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Hypocrisy on Campus: Decolonization Means Cutting Ties with Israeli Apartheid

By Adam Saeed | Palestine Chronicle | June 14, 2020

Those of us who have the misfortune of following their universities on social media were recently exposed to a new wave of hypocrisy when these institutions which are directly complicit in apartheid against the Palestinian people and the destruction of our environment released statements “in support” of the BLM movement. This act of performative solidarity and intentional distortion of the meaning of decolonization was rightly met with anger and outrage by many student activists calling the institutions out on their duplicity.

Indeed, these words that celebrate humanity and commitment to fighting for equality and against oppression ring hollow to those who see Palestinians being excluded from this racist definition of humanity. If the case is being put for equality and against oppression, then the first step our universities and unions should take before they attempt to co-opt the Black Lives Matter Movement is clear: they must commit to decolonization by ending material and institutional complicity with Israeli Apartheid.

In stark contrast to the line of marketing teams of universities like SOAS or Glasgow, we are calling for decolonization of our institutions that will have factual implications to the situation on the ground. Namely ending institutional links to Israeli Universities which are directly complicit in the colonization of Palestinian land and contribute to the development of strategies and technologies that are used in the violent oppression of Palestinians across the land. The Hebrew University represents a prime example of institutional involvement in this process of colonization of Palestine.

At the time of its establishment in the early 20th century, the University was viewed as being a key symbol of the Zionist project in Palestine: plans for establishing the university were formulated by key Zionist thinkers, including Chaim Weizmann, who would later become the first president of Israel. In this sense, the university was an essential part of the process of settler-colonialism within which Israel was created and in which it continues to constitute its existence. The University also contributed to the development and propagation of Zionist colonial ideology and advocates for Jewish ethnopolitical supremacy in Palestine until today.

After Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, annexing East Jerusalem, the Israeli Government confiscated the land around Hebrew University and its affiliated Hadassah Hospital, embarking on large-scale expansion. This expansion reached beyond the green line and included private Palestinian land. As it stands today, substantial parts of the Hebrew University that are built upon occupied Palestinian land, are defined as an illegal settlement under international law. Constituting a clear breach of the Geneva Convention. Importantly for UK universities, the accommodation offered to international students undertaking Year Abroad programs lies within the Student Village, which stands on occupied land, and therefore students housed in these buildings are directly taking part in a perpetration of a war crime.

The violations committed by Hebrew University don’t end there. Like all Israeli higher education institutions, Hebrew University plays an active role in the Apartheid system by discriminating against Palestinian students and supporting the Israeli Army’s repression of Palestinians. Recently, the Hebrew University has launched an academic excellence program for IDF soldiers, opening a ‘de-facto military base’ on campus.

The program, known as ‘Havatzalot’, offers three-year training for future intelligence officers as part of their mandatory army service. It includes basic training at combat level, officer training, a bachelor’s degree, and military intelligence and leadership training. The IDF student soldiers live on campus and are required to wear uniforms and carry weapons at all times. Moreover, the IDF has enforced further security measures to be put in place inside the campus, including biometric IDs and the right to demand the replacement of anyone employed in the soldiers’ compound if they don’t pass a security screening. For the Palestinian staff at the university, this presents a threat to their livelihoods and safety.

The extreme militarization of Hebrew University manifested through programs like Havatzalot goes hand in hand with its premises and buildings being used by the IDF and Israeli police to oppress and control the population of Palestinian Issawiyah neighborhood next to which the Hebrew University is located. This also includes closing the southern entrance to the neighborhood by the Israeli police and brutalizing its inhabitants passing through the gate close to the university campus.

Our universities are sending their students to directly take part in the maintenance of war crimes and normalize relationships with institutions that are rooted in the most brutal form of racism in our time: colonialism and European supremacy. The need for decolonization at our universities as a process of ending material support for these institutions is the only viable next step forward and towards an anti-racist, decolonial future. We must not allow decolonization and anti-racism to be co-opted by the marketing teams of these marketized institutions.

I urge every anti-racist student campaigner to join our decolonizing mission at Apartheid Off Campus today. Let us unite under the banner of anti-racism and decolonization to end our universities’ complicity. Let’s follow in the footsteps of the University of Johannesburg which terminated its relations with Israeli academic institutions in 2011 and show our solidarity with the Palestinian people, whose voices must be heard today more than ever.

– Adam Saeed is a Palestinian student of Arabic and Politics at the University of Leeds. He is also an activist within the Apartheid Off Campus student led-network. They are on Twitter: @AOC_movement. 

June 14, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | 2 Comments

The Anti Slavery Mural is Back, Hopefully Forever.

By Gilad Atzmon | June 13, 2020

Hip Hop legend Ice Cube came under fire last week for posting an anti- racist image on Twitter in support of Black Lives Matter. The image was widely panned as ‘anti-Semitic’ by those who work hard to conceal images of slavery, oppression and abuse as soon as they gather that a member of their ethnic group may be complicit in such immoralities.

Following the killing of George Floyd, Ice Cube uploaded an image of a group of bankers sitting around a game board that rests on the bowed, naked backs of black slaves. “All we have to do is stand up and their little game is over” is the accompanying text.

This anti slavery image isn’t new. It first appeared as a mural by artist Mear One in London’s East End back in 2012 when it sparked a controversy. Some local Jews were offended and, of course, the local Labour council of the London borough of Tower Hamlets was quick to react. It called in the police and reportedly gave the owner of the property 28 days to remove it.

Jeremy Corbyn, supposedly an ‘anti racist’  initially voiced support for the mural and the artist behind it. Later, following pressure from Jewish groups, Corbyn reversed himself and apologized. The Guardian, once a respected Left leaning paper was also quick to cry foul  and located the anti racist mural within the Elders of Zion-Nazi propaganda spectrum. Even the ultra Left Morning Star turned against the pro black/anti capitalist  art “Bad Art and Bad Politics” is how our most dedicated ‘socialist’ paper referred to Mear One’s mural.

