Fugitive Georgian Ex-President Appointed Governor of Odessa Region
RT | May 30, 2015
Georgia’s former President Mikhail Saakashvili, wanted by his country’s prosecutors for embezzlement, abuse of power and politically-motivated attacks, has been appointed governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region.
President Petro Poroshenko personally appointed Saakashvili to the post, saying the former Georgian leader is “a friend of Ukraine.” In a statement at Saakashvili’s nomination in Odessa, Poroshenko said the two had known each other for 25 years, since university days.
According to Poroshenko, Saakashvili “has proven with deeds, not words that he can not only give birth to creative ideas, but also put them into practice.” He added Georgia’s ex-president had changed his country “in the direction of transparency, effectiveness, anti-corruption, appeal for foreign investors, fair justice, protection of citizen’s rights, democracy,” something Poroshenko “would like to see very much” in Odessa.
Earlier on Saturday, Saakashvili was given Ukrainian citizenship under Petro Poroshenko’s personal decree, published on his website. According to the Ukrainian constitution, only a citizen can become an official at governor level.
Mikhail Saakashvili left Georgia in autumn 2013, days before his presidential term expired. He has been living abroad ever since.
In spring 2014, Georgia’s new ruling coalition accused Saakashvili of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state budget. According to Georgian officials’ accounts, he spent the money on parties and expensive presents for his nearest and dearest. Saakshvili denies the charges, saying the funds went to attracting foreign investors to the country. Georgia’s prosecutors have started an investigation into the case.
There are several other criminal cases ongoing against Mikhail Saakashvili. He is being accused of abuse of power during the crackdown on anti-government protests in the Georgian capital Tbilisi on November 7, 2007. He was also allegedly involved in the attack on the opposition TV station Imedi, which was seized by Georgian special forces on the same day, and the appropriation of the founder’s assets.
During his term, Saakashvili personally controlled the country’s special forces. After his opponents came to power, the force was removed from the head of state’s direct command, and its documents declassified.
In February 2015, Georgia issued an extradition request for Saakashvili, but Ukraine declined it.
The Russian Foreign Ministry’s human rights representative Konstantiv Dolgov has made a sarcastic comment about Saakashvili’s new post. “Saakashvili, accused of multiple crimes against the people of Georgia, has been appointed the governor of Odessa, where neo-nazis had burned people alive and got no punishment,” Dolgov said on Twitter, referring to the May 2014 fire in which dozens opponents of the Maidan movement perished.
“This is deeply symbolic of ‘Kiev-style democracy’, which the West is still watching with shameful approval!” the Russian official added.
Saakashvili has been a long-time supporter of the current Kiev administration, ever since its heads were leaders of the Maidan movement which toppled the former Ukrainian president in the February 2014 coup. He came to Kiev to support the protesters during the rioting. Before the latest appointment, Saakashvili was Poroshenko’s advisor on reform.
In his new post, Saakashvili says he plans to turn the port city of Odessa into “the capital of the Black Sea.” In an address following his nomination, he said: “It is very important for me to start, because this is going to be a very long process,” adding, “it needs serious change… to bring many more tourists and investors to Odessa and turn it into a real world wonder.”
Never mind Israel, it’s time to show the red card to the PA
MEMO | May 30, 2015
For many observers, the fact that Sepp Blatter was re-elected as president of FIFA came as no surprise. As expected, he was determined to stay in office despite the arrests and corruption charges this week. That Israel, unlike the European countries, supported Blatter’s candidacy is also not surprising; it is a state whose own political leaders have been tainted by corruption charges over the years.
The most shocking news from the FIFA congress in Zurich was actually the decision by Palestinian Football Association chief Jibril Rajoub to withdraw the resolution for a vote to suspend Israel from world football’s governing body. Although the Palestinian Authority (PA) is notorious for its wanton squandering of international goodwill, this latest example is arguably the worst of all. It was a golden opportunity to take the international boycott of apartheid Israel to a new level. Rajoub’s claim that he was pressured by African and Asian countries is a lame and shameless excuse. His past history as head of the PA’s preventive security agency and thus a willing collaborator with Israel on security issues demonstrates clearly where his loyalties lie on such matters.
While much of what goes on at FIFA is often shrouded in secrecy, the universal support for the Palestinian case among the member federations was well known. If anyone doubts the level of international support that was there for the taking, just consider how petrified Israeli officials became in the days leading up to the Zurich meeting.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin described the imminent suspension from FIFA and popular calls for a cultural boycott as a “strategic threat” to his country. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued the now customary volley of threats to the PA, to Jibril Rajoub (he claims) and FIFA itself. To his credit, the Israeli leader did, at least, stand up to protect his country’s interests, which is more than can be said for the Palestinian leadership. Yet again, the PA proved that it desperately lacks the political will to do the same.
If nothing else, Rajoub’s farcical performance in Zurich confirms that the Ramallah authority cannot be trusted. It has now made it standard practice to betray the collective will and expectations of the Palestinian people. In 2008, for example, the PA obstructed the passage of a UN resolution proposed by the State of Qatar calling for an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip. The following year, it abandoned a resolution for the Human Rights Council to forward Judge Richard Goldstone’s report on war crimes in Gaza to the UN Security Council. The PA has thus acquired a unique record of putting Israel’s interests before that of the Palestinians.
In a bizarre and theatrical manner, Rajoub took to the stage in Zurich carrying a red card – which he obviously had no intention of using – to announce that he was withdrawing the resolution because he was aware of the harm it would bring to Israel. His words amounted to an apology to the Israelis, as if their suspension from FIFA or a sporting boycott of the apartheid state was a crime.
Gideon Levy, the Israeli columnist for Haaretz newspaper, would have made a better representative for the Palestinians than Rajoub. “A soccer ban doesn’t kill anyone,” he wrote. “A boycott spills no blood. It is a legitimate weapon to establish justice and apply international law.”
That said, there are others, including Rajoub, who claim that politics should be kept out of sports. Of course, they would say that wouldn’t they, especially when it suits their interests to do so. But didn’t the US lead an international boycott of the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow after the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan? Didn’t the Thatcher government in Britain as well as France and Australia support the boycott, leaving the decision about whether or not to compete to individual athletes? Similarly today, it is up to every individual citizen of the world to take a stand on Israeli apartheid. To advocate anything else would be sheer hypocrisy.
Whatever disappointment and outrage Palestinians and the thousands of people who had been campaigning vigorously for the ban may feel after Zurich, all is not lost. This latest encounter with apartheid Israel has placed the nuclear option of a sporting and cultural boycott of the rogue state well within the reach of the masses. They do not have to wait for the approval of FIFA or even the Palestinian Authority to set it in motion.
