‘Eliminate Him’: A look at the violent rhetoric against Donald Trump
RT | July 14, 2024
While the attempted assassination of Donald Trump has been roundly condemned by his political opponents, liberal politicians and pundits have – implicitly and explicitly – called for his death before.
Trump narrowly avoided death at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, when an assassin’s bullet apparently clipped his ear as it whizzed past his head. The shooter – named by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks – killed one spectator at the rally and wounded two others before he was shot dead by Secret Service agents.
US President Joe Biden decried the attempt on Trump’s life, declaring that “there’s no place for this kind of violence in America.” Ever since Trump won the 2016 election, however, he has faced a steady stream of threats from members of Biden’s party and their allies in the media.
Off with his head
Hollywood celebrities reacted with outrage to Trump’s shock defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016. 80s pop icon Madonna spoke of wanting to “blow up the White House;” actor and activist Peter Fonda called for the president’s youngest son, Barron, to be “put in a cage with pedophiles;” and comedienne Kathy Griffin grabbed headlines when she posed for a photoshoot holding a mockup of Trump’s bloodied and severed head.
Addressing the audience at Britain’s Glastonbury Festival in 2018, Johnny Depp wondered “when was the last time an actor assassinated a president?,” adding “maybe it’s time.” This reference to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was echoed by Broadway star Carole Cook several months later, when she asked a photographer “where’s John Wilkes Booth when you need him?”
Take him out
Speaking to MSNBC after Trump formally announced his presidential campaign last year, Representative Dan Goldman declared that his fellow New Yorker cannot be allowed to “see public office again.”
“He is not only unfit, he is destructive to our democracy, and he has to be, he has to be eliminated,” Goldman proclaimed.
While Goldman later apologized for his choice of words, he is not the only Democrat lawmaker to apparently threaten Trump’s life. Michigan State Representative Cynthia Johnson was stripped of her committee assignments in 2020 when she warned Trump and his “trumpers” to “walk lightly,” or else her “soldiers” would “make them pay.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used similar rhetoric last week when she declared that the upcoming presidential election “is not a normal election,” and that Trump “must be stopped. He cannot be president.”
Two weeks before the shooting, BBC reporter David Aaronovitch wrote on X that if he were President “Biden, I’d hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America’s security.” On Sunday morning, Aaronovitch said that he had deleted the tweet, claiming that his words were “clearly satirical.”
A threat to democracy
Biden’s response to Saturday’s shooting was one of unequivocal condemnation. The president, who will face off against Trump in this November’s election, said that he was “praying for” his political opponent, and that “we must unite as one nation to condemn” political violence.
In a post on social media less than a month earlier, however, Biden’s team described Trump as “a genuine threat to this nation.”
“He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for,” they posted on the president’s social media accounts.
While Biden has never explicitly wished physical harm on his opponent, at least one would-be assassin has used similar words to justify his plans to kill Trump. 77-year-old Thomas Welnicki was arrested for phoning US Capitol Police in 2020 threatening to “take down” then-President Trump. His lawyer later told prosecutors in New York that Welnicki was distraught at “the threats to our democracy posed by former President Trump.”
Stripped of protection
Had Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson got his way, Trump would have had no Secret Service protection at Saturday’s rally. Earlier this year, Thompson proposed legislation that would strip this protection from former presidents convicted of felonies, as Trump was in May. The act was explicitly tailored to target Trump, Thompson’s office said, explaining that the former president’s criminal charges “have created a new exigency that Congress must address.”
Immediately following Saturday’s shooting, one of Thompson’s staffers wrote on Facebook that the shooter should “get some shooting lessons so you don’t miss next time.” She deleted the post – which Mississippi Republicans called “despicable” – shortly afterwards.
Why France’s Snap Election Proves EU’s Warmongering Agenda Flopped
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 10.07.2024
Despite surviving the runoff vote, Emmanuel Macron sustained a crushing and unexpected defeat during the snap election, Fabien Chalandon, French political commentator and writer, told Sputnik. What’s more, the parliament’s new composition may put the brakes on Macron’s bellicosity.
The outcome of the snap election in the French National Assembly has left no party with a majority, leading to uncertainty regarding the formation of a coalition. This raises the question of whether the left-wing and centrist parties will be able to collaborate effectively in order to establish a functional parliament.
“This is the key question,” Fabien Chalandon, chevalier of the French Legion d’Honneur, investor, and writer, told Sputnik. “No party has any majority, and any government can be deposed at any time by a combination of the two other groups. The parliament is therefore in a gridlock and ungovernable. In addition, the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) is a coalition of small parties all deeply opposed on any subject, including Ukraine, and which have only one common ground: their hate of the National Rally (RN), which cannot provide a common set of practical objectives for an effective governing alliance.”
The NFP, a broad left-wing coalition which brought together Socialists, Communists, Greens and the hardline leftist France Unbowed Party (La France Insoumise), was hastily founded on June 10 with the sole aim of defeating the right-wing RN in the snap legislative election.
According to the commentator, the likelihood of the NFP coalition passing the test of time is “remote as it may explode on the issue of loss of real income, when finally politicians admit that the bulk of the current impoverishment of French middle and poor class has been stoked by inflation directly derived from the Ukrainian conflict.”
Macron’s Bellicosity Backfired During Elections
Meanwhile, it appears that the new composition of the parliament could disrupt French President Emmanuel Macron’s “tour de force” for European leadership.
Over the past several months, Macron has made a series of controversial statements, ranging from putting NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine to doubling the EU budget and promoting the idea of a “major European loan” to finance the bloc’s rearmament effort.
Macron’s sudden transformation into a “Ukraine hawk” – given that France has been ranked 15th in terms of military aid to Kiev – raised questions in the European mainstream press. According to the Spectator, one of the causes of Macron’s bellicosity was his desire to “embarrass” the National Rally in the European elections, “not to mention their predicted victory in the 2027 presidential race.”
The French president’s scheme appeared to have boomeranged. His Renaissance party secured just 15.2 percent of the vote during the EU parliamentary elections last month, while the National Rally got a whopping 31.5 percent.
In the snap election, announced by Macron after the humiliating defeat, the centrist-liberal Ensemble (Together) party survived by pure luck and due to its unholy formal alliance with Les Republicains (LR) and the NFP to obstruct “at all costs” the National Rally in the second round, according to Chalandon.
“Compared to the 2022 elections, the Macron presidential party ‘Together’ lost 100 seats to 168,” the political commentator noted.
“This [snap] election is therefore a second crushing defeat for M. Macron,” the pundit said. “Macron did not expect such a damning result after the first round. In fact, this snap election is overwhelmingly portrayed in the French press and social media as a ‘childish’ decision following the RN tsunami during the previous European elections.”
The election outcome would continue to undermine Macron’s warmongering posture, including his push for rearmament and increased military support to Ukraine, according to the commentator.
“On Ukraine, the NFP is clearly against the EU and EU support of Ukraine. But so is the Unbowed France Party… Any proposal for additional funding to Ukraine may not be approved if these two coalesce to block it, even if they do not coordinate,” Chalandon said.
While the EU’s bureaucracy could circumvent the legislative gridlock in its member states by stealthily boosting its funding to Ukraine within its general budget, the crux of the matter is that Europeans and especially young people across the continent have increasingly started to realize the collective West’s hypocrisy with regard to Ukraine, according to the pundit.
Chalandon notes that Europeans are steadily recognizing the West’s 20-year provocations against Russia, as well as the sabotage of the Istanbul agreement in April 2022 led by the US and UK.
“Moreover, the cause of the recent sharp decline of Europe’s purchasing power is starting to be attributed to the Ukrainian conflict, so far, a taboo subject among politicians. Ukraine’s war and open-ended funding will not continue unabated and may progressively appear for what it is: the main cause of Europe’s recent economic downfall,” the commentator emphasized.
How Could US Political Debacle Affect Europe’s Ukraine Policy
Nonetheless, the EU elites are unwilling to change their stance on the Ukraine conflict, especially given their political dependency on their peers in Washington.
However, US neocons have recently found themselves on the horns of a dilemma given that their major “pro-war” presidential candidate Joe Biden appears to be “unsellable” to American voters, as Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel noted in an earlier interview with Sputnik.
