Fake News, Fake History, Fake Law

BY ALFRED DE ZAYASFacebook

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“Fake news” is a widespread phenomenon – not only in wartime, but also in daily political and economic relations.  Fake news are not only disseminated by governments and its proxies, but also practiced by the private sector, by media conglomerates, by individuals in their correspondence, gossip, social media and through the internet.

Fake news is as prevalent in Europe as it is in the United States, in Latin America, Africa and Asia.  Patently false narratives, false flag operations and bogus incidents are concocted by governments in order to justify their policies, a compliant corporate media acting as echo chambers of the propaganda issued by governments.  Purportedly independent journalists (with their own agendas) have no hesitation to print evidence-free allegations, referring to anonymous officials or witnesses, supported by “secret intelligence”. Thus emerges “fragmented truth”, and no one really knows what truth is, everyone clings to his own views, refusing to consider alternative versions of the facts. When it comes to access to reliable information, freedom of opinion and expression, we live in an increasingly polarized, intolerant, intransigent world.

Only reluctantly we must acknowledge that “fake news” have always been around, the difference being that in the past only governments were purveyors of fake news, only governments could successfully manipulate public opinion, whereas today anybody with access to the internet can also weigh in. From experience we also know that all media – CNN, BBC, DW, NYTimes, Washington Post, The Times, The Economist, Le Monde, Le Figaro, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, El Pais, El Mundo, RT, Sputnik, CGTN, Asia Times, Telesur – all slant the news in a particular way.  They cite their favourite spin doctors and distort the facts, lying here and there, suppressing inconvenient facts and opinions, or shamelessly applying double-standards.

The perception of contemporary events eventually generates “fake history”, which necessarily builds on the steady flow of both verifiable information  and fake news.  As an aspiring historian taking courses in the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (at the same time as  I was getting my law degree), as a doctoral candidate in history at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Göttingen in Germany, I learned to question historical narratives,  look at the sources, insist on seven C’s of history writing; chronology, context, coherence, comprehensiveness, causality,comparison and cui bono (who stands to gain from an event and from a particular interpretation). I was taught never to rely on a single source, but proactively to look for alternative views, see whether the standard narrative can be challenged, whether the subsequent publication of previously classified documents, whether the memoirs of movers and shakers, politicians and diplomats suggest the necessity of adjusting in the mainstream narrative.

My research activities for my publications on the Spanish Civil War and  on the Second World War and its aftermath convinced me that history textbooks were not all that reliable, that some of them were essentially propagating oversimplifications that ignored crucial facts, that long debunked canards had found their way into the mainstream narrative, sometimes resulting in a caricature of events.  My research in public and private archives in the US, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, my ability to read the original documents in English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Russian opened my horizons far beyond the accepted narratives. On the other hand, I realized that archives could be incomplete, that inconvenient documents could have been destroyed, that pertinent information is still classified.  Personal interviews with key players like George F. Kennan, Robert Murphy, James Riddleberger, Lord Strang, Lord Paget, Lord Weidenfeld, Lord Thomas, Sir Geoffrey Harrison, Sir Denis Allen, Telford Taylor, Benjamin Ferencz, Howard Levie, Albert Speer, Karl Dönitz, Otto von Habsburg, Kurt Waldheim, added missing links and nuances.  I was able to connect the dots.

I also realized that the optimistic expectation that as time passes and emotions abate the historical narrative will become more objective is  a sorry illusion.  Frequently the very opposite happens, because as the persons in the know disappear, as witnesses die and no one is left to dispute the politically useful narrative, pseudo-history is cemented and emerges as the  socially accepted narrative.  Extrapolating from my experience researching 20th century historical events, I am convinced that our knowledge of Greek and Roman times, our perception of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Napoleonic ear, must be woefully incomplete. I also realize that it will be very difficult to change the established narratives – absent some extraordinary discovery of previously unknown manuscripts of diplomatic or commercial correspondence, papyrus or cuneiform tablets.

What amazes me is that no one seems to be talking about “fake law”? Indeed, politicians and journalists frequently “invent” law as they go along, contending that what some lobby or interest group invokes as law actually has legal force, as if law and legal obligations could spontaneously arise, without the drafting, negotiation and adoption process of all legislation, treaties, conventions, or without  the ratification by Parliaments.

We must beware of the loose use of legal terms, which undermines the authority and credibility of the law.  Not every military encounter entails “aggression”, not every massacre constitutes “genocide”, not every form of sexual harassment can be considered “rape”.  Nor is every jailed politician a “political prisoner”, nor every migrant a “refugee”.  And yet, much hyperbole and political agitation play out on this pseudo-legal arena, much political blackmail is practiced on the basis of fake “law”, much propaganda is actually believed by average citizens. Mundus vult decepi (the world wants to be deceived).

Politicians who want to impose sanctions  insist that they are legal, without, however, elucidating  the legal basis.  In classical international law unilateral coercive measures are not legal. The only legal sanctions are those imposed by the UN Security Council under article VII of the Charter.  All other unilateral coercive measures actually constitute an illegal “use of force”,  prohibited in article 2(4) of the Charter, and contrary to article 2(3), which requires negotiations in good faith.

Moreover, the extra-territorial application of national law (e.g. the Helms-Burton Act) violates numerous principles of the United Nations, including the sovereign equality of states, the self-determination of peoples, freedom of commerce and freedom of navigation.  Every day politicians and the media invent their own law – but it is bogus law.  Alas, the media simply disseminates the “fake law” as a form of “fake news” – and people believe it.

Some politicians pretend that there is a human right to migration, but fail to give any treaty or doctrinal source.  Of course every sovereign state can generously open its border and welcome both economic migrants and refugees, but this opening of frontiers is nowhere required by international law.  In fact, the very ontology of a sovereign state since the Peace of Westphalia is that the state controls its frontiers and determines who can and cannot enter its territory.  This is customary international law recognized in every textbook.

There is, of course, the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and members of their Families, but this Convention applies only to migrant workers who have already entered the territory and have their papers in order.  Moreover, the Convention does not establish a right of migration, it only specifies the rights of migrant workers living within the State’s jurisdiction.  It should also be noted that only 56 countries have ratified the MWC – not the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Spain etc.

All too often we are confronted by a combination of fake news, fake history and fake law, a very toxic cocktail for any democracy.  Alas, fake law has become a favourite weapon of demagogues and phoney “experts” and “diplomats” who gleefully engage in what may be termed “fake diplomacy”, as the goal is not to reach a reasonable negotiated settlement, but rather to score points on the gladiator arena of power-politics, with the dutiful collusion of a sold-out and capricious media.

The unsuccessful encounters between Putin and Biden, between Lavrov and Blinken belong in this category of “fake diplomacy”.  Indeed, unless we do away with fake news, fake history and fake law, it will be very difficult to advance with true diplomacy in the sense of George F. Kennan. Thus continues the game of sabre-rattling and sanctions that have brought the world to a situation of armed conflict, which could even degenerate into World War III.  In the process many fortunes are being made, since nothing is more lucrative than the arms business, and the military-industrial-financial complex has a economic interest in stoking tensions and war.