In retrospect, the failure of the PA to seek the suspension of Israel from FIFA has nothing to do with Israel’s “international effort” as Netanyahu claimed triumphantly. It was all about the spinelessness of the Palestinian Authority and its utter dependency on Israeli and Western largesse. Forget about showing Israel the red card; it is high time for the PA to be sent for an early bath for its repeated failures to represent the people of Palestine and defend their national interests.
1921: Black Business District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Attacked, Aerially Bombed and Razed, Victims Dumped in Mass Graves
Empire Slayer | May 16, 2015
An otherwise poor and uninformative documentary (funded by Pennsylvania Public Television and Corporation for Public Broadcasting) on the US bombing and burning alive of 11 residents, adults and children, of the MOVE house in Philadelphia, 1985, begins with one minute (10:30 to 11:30) on the rarely-mentioned 1921 onslaught, aerial bombing, and incineration of the “Black Wall Street” business district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, by white mobs, including the KKK and government forces.
From the PPT, CPB doc:
May 31st, 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma. The ‘Negro Wall Street’ district of the Greenwood neighborhood is bombed from the air.
Whites invade the enviable black business district, looting, burning, killing.
The police commandeer private planes. The 101st Airborne is flown in. A load of dynamite is dropped. 75 instantly killed. Hundreds of homes and businesses destroyed.
Four truckloads of bodies are shoveled into mass graves along the Arkansas river.
4,000 black men, women, and children arrested and placed in concentration camps, where they are required to carry ‘passes’.
The city quickly re-zones the neighborhood so that the railroad can be run through, thus completing the destruction of that neighborhood.
Wikipedia states that on May 31 and June 1, 1921:
… a group of white people attacked the black community of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It resulted in the Greenwood District, also known as ‘the Black Wall Street‘ and the wealthiest black community in the United States, being burned to the ground.
An estimated 10,000 blacks were left homeless, and 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire. The official count of the dead by the Oklahoma Department of Vital Statistics was 39, but other estimates of black fatalities vary from 55 to about 300.
The events of the riot were long omitted from local and state histories. “The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was rarely mentioned in history books, classrooms or even in private. Blacks and whites alike grew into middle age unaware of what had taken place.”
One official, the police chief, was found guilty of “failing to take proper precautions for protecting life and property, and for conspiring to free automobile thieves and collect rewards.”
“No legal records indicate that any other white official was ever charged of wrongdoing or even negligence.”
Black Wall Street neighborhood after the massacre and being razed:
Of the wider trend of this kind of violence in the US during that period, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elliot G. Jaspin has documented in his book, Buried in Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America, that whites in the US, mainly in the period of about 1900 to about 1920, engaged in extraordinarily widespread, mass “racial cleansings” of large areas in which black people lived.
White terrorists would form mobs and drive out the black people, torturing and killing those who could not escape or refused to leave. The US government allowed the practice and did not punish or rectify it, and many of the cleansed counties remain entirely white today.
Records, like those from the Black Wall Street massacre, abound of harrowing escapes as white mobs fired at black civilians in their neighborhoods and burned down their houses, forcing people to flee through forests and creeks, hide in wells, or simply get on trains at gunpoint and go away.
Crucially, Jaspin also documents why this history is almost entirely unknown in the US: people either deny or try to explain away racial cleansings [and many other crimes of their society], through tactics such as using euphemisms, making excuses, or, the tactic perhaps most seen today, blaming the victims.
George Orwell wrote: “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”
Lynchings of black people were also a frequent occurrence during, before, and after this period.
Harvard scholar Garikai Chengu notes:
A lynching was a quintessential American public ritual that often took place in front of large crowds that sometimes numbered in the thousands. Historian Mark Gado notes that, “onlookers sometimes fired rifles and handguns hundreds of times into the corpse while people cheered and children played during the festivities”.
… in 1899 the Springfield Weekly described a lynching by chronicling how, “the Negro was deprived of his ears, fingers and genital parts of his body. He pleaded pitifully for his life while the mutilation was going on… before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the bones crushed into small bits… the Negro’s heart was cut into several pieces, as was also his liver… small pieces of bones went for 25 cents…”. Such graphic accounts were the norm in the South, and photos, were regularly taken of the lynched bodies on display and made into postcards that were sent all over the country.
Lynchings were sanctioned by the US government, as they were not prevented and went unpunished.
In the US today, Chengu continues, the:
… police state assassinates the Black victim twice. Once by way of lynching and again to assassinate the victim’s character so as to justify the public execution [blaming the victim].
Chauncey DeVega notes:
American Exceptionalism [the US state-worshiper’s version of “Our God is the One True God”] blinds those who share its gaze to uncomfortable facts and truths about their own country.
The burned to death images of the black body were a form of mass culture in 19th- and 20th-century America.
DeVega gives some samples of reports on how lynchings were carried out:
Two thousand people gathered for the killing, some taking a special excursion train from Atlanta for the purpose. The leaders of the lynching stripped Hose, chained him to a tree, stacked wood around him, and soaked everything in kerosene. The mob cut off Hose’s ears, fingers and genitals; they peeled the skin from his face. They watched, a newspaper reported, ”with unfeigning satisfaction” as the man’s veins ruptured from the heat and his blood hissed in the flames.
Another lynching:
“Great masses of humanity flew as swiftly as possible through the streets of the city in order to be present at the bridge when the hanging took place … the Negro was … taken to the City Hall … crowds of men, women and children turned and hastened to the lawn.
“On the way to the scene of the burning people on every hand took a hand in showing their feelings in the matter by striking the Negro with anything obtainable, some struck him with shovels, bricks, clubs, and others stabbed him and cut him until when he was strung up his body was a solid color of red, the blood of the many wounds inflicted covered him from head to foot.
“Dry goods boxes and all kinds of inflammable material were gathered, and it required but an instant to convert this into seething flames. When the Negro was first hoisted into the air his tongue protruded from his mouth and his face was besmeared with blood.
“Life was not extinct within the Negro’s body, although nearly so, when another chain was placed around his neck and thrown over the limb of a tree on the lawn, everybody trying to get to the Negro and have some part in his death. The infuriated mob then leaned the Negro, who was half alive and half dead, against the tree, he having just strength enough within his limbs to support him.
>“As rapidly as possible the Negro was then jerked into the air at which a shout from thousands of throats went up on the morning air and dry goods boxes, excelsior, wood and every other article that would burn was then in evidence, appearing as if by magic. A huge dry goods box was then produced and filled to the top with all of the material that had been secured.