“The key factor which could affect French and Europe’s attitude in the Ukrainian conflict is if M. Trump wins the US election and decides to force Ukraine to negotiate by interrupting its military aid,” Chalandon said, referring to the Republican frontrunner’s plan to stop the fighting and look into peace negotiations.
The political commentator noted, however, that despite Trump’s high-powered numbers across US nationwide polls, his victory is not a done deal given the lawsuits brought forward by his political opponents.
Likewise, the Biden camp is also teetering in the balance as the Democratic Party is waging a behind the scenes battle over a possible replacement for the aging Biden. This potential change could allegedly shift Washington’s attitude on the Ukraine conflict.
“Since European efforts towards Ukraine cannot survive a withdrawal by the US, Europe and France will be left with no other option than to cave in,” the French political commentator remarked.
Chalandon concluded that if a new US context were to arise, Europe’s determination to carry on with the ongoing military “solution” to the Ukrainian conflict would amount to nothing more than empty posturing.
In parallel to his investment banking career, Chalandon co-founded and ran a French political think tank, Fondation Concorde, and was awarded the French Legion d’Honneur in 2000 and wrote for leading French newspapers on political issues. His father, Albin Chalandon, served as minister of various governments under President Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou and then minister of justice between 1986 and 1988 in a Jacques Chirac-led government under then President Francois Mitterrand.
The Supreme Court’s Superb Dissenting Opinion
At least three justices understand what is at stake here
By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | July 5, 2024
Three justices of the Supreme Court actually read and understood the record in our case. Justice Alito, joined by Gorsuch and Thomas, wrote an important dissenting opinion. I’d like to share a few highlights here, as it provides a roadmap to ultimately prevailing in our case.
The three dissenting justices clearly recognize that we the plaintiffs were victims of the government’s unconstitutional censorship activities:
Among these victims were two States, whose public health officials were hampered in their ability to share their expertise with state residents; distinguished professors of medicine at Stanford and Harvard; a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine; the owner and operator of a news website; and Jill Hines, the director of a consumer and human rights advocacy organization. All these victims simply wanted to speak out on a question of the utmost public importance.
Echoing the district court and circuit court opinions, the dissenting justices indicate the landmark importance of this free speech case:
If the lower courts’ assessment of the voluminous record is correct, this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years. Freedom of speech serves many valuable purposes, but its most important role is protection of speech that is essential to democratic self-government, and speech that advances humanity’s store of knowledge, thought, and expression in fields such as science, medicine, history, the social sciences, philosophy, and the arts.
Unlike the majority opinion, which took the government’s claim to be combating “misinformation” at face value, the dissenting opinion recognized that much of the speech that the government suppressed was true:
The speech at issue falls squarely into those categories. It concerns the COVID–19 virus, which has killed more than a million Americans. Our country’s response to the COVID–19 pandemic was and remains a matter of enormous medical, social, political, geopolitical, and economic importance, and our dedication to a free marketplace of ideas demands that dissenting views on such matters be allowed. I assume that a fair portion of what social media users had to say about COVID–19 and the pandemic was of little lasting value. Some was undoubtedly untrue or misleading, and some may have been downright dangerous. But we now know that valuable speech was also suppressed. That is what inevitably happens when entry to the marketplace of ideas is restricted.
The majority opinion suggested, without evidence, that our censorship was the result of the actions of social media platforms, who may have censored us even in the absence of government coercion. The dissenting opinion explains the flaws with this unwarranted assumption:
Of course, purely private entities like newspapers are not subject to the First Amendment, and as a result, they may publish or decline to publish whatever they wish. But government officials may not coerce private entities to suppress speech, see National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo, 602 U. S. 175 (2024), and that is what happened in this case.
The record before us is vast. It contains evidence of communications between many different government actors and a variety of internet platforms, as well as evidence regarding the effects of those interactions on the seven different plaintiffs.
Alito focuses on Facebook and co-plaintiff Jill Hines as the clearest example (though by no means the only example) to illustrate the nature of the problem:
Here is what the record plainly shows. For months in 2021 and 2022, a coterie of officials at the highest levels of the Federal Government continuously harried and implicitly threatened Facebook with potentially crippling consequences if it did not comply with their wishes about the suppression of certain COVID–19-related speech. Not surprisingly, Facebook repeatedly yielded. As a result Hines was indisputably injured, and due to the officials’ continuing efforts, she was threatened with more of the same when she brought suit. These past and threatened future injuries were caused by and traceable to censorship that the officials coerced, and the injunctive relief she sought was an available and suitable remedy.
It’s hard to know how much more harm the Supreme Court would need to see before agreeing that at least one of the plaintiffs has standing. These examples could be multiplied. By refusing to examine the record and rule on the merits, Alito suggests that the Court actually provides a roadmap for future government censorship efforts:
This evidence was more than sufficient to establish Hines’s standing to sue, and consequently, we are obligated to tackle the free speech issue that the case presents. The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think.
That is regrettable. What the officials did in this case was more subtle than the ham-handed censorship found to be unconstitutional in Vullo, but it was no less coercive. And because of the perpetrators’ high positions, it was even more dangerous. It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so. Officials who read today’s decision together with Vullo will get the message. If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by. That is not a message this Court should send.
Alito then echoes arguments I published in The Federalist following oral arguments, regarding the key differences between newspapers and social media companies in terms of their interactions with government:
Internet platforms, although rich and powerful, are at the same time far more vulnerable to Government pressure than other news sources. If a President dislikes a particular newspaper, he (fortunately) lacks the ability to put the paper out of business. But for Facebook and many other social media platforms, the situation is fundamentally different. They are critically dependent on the protection provided by §230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, 47 U. S. C. §230, which shields them from civil liability for content they spread. They are vulnerable to antitrust actions; indeed, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described a potential antitrust lawsuit as an “existential” threat to his company. And because their substantial overseas operations may be subjected to tough regulation in the European Union and other foreign jurisdictions, they rely on the Federal Government’s diplomatic efforts to protect their interests.
This dynamic sets social media companies up to be vulnerable to government coercion, in precisely the way we argued before the Court:
For these and other reasons, internet platforms have a powerful incentive to please important federal officials, and the record in this case shows that high-ranking officials skillfully exploited Facebook’s vulnerability. When Facebook did not heed their requests as quickly or as fully as the officials wanted, the platform was publicly accused of “killing people” and subtly threatened with retaliation.
Not surprisingly these efforts bore fruit. Facebook adopted new rules that better conformed to the officials’ wishes, and many users who expressed disapproved views about the pandemic or COVID–19 vaccines were “deplatformed” or otherwise injured.
Alito perfectly describes how this abusive Stockholm Syndrome dynamic played out between Facebook and the White House:
What these events show is that top federal officials continuously and persistently hectored Facebook to crack down on what the officials saw as unhelpful social media posts, including not only posts that they thought were false or misleading but also stories that they did not claim to be literally false but nevertheless wanted obscured. And Facebook’s reactions to these efforts were not what one would expect from an independent news source or a journalistic entity dedicated to holding the Government accountable for its actions. Instead, Facebook’s responses resembled that of a subservient entity determined to stay in the good graces of a powerful taskmaster. Facebook told White House officials that it would “work . . . to gain your trust.” When criticized, Facebook representatives whimpered that they “thought we were doing a better job” but promised to do more going forward. They pleaded to know how they could “get back to a good place” with the White House. And when denounced as “killing people,” Facebook responded by expressing a desire to “work together collaboratively” with its accuser. The picture is clear.
Here we have a major social media platform responding as though they are entirely subservient to government interests. The more they try to please the government by ramping up censorship, the more abusive and demanding the government becomes.
To the dubious claim that plaintiffs cannot allege potential future injuries because—on their word—the White House has backed off the social media companies, Alito (in contrast to the majority opinion) calls the government’s bluff:
The White House threats did not come with expiration dates, and it would be silly to assume that the threats lost their force merely because White House officials opted not to renew them on a regular basis.
As Alito later quips, “death threats can be very effective even if they are not delivered every day.”
