Powerless and ridiculous for US to cry for its recognition as regional leader
Global Times | March 2, 2023
“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t,” said former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher. From this, we know how powerless and ridiculous it is when the US tries to persuade others by repeating, “I am still a leader, and you have to believe and admit it!”
In a video released Tuesday by NBC News, Nicholas Burns, the US Ambassador to China, who spoke by video link at a US Chamber of Commerce event, said Beijing must accept that Washington is a leader in Asia. He declared that China must now understand that “the US is staying in this region – we’re the leader in this region in many ways.”
What the US politician said implies two messages. First, he seems to criticize China for not understanding US’ presence in the Asia-Pacific. Second, Burns wants Beijing to acknowledge Washington’s leadership in the region. Yet, both are far from the truth.
Washington has always had the strategic miscalculation: It believes Beijing wants to push it out of the Asia-Pacific region. But China not only recognizes US’ presence in the area, but also seeks peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation with the US on the premise of mutual respect. What Beijing refuses is to be led by anyone else, including Washington.
Burns’ words are extremely US-centric, as they come entirely from Washington’s perspective of its regional role while ignoring the actual opinions of other Asia-Pacific nations. Such arrogance aims to satisfy the US’ strategic need for maintaining global hegemony.
“US continues to live in an alternative reality fuelled by hubris,” one tweet said, commenting on Burns’ remarks. This hits the nail on the head regarding US’ current status.
Washington has to understand that most Asia-Pacific countries do not want to be stuck in a Cold War-like confrontation again, nor do they want to see conflicts between major powers. The US’ desire to lead regional affairs and get the recognition of other countries is wishful thinking, which is completely at odds with the trend of development in Asia-Pacific.
Besides, against the backdrop of the deteriorating domestic problems and the relative decline in US’ national power, there’s also a sense of lack of confidence in Burns’ remarks: In fact, it actually sounds like a self-affirmation the US has to make.
“In the past, the US could confidently intervene in the affairs of any region and use force or coercion to maintain its leadership. But now it is increasingly incapable of acting as a leader, because Washington finds it more difficult to focus on other regions,” Zhang Tengjun, deputy director of the Department for Asia-Pacific Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times.
Almost one year in office, Burns has increasingly fueled the deterioration of China-US relations. As Washington’s megaphone for Beijing, the ambassador has frequently criticized China’s policies in public, including on social media. Many of his comments are damaging to US-China relations and inappropriate to his ambassadorship.
For instance, an exclusive report by the Global Times on Monday noted that Burns recently sparked discontent among the attendees of the 22nd Annual Appreciation Dinner American Chamber of Commerce when he criticized China in his address to the event.
The US Ambassador to China is the executor of US policy toward China. After taking office, Burns has been following Washington’s order on many China-related issues tightly and expressing what the White House wants him to say. Therefore, it is easy to see that Burns’ actions of fueling the fire essentially stem from the hysteria of the US’ containment policy toward China.
Over the past year, it seems that condemning China has become an instinctive reaction of any US official when dealing with China, especially in the current US political environment that promotes anti-China sentiments.
Nevertheless, politicians like Burns should understand that “pride and prejudice” toward China will only bring more danger and chaos to the region and the world. No matter how harsh they want to sound when talking about China and how assertive when talking about the US, they can never fool other countries by trying to sugarcoat US hegemony as “leadership.”
Israel’s ‘right to exist’ challenged in expert testimonies
By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | March 3, 2023
“Israel’s right to exist” has been challenged in expert testimonies by leading scholars Professor John Dugard and Professor Avi Shlaim. Dugard is an advocate of the High Court of South Africa. He has served intermittently as Judge of the International Court of Justice. His other high-profile appointment was at the United Nations where he served as Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from 2001 to 2008. Shlaim, who is an author of several books on Israel and Palestine, is an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College and an Emeritus Professor in International Relations at the University of Oxford.
Dugard and Shlaim issued their testimonies in response to the UK government’s prohibition on schools and universities from engaging with organisations that question Israel’s “right to exist”. The testimonies are part of a legal action against the former Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, by UK human rights group, CAGE. In a 2021 letter to schools and universities, Williamson applied pressure to adopt the discredited International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. The letter also told schools that they were prohibited from engaging with organisations that reject Israel’s “right to exist”.
A judicial review of the government’s guideline was lodged by CAGE, it argued that no such right exists in international law that prohibits people and groups from questioning a state’s legitimacy. “For too long, the political phrase ‘Israel’s right to exist’ has been used as a weapon to silence any debate about the legitimacy of its creation, the right of return of Palestinian refugees displaced by its creation and the apartheid nature of the Israeli state,” CAGE said at the time. In July a British High Court ruled against a judicial review.
This week CAGE published the expert testimonies of Dugard and Shlaim. Both challenged the prevailing narrative pushed by the UK government on Israel’s “right to exist”. Their testimony gave a brief history of the creation of the State of Israel and explained why the claim of a “right to exist” in law and morality is debatable.
Shlaim described Williamson as someone who habitually conflates anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. He also claimed that the former education secretary had used his ministerial position to restrict freedom of speech on Israel. Commenting on the IHRA and possible financial sanctions that may be imposed if schools refused to adopt it, Shlaim said: “This is a highly controversial and, in my opinion, discredited definition which was promoted by Israel’s friends. The two-sentence definition is vacuous, but it is followed by 11 ‘illustrative examples’ of what might constitute antisemitism. Seven of the 11 examples relate to Israel. The real purpose of the definition is not to protect Jews against antisemitism but to protect Israel against legitimate criticism.”
Shlaim was one of 77 Israeli academics in Britain who united in response to Williamson’s infamous intervention. In January 2021, they sent a letter to vice chancellors and academic senates in England urging universities not to adopt the IHRA document, which they viewed as being “detrimental not only to academic freedom and to the struggle for human rights, but also to the fight against antisemitism.”
Challenging Israel’s right to exist, the expert testimonies argued that such a claim has no basis in international law. The idea that states have rights is rejected outright. The point is often made in the following way: Human beings have a right to exist, and to live flourishing lives. The moral and legal justification for the existence of any nation-state is based on their ability to protect and defend the rights of human beings and through serving the interest and well-being of peoples cultures and communities living within the territory they control. When a state fails in this regard for enough of those people for a long enough time, its control comes under challenge and loses its legitimacy. The shelf-life of any state is to the degree it can guarantee the human rights of people in territory controlled by that state.
Though there are many examples, a classic case often cited to highlight that point is Apartheid South Africa. Arguments were raised that Apartheid South Africa should not be recognised as a state and should be expelled from the UN. Although South Africa was not expelled from membership of the world body, the credentials of the South African government were not accepted, and it was denied the right to participate in the work of the General Assembly. In effect, this meant that many countries believed that South Africa no longer had the right to exist as a state because of its policy of apartheid. South Africa lost its legitimacy because of its refusal to guarantee and protect the rights of black South Africans in the same territory.
The arrangement in Apartheid South Africa has many similarities with Israel, which is why every major human rights group has concluded that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid. Within the territory controlled by the occupation state – known also as historic Palestine – seven million of Israel’s Jewish population enjoy full rights and privileges, while seven million of the territories’ non-Jewish population experience some form of discrimination depending on where they live. Twenty per cent of Israel’s Palestinian citizens for example suffer less discrimination than the five million Palestinians in occupied West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. Not forgetting also, the six million Palestinian refugees who are refused their right to return while every Jew in the world is granted their “right to return”.