Is there a solution to “fake news”? Demagogues would establish an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth”, others would criminalize “fake news” (but only inconvenient “fake news”), others would pretend to filter facts and opinion using self-made tools to determine what is true and what isn’t.

No one needs this kind of Inquisition and censorship, because neither governments nor the private sector can be gatekeepers of the truth. The only solution is ensuring access to pluralistic information and open debate.  Society must demand greater transparency at all levels and proactively seek the truth by consulting multiple sources and making a new synthesis, which will not be “revealed truth” or “immutable truth”, but a constantly evolving truth that incorporates the complexity and nuances of reality on the ground.

All of the above raises the question whether we are not already living under a fake democracy?  What kind of correlation is there between the will and needs of the people and the laws and regulations that govern them?  Is there not a great disconnect between governments and the people? Are there any democratic governments where the people actually can fully take part in the conduct of public affairs as envisaged in article 25 of the International covenant on Civil and Political Rights?  Where is the power of initiative and the right to hold referendums recognized?  Surely the meaning of democracy must encompass more than the ritual act of going to the polls once every two or four years.  Surely the democratic process must allow real choices, not just pro-forma voting for one of two candidates.  In my reports to the General Assembly and Human Rights Council I insisted that those individuals who are elected do not really govern, while those who govern are not elected.  I deplored the fact that “representative democracy” can only be called democratic if the Parliamentarians represent the electorate, if they proactively inform the electorate and proactively consult with them.  As an American I have noted that US elections do not permit real choices, and that we can only exercise the fake right to vote for A or B, knowing that both A and B are committed to the military-industrial complex, that both support Wall Street over Main Street, that both are for capitalism with no frills, and in foreign affairs both are hawks, both are interventionists, both prefer to engage in military interventions than to negotiate in good faith.  This ontological disconnect made me conclude that the two-party system we know in the United States is only twice as democratic as the one-party system that rules China.  Democracy means rule by and for the people.  Alas, we do not enjoy democracy and must content ourselves with the window-dressing, with the pro-forma rhetoric, with the trappings of democracy.

It is time for the American people to demonstrate the courage to demand an end to fake news, fake history, fake law, fake diplomacy and fake democracy.  But to achieve that we must first win the information war and defeat those who systematically brainwash the public.  It will take time to reform the system, but this is a task we cannot avoid.  We owe it to future generations.

 

Alfred de Zayas is a law professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and served as a UN Independent Expert on International Order 2012-18. He is the author of ten books including “Building a Just World Order” Clarity Press, 2021.  

 

A Brief History of Kill Lists, from Langley to Lavender

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies Posted onApril 17, 2024

The Israeli online magazine +972 has published a detailed report on Israel’s use of an artificial intelligence (AI) system called “Lavender” to target thousands of Palestinian men in its bombing campaign in Gaza. When Israel attacked Gaza after October 7, the Lavender system had a database of 37,000 Palestinian men with suspected links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Lavender assigns a numerical score, from one to a hundred, to every man in Gaza, based mainly on cellphone and social media data, and automatically adds those with high scores to its kill list of suspected militants. Israel uses another automated system, known as “Where’s Daddy?”, to call in airstrikes to kill these men and their families in their homes.

The report is based on interviews with six Israeli intelligence officers who have worked with these systems. As one of the officers explained to +972, by adding a name from a Lavender-generated list to the Where’s Daddy home tracking system, he can place the man’s home under constant drone surveillance, and an airstrike will be launched once he comes home.

The officers said the “collateral” killing of the men’s extended families was of little consequence to Israel. “Let’s say you calculate [that there is one] Hamas [operative] plus 10 [civilians in the house],” the officer said. “Usually, these 10 will be women and children. So absurdly, it turns out that most of the people you killed were women and children.”

The officers explained that the decision to target thousands of these men in their homes is just a question of expediency. It is simply easier to wait for them to come home to the address on file in the system, and then bomb that house or apartment building, than to search for them in the chaos of the war-torn Gaza Strip.

The officers who spoke to 972+ explained that in previous Israeli massacres in Gaza, they could not generate targets quickly enough to satisfy their political and military bosses, and so these AI systems were designed to solve that problem for them. The speed with which Lavender can generate new targets only gives its human minders an average of 20 seconds to review and rubber-stamp each name, even though they know from tests of the Lavender system that at least 10% of the men chosen for assassination and familicide have only an insignificant or a mistaken connection with Hamas or PIJ.

The Lavender AI system is a new weapon, developed by Israel. But the kind of kill lists that it generates have a long pedigree in U.S. wars, occupations and CIA regime change operations. Since the birth of the CIA after the Second World War, the technology used to create kill lists has evolved from the CIA’s earliest coups in Iran and Guatemala, to Indonesia and the Phoenix program in Vietnam in the 1960s, to Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s and to the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just as U.S. weapons development aims to be at the cutting edge, or the killing edge, of new technology, the CIA and U.S. military intelligence have always tried to use the latest data processing technology to identify and kill their enemies.

The CIA learned some of these methods from German intelligence officers captured at the end of the Second World War. Many of the names on Nazi kill lists were generated by an intelligence unit called Fremde Heere Ost (Foreign Armies East), under the command of Major General Reinhard Gehlen, Germany’s spy chief on the eastern front(see David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, p. 268).

Gehlen and the FHO had no computers, but they did have access to four million Soviet POWs from all over the USSR, and no compunction about torturing them to learn the names of Jews and communist officials in their hometowns to compile kill lists for the Gestapo and Einsatzgruppen.

After the war, like the 1,600 German scientists spirited out of Germany in Operation Paperclip, the United States flew Gehlen and his senior staff to Fort Hunt in Virginia. They were welcomed by Allen Dulles, soon to be the first and still the longest-serving director of the CIA. Dulles sent them back to Pullach in occupied Germany to resume their anti-Soviet operations as CIA agents. The Gehlen Organization formed the nucleus of what became the BND, the new West German intelligence service, with Reinhard Gehlen as its director until he retired in 1968.

After a CIA coup removed Iran’s popular, democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, a CIA team led by U.S. Major General Norman Schwarzkopf trained a new intelligence service, known as SAVAK, in the use of kill lists and torture. SAVAK used these skills to purge Iran’s government and military of suspected communists and later to hunt down anyone who dared to oppose the Shah.

By 1975, Amnesty International estimated that Iran was holding between 25,000 and 100,000 political prisoners, and had “the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture that is beyond belief.”