Drawing an analogy to another free speech case (Vullo) that was heard on the same day as ours, Alito explains:
In Vullo, the alleged conduct was blunt. The head of the state commission with regulatory authority over insurance companies allegedly told executives at Lloyd’s directly and in no uncertain terms that she would be “‘less interested’” in punishing the company’s regulatory infractions if it ceased doing business with the National Rifle Association. The federal officials’ conduct here [in Murthy] was more subtle and sophisticated. The message was delivered piecemeal by various officials over a period of time in the form of aggressive questions, complaints, insistent requests, demands, and thinly veiled threats of potentially fatal reprisals. But the message was unmistakable, and it was duly received.
The Supreme Court majority was ready to knock down ham-fisted censorship (in Vullo) but gave a pass—at least for now—to sophisticated and debonair censorship (in Murthy).
The government’s defense of its behavior included the argument that it had the right to use the bully pulpit to “persuade” social media companies to do its bidding—”the government has free speech rights, too, don’t you see?” Alito sees right through this ruse:
This argument introduces a new understanding of the term “bully pulpit,” which was coined by President Theodore Roosevelt to denote a President’s excellent (i.e, “bully”) position (i.e., his “pulpit”) to persuade the public. But [Rob] Flaherty, [Andy] Slavitt, and other [White House] officials who emailed and telephoned Facebook were not speaking to the public from a figurative pulpit. On the contrary, they were engaged in a covert scheme of censorship that came to light only after the plaintiffs demanded their emails in discovery and a congressional Committee obtained them by subpoena. If these communications represented the exercise of the bully pulpit, then everything that top federal officials say behind closed doors to any private citizen must also represent the exercise of the President’s bully pulpit. That stretches the concept beyond the breaking point.
In any event, the Government is hard-pressed to find any prior example of the use of the bully pulpit to threaten censorship of private speech.
To repeat what I have said many times before: this case is not about constraining the government’s speech—as they falsely claim; it’s about stopping the government from constraining the speech of U.S. citizens.
The dissenting justices argue that the majority opinion applies a “new and heightened standard” of traceability in our case (p.20). Alito explains, again using the case of co-plaintiff Jill Hines, that she clearly has standing to bring the case (and we only need one plaintiff with standing to prevail):
Here, it is reasonable to infer (indeed, the inference leaps out from the record) that the efforts of the federal officials affected at least some of Facebook’s decisions to censor Hines. All of Facebook’s demotion, content-removal, and deplatforming decisions are governed by its policies. So when the White House pressured Facebook to amend some of the policies related to speech in which Hines engaged, those amendments necessarily impacted some of Facebook’s censorship decisions. Nothing more is needed. What the Court seems to want are a series of ironclad links—from a particular coercive communication to a particular change in Facebook’s rules or practice and then to a particular adverse action against Hines. No such chain was required in the Department of Commerce case, and neither should one be demanded here.
Furthermore, the Court’s majority opinion developed a novel, higher standard of repressibility of potential future harms to avoid ruling on the merits of our case:
As with traceability, the Court applies a new and elevated standard for redressability, which has never required plaintiffs to be “certain” that a court order would prevent future harm.
Having established that the Court should have found that we have standing, Alito proceeds to analyze the record on the merits, using the following legal framework:
The principle recognized in Bantam Books and Vullo requires a court to distinguish between permissible persuasion and unconstitutional coercion, and in Vullo, we looked to three leading factors that are helpful in making that determination: (1) the authority of the government officialswho are alleged to have engaged in coercion, (2) the natureof statements made by those officials, and (3) the reactions of the third party alleged to have been coerced. 602 U. S., at 189–190, and n. 4, 191–194. In this case, all three factors point to coercion.
Although the government tries to spin their interactions with social media platforms as fairly benign, examination of the record in this regard leaves no doubt: “The totality of this record—constant haranguing, dozens of demands for compliance, and references to potential consequences—evince ‘a scheme of state censorship.’” Lest there be any doubt in this regard, “Facebook’s responses to the officials’ persistent inquiries, criticisms, and threats show that the platform perceived the statements as something more than mere recommendations.” Alito concludes, “In sum, the officials wielded potent authority. Their communications with Facebook were virtual demands. And Facebook’s quavering responses to those demands show that it felt a strong need to yield.”
From here we return to the District Court in Louisiana for trial, where we have an excellent judge (Terry Doughty). We will be granted additional discovery, in which we anticipate getting enough additional “smoking guns” to cross the high standing bar set by the majority Supreme Court opinion. The District court has combined our case with an analogous case filed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is clearly named and targeted in several government censorship missives—so between Hines and Kennedy there should be no questions on the issue of standing, even under the novel and strict criteria that SCOTUS requires in this case.
In other words, we will prevail in the end. I anticipate being back at the Supreme Court in another year or two for the final ruling. At that point, SCOTUS will not be able to temporize or look away as they did this time. And when judges examine the record in our case, they have only reached one conclusion: the government engaged in unconstitutional censorship on a mass scale. And it has to stop.
Destroying Ukraine with Idealism
Why Ukraine should not have the “right” to join NATO
BY GLENN DIESEN | JULY 2, 2024
Political realism is commonly and mistakenly portrayed as immoral because the principal focus is on the inescapable security competition and it thus rejects idealist efforts to transcend power politics. However, because states cannot break with security competition, morality for the realist entails acting in accordance with the balance of power logic as the foundation for stability and peace. Idealist efforts to break with power politics can then be defined as immoral by undermining the management of security competition as the foundation of peace. As Raymond Aron expressed in 1966: “The idealist, believing he has broken with power politics exaggerates its crimes”.[1]
Ukraine’s Sovereign Right to join NATO
The most appealing and dangerous idealist argument that destroyed Ukraine is that it has the right to join any military alliance it desires. It is a very attractive statement that can easily win support from the public as it affirms the freedom and sovereignty of Ukraine, and the alternative is seemingly that Russia should be allowed to dictate Ukraine’s policies.
However, arguing that Ukraine should be allowed to join any military alliance is an idealist argument as it appeals to how we would like the world to be, not how the world actually works. The principle that peace derives from expanding military alliances without taking into account the security interests of other great powers has never existed. States such as Ukraine that border a great power have every reason to express legitimate security concerns, but inviting a rival great power such as the US into its territory intensifies the security competition.
Is it moral to insist on how the world ought to be when war is the consequence of ignoring how the world actually works?
The alternative to expanding NATO is not to accept a Russian sphere of influence, which denotes a zone of exclusive influence. Peace derives from recognising a Russian sphere of interests, which is an area where Russian security interests must be recognised and incorporated rather than excluded. It did not use to be controversial to argue that Russian security interests must be taken into account when operating on its borders.
Mexico has plenty of freedoms in the international system, but it does not have the freedom to join a Chinese-led military alliance or host Chinese military bases. The idealist argument that Mexico can do as it pleases implies ignoring US security concerns, and the result would likely be the US destruction of Mexico. If Scotland secedes from the UK and then joins a Russian-led military alliance and hosts Russian missiles, would the English still champion the principle that it has no say? Idealists who sought to transcend power politics and create a more benign world would instead intensify the security competition and instigate wars.
The Morality of Opposing NATO Expansionism
To argue that NATO expansionism provoked Russia’s invasion is regularly condemned by idealists as immoral because it allegedly legitimises both power politics and the invasion. Is objective reality immoral if it contradicts the ideal world we would like to exist?
The former British ambassador to Russia, Roderic Lyne, warned in 2020 that it was a “massive mistake” to push for NATO membership for Ukraine: “If you want to start a war with Russia, that’s the best way of doing it”.[2] Angela Merkel acknowledged that Russia would interpret the possibility of Ukrainian NATO membership as a “declaration of war”.[3] CIA Director William Burns also warned against drawing Ukraine into NATO as Russia fears encirclement and will therefore be under enormous pressure to use military force: “Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face”.[4] The advisor to former French President Sarkozy argued that the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership in November 2021 “convinced Russia that they must attack or be attacked”.[5] None of the aforementioned people sought to legitimise an invasion, rather they sought to avoid a war.