At the time Artist Mear One stated, loud and clear, that his “mural is about class and privilege… The banker group is made up of Jewish and white Anglos. For some reason they are saying I am anti-Semitic. This I am most definitely not… What I am against is class.”

It was also ­­­­revealed at the time that out of the six bankers figures depicted in the  mural (Lord Rothschild, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Aleister Crowley, Andrew Carnegie and Paul Warburg) – only two (Rothschild and Warburg) were Jewish. But none of that helped, our socialists, progressives and ‘Left’ icons left the black slaves to rot under the monopoly game board and stood firmly against Mear One’s art just because two of the bankers he depicted were Jewish.

What I want to understand today is how it is possible that the Labour council of Tower Hamlets, the ‘anti racist’ Jeremy Corbyn, the presumably multicultural ‘progressive’ Guardian, the ultra left Morning Star, or shall we say the entire Left/progressive  spectrum all fell into the same trap, they turned their backs on Blacks and slavery and committed to the defence of the most horrendous abusive bankers known to man just because two of them were  gifted (artistically)  with a well endowed nose. One may wonder whether White Privilege is a valid notion as it becomes clear that Hooked Nose is by far the ultimate privilege. It literally allows for  total impunity. You even get away with slavery, at least in the ‘Left’ realm.

Time to admit it publicly – in the face of Jewish sensitivities, the Left seems to collapse. Its solidarity with oppressed minorities evaporates. Indeed, if there is one thing the Left is really good at, it is betraying its core supporters. The Left has repeatedly betrayed the working class. Instead it adopted Identitarian politics that were set to break the working class into biologically oriented fragments (defined by skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, etc.). The Left even betrayed its own ideology dismantling its own philosophy of class politics that initially united us regardless of our gender, race or ethnicity. Embracing biologically oriented identification is, in practice, an adoption of Hitlerian ideology. Corbyn had been anti- banker, but he has often been very forgiving towards Jewish financiers such as the Rothschilds and George Soros. “Really important video which spells out the vile and destructive nature of antisemitic conspiracy theories,” is how Corbyn, as a Labour leader, described a horrendous video that presented the Rothschilds and George Soros as mere victims. Rothschild according to the video wasn’t even that  rich.

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For the Left, I am sorry to say it, the Blacks are solidarity pets. So are the Palestinians and other oppressed groups and minorities. I am afraid that this shameful divisive parade is not going to stop anytime soon. But Black community leaders have started to wake up.

Yesterday, members of African American Council were BOOED as they told protesters in Seattle’s ‘autonomous zone’ that they had ‘hijacked’ the Black Lives Matter movement by pushing other causes.

And there is some good news in this mural saga: 1. By now we know that art, like books, can be physically burned, it can be erased from walls, removed from exhibition: but beauty like the truth unveils itself against all odds. Mear One’s mural is with us forever and so is the memory of Corbyn/Guardian/Morning Star betrayal of the Blacks and their history.

 2. Despite horrendous harassment from Jewish pressure bodies, the American Hip Hop star stood firm. Unlike Corbyn, Ice Cube answered his critics tweeting “what If I was just pro-Black?… I’ve been telling my truth.” I have always wondered why Corbyn didn’t answer his critics: ‘what if I were pro Palestinian rather than anti Jewish?’ The brainless veteran Labour leader couldn’t even figure this out.

Our world would look far better if our politicians in general and Left ones in particular had been just slightly more committed to truth. It would help if they had as much guts in their entire bodies as artists like Ice Cube have between their toes.

June 13, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | 1 Comment

No Place For Hypocrisy

Israeli police officers attack a Palestinian protestor outside the compound housing al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City March 12, 2019. (Reuters)
By Richard Hugus | June 10, 2020

“No Place For Hate” has come out in support of widespread Black Lives Matter protests against the May 25, 2020 police murder of George Floyd. What does “No Place for Hate” have to say about the police tactics used against George Floyd also being used daily against Palestinians in occupied Palestine? “No Place for Hate” has nothing to say about this because it is part of the Anti Defamation League which openly represents, lobbies, and propagandizes for the state of Israel and Israel treats Palestinians the same way Minneapolis police treated George Floyd. It has done so since its inception, and far worse. The ADL and “No Place for Hate” are therefore guilty of rank hypocrisy. Indeed, the ADL has funded police departments all over the US to receive police training either in Israel or by bringing Israeli instructors to the US. The Israeli perspective on policing is that of an occupying army whose job is to control a hostile population, and this is what they teach US police to do in US cities. In this way, the ADL has promoted police brutality, not opposed it. By stressing the victimhood of blacks facing supposed omnipresent white racism, and making the term ‘racist’ into the same kind of weapon as ‘anti-Semite’, it has also promoted racial division, thus diverting a class war into a race war.

It has always been the strategy of the powerful to divide and rule, and clearly the ADL and the Jewish lobby represent the powerful. Otherwise oligarchs like George Soros, corporations like the Ford Foundation, and political formations like the US Democratic Party would not be contributing. To them, Black Lives Matter is no more than a tool in a color revolution now being carried out in the US. The regime to be overthrown is that of Trump and the racist “deplorables” who support him. The “color” in this case is black. The raised fist logo typical of color revolutions from Serbia to Venezuela has now shown up at Black Lives Matter protests in Boston:

The black struggle in the US has been hijacked by the very people who claim to be supporting it. Every good thing is subject to being co-opted. Orchestrated protests across the world (with bricks conveniently provided) following so closely three months of lockdown for a super-hyped global pandemic (with empty hospitals) show that we are living in a time of massive experiments in social engineering.

June 13, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | 3 Comments

Palestinian solidarity unsettles Canadian diplomats

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By Yves Engler | June 11, 2020

The Palestinian solidarity movement is unsettling Canada’s diplomatic apparatus. In the final week of their multi-year campaign for a seat on the United Nations Security Council they’ve been forced to respond to a strong, well-documented, campaign in defence of Palestinian rights.