“The Negro’s body was swaying in the air, and all of the time a noise as of thousands was heard and the Negro’s body was lowered into the box.” “No sooner had his body touched the box than people pressed forward, each eager to be the first to light the fire, matches were touched to the inflammable material and as smoke rapidly rose in the air, such a demonstration as of people gone mad was never heard before. Everybody pressed closer to get souvenirs of the affair. When they had finished with the Negro his body was mutilated.
“Fingers, ears, pieces of clothing, toes and other parts of the Negro’s body were cut off by members of the mob that had crowded to the scene as if by magic when the word that the Negro had been taken in charge by the mob was heralded over the city. As the smoke rose to the heavens, the mass of people, numbering in the neighborhood of 10,000 crowding the City Hall law and overflowing the square, hanging from the windows of buildings, viewing the scene from the tops of buildings and trees, set up a shout that was heard blocks away.”
In another lynching:
… fingers and toes were cut off, his teeth pulled out by pliers and finally he was castrated. It still wasn’t enough. Irwin was then burned alive in front of hundreds of onlookers (Brundage, p. 42).
DeVega continues that white torture and execution of blacks:
…was a ceremony … with distinct practices, that symbolically purged the black body from the white polity…
The rendering of spectacular violence against non-whites paid a psychological wage to white people that helped to create a type of social cement for White America, one that covered up its own intra-group tensions of class, religion, and gender. This racial logic continues in the present with a racially discriminatory criminal justice system, the murder by police of black and brown people, and how white Americans support such unfair treatment.
…
A 2001 report on the destruction of Black Wall Street “included the commission’s recommendations for some compensatory actions, most of which were not implemented by the state and city governments. The state passed legislation to establish some scholarships for descendants of survivors, economic development of Greenwood, and a memorial park to the victims in Tulsa. The latter was dedicated in 2010.”
The Cultural Afterparty of Maidan
By ANDREY UKRAINSKIY and ANATOLIY SLOBODYANYUK | CounterPunch | May 29, 2015
Creative intelligentsia has always been a social stratum which effectively serves the ruling class but tries to preserve a semblance of independence. So in the current situation in Ukraine, it is no surprise to see the proliferation of pro-war art exhibitions, hundreds of patriotic videos, dozens of bands singing vulgar songs about the leader of the neighbor state of Russia, and performers who see the main problem of the country being Lenin monuments and who stage “performances” by burning his works. In this article, we look at small part of this insanity.
Huge numbers of Ukrainian so-called “creative middle classes” were jumping up and down on Maidan Square chanting “Whoever is not jumping is a ‘moskal’ [derogatory term for a Russian] in the company of ultra-right militants. But playing at revolution and counterculture very quickly turned into backing the most reactionary tendencies of the new authorities. The transition from quantity to quality became obvious after the exhibition ‘Beware of Russians’ was presented in April 2014 at the Modern Art Center M17 in Kyiv. “Russians” sporting St. George ribbons were placed in zoo cages with signs attached to the cages saying “Do not feed”. The “Russians” were drinking vodka, playing balalaikas, honoring Putin and threatening visitors.
It is possible to find in any country such idiots as those who staged this exhibition. The most important thing to note is whether such conduct is supported by the state and what is the reaction of the society to such actions. Ukrainian media provided good feedback from the exhibition. A significant number of the ‘denizens of culture’ who attended it supported the exhibition. This was quite a telling fact.
Half a year later, the exhibition ‘Top 100 of the best patriotic posters‘ became a direct continuation of this dehumanizing tendency. The vulgar posters on display were often just adaptations of posters from bygone eras, with slogans adapted to the present day. So we saw, ‘Don’t pass it by, kill a ‘colorad!’ [1] and ‘Vata has no right to speak‘. [2]. Other themes present were sexism (in adapted pin-up pictures), anticommunism, clericalism, and pro-war propaganda.
The exposition ‘Goddess of War’ in Kharkiv presented panel images titled ‘Dogs of the DPR’, portraying dead bodies of members of the defense forces of Donetsk and Donbas.
Openly fascist cartoons about ‘vatniks’ (see footnote 2) by Irena Karpa (Ukrainian writer and musician) portrayed the Donbas population as subhumans. The xenophobic message of the cartoons was clear, even without translation. Not to speak of the utterly failed and banal artistic content of the effort. But all that didn’t stop the cartoons from being shown on the Ukrainian central television channel Inter and being welcomed by the chauvinist part of society.
During the last year, Ukrainian ‘art workers’ have actively dehumanized any opponent to the current political authorities. The derogatory terms ‘vatniks’ and ‘colorads’ resemble the die Untermenschen (‘sub-humans’) of the Third Reich or the ‘cockroaches’ label given to the Tutsi people massacred in Rwanda. (In March 1945, the magazine of the U.S. Marine Corps called the Japanese people “Japanese lice” (louseous japanicas). In the same month, 67 Japanese cities were bombed with fire-bombs. Later, Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered nuclear bombs.[3])
After such ‘art’ exhibitions in the months following the triumph of Euromaidan, it’s not surprising to recall that just one week after ‘Beware of Russians’ exhibition, on May 2, the Ukrainian ultra-right burned alive some oppositionists in the Odessa Trade-Union House.
Neither the artists involved in these macabre displays nor the consumers of their products seem to understand clearly what they have gotten themselves drawn into. Such radical metamorphosis in the behavior of the seemingly “creative and, intelligent” class of people could be predicted, but the threat of cultural nationalism was underestimated by many people on the anti-fascist side. The cultural nationalism appeared primarily ‘nationalist’ and not ‘cultural’, rather expansive than protective.
A few words should be said about Serhiy Zhadan – a writer and poet, famous in both Ukraine and Russia. Despite his support to Maidan, his glorification of the so called Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO), and his participation in attempts to demolish Lenin’s monument in Kharkiv (and this is not a complete list of his activity), some people who still call themselves the “Ukrainian left”, like the small, liberal sect Left Opposition or the national-anarchists of the Autonomous Workers’ Union, tolerate Zhadan or consider him an ally because they would like to be ‘trendy’ and be “liked” by some circles of Kiev elitist closed groups.
We can talk for a long time about the metastasis and regress of Ukrainian culture. Putrefaction is a colorful process, accompanied by multiple miasmas. But the general judgment remains the same – putrefaction is an immediate consequence of death.