When great powers do not have a soft institutional veto, they use a hard military veto. The idealists insisting that Russia should not have a veto on NATO expansion pushed for the policies that predictably resulted in the destruction of a nation, the loss of territory, and hundreds of thousands of deaths. Why do the idealists get to present themselves as moral and “pro-Ukrainian”? Why are the realists who for more than a decade warned against NATO expansion immoral and “anti-Ukrainian”? Are these labels premised on the theoretical assumption of the idealists?
NATO as a Third Party?
Suggesting that Ukraine has the sovereign right to join NATO presents the military bloc as a passive third party that merely supports the democratic aspiration of Ukrainians. This narrative neglects that NATO did not have an obligation to offer future membership to Ukraine. Indeed, the Western countries signed several agreements with Moscow after the Cold War, such as the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, to collectively construct a Europe without dividing lines and based on indivisible security. NATO broke these agreements by pushing for expansion and refusing to offer Russia security guarantees to mitigate the security competition. By offering future membership to Ukraine, the NATO-Russia conflict became a Russia-Ukraine conflict as Russia had to prevent Ukraine from joining the military bloc and hosting the US military on its territory.
NATO’s support for Ukraine’s right to choose its own foreign policy is also dishonest as Ukraine had to be pulled into the orbit of the military bloc against its will. The Western public is rarely informed that every opinion poll between 1991 and 2014 demonstrates that only a very small minority of Ukrainians ever wanted to join the alliance. NATO recognised the lack of interest by the Ukrainian government and people as a problem to be overcome in a report from 2011: “The greatest challenge for Ukrainian-NATO relations lies in the perception of NATO among the Ukrainian people. NATO membership is not widely supported in the country, with some polls suggesting that popular support of it is less than 20%”.[6]
The solution was to push for a “democratic revolution” in 2014 that toppled the democratically elected government of Ukraine in violation of its constitution and without majority support from Ukrainians. The leaked Nuland-Pyatt phone call revealed that the US was planning a regime change, including who should be in the post-coup government, who had to stay out, and how to legitimise the coup.[7] After the coup, the US openly asserted its intrusive influence over the new government it had installed in Kiev. The general prosecutor of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, complained that since 2014, “the most shocking thing is that all the [government] appointments were made in agreement with the United States” and Washington “believed that Ukraine was their fiefdom”.[8] A conflict with Russia could be manufactured that would create a demand for NATO.
What were the first decisions of the new government hand-picked by Washington? The first decree by the new Parliament was a call for repealing Russian as a regional language. The New York Times reports that on the first day following the coup, Ukraine’s new spy chief called the CIA and MI6 to establish a partnership for covert operations against Russia that eventually resulted in 12 secret CIA bases along the Russian border.[9] The conflict intensified as Russia responded by seizing Crimea and supporting a rebellion in Donbas, and NATO sabotaged the Minsk peace agreement that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians voted to have implemented. Preserving and intensifying the conflict gave Washington a dependent Ukrainian proxy that could be used against Russia. The same New York Times article mentioned above, also revealed that the covert war against Russia after the coup was a leading reason for Russia’s invasion:
“Toward the end of 2021, according to a senior European official, Mr. Putin was weighing whether to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the head of one of Russia’s main spy services, who told him that the C.I.A., together with Britain’s MI6, were controlling Ukraine and turning it into a beachhead for operations against Moscow”.[10]
The Immorality of Peace vs Morality of War?
After Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine, the idealists insist that Ukraine must become a member of NATO as soon as the war is over. It is intended as an appealing and moral statement to ensure that Ukraine will be protected and such a tragedy will not be repeated.
Yet, what does it communicate to Russia? Whatever territory Russia does not conquer will fall into the hands of NATO, which can then be used as a frontline against Russia. The threat of NATO expansion incentivises Russia to seize as much territory as possible and ensure what remains is a deeply dysfunctional rump state. The only thing that can bring peace to Ukraine and end the carnage is to restore its neutrality, yet the idealists denounce this as deeply immoral and thus unacceptable. To repeat Raymond Aron: “The idealist, believing he has broken with power politics exaggerates its crimes”.[11]
[1] Aron, R., 1966. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations. Doubleday, Garden City, p.584.
[2] R. Lyne, ‘The UC Interview Series: Sir Roderic Lyne by Nikita Gryazin’, Oxford University Consortium, 18 December 2020.
[3] A. Walsh, ‘Angela Merkel opens up on Ukraine, Putin and her legacy’, Deutsche Welle, 7 June 2022.
[4] W.J. Burns, ‘Nyet means nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines’, Wikileaks, 1 February 2008.
[5] C. Caldwell, ‘The War in Ukraine May Be Impossible to Stop. And the U.S. Deserves Much of the Blame’, The New York Times, 31 May 2022.
[6] NATO, ‘‘Post-Orange Ukraine’: Internal dynamics and foreign policy priorities’, NATO Parliamentary Assembly, October 2011, p.11.
[7] BBC, ‘Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call’, BBC, 7 February 2014.
[8] M.M. Abrahms, ‘Does Ukraine Have Kompromat on Joe Biden?’, Newsweek, 8 August 2023.
[9] A. Entous and M. Schwirtz, 2024. ‘The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin’, The New York Times, 25 February 2024.
[10] A. Entous and M. Schwirtz, 2024. ‘The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin’, The New York Times, 25 February 2024.
[11] Aron, R., 1966. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations. Doubleday, Garden City, p.584.
New law ‘pushing Georgia away from EU’ – Borrell
RT | June 25, 2024
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has warned Georgia that its potential accession to the bloc is in jeopardy after Tbilisi adopted a controversial ‘foreign agent’ law earlier this month. The US has also indicated it will not hesitate to penalize the former Soviet republic unless it walks back the legislation.
Known officially as the Transparency of Foreign Influence Act and spearheaded by the ruling Georgian Dream party, the law came into force earlier this month despite opposition protests and a veto by President Salome Zourabichvili.
The legislation requires NGOs, media outlets, and individuals who receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as entities “promoting the interests of a foreign power” and to disclose their donors. Those who fail to comply will face fines of up to $9,500.
While opponents of the bill have described it as “Russian” and an attack on democracy, supporters have insisted it is similar to what numerous Western nations, including the US, have in place.
On Monday, Borrell said the foreign ministers of EU members had held “a lively debate on Georgia” for the second time in less than a month. Citing “worrying political developments,” the diplomat warned that “this law and all the negative developments around it are pushing Georgia away from the European Union.”
“If the government does not change the course of action, Georgia will not progress on the European Union path,” Borrell insisted.
According to the EU foreign policy chief, the law goes “against the will of the overwhelming majority of the Georgian population.” Brussels is planning to “increase our support to civil society and media” in the former Soviet republic, he added. The EU will also downgrade political contacts with Tbilisi and consider “putting on hold our financial assistance to the government,” Borrell stated.
Earlier this month, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller claimed the ‘foreign agent’ law “moves Georgia away from its democratic trajectory” and “fundamentally alter[s] the US relationship with Georgia.” “We have not yet announced individual sanctions… but we have made clear that we would not hesitate to impose them,” the official stated.
Late last month, Washington announced that it would start restricting visas for Georgian politicians who played a role in passing the legislation. In November 2023, the European Commission recommended granting Georgia candidate status “on the understanding that the government takes important reform steps.”
ICC a tool of ‘Western hybrid war’ – Moscow
RT | June 25, 2024
Moscow has denounced the Hague-based International Criminal Court’s (ICC) decision to issue arrest warrants for two top Russian defense officials, branding the institution a mere tool of the West’s “hybrid war” efforts.
The ICC on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for ex-Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and the current chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, accusing the two of committing “alleged international crimes” amid the Ukrainian conflict.
Russia’s Security Council has denounced as “void” the court’s move, pointing out that its jurisdiction does not extend to Russia.
“The decision of the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC against the Secretary of the Russian Security Council Sergei Shoigu is void. This is just hot air, since the jurisdiction of the ICC does not extend to Russia, and [the decision] was made as part of the West’s hybrid war against our country,” the council said.
The two top military officials are accused by the ICC of committing “alleged international crimes,” namely “directing attacks at civilian objects,” as well as “causing excessive incidental harm to civilians” amid the Ukraine conflict. The charges stem from Russia’s campaign of strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, which Moscow regards as dual-purpose strategic installations rather than purely civilian facilities.