Yesterday, Canada’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Marc-André Blanchard, delivered a letter to all UN ambassadors defending Canadian policy on Palestinian rights. Blanchard was responding to an Open Letter organized by Just Peace Advocates signed by more than 100 organizations and dozens of prominent individuals. Over the past week more than 1000 individuals have used that letter as a template to contact all 193 UN ambassadors to ask them to vote for Ireland and Norway instead of Canada for two seats available on the Security Council.

Canada’s ambassador claims the Just Peace Advocates’ letter contains “significant inaccuracies”, but he doesn’t identify a single one of those “inaccuracies” (Blanchard probably hoped his letter wouldn’t be put online).

Here is the Palestinian solidarity letter sent to all UN ambassadors:

“As humanity reels from the Covid-19 pandemic, you will soon select the world’s representatives on the UN’s highest decision-making body. As organizations and individuals advocating in Canada and elsewhere for a just peace in Palestine/Israel, we respectfully ask you to reject Canada’s bid for a seat on the UN Security Council.
As you choose seats on the Security Council between the bids of Canada, Ireland and Norway for the two Western Europe and Other States, the UN’s historic contribution to Palestinian dispossession and responsibility to protect their rights must be front of mind. In these uncertain times, Palestinians are particularly vulnerable to Covid-19 due to Israel’s military occupation and violations of UN resolutions.

The Canadian government for at least a decade and a half has consistently isolated itself against world opinion on Palestinian rights at the UN. Since coming to power – after the dubious record of the Harper government – the Trudeau government has voted against more than fifty UN resolutions upholding Palestinian rights that were backed by the overwhelming majority of member states. Continuing this pattern, Canada “sided with Israel by voting No” on most UN votes on the Question of Palestine in December. Three of these were Canada’s votes on Palestinian Refugees, on UNRWA and on illegal settlements, each distinguishing Canada as in direct opposition to the “Yes” votes of Ireland and Norway.

The Canadian government has refused to abide by 2016 UN Security Council Resolution 2334, calling on member states to “distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied in 1967.” On the contrary, Ottawa extends economic and trade assistance to Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise.

Canada has repeatedly sided with Israel. Ottawa justified Israel’s killing of “Great March of Return” protesters in Gaza and has sought to deter the International Criminal Court from investigating Israeli war crimes. In fact, Canada’s foreign affairs minister announced that should it win a seat on the UNSC, it would act as an “asset for Israel” on the Council.

When deciding who represents the international community on the UN’s highest decision-making body, we urge you to consider the UN-established rights of the long-suffering Palestinians, and to vote for Ireland and Norway, which have better records on the matter than Canada.”

In reality, the letter only touches on the current government’s anti-Palestinian record. They’ve also celebrated Canadians who fight in the Israeli military, threatened to cut off funding to the International Criminal Court for investigating Israeli crimes, protected Israeli settlement wine producers, added Palestinian organizations to Canada’s terrorism list, adopted a definition of antisemitism explicitly designed to marginalize those who criticize Palestinian dispossession and repeatedly slandered the pro-Palestinian movement. None of this is secret. In fact, Liberal MP and former chair of the government’s Justice and Human Rights Committee, Anthony Housefather, has repeatedly boasted that the Trudeau government’s voting record at the UN was more anti-Palestinian than the Stephen Harper government!

The Trudeau government has almost entirely acquiesced to Housefather, B’nai B’rith, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and the rest of the Israel lobby’s positions. But, they understand that there is sympathy for Palestinians within the UN General Assembly. And they need those individuals to vote for Canada’s Security Council bid if they don’t want to suffer an embarrassing defeat.

To be forced to respond at this late hour in their Security Council campaign represents a setback to the Liberals. But, we won’t know how significant the damage is until after next week’s vote. In the meantime please send a letter to all UN ambassadors calling on them to vote for Canada’s competitors, Norway and Ireland, for the two non-permanent Security Council spots open for Western countries.

As Just Peace Advocates’ Karen Rodman has pointed out, “the letter is seeking to pull at the heartstrings of the individuals who cast the secret ballots for the Security Council seat. We want to remind UN ambassadors that Canada has consistently isolated itself against world opinion when it comes to the long-suffering Palestinians.”

June 11, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

All Tom Cotton has to do to get back in the NYTimes’ good graces is call for the US military to bomb ANOTHER country’s civilians

The war comes home… literally © Reuters / Andy Sullivan
By Helen Buyniski | RT | June 6, 2020

Republican senator Tom Cotton’s controversial op-ed demanding US troops be deployed against American protesters would have been embraced by the New York Times if he’d just stuck to cheering on military actions abroad.

The Times has been consumed with angst over the backlash to the Arkansas senator’s piece, which called for the military to be turned loose in US cities as an “overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers.” Hundreds of the outlet’s staffers have slammed management’s decision to publish, insisting Cotton’s words somehow put them in danger.

Yet the Paper of Record has a long, colorful history of publishing op-eds (and even news pieces) supporting the deployment of the US military against civilian populations. Sure, those populations generally live outside the US – maybe they’re in Iraq, or Venezuela, or Iran – but the Times can almost always be relied upon to support the idea that the US military is a force for good, bringing sweetness and light (and, of course, democracy) wherever it goes.

That the Times would then balk at Cotton’s call to send those same troops into American cities is a bit surprising. Are these writers suggesting military activity in civilian areas isn’t limited to building schools for needy children, or freeing kittens trapped up tall trees?

And if they are aware of the destruction that takes place when US troops invade a country – civilian casualties, terrorism, drug and human trafficking – what’s their excuse for declaring, again and again, that military intervention is the answer to any nation’s problems?

© New York Times

For the paper to cry fascism now – when its pages have been used to manufacture consent for war after war among the American people, facilitating the decimation of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria – is the pinnacle of hypocrisy. The time to speak up, morally, was long ago. Putting their foot down now is utter cowardice, motivated not by concern over a fascist takeover – that ship has sailed – but by a desire to keep Uncle Sam’s enforcers from stomping back home.

Michelle Goldberg, given the task of refuting Cotton’s ‘dangerous’ views on the op-ed page on Friday, cut to the heart of the matter when she pointed out that Cotton’s recommendations would “almost certainly amount to massive violence against his fellow citizens.” Massive violence, then, is only acceptable when it happens to civilians outside the US.