Returning to the expert testimonies, Dugard and Shlaim rejected Israel’s “right to exist”, explaining that such a right cannot be exercised because there is no basis for it in international law. According to Dugard, the rights of a state that are enshrined in international law are the right to territorial integrity; political independence and not to be forcibly attacked by another state. It’s not obvious therefore why Israel should be allowed to enjoy these rights given that it has no defined borders, and furthermore not only has it forcibly attacked and occupied the State of Palestine, it continues to annex territory beyond the internationally recognised borders of the apartheid state.
Further arguments rejecting Israel’s “right to exist” are demonstrated by the fact that a state may be recognised as a state by some states but not by others. Consequently, it is a state for those countries that recognise it but not for states that do not recognise it. Palestine, for instance, is recognized as a state by 138 countries, which is more than Kosovo, recognised by 100 states.
Perhaps the most powerful objection against Israel’s demand on others to recognise its “right to exist” are claims it had made about itself during the country’s founding. Israel’s declaration of independence was based on the Balfour Declaration, the Mandate of the League of Nations and the General Assembly’s Partition Resolution. Every one of those claims have been challenged on legal grounds since 1948. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 for example did not recognise the right of the Jewish people to a state in Palestine. It simply stated that the British government viewed “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a home for the Jewish people” but that this was to be without prejudice to the “civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” The clear and obvious goal of the declaration was to create a “home” for the Jewish people “In Palestine,” not erase Palestine as Israel has done to supplant a new state on top of it.
Similar contentions exist with the British Mandate for Palestine and UN Partition Plan. Although the Mandate incorporated the provisions of the Balfour Declaration it made no provision for a Jewish State. As for the partition plan, Palestinians rejected Resolution 181 on account of its unfairness: it gave the Jewish community comprising 33 per cent of the population of Palestine 57 per cent of the land and 84 per cent of the agricultural land.
The message in the expert testimonies can be boiled down to the fact that not only is the British government’s suppression of a discussion on Israel’s “right to exists” preposterous, ahistorical and an attack on freedom of thought, there can be no discussion about Israel’s “right to exist” without a similar discussion about Palestine’s right to exist.
Early “Spring Exacerbation”
By Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – 01.03.2023
Those who closely follow the events on the Korean peninsula know that military exercises of the United States and the Republic of Korea take place every spring. The DPRK traditionally perceives them as a rehearsal for an invasion and responds with demonstration of force. Each side declares however that in response to the provocations of the other, it has the right to strengthen its defense capability thus getting trapped in a vicious circle. But although the actions of Washington and Seoul aggravate the situation no less, they do not make the front pages, unlike the news about launches or statements by the North, and this creates a picture in the public mind that Pyongyang is the culprit of tension.
On February 17, the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Korea announced that in March South Korea and the United States would hold a joint 11-day Freedom Shield exercise. In response, the DPRK Foreign Ministry issued a statement, in which it threatened to take “unprecedented tough and decisive measures” for “disturbing military demonstrations that seriously violate the security interests of the DPRK.”
On February 18, North Korea resumed missile launches. An ICBM was launched towards the East Sea (Sea of Japan).
The reaction of Washington and Seoul was quite acute: if you recalculate the missile trajectory from a high-altitude to a more typical one, its range turns out to be 14,000 km. So it can reach the continental territory of the United States by a wide margin.
South Korean experts also noted that the launch had been managed by the Main Missile Directorate, and it was carried out by the same unit as the Hwasong-17 launch on November 18, and it took almost nine and a half hours to prepare the liquid-fuel ICBM for being started. In addition, they traditionally doubted that the missile had successfully entered the atmosphere: allegedly, a video of a descending missile filmed by a Japanese fighter shows that its warhead had been broken into pieces and disappeared from view after it caught fire. After the previous failure in November on September 3, North Korea released an improved Hwasong-15 ICBM with a lighter warhead. But this time the missile seems to have failed again to re-enter the atmosphere.
On February 19, the deputy department head of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), Kim Yo-jong published a press statement in which she castigated Washington’s desire to turn the UN Security Council into an tool for implementing a hostile policy against the DPRK. And although Kim Jong-un’s sister noted that “our ICBMs will never take aim at Seoul,” this phrase is not identical to “DPRK missiles are not aimed at Seoul” – the DPRK has enough other types of missiles and barrel artillery capable of reaching the capital of the Republic of Korea.
On the same day, February 19, South Korea and the United States conducted joint air exercises with the participation of American B-1B strategic bombers. For understanding: taking off from Guam, the B-1B can reach Pyongyang in two hours.
February 20 became an eventful day. First, Kim Yo-jong responded to critical statements about the February 18 launch in the style of “your experts are idiots.” In particular, the fighter did not film the disintegration of the warhead, but the separation of the so-called hypersonic glider from the missile head. The “first sister” summed up by saying that “in case of any direct and indirect alarm,” we will take appropriate response measures and “the frequency of using the Pacific Ocean as our training ground depends on the nature of the actions of American troops“.
Second, at about 7 a.m., the North launched eastwards two medium-range ballistic missiles from Sukchon, South Pyongan Province. It is noteworthy that the North Korean media covered the launch a mere hour after the fact.
In the context of the above, the experts of the Republic of Korea believe that the DPRK military might have simulated strikes on the Cheongju and Osan air bases (North Chuncheon Province) and Gunsan (North Jeolla Province), which are located at a 340 and 390 km distance from the missile launch site. It was from them that the planes of the US and South Korean Air Forces took off for joint exercises the day before.
Third, the ROK has imposed new unilateral sanctions against the DPRK. More precisely, in relation to four individuals and five organizations for their assistance to the nuclear and missile development of the North, as well as for evading the implementation of UN Security Council resolutions. This measure is being applied for the fourth time in the reign of Yoon Suk-yeol: new sanctions were introduced just ten days after the decision had been made to restrict Pyongyang’s illegal activities in cyberspace. Previously, these same individuals and organizations had been included in the US sanctions lists, so the step was purely formal.
Fourth, the “Korean” meeting of the UN Security Council eventually took place. In 2022, the UN Security Council held 10 meetings specifically devoted to discussing North Korea’s missile threats, but all of them ended without any results due to the opposition of China and Russia, who are permanent members of the Security Council with veto power.
In 2023, the scenario was resumed. The United States has called on the UN Security Council to hold North Korea accountable “for its recent missile provocations.” Nevertheless, China once again opposed taking any action against Pyongyang, accusing the United States of escalating tensions and provoking North Korea. Its representative reminded the world that the United States had announced joint military exercises at a higher level and on a larger scale, as well as the timely deployment of strategic assets on the Korean peninsula. Russia’s permanent representative to the UN also accused the United States of provoking North Korea. According to the Russian diplomat, the DPRK is simply responding with missile tests to unprecedented US military maneuvers, which are clearly anti-Pyongyang in nature.
On February 22, the military of South Korea, the United States and Japan conducted joint missile defense exercises in the waters of the Sea of Japan. It involved destroyers equipped with the system, which worked out actions for the exchange of information about ballistic missiles, procedures for their detection, tracking and interception. On the same day, a meeting of the Naval commanders of the three countries took place in Yokosuka.