Earlier this year, the ICC also targeted two top Russian military commanders, Lieutenant-General Sergey Kobylash of the Long-Range Aviation fleet and Admiral Viktor Sokolov of the Black Sea fleet. The charges against those commanders also resulted from the campaign of air strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure.
The Hague-based institution has taken multiple steps against Russia amid the Ukraine conflict, most notably by issuing an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin last spring. The president is accused of “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia.
Moscow, like many other countries, including the US, does not recognize the authority of the ICC and its actions hold no legal power in Russia.
EU ‘crossed a red line’ by banning Hungary from latest Ukraine vote, says Foreign Minister Szijjártó
BY DÉNES ALBERT | REMIX NEWS | JUNE 25, 2024
The European Union crossed a red line by prohibiting Hungary from voting on the use of the proceeds from frozen Russian bank accounts, said Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó on Monday.
Speaking during a break in the meeting of the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council, the Hungarian minister said an additional €1.4 billion from the European Peace Facility would be used for arms transfers to Ukraine, despite Hungary’s disagreement.
“This €1.4 billion is effectively the amount of the proceeds of the seized or frozen Russian assets, and since Hungary abstained in the first vote on their use, the Council’s legal service, Brussels, the bureaucrats, and some member states considered that this was a sufficient basis for ignoring Hungary’s right to decide, and so they decided to use €1.4 billion from the European Peace Facility to finance new arms shipments to Ukraine, ignoring Hungary’s position,” he said.
“This is a clear red line. Never before has such a shameless breach and disregard of common European rules been shown. Moreover, it is precisely those who are pushing for the rule of law procedures at full volume and talking about the endangerment of democratic values who are breaking European rules,” he continued.
“The self-proclaimed warriors of democracy and the rule of law have now flouted the rules in the most shameless way possible by excluding Hungary from this decision. So the pro-war fervor has effectively blinded the decision-makers,” he added.
Szijjártó underlined that the EU clearly wants to continue crossing red lines, as evidenced by the fact that High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell has this time come up with a proposal to allow the training of Ukrainian soldiers by European troops on Ukrainian territory.
“This is an extremely dangerous proposal. It is a proposal that would cross another red line. We remember the statements of leading Western European politicians during the European Parliament election campaign that European soldiers could and should be stationed, deployed, and sent to Ukraine. And here is the first step,” he said.
“They want to send military trainers to Ukraine. This is unacceptable to us, and we are protesting against it with all means at our disposal because the deployment of EU trainers in Ukraine would create another extremely serious risk of further escalation of the war,” he warned.
Former PM says Ukraine has no opposition: ‘They are in prison or abroad’
By Ahmed Adel | June 25, 2024
Currently, in Ukraine, there is no opposition and politicians challenging Volodymyr Zelensky as they are either in prison or abroad, according to the country’s former prime minister, Mykola Azarov. He also highlighted that Kiev would be forced to accept any agreement between Russia and the United States.
“There is no opposition in Ukraine now. [Pyotr] Poroshenko or [Yulia] Tymoshenko are not opposition. Their policy was no different from the current policy of the Kiev regime. The real opposition was eliminated. Some were killed, others are in prison, and some were forced to go abroad,” Azarov said in an interview with the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty published on June 24.
According to the former prime minister, the left-wing parties and opposition forces in Ukraine now do not exist.
“In addition, trade unions are absent, and there is strong persecution of the Church. The current conflict is often presented as a confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, but this is not true,” he added.
Azarov also mentioned that some people want to oppose Zelensky in Ukraine but do not speak out.
Zelensky was elected in 2019, and his first term was supposed to have ended in May. However, the regime introduced a new martial law, saying no election could be held during the war. The Ukrainian president is consolidating his power and has even purged political opponents.
It is recalled that the former head of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valeriy Zaluzhny, was appointed as the country’s ambassador to the UK only a few months ago after being touted as a potential rival to Zelensky. After being removed from Ukraine, Zaluzhny has now stayed quiet on the political front. The case of the former general is just one of many examples of individuals purged in Ukraine if they threatened Zelensky’s power.
The Ukrainian president has also jailed his political rivals, even Petro Poroshenko, shut down independent media outlets, such as ZIK, NewsOne and 112 Ukraine, and used the SBU state security agency to go after his critics, like Gonzalo Lira.
Azarov also stated that the US understands that the world cannot be subjected to the risk of a nuclear war, and Washington can start an informal dialogue with Moscow on this issue and influence Kiev.
“On the other side [USA], there are still some sensible ideas that the world cannot be subjected to the risk of a nuclear war. There are hopes that an informal dialogue could emerge that would result in some kind of concrete agreement,” he said.
According to the former prime minister, Zelensky’s regime will have to comply with this agreement between Moscow and Washington.
“There is no way around this. The Americans have one hundred percent influence over the current leadership of Ukraine. Just stop providing funding and weapons, and the regime will literally fall and physically disintegrate. The regime cannot exist without money when salaries are not paid to soldiers and the security service,” Azarov explained.
His comments on the nuclear issue come following a Ukrainian attack on the Raduga substation of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant on June 21.
“As a result of the attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Raduga substation of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, work on the infrastructure facilities was interrupted,” the press service of the nuclear plant published on its Telegram channel.
Compounding the nuclear issue, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed on the same day as the attack the intentions to modernise the nuclear triad, the three components of the country’s atomic arsenal, by adding the nuclear-capable Sarmat (RS-28) intercontinental ballistic missiles, with a range of 18,000 kilometres, to its arsenal.
“We plan to continue improving the nuclear triad as a guarantee of strategic deterrence,” Putin said, adding that the advances in the land, air and naval components of the nuclear forces guarantee balance in the world.
“Taking into account the difficult international situation, the emergence of new challenges and risks, we will continue to improve our Armed Forces,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on June 24, citing Putin’s statement, told a briefing that “work is underway to bring the doctrine in line with current realities.”
This was the inevitable course of action after the US allowed the Kiev regime to use American-made weapons to strike inside Russian territory. Besides the attack on the nuclear power plant, there was also the brutal attack with ATACMS missiles on civilian infrastructure in Crimea that left four people dead and 153 seeking medical help on June 23.
The Kremlin previously vowed to respond to any Ukrainian attacks with US-made weapons, and Azarov’s assessment that Kiev may be forced to accept any agreement made between Moscow and Washington could eventuate if the Americans feel that the situation is escalating in a way that cannot be controlled. Meanwhile, despite the escalation, the US will continue to hypocritically overlook that Zelensky is heading a regime that has subverted democracy and human rights whilst lying that liberalism and Western values are being defended in Ukraine.
Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Canada Gets a Pass From the West for Foreign Agents Law While Georgia Is Punished
Sputnik – 20.06.2024
Georgia’s efforts to insulate itself from possible foreign meddling through NGOs funded from abroad were not met with understanding from the United States and its European allies. But when Canada does the same, that is a different story.
The United States and the European Union refraining from criticizing the foreign agents registry law recently adopted in Canada, while simultaneously blasting similar legislation adopted by Georgia, is essentially a “problem of double standards,” said Dr. Marco Marsili who holds research positions in major civil and military institutions in Portugal, the UK and Italy.
“It depends on the point of view of the proponents, the lawmakers, and of those who are their allies and assess the bill as just and fair, according to their geopolitical perspective,” Dr. Marsili explained. “Basically, it is a Manichaeans approach, according to which the world is divided into the good ones and the bad ones – figure out which are which according to a Western vision.”
Georgia merely seeks to protect itself from foreign influence exerted through funding from abroad of local NGOs and “any other public outreach activity like media outlets,” basically following the example of the Western powers, he noted.
Western powers, however, insist that “Georgian politics must be influenced through Western financial support to local agents” but at the same time “reject any Russian funding.”
“That is really bizarre – it’s not just double-standard, but also non-sensical,” Dr. Marsili remarked.
Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, also suggested that both Russia and Georgia are “entitled to have their own equivalents to the US Foreign Agents Registration Act,” considering that many of the foreign NGOs operating in these countries are “designed to destabilize the host governments and produce color revolutions.”
