialism, both Spanish and U.S. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the U.S. added its wars and occupations of other lands to its colonization of the indigenous people of North America with the excuse of “Remember the Maine,” the war cry after the explosion on the U.S. ship Maine in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. That explosion began the US war on Spain which resulted in the U.S. claiming Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines as its war prizes—and in the same colonization epoch, annexed Hawai’i.

The human species has continued its use of wars on land and sea from the 16th and 17th centuries onward adding air wars to World War I and II, the war on Viet Nam, on Iraq, on Afghanistan, on Syria, on Yemen, on Palestine.
To Survive the Threat of Nuclear Weapons, Climate Change and Poverty, We must have a Different Security Order Based on Dialogue, Cooperation, Disarmament for Human Security

The week in Madrid at the NO to NATO events underscored the current threats of war to the survival of humanity.

The NO to NATO final statement summarizes our challenge that “Together we MUST work for a different security order based on dialogue, cooperation, disarmament, common and human security. This is not only desirable, but necessary if we want to preserve the planet from threats and challenges posed by nuclear weapons, climate change and poverty.”

Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army and Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. She was also a U.S. diplomat and served in U.S. embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned in 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq. She is the co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”

Marx, Spinoza, and the Political Implications of Contemporary Psychiatry

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/07/07/marx-spinoza-and-the-political-implications-of-contemporary-psychiatry/



July 7, 2022

by Bruce E. Levine
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Spinoza and the Rabbis by Samuel Hirszenberg (1907) – Public Domain

Simple logic tells us that those atop a societal hierarchy will provide rewards for professionals—be they clergy or psychiatrists—who promote an ideology that maintains the status quo, and that the ruling class will do everything possible to manipulate the public to believe that the social-economic-political status quo is natural.

If a population believes that its financial and emotional suffering are caused not by social-economic-political variables but instead by individual defects—be it noncompliance with religious dogma or faulty biochemistry—this “individual-defect” belief system can be a more powerful and less expensive way of maintaining the status quo than a heavily armed police force.

That organized religion has a great deal in common with organized psychiatry would be apparent to both Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), two of history’s most famous critics of the political implications of organized religion.

Karl Marx, in A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843), famously said: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.”

Baruch Spinoza, in his Theological-Political Treatise (1670), somewhat less famously but perhaps more courageously given his era, said: “Granted, then, that the supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation.”

Today, a handful of professors teach their students about Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) and cultural hegemony, however, a century ago, the working class did not need scholars to explain to them how prevailing cultural beliefs are often social constructs implemented by the ruling class through favored institutions so as to maintain domination. Back then, workers immediately got IWW activist Joe Hill’s (1879-1915) song “The Preacher and the Slave” (1911) about how preachers from the “starvation army” attempt to get them to buy the lie: “Work and pray, live on hay. You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”

If alive today, Hill may well write something along the lines of: “Alienate . . . Medicate. You’ll get pie in the sky with your SSRI.”

A generation ago, the political implications of biological individual-defect theories were obvious to many prominent scientists with a left perspective, for example, evolutionary geneticist R.C. Lewontin, neurobiologist Steven Rose, and psychologist Leon Kamin. In their 1984 book Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature, Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin make clear the rightwing political ideology implicit in the individual defect theory of biochemical/genetic determinism: “Biological determinism (biologism) has been a powerful mode of explaining the observed inequalities of status, wealth, and power in contemporary industrial capitalist societies. . . . Biological determinism is a powerful and flexible form of ‘blaming the victim.’”

Marx and Spinoza highly valued science, but it would be obvious to them that simply calling oneself scientific does not make one so.

Should psychiatry be seen as a science? Or should it be seen—no different than organized religion— as simply a belief system with its own social constructs that are promoted by the ruling class to convince people that their suffering is due to individual defects, rather than a defective social-economic-political system that results in alienation from one’s own humanity, from others, and from the rest of the natural world?

The Scientific Failure of Contemporary Psychiatry

Within the highest levels of establishment psychiatry, there are today three acknowledged areas of scientific failure that contradict the myth of psychiatry’s scientific progress: (1) the jettisoning of psychiatry’s chemical imbalance theory of mental illness; (2) worsening treatment outcomes despite increased treatment; and (3) the scientific invalidity of its diagnostic system.