The rest of the world still has to deal with the fallout from the Times’ warmongering. If Cotton wants to make nice with the Times, all he has to do is write a piece explaining how the children of Hong Kong (or Pyongyang, or Tehran) are crying out for the kind of freedom that can only be delivered from the barrel of a made-in-USA M-16. All will be forgiven.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

June 6, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

George Floyd’s Case Used to Destabilise Political Situation Ahead of 2020 Vote, UK Politician Says

Protesters in Washington DC on 3 June 2020

Protesters in Washington DC on 3 June 2020 © Sputnik/Artur Gabdrahmanov
Sputnik – 05.06.2020

A lawyer acting on behalf of George Floyd and his family has stated that a pandemic of racism led to his death at the hands of the Minneapolis police last week.

James Dalton, Party Secretary of the 5 Star Direct Democracy Party, reflects on the nationwide protests in the US sparked by the murder of George Floyd in police custody.

Sputnik: How will the death of George Floyd impact the upcoming US presidential election?

James Dalton: I think that this is completely politically motivated through the press. What we have seen in the last week is a pre-determined propaganda exercise, as we see in all election cycles, and they have hooked it around this particularly terrible incident in Minneapolis when the chap appears to be have been treated particularly awfully by the police when he’s been arrested.

That’s a crime in the United States of America, and there are obviously around 50 to 52 homicides every day in the US, so what we are seeing is purely political hackery, and it all has to do with destabilising the political situation in the run-up to this years’ presidential election.

It’s obviously a very powerful fraud that is being played on the unsuspecting peoples throughout the world, and political actors are trying to pit people against each other based on, in this instance, the colour of people’s skins.

Sputnik: Is it fair to call the Minneapolis police force institutionally racist?

James Dalton: It’s rather sad, because when you take this incident in Minneapolis, the death of George Floyd, and when you look at what has happened; there has been an incident, a crime, and it has been recorded on video footage, and some seven days ago an individual was charged with third-degree homicide, so due process of the law is underway.

Subsequent to the arrest and charging of one of the officers involved, three of the other officers have been charged also, now people can freely go and look at the skin tone, if that is what floats their boat, of the officers involved, but they are not interested in that; they are interested in the skin tone of one of them.

They can go and look at for instance at Chief Medaria Arradondo, who is the Chief of Police in Minnesota, who is a black gentleman. He joined the force in the early 1980s, and he has managed to get promoted through the ranks to become chief of police.

If the police force in Minneapolis is structurally racist; then maybe we could have a word with this silent person as to why that might be?

Sputnik: Should Black Lives matter protesters be venting their anger at the Democrats as opposed to President Trump?

James Dalton: Maybe we could talk to the Democrat Mayor of Minneapolis Jacob Frey, who obviously has responsibility for law and order in the city of Minneapolis, or maybe we can go back all the way to 1979 because that is how long Minneapolis has had a Democratic Mayor making decisions on behalf of the people of Minneapolis.

People aren’t asking the questions of the responsible parties. You could ask about the Governors, and why they have not been heard of, and again; he is a Democratic Governor, and if you look at the list of Governors for the last eleven years, they have all been Democratic Governors.

You could look at the Senators; you’ve got Amy Klobuchar, who when she was in the Attorney General’s office in Minneapolis; failed to sack this particular police officer, who is obviously in the spotlight now when there was an incident where three people died in a police chase that he was involved in before.

Amy Klobuchar; who is obviously a Democratic Senator, wanted to be President of the United States, and was on the ticket in an attempt to become the Democratic nominee, she is the Senator of Minnesota, and who is talking to her about law and order there?

Is there an institutional racism problem within the Minnesota police department? Well if there is; it is clear who is running it for the last forty years, and I just find it bizarre that somebody would make that suggestion when you look at the Chief of Police, and he is a black gentleman, it just doesn’t make any sense.

June 5, 2020 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

George Floyd protest is ‘for the benefit’ of ‘democratic struggles’ abroad, says US group known for promoting regime change

RT | June 6, 2020

The National Endowment for Democracy, a soft-power group mostly known for splashing government dollars on pro-US influence campaigns overseas to enforce regime change, has endorsed protests against police brutality at home.

In a statement on Friday, the NED came out in support of the protests against the police killing of unarmed black man George Floyd, which, while originally peaceful, spiralled into violence, wrecking havoc across dozens of US cities. The group, which styles itself as a “private and nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world” but is notorious for being used as a vehicle of US foreign policy abroad, said that it hopes that the movement for racial justice in the US will inspire other “brave people” to challenge the status quo all around the globe.

“Such a movement is needed not just for the sake of our own country, but for the benefit of brave people on the frontlines of democratic struggles around the world.”

In its emphatic endorsement of the ongoing protests, marred by looting, arson and numerous instances of violence, the group equated its doing of Washington’s bidding abroad with the civil rights movement that brought the system of legal segregation in the US to its formal end, arguing that the NED’s mission is “based on the same values of freedom and human equality.”

In a not so thinly-veiled innuendo, the group, which is sponsored by the US Congress and is backed by both Republican and Democratic parties, expressed hope that the events in the US could ignite similar movements elsewhere.

“May the present crisis lead to the realization of the ideals that animate our democracy, and may this give hope to those in other countries who share our commitment to freedom and human dignity.”

The NED, founded in 1983, has courted controversy for using its US government allocated resources for encouraging regime change in countries that refuse to toe Washington’s line, like  Russia and China. The group, along with other US-based “NGOs” supported the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine and later funneled millions of freedom dollars to the country ahead of the 2014 anti-Russian coup that brought down Ukraine’s former President Viktor Yanukovych.

In 2015, Moscow designated the NED’s activities as “undesirable” after it was found to have sponsored political campaigns aimed at influencing the Russian government’s decisions, including discrediting the nation’s military forces and the results of elections.

The outlet has also been caught red-handed stirring anti-Beijing sentiment  in Hong Kong, drawing fire from the Chinese government. In December 2019, Beijing sanctioned the NED along with several other US-affiliated organizations, accusing them of  “horrible activities in the months-long turmoil in the city.”