“All of these Western NGOs operate under the basic principle: he who pays the piper calls the tune!” he added. “Many of these foreign NGOs are shot through with Western intelligence agents and assets. So of course these foreign NGOs have to be regulated in order to preserve the sovereign independence of the host states under international law.”
Humanitarian aid and Israel’s ‘voluntary migration’ scheme
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | June 20, 2024
Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis said earlier this week that, “We have offered ourselves to host injured people from Palestine but also children from Palestine to come to Europe and stay here until the war is over.” Israel would be thrilled at such an idea, for sure. “Voluntary migration” in the guise of humanitarian aid could not get any better for Israel’s colonial expansion plans.
In October last year, Gerapetritis declared his government’s pro-Israel stance: “Greece, from the very first moment, supported the right of Israel to defend itself in line with international law.” No such right exists for an occupation state against the people living under its brutal military occupation.
In the same month, Greece also abstained from the UN General Assembly vote calling for a humanitarian ceasefire. A month earlier, the Greek government purchased 300 precision-guided munitions from Israel, known as spice bombs, for $130 million. And in a move aimed at curbing activism on university campuses, nine EU and UK individuals are facing deportation for participating in protests against the Gaza genocide, with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis stating that the authorities would forbid “universities from becoming sites for protest”.
As the genocide continues, the ways that politicians and diplomats try to make amends are becoming even weaker. The suggestion by Gerapetritis plays directly into the humanitarian paradigm which the EU hides behind, even as it continues to invest in Israel’s military and surveillance systems, all field tested on Palestinians in Gaza, of course.
There is not a single European country that can speak with honesty about Gaza and Israel, because investment in the latter has generated high stakes in terms of profit and complicity.
Humanitarian gestures, meanwhile, are becoming meaningless for Palestinians and strategically valuable for Israel, because there is no deterrent, no measure that forces Israel to stop the genocide.
Keeping in mind that Israel wants Gaza empty of Palestinians, why would the EU, which is complicit in arming the apartheid state, offer a humanitarian gesture that would help the settler-colonial entity in its ethnic cleansing? This begs a bigger question: why do diplomats insist on depoliticising humanitarian aid for the recipients, when the donors are involved in human rights abuses, war crimes and crimes against humanity?
Offering temporary safe haven for Palestinian children maimed by the war might be an acceptable humanitarian gesture if European countries weren’t complicit in the genocide conducted by the settler-colonial state which maimed them in the first place. “We have to remind ourselves of one thing: It is not enough to build only settlements,” said far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir recently, in the context of emphasising the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians, otherwise known as normalised ethnic cleansing.
A look at the recent statement by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy shows how the Gaza genocide is not called to attention, but rather focuses on specific Israel violations while still recognising “Israel’s right to defend itself”. Josep Borrell also called for “the unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas,” which essentially tells Palestinians that, as the colonised population, they should remain voiceless and not articulate any demands. Palestinians are facing genocide, and the EU’s statement is careful to protect Israel’s ability to act with impunity.
Any plan for EU states to host Palestinian children from Gaza cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. Such a safe haven in Europe is part of the colonial framework that aids Israel, as does Europe’s complicity in Israel’s bombing and destruction of hospitals in Gaza, and murder of medical personnel. Apart from the fact that the number of Palestinian children taken in by Greece would be symbolic more than anything else, politicising medical treatment to aid Israel’s “voluntary migration” scheme is depraved and self-serving. Gerapetritis should have been more honest and said that his country will not stop the genocide, but will host and treat an insignificant percentage of its victims that will not jeopardise its relationship with Israel.
No political gesture will disguise the fact that Europe has much bigger obligations than playing humanitarian saviour to a relatively few wounded and severely traumatised Palestinian children.
Sham-ocracy, Scam-ocracy
By Laurie Calhoun | The Libertarian Institute | June 17, 2024
The word “democracy” is bandied about rhetorically by politicians on a regular basis to rationalize whatever it is that they want to do. This tendency has increased markedly in recent times as so-called wars of democracy and campaigns to save or preserve democracy are cast as the most pressing priorities of the day.
In the U.S. presidential election campaign currently underway, both members of the War Party duopoly claim to be the champions of democracy, while depicting their adversaries as loose cannon authoritarians. President Joe “Our Patience is Wearing Thin” Biden attempted in 2021 to force free people to submit to an experimental pharmaceutical treatment which many of them did not need. The Biden administration also oversaw what was one of the most assiduous assaults on free speech in the history of Western civilization. Social media platforms were infiltrated by agents of the federal government with the aim of squelching criticism of regime narratives, even, remarkably, facts recast by censors as malinformation for their potential to sow skepticism about the new mRNA shots never before tested on human beings.
Biden & Co. nonetheless insist that voters must reelect him, because his rival is a dictator in waiting à la Hitler or Mussolini. This despite the fact that Donald Trump already served as president for four years, and never imposed martial law, not even at the height of the highly chaotic and destructive George Floyd and Black Lives Matters protests. Ignoring such conflicting evidence, Joe Biden and his supporters relentlessly proclaim that a Trump victory in November 2024 would usher in the likely end of democracy.
After the conviction of Trump on felony charges crafted through novel procedures and using legalistic epicycles in entirely unprecedented ways, obviously tailored to convict one and only one person, with the aim specifically of preventing his election as the president of the United States, Democratic party operatives and Deep State bureaucrats alike have voiced concern that, if Trump is elected in November, he will go after those responsible for what fully half the country views as his persecution. Given the manifold conflicts of interest involved in the case, in which he was found guilty of all thirty-four charges, it seems likely that, as in the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling to remove Trump’s name from the ballot in that state, the creative felony convictions of Trump will not stand on appeal. One thing is clear: the crime of “miscategorizing hush money payments” has arguably been committed by every member of Congress for whom taxpayer money was used to dispense “undisclosed” payments in suppressing allegations of sexual harassment and other forms of malfeasance. (Thanks to Representative Thomas Massie for sharing on Twitter/X that $17 million dollars were paid to settle 268 such lawsuits from 1997 to 2017.)
Meanwhile, the Russiagate narrative which dominated the mainstream media for the entirety of Trump’s presidency, and continues to this day to color people’s views of the Russian government—thus buoying support for the war in Ukraine—has already been thoroughly debunked for the Hillary Clinton campaign product that it was. The Clinton campaign and the DNC (Democratic National Committee) were fined by the Federal Election Commission for their use of campaign funds miscategorized as legal fees to conduct opposition research which found its way into the Steele dossier on which angry denunciations of Trump’s supposedly treasonous behavior were based. To this day, none of the individuals involved have been indicted for what endures in many minds as the fanciful idea that “Trump is inside Putin’s pocket!” as a man I met in rural New Zealand in 2017 so vividly put it. (I assume he watches CNN.)
Since Trump’s recent conviction for the erroneous classification on his tax form of a hush money payment as a legal fee, he has been busy making lemonade out of lemons, using his new, improved tough-guy “gangster” image to wheel in voters and financial supporters who relate more than ever to his plight, having themselves either been or known victims of the not-so-evenhanded U.S. justice system. To Trump and his supporters, of course, going after those who went after him would be tit-for-tat retribution, just the sort of sweet revenge which persons wronged may crave. But to the many Trump haters (and there is no other way to describe them at this point in history), any attempt to retaliate by using the legal system to press charges against individuals who used the legal system for diaphanously political aims would constitute a grave injustice and threat to democracy.
The situation differs in degree, not in kind, in Europe, where the results of the recent elections have inspired heartfelt exclamations by the usual suspects (European Union Commission president Ursula von der Leyden, et al.) that “democracy” is endangered by the right-wing political groups now in ascendance. Pointing out that those groups were voted in by the people (demo-) to rule (-cracy) does nothing to quell the hysterics, who are somehow oblivious of the fact that when new parties are voted into power, this is precisely because of the electorate’s dissatisfaction with their current government officials. Voting is the only way people have of ousting the villains currently holding elected positions, along with the bureaucrats appointed by them.