On the same day, on February 22, the 8th U.S-ROK Deterrence Strategy Committee Table-Top Exercise (DSC TTX) was held at the Pentagon. The parties were represented by Heo Tae-keun, ROK Deputy Minister for National Defense Policy (DEPMIN), Siddharth Mohandas, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia, and Richard Johnson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Policy (N-CWMD). The military reviewed measures to strengthen combat readiness in case of the real use of nuclear weapons by the North, and they studied a variety of possible scenarios.
Also on February 22, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK for International Organizations Kim Song Kyung criticized the “unfair and unbalanced” policy of the UN Secretary General, who “from year to year repeats illogical and deplorable nonsense, no different from the chatter of US State Department officials.” And if, because of this stance, “an undesirable situation arises”, he “will not get rid of the heavy responsibility for it.”
At dawn on February 23, North Korea responded to previous day’s exercise by conducting a launch of Hwasal-4 “strategic cruise missiles” capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
In an interview with the Korea Times, senior researcher at the Korean Defense and Security Forum, Shin Jung-woo said that the range of the missiles was 200 kilometers longer than those tested on January 25, 2022. However, in general, the description of the launch was assessed skeptically. According to a representative of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on February 24, the data obtained by ROK and US observation means do not correspond to the information voiced by the North and may be exaggerated. The military did not provide other details, referring to the fact that this could reveal the capabilities of the allies in the field of surveillance.
On February 24, the head of the DPRK Foreign Ministry Department for US Affairs, Kwon Jong-geun, chastised the UN Security Council meeting, at which, according to the North Korean diplomat, the United States “again found fault with our use of the right to self-defense.” But in addition to the customary rhetoric, there was something new. “The United States should bear in mind that the further continuation of their hostile and provocative acts against the DPRK, despite our repeated protests and warnings, can be considered a declaration of war against our Republic.” This is quite serious, given the new regulations for the use of North Korean nuclear weapons. In response, the US warned that North Korea’s use of nuclear weapons would lead to the end of the DPRK regime, and announced that it would continue to deploy specialized nuclear forces.
What will happen next? In February, the ROK and US military intend to conduct an additional Air Force exercise, and then in March the large-scale Freedom Shield exercise will take place, which will last 11 days, including its field component. The main trigger of the “spring exacerbation”. Moreover, negotiations are underway on the arrival at the port of Busan of an American nuclear aircraft carrier (presumably the Nimitz), which will take part in the exercise. Similarly, in 2022, the United States sent the Ronald Reagan to the peninsula. The Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Korea, however, refused to confirm this fact but stated that “the deployment of key US military assets took place in close consultation between South Korea and the United States“.
So, both sides do not intend to retreat, and it is highly likely that 2023 will equal 2022 in terms of the number of missile launches from the North, and even surpass it. However, seasonal exacerbation is seasonal for a reason: it happens within certain limits. And although non-core experts react to this saber rattling every time as if a war were on the threshold, one should rather be afraid of the probability of an irrational factor when, against the background of tension, someone may lose their nerves.
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
US ‘diplomacy’ – bottomless pit of hypocrisy and double standards
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning
By Drago Bosnic | February 28, 2023
Diplomacy has always been one of the cornerstones of the so-called “soft” power projection. Countries have used it throughout human history to negotiate issues that otherwise would have been resolved on the battlefield. The United States of America, the world’s most aggressive imperialist (and neocolonialist) power, is rather unique in this regard, as it is essentially using its “diplomacy” as a form of arm-twisting instead of actual dialogue and negotiations. For the warmongering elites in Washington DC, utterly barbaric behavior seems to be a given, while mutual respect and taking the other side’s legitimate interests into account is clearly considered a “foolish weakness”.
This has resulted in numerous wars around the world, further leading to hundreds of millions of dead, wounded and expelled people, or in simpler words, countless lives destroyed due to unparalleled US aggression against the world. And while such a belligerent foreign policy approach is expected from Washington DC when it comes to smaller countries that cannot match US power, they certainly do not attempt to behave similarly toward global powers and superpowers. But America is doing exactly that, with the US State Department issuing open threats to China, accusing it of alleged (planned) arms shipments to Russia. Top American officials also added that Beijing will suffer “very real consequences” if it goes ahead with the supposed deal.
Obviously, the Asian giant wasn’t even given the chance to deny the accusations as the US resorted to directly threatening Beijing. However, China is anything but intimidated. Increasingly confident due to its meteoric rise to superpower status, Beijing was quick to fire back at the blatant threats. During a press briefing on February 27, Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of China, stated that the Asian giant is fully prepared to retaliate if illegal US sanctions against Chinese companies operating in Russia are not removed. Mao also dismissed allegations that Beijing is planning to send weapons to Russia, rejecting the questionable (at best) US mainstream propaganda reports as disinformation.
“The US, however, has been fanning the flame and fueling the fight with more weaponry,” she (quite correctly) indicated at the blatant American hypocrisy, adding: “This is out-and-out hegemonism and double standards, and absolute hypocrisy. The Chinese side will continue to do what is necessary to firmly safeguard the lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies. We will take resolute countermeasures in response to the US sanctions.”
Mao also reiterated Beijing’s official position on the Ukraine crisis as one of peace, seeking a solution through negotiations rather than the force of arms. She stressed that “China has been actively promoting peace talks and the political settlement of the crisis,” adding that Beijing has been much more constructive than Washington DC. Mao once again indicated that the US is fully responsible for the incessant escalation in its relations with China. This is certainly true, particularly in recent times, as Washington DC has used even the most trivial matters to denigrate and antagonize Beijing, while also illegally arming the Chinese breakaway island province of Taiwan, exacerbating US-China tensions to a boiling point.
“In addition to pouring lethal weapons into the battlefield in Ukraine, the US has been selling sophisticated weapons to the Taiwan region in violation of the three China-US joint communiqués. What exactly is the US up to? The world deserves to know the answer,” Mao concluded.
Mao also remarked that America is spreading disinformation about China’s alleged supply of weapons to Russia in order to use it as a pretext to sanction Chinese companies, thus eliminating competition by using such underhanded tactics. One of the affected Chinese companies, Changsha Tianyi Space Science and Technology Research Institute, has already been sanctioned based on unsubstantiated claims that it is supposedly supplying the Wagner Group PMC (private military company) with satellite imagery of Ukraine. US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland stated last week that sanctions were targeting Chinese companies that “have been observed sneaking up to the edge and trying to provide weapons to Russia”.
The unprecedented US hypocrisy is also seen in the attempts to portray Russian President Vladimir Putin as a supposed “war criminal”, with US President Joe Biden already accusing him of being one and even saying “evidence needs to be gathered for a war crime trial“. This is despite Biden’s central role in starting numerous wars under several US administrations and despite virtually the entire establishment in Washington DC being involved in warmongering and war crimes, regardless of political affiliation. Perhaps an even better example would be the May 2022 speech made by former US president George W. Bush, whose Freudian slip about the “wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq, I mean Ukraine” clearly showed the entire world the sheer scale of US hypocrisy and double standards.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
New law sought by Brazil’s Lula to ban and punish “fake news and disinformation” threatens free internet everywhere
Nations seem poised to abandon the core lesson of the Enlightenment: no human institution can or should be trusted to decree Absolute Truth and punish dissent
By Glenn Greenwald | February 25, 2023
A major escalation in official online censorship regimes is progressing rapidly in Brazil, with implications for everyone in the democratic world. Under Brazil’s new government headed by President Lula da Silva, the country is poised to become the first in the democratic world to implement a law censoring and banning “fake news and disinformation” online, and then punishing those deemed guilty of authoring and spreading it. Such laws already exist throughout the non-democratic world, adopted years ago by the planet’s most tyrannical regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.