First, the jettisoning of psychiatry’s chemical imbalance theory of mental illness. Crucial to psychiatry’s value to the ruling class is some kind of “individual-defect theory of mental illness.” Much of the public and even many doctors remain unaware that researchers had disproven psychiatry’s chemical imbalance theory of mental illness by the 1990s, and that more recently, even establishment psychiatry has publicly acknowledged this theory’s invalidity.

In 1998, in Blaming the Brain, Elliot Valenstein, professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan, detailed research showing that it is just as likely for people with normal serotonin levels to feel depressed as it is for people with abnormal serotonin levels, and that it is just as likely for people with abnormally high serotonin levels to feel depressed as it is for people with abnormally low serotonin levels, and he concluded, “Furthermore, there is no convincing evidence that depressed people have a serotonin or norepinephrine deficiency.”

In 2011, establishment psychiatrist Ronald Pies, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the Psychiatric Times, stated: “In truth, the ‘chemical imbalance’ notion was always a kind of urban legend—never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists.” Thomas Insel, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) director from 2002-2015, recently acknowledged the jettisoning of the chemical imbalance theory in his 2022 book Healing, stating: “The idea of mental illness as a ‘chemical imbalance’ has now given way to mental illnesses as ‘connectional’ or brain circuit disorders.”

With respect to this “brain circuit disorder” theory, there is as little evidence for this new individual-defect theory as there was for the now discarded chemical imbalance theory. Spinoza knew, 350 years ago, that the new and not yet unproven is useful in keeping the public hoodwinked, as he remarked: “Indeed, as the multitude remains ever at the same level of wretchedness, so it is never long contented, and is best pleased only with what is new and has not yet proved delusory.”

Second, worsening treatment outcomes despite increased treatment. Insel, as NIMH director in 2011, acknowledged: “Whatever we’ve been doing for five de­cades, it ain’t working. And when I look at the numbers—the number of sui­cides, number of disabilities, mortality data—it’s abysmal, and it’s not getting any better” (reported by Gary Greenberg in The Book of Woe, 2013).

In 2021, New York Times reporter Benedict Carey, after covering psychiatry for twenty years, concluded that psychiatry had done “little to improve the lives of the millions of people living with persistent mental distress. Almost every measure of our collective mental health—rates of suicide, anxiety, depression, addiction deaths, psychiatric prescription use—went the wrong direc­tion, even as access to services expanded greatly.” In his 2022 book Healing, former NIMH director Insel, notes: “While we studied the risk factors for suicide, the death rate had climbed 33 percent.”

All of this despite increased treatment, as Insel reports, “Since 2001, prescriptions for psychiatric medications have more than doubled, with one in six American adults on a psychiatric drug.”

Third, scientific invalidity of psychiatry’s diagnostic system. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the guild of American psychiatrists, and it is routinely referred to as the “bible of psychiatry.” In 2010, the chair of DSM-IV task force, Allen Frances, candidly acknowledged that “there is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it.” In 2013, the same year that the newly revised DSM-5 (foregoing Roman numerals) was published, Insel, as NIMH director, stated that the DSM’s diagnostic categories lack validity and announced that “NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories.” Frances was so appalled and embarrassed by the APA’s DSM-5 revision that he published Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life (2013).

Not only is there a growing consensus among establishment psychiatry that DSM disorders are scientifically invalid, DSM diagnoses cannot be reliably assessed. To assess the reliability of the current DSM-5, the APA conducted field trials assessing the degree of agreement between clinicians diagnosing the same individuals. A standard statistic used to assess reliability is called kappa (a kappa value of 0 means zero agreement and no reliability, and a kappa of 1.00 means perfect reliability). A previous DSM task force chair, Robert Spitzer, had stated that with respect to assessing the reliability of the DSM that a kappa of less than .40 indicates “poor” agreement and .70 was “only satisfactory.” For the DSM-5 field trials, here is a sample of kappa results: .20 for generalized anxiety disorder; .32 for major depressive disorder; .41 for oppositional defiant disorder; and .46 for schizophrenia.

If a construct lacks validity and cannot be reliably measured, it has no scientific value, and so research that attempts to associate such constructs with biochemical-genetic variables is simply “garbage in, garbage out” research.

What Would Spinoza Think of the Political Implications of Psychiatry?