In Europe, many working people are disturbed by not only the immigration situation and the specter of totalitarian “wokeism” but also the insistence of their current leaders on provoking and prolonging a war with Russia. It does not seem to be a matter of sheer coincidence, for example, that French president Emmanuel Macron suffered a resounding electoral blow after having expressed the intention to escalate the war between Ukraine and Russia, thus directly endangering the people of France. Macron was also assiduous in excluding swaths of his population, who protested in the streets for months on end, from participation in civil society for what he decreed to be their crime of declining to submit to the experimental mRNA treatment during the height of the Coronapocalypse.
Protests tend not to have any effect on the reigning elites, primarily because the mainstream media no longer covers them to any significant degree, but when politicians are removed from office by the electorate, and replaced by persons who share the concerns of the populace, then change does become possible, at least in principle. Unfortunately, most viable candidates today are card-carrying members of the War Party, whatever divergent opinions they may hold about domestic issues such as whether persons in possession of Y-chromosomes should be considered biological males or whether non-citizens should be permitted to vote.
It would be nice to be able to believe, as some of Trump’s libertarian-leaning supporters apparently do, that his populist appeal reflects a genuine interest in preserving freedom and democracy. This notion is however impugned by the fact that it was under Trump’s administration that the active pursuit of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange commenced, when he was wrenched from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and thrown into Belmarsh prison, where he continues to languish today. It was also under Trump that Assange’s internet access was taken away, which already represented an assault on free speech. But by allowing then-CIA director Mike Pompeo to “mastermind” the eternal silencing of Assange, for the supposed crime of exposing U.S. war crimes (recast as serial violations of the Espionage Act of 1917), Trump betrayed his own commitment to the now octopoid MIC (military-industrial-congressional-media-academic-pharmaceutical-logistics-banking complex), notwithstanding his occasional moments of seeming lucidity with regard to reining in the endless wars. Among other examples, there is not much daylight between the platforms of Biden and Trump regarding Israel. President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken occasionally pay lip service to the innocent Palestinians being traumatized, wounded, and killed, but they nonetheless have furnished Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the means to do just that.
In reality, highly seductive, albeit fraudulent, claims to be defending democracy have been the primary basis for waging, funding, and prolonging wars which have resulted in the deaths of millions of human beings in this century alone. For two decades, the war in Afghanistan was rationalized by appeal to the need to democratize that land, which is currently ruled by the manifestly authoritarian Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (formerly known as the Taliban), just as it was in 2001. Indeed, every country targeted by the U.S. military behemoth is claimed to be the beneficiary of what are the twenty-first-century equivalent of the missions civilisatrices of centuries past. Today, brutal bombing campaigns, invasions and occupations are invariably sustained through the rhetoric of democracy. Since every U.S.-instigated or funded war is said to support “democracy” (by definition!), this rhetorical strategy succeeds in garnering the support of politicians who know that their constituents know, if nothing else, that murder is evil, and democracy is good.
That wars imposed on people against their will—and in which they themselves are annihilated—serve democracy is a preposterous conceit, and yet it becomes ever more frequent as leaders continue to point to World War II as proof that sometimes people must die if freedom and liberty—and, of course, democracy—are to survive. Whoever is running Joe Biden’s Twitter/X account posted a suite of recycled versions of this fallacious notion not long after Memorial Day:
“American democracy asks the hardest of things: To believe we’re part of something bigger than ourselves. Democracy begins with each of us. It begins when one person decides their country matters more than they do.”
“Democracy is never guaranteed. Every generation must preserve it, defend it, and fight for it.”
“History tells us that freedom is not free. If you want to know the price of freedom, come here to Normandy, or other cemeteries where our fallen heroes rest. The price of unchecked tyranny is the blood of the young and the brave.”
Any sober examination of the historical record reveals that vacuous claims to be supporting “democracy” in wars abroad—the literal weaponization of that term—have as their primary result that the people being slaughtered lose not only their political voice, but also their very life, usually against their own will. War represents, in this way, the very antithesis of democracy.
The conflation of defense and offense codified in 2002 by the George W. Bush administration in its notorious National Security Strategy of the United States of America was made public in a pithy phrase: “Our best defense is a good offense.” This perverse rebranding of state aggression as somehow honorable has given rise to a global military system in which wars are funded by the U.S. government under the assumption that they are everywhere and always a matter of protecting post-World War II democracies. But if people are killed in these wars against their will, often because they are forbidden from leaving their country, and therefore subjected to a greatly increased risk of death through bombing, as was the case in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere throughout the Global War on Terror), and is currently the case in both Ukraine and Israel, then there is no sense in which the military missions which culminate in the deaths of those people constitute defenses of democracy. Instead, the prolongation of such wars ensures only that there will be fewer people voting than before.
Such flagrant assaults on democracy (rule by the people) in the name of democracy do not, however, end with the depletion of the civilians sacrificed by leaders for the lofty aims of securing the freedom of future, as-of-yet unborn persons. Notably, the idea that already existent young persons should be coerced to fight and die in such wars is often supported by the warmongers as well. The current British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, recently proposed that mandatory national service be reinstated, a clear sign of only one thing: that the British public has grown weary and wary of the endless regime-change wars waged and/or funded by the U.S. government and unerringly supported by its number one poodle ally, the United Kingdom. As a result of the willingness of the British government to deploy its military to serve the dubious purposes of the U.S. hegemon, the number of voluntary enlistees is naturally in decline.
Conscription, the use of coercive means to increase the number of persons to fight in wars, directly contradicts the very foundations of democracy. If democracy is rule by the people, then in order for a war to have any democratic legitimacy whatsoever (ignoring, as if it were somehow irrelevant, the “collateral damage” on the other side), it would have to be fought not only for but also by persons who support it. If it is not to be a contradiction in terms, a democratic war would involve only persons who freely agreed to sacrifice their own lives for a cause which they themselves deemed worth dying for. The fact that coercive threats of imprisonment or even death are used to enlist new soldiers shows that at least those persons, a clearly demarcated segment of the society, do not agree with what they are being ordered to do. A war does not become democratic because a majority of the persons too old to fight in it support sending their young compatriots to commit homicide and die in their stead.
This is the sense in which antiwar activists who exhort chicken hawks such as Senator Lindsey Graham and former Vice President Dick Cheney to go fight their own bloody wars are right. For in any conflict purported to be a “war of democracy,” only persons who freely choose to fight, kill and possibly die in it would be donning uniforms. By this criterion, neither World War I nor World War II were wars of democracy. All of the draft dodgers imprisoned or executed for evading military service were horribly wronged wherever and whenever this occurred.
Conscription is always floating about as a topic of debate in so-called democratic nations because of the list of wars capriciously waged with abstract and dubious aims, and incompetently executed, such as the series of state-inflicted mass homicides constitutive of the Global War on Terror. The prospect of active conscription is always looming in the background wherever more and more leaders, under the corrupting influence of military industry lobbyists, and seduced by “just war” rhetoric, exhibit a willingness to embroil their nations in war. Young persons understandably exhibit an increasing reluctance to serve in what since 1945 have proven to be their self-proclaimed democratic leaders’ nugatory and unnecessary wars.
Mandatory national service is a condition for citizenship in some countries, such as Israel, where at least some persons (the Israelis) can freely choose to leave or to substitute a form of civil service rather than agreeing to kill other human beings at the behest of their sanguinary leaders. In wars in progress, such as that in Ukraine, conscription is used in more of an ad hoc way, as it becomes clear that the forces are dwindling and must be replenished, if the war is to carry on. But the very fact that conscription has come to seem necessary to the leaders prosecuting a war itself belies their claims that what is at stake is democracy itself.
This antidemocratic dynamic is currently on display in Ukraine, where President Volodomyr Zelensky recently remained in power, effectively appointing himself monarch, after canceling the elections which would have given the people the opportunity to oust him, specifically on the grounds that they oppose his meatgrinder war with no end in sight—barring either negotiation or nuclear holocaust. In a true democracy, the people themselves would be able to debate and reject the government’s wars, but in a nation such as Ukraine, the president decides, based on “guidance” provided to him by the leaders of powerful and wealthier nations, above all, the United States and its sidekick, the United Kingdom, to carry out a war for so long as he is furnished with the matériel needed to keep the war machine up and running.