If one wishes to be generous with the phrase “the democratic world” and include Malaysia and Singapore – at best hybrid “democracies” – then one could argue that a couple other “democratic” governments have already seized the power to decree Absolute Truth and then ban any deviation from it. But absent unexpected opposition, Brazil will soon become the first country unambiguously included in the democratic world to outlaw “fake news” and vest government officials with the power to banish it and punish its authors.
Last May, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was forced to retreat from its attempt to appoint a “disinformation czar” to oversee what would effectively be its Ministry of Truth. That new DHS agency, at least nominally, was to be only advisory: it would declare truth and falsity and then pressure online platforms to comply by banning that which was deemed by the U.S. Security State to be false. The backlash was so great — the CIA and company are not exactly world-renown for telling the truth — that DHS finally claimed to cancel it, though secret documents emerged in October describing the agency’s plans to continue to shape online censorship decisions of Big Tech.
Brazil’s law would be anything but advisory. Though the details are still yet to be released, it would empower law enforcement officials to take action against citizens deemed to be publishing statements that the government classifies as “false,” and to solicit courts to impose punishment on those who do so.
The Brazilian left is almost entirely united with the country’s largest corporate media outlets in supporting this censorship regime (sound familiar?). The leading advocates of this new censorship law include pro-government lawyers, famous pro-Lula YouTube influencers, and even journalists(!). They are now being invited to and feted in “fake news” and “disinformation” conferences in glamorous European capitals sponsored by UN agencies, because the EU is eager to obtain such censorship powers for itself, and sees Brazil as the first test case for whether the public will tolerate such an aggressive acquisition of dissent-suppression authorities by the state. (Recall that the EU itself, at the start of the war in Ukraine, escalated online censorship to an all-new level by making it illegal for any online platform to host Russian-state media outlets; Rumble’s refusal to obey France’s command to remove RT from its platform forced Rumble to cease broadcasting in France).
Last Sunday, Brazil’s largest newspaper, Folha of São Paulo, announced that I had become a regular columnist for the paper (I will likely publish columns every other week, and those with international relevance will be published in English as well). Their offer came after months of rather intense controversy in which I have been vocally denouncing as dangerously authoritarian the regime of censorship and other weapons of dissent-suppression imposed by a member of Brazil’s Supreme Court, Alexandre de Moraes.
Even prior to enactment of this newly proposed law, the online censorship attacks of this single Brazilian judge, acting with the support of the a majority of its Supreme Court, has been so extreme that even liberal American news outlets have published critical articles on him and what they suggests are his lawless and wild censorship binges (including three in The New York Times, one in the Associated Press and another in The Washington Post ). One New York Times article – published weeks before the first round of the 2022 presidential race that sent Lula and incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro to a run-off – described the judge’s conduct this way:
Mr. Moraes has jailed five people without a trial for posts on social media that he said attacked Brazil’s institutions. He has also ordered social networks to remove thousands of posts and videos with little room for appeal. And this year, 10 of the court’s 11 justices sentenced a congressman to nearly nine years in prison for making what they said were threats against them in a livestream.
The power grab by the nation’s highest court, legal experts say, has undermined a key democratic institution in Latin America’s biggest country as voters prepare to pick a president on Oct. 2. … In many cases, Mr. Moraes has acted unilaterally, emboldened by new powers the court granted itself in 2019 that allow it to, in effect, act as an investigator, prosecutor and judge all at once in some cases.
As the AP articles notes, we were the first to reveal one of Judge de Moraes’ secret censorship orders, which I obtained and then reported on in an episode of SYSTEM UPDATE, which was viewed by more than half a million people:
Despite also being the journalist who – back in 2019 and 2020 – exposed the grave corruption committed by the once-heroic Brazilian judge and prosecutors who imprisoned Lula in 2017 – reporting that won top journalism awards in Brazil, garnered universal praise from the Brazilian left, resulted in an unsuccessful attempt to prosecute me, and ultimately led to Lula’s release from prison and restored his eligibility to run for president in 2022 – both my husband David Miranda (a Congressman until last month) and I have, overnight, become among the most reviled figures by Lula’s followers. This has been in part due to my increasingly active opposition to growing censorship efforts led by this judge and his left-wing allies, censorship which the Brazilian left and their corporate-media allies support with great fervor and with something close to lock-step unanimity.
Those left-wing attacks against us began when David announced in January, 2022 that he was leaving his left-wing party PSOL – which had long been opposed to PT and Lula – because he objected to the party’s decision to support Lula’s presidential candidacy in the first round of voting. He instead joined the center-left party PDT in order to support presidential candidate Ciro Gomes.
Because David was the first national left-wing political official to publicly refuse to support Lula’s candidacy in the first-round of voting, it was necessary for PT to make an example of him (and, by extension, of me). The campaign of vilification was deeply personal. Even as a couple accustomed to being the target of such campaigns, the attacks on us from Lula’s followers were unlike anything I had seen in terms of vitriol, unrestrained online mob rage, and the kind of bigoted tropes the left pretends it reviles but instantly unleashes against any member (such as David) of the “marginalized groups” the left believes it owns.
As is true in the U.S., nothing enrages the left and provokes the lowest and most scurrilous attacks more than when a person they believe they own due to their membership in a “marginalized” group who proclaims their independence and right to think critically (in September, I was forced by David’s health crisis to petition the election court to withdraw his re-election candidacy, and the new Congress was inaugurated on February 1 without him).
But those already-lowly attacks escalated severely when I became much more vocal about my increasing concern over the country’s growing reliance on censorship and due-process-free persecution of PT’s opponents. Unlike in the U.S. – where the liberal-left still pays lip service to their support for free speech while clearly acting to subvert it – the Brazilian left barely bothers with this pretense. Many simply acknowledge that they do not believe in free speech, and equate a defense of free speech with fascism. They do so with no apparent recognition of the irony – that the first thing a fascist regime does is ban books and criminalize dissent – and despite the fact that free speech is a right guaranteed by the Brazilian constitution.
For the globalist order increasingly petrified of internet freedom – they blame online free speech for everything from Brexit and Hillary’s defeat to skepticism of health authorities and growing opposition to U.S. support for the proxy war in Ukraine – Brazil has become the perfect test case for seizing state power to censor the internet in the name of stopping “fake news and disinformation.” Nothing fosters support for authoritarianism the way fear does, and much of the Brazilian establishment believes they are fighting a new War on Terror. Even with Bolsonaro vanquished for now in Florida, his party in the last election won the most seats in both houses of Congress as well as key governorships across the country.
Just as the Bush/Cheney government exploited the 9/11 attack, and the Biden administration still exploits the January 6 riot, to justify previously unthinkable assaults on core civil liberties, the Brazilian left – in union with the country’s establishment – is now exploiting the January 8 invasion of government buildings by a few thousand Bolsonaro supporters to argue that anything and everything is justified in the name of their “war on terrorism” (unlike the 3,000 deaths on 9/11, and the deaths of four Trump supporters on 1/6, nobody died or was grievously injured on January 8 in Brasilia). And using the same playbook of neocons to support their crisis-justified civil liberties attacks, anyone in Brazil who even questions the need for new censorship powers and other attacks on dissidents demanded by the government is accused of being “pro-Terrorist” or an “apologist for fascism” (I honestly never thought I would live to see the day when one stands accused of being pro-facist for opposing censorship rather than supporting it, but such are the times in which we live).