The oft-criticized thesis of ‘CULTURE’ (as the sum of cultural products and the process of their production) and ‘MATERIAL PRODUCTION’ (as a basis for cultural life of the society) has received a stunning confirmation in Ukraine. Our country has actually stopped the process of producing both. Last year was a time of endless carving up and selling for cheap the cultural and industrial legacy of the Soviet era. Profits from transportation of Russian gas to Europe and rents paid by Russia for stationing its naval forces in Crimea have been squandered. All the normal ways of conducting business were ignored because of their lesser potential profit, compared to an illegal takeover and selling of enterprises. Donbas (as well as Crimea) was ousted from the public discourse, including art discourse, during the past several decades and de facto excluded from the decision making in the Ukrainian economic context.
The art that found itself in a fruitless and sterile environment, acquired its own specific character. Some successful artists left the country. The producers of cultural product of early 1990’s (whose activity was aimed mostly at addressing the dissolution of the USSR and its legacy) were far from untalented, but now they occupy high positions and push modern Ukrainian culture to a self-destructive path. (Along that road, they do not overlook creating their private villas in elite neighborhoods, and not only in Ukraine.)
This was actually the cultural background of Maidan. A creative minority at the time of Maidan’s beginning has effectively isolated itself inside its own, closed pseudo-underground environment of exhibitions-concerts-performances which were interesting only to the inner circle. Meanwhile, the masses continued to be satisfied with mass culture. On both sides we find crowds of lonesome people – crowds consisting of ‘unique personalities’ but who suffer because nobody listens to them. That’s because they actually have nothing to say.
Maidan was like a final gasp of breath. Through bloody sacrifice, the economic health of Ukraine (relatively speaking) was destroyed and only some meaningless catchwords remain – like “dignity” [Maidan was called a “revolution of dignity”] and fancy symbols of the supposed freedom in the European Union.
We were witness to an emotional activisation of half-educated and half-witted persons causing outbursts of cultural mythology. Issues of style and taste didn’t bother anyone at that time – anything of ‘pro-Maidan’ style was seen by Maidan participants as needed, appropriate and ‘trendy’’.
This charge of the quasi-idea (which was supposed to raise the cultural level of the masses) has stuck in the minds of the ‘creative layers’. That’s why we witness an apotheosis of aesthetic squalor, cannibalistic immorality and populist orientation among the creators of ‘culture’ in ‘modern’, post-Maidan Ukraine. Those who pretended to had something to say suddenly discovered that a portion of society supporting Maidan could only hear, or were only interested in, a set of incantations—”Glory to Ukraine – Glory to heroes” (Nation über alles).
It is no wonder that some artists, looking for popularity, were charmed by it all and assumed that it would endure. But their hopes are groundless because nationalist hysteria is temporal. The upsurge of nationalist hysteria and its inevitable fall are each the results of the objective processes in society and culture, not a product of the actions of the ‘creative layers’. Soon they will be held to account for their participation in absolutely monstrous (both ethical and moral) ‘art’ events. Or try to erase it from their biographies, though this will be quite a difficult task for them.
Andrey Ukrainskiy is a doctor, left-wing activist and journalist from the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. He lives in exile from Ukraine due to the conditions of government and vigilante repression.
Anatoliy Slobodyanyuk was a lecturer in the Faculty of Sociology of Kharkiv National University. In November 2014, he was fired along with the dean of the faculty and numbers of other lecturers and academics. They were fired for their criticism of new regime and alleged support for “separatism” as widely accused in social media networks. Soon after, he received numerous threats from far-right, pro-Maidan nationalists. He also lives in exile.
Ukraine humanitarian crisis ‘one of the world’s worst’ – UN refugee agency
RT | May 28, 2015
The rise in the number of refugees in the Ukrainian conflict is resulting in one of the world’s “worst humanitarian crisis” today, the UN has confirmed, as sporadic fighting and a lack of aid forces civilians flee to neighboring countries, mainly Russia.
The number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and those seeking refuge abroad is reaching catastrophic proportions despite the February-implemented Minsk II ceasefire agreement which barely holds ground with intermittent fighting continuing in the Donbass region.
The latest statistics from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) show that some 857,000 Ukrainians have sought asylum in neighboring countries. That is an increase of about 23,000 people in the last two weeks.
“The situation seems to be getting worse,” William Spindler, UNHCR Senior Communications Officer for Europe, West Africa, Statelessness told RT. He says that the number of IDPs and refugees from Ukraine has surpassed 2 million people. He added that people in Donbass continue to live in “substandard accommodation” as a result of the ongoing fighting.
“1.2 million people have been displaced inside Ukraine and over 800,000 people have gone to neighboring countries,” Spindler said, confirming the latest figures disclosed by his office. He added that those fleeing to neighbouring countries have gone “mainly to the Russian Federation” as well as Belarus, Poland, Germany and France.
In the latest report on the Ukraine conflict, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that between mid-April 2014 and 14 May 2015, at least 6,334 people were killed and 15,752 wounded. It also reported a danger posed to civilians by “unexploded ordinance and landmines” that are still left in Donbass.
“The situation is very serious, very worrying. This is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world today,” Spindler said.
The lack of medicine and medical equipment in conflict areas in Ukraine poses great danger, OCHA reported earlier. Both humanitarian and political efforts on the ground by the parties involved need to be “stepped up,” Spindler says, in order to reverse the dire situation that resulted from Kiev’s ongoing so-called “anti-terrorist operation” in eastern Ukraine.
“We are distributing essential aid but our efforts are not sufficient to deal with the needs,” said Spindler, stressing that more funding is needed to continue humanitarian aid work as the current financing covers only some 40 percent of the organization’s mission to Ukraine.
One of the main areas of concern for the UN refugee agency is the “difficulty” civilians have crossing the conflict line, Spindler told RT. He said that in some cases people were “separated” at the crossing line between Ukrainian and rebel controlled territories, as they tried to join their relatives or “obtain benefits that they are entitled to.”
Russia meanwhile continues to receive refugees from Ukraine, accommodating those seeking shelter in refugees camps before helping them settle all across the federation. “During multiple visits to a refugee center for Ukrainians we did not notice any problems with accommodation, food, medical services and education. Everything is organized as it should be, on the same level as for Russian citizens,” UN Refugees Agency (UNHCR) representative in Russia Baisa Vak-Voya told journalists Monday.
At the same time, Federal Migration Service chief Konstantin Romodanovsky called the situation in Ukraine a humanitarian disaster, as up to 600 Ukrainians cross into Russia daily.
“It is a catastrophe, of course. Homes have been ruined there. People vote with their feet, leaving their home country and entering Russia, where they get the status of temporary refugees – not because this is something Russia wants, but simply because there is no place they can live in,” Romodanovsky told Interfax on Monday.