There have been many efforts at applying a Marxist analysis to psychiatry, most recently by psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff, co-chair off the Critical Psychiatry Network, who references several such Marxist analyses in her 2022 “The Political Economy of the Mental Health System: A Marxist Analysis.” Moncrieff concludes, “The concept of mental illness has a strategic role in modern societies, therefore, enabling certain contentious social activities by obscuring their political nature, and diverting attention from the failings of the underlying economic system.”

In contrast to Marxist analyses of psychiatry, Spinozist analyses of psychiatry are uncommon. I believe that Spinoza would see both the overt and insidious political implications of contemporary psychiatry.

The overt institutional corruption of psychiatry would be immediately obvious to Spinoza. Observing the financial relationships between drug companies and psychiatry, Spinoza or any critical thinker would not take seriously psychiatry’s proclamations (or those of any institution that has a blatant disregard with respect to conflicts of interest that compromise and corrupt science).

Financial relationships between drug companies and psychiatry institutions have—similar to other US industrial complexes—increasingly become normalized. Owing to 2008 Congressional hearings on psychiatry’s financial relationship with drug companies, psychiatry’s flagrant conflicts of interest received widespread public attention. One of many psychiatrists exposed by these Congressional hearings was Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Biederman, Director of the Johnson & Johnson Center for Pediatric Psychopathology Research at Massachusetts General Hospital. Biederman is credited with creating pediatric bipolar disorder, and due in great part to his influence, the number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased forty-fold from 1994 to 2003. Congressional investigations revealed that Biederman had received $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007.

Federal legislation was enacted in 2013 that required pharmaceutical companies to disclose their direct payments to physicians, resulting in the creation of an Open Payments database. However, psychiatrists, similar to most US politicians, are not concerned that the transparency of their conflicts of interest will harm their careers. In 2021, utilizing this database, journalist Robert Whitaker reported: “From 2014 to 2020, pharmaceutical companies paid $340 million to U.S. psychiatrists to serve as their consultants, advisers, and speakers, or to provide free food, beverages and lodging to those attending promotional events.” Open Payments lists 31,784 psychiatrists (roughly 75 percent of the psychiatrists in the United States) who, Whitaker noted, “received something of value from the drug companies from 2014 through 2020.”

Spinoza was scrupulous about not allowing any financial conflicts of interest to interfere with his free thought and expression. In one of many examples of how he conducted his life, in 1673, Spinoza’s fame overseas garnered him an offer for a prestigious job, as he received a flattering letter from a professor at the University of Heidelberg inviting him to be a professor there; however, he turned it down, one major reason being a stipulation that could compromise his freedom of thought. Spinoza knew that it is difficult enough without conflicts of interest to discover truths; and so he would likely conclude that only the naïve and delusional would trust researchers and doctors who are financially dependent on giant pharmaceutical corporations.

More insidiously, Spinoza would see, as would Marx, Gramsci, and other critical thinkers, how organized psychiatry—similar to organized religion—serves the ruling class by having a population focus on their individual defects rather than societal ones. It would be clear to Spinoza, as a keen analyst of the political implications for belief systems, that a focus on biochemical individual defects rather than socioeconomic variables is a political win for the following factions: (1) pharmaceutical companies; (2) drug prescribers; (3) mental illness institutions whose survival is tied to biochemical causality; and (4) those atop the societal hierarchy who prefer social and economic causes for emotional difficulties and behavior disturbances be unexamined.

Moreover, given what Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise reveals about his thinking, it is likely that Spinoza would see another political implication of psychiatry. Spinoza cared deeply about freedom of thought and expression, and his major motivation for writing that treatise was his concern that clergy’s power over civil society threatened these freedoms; and his radical solution was to strip clergy of political power over civil society. In order to delegitimize the authority of clergy, Spinoza demonstrated that the Bible was not sacred, not revealed by God, and that instead it had numerous human authors over many years. For Spinoza, the Bible is simply a work of literature, a “faulty, mutilated, adulterated, and inconsistent” work. Spinoza knew that if the Bible is seen as God’s word, and if clergy authorities are seen as superior to others in the Bible’s interpretation, then they can exercise control over others.

Spinoza would be interested in the DSM—ironically called the “bible of psychiatry”—because of its political implications. He would see how the DSM, similar to the Bible, provides power for one group of people over others. Spinoza was troubled by how the false idea that the Bible is the word of God provides power for its professional interpreters, and he would likely be troubled by how the false idea that the DSM is scientific provides power for its professional interpreters.