“[There is] a great amount of evidence proving that these NGOs have supported anti-China forces to create chaos in Hong Kong, and made utmost efforts to encourage these forces to engage in extreme violent criminal acts,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said at the time.

June 5, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

China urges Facebook to drop ‘ideological bias’ after it slaps warning labels on ‘state-controlled media’ pages

RT | June 5, 2020

The Chinese government has accused Facebook of “ideological bias” after the social media giant announced plans to put warning labels on Chinese “state-controlled” media pages including Xinhua and CCTV.

The Chinese news agency and TV channel are among the outlets which Facebook has designated as “wholly or partially under editorial control of a state”, based on the opinion of unnamed experts. Beijing criticized the change on Friday, saying social media platforms should not create obstacles for traditional media.

“We hope that the relevant social media platform can put aside the ideological bias and hold an open and accepting attitude towards each country’s media role,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said during a daily briefing.

Facebook started labeling media pages on Thursday. Outlets associated with countries including China, Russia or Iran are described as “state-controlled”.

However, public broadcasters in nations allied with Washington, have been given softer markers. The BBC in Britain has the label: “Confirmed Page Owner: British Broadcasting Corporation”. The Facebook page of the US government news channel Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty had no label at the time of writing.

The labeling spree has coincided with an embarrassing failure to police content on Facebook. The network’s “fact checkers” flagged as fake a report by RT Deutsch about the construction of a hospital in a Russian city. Facebook claimed it was false, and provided a link to an unrelated check of quotes wrongly attributed to a former French minister. This was explained as a “glitch” by the company.

June 5, 2020 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

The Media Has Conveniently Forgotten George W. Bush’s Many Atrocities

By James Bovard | Mises Wire | June 4, 2020

Former president George W. Bush has returned to the spotlight to give moral guidance to America in these troubled times. In a statement released on Tuesday, Bush announced that he was “anguished” by the “brutal suffocation” of George Floyd and declared that “lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for all is the duty of all.”

Bush’s declaration was greeted with thunderous applause by the usual suspects who portray him as the virtuous Republican in contrast to Trump. While the media portrays Bush’s pious piffle as a visionary triumph of principle, Americans need to vividly recall the lies and atrocities that permeated his eight years as president.

In an October 2017 speech in a “national forum on liberty” at the George W. Bush Institute in New York City, Bush bemoaned that “Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.” Coming from Bush, this had as much credibility as former president Bill Clinton bewailing the decline of chastity.

Most media coverage of Bush nowadays either ignores the falsehoods he used to take America to war in Iraq or portrays him as a good man who received incorrect information. But Bush was lying from the get-go on Iraq and was determined to drag the nation into another Middle East war. From January 2003 onward, Bush constantly portrayed the US as an innocent victim of Saddam Hussein’s imminent aggression and repeatedly claimed that war was being “forced upon us.” That was never the case. As the Center for Public Integrity reported, Bush made “232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda.” As the lies by which he sold the Iraq War unraveled, Bush resorted to vilifying critics as traitors in a 2006 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Bush’s lies led to the killing of more than four thousand American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. But since those folks are dead and gone anyhow, the media instead lauds Bush’s selection to be in a Kennedy Center art show displaying his borderline primitive oil paintings.

In February 2018, Bush was paid lavishly to give a pro-democracy speech in the United Arab Emirates, ruled by a notorious Arab dictatorship. He proclaimed: “Our democracy is only as good as people trust the results.” He openly fretted about Russian “meddling” in the 2016 US election.

But when he was president, Bush acted as if the United States were entitled to intervene in any foreign election he pleased. He boasted in 2005 that his administration had budgeted almost $5 billion “for programs to support democratic change around the world,” much of which was spent on tampering with foreign vote totals. When Iraq held elections in 2005, Bush approved a massive covert aid program for pro-American Iraqi parties. The Bush administration spent over $65 million to boost their favored candidate in the 2004 Ukraine election. Yet, with boundless hypocrisy, Bush proclaimed that “any (Ukrainian) election… ought to be free from any foreign influence.” US government-financed organizations helped spur coups in Venezuela in 2002 and Haiti in 2004. Both of those nations, along with Ukraine, remain political train wrecks.

In that October 2017 New York speech, Bush proclaimed: “No democracy pretends to be a tyranny.” But ravaging the Constitution was apparently part of his job description when he was president. Shortly after 9-11, Bush turned back the clock to before 1215 (when the Magna Carta was signed), formally suspending habeas corpus and claiming a prerogative to imprison indefinitely anyone he labeled a terrorist suspect. In 2002, Justice Department lawyers informed Bush that the president was entitled to violate the law during wartime—and the war on terror was expected to continue indefinitely. In 2004, Bush White House counsel Alberto Gonzales formally asserted a “commander-in-chief override power” entitling presidents to ignore the Bill of Rights.

Under Bush, the US government embraced barbaric practices which did more to destroy America’s moral credibility than all of Trump’s tweets combined. Bush’s “enhanced interrogation” regime included endless high-volume repetition of a Meow Mix cat food commercial at Guantanamo, head slapping, waterboarding, exposure to frigid temperatures, and manacling for many hours in stress positions. After the Supreme Court rebuffed some of Bush’s power grabs in 2006, he pushed through Congress a bill that retroactively legalized torture—one of the worst legislative disgraces since the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. During his years in the White House, Bush perennially denied that he had approved torture. But in 2010, during an author tour to promote his new memoir, he bragged about approving waterboarding for terrorist suspects.