Russia meanwhile estimates that over a million of Ukrainians have entered Russia since the conflict began last year, according to Valentina Kazakova, head of the Federal Migration Service’s Department for Citizenship.
Out of that number some 350,000 have applied and most of them granted temporary refuge status. “Another 105,000 have applied for entrance onto the state program for assisting the voluntary resettlement of compatriots from foreign countries,” Kazakova told Interfax earlier this month.
Since the conflict began another 195,000 Ukrainians requested temporary residence permits in Russia, while 40,000 applied for permanent residence cards and 88,000 for citizenship.
Latest Amnesty International Ukraine War Crimes Report Fails the Test
By Roger Annis | The New Cold War | May 29, 2015
Amnesty International has issued a 33-page report on the treatment of captured combatants and of civilians caught in the crossfire of the civil war (‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’) that the governing regime in Kyiv launched in eastern Ukraine in April 2014. Titled, ‘ Breaking Bodies: Torture and Summary Killings in Eastern Ukraine‘, the report presents grave allegations against the Ukrainian government and against the defense forces of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics. Allegations include forced and illegal detentions, prisoner abuse and torture, and summary executions.
The report has made headlines in Western mainstream press. One reason for that is its authorship. Amnesty International is a respected and renowned agency. But another reason is the nature of the report itself-it accuses both sides in the civil war with equal vigour.
That appeals to editors of Western publications who for the past year have systematically ignored or downplayed the documented accusations levied against the Ukrainian government and its armed forces and allied paramilitaries in earlier human rights reports. Those include the report of Human Rights Watch in October 2014 saying that Kyiv is using cluster weapons against civilian targets, and the lengthy reports in November 2014 and March 2015 of the Moscow-based Foundation for the Study of Democracy. The Human Rights Watch report concerning cluster weapons was corroborated by a separate and coincidental New York Times investigation and by later findings of inspectors of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Is there any basis to Amnesty International’s equal treatment and equal blame against both sides? No there is not.
Firstly, Amnesty produces no numbers to back its equivalency treatment. It says these are difficult to ascertain. This may be true for arriving at very specific numbers. But given the volume of media and human rights reports documenting human rights violations and war crimes by Kyiv, and considering that the Ukrainian government controls more than 95 per cent of the territory of the country, it is a stretch, to say the least, to make an equivalency argument.
Secondly, the Amnesty report excludes reporting on the multiple documented cases of human rights atrocities throughout Ukraine, for example the massacre in Odessa on May 2, 2014 that saw more than 50 people killed by right-wing vigilantes. It makes no mention of the economic embargo and routine interruption of aid shipments imposed by Kyiv against the rebel territory, including cutting the pensions of seniors. Instead, the report selectively chooses the band of territory proximate to the actual combat zone in the southeast of Ukraine. As if documented human rights violations by the Ukraine government elsewhere in the country would have no bearing on its conduct in the war zone, a war zone, moreover, that Kyiv has created. As if the recent string of killings of journalists and politicians in Kyiv and other cities of the country are incidental.
The Amnesty report shows extreme bias against the rebel forces in Donetsk and Lugansk by its selective language. It calls them “separatists”, “the separatist side”, or “the self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic… and Luhansk People’s Republic”.
The term “separatist” is a pejorative, used to discredit those so labelled. Considering the changes to Ukrainian law in the past year which have made the advocacy of “separatism” in Ukraine a grave criminal act, not to speak of an invitation to vigilante violence and murder against anyone so accused, it is inconceivable that a human rights organization would so carelessly use the term.
Two additional reasons make Amnesty International’s use of the term a scandal. One, there is the small matter that it is not true. The leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics as well as the advocates for political rights throughout eastern Ukraine have made it clear that they are receptive to any and all political options for the Donbas territory. The leaders of Donetsk and Lugansk signed the ceasefire agreement in Minsk, Belarus to this effect on February 12, 2015. Unfortunately, the Kyiv regime refuses to adhere to the clauses in that document, including the one that obliges it to negotiate forms of political autonomy (‘federalization’) with the rebel movement (a fact which the report by Amnesty omits mentioning).
Two, Amnesty International as well as the supporters of the governing regime in Kyiv throw around the term “separatist” (by which we can understand “political self-determination” or “secession”) as if it were some high crime. It is not. It is enshrined in international law. Many of the major countries of the NATO military alliance presently supporting Kyiv in its war have had perfectly legal “separatism” votes take place in their territories, including in Quebec, Canada in 1976 and 1995 and in Scotland, United Kingdom in 2015. Irony of ironies, modern, independent Ukraine itself was born of two “separatist” acts which made the country independent—the revolution of 1917-18 and the vote in 1991 to discontinue the Soviet Union.
While Amnesty has harsh language for the “separatists” of Donetsk and Lugansk, the extremist militias who are fighting alongside the regular Ukrainian army and committing no end of human rights atrocities are given kid-glove treatment. The Amnesty report calls the extreme-right militias that are waging cruel war in eastern Ukraine “volunteer militia formations”. This is the same, polite language used by Western media to minimize and obfuscate who it is, exactly, the NATO countries are backing in Ukraine, including with weapons and military training. (In recent months, the extremist paramilitaries have been incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard in order to lessen embarrassment to their NATO country benefactors.)
Amnesty’s report commits another significant travesty in the field of human rights investigation by drawing an equivalency of responsibility between the national government in Kyiv and the rebel forces in eastern Ukraine. The two are not equivalent. Kyiv has sent its army against its own people, a violation of international convention and law. Kyiv is a member of the United Nations and is a signatory to all manner of international laws and conventions obliging it to protect the human and political rights of its citizens.
Kyiv has shelled and bombarded civilian targets on a scale far in excess of whatever shells from the opposite side have incidentally struck civilian targets. Last September, when the rebel side had huge military momentum in its favour, it declined to press its advantage and retake the city of Mariupol, saying the civil damage and civilian casualties that would result were unthinkable and would be unpardonable.
Of course, the rebel military should be subject to the same standards governing human and political rights as any government. Indeed, there is ample evidence, including in this latest report by Amnesty, that the governing powers in Donetsk and Lugansk are living up to their responsibilities. But to charge them with the same degree of responsibility as the internationally recognized government in Kyiv is to make a mockery of international law. How many judges would give a free pass to rights violations by a national government were it to argue, “Hey, you can’t accuse us of war crimes, we say that the other side committed them, too.”
The fact that Kyiv is able to perpetrate war crimes and massive rights violations against its civilian population while enjoying the vigorous backing of many of the major governments of the world and of much of mainstream media, while a leading, international human rights organization apparently turns a blind eye, is a very alarming sign of the deterioration of the regime of accountability for war crimes that the post-WW2 trials against officials of Nazi Germany established.