Just as Spinoza saw how clergy derive their authority by positioning themselves to be the interpreters of a pseudosacred Bible, he would see how psychiatrists derive their authority by positioning themselves as the interpreters of a pseudoscientific DSM. And so, just as it was necessary for him to critique the Bible, Spinoza would see it necessary to critique the DSM. Spinoza would recognize that DSM criticism is not simply scientifically important but politically necessary.

If Marx and Spinoza were alive today, it is likely they would consider the following political questions about psychiatry: (1) Is psychiatry a science based on valid and reliable empirical evidence, or is it a religion with political implications? (2) Are psychiatrists and other mental health professionals being used by societal rulers to compel individuals to adjust to a society that is unjust and dehumanizing? (3) Are biological individual-defect theories of mental illness diverting attention from societal ills that cause emotional suffering? (4) Has the ruling class’s reward of status and authority to psychiatrists and other mental health professionals undermined mutual aid, which may well be far more helpful for emotionally suffering people?

Asking these questions today makes one a heretic, but Marx and Spinoza would be unintimidated by the prospect of such a diagnosis.




Bruce E. Levine, a practicing clinical psychologist, writes and speaks about how society, culture, politics, and psychology intersect. His most recent book is A Profession Without Reason: The Crisis of Contemporary Psychiatry—Untangled and Solved by Spinoza, Freethinking, and Radical Enlightenment (2022). His Web site is brucelevine.net

Russia Demands Israel Stop Sovereignty-Violating Airstrikes on Syria

https://news.antiwar.com/2022/07/04/russia-demands-israel-stop-sovereignty-violating-airstrikes-on-syria/



Warns attacks are unacceptable by Jason Ditz Posted on July 4, 2022

Over the weekend, Israel carried out attacks against a poultry farm on the Syrian coast, wounding two civilians. Russia issued a statement Monday, warning such attacks are “categorically unacceptable.”

Russia has positions on the Syrian coast, and has warned Israel away from the area before. The latest attack came from the coast, and conspicuously Russia didn’t comment when it happened.

The Russians say it violates Syrian sovereignty, and is against international norms. Those are plainly true things, but have never stopped Israel before.

Israel has shown time and again they’re willing to keep attacking over objections. If Russia decides to flat out stop them militarily, they clearly could, but so far that’s not been the case.

Instead Russia has tried to deter further attacks with air defenses. That’s allowed Syria to intercept more Israeli missiles, but not stop them outright. This warning sounds serious, but so did the last few without any action to stop the attacks.

The importance of elders

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220707141755.htm




Researchers argue that the long human lifespan is due in part to the contributions of older adults 

July 7, 2022
University of California - Santa Barbara
 

In a new paper, researchers challenge the longstanding view that the force of natural selection in humans must decline to zero once reproduction is complete. They assert that a long post-reproductive lifespan is not just due to recent advancements in health and medicine. The secret to our success? Our grandparents.




FULL STORY


According to long-standing canon in evolutionary biology, natural selection is cruelly selfish, favoring traits that help promote reproductive success. This usually means that the so-called "force" of selection is well equipped to remove harmful mutations that appear during early life and throughout the reproductive years. However, by the age fertility ceases, the story goes that selection becomes blind to what happens to our bodies. After the age of menopause, our cells are more vulnerable to harmful mutations. In the vast majority of animals, this usually means that death follows shortly after fertility ends.


Which puts humans (and some species of whale) in a unique club: animals that continue to live long after their reproductive lives end. How is it that we can live decades in selection's shadow?

"From the perspective of natural selection, long post-menopausal life is a puzzle," said UC Santa Barbara anthropology professor Michael Gurven. In most animals, including chimpanzees -- our closest primate brethren -- this link between fertility and longevity is very pronounced, where survival drops in sync with the ability to reproduce. Meanwhile in humans, women can live for decades after their ability to have children ends. "We don't just gain a few extra years -- we have a true post-reproductive life stage," Gurven said.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, senior author Gurven, with former UCSB postdoctoral fellow and population ecologist Raziel Davison, challenge the longstanding view that the force of natural selection in humans must decline to zero once reproduction is complete.