Is Bush nominating himself to be the nation’s racial healer? When he was president, Bush inflicted more financial ruin on blacks than any president since Woodrow Wilson (who brought Jim Crow barbarities to the federal government). Bush trumpeted his plans to close the gap between black and white homeownership rates and promised in 2002 to “use the mighty muscle of the federal government” to solve the problem. Bush was determined to end the bias against people who wanted to buy a home but had no money. Congress passed Bush’s American Dream Downpayment Act in 2003, authorizing federal handouts to first-time homebuyers of up to $10,000 or 6 percent of the home’s purchase price. Bush also swayed Congress to permit the Federal Housing Administration to make no–down payment loans to low-income Americans. Bush proclaimed: “Core American values of individuality, thrift, responsibility, and self-reliance are embodied in homeownership.” In Bush’s eyes, self-reliance was so wonderful that the government should subsidize it. And it didn’t matter whether recipients were creditworthy, because politicians meant well. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign trumpeted his down payment giveaways, a shining example of “compassionate conservatism.”

Thanks in large part to his policies, minority households saw the fastest growth in homeownership leading up to the 2007 recession. The housing collapse ravaged the net worth of black and Hispanic households. “The implosion of the subprime lending market has left a scar on the finances of black Americans—one that not only has wiped out a generation of economic progress but could leave them at a financial disadvantage for decades,” the Washington Post reported in 2012. The median net worth for Hispanic households declined by 66 percent between 2005 and 2009. That devastation was aptly described in a 2017 federal appeals court dissenting opinion as “wrecking ball benevolence” (quoting a 2004 Barron’s op-ed I wrote). But almost none of the media coverage of the ex-president reminds people of the economic carnage of this Bush vote-buying binge.

It is possible to condemn police brutality and, even more importantly, the evil laws and judicial doctrines that enable police to tyrannize other Americans without any help from a demagogic ex-president who ravaged our rights, liberties, and peace. As I commented in an August 2003 USA Today op-ed, “Whether Bush and his appointees will be held personally liable for their [Iraq War] falsehoods is a grave test for American democracy.” The revival of Bush’s reputation vivifies how our political media system failed that test. As long as George Bush doesn’t turn himself in for committing war crimes, all of his talk about “achieving justice for all” is rubbish.

James Bovard is the author of ten books, including 2012’s Public Policy Hooligan, and 2006’s Attention Deficit Democracy. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and many other publications.

June 4, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | 2 Comments

Destroying the environment to save it

Pseudo-green energy will wreak devastation, pretending to prevent exaggerated climate harm

By Paul Driessen | Watts Up With That? | May 31, 2020

“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” The infamous Vietnam era quotation may or may not have been uttered by an anonymous US Army major. It may have been misquoted, revised, apocryphal or invented. But it quickly morphed into an anti-war mantra that reflected attitudes of the time.

For Virginians and others forced to travel the path of “clean, green, renewable, sustainable” energy, it will redound in modern politics as “We had to destroy the environment in order to save it.”

Weeks after Governor Ralph Northam signed Virginia’s “Clean Economy Act,” which had been rushed through a partisan Democrat legislature, Dominion Energy Virginia announced it would reach “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To do so, the utility company will raise family, business, hospital and school electricity bills by 3% every year for the next ten years – as these customers and state and local governments struggle to climb out of the financial holes created by the ongoing Coronavirus lockdown.

Just as bad, renewable energy mandates and commitments from the new law and Dominion’s “integrated resource plan” will have major adverse impacts on Virginia and world environmental values. In reality, Virginia’s new “clean” economy exists only in fantasy land – and only if we ignore “clean” energy CO2 emissions, air and water pollution, and other environmental degradation around the world.

Dominion Energy plans to expand the state’s offshore wind, onshore solar and battery storage capacity by some 24,000 megawatts of new “renewable” energy by 2035, and far more after that. It will retain just 9,700 MW of existing natural gas generation, and only through 2045, build no new gas-fired units, and retire 6,200 megawatts of coal-fired generation. This will reduce in-state carbon dioxide emissions, but certainly won’t do so globally. The company intends to keep its four existing nuclear units operating.

To “replace” some of its abundant, reliable, affordable fossil fuel electricity, Dominion intends to build at least 31,400 megawatts of expensive, unreliable solar capacity by 2045. The company estimates that will require a land area some 25% larger than 250,000-acre Fairfax County, west of Washington, DC. That means Dominion Energy’s new solar facilities will blanket 490 square miles (313,000 acres) of beautiful croplands, scenic areas and habitats that now teem with wildlife.

That’s almost half the land area of Rhode Island, eight times the District of Columbia, 14 times more land than all Fairfax County parks combined – blanketed by imported solar panels. Still more land will be torn up for access roads and new transmission lines. All this is just for Dominion Energy’s solar panels.

The panels will actually generate electricity maybe 20-25% of the year, once you factor in nighttime hours, cloudy days, and times when the sun is not bright enough to generate more than trifling electricity.

Dominion and other Virginia utility companies also plan to import and install 430 monstrous 850-foot-tall bird-chopping offshore wind turbines – and tens of thousands of half-ton battery packs, to provide backup power for at least a few hours or days when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. The batteries will prevent the economy from shutting down even more completely during each outage than it has during the Corona lockdown. Similar policies across America will impact hundreds of millions of acres.

Most of these solar panels, wind turbines and batteries – or their components, or the metals and minerals required to manufacture those components – will likely come from China or from Chinese-owned operations in Africa, Asia and Latin America … under mining, air and water pollution, workplace safety, fair wage, child labor, mined land reclamation, manufacturing and other laws and standards that would get US and other Western companies unmasked, vilified, sued, fined and shut down in a heartbeat.

It is those minimal to nonexistent laws and regulations that govern most of the companies and operations that will supply the “clean” technologies that will soon blight Virginia landscapes and serve the new “clean” Virginia economy. As Michael Moore observes in his new film, Planet of the Humans, other states that opt for “clean” energy will face the same realities.

Thus far, no one has produced even a rough estimate of how much concrete, steel, aluminum, copper, lithium, cobalt, silica, rare earth metals and countless other materials will be needed. All will require gigantic heavy equipment and prodigious amounts of fossil fuels to blast and haul away billions of tons of rocky overburden; extract, crush and process tens of millions of tons of ores, using acids, toxic chemicals and other means to refine the ores; smelt concentrates into metals; manufacture all the millions of tons of components; and haul, assemble and install the panels, turbines, batteries and transmission lines, setting them on top of tens of thousands of tons of concrete and rebar. All of it beyond Virginia’s borders.