That is why Europe, and large sectors of the U.S. establishment, see Brazil as the perfect laboratory to test how far censorship powers can go. With many Brazilians believing they just suffered their own 9/11 or January 6, all power centers know that the perfect time to seize new authoritarian powers and abridge core liberties is when the population is in a state of fear and terror, and thus willing to sacrifice liberties in exchange for illusory promises of security.
And recall that polling data in the U.S. shows that very large majorities of Democrats (and a disturbingly robust minority of GOP voters) would support a law similar to the one pending in Brazil to empower the state to restrict internet freedom in the name of stopping “misinformation.” As Pew found in 2021, 65% of Democrats “say the government should take steps to restrict false information, even if it means limiting freedom of information.” Perhaps the First Amendment would be a barrier to implementation of such a law in the U.S., but there is ample public support, especially on the liberal-left, for state censorship of the internet.
A major reason I accepted the offer to become a Folha columnist is that it gives me a significant platform in Brazil to combat what I regard as these increasingly grave attacks on core liberties, not only because they threaten rights of free speech, due process and a free internet in Brazil, but because they threaten all those values far beyond Brazil’s borders as well. My reporting on this new “fake news and disinformation” law sought by Lula’s government as set forth below includes parts of my first Folha column published last Sunday on the dangers of this newly proposed law, as well as significant new passages I wrote for an international audience and for publication of this new article here on Locals.
Ten days before the run-off voting for the 2018 presidential election which sent Bolsonaro into the presidency, Folha reported that an “illegal practice” was being used to help Jair Bolsonaro win that election. “Companies are purchasing large packages of messaging assailing [Lula’s] Workers’ Party (PT) for mass dissemination on WhatsApp,” Folha explained.
Bolsonaro not only denied the story but accused both Folha and PT of spreading Fake News. As Folha noted at the time, Bolsonaro’s party “intended to sue” his election-year rival Fernando Haddad of PT. Bolsonaro accused PT of “spreading false news.”
Upon winning the presidency, there was no law available to Bolsonaro – similar to the one which Lula’s government is now proposing – that would have empowered his government, or judges sympathetic to him, to ban discussion online of Folha’s reporting by claiming it was “fake news.” But if he did have that power – if the law which PT hopes to implement to govern “fake news” had been in the hands of Bolsonaro’s allies – it is very reasonable to suspect they may have used it to suppress those revelations on the ground that, in the view of Bosonaro’s supporters, the allegations were “false.”
After all, the new law proposed by Lula’s government would empower both the judiciary and the equivalent of Brazil’s Solicitor General (AGU) to take more aggressive action to combat “fake news” online. Among other new powers, the proposed law would permit “an action by the AGU, a body that legally represents the government, to file legal cases against those it regards as authors of false content.”
In a January 19 interview with Folha, Lula’s chief spokesman, Paulo Pimenta, vowed: “we will start to respond more forcefully, more sharply, to information that distorts the truth and is wrong.”
Everyone would love to live in a world in which an omnipotent and benevolent power who rules us allows only truthful statements, while it accurately identifies and then outlaws all false claims. Such a world sounds like paradise: no errors, only truth. Who could possibly be opposed to that?
Unfortunately, human nature makes such a world impossible. If history teaches any lesson, it is clear that treating human leaders or institutions as capable of god-like infallibility and super-human wisdom is quite dangerous.
Humans have tried all this before. For a thousand years prior to the Enlightenment, most societies were ruled by omnipotent institutions – monarchies, empires, churches – that claimed to possess absolute truth and therefore outlawed any views that deviated on the ground that they were “false.”
The core innovation of the Enlightenment, one of the greatest intellectual advancements of human liberation, was that all human institutions are fallible, that they endorse false claims either due to error or corruption, and that every individual must always retain the right to question and challenge their orthodoxies.
In sum, there is no such thing as an institution of authority that can be trusted to decree what Truth is. The oldest indigenous societies, far from Europe, had already internalized this lesson, having discarded faith in centralized authorities in favor of decentralized power and dispersed democratic values. And what is now called “the democratic world” is founded in the view that secular truths are ascertained not by decrees of monarchs, clerics and emperors, but by free and open debate driven by human reason and the sacred right to dissent.
Since the start of the COVID pandemic, it has been bizarre to hear left-liberals throughout the democratic world proclaim their devotion to science while simultaneously demanding that all “false statements” about science be banned. Science cannot exist if one assumes that permanent truth has already been apprehended. Science requires the acknowledgement that even its most brilliant and accomplished experts may have embraced grave errors and faulty assumptions. Scientific truth is unearthed only by permitting challenges to prevailing orthodoxies, not by prohibiting let alone outlawing them.
To say that one believes in science while demanding that “falsity” be banned is like saying that one believes in religion while demanding that prayer be banned. Scientific discovery, like all intellectual endeavors, only advances by a process of trial and error, by challenging and objecting to prevailing beliefs so that error can be uncovered. To ban “false claims” is not to honor and strengthen science but to vandalize and kill it.
From the start of the COVID pandemic, many of the claims made by the world’s most prestigious experts and trusted institutions have turned out to be false or uncertain. As just one example, the World Health Organization announced in February and March of 2020 that asymptomatic people should not wear masks and that doing so could make a COVID infection worse by “trapping” the virus. In April, the recommendation was the opposite: everyone should wear masks regardless of one’s health condition.
In 2018, any Brazilian “fact-checker” would have affirmed as true the statement that Lula was a “thief,” as he was convicted of multiple corruption felonies, which Brazilian appellate courts affirmed on appeal. By 2022, the situation was reversed as Brazilian courts nullified that conviction (in large part based on the revelations of our reporting regarding the corruption on the part of Lula’s judge and prosecutors). As a result, Brazil’s election courts in the 2022 campaign banned campaign materials calling Lula a “thief” on the ground that they were false.
In other words, what was considered Gospel about Lula in 2018 became prohibited Falsity just four years later. That is the unyielding, universal pattern driving human intellectual advancement: what is deemed Truth one minute becomes shameful and discredited the next.
For that reason, at the heart of every censor resides one of the most toxic human traits: hubris. It is astonishing to watch some humans believe that they have managed to liberate themselves from this historical cycle of misperception, misapprehension and error, and instead believe that they have become owners of the Truth. Even with the best of motives, only hubris would lead people to have so much confidence in their truth-finding abilities that they would want the state to make it a crime to question or deny their views of the world. And yet no other mentality than this one can account for someone supporting the kind of law to ban and punish “fake news and disinformation” as the new Brazilian government and its allies in Congress are on the verge of adopting.
Error is the inevitable condition of even the most well-intentioned humans. But most humans do not operate with the purest of motives. Humans with great power are highly likely to abuse that power absent very serious limits. Even if you believe you finally found political leaders with almost god-like virtue, who can be trusted not to abuse such powers when suppressing ideas as “false,” it is extremely likely such laws will be transferred in the future to new leaders with different ideologies and who are more human than the deity you have been fortunate enough to have found.