In Guatemala, a CIA coup in 1954 replaced the democratic government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman with a brutal dictatorship. As resistance grew in the 1960s, U.S. special forces joined the Guatemalan army in a scorched earth campaign in Zacapa, which killed 15,000 people to defeat a few hundred armed rebels. Meanwhile, CIA-trained urban death squads abducted, tortured and killed PGT (Guatemalan Labor Party) members in Guatemala City, notably 28 prominent labor leaders who were abducted and disappeared in March 1966.

Once this first wave of resistance was suppressed, the CIA set up a new telecommunications center and intelligence agency, based in the presidential palace. It compiled a database of “subversives” across the country that included leaders of farming co-ops and labor, student and indigenous activists, to provide ever-growing lists for the death squads. The resulting civil war became a genocide against indigenous people in Ixil and the western highlands that killed or disappeared at least 200,000 people.

This pattern was repeated across the world, wherever popular, progressive leaders offered hope to their people in ways that challenged U.S. interests. As historian Gabriel Kolko wrote in 1988, “The irony of U.S. policy in the Third World is that, while it has always justified its larger objectives and efforts in the name of anticommunism, its own goals have made it unable to tolerate change from any quarter that impinged significantly on its own interests.”

When General Suharto seized power in Indonesia in 1965, the U.S. Embassy compiled a list of 5,000 communists for his death squads to hunt down and kill. The CIA estimated that they eventually killed 250,000 people, while other estimates run as high as a million.

Twenty-five years later, journalist Kathy Kadane investigated the U.S. role in the massacre in Indonesia, and spoke to Robert Martens, the political officer who led the State-CIA team that compiled the kill list. “It really was a big help to the army,” Martens told Kadane. “They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands. But that’s not all bad – there’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.”

Kathy Kadane also spoke to former CIA director William Colby, who was the head of the CIA’s Far East division in the 1960s. Colby compared the U.S. role in Indonesia to the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, which was launched two years later, claiming that they were both successful programs to identify and eliminate the organizational structure of America’s communist enemies.

The Phoenix program was designed to uncover and dismantle the National Liberation Front’s (NLF) shadow government across South Vietnam. Phoenix’s Combined Intelligence Center in Saigon fed thousands of names into an IBM 1401 computer, along with their locations and their alleged roles in the NLF. The CIA credited the Phoenix program with killing 26,369 NLF officials, while another 55,000 were imprisoned or persuaded to defect. Seymour Hersh reviewed South Vietnamese government documents that put the death toll at 41,000.

How many of the dead were correctly identified as NLF officials may be impossible to know, but Americans who took part in Phoenix operations reported killing the wrong people in many cases. Navy SEAL Elton Manzione told author Douglas Valentine (The Phoenix Program) how he killed two young girls in a night raid on a village, and then sat down on a stack of ammunition crates with a hand grenade and an M-16, threatening to blow himself up, until he got a ticket home.

“The whole aura of the Vietnam War was influenced by what went on in the “hunter-killer” teams of Phoenix, Delta, etc,” Manzione told Valentine. “That was the point at which many of us realized we were no longer the good guys in the white hats defending freedom – that we were assassins, pure and simple. That disillusionment carried over to all other aspects of the war and was eventually responsible for it becoming America’s most unpopular war.”

Even as the U.S. defeat in Vietnam and the “war fatigue” in the United States led to a more peaceful next decade, the CIA continued to engineer and support coups around the world, and to provide post-coup governments with increasingly computerized kill lists to consolidate their rule.

After supporting General Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the CIA played a central role in Operation Condor, an alliance between right-wing military governments in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, to hunt down tens of thousands of their and each other’s political opponents and dissidents, killing and disappearing at least 60,000 people.

The CIA’s role in Operation Condor is still shrouded in secrecy, but Patrice McSherry, a political scientist at Long Island University, has investigated the U.S. role and concluded, “Operation Condor also had the covert support of the US government. Washington provided Condor with military intelligence and training, financial assistance, advanced computers, sophisticated tracking technology, and access to the continental telecommunications system housed in the Panama Canal Zone.”

McSherry’s research revealed how the CIA supported the intelligence services of the Condor states with computerized links, a telex system, and purpose-built encoding and decoding machines made by the CIA Logistics Department. As she wrote in her book, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America:

“The Condor system’s secure communications system, Condortel… allowed Condor operations centers in member countries to communicate with one another and with the parent station in a U.S. facility in the Panama Canal Zone. This link to the U.S. military-intelligence complex in Panama is a key piece of evidence regarding secret U.S. sponsorship of Condor…”

Operation Condor ultimately failed, but the U.S. provided similar support and training to right-wing governments in Colombia and Central America throughout the 1980s in what senior military officers have called a “quiet, disguised, media-free approach” to repression and kill lists.

The U.S. School of the Americas (SOA) trained thousands of Latin American officers in the use of torture and death squads, as Major Joseph Blair, the SOA’s former chief of instruction described to John Pilger for his film, The War You Don’t See:

“The doctrine that was taught was that, if you want information, you use physical abuse, false imprisonment, threats to family members, and killing. If you can’t get the information you want, if you can’t get the person to shut up or stop what they’re doing, you assassinate them – and you assassinate them with one of your death squads.”

When the same methods were transferred to the U.S. hostile military occupation of Iraq after 2003, Newsweek headlined it “The Salvador Option.” A U.S. officer explained to Newsweek that U.S. and Iraqi death squads were targeting Iraqi civilians as well as resistance fighters. “The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists,” he said. “From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation.”

The United States sent two veterans of its dirty wars in Latin America to Iraq to play key roles in that campaign. Colonel James Steele led the U.S. Military Advisor Group in El Salvador from 1984 to 1986, training and supervising Salvadoran forces who killed tens of thousands of civilians. He was also deeply involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, narrowly escaping a prison sentence for his role supervising shipments from Ilopango air base in El Salvador to the U.S.-backed Contras in Honduras and Nicaragua.

In Iraq, Steele oversaw the training of the Interior Ministry’s Special Police Commandos – rebranded as “National” and later “Federal” Police after the discovery of their al-Jadiriyah torture center and other atrocities.

Bayan al-Jabr, a commander in the Iranian-trained Badr Brigade militia, was appointed Interior Minister in 2005, and Badr militiamen were integrated into the Wolf Brigade death squad and other Special Police units. Jabr’s chief adviser was Steven Casteel, the former intelligence chief for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in Latin America.

The Interior Ministry death squads waged a dirty war in Baghdad and other cities, filling the Baghdad morgue with up to 1,800 corpses per month, while Casteel fed the western media absurd cover stories, such as that the death squads were all “insurgents” in stolen police uniforms.

Meanwhile U.S. special operations forces conducted “kill-or-capture” night raids in search of Resistance leaders. General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of Joint Special Operations Command from 2003-2008, oversaw the development of a database system, used in Iraq and Afghanistan, that compiled cellphone numbers mined from captured cellphones to generate an ever-expanding target list for night raids and air strikes.

The targeting of cellphones instead of actual people enabled the automation of the targeting system, and explicitly excluded using human intelligence to confirm identities. Two senior U.S. commanders told the Washington Post that only half the night raids attacked the right house or person.

In Afghanistan, President Obama put McChrystal in charge of U.S. and NATO forces in 2009, and his cellphone-based “social network analysis” enabled an exponential increase in night raids, from 20 raids per month in May 2009 to up to 40 per night by April 2011.

As with the Lavender system in Gaza, this huge increase in targets was achieved by taking a system originally designed to identify and track a small number of senior enemy commanders and applying it to anyone suspected of having links with the Taliban, based on their cellphone data.

This led to the capture of an endless flood of innocent civilians, so that most civilian detainees had to be quickly released to make room for new ones. The increased killing of innocent civilians in night raids and airstrikes fueled already fierce resistance to the U.S. and NATO occupation and ultimately led to its defeat.

President Obama’s drone campaign to kill suspected enemies in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia was just as indiscriminate, with reports suggesting that 90% of the people it killed in Pakistan were innocent civilians.

And yet Obama and his national security team kept meeting in the White House every “Terror Tuesday” to select who the drones would target that week, using an Orwellian, computerized “disposition matrix” to provide technological cover for their life and death decisions.

Looking at this evolution of ever-more automated systems for killing and capturing enemies, we can see how, as the information technology used has advanced from telexes to cellphones and from early IBM computers to artificial intelligence, the human intelligence and sensibility that could spot mistakes, prioritize human life and prevent the killing of innocent civilians has been progressively marginalized and excluded, making these operations more brutal and horrifying than ever.

Nicolas has at least two good friends who survived the dirty wars in Latin America because someone who worked in the police or military got word to them that their names were on a death list, one in Argentina, the other in Guatemala. If their fates had been decided by an AI machine like Lavender, they would both be long dead.

As with supposed advances in other types of weapons technology, like drones and “precision” bombs and missiles, innovations that claim to make targeting more precise and eliminate human error have instead led to the automated mass murder of innocent people, especially women and children, bringing us full circle from one holocaust to the next.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022.

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

NYC Mayor Smeared A Grandmother As An “Outside Agitator” To Justify NYPD Assault On Columbia

Nahla Al-Arian lost more than 200 relatives in Israel's attacks on Gaza. Then Eric Adams said she was the reason police raided Columbia.

By Jeremy Scahill
May 4, 2024
Source: The Intercept

Nahla Al-Arian at a protest camp on Columbia University’s campus in NYC, on April 25, 2024. Photo: Laila Al-Arian

Nahla Aa-Arian has been living a nightmare for the past seven months, watching from afar as Israel carries out its scorched-earth war against her ancestral homeland in the Gaza Strip. Like many Palestinian Americans, the 63-year-old retired fourth-grade teacher from Tampa Bay, Florida, has endured seven months of a steady trickle of WhatsApp messages about the deaths of her relatives.

“You see, my father’s family is originally from Gaza, so they are a big family. And they are not only in Gaza City, but also in Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, other parts,” Al-Arian told me. Recently, the trickle of horrors became a flood: “It started with like 27, and then we lost count until I received this message from my relative who said at least 200 had died.”

The catastrophe was the backdrop for Al-Arian’s visit last week to Columbia University in New York City.

Al-Arian has five children, four of whom are journalists or filmmakers. On April 25, two of her daughters, Laila and Lama, both award-winning TV journalists, visited the encampment established by Columbia students to oppose the war in Gaza. Laila, an executive producer at Al Jazeera English with Emmys and a George Polk Award to her name, is a graduate of Columbia’s journalism school. Lama was the recipient of the prestigious 2021 Alfred I. duPont–Columbia Award for her reporting for Vice News on the 2020 explosion at the port of Beirut.

The two sisters traveled to Columbia as journalists to see the campus, and Nahla joined them.

“Of course, I tagged along. You know, why would I sit at the hotel by myself? And I wanted to really see those kids. I felt so down,” she said. “I was crying every day for Gaza, for the children being killed, for the women, the destruction of my father’s city, so I wanted to feel better, you know, to see those kids. I heard a lot about them, how smart they are, how organized, you know? So I said, let’s go along with you. So I went.”

Nahla Al-Arian was on the campus for less than an hour. She sat and listened to part of a teach-in, and shared some hummus with her daughters and some students. Then she left, feeling a glimmer of hope that people — at least these students — actually cared about the suffering and deaths being inflicted on her family in Gaza.

“I didn’t teach them anything. They are the ones who taught me. They are the ones who gave me hope,” she recalled. “I felt much better when I went there because I felt those kids are really very well informed, very well educated. They are the conscience of America. They care about the Palestinian people who they never saw or got to meet.”

Her husband posted a picture of Nahla, sitting on the lawn at the tent city erected by the student protesters, on his Twitter feed. “My wife Nahla in solidarity with the brave and very determined Columbia University students,” he wrote. Nahla left New York, inspired by her visit to Columbia, and returned to Virginia to spend time with her grandchildren.

A few days later, that one tweet by her husband would thrust Nahla Al-Arian into the center of a spurious narrative promoted by the mayor of New York City and major media outlets. She became the exemplar of the dangerous “outside agitator” who was training the students at Columbia. It was Nahla’s presence, according to Mayor Eric Adams, that was the “tipping point” in his decision to authorize the military-style raids on the campus.

USA vs. Al-Arian

On February 20, 2003, Nahla’s husband, Sami Al-Arian, a professor at the University of South Florida, was arrested and indicted on 53 counts of supporting the armed resistance group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The PIJ had been designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, and the charges against Al-Arian could have put him in prison for multiple life sentences, plus 225 years. It was a centerpiece case of the George W. Bush administration’s domestic “war on terror.” When John Ashcroft, Bush’s notorious attorney general, announced the indictment, he described the Florida-based scholar as “the North American leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Sami Al-Arian.”

Among the charges against him was conspiracy to kill or maim persons abroad, specifically in Israel, yet the prosecutors openly admitted Al-Arian had no connection to any violence. He was a well-known and deeply respected figure in the Tampa community, where he and Nahla raised their family. He was also, like many fellow Palestinians, a tenacious critic of U.S. support for Israel and of the burgeoning “global war on terror.” His arrest came just days before the U.S. invaded Iraq, a war Al-Arian was publicly opposed to.

The Al-Arian case was, at its core, a political attack waged by Bush’s Justice Department as part of a wider assault on the rights of Muslims in the U.S. The government launched a campaign, echoed in media outlets, to portray Al-Arian as a terror leader at a time when the Bush administration was ratcheting up its so-called global war on terror abroad, and when Muslims in the U.S. were being subjected to harassment, surveillance, and abuse. The legal case against Al-Arian was flimsy, and prosecutors largely sought to portray his protected First Amendment speech and charitable activities as terrorism.

The trial against Al-Arian, a legal permanent resident in the U.S., did not go well for federal prosecutors. In December 2005, following a six-month trial, a jury acquitted him on eight of the most serious counts and deadlocked 10-2 in favor of acquittal on the other nine. The judge made clear he was not pleased with this outcome, and the prosecutors were intent on relitigating the case. Al-Arian had spent two years in jail already without any conviction and was staring down the prospect of years more.

In the face of this reality and the toll the trial against him had taken on his family, Al-Arian agreed to take a plea deal. In 2006, he pleaded guilty to one count of providing nonviolent support to people the government alleged were affiliated with the PIJ. As part of the deal, Al-Arian would serve a short sentence and, with his residency revoked, get an expedited deportation. At no point during the government’s trial against Al-Arian did the prosecution provide evidence he was connected to any acts of violence.

For the next eight years following his release from prison in 2008, Al-Arian was kept under house arrest and effectively subjected to prosecutorial harassment as the government sought to place him in what his lawyers characterized as a judicial trap by compelling him to testify in a separate case. His defense lawyers alleged the federal prosecutor in the case, who had a penchant for pursuing high-profile, political cases, held an anti-Palestinian bias. Amnesty International raised concerns that Al-Arian had been abused in prison and he faced the prospect of yet another lengthy, costly court battle. The saga would stretch on for several more years before prosecutors ended the case and Al-Arian was deported from the United States.

“This case remains one of the most troubling chapters in this nation’s crackdown after 9-11,” Al-Arian’s lawyer, Jonathan Turley, wrote in 2014 when the case was officially dropped. “Despite the jury verdict and the agreement reached to allow Dr. Al-Arian to leave the country, the Justice Department continued to fight for his incarceration and for a trial in this case. It will remain one of the most disturbing cases of my career in terms of the actions taken by our government.”

That federal prosecutors approved Al-Arian’s plea deal gave a clear indication that the U.S. government knew Al-Arian was not an actual terrorist, terrorist facilitator, or any kind of threat; the Bush administration, after all, was not in the habit of letting suspected terrorists walk. Al-Arian and his family have always maintained his innocence and say that he was being targeted for his political beliefs and activism on behalf of Palestinians. He resisted the deal, Nahla Al-Arian said.

“He didn’t even want to accept it. He wanted to move on with another trial,” Nahla said. “But because of our pressure on him, let’s just get done with it [because] in the end, we’re going leave anyway. So that’s why.”

Sami and Nahla Al-Arian now live in Turkey. Sami is not allowed to visit his children and grandchildren stateside, but Nahla visits often.

NYPD Smear Campaign

The night of the raids on Columbia, police and other city officials began leaking to journalists that the wife of a convicted terrorist was on the campus, cavorting with the student protesters who had seized Hamilton Hall.

A reporter for CBS News tweeted the allegation, citing City Hall sources. During a broadcast on CNN late that night, the network showed Sami Al-Arian’s tweet with Nahla’s picture. “We’re learning tonight that the wife of an indicted terrorist was on the campus,” said host Laura Coates, adding that “a source” had tipped off CNN about Al-Arian’s tweet. (CNN and Coates, a former federal prosecutor, did not respond to requests for comment.)

Nahla was asleep in Virginia when the raids at Columbia unfolded and was unaware that she was becoming a figure in the emerging New York Police Department and media narratives. In the middle of the night, she checked her family’s WhatsApp group where her daughter had posted the since-deleted tweet from the CBS reporter and a clip from the CNN segment showing her photo.

“I woke up at 2 a.m. And, unfortunately, I took my phone and I looked. I was shocked. I couldn’t sleep for two or three hours,” she said. “I stayed awake feeling very depressed and feeling very shocked. I don’t care about myself. I care about those students that I admired. I didn’t want any harm to happen to them because of me or anyone else. And I felt betrayed by the authorities who resort to using these kinds of tricks, illegitimate, illegal tricks, shameful, shameful methods to attack those students. So I felt betrayed and angry. Is that the America that we believe in, the democracy?”

In a blitz of interviews the next two mornings, Adams, the New York mayor, repeatedly mentioned Al-Arian’s presence at Columbia and said it was a crucial part of his decision to authorize the military-style raid on the building. As evidence of “outside agitators” directing the protests, Adam cited Al-Arian as the one specific example to make his case.

“One of the individuals’ husband was arrested for and convicted for terrorism on a federal level,” Adams said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I knew that there was no way I was going to allow those children to be exploited the way they were being exploited, and many people thought that this was just a natural evolution of a protest. It was not. These were professionals that were here.”

Adams echoed the tone and tenor of his remarks on “CBS Mornings,” but on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Adams went further, saying Nahla’s presence at Columbia was the impetus for the raid.

“What really was a tipping point for me was when I learned that one of the outside agitator’s, professional’s husband was arrested for federal terrorism charges,” he said. “I knew I could not sit back and state that I’m going to allow this to continue to escalate. That is why I made that determination” — to raid the campus. (The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

“The mayor’s inflammatory comments about my mother’s brief visit to Columbia are being used to justify the heavy-handed and repressive police raid of the student protest,” said Laila Al-Arian, Nahla’s daughter. “It’s equally shameful that some journalists are simply regurgitating these sensationalist claims that are intended to smear students protesting Israel’s daily killing and maiming of Palestinians in Gaza.”

In a press conference on May 1, the NYPD acknowledged that Nahla Al-Arian was not on the campus during the raids, but continued to use her visit the previous week as a justification for the police assault on the protests. “Last week there was the wife of somebody who had been convicted for material support to terrorism on campus,” said Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism. “We have no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing on her part, but that’s not somebody who I would want necessarily influencing my child if I were a parent of somebody at Columbia.”

The smear campaign against Nahla went far and wide online, particularly in the right-wing media and social media ecosystem. The Israeli actor Noa Tishby posted a video featuring the picture of Nahla’s visit to Columbia and falsely said she had been “convicted with connections to terrorism financing.” Nahla has never been convicted or charged with any crimes.

The New York Post ran an article with the headline: “Wife of convicted terrorist Sami Al-Arian was hanging out at Columbia encampment before dramatic raid.”

For Nahla and the Al-Arian family, none of this is shocking. They have endured more than 20 years of surveillance and trials that have displaced and scattered the family, continuing a long history of what happened to them and other Palestinians throughout the past 75 years. The Al-Arians themselves are descendants of Palestinians expelled from their homes during the 1948 Nakba.

Even as they express outrage at how Nahla was smeared, the Al-Arian family is quick to point out that their suffering pales in comparison to the Palestinians of Gaza, including the scores of their own family members who have died in an Israeli war fueled by the U.S. government.

“I just feel angry because I am being used to hurt those students, to find an excuse to invade their place and to arrest those students. And I feel so terrible,” Nahla said. “It’s also a distraction from the genocide that’s happening in Gaza. Just focusing on a stupid thing like this — they just distract people so people will not think about what’s happening in Gaza. The killing that’s still happening every day, every minute, that destruction. I can’t believe it. They focus on my story and they ignore the most depressing story, which is the killing of innocent people. This is shameful.”

The Fiction of the “Outside Agitator”

With the “outside agitator” narrative, the media and politicians are puking up the worst of this country’s past.

By Dave Zirin

May 4, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair



More than 2,000 people have been arrested on US college campuses for peacefully protesting Israel’s war on the people of Palestine. For the “crime” of forming tent cities, or “encampments” on campus, students have been attacked by mobs, brutalized by police, and even faced gunfire at Columbia University after occupying a building. (I occupied several administration buildings in decades past and never had to face live ammo.)

President Joe Biden gave his tacit approval to release the hounds when he said, “Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest, it is against the law.”

If that’s the case, then police and violent counterprotesters should have been arrested in droves. Biden’s wink and nod is also politically derelict; it will repel the youth voters he desperately needs to defeat Donald Trump. Biden is sacrificing his election chances and perhaps any pretense of democracy for his support for Israel’s war crimes.

An incurious media in a state of bloodlust has egged on the violence. CNN’s Dana Bash’s comparison of campus protests to 1930s Germany is an insult to every victim of the Holocaust and their descendants—and I have met several descendants of Jewish Holocaust victims at the encampments. There is a Jewish presence at every one of the three dozen encampments that I have been able to research. In a sane media world, Bash would be looking for work, perhaps with a sign that reads, “Will lie for food.”

This is what the powerful do when they lose an argument. There is no moral or political justification for what Israel is doing to the people of Gaza, and students, professors, and community members are pointing that out. Being unable to argue with reason, political leaders have turned to deceit, state repression, and encouraging stochastic terrorism.

We have heard the greatest lie: that the encampments are “antisemitic”—an Orwellian falsehood told to justify state violence. But there is another dangerous narrative taking root: that those arrested are “outside agitators.” It has been striking to see the exhuming and resuscitation of that relic of an insult. One would have thought that calling citizens “outside agitators” had died of shame decades ago. It was used to slander Black Lives Matter protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, but in the mouths of politicians like NYC Mayor Eric Adams, the phrase is having a renaissance. The media and politicians are puking up the worst of this country’s past.

“Outside agitator” is a phrase with its origins in the late 1940s during the earliest days of the Black freedom struggle. It was first said by John Birchers and Jim Crow cops to denigrate and slander civil rights activists. Their argument was that Black people in the South were more than content with white supremacy until a bunch of Northern, radical, carpetbagging communists showed up to tell them that there was something wrong in the world.

Incredibly and ironically, one of the best refutations of the phrase came from Jackie Robinson in 1949, at a congressional House Un-American Activities Committee hearing. This was where Robinson—in the great regret of his life—criticized Paul Robeson for his communist sympathies. But that’s not all Robinson had to say. Little note was made of this in media reports that celebrated the Robeson takedown, but the trailblazing baseball player also said that


“…every single Negro who is worth his salt is going to resent slurs and discrimination because of his race, and he’s going to use every bit of intelligence he has to stop it. This has got absolutely nothing to do with what Communists may or may not do. Just because it is a Communist who denounces injustice in the courts, police brutality, and lynching when it happens doesn’t change the truth of the charges. Blacks were stirred up long before there was a CP and will be stirred up after unless Jim Crow has disappeared.”

One could rewrite this for today’s moment. College students are not stirred up because an adult shows up, bullhorn in hand, telling everyone to gather in the quad with tents to risk arrest, future career prospects, and state violence. They are stirred up by mass graves in Gaza; the killings of civilians, journalists, and children; and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. They are repelled that this genocide is being underwritten with our tax dollars. That’s what pushes people into action, not some imaginary outside agitator.

What the media elites and DC warmongers cannot compute is that they believed this generation was apathetic at best. Now seeing them rise up on college campuses across the country is causing them to malfunction. When Biden proclaims, “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent” while professors are being thrown to the ground and led away in handcuffs, it doesn’t take an “outside agitator” for students to see that something is rotten in our democracy.

The boomer elites have lost a generation, and instead of listening to the young, they search for excuses. What they cannot comprehend is that maybe they lost this generation—including many of my fellow Jews—because they have been selling a lie about Israel and the United States being forces for good, and the young are tired of pretending that it is anything other than an ugly hoax.

Dave Zirin

Dave Zirin, Press Action's 2005 and 2006 Sportswriter of the Year, has been called "an icon in the world of progressive sports." Robert Lipsyte says he is "the best young sportswriter in the United States." He is both a columnist for SLAM Magazine, a regular contributor to the Nation Magazine, and a semi-regular op-ed writer for the Los Angeles Times.

Zirin's latest book is Welcome to the Terrordome:The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports(Haymarket Books). With a foreward by rapper Chuck D, the book is an engaging and provocative look at the world of sports like no other.

Zirin's other books include The Muhammad Ali Handbook, a dynamic, engaging and informative look at one of the most iconic figures of our age and What’s My Name, Fool? Sports & Resistance in the United States (Haymarket Books), a book that is part athletic interview compendium, part history and civil rights primer, and part big-business exposé which surveys the “level” playing fields of sports and brings inequities to the surface to show how these uneven features reflect disturbing trends that define our greater society. He has also authored a children's book called My Name is Erica Montoya de la Cruz (RC Owen).

Zirin is a weekly television commentator [via satellite] for The Score, Canada's number one 24-hour sports network. He has brought his blend of sports and politics to multiple television programs including ESPN's Outside the Lines, ESPN Classic, the BBC's Extratime, CNBC's The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch (debating steroids with Jose Canseco and John Rocker), C-SPAN's BookTV, the WNBC Morning News in New York City; and Democracy Now with Amy Goodman.

He has also been on numerous national radio programs including National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation; Air America and XM Radio's On the Real' with Chuck D and Gia'na Garel; The Laura Flanders Show, Radio Nation with Marc Cooper; ESPN radio; Stars and Stripes Radio; WOL's The Joe Madison Show; Pacifica's Hard Knock Radio, and many others. He is the Thursday morning sports voice on WBAI's award winning "Wake Up Call with Deepa Fernandes."

Zirin is also working on A People's History of Sports, part of Howard Zinn's People's History series for the New Press. In addition he just signed to do a book with Scribner (Simon & Schuster.) He is also working on a sports documentary with Barbara Kopple's Cabin Creek films on sports and social movements in the United States.

Zirin's writing has also appeared in New York Newsday, the Baltimore Sun, CBSNEWS.com, The Pittsburgh Courier, The Source, and numerous other publications.

The US Cannot Allow the UAE to Procure Chinese “Brain Control Weapons” (Part 2 of 2)


by CJ Werleman | Mar 11, 2022

The burgeoning UAE-China security alliance and the purchase of Chinese military technologies to repress and control minorities and dissidents by the United Arab Emirates should frighten every American and human rights advocate.

Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Monday, July 22, 2019. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

**This is the second of a two-part article series covering the UAE’s growing ties with China, and how this will severely impact the US. The first part covered how the UAE and China’s relationship is strengthening, and why this is concerning for the US.

LONG READ

~~~

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) caught the United States off guard when it suddenly and unexpectedly announced it was suspending talks with the US regarding the $23 billion arms package promised to Abu Dhabi by the Trump administration in 2020. The move was immediately described as a “significant shake-up” between the two countries, and evidence of the UAE’s drift away from Washington and towards Beijing.

In this part two of Inside Arabia’s analysis of the burgeoning security ties between Beijing and Abu Dhabi, we take a closer look at the potential moral and ethical consequences of this nefarious relationship, one forged between two authoritarian regimes. The alliance may soon mean more suppression of residents and visitors to the UAE, along with those in neighboring states.

Beyond the obvious economic benefits, Emirati rulers are bedazzled by China’s eminence as the world’s most sophisticated hi-tech totalitarian state. And high on their wish list is every surveillance technology they can solicit, borrow, and buy from Beijing to maintain a firm grip on power and control at home, and also expand their colonial exploits in the Middle East and North Africa.

Emirati rulers are bedazzled by China’s eminence as the world’s most sophisticated hi-tech totalitarian state.

Quite simply, China is the “poster child” for every insecure autocratic regime on the planet. “It is in the field of information technology and data exploitation that the security partnership between Abu Dhabi and Beijing is growing in strategic depth,” observes Dr. Andreas Krieg, an assistant professor at the Defense Studies Department of King’s College London.

More to the point: Beijing is willing to give to Abu Dhabi what the United States won’t, because of American voters’ concerns about democracy, human rights, and rule of law.

For instance, the US recently put China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences, along with a dozen other affiliated biotechnology research institutes, on an export blacklist for allegedly helping the Chinese military develop “brain control weaponry” for potential offensive use.

“Brain control weaponry” is a term used by Chinese government officials to describe any tool or equipment that interferes with a person’s ability to control his own thoughts and movements during combat operations.

In December 2021, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters that China had opted to used technologies for surveillance and tracking in an effort to “pursue control over its people.” While another US official claimed the Asian superpower is using “emerging biotechnologies to develop future military applications, including gene editing, human performance enhancement, and brain-machine interfaces,” as reported by the national security magazine Defense Post.

China has test-driven many of these biotechnologies in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Zone, where Uyghur Muslims are subjected to an array of human rights violations, including mass detention, forced family separations, forced abortions, forced sterilizations, forced marriages, torture, and worse, according to multiple reports.

The UAE has become one of the fastest adopters of China’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology.

Now, while there’s no evidence the UAE has acquired “brain control weaponry” from China – at least for now – we do know the Emirate government has not only become one of the fastest adopters of China’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology but also mimicked China’s Orwellian named “Smart and Safe Cities” infrastructure project. This project deploys hundreds of thousands of CCTV cameras and facial recognition capabilities as well as infrared technology throughout Chinese cities, in launching surveillance projects such as “Police Without Policeman” and “Oyoon” (the Arabic word for “Eyes”) in 2016.

Implemented first in Dubai, Oyoon uses facial recognition technology and auto-analysis on data captured by tens of thousands of video feeds from cameras across the city that feedback into a central command center, observes the technology magazine Wired. Each of these cameras is equipped with biometric surveillance capabilities and is deployed along roads, public transit areas, shopping centers, and popular tourist destinations.

[UAE’s Growing Ties with China Threaten US Interests and Security]

[What’s Behind the UAE’s Shifting Role in the Middle East]

[The UAE’s Dangerous Balancing Act Between the US and China]

But as noted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Public Policy Center, the Emirati government, like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), “makes use of a charitable interpretation of the term ‘criminals’ to include not only criminals like thieves and robbers, but also political dissidents, human rights activists, and journalists potentially threatening the monarchy.” It is important to remember that the UAE has one of the highest rates of political prisoners per capita in the world.

Amnesty accused Emirati rulers of “taking measures to silence citizens and residents.”

In its most recent report on the UAE, the human rights organization Amnesty International accused Emirati rulers of “taking measures to silence citizens and residents who expressed critical opinions on Covid-19 and other social and political issues.” It also pointed to the mass arrest without trial of human rights defenders, activists, and artists under draconian anti-terrorism laws, along with the use of torture to extract false confessions.

It’s little wonder the UAE views China as its Big Brother for “Big Brother-esq” surveillance technology.

This security relationship was made even more formal in 2019 when Abu Dhabi Investment Office signed a deal with Chinese AI firm SenseTime to base its regional research and development headquarters in the Emirates. The agreement establishes the UAE as China’s hub for biotechnology in the Middle East, according to Dubai-based newspaper The National.

Bill Marczak is a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab, the research group that discovered an Israeli cyber-surveillance company had developed technology (“Pegasus”) to hack into a target’s WhatsApp account, a tool purchased by the UAE. In an interview, Marczak said that surveillance companies are “very interested in doing business in the Gulf because these governments are very likely to pay much higher prices than Western governments.”


The UAE’s has a history of weaponizing surveillance technology against the US.

Clearly, the United States must go further in pressuring the UAE to distance itself from Chinese surveillance companies. This is especially critical given the UAE’s history in weaponizing surveillance technology against the US. In fact, the UAE’s cybersecurity firm Dark Matter hired a clandestine team under the operation name “Project Raven,” which included more than a dozen former US intelligence operatives to spy on dissidents and critics of the monarchy, including US citizens.

“Technology has indeed played a role in elevating the power of autocrats, as it has in China and the UAE. To staunch the rising tide of authoritarian rule, actions taken by the United States towards China, need to be similarly applied to the UAE to conserve national security and democratic principles,” warns the Public Policy Center.

Burgeoning UAE-China security ties should concern every American because if the United States is serious about its commitment to advancing democracy and human rights, it cannot tolerate “brain control weapons” and other inexcusable hi-tech surveillance technologies falling into the hands of repressive regimes, including those considered allies.


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CJ Werleman is a journalist, published author, political commentator, analyst on conflict and terrorism, and activist who has dedicated his career to exposing discrimination and injustices against Muslim communities around the world. @cjwerleman

The War on Logic: Contradictions and Absurdities in the House’s Military Spending Bill

There is simply no logic to it—other than the inexorable logic of war profiteering and global control.

by

Richard Eskow

Congress seems to approach military interventions as if it were building mousetraps. It makes it easy to get into them, but almost impossible to get out. (Photo: Scott Nelson/Getty Images)

The House Armed Services Committee just passed a defense appropriations bill filled with moral contradictions and illogical absurdities. Consider:

It removes some racist symbols in the military, but preserves Trump’s ability to use the military against anti-racist demonstrators.

It abdicates Congress’ responsibility to declare war, but prevents the executive branch from moving toward peace.

It was passed by elected officials, but gives a single general the ability to overrule an elected branch of government.

It requires officials to state definitively that removing troops won’t harm security interests, but not to say whether keeping them there will—despite the destabilizing and destructive impact of our troop presence to date in the Middle East.

It is supported by deficit hawks, but would result in 50 percent higher military spending than the last Cold War budget.

The Military and Racism

The Committee’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) requires the removal of Confederate names and flags from military bases. That is an unequivocally good and important thing. Most Americans now understand that the Confederacy was a brief and violent insurrection against lawful authority, conducted solely to help a few wealthy people keep holding other people in brutal bondage. Forcing Black servicemembers and civilians to live and work in the presence of these names and symbols was an extension of slavery culture.

But a number of House Democrats joined with Republicans to block restrictions on Trump’s ability (or a future president’s) to use the military against peaceful protestors, as Trump threatened to do against Black Lives Matter protesters in early June of this year. Another Republican, Sen. Tom Cotton (considered a potential presidential candidate) tweeted: 

If necessary, (use) the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry—whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters."

Cotton, a former military officer, understands that "no quarter" means refusing to accept the lawful surrender of an enemy. Cotton and Trump were talking about the Insurrection Act, a 213-year-old law which gives the president the power to use the military inside the country under certain circumstances. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) drafted an amendment in response to these threats, and to the misuse of paramilitary police forces against BLM demonstrators which would have limited that power. It was killed, however, with the help of Democrats on Committee like Reps. Kendra Horn (Okla.), Xochitl Torres Small (N.M.), Jared Golden (Maine), Elaine Luria (Va.), Anthony Brindisi (N.Y.) and Gil Cisneros (Calif.)

Some people point out that the Insurrection Act has been used for good, most notably when Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy used troops to protect brave Black children who were integrating Southern schools. But the Escobar amendment would not have prevented that. It would have merely required the president to certify that states were unwilling or unable to quell an unlawful disturbance or rebellion, and have given Congress the ability to terminate a president’s use of the Act.

The result? Trump can still send troops to attack Black demonstrators, but they’ll be deployed from bases with more politically correct names.

The Opposite of Authority

Democrats also helped passed two amendments that would make it harder for Trump to reduce troop levels in Afghanistan and Europe. The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to declare war, which it has not done in countries where we are currently at war.  It gave the president authorization to use military force in the Middle East in 2001, but there is considerable controversy about the extent of that authorization. Trump has not provided Congress with an annual report on his administration’s view of its warmaking authority, which he was legally obligated to do on March 1.

Congress has not demanded that report, nor has it declared war. And yet, in a bizarre inversion of its constitutional authority, The Committee passed two amendments barring a president from reducing military presence without Congressional authority—in places where it never declared war in the first place!

One amendment, introduced by Democrat Jason Crow of Colorado, restricts the president’s ability to reduce troop levels in Afghanistan unless he reports to Congress about the effect of troop reductions on a list of factors that is several pages long. This is a bureaucratic snarl and an exercise in predicting the unpredictable. It’s clearly designed to impose an impossible burden, as is made clear by the requirement that all of the following officials must concur with the report:

- the Secretary of State;

- the Director of National Intelligence;

- the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs;

- the Commander of United States Command;

- the Commander of US forces in Afghanistan; and,

- the US Permanent Representative to NATO.

All of these officials must put their careers on the line by stating that none of the many bad things listed in the amendment will happen. How many people would take that risk?  The amendment doesn’t require them to declare that keeping troop levels higher will have no negative consequences, even though that is also clearly possible. This makes it clear: if you want to protect yourself, block these withdrawals.

The Crow amendment even requires the officials to certify that troop reduction “will not unduly increase the risk to United States personnel in Afghanistan.”  A complete withdrawal would reduce that risk to zero, but the amendment doesn’t address that possibility.

The General’s Veto

The other such amendment, from Democrat Ruben Gallego of Arizona, blocks the president from reducing troop levels in Germany and elsewhere in Europe until Congress receives separate certifications from the Defense Secretary and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that it would not threaten military and security goals.

To my knowledge, these two amendments are the first time a military officer (currently US Army General Mark Milley) has been given the power to overrule a president, simply by withholding his “concurrence.” The president could theoretically fire him, but that would trigger a political firestorm.

It doesn’t take a rose-colored view of Trump to see the dangers in this approach. Trump is no peace president. He hasn’t ended our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite his campaign promises, and he has dropped more bombs in the Middle East than either Bush or Obama. He’s brought us to the brink of war with Venezuela and North Korea, and he has heaped praise on brutal authoritarians like Bolsonaro of Brazil, Duterte of the Philippines, and Modi of India.

But Congress hasn’t acted to end any of those threats and escalations. It has chosen to block the president when, and only when, he might reduce our military presence in other countries.

The War Dividend

Then there’s the sheer size of this appropriation. The Orwellian-named “defense budget” was already larger than that of the next ten countries combined – three times China’s and eleven times Russia’s, according to estimates. And that’s not counting the intelligence budget. Or Homeland Security’s. Or the cost of the Department of Energy’s work on nuclear weapons.

In 1991, as the Cold War was ending, the budget was $280 million, which is $527 billion in 2021 dollars. The House Armed Services Committee just unanimously approved a budget of more than $740 billion. That doesn’t include the “Overseas Contingency Operations” budget that funds the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for which the Defense Department is requesting $69 billion. When this cost is added to the NDAA budget, the total is approximately $810 billion – an increase of more than 50 percent over the country’s defense spending in 1991, at the close of the Cold War.

Where’s that “peace dividend” we were promised?

Speaking of peace: This figure is more than 14 times larger than the “international budget” line item for diplomacy. And yet, the Trump Administration is proposing to cut its international budget request by nearly $12 billion, from $55.8 billion in fiscal year 2021 to $43.9 billion in FY 2021.

The War on Logic

There is simply no logic to it—other than the inexorable logic of war profiteering and global control. Even if you believe intelligence reports about election hacking and bounties on US troops, neither of those activities will be stopped by high-cost items like the F-35 fighter or the Navy’s billion-dollar. This bill was approved by a vote of 56-0, so it is highly likely to pass.

A few representatives fought for common-sense ideas. Rep. Escobar introduced her Insurrection Act amendment. Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) fought the Gallego amendment on troops in Germany.

And there was one piece of good news: the Committee adopted an amendment from Khanna to end logistical support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen. The Saudi assault on that country has created a humanitarian catastrophe, one Congress should have prevented.

But Congress seems to approach military interventions as if it were building mousetraps. It makes it easy to get into them, but almost impossible to get out.

Richard (RJ) Eskow is Senior Advisor for Health and Economic Justice at Social Security Works and the host of The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow on Free Speech TV. Follow him on Twitter: @rjeskow 



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