They assert that a long post-reproductive lifespan is not just due to recent advancements in health and medicine. "The potential for long life is part of who we are as humans, an evolved feature of the life course," Gurven said.

The secret to our success? Our grandparents.

"Ideas about the potential value of older adults have been floating around for awhile," Gurven said. "Our paper formalizes those ideas, and asks what the force of selection might be once you take into account the contributions of older adults."

For example, one of the leading ideas for human longevity is called the Grandmother Hypothesis -- the idea that, through their efforts, maternal grandmothers can increase their fitness by helping improve the survival of their grandchildren, thereby enabling their daughters to have more children. Such fitness effects help ensure that the grandmother's DNA is passed down.

"And so that's not reproduction, but it's sort of an indirect reproduction. The ability to pool resources, and not just rely on your own efforts, is a game changer for highly social animals like humans," Davison said.

In their paper, the researchers take the kernel of that idea -- intergenerational transfers, or resource sharing between old and young -- and show that it, too, has played a fundamental role in the force of selection at different ages. Food sharing in non-industrial societies is perhaps the most obvious example.

"It takes up to two decades from birth before people produce more food than they're consuming," said Gurven, who has studied the economy and demography of the Tsimané and other indigenous groups of South America. A lot of food has to be procured and shared to get kids to the point where they can fend for themselves and be productive group members. Adults fill most of this need with their ability to obtain more food than they need for themselves, a provisioning strategy that has sustained pre-industrial societies for ages and also carries over into industrialized societies.

"In our model, the large surplus that adults produce helps improve the survival and fertility of close kin, and of other group members who reliably share their food, too," Davison said. "Viewed through the lens of food production and its effects, it turns out that the indirect fitness value of adults is also highest among reproductive-aged adults. But using demographic and economic data from multiple hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists, we find that the surplus provided by older adults also generates positive selection for their survival. We calculate all this extra fitness in late adulthood to be worth up to a few extra kids!"

"We show that elders are valuable, but only up to a point," contends Gurven. "Not all grandmothers are worth their weight. By about their mid-seventies, hunter-gatherers and farmers end up soaking up more resources than they provide. Plus, by their mid-seventies, most of their grandkids won't be dependents anymore, and so the circle of close kin who stand to benefit from their help is small."

But food isn't everything. Beyond getting fed, children are also taught and socialized, trained in relevant skills and worldviews. This is where older adults can make their biggest contributions: While they don't contribute as much to the food surplus, they have the accumulation of a lifetime of skills they can deploy to ease the burden of childcare on parents, as well as knowledge and training that they can pass on to their grandchildren.

"Once you take into account that elders are also actively involved in helping others forage, then it adds even more fitness value to their activity and to them being alive," Gurven said. "Not only do elders contribute to the group, but their usefulness helps ensure that they also receive from the surpluses, protections and care from their group. In other words, interdependence runs both ways, from old to young, and young to old."

"If you're part of my social world, there might be some kickback," Davison explained. "So to the extent that we're interdependent, I'm vested in your interest, beyond just simple kinship. I'm interested in getting you to be as skilled as possible because some of your productivity could help me down the road."

Gurven and Davison found that rather than our long lifespans opening up opportunities that led to a human-like foraging economy and social behavior, the reverse is more likely -- our skills-intensive strategies and long-term investments in the health of the group preceded and evolved with our shift to our particular human life history, with its extended childhood and unusually long post-reproductive stage.

In contrast, chimpanzees -- who represent our best guess as to what humans' last common ancestor may have been like -- are able to forage for themselves by age 5. However, their foraging activities require less skill, and they produce minimal surplus. Even so, the authors show that if a chimpanzee-like ancestor would share their food more widely, they could still generate enough indirect fitness contributions to increase the force of selection in later adulthood.

"What this suggests is that human longevity is really a story about cooperation," said Gurven. "Chimpanzee grandmothers are rarely observed doing anything for their grandkids."

Though the authors say their work is more about how the capacity for long life came to first exist in the Homo lineage, the implication that we owe it to elders everywhere is an important reminder looking forward.

"Despite elders being far more numerous today than ever before in the past, there's still much ageism and underappreciation of older adults," Gurven said. "When COVID seemed to be most deadly just for older adults, many shrugged their shoulders about the urgency of lockdown or other major precautions.