And as has been widely reported, the new industry to define “disinformation” is largely a scam. It is funded by a small handful of liberal billionaires, and employs highly politicized actors who claim a fake expertise – “disinformation experts” – to masquerade their ideological views as science. Any attempts by the state to make “fake news and disinformation” illegal will almost certainly rely on this fraudulent industry to justify their censorship decisions by claiming that their assessment of truth and falsity has been supported by “experts.”
If Brazil implements this proposed law, it will not be the first time a government is empowered to ban “fake news” on the internet. Other countries live under governments which have been given the power to ban journalism and commentary on the ground that it is judged by the state to be dangerous, to be false, to incite violence, or to foster social instability or even revolutions against the prevailing order.
Regimes with such laws are the planet’s most despotic: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Singapore and Qatar (whose law, entitled “Crimes against the internal security of the State,” allows the state to “impose up to five years imprisonment on anyone who spreads rumors or false news with bad intent”).
There, the outcome is predictable. All dissent against government orthodoxies and criticism of its leaders are quickly labeled “false” or “dangerous” or designed to incite violence and are censored on that ground. Last May, the UN, warning about a newly proposed “anti-disinformation” law in Turkey, “expressed concern after the vote by the Turkish parliament of a law that could imply the imprisonment of up to three years of journalists and users of ‘social media’ for the dissemination of ‘fake news’.”
Those attacks on dissent using these “Fake News” laws are not due to “abuse of a good law.” They are, instead, the inevitable, arguably the intended, outcome of such a law. No political faction is immune from believing that any dissent from its core pieties is not just misguided but deliberately false and even dangerous.
The dissent-suppressing persecution where such laws have been allowed to flourish are entirely predictable. Only in authoritarian cultures, or ones that wish to return to the pre-Enlightenment days of full submission to institutions of authority, would citizens trust political, governmental or religious officials with the power to declare absolute truth and then, using the force of law, bar any expression that deviates from it.
These abuses of “fake news” laws happen in those countries where those laws have been adopted not because those countries are different than ours, but because they are the same. All powerful leaders, even well-intentioned ones, will be highly tempted to ban dissent on the grounds that it is dangerous or “false.”
Humans, by our very nature, are incapable of acquiring absolute truth about politics or science even with the best of motives. What one generation believes to be proven Truth (the earth is the center of the universe) is demonstrated by subsequent generations to be gross error, though such truth-tellers often suffer severe persecution when “falsity” is rendered illegal (which is why Socrates, Copernicus, Galileo, Voltaire and many others like them wasted years attempting to avoid prison or worse, often unsuccessfully, due to laws banning ideas deemed “false” by the reigning authorities of their era). The intellectual history of humanity has one indisputable lesson: humans will always err when claiming they have discovered such absolute truth that nobody should be permitted to doubt or challenge their claims.
It is likely for these reasons that “the large portion” of the Brazilian legal specialists consulted by Folha about Lula’s proposed law to ban “fake news and disinformation” emphasized “that a legal process of this kind by the government can set a precedent that represents a risk to freedom of expression, given the possibility of being weaponized for judicial harassment against critics and opponents.”
Even if you are lucky to have found the most trustworthy and benevolent leaders in history, ones who are somehow capable of decreeing truth without erring and who use such laws only in the most noble ways – something the Brazilian left believes of Lula and his government – at some point other leaders will be elected and they, too, will have such powers.
When assessing whether one should support a proposed law, the key question is not whether one is comfortable with it in the hands of leaders one likes and trusts, but whether one is comfortable with such powers in the hands of different leaders.
German Green Ministers Emitting The Most With Government Flights… Minister Baerbock 5000 Tonnes CO2!
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | February 24, 2023
Recall how climate activists demand that ordinary citizens, i.e. “useless consumers”, limit their annual CO2 emissions to just a single measly tonne per person. Currently the average CO2 emissions per person in Europe are about 8 tonnes.
German government ministries run by the Green Party emit by far the most CO2 when it comes to government flights. AI generated symbol image, dall.e 2.
Climate activists, like the German Greens, you’d think, would thus themselves be practicing what they preach, at least limiting their emissions to some extent in order to set an example for the rest of us.
To find out whether or not the leading German Greens are preaching water and actually drinking it themselves, economics expert Tilman Kuban of Germany’s opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU), asked the current Socialist-Green government to provide a breakdown of how many flights were made by the government ministries using the German Armed Forces’ Special Air Mission Wing during the current legislative period (December, 2021 to January, 2023).
For the sake of a political overview, there are basically major 6 parties active in Germany. From left spectrum to right: Die Linke, The Greens, The Socialists SPD, The Free Democrats FDP, the Christian Democratic Union CDU and the Alternativ für Deutschland AfD. Currently a leftist coalition made up of the SPD, FDP and Greens make up the government.
Germany’s online BILD daily crunched the numbers on the number of flights and the CO2 emitted by the different ministries and the people who head them.
62% of all CO2 emissions by government flights were generated by the Greens alone
According to the official government data, most of the 11,234 tonnes of CO2 for flights by government ministries so far in the current legislative period are attributable to the Greens: 6,900 tonnes of CO2. That is over 60 percent of the CO2 emissions of all ministerial flights.
Top frequent flyer/emitter: Annalena Baerbock
Number 1 among all the ministers is Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Green Party) with 67 flights, 5000 tonnes of CO2 and costs of around 7.6 million euros.
Second place goes Robert Habeck, Minister of Economics and Climate Protection (Green Party) with almost 1900 tonnes of C02 emitted on 32 flights (costing around 3.2 million euros).
In total, 250 flights were taken by the government ministries.
The government’s biggest CO2 emitter is Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) himself (not a minister). According to BILD daily: “The Chancellor’s office took 114 flights that emitted almost 7200 tons of CO2. Cost: more than 11.2 million euros.”
Ukraine bans former president’s party
RT | February 21, 2023
The party of former president Viktor Yanukovich, once Ukraine’s largest, was banned on Tuesday by a Kiev court acting on a government request. Ukraine’s security services had accused the Party of Regions of illegally signing a 2010 treaty with Russia and “crimes” against the 2014 US-backed coup that ousted Yanukovich.
Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) announced the ban to state media, saying it followed a motion by the Ministry of Justice based on accusations leveled by the SBI and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) against the party.
“In particular, the SBI provided materials regarding the illegal actions of the leadership of the Party of Regions during the signing and ratification of the so-called Kharkov Agreements, as well as crimes committed by them during the events of the Revolution of Dignity,” the agency said.
The 2010 agreement, signed in Kharkov, extended the Russian lease of naval facilities in Crimea through 2042 and gave Ukraine a discount on Russian natural gas supplies. The “Revolution of Dignity” is the name the new Ukrainian government gave the Maidan coup of 2014, which triggered the conflict over Crimea and the Donbass.
The Ukrainian government is “currently determining” the value of the party’s assets, which will be seized under a law enacted in May 2022. It enables President Vladimir Zelensky’s government to ban any party that challenges its official position, in particular when it comes to the conflict with Russia. A court’s decisions are final and cannot be appealed.
The law has been used to ban a dozen parties so far. The largest parliamentary opposition bloc, Opposition Platform – For Life, was outlawed last June.
The Party of Regions was established in 1997 and had grown into Ukraine’s biggest political party by 2006, in response to the 2004 ‘Orange Revolution’ that installed a pro-American government. It practically ceased to operate after the 2014 coup, as Yanukovich and Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov sought asylum in Russia.