Lastly, in its hasty and all-too-brief summary of the human rights topic it is supposedly investigating, Amnesty leaves a gaping, unanswered question. It writes in the report, “The [Donetsk Peoples Republic] officially suspended prisoner exchanges on 5 April 2015, but even since that time it has released some prisoners on an ad hoc basis. Some have been released directly to relatives who picked them up from their places of detention, while others have been released after informal negotiations, including by priests and war veterans on both sides of the conflict.”
Now why did the DPR suspend prisoner exchanges? Left unsaid in the Amnesty report is that the decision was made by Donetsk officials because of Kyiv’s failure to implement the Minsk ceasefire agreement, specifically, its obligation to join in creating working groups to oversee implementation of all the agreement’s terms. Questions have also been raised about whether Kyiv is providing genuine prisoners of the conflict for exchange or whether it is emptying its jails of common prisoners, as it did following the first ceasefire agreement in September 2014 (New York Times report).
Overall, this report by Amnesty International is an example of the bad place where a human rights agency ends up when it promotes a “plague on both your houses” line in a conflict where feigned neutrality only obscures the human rights issues at stake.
Unfortunately, Amnesty’s “both sides are to blame” message will carry a great deal of weight and will be spread far and wide. It deserves vigorous response and challenge.
US government ordered to prepare Guantánamo force-feeding videos for release
Reprieve | May 29, 2015
An appeal court has today ordered the Obama Administration to redact 12 hours of secret Guantánamo force-feeding footage in preparation for its public release, rejecting the Administration’s argument that not one single frame should be seen by the public.
The classified videos, which show Guantánamo prisoner Abu Wa-‘el Dhiab being forcibly removed from his cell and force-fed by the US military, were ordered to be released to the public by federal Judge Gladys Kessler in October 2014, following a First Amendment intervention from 16 US press organizations in the abuse case Dhiab v Obama.
The Obama Administration defied Judge Kessler’s order to prepare the videos for release, complaining that the process was too much work and insisting that revealing even one frame from the videos posed a national security risk. Leaving the videos unredacted, the Administration took the case straight to D.C.’s federal Court of Appeals in an attempt to get the order overturned.
In a judgment handed down today, the Court of Appeals ruled that the Administration’s refusal to comply with the lower court’s order was wrong, and rejected its attempt to use the ‘burdensome’ task of redacting videos as a reason to circumvent the First Amendment.
The Obama Administration must now comply with Judge Kessler’s original order to redact the videotapes to address national security concerns, and submit the redacted tapes to her court for reconsideration ahead of their release.
Alka Pradhan, Reprieve US attorney for Mr Dhiab, said: “The Obama Administration’s defiance of Judge Kessler’s order suggests a basic contempt for both the court’s authority and our First Amendment rights, which the Circuit judges recognized.
“The Administration is fighting hard because once those videotapes are redacted, they are one step closer to public release – and the government is one step closer to being held accountable for their treatment of Guantanamo detainees. Yet the harder the Administration resists, the more they confirm that they have much wrongdoing to hide.
“It is time to stop running absurd arguments, and simply to do the right thing: expose and end the ongoing abuse of hunger-strikers at Guantanamo Bay.”
With Courage and Anguish, A Gaza Athlete Speaks Out
By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | May 28, 2015
His name is Iyad Abu Gharqoud; he is a soccer player and a resident of Gaza, and he speaks to us directly from The New York Times today, allowing us to hear his anguish— as well as his courage—in telling his own experience of Israeli oppression. This is a rare occurrence in the newspaper of record, and we should savor the moment.
It is true that Abu Gharqoud’s op-ed piece “FIFA Should Give Israel the Red Card,” appears in print only in the international edition, but it is also to be found online, with a reasonably prominent position on the World page. The essay, calling on FIFA to suspend Israel for its treatment of Palestinians, is notable for its ring of genuine feeling: his love of soccer, his grief at the suffering he has endured and witnessed and his fear of Israeli reprisals for this moment of speaking out.
The young athlete writes to us from Bureij, a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, where his family has lived since they were driven from their home near Beersheba in 1948. He has found “great joy” in playing soccer, but as a professional he has come up against the fact that Palestinians under occupation live “at the whim of Israeli officials.”
His teams, Hilal al Quds and the Palestinian national team, are often held up at check points or prevented from traveling altogether; players, coaches and referees are denied travel rights, harassed and imprisoned; and two athletes were permanently maimed last year when Israeli border police shot them in their feet.
Abu Gharqoud writes of the special agony of Gaza, where Israel bombed soccer fields and recreation areas last summer, where four boys died under Israeli shells as they played soccer on a sandy beach and where Israeli missile fire killed eight soccer fans as they watched a televised World Cup game.
When he calls for FIFA to suspend Israel, his plea has the force of a moral argument. “I have been stopped at too many checkpoints, held for too many hours and suffered too long on account of my Palestinian nationality to be silent at this crucial moment,” he writes.
Here it becomes clear that he is taking a serious risk by speaking out. He goes on: “I have dedicated much of my life to excelling at the sport I love, but there are more important things in life than success on the soccer pitch.” In other words, he knows that Israel could choose to ruin his career for what he has told the world.
This is an antidote to the usual Times reports on Palestine/Israel, where we find official commentary taking the place of on-the-ground reality. Abu Gharqoud speaks with an authentic voice, and he gives us one small piece of the crushing Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Although he writes of soccer, he links its struggle under Israeli rule to the larger picture of occupation, to the “subjugation of the Palestinian people.” Two states or one, he writes, is not important. “Equality is.”
The article should point us to Israel’s repressive policies beyond the game of soccer. We could substitute almost any other endeavor in its place and find similar stories: in education, for instance, where schools are attacked with tear gas and students detained on the way to exams, in agriculture, where crops are destroyed and market produce left to rot at checkpoints.
In this piece, the Times has lifted the curtain to give us a brief view of the crushing effect of the Israeli occupation. Readers would benefit from more of this, but past experience warns that we should not expect a repeat any time soon.
Activists Confront “Jerusalem Hug” March
IMEMC News & Agencies | May 28, 2015
Activists confronted participants in the so-called “Jerusalem Hug” march, in which Palestinian and Israelis participated in Jerusalem, on Thursday.
Palestinians from Jerusalem gathered near Damascus Gate, where the march took place, and started telling Palestinian participants in the event that it had “normalization” goals.
There were minor scuffles and exchanges of swearing between the two sides.