No one has tallied the oil, natural gas and coal fuel requirements for doing all this “Virginia Clean Economy” work – nor the greenhouse gases and actual pollutants that will be emitted in the process.

Nothing about this is clean, green, renewable or sustainable. But Virginia politicians and Dominion Energy officials have said nothing about any of this, nor about which countries will host the mining and other activities, under what environmental and human rights standards.

Will Virginians ever get a full accounting? Just because all of this will happen far beyond Virginia’s borders does not mean we can ignore the global environmental impacts. Or the health, safety and well-being of children and parents in those distant mines, processing plants and factories.

This is the perfect time to observe the environmentalist creed: think globally, act locally. Will that be done?

Will Dominion and Virginia require that all these raw materials and wind, solar and battery components be responsibly sourced? Will it require independently verified certifications that none of them involve child labor, and all are produced in compliance with US and Virginia laws, regulations and ethical codes for workplace safety, fair wages, air and water pollution, wildlife preservation, cancer prevention and mined lands reclamation? Will they tally up all the fossil fuels consumed, and pollutants emitted, in the process?

Science journalist, businessman and parliamentarian Matt Ridley says wind turbines need some 200 times more raw materials per megawatt of power than modern combined-cycle gas turbines. It’s probably much the same for solar panels. Add in the millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels and billions of backup batteries that would be required under a nationwide Green New Deal, and the combined US and global environmental, human health and human rights impacts become absolutely mindboggling.

If you ignore all the land and wildlife impacts from installing the wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and transmission lines – you could perhaps call this “clean energy” and a “clean economy” within Virginia’s borders. But not beyond those borders. This is a global issue, and the world would likely be far better off if we just built modern combined-cycle gas turbines (or nuclear power plants) to generate reliable electricity – and avoided all the monumental human and ecological impacts of pseudo-renewable energy.

When it’s time to select sites for these 490 square miles of industrial solar facilities, will Virginia, its county and local governments, its citizens, environmentalist groups and courts apply the same rigorous standards, laws and regulations that they demand for drilling, fracking, coal and gas power plants, pipelines, highways, timber cutting and other projects? Will they apply the same standards for 850-foot-tall wind turbines and 100-foot-tall transmission lines as they demand for buried-out-of-sight pipelines?

Virginia’s Clean Economy Act will also plunge almost every project and jurisdiction into questions of race, poverty and environmental justice. Dominion Energy and other utility companies will have to charge means-tested rates (even as rates climb 3% per year) and exempt low-income customers from some charges. They will have to submit construction plans to “environmental justice councils” – even as the companies, councils and politicians ignore the rampant injustices inflicted on children and parents slaving away in Chinese, African and Latin American “clean energy” mines, processing plants and factories.

Government officials, utility industry executives, environmentalists and anyone else who promotes wind, solar, battery and biofuel energy need to explain exactly how they plan to address these issues. Future town hall meetings and project approval hearings promise to be raucous, entertaining and illuminating.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.

May 31, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Environmentalism, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite | | 1 Comment

Two can play Section 230 game: Trump’s EO uses key statute against social media censorship

By Nebojsa Malic | RT | May 28, 2020

Social media giants have long hid behind a law shielding them from litigation to censor content they did not like. President Donald Trump’s executive order just reminded them that laws can also be used as a sword.

Though the First Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits the government from restricting freedom of speech, social media platforms have long argued this does not apply to them as private companies. The executive order signed by Trump on Thursday points out that their status as platforms, and immunity from endless civil lawsuits, depends on their removal of controversial content being done “in good faith.”

The order instructs federal agencies to focus on that qualifier when considering Section 230 (C) of 47 US Code to social media companies, noting that this clearly does not apply when their practices are “deceptive” or “pretextual,” inconsistent with their own terms of service, and used to stifle viewpoints with which they disagree.

Until now, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others could have it both ways, insisting they were “platforms” and therefore not liable for user-generated content, while acting as “publishers” and actively deciding which content they would allow, using entirely arbitrary and ever-changing rules.

The issue became political after 2016, when Trump used social platforms to bypass the establishment media that overwhelmingly favored – and endorsed – his opponent. The ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theory wasn’t just used in an attempt to get Trump out of office, but also to pressure social media giants to censor viewpoints the establishment did not like – overwhelmingly targeting Trump supporters, but also purging dissident voices on the left.

It made little difference whether the companies did so internally, or by outsourcing it to third parties – such as Facebook did recently – the people making these decisions invariably turned out to be passionately partisan.

The fact that Trump specifically called out Twitter’s “head of integrity” and referenced the presence of a Democrat impeachment witness on Facebook’s Oversight Board indicates that Thursday’s order did not come out of the blue. The advanced copy leaked to friendly journalists earlier in the day likewise suggested that the White House has been laying the groundwork for such a measure for years, just waiting for the right moment.

Remember when a federal judge ruled that Trump is not allowed to block trolls on his personal account, because Twitter was a “designated public forum” and he is an elected official? Trump does, and he’s using the same logic to put the responsibility on social media to act as such.

Critics, of course, claimed that Trump was only acting now – after years of doing nothing and “monitoring the situation” – because Twitter dared “fact check” his opinions on mail-in ballots this week.

Attempting to shield his employees from Trump’s ire, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey argued that the president’s tweets “may mislead people into thinking they don’t need to register to get a ballot.”

Trump called this “ridiculous” and “stupid.” Think of him what you want, but in this instance he’s correct – Dorsey is really reaching here, and insulting the intelligence of millions of Americans in the process.

Perhaps one of the most absurd features of the Trump era is the extent to which his critics have openly sacrificed their own publicly professed principles in order to oppose him. Thus the self-styled civil libertarians on the left suddenly decided they actually love private corporations and hate government regulations, coming out in support of purging “hate speech” (a nonexistent category in US law).

All of a sudden, the First Amendment applied only to the government – but not to Twitter, Facebook or YouTube. Nor did they bother protesting when those companies applied German, Pakistani or Chinese laws to silence Americans. But now the American Civil Liberties Union is reacting to Trump’s order by shrieking “He can’t do that!”