The latest ban comes just a day after US President Joe Biden visited Kiev and compared Ukraine’s government to democracy itself. “Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. America – and the world – stands with Ukraine,” Biden declared after a photo-op with Zelensky.
How Long Did Americans Support America’s Longest War?
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | February 21, 2023
In an op-ed in today’s Los Angeles Times, Alexander J. Moytyl, a professor of political science at Rutgers, asks, “How long will Russians tolerate Putin’s costly war?” After pointing out the many negative consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moytyl makes a pointed observation: “And yet, almost a year after the invasion of Ukraine, Russians continue to support strongman Putin and the war.” Moytyl just cannot understand how this can be.
Well, maybe if we look inward, which Moytyl certainly does not do in his op-ed, we can figure out the answer.
Let’s consider, for example, the U.S. government’s wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. There were lots of negative aspects of those two wars, beginning with the fact the U.S. invasions of both countries were illegal, both under International law and U.S. law.
It is undisputed that neither Afghanistan nor Iraq ever attacked the United States. That means that the U.S. was the aggressor in both wars.
Yes, I know, defenders of the Afghanistan invasion point to the fact that Osama bin Laden, who was accused of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks, was supposedly living in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, under International law, the U.S. had no legitimate legal authority to invade Afghanistan to arrest or kill him.
It is also undisputed that there was no extradition treaty between Afghanistan and the United States. Therefore, when President Bush demanded that the Afghan government extradite bin Laden to the U.S., under international law Afghanistan had the legitimate authority to say no. Under international law, Bush had no legitimate authority to invade the country simply because Afghanistan rejected his unconditional extradition demand.
It is also undisputed that neither the Iraqi people nor the Iraqi government had any connection to the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. invasion of that country was a pure war of aggression, one based on the flagrant and fraudulent pretense of uncovering non-existent “weapons of mass destruction.”
It is also undisputed that there was no declaration of war issued by Congress against either Afghanistan or Iraq, as required by the U.S. Constitution. That made both invasions illegal under our form of constitutional government.
It is impossible to know exactly how many people in Afghanistan and Iraq were tortured, injured, or killed by U.S. forces in those two wars of aggression. That’s because, early on, the Pentagon announced that it would not keep track of enemy dead. That’s because the lives of Afghans and Iraqis didn’t count.
However, according to the Watson Institute at Brown University, “Nearly 20 years after the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan, the cost of its global war on terror stands at $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths.”
That is a lot of money. And that is a lot of dead people. I would estimate that 99 percent of those dead people had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.
Yet, many Americans supported their government throughout all this mayhem, just as the Russian people are standing with their government during its current mayhem. In fact, I remember church ministers all across the United States beseeching their congregations for years to “support the troops, especially those in harm’s way in Afghanistan and Iraq.” I also recall how we were all encouraged to “thank the troops for their service” whenever we saw them in uniform. I also remember all those critical things that were said against those of us who opposed these wars of aggression and resulting occupations.
Supporting their government in time of war is what most citizens do in every nation, including Russia, the United States, and Germany. Most citizens are forced into the state’s educational system at a very young age, where their minds are molded to blindly come to the support of their regime during wartime. Children are inculcated with mindsets of deference to authority and blind trust in their political, military, and intelligence officials. That mindset continues well into adulthood. In the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I recall many people, including commentators in the mainstream press, exclaiming, “We need to trust our officials. They have access to information that we don’t have.”
So, what befuddles me is why Alexander J. Moytyl is befuddled by the overwhelming support by Russian citizens of their regime during wartime. If American citizens blindly support their regime during wartime, why would anyone expect that Russian citizens would respond differently?
Biden’s Kiev trip ‘a slap in the face’ to America – US Congressman
RT | February 21, 2023
US President Joe Biden’s trip to Ukraine was “a slap in the face to every American,” Republican Rep. Paul Gosar declared on Monday. Already under fire over the hundreds of billions of dollars he’s handed Kiev, Biden is now being savaged by Republicans for his handling of a disastrous chemical accident on US soil.
Biden made an unannounced visit to Kiev on Monday, where he told Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky that his administration was readying a $500 million military aid package for his forces. Biden’s administration has handed Zelensky almost $30 billion in military aid since last February, and has set aside more than $110 billion for continued military and economic assistance to Ukraine.
“Joe Biden visiting Ukraine is a slap in the face to every American, especially the people of East Palestine, Ohio,” Gosar tweeted. “Ukraine is not our friend, and Russia is not our enemy.”
Gosar has bitterly opposed Biden’s bankrolling of Ukraine, and sponsored a resolution earlier this month that would halt US aid to Kiev. The resolution, signed by 11 members of the anti-interventionist ‘Freedom Caucus’, calls on Russia and Ukraine to reach a peace agreement.
Republicans from the Freedom Caucus and beyond have hammered Biden for his handling of the East Palestine chemical spill. A train carrying vinyl chloride and other hazardous chemicals derailed in this small Ohio town earlier this month, and a controlled burn of these substances blanketed the town in a cloud of black smoke.
Biden has not visited East Palestine, nor has he approved a disaster declaration. Biden’s transportation secretary blamed the derailment on former President Donald Trump, and although Biden has sent Environmental Protection Agency and Health and Human Services officials to the location to declare it safe, residents have complained of alarming physical symptoms as well as dead pets, livestock and fish.
“That was the biggest slap in the face,” East Palestine Mayor Trent Conway said of Biden’s trip to Kiev. “That tells you right now he doesn’t care about us. He can send every agency he wants to, but I found out this morning that he was in Ukraine giving millions of dollars away to people over there and not to us…on President’s Day in our country, so I’m furious,” he told Fox News.
Moldova acts in a destabilizing way in Transnistria
By Lucas Leiroz | February 21, 2023
Moldova insists on the threat and blackmail strategy against Transnistria. The country’s new head of government has called on Russian troops to withdraw from the autonomous republic in order for the region to be “demilitarized”. In fact, the Western-backed Moldovan tactic of trying to intimidate the Transnistrian people will only lead to more conflict and insecurity, creating a scenario of instability in the face of which Moscow will not remain inert.
The new Prime Minister of Moldova, Dorin Recean, said on February 20 that Transnistria must be demilitarized, and the Russian troops must be expelled from there. The statement made clear the position of the new head of the Moldovan government, eliminating any doubts about the possibility of the emergence of more peaceful tendencies towards Russia in Chisinau with the recent change in the team of ministers. The country seems increasingly willing to cooperate with the West to advance anti-Russian political projects in the region.
According to Recean, Moldova is currently in a very vulnerable security situation, the solution of which depends in the first place on the immediate demilitarization of the “left bank of the Dniester”. The prime minister made it clear that even economic and social issues should only be discussed after demilitarization is achieved. In this sense, the withdrawal of Russian forces from Transnistria is the highest priority of the Moldovan government.
“[There are] real threats of escalation of either military or hybrid operations [in Moldova] (…) We must calibrate our defenses so that it would be tough for any aggressor to attack us (…) The left bank of the Dniester (Transnistria) should be demilitarized by evacuating Russian troops and demilitarizing local residents (…) We must achieve one fundamental thing – demilitarization. Everything else follows after that, and the economic and social integration of our citizens who are there is very important, but in the first place is demilitarization. It depends on many things, but at some point, it will be decided”, he said.
