US-Backed Ukrainian Publication Releases New ‘Enemies List’

by Daniel McAdams Posted onJune 10, 2024

The US government-affiliated Ukrainian web publication “Data Journalism Agency” (TEXTY) has just released a report attacking hundreds of prominent American individuals and organizations as enemies for not supporting sending more US money and weapons to Ukraine.

The report, titled “Roller Coaster: From Trumpists to Communists. The forces in the U.S. impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it,” intends to smear American politicians, journalists, and social media influencers as tools of Russia, writing:

Most of the people in our study do not have direct, proven ties to the Russian government or propagandists. However, the arguments they use to urge authorities to distance themselves from Ukraine echo key messages of Russian propaganda aimed at depriving Ukrainians of the ability to defend themselves with Western weapons and funds. (emphasis added)

Although the “enemies list” purports to correct disinformation about Ukraine spread by those on its list, the report itself is full of crude disinformation. For example this bit:

Even long-debunked myths continue to surface, such as claims of Nazi dominance and American Biolabs in Ukraine and the portrayal of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity as a coup.

The organization’s assertion that these claims are “long-debunked” may be wishful thinking, but back on planet reality even mainstream, pro-Ukraine media sites in the US wring their hands over the disturbing, extremist images coming out of the country. For example, NBC News wrote that, “Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real, even if Putin’s ‘denazification’ claim isn’t.” Newsweek wondered, “Why Have So Many Neo-Nazis Rallied to Ukraine’s Cause?” Even before the current conflict, mainstream pro-Ukraine publications such as Reuters worried in 2918 about “Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem.”

As to the biolabs, none other than Mother of the Maidan Victoria Nuland admitted in a US Senate hearing that there were biolabs in Ukraine. Ah, but one may counter that these were not “American biolabs.” In fact with the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop now absolutely confirmed during his trial, a report by the New York Post two years ago based on the laptop also must be considered accurate. According to the article, “Russia’s assertion that President Biden’s son Hunter was ‘financing… biological laboratories in Ukraine’ was based in truth, according to e-mails reviewed by The Post.”

And on whether the Maidan events of 2014 were a “Revolution of Dignity” or a coup, we again only need turn to Victoria Nuland’s infamous phone call with US Ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, for all the evidence needed that the US was micromanaging the removal of an elected leader and replacing him with hand-picked US puppets.

The report also includes such prominent American politicians and journalists as Sen. JD Vance, Sen. Rand Paul, Rep. Matt Gaetz, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rep. Jim Jordan, and Col. Douglas Macgregor.

Even our friends at Antiwar.com… and your own correspondent (!) find ourselves appearing on the Ukrainian “enemies list”:

As the report states:

There are 391 individuals and 76 organizations in our list. These include politicians, political movements and groups, media and journalists, experts, and think tanks (some individuals appear in multiple categories).

Perhaps what is most shocking about this attack on American citizens is the fact that the Data Journalism Agency (TEXTY) has a long affiliation with the US Government itself! In fact, the founder of the publication Anatoly Bondarenko appears prominently on a US Government website as a participant in the US State Department’s “TechCamp” project.

The Data Journalism Agency (TEXTY) is listed as an “Implementing Partner” of the US Agency for International Development’s Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services/ TAPAS Project.

The Ukrainians seemingly love to make lists of their “enemies.” One of their most notorious of these is the infamous “kill list” put out by the Mirotvorets Center in Kiev. From that list several have already been murdered by Ukraine, including prominent Russian journalist Daria Dugina.

One wonders how, for example, former US President Donald Trump and dozens of members of the US Congress will react when they hear that US tax dollars are being sent to Ukraine for US-backed Ukrainian organizations to make “hate lists” and “kill lists” of patriotic Americans like themselves.

Daniel McAdams is Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and co-Producer/co-Host, Ron Paul Liberty Report. Daniel served as the foreign affairs, civil liberties, and defense/intel policy advisor to U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, MD (R-Texas) from 2001 until Dr. Paul’s retirement at the end of 2012. From 1993-1999 he worked as a journalist based in Budapest, Hungary, and traveled through the former communist bloc as a human rights monitor and election observer. Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

How the US is Scrambling to Stop Ukraine Peace Plan by China & Brazil w/ Vijay Prashad

By Vijay Prashad, Eugene Puryear , Rania Khalek 

June 5, 2024

Source: BreakThrough News

While world leaders prepare to convene in Switzerland for a “peace summit” ostensibly called to advance peace in Ukraine despite excluding Russia from the meeting, Brazil and China have proposed an alternative. Both countries released a joint statement calling for an international peace conference with equal participation from both Russia and Ukraine. Vijay Prashad, the Executive Director of the Tricontinental Institute, calls the Switzerland summit a “facade” and explains how the US and NATO are thwarting any real chances for peace.ussia and Ukraine. Vijay Prashad, the Executive Director of the Tricontinental Institute, calls the Switzerland summit a “facade” and explains how the US and NATO are thwarting any real chances for peace.

Zelensky’s Peace Summit Is Just an Echo Chamber

The Ukrainian President will use his platform in Switzerland to hector his supporters to send more weapons and money to Kyiv

by Ian Proud Posted onJune 10, 2024

In one of his more bizarre outbursts, Volodymir Zelensky, red of face, jabbing his finger, recently accused China of being “an instrument in the hands of Putin”. He said this at the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore as part of a world tour, in which he is encouraging participation at what Ukraine calls the Global Peace Summit.  This will take place in Switzerland from 15-16 June, and China has said it will not attend. Zelensky was treading a now well-worn path in which he and other senior Ukrainian figures insult countries that don’t bend to Ukraine’s demands for support in the war with Russia.

He believes that China has been discouraging countries from attending the Summit but provided no evidence of this.  Some reports suggest that up to 107 States may attend.  Although, in addition to Xi Jinping, there’s a chance Joe Biden may also not attend because of a fund-raiser in Texas.  Those who do send country delegations will undoubtedly enjoy the comforts of the Bürgenstock Resort on the shores of Lake Lucerne.  Though I suspect many will be confused about the purpose of the event.

For, despite its billing, this won’t be a Global Summit. If it was, it would undoubtedly look at the appalling situation in Israel and Gaza, and no doubt other conflict hotspots across the world too. It might consider more broadly how to strengthen the adherence of states to their obligations under the UN Charter or review progress in strengthening international peacebuilding architecture. But it won’t do those things.

Indeed, the Swiss Government, which is hosting, refers to it as the Summit on Peace in Ukraine.  Although it isn’t clear that Switzerland is in charge, as most of the press reporting about invitations appears to issue from Zelensky’s office. So this raises a diplomatic question as to the precise scope of the event itself?  Summits are normally hosted by the countries in which they take place; those countries shape the agenda and try to steer a communique that represents the best outcome of what can be agreed among the parties. In this case, there appears to be a diplomatic tug of love between the Swiss and the Ukrainians about who is running the show.

For Ukraine, the Summit is explicitly an opportunity to push Zelensky’s so-called ten-point peace formula, which is essentially the points he made in a speech at UNGA.  The formula does contain some helpful lines on nuclear safety, food and energy security and environmental protection.  But it also contains three points that are probably unachievable.  Namely, the full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, by which it means Ukraine’s border pre-2014.  This, according to Zelensky, ‘is not up to negotiations’. Secondly, the full withdrawal of Russia’s military and, third, the establishment of a tribunal to investigate alleged Russian war crimes.

However, Ukraine’s pre-2014 border won’t be restored because the west tacitly gave up on Crimea in 2014 and focussed its energy instead on attempts to mediate a peace in the Donbass. These attempts notably included the Franco-German orchestrated Normandy format, which failed in the teeth of US and UK interference; namely, the locking in of sanctions against Russia under an unattainable notion of full Minsk II implementation. European leaders won’t commit to a plan where retaking Crimea is a key element, indeed, western war aims in Ukraine are now completely unclear, beyond helping Ukraine to hold on from further territorial losses.

Even though hardline and now sidelined figures like Boris Johnson and Liz Truss have long supported the aspiration to re-take Crimea, Ukraine does not now and will never have the military capabilities to do so.  So the second and related aspiration of the full withdrawal of Russian troops is also unrealistic, however the map is drawn. Using western weapons to strike targets in the west of Russia won’t change the balance of power on the battlefield in Ukraine which favours Russia. It also won’t decisively shift Russian public opinion away from support for Putin in this war. Rather, it will ramp up the risk of escalation by Russia, which has still not committed its forces to the fight in Ukraine, in any numbers.

While there is clearly a need to investigate allegations of war crimes committed by Russian forces during the war, the west will struggle to deliver this, not least because of the inevitable pressure to consider allegations of war crimes committed by Ukrainian forces.  And as neither Ukraine nor Russia are signatories to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, neither country would recognise the legitimacy of any investigation should it materialise.  That would render the endeavour toothless in the absence of more coercive measures to hold either country to account under international law.

So, Zelensky’s plan is nothing more than Ukraine’s maximalist position that will inevitably be bargained down in any future peace negotiations that take place with Russia.

But, and here’s the rub, Russia hasn’t been invited to the Swiss Summit.  The Swiss Government believes that Russia should be invited. The Swiss MFA website says “Switzerland is convinced that Russia must be involved in this (peace) process. A peace process without Russia is unthinkable.” But Zelensky clearly doesn’t agree. It has been an explicit aim of Ukrainian foreign policy to exclude Russia from any dialogue on a settlement of the conflict.

Indeed, this mirrors long-standing UK policy of talking about Russia and not to Russia. Rather, and in a recent visit to Madrid, Zelensky encouraged western partners to force Russia to make peace.  By that, he meant specifically to continue to provide Ukraine with offensive weapons that it can use it strike directly into Russia. Or force Russia into peace by continuing to make war, even though there is no evidence that NATO plans to join the fight in any decisive way.

And just to be clear, on the summitry itself, Zelensky’s so-called Peace Formula isn’t a communique as the Swiss are (or should be) holding the pen. The Swiss are shooting for peace. But, whenever Zelensky talks about peace, what he really means is ‘keep funding the war’.  So this creates a recipe for diplomats finessing any public statements at the end of a Summit that will, most likely, achieve nothing.

Since his unhelpful comments about China, Zelensky has also suggested that Donald Trump is a loser. The event in Switzerland is shaping up to be another echo chamber for an increasingly boorish Zelensky to publicly hector countries that don’t agree with his deluded and completely unsupportable position.  It’s time for real peace talks with Russia to begin.

Ian Proud is a former British diplomat and was the Economic Counsellor at the British Embassy in Moscow from July 2014 to 2019.  While in Russia, Ian advised UK Ministers on Russia’s political economy, and that of neighbouring former Soviet states, including Ukraine. He recently published his memoir, a Misfit in Moscow: how British diplomacy in Russia failed, 2014-2019.

Exurbia Now: A Liberal Dissects MAGA Pathology

Review of Exurbia Now: The Battleground of American Democracy by David Masciotra (Melville House, 2024)

By Chris Green

May 31, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.




I think this is a book of some merit although I disagree with plenty of its content. I first learned of it a few months ago watching a Youtube clip of a friendly interview with the author conducted on a favorite progressive podcast of mine, The Majority Report with Sam Seder.

The author is a liberal journalist who lives in northwestern Indiana. He has published books celebrating Jesse Jackson and the music of John Cougar Mellencamp. He has written for such publications as The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Salon.com and Alternet. He teaches at Indiana University Northwest.

The book is a reflection on the pathology of MAGA voters and in that way is similar to another recently released book that has gotten much more publicity: The Roots of Rural Rage: The Threat To American Democracy by Paul Waldman and Tom Schaller. However, while Waldman and Schaller focus on rural America as the source of MAGA strength, Masciotra locates that strength in exurbs. Exurbs are communities of relatively recent origin around the US that have sprung up between suburbs and rural areas: their residents tend toward the higher end of the income scale. Exurbs have been notable in the last few decades as landing spots for middle and upper class whites fleeing the increasing racial diversity of suburbs.

I think this book’s focus on exurbia as the prime locus of Trump’s movement is valuable. The stereotype of the MAGA voter is the ignorant, rural, poor or working class redneck. There is some of that in Trump’s base but the latter, to a surprising extent, actually lean toward the higher end of the income spectrum. Some Trump supporters may not be college educated but they have become at least moderately wealthy as small business owners or in such roles as independent contractors in construction trades. In Marxist parlance, a lot of Trump supporters are indeed petty bourgeois–small business owners, educated professionals, police officers and the like who have ended up residing in exurbs. Masciotra relies on the research of left-wing political scientist Anthony Dimaggio for this insight.

Here are a few more of the book’s strengths:

–it is well researched, relying on the most recent academic scholarship about the sociological subjects discussed in the book. It provides brief, interesting semi-sociological surveys of some of the suburbs and exurbs in the Chicago metro area (both in Illinois and northwest Indiana).

–Masciotra’s account of Donald Trump’s con job against the rustbelt city of