Except that yes, he can. Ensuring US laws are faithfully executed is literally his mandate (Article II, Section 3). Trump is not revoking Section 230 – only Congress can do that – but he is clearly issuing new guidance as to how it is to be enforced. The federal government may not even need to do much – Trump seems to be well aware of Saul Alinsky’s Rule 9:“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”

The mere prospect of being stripped of Section 230 protections and facing costly litigation as a result may prompt these companies to rethink their behavior. Or they could decide their commitment to the ideology of “social justice” and connections to one party in the US political system trump business concerns, so to speak. We’ll see what happens.

The trouble with the latter approach is that Joe Biden, the Democrat nominee facing off against Trump in November, has just recently called for abolishing Section 230 altogether – making Trump’s position the more moderate and reasonable one by comparison, from their standpoint.

As I’ve argued before, the battle has never been over a particular tweet or two, but over who gets to be the arbiter of truth – the American people, or the establishment and its allies in legacy and social media.

At the end of the day, that’s what this executive order is all about.

Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic

May 29, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Western Reaction to China Shows the Bad Old Days Haven’t Passed

By James O’Neill | Dissident Voice | May 29, 2020

One of the most tiresome clichés uttered by the western nations, including Australia, is their alleged commitment to the “rules based international order”. By this they generally mean a set of rules of supposed international authority, to which all developed nations are expected to adhere.

Those who allegedly failed to do so are labelled as rogue states, or deviant states, and in some way a threat to good government and a peaceful world. The myth has always had trouble confronting the reality. Australia has been one of the most assiduous articulators of the myth. As recently as this week it was accusing China of breaching the said rules by China asserting its authority over Hong Kong.

When one reads the mainstream media of all the events in Hong Kong what is immediately striking is that Hong Kong’s history seems to go back no further than the 1990s when the United Kingdom and China signed an agreement whereby the United Kingdom would release its rule of Hong Kong.

Conveniently overlooked in these accounts is the slightest hint of real history. Hong Kong had been part of China for more than 2000 years until the 1860s. We will leave to one side what sort of history the United Kingdom could boast of that goes back two thousand years.

The United Kingdom acquired Hong Kong by conquest during the first of the two opium wars, another feature of British colonial history that the mainstream media glides over as though it did not exist. The British invaded Afghanistan three times during the 19th century. They were not bringing the dubious benefits of British civilisation to the Afghanis. They wanted to control the opium production source, then as now, producing the bulk of the world’s heroin production.

China unsurprisingly did not appreciate Hong Kong being used as the entry point for Afghan heroin under British control. They fought back, but lost. Hence the ceding of Hong Kong to British rule. The heroin was therefore able to be imported freely by the British to the extent that by 1900 one in seven adult Chinese males was a heroin addict.

The 1949 revolution changed the government of China but it was several decades before they began to assert their wish that Hong Kong be returned to the mainland. By 1998, when the handover agreement was finally signed, China was still not strong enough to refuse to accept what was a manifestly unequal bargain.

There is no other historical precedent that I am aware of that land colonised by an imperial power and eventually returned to its rightful owner is done so conditionally.

The Chinese are now accused by the British, the Americans, and the Australian governments of not complying with the terms of the handover. That allegation is made by people who have never bothered to read the terms of the agreement.

Even more critically, those same governments are alleging that the people of Hong Kong are being deprived of their “democratic rights” to self-government. This was an argument that was never heard during the entire century plus of British rule.

Among the various benefits that the Hong Kong people have enjoyed since liberation from British rule is that they now have the right to vote. That the people of Hong Kong had no democratic means of determining how and by whom they were governed during British rule, not even having the right to vote, is another inconvenient fact glided over by the present erstwhile defenders of so-called Hong Kong democracy.

It is a fundamental principle of international law that countries are entitled to govern their own affairs. It is also a fundamental principle that the British, and particularly the Americans since 1945, have simply ignored the principle when it suited them.

Where was the West’s “respect for international law” when the United States and its allies (including Australia) sanctioned, bombed, invaded, occupied and otherwise destroyed to a greater or lesser extent at least 70 countries over the past 70 years? The death toll from those illegal activities has been variously estimated at between 50 and 70 million people.

Current illustrations of that point, all of them involving the willing compliance and assistance of Australia, include Afghanistan (invaded 2001 and still there); Iraq, invaded 2003 and still there despite the clearly expressed view of the Iraqi parliament that all uninvited foreign troops should leave; and Syria, invaded in 2015 after years of supporting terrorist proxies in that country by their invaders. The United States currently occupies Syria’s oil region, stealing its oil and keeping the proceeds of sale. Not a word of dissent from its Australian ally who clearly has a flexible definition of what the “rules based international order” actually means.

In the case of China, Australian adherence to the United States line goes far beyond the current situation in Hong Kong. Australia was being the loyal United States proxy when it alleged that China was the source of the coronavirus currently causing economic havoc around the world.

On instructions from Washington, Australia proposed a motion for international consideration that the origins of the virus should be investigated in China. Had the proposal beeg neutrally worded, for example suggesting an investigation of all countries that might have been the source, the proposal might not have been ignored as it was.

All countries obviously include the United States, where a growing body of evidence suggests it is the real source of the pandemic. That, however, would not suit the current suicidal Australian campaign to attack China on various fronts on behalf of its American masters.

Why Australia would want to attack such a vitally important nation, whose importance to the Australian economy extends far beyond being a market for Australian goods, defies rational explanation. The Chinese, unsurprisingly, and in my view completely justifiably, have begun to take measures in response, the result of which will be extraordinary pain to the Australian economy.

The current pandemic should be seen as an opportunity for Australia to discard its colonial status and actually take decisions that enhance rather than hinder Australia’s vital interests. The history of the past 70 years however, suggests that is a vain hope.

James O’Neill is a Barrister at Law and geopolitical analyst. He can be contacted at joneill@qldbar.asn.au.

May 29, 2020 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 3 Comments

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