Head of Fateh’s Jerusalem youth council Ahmad al-Ghoul told Ma’an News Agency that Palestinian participants in the march — from the West Bank cities of Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, and Tulkarem — were deceived into joining it by luring them with permits to enter Jerusalem.
Al-Ghoul said that the organization claimed that the march was a “humanitarian project for people in the West Bank” and provided them with permits and the necessary transportation without showing them the “normalization” goals of the visit.
He added that such organizations equate the “victim and the executioner” and show the world a picture of Palestinians and Israelis living in peace and love, spending millions of shekels in the process.
Israeli police detained Mahdi Abu Sbeih and Shadi al-Labban, who were trying to stop the march.
Corporate Welfare Fails to Deliver the Jobs
The Sad Case of Start-Up NY
By Lawrence S. Wittner | May 28, 2015
For several decades, state and local governments have been showering private businesses with tax breaks and direct subsidies based on the theory that this practice fosters economic development and, therefore, job growth. But does it? New York State’s experience indicates that, when it comes to producing jobs, corporate welfare programs are a bad investment. This should be instructive to state and local officials across the US.
In May 2013, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, with enormous fanfare, launched a campaign to establish Tax-Free NY — a scheme providing tax-free status for ten years to companies that moved onto or near the state’s public college and university campuses. According to Cuomo, this would “supercharge” the state’s economy and bring job creation efforts to an unprecedented level. It was “a game-changing initiative,” the governor insisted, and — despite criticism from educators, unions, and some conservatives — local officials fell into line. Reluctant to oppose this widely-touted jobs creation measure, the state legislature established the program — renamed Start-Up NY and including some private college campuses — that June.
After that, Start-Up NY moved into high gear. A total of 356 tax-free zones were established at 62 New York colleges and universities, with numerous administrators hired to oversee the development of the new commercial programs on their campuses. New York State spent $47 million in 2014 — and might have spent as much as $150 million over the years — advertising Start-Up NY in all 50 states of the nation, with ads focused on the theme: “New York Open for Business.” Nancy Zimpher, the chancellor of the State University of New York, crowed: “Nowhere in the country do new businesses and entrepreneurs stand to benefit more by partnering with higher education than in New York State, thanks to the widespread success of Governor Cuomo’s Start-Up NY program. With interest and investment coming in from around the globe and new jobs being created in every region, Start-Up NY has provided a spark for our economy and for SUNY.” This was, she declared, a “transformative initiative.”
But how “transformative” has Start-Up NY been? According to the Empire State Development Corporation, the government entity that oversees more than 50 of the state’s economic development programs, during all of 2014 Start-Up NY generated a grand total of 76 jobs. Moreover, the vast majority of the 30 companies operating under the program had simply shifted their operations from one region of the state to another. The New York Times reported that, of the businesses up and running under Start-Up NY, just four came from out of state. Indeed, in some cases, the “new” businesses had not even crossed county lines. One company moved one mile to qualify for the tax-free program. Furthermore, when it came to business investment, there was a substantial gap between promises and implementation. As the Empire State Development Corporation noted, companies promised $91 million in investments over a five year period, but only invested $1.7 million of that in 2014. Thus, not surprisingly, during 2014 the companies operating under Start-Up NY created only 4 percent of the new jobs they had promised.
Actually, Start-Up NY’s dismal record is not much worse than that of New York’s other economic development programs. According to a December 2013 study by the Alliance for a Greater New York, the state spends approximately $7 billion every year on subsidies to businesses, including “tax exemptions, tax credits, grants, tax-exempt bonds, and discounted land to corporations, ostensibly in the name of job creation, economic growth, and improved quality of life for all New Yorkers.” But 33 percent of spending by the state’s Industrial Development Agencies resulted in no job promises, no job creation, or a loss of jobs. In fact, “with little accountability, businesses often take the money and run.”
A recent report by state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli reached similar conclusions. According to DiNapoli, in 2014 the programs overseen by the Empire State Development Corporation cost the state $1.3 billion (not including the voluminous tax breaks granted to companies) and helped create or retain only 14,779 jobs — at a cost to taxpayers of $87,962 per job. The comptroller’s scathing report concluded that there was no attempt by the state agency to ascertain whether its programs “have succeeded or failed at creating good jobs for New Yorkers or whether its investments are reasonable.”
Of course, instead of shoveling billions of dollars into the coffers of private, profit-making companies, New York could invest its public resources in worthwhile ventures that generate large numbers of jobs — for example, in public education. In 2011, as a consequence of severe cutbacks in state funding of New York’s public schools and a new state law that capped local property tax growth — two measures demanded by Governor Cuomo — 7,000 teachers were laid off and another 4,000 teacher positions went unfilled. Overall, 80 percent of school districts reported cutting teaching positions. Today, with New York’s schools severely underfunded — more than half of them receiving less state aid now than they did in 2008-2009 — this pattern of eliminating teachers and closing down educational opportunities for children has continued. But what if the billions of dollars squandered on subsidizing private businesses in the forlorn hope that they will hire workers were spent, instead, on putting thousands of teachers back to work? Wouldn’t this policy also create a better educated workforce that would be more likely to secure employment? And wouldn’t this shift in investment have the added advantage of creating a more knowledgeable public, better able to understand the world and partake in the full richness of civilization?
It’s a shame that many state and local government officials have such a limited, business-oriented mentality that they cannot imagine an alternative to corporate welfare.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and is syndicated by PeaceVoice. His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization and rebellion, What’s Going On at UAardvark?
Struggling against the Surveillance State
By John V. Walsh | Dissident Voice | May 27, 2015
A struggle of some consequence is now being waged in Congress to keep on life support the NSA’s massive spying on the American people. And in this struggle the so-called progressives (more accurately referred to as liberals) are engaged in a massive betrayal of all they profess to believe in. Instead too many of them are scurrying about attacking Rand Paul, the libertarian, anti-interventionist, Republican Senator who is leading the charge against the Bush/Obama spying program. Among other things Senator Paul has engaged in a filibuster to stop this nefarious program. So far he has been successful.
Let us try to make the crucial events in Congress as simple and crystal clear as possible. There are two pieces of legislation that were before the Senate last week.
The first is the Patriot Act itself, Section 215 of which, in the government’s secret interpretation, allowed the NSA to vacuum up data on virtually every piece of electronic communication by every American and indeed everyone on the planet. This secret interpretation and use of 215 came to light only when the heroic Edward Snowden blew his whistle. Such massive spying has already been declared illegal by a recent opinion of the Second Circuit Court, although the NSA ignores this ruling. The Patriot Act is due to expire on June 1, and Obama is desperate to keep its essentials alive. Since the government has not been able to produce any convincing data that such surveillance has protected the U.S., one might well ask why Obama is so frantic, almost hysterical, to keep it alive. Why indeed.