The problem for Zelensky is that no matter how many bombs, missiles, and planes are furnished to the government of Ukraine to bolster the purported defense of democracy, there will always be the need for personnel on the ground to deploy those means. When the voluntary members of the army are injured, exhausted, or dead, then the government, rather than taking a seat at the negotiation table, opts to create an artificial pool of soldiers by coercing able-bodied persons who are ill-inclined to participate, having already had the opportunity to volunteer to serve but declined to do so.
The primary support of both the war in Ukraine and the Israeli government’s assault on Gaza is based on a curtailed, amnesiac view of history, conjoined with the fiction that the states currently in existence are somehow eternal and sacred plots of land the borders of which may never be changed. In reality, states are artifacts, the perimeters of which were established by small committees of (usually) men who negotiated among themselves at some point to permit distinct states to exist. In order for a border war to be in any sense democratic, it would have to take into account the interests of all of the persons likely to be affected, not only the young people enlisted to fight, but also the hapless civilians forbidden from relocating, as in Gaza, and then summarily slaughtered by the government as it pursues its own agenda. The frequently recited refrain that it is necessary to continue to fund the commission of mass homicide in Ukraine and Israel in order to preserve democracy is self-contradictory and delusional, both a sham and a scam.
Laurie Calhoun is a Senior Fellow for The Libertarian Institute. She is the author of Questioning the COVID Company Line: Critical Thinking in Hysterical Times,We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age, War and Delusion: A Critical Examination, Theodicy: A Metaphilosophical Investigation, You Can Leave, Laminated Souls, and Philosophy Unmasked: A Skeptic’s Critique.
Brazilian experts warn of the risk of western intervention in the Amazon region
By Raphael Machado | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 17, 2024
On June 11, an important debate took place in the Brazilian Congress which could have some interesting repercussions. The event, called the “Debate on National Sovereignty in the 21st Century,” was held within the scope of the Foreign Relations and National Defense Committee of Congress, organized at the request of Representative Luiz Philippe de Orleans e Bragança.
The debate, held within one of the most important committees of the Brazilian Congress (as it deals precisely with fundamental state issues), included the participation of important specialists in military and intelligence matters, such as Commander Robinson Farinazzo, officer of the Brazilian Navy, the defense analyst Albert Caballé, and Professor Ricardo Cabral, former professor at the Naval War College, among others.
Referring to statements by former NATO officers, presidents, and prime ministers of various countries connected to the Atlantic Alliance, Farinazzo highlighted the fact that the fate of Brazilian territories, especially the Amazon region and its rainforest, is discussed in summits held outside Brazil, without the representation of Brazilian interests.
As an example, Farinazzo recalled a draft resolution in the United Nations Security Council, dated 2021, which aimed to categorize general climate issues as “security threats” that could be discussed, overseen, and operated within the framework of the Security Council. This draft was vetoed by Russia and India and did not have the support of China, which abstained.
Although the draft did not specifically mention the Amazon or Brazil, it is impossible to ignore the numerous references to the “internationalization of the Amazon,” seen as the “heritage of humanity,” in the context of the radicalization of ecoglobalist discourses created within the centers of knowledge and public policy of the Atlanticist West.
As jurist Carl Schmitt said, “whoever invokes humanity is trying to deceive.” Behind humanitarian discourse lie all the most brutal and nihilistic projects of the liberal Western elites. To prove this, we just need to look at how the narratives of “humanitarian intervention” were used in Libya, Iraq, and the Balkans over the past 30 years.
Indeed, in August 2019, American political scientist Stephen Walt published an article within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs speculating on the possibility of military actions legitimized by environmentalist discourse of defending “humanity” from “climate threats”. According to Walt, in the future, major powers might try to halt situations of environmental degradation through armed interventions in weaker countries, specifically mentioning Brazil as an example.
Less than a month later, The Guardian published an article by an author named Lawrence Douglas, in which he argued that the same logic applied to humanitarian interventions, such as the “Responsibility to Protect,” a globalist concept enshrined at the UN in 2005, should serve to legitimize the use of force against the geopolitical enemies of the Atlanticist West with a humanitarian/environmentalist veneer.
Indeed, at the event held in the Brazilian Congress, Stephen Walt’s article was specifically mentioned, along with many other pieces of evidence. It is necessary to recall, as Farinazzo did, that James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and former SOUTHCOM Commander, claimed that fires in the Amazon Rainforest represented a security risk for the U.S., legitimizing their intervention in Brazil. Emmanuel Macron (who was warmly welcomed by Lula in the Amazon a few months ago) and Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, have also publicly stated that the Amazon region does not really belong to Brazil, but rather is a “common good” of so-called “humanity.” David Milliband, Secretary of the Environment under Tony Blair’s government, even went so far as advocate for the privatization of the Amazon Rainforest in 2006.
All this was presented to the Foreign Relations and National Defense Committee of the Brazilian Congress with abundant evidence and sources.
If the issue of Amazon fires was the most “weaponized” against Brazil during the Bolsonaro government, now the topic that generates the most furious reactions from environmental NGOs in Brazil, as well as “concerned” comments from foreign bureaucrats, is the exploration of oil in the Equatorial Margin, as pointed out by Professor Ricardo Cabral in Congress.
This is a topic that is linked, as he pointed out, with the entire history of efforts to prevent or hinder the exploitation of Brazilian mineral and energy resources, usually under allegations of “environmental damage” or “violations of indigenous peoples’ rights” – narratives that put pressure for the loss of sovereignty over parts of Brazilian territory, which should, as the narrative goes, be under “international tutelage,” in a more refined and postmodern version of the old British privatization proposals.
The problem, as analyst Albert Caballé pointed out, however, is that the Brazilian defense industry is in crisis; a crisis that has lasted for several years already.
If until approximately the 1980s, Brazilian companies in the defense sector not only supplied most of the national military needs but were also exporters, especially to the Middle East and Africa, the neoliberal avalanche of the 1990s in a post-Cold War context led to a gradual dismantling of the sector and its denationalization, with several of the main Brazilian defense companies, such as Ares and others, coming under the control of multinational companies – almost always from the same Atlanticist countries that show interest in the “internationalization” of the Amazon.
The hypothetical scenario discussed in the Brazilian Congress for an interventionist action against Brazil, as presented by Farinazzo, mentions the possibility of a blockade of the main Brazilian ports by Atlanticist naval forces, in a sort of “anaconda strategy” (a tactic that is part of the manual of Admiral Mahan, the father of American geopolitics).
The concern of Brazilian experts and representatives specializing in defense and international relations, therefore, is that Western greed in an era of transition and geopolitical crisis could turn against Brazil – and that Brazil, if it does not quickly wake up to the contemporary risks and dangers, may not be able to face this challenge.
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Medicalized Motherhood (2026)
Unbekoming | January 15, 2026
A healthy woman downloads a fertility app before she’s even trying to conceive. The algorithm tells her she’s “irregular,” suggests she might have a problem, builds a referral pathway to a fertility clinic directly into the interface. She arrives at pregnancy already a patient—monitored, tested, supplemented, optimized. Forty weeks later, she’s induced for passing an arbitrary due date, monitored continuously, confined to bed, augmented with synthetic hormones, numbed with an epidural, and delivered by cesarean for “failure to progress.” Her newborn is immediately clamped, separated, injected, tested, and supplemented with formula. A year later, her baby has a diagnosis for falling below the 10th percentile on a growth chart. Five years later, she’s still in the system—annual screenings, ongoing surveillance, carrying diagnoses that originated in pregnancy. She entered healthy. She never exits.
Medicalized Motherhood: From First Pill to Permanent Patient documents 123 medical interventions that operate through a single logic: each one creates conditions requiring the next. The induction requires monitoring. The monitoring requires confinement. The confinement slows labor. The slowed labor requires drugs. The drugs intensify pain. The pain requires anesthesia. The anesthesia impairs pushing. The impaired pushing requires surgery. This isn’t system failure—it’s the system functioning exactly as designed, converting healthy women into lifelong patients while generating revenue at every step. The book maps this cascade across six phases: pre-conception capture, pregnancy surveillance, labor management, immediate newborn intervention, infant pathologizing, and postpartum capture. No other single resource traces how a fertility tracking app connects to a cesarean scar connects to a “failure to thrive” diagnosis connects to permanent patient status. … continue
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