As expected, the reaction of the Russian and Transnistrian authorities was immediate, with several criticisms against the Moldovan position. Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on the topic saying that “Moldova is slipping into anti-Russian hysteria”. In the same vein, Transnistria’s Foreign Minister Vitaly Ignatyev said: “It (the Moldovan side) is not ready for dialogue (…) In reality, Chisinau is sparing no effort to destroy the negotiating structures we have and to create new problems to dodge the implementation of its liabilities”.
In fact, it is curious to analyze what the Moldovan government understands by “demilitarization”. The withdrawal of Russian forces from Transnistria would not mean the mere “demilitarization” of the region, but its weakening, thus enabling Chisinau to intervene and resolve the issue through force and hostility. At no time did the Moldovan government show interest in advancing the negotiations towards a peaceful solution – it only emphasizes the Transnistrian issue as a national security matter, which makes it seem that the demand for the Russians to leave has the objective of facilitating a possible armed intervention in the region.
The presence of Russian peacekeepers in Transnistria is not any kind of occupation. On the contrary, the permanence of the forces is supported by the vast majority of the local population, who see in the Russian military a guarantee of protection against the constant threats of aggression by the central government. Politically, Moscow has respected Moldovan sovereignty, recognizing Transnistria as an autonomous region, with its right to self-administration, in coexistence with the Moldovan government. However, for Chisinau, there seems to be no other possible end to the conflict than an eventual military, violent recapture of the area.
Considering that Moldova has acted over the years as a proxy for NATO, given its alignment with the countries of the western alliance, mainly Romania, for Moscow it is absolutely unacceptable to allow Moldovan military growth in the region, as this would jeopardize not only the security of the Transnistrian people, but would also threaten Russia itself, since the Russian strategic environment would be vulnerable in the face of yet another focus of conflict.
Therefore, threat and blackmail really do not seem like good tactics for the Moldovan government to deal with the Transnistrian issue. The only interesting way to resolve the dispute is through peace negotiations that guarantee Transnistria’s right to political autonomy. Demanding that the Russians leave the region is meaningless, as obviously Moscow cannot remain inert while another threat of war arises within its strategic environment. In fact, either Chisinau adheres to diplomacy or the militarization of Transnistria will continue.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
Putin Announces Suspension of New START Treaty, Orders New Strategic Systems Be Put on Combat Duty
Sputnik – 21.02.2023
Russia will be suspending its participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction (New START) Treaty, President Vladimir Putin has announced.
The Russian president made the announcement during the course of a major annual address to lawmakers on Tuesday that focused on the security crisis in Ukraine and the broader global tensions between the West and Russia.
“They [the West] seek to inflict a strategic defeat on us and to creep onto our nuclear sites. In connection with this, I am forced to announce today that Russia is suspending its participation in the New START Treaty. I repeat – not exiting from the treaty, but suspending its participation,” Putin said, speaking to gathered lawmakers in Moscow during his speech to the Federal Assembly.
Putin explained that “at the start of February, the North Atlantic Alliance made a statement factually demanding that Russia ‘return to the implementation of the strategic offensive arms treaty,’ including the admission of inspections to our nuclear and defense facilities.”
“I don’t even know what to call this – some kind of theater of the absurd. We know that the West is involved directly in attempts of the Kiev regime to strike the bases of our strategic aviation,” Putin said, pointing to recent Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s Engels Air Base, home to part of the airborne contingent of Russia’s nuclear triad.
The drones used in these attacks were “equipped and modernized with the assistance of NATO specialists,” Putin said. “And now they want to inspect our defense facilities. In the current conditions and today’s confrontation, this simply sounds like some kind of nonsense.”
“A week ago, I signed a decree putting new ground-based strategic weapons systems on combat duty. Are they going to stick their nose in there too?” Putin asked.
The Russian president suggested that NATO’s collective statement essentially amounted to an application to join the New START Treaty, and said Moscow would only welcome such a move.
“We agree, please go ahead. Furthermore, we think that such a formulation of the issue is long overdue. After all, NATO contains not just one nuclear power – the USA. Britain and France also have nuclear arsenals, which are being developed and improved, and which are also directed against us, against Russia,” Putin said.
Slamming the US and NATO over the “hypocrisy” of their demands, Putin recalled how the Western bloc has attempted to assure Moscow that “there is no connection between issues related to strategic offensive arms and, say, the conflict in Ukraine, or other hostile actions against our country,” while at the same time seeking to “defeat” Russia militarily.
“This is either the height of hypocrisy and cynicism, or the height of stupidity. You can’t call them idiots, they are not stupid people: they want to inflict a strategic defeat on us,” the president said.
What is New START and Why Is It Important?
The New START Treaty is the last major strategic arms limitation agreement between the nuclear superpowers – Russia and the United States. The agreement, drafted in 2009 and signed by then-Russian and US Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama in Prague, Czech Republic in 2010, limits the two countries’ deployed arsenals of strategic weapons and nuke stockpiles, and features a series of measures aimed at increased transparency and trust, including the broadcast of telemetry data, limits to missile testing activities, and the exchange of other information.
The Trump administration threatened to let the clock run out on New START in late 2020 after withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty – a late Cold War-era pact which eliminated Soviet and US ground-based nuclear missiles in the 500-5,500 km range, in 2019. The Biden administration agreed to renew New START for five years in early 2021. Pentagon planners have repeatedly criticized the strategic treaty for its failure to account for the nuclear arsenal of China. Beijing has said that it would be happy to sign a nuclear agreement with Washington if the US reduced the size of its nuclear arsenal to China’s level.
The post-Cold War strategic security order began to be dismantled in late 2001, when the George W. Bush administration announced that it would scrap the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty – a landmark 1972 agreement designed to limit anti-missile defenses and thus reduce the danger of a global nuclear war. Washington quit the treaty despite proposals by Moscow at the time to establish a joint missile defense system in the Caucasus to eliminate any threats posed to the US or Europe.
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Robert Faurisson and the Study of the Past
By Gilad Atzmon | October 23, 2018
The history of ideas provides us with the names of those few men and women who challenged the boundaries of tolerance. Professor Robert Faurisson was one such man. Faurisson, who died last Sunday at age 89, was a French academic who didn’t believe in the validity of parts of the Holocaust narrative. He argued that gas chambers in Auschwitz were the “biggest lie of the 20th century,” and contended that deported Jews had died of disease and malnutrition. Faurisson also questioned the authenticity of the Diary of Anne Frank many years before the Swiss foundation that holds the copyright to the famous diary “alerted publishers that her father (Otto Frank) is not only the ‘editor’ but also legally the ‘co-author’ of the celebrated book” (NY Times ).
In the France of the late 1960s-1970s Faurisson had reason to believe that his maverick attitude toward the past would receive a kosher pass. He was wrong. Faurisson may have failed to grasp the role of the Holocaust in contemporary Jewish politics and culture. And he did not grasp that Jewish power is literally the power to silence opposition to Jewish power.
In 1990 France made holocaust revisionism into the crime of history denial. Faurisson was repeatedly prosecuted, beaten and fined for his writings. He was dismissed from his academic post at Lyon University in 1991.
I am bothered by the question of why Jews and others attached to their politics are desperate to restrict the story of their past. This question extends far beyond the holocaust. … continue
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