"Much of the huge value of our elders goes untapped," he added. "It's time to think seriously about how to reconnect the generations, and harness some of that elder wisdom and expertise."







Story Source:

Materials provided by University of California - Santa Barbara. Original written by Sonia Fernandez. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference: Raziel Davison, Michael Gurven. The importance of elders: Extending Hamilton’s force of selection to include intergenerational transfers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022; 119 (28) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2200073119

Myths And Facts About The Israeli Siege On Gaza

https://popularresistance.org/15-years-of-failed-experiments-myths-and-facts-about-the-israeli-siege-on-gaza/



By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle. July 7, 2022


15 Years of Failed Experiments.

15 years have passed since Israel imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip, subjecting nearly two million Palestinians to one of the longest and most cruel politically-motivated blockades in history.

The Israeli government had then justified its siege as the only way to protect Israel from Palestinian “terrorism and rocket attacks”. This remains the official Israeli line until this day. Not many Israelis – certainly not in government, media or even ordinary people – would argue that Israel today is safer than it was prior to June 2007.

It is widely understood that Israel has imposed the siege as a response to the Hamas takeover of the Strip, following a brief and violent confrontation between the two main Palestinian political rivals, Hamas, which currently rules Gaza, and Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.

However, the isolation of Gaza was planned years before the Hamas-Fatah clash, or even the Hamas legislative election victory of January 2006. Late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was determined to redeploy Israeli forces out of Gaza, years prior to these dates.

What finally culminated in the Israeli Disengagement from Gaza in August-September 2005 was proposed by Sharon in 2003, approved by his government in 2004 and finally adopted by the Knesset in February 2005.

The ‘disengagement’ was an Israeli tactic that aimed at removing a few thousand illegal Jewish settlers out of Gaza – to other illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank – while redeploying the Israeli army from crowded Gaza population centers to the border areas. This was the actual start of the Gaza siege.

The above assertion was even clear to James Wolfensohn, who was appointed by the Quartet on the Middle East as the Special Envoy for Gaza Disengagement. In 2010, he reached a similar conclusion: “Gaza had been effectively sealed off from the outside world since the Israeli disengagement … and the humanitarian and economic consequences for the Palestinian population were profound.

The ultimate motive behind the ‘disengagement’ was not Israel’s security, or even to starve Gazans as a form of collective punishment. The latter was one natural outcome of a much more sinister political plot, as communicated by Sharon’s own senior advisor at the time, Dov Weisglass. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in October 2004, Weisglass put it plainly: “The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process.” How?

“When you freeze (the peace) process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem,” according to Weisglass. Not only was this Israel’s ultimate motive behind the disengagement and subsequent siege on Gaza but, according to the seasoned Israeli politician, it was all done “with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.” The President in question here is no other than US president at the time, George W. Bush.

All of this had taken place before Palestine’s legislative elections, Hamas’ victory and the Hamas-Fatah clash. The latter merely served as a convenient justification to what had already been discussed, ‘ratified’ and implemented.

For Israel, the siege has been a political ploy, which acquired additional meaning and value as time passed. In response to the accusation that Israel was starving Palestinians in Gaza, Weisglass was very quick to muster an answer: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

What was then understood as a facetious, albeit thoughtless statement, turned out to be actual Israeli policy, as indicated in a 2008 report, which was made available in 2012. Thanks to the Israeli human rights organization Gisha, the “redlines (for) food consumption in the Gaza Strip” – composed by the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories – was made public. It emerged that Israel was calculating the minimum number of calories necessary to keep Gaza’s population alive, a number that is “adjusted to culture and experience” in the Strip.

The rest is history. Gaza’s suffering is absolute. 98 percent of the Strip’s water is undrinkable. Hospitals lack essential supplies and life-saving medications. Movement in and out of the Strip is practically prohibited, with minor exceptions.

Still, Israel has failed miserably in achieving any of its objectives. Tel Aviv hoped that the ‘disengagement’ would compel the international community to redefine the legal status of the Israeli occupation of Gaza. Despite Washington’s pressure, that never happened. Gaza remains part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories as defined in international law.

Even the September 2007 Israeli designation of Gaza as an “enemy entity” and a “hostile territory” changed little, except that it allowed the Israeli government to declare several devastating wars on the Strip, starting in 2008.