The second is a “reform” of the Patriot Act, called the “USA Freedom Act,” proposed by Obama and company. However, the USA Freedom Act is not different in its essentials from the original Patriot Act. One “difference” is that the telephone and internet companies will hold the data rather than the government itself, and then the government will vacuum it up from those companies. A distinction without a difference, to be sure. Here is what the ACLU has to say about the “USA Freedom Act”:
“This bill would make only incremental improvements, and at least one provision—the material-support provision—would represent a significant step backwards,” ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement. “The disclosures of the last two years make clear that we need wholesale reform.”
Jaffer wants Congress to let Section 215 sunset completely, a common sentiment among privacy activists who are USA Freedom Act skeptics—they’d rather let it expire and wait for a better reform package than endorse something half-baked.
Now we get to the meat of the politics and the possible victory over the Stasi State that we have within reach. Last week both these bills came up for a vote in the Senate. Rand Paul filibustered, a filibuster denigrated by many “progressives” as just a “long speech.” Nevertheless, it was enough that cloture had to be invoked to get a vote on the bills. That means 60 votes were needed to keep the legislation alive. First came the vote for the USA Freedom Act. There were less than 60 votes to keep it alive. Down it went. Then came the vote to continue the good ol’ Patriot Act and its atrocious Section 215. Again there were less than the 60 votes needed to keep it alive. Down it went. So as things stand now, Section 215 will be history as of June 1!
That in itself is an enormous victory and should be widely heralded. But here is the interesting thing. All the Democrats voted in favor of Obama’s phony reform, the USA Freedom Act. (As noted above, they could not, however, muster the 60 votes needed to bring it forward and get it passed.) They included the favorites of the faux progressives, Ron Wyden, Patrick Leahey, Elizabeth Warren and of course that notorious advocate of butchery in Gaza, Bernie Sanders. What motivated these Dems to take such a stand? First, it was Obama’s bill, and more importantly it gave some cover to these Dems since most of their constituents are horrified by the Spy State. Next, when it came time to vote for the original Bush/Obama Patriot Act, the sides switched and the Republicans voted in favor of that measure. But they also failed to muster the 60 votes needed to go forward and so that version of mass surveillance failed. Only Rand Paul and a few other Republicans stood firm on the issue of no mass surveillance and confronted the Republican majority, a clear proclamation of principle over Party. For progressives this is (yet another) massive failure of those Dems whom they labored to install in the Senate.
Now this week the bullies that “lead” Congress are conferring frantically to find a way to keep alive the government spying on us. Every sort of blackmail, payoff, bribe and other inducement is certainly on the table to bring the necessary number of Senators along. It is not beyond imagination that the NSA is providing some embarrassing confidential information on recalcitrant Senators, which has been hoovered up in the last decade. These Congressional leaders have until the weekend to muster the 60 Senate votes needed for this ugly task, and they are within 3 votes of getting their way right now. Today Obama himself urged Congress to do whatever it takes to continue the bulk spying law.
Clearly this is a time when progressive organizations, who are forever urging us to write and contact our Congresspeople, should be rolling into action. And here is the biggest problem. I have long been on many of the progressive mailing lists. On this issue I have received nothing from them – nada, zilch. So I checked to see what they had on their web sites. Would there be at least a mention of this issue, a plea to contact one’s Senator? I checked Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), Green Party, Code Pink and Peace Action. None of them had a call to action on this issue as far as I could see as of May 26, which is very late in the game . To be fair, UNAC (United National Antiwar Coalition) did have a statement on this as an issue, dating from a while back and including condemnation of Obama for his actions. But even here there was no call to action – no call for phone or letters to Congress and certainly no calls for a street demonstration, which is almost an autonomic reflex with UNAC.
In short the pwogs have shown an abysmal failure to take action in halting the Spy State. And there is not much time to act. If you, dear reader, contribute to one of these organizations, stay your check writing hand until they do something. Dollars they understand – if not principles.
Moreover, what I have received recently in personal emails from progressive contacts is yet more excoriations of Rand Paul. Here the progressives have an ally in what should be an all important fight and they turn on him! In fact the pwogs are among the targets of this surveillance. Why then make an enemy of a potential ally in the fight against the police state? That is indeed worth thinking about.
One final point, Rand Paul in the Senate, and fellow libertarians in the House like Thomas Massie and Justin Amash (the only Palestinian American in Congress) and a few others (including a few Democrats like Mark Pocan and Zoe Lofgren) stand almost alone now in serious opposition to the entire imperial elite establishment, Republican and Democrat both, in this fight. And Rand Paul is taking the greatest hits – even from that corpulent bag of corruption and mendacity, Chris Christie.
A victory on this issue is possible now. It happened before when Obama halted a plan to bomb Syria because of opposition in Congress, an opposition fueled by letters to Congress, resulting in a bipartisan opposition to an attack on Syria.
A victory here would arouse more interest in the kind of Right/Left alliances on concrete issues that this writer, Ralph Nader and others have been advocating for some years.
So progressives should abandon their theological or religious approach to politics, an infantile disorder that produces little because it does not allow issues to be attacked one at a time. If one conducts one’s politics like a Church, then one’s influence will never extend far beyond the tiny groups huddled in Church basements.
John V. Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com
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A New Era Of Mass Armies Approaches
BY IAN WELSH | SEPTEMBER 29, 2023
The army, or a part of it at the war college, has perked up and noticed some of the lessons of the Ukraine war, and that it’s a war that the US military could not fight. They’ve missed a lot of things, or felt they couldn’t/shouldn’t write about them, but they’ve figured some stuff out and written about them in a new report, “A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force” by Lieutenant Colonel Katie Crombe, and Professor John A. Nagle.
The entire thing is worth reading, but I’m going to pull out three of the main points. The first is that a volunteer US military can’t fight a real war.
The Russia-Ukraine War is exposing significant vulnerabilities in the Army’s strategic personnel depth and ability to withstand and replace casualties.11 Army theater medical planners may anticipate a sustained rate of roughly 3,600 casualties per day, ranging from those killed in action to those wounded in action or suffering disease or other non-battle injuries. With a 25 percent predicted replacement rate, the personnel system will require 800 new personnel each day. For context, the United States sustained about 50,000 casualties in two decades of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. In large-scale combat operations, the United States could experience that same number of casualties in two weeks. (emphasis mine)
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