None of these wars have successfully served a long-term Israeli strategy. Instead, Gaza continues to fight back on a much larger scale than ever before, frustrating the calculation of Israeli leaders, as it became clear in their befuddled, disturbing language. During one of the deadliest Israeli wars on Gaza in July 2014, Israeli right-wing Knesset member, Ayelet Shaked, wrote on Facebook that the war was “not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority.” Instead, according to Shaked, who a year later became Israel’s Minister of Justice, “… is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people.”

In the final analysis, the governments of Sharon, Tzipi Livni, Ehud Olmert, Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett failed to isolate Gaza from the greater Palestinian body, break the will of the Strip or ensure Israeli security at the expense of Palestinians.

Moreover, Israel has fallen victim to its own hubris. While prolonging the siege will achieve no short or long-term strategic value, lifting the siege, from Israel’s viewpoint, would be tantamount to an admission of defeat – and could empower Palestinians in the West Bank to emulate the Gaza model. This lack of certainty further accentuates the political crisis and lack of strategic vision that continued to define all Israeli governments for nearly two decades.

Inevitably, Israel’s political experiment in Gaza has backfired, and the only way out is for the Gaza siege to be completely lifted and, this time, for good.

Taiwan And The Making Of An ‘Asian’ NATO

https://popularresistance.org/taiwan-and-the-making-of-an-asian-nato/



By Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report. July 7, 2022


The United States wants to turn Taiwan into an Asian Ukraine.

The goal is to use it as a weapon against a China, a country that has been declared an adversary.

These are amended remarks given by the author at an event held by the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute titled “NATO and Global Empire.” The event can be watched in full here .

This year’s NATO Summit took place amid a geopolitical seismic wave crashing upon Eurasia: Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. Contrary to the musings of the U.S. foreign policy establishment and its loyal servants in the West, NATO is not a defensive institution but rather the root cause of the dangerous confrontation developing between the U.S. and Russia. NATO provoked Russia to intervene in Ukraine by sponsoring a right-wing coup in 2014 and facilitating a regime of ethnic cleansing in the Donbas region for the next eight years. NATO is now prolonging the special military operation in Ukraine through massive military aid packages and economic sanctions. True to imperialism, NATO has no intention of stopping with Ukraine. The military alliance not only has plans to expand further into Eurasia to provoke Russia but also has set its sights on China in the Asia-Pacific.

NATO’s ambitions are nothing more than an extension of U.S. foreign policy objectives. The primary objective of U.S. imperialism at this moment in history is the containment of China—a euphemism for war. While U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has denied any intention of creating an “Asian NATO,” U.S. and NATO actions say otherwise. NATO invited Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea to this year’s Summit. NATO’s so-called Strategic Concept which came out of the Summit placed heavy focus on the “threats” posed by China and went so far as to call the socialist country “malicious” in its supposed targeting of “Alliance security.”

Beyond the Summit, the United States has led the way in developing military and political alliances that mirror NATO. In 2020, the Trump administration revived the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (known as the Quad) to bring India, Japan, and Australia further into the anti-China fold. However, members of the Quad are careful not to engage in a united military pact. The Biden administration was thus compelled to launch AUKUS in 2021, a mini-Asian NATO. AUKUS brings the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia into a military alliance which promises to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines and encourage Australia to increase military spending to satisfy its imperialist partners, all in the name of countering the so-called “China threat.” On June 24th, the U.S. announced the formation of the Partners in the Blue Pacific with New Zealand, Australia, and the U.K. in an obvious response to China’s recent security agreement with the Solomon Islands.

The U.S.’s emphasis on building up military alliances in the Asia-Pacific against China can be traced back to former President Barack Obama’s Pivot to Asia strategy. The Pivot to Asia has since morphed into an “Indo-Pacific Strategy” that has garnered only lukewarm results. China’s stabilizing economic presence in the region presents a counterweight to the U.S.’s military ambitions. Even the most unfriendly nations toward China, such as Japan, must carefully negotiate between its loyalties to the U.S. and its need for trade relations with China. For all the talk of an Asian NATO or a stronger military alliance in the region, the United States has been forced up until this point to rely on bilateral relationships to forward its aggressive policy toward China.

Still, NATO’s decision to shift attention on the Pacific is a clear and present threat to world peace. Even the Washington Post-owned Foreign Policy magazine has warned of a “Global Cold War” arising out of NATO’s interest in China. The U.S. government, Northrup Grumman-funded Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has admitted that NATO is returning to a “Cold War posture.” A better term for the strategy is full-spectrum dominance. The alliances that the U.S. is attempting to build in the Pacific are nothing more than an extension of a decade-long militaristic posture toward China which has brought more than half of the U.S.’s military arsenal to the region.

This brings the question of Taiwan into view. It’s clear to anyone paying attention that the U.S. views Taiwan as the single most important flashpoint for its military strategy against China. U.S. President Joe Biden has already approved four different weapons transfers to Taiwan over the course of eighteen months. Biden has also verbalized on three different occasions that his administration is committed to defending the island from a so-called invasion from China.

These moves are dangerous violations of the status quo on the Taiwan question established during the tumultuous latter stages of the Cold War. The recognition of the People’s Republic of China by the United Nations in 1971 and the normalization of relations between the U.S. and China in 1979 affirmed Taiwan as a Chinese province under the One-China principle. However, the United States under successive administrations has moved away from the status quo by providing clear political support to separatist forces in legislation such as the Taipei Act which advocates for Taiwan’s participation within prominent international bodies. Furthermore, the United States has increased arm sales to Taiwan in violation of Article 6 of the 1982 Joint Communiqué between China and the U.S. which states:


Having in mind the foregoing statements of both sides, the United States Government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, that its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms, the level of those supplied in recent years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and that it intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution.

To get a picture of just how much the U.S. has violated this clause, the U.S. maintains a backlog of weapons transfers to Taiwan worth $14 billion and this number is only set to grow with the announcement of $120 million more in assistance to Taiwan’s naval forces earlier this month.

Taiwan is intimately connected to the U.S.’s overall strategy of developing a NATO-like infrastructure in the Pacific. U.S. military strategists and talking heads have become obsessed with likening Ukraine to Taiwan. Their argument is that Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine means that the U.S. must escalate in Taiwan to protect the island from China. The problem with this formulation is two-fold. Ukraine is a sovereign country. Taiwan is a province of China. Where the parallel truly resides is that similar to Ukraine being used as a pawn to forward the NATO encirclement of Russia, Taiwan is being used as a chip in the U.S.’s plans to militarily encircle China.

A key country to watch following the NATO summit is Japan. Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pre-empted the NATO summit by stating that China should be forced to “give up seizing Taiwan.” Japan currently stations more than 120 U.S. military bases and has already made a commitment to increase military spending in a show of loyalty to the U.S.’s anti-China geopolitical strategy. With South Korea’s election of a new pro-U.S. president and Australia’s adoption of a hostile policy toward China, the U.S. will likely seek firmer commitments from its so-called allies on the question of Taiwan.

The U.S. sees in the Taiwan question both a profitable venture for its defense industry and an opportunity to build the case for war with China. But the U.S.’s legitimacy is on the decline and China’s prestige in Asia, the Pacific, and the rest of the world is on the rise. The U.S. doesn’t merely seek alliances; it needs them. Military encirclement and the host of aggressive policies that the U.S. employs against China cannot succeed in isolation, if they can succeed at all. The U.S. understands that any conflict with China over Taiwan would require a level of support in the region similar to the servitude demonstrated by Europe against Russia.

Such a pursuit is incredibly reckless for a host of reasons. First, China presents no tangible military threat and in fact makes peace a fundamental priority in the international arena. China has only a single military base abroad and has not participated in a military conflict in more than four decades. Furthermore, while China seeks peaceful resolution to the issue of reunification with Taiwan, it will not tolerate any attempt by the U.S. to engineer independence or separatism. So-called Taiwan “independence” is China’s red-line, just as Russia’s red-line was NATO expansion into Ukraine and beyond.

The U.S.’s provocations in Taiwan thus risk a hot war with China that would inevitably lead to nuclear exchange. A hot war with China would destroy whatever stability exists around the world and create an economic and human catastrophe far greater than what has occurred over the course of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. Those who dismiss these real and legitimate threats to humanity in favor of Sinophobia, Yellow Peril, and New Cold War talking points are walking in lock-step with the U.S. empire. It is critical that we resist this reactionary defeatism, oppose any and all attempts of the U.S. to form a NATO-like infrastructure in the Pacific, and align ourselves with all global forces, including China, standing on the side of self-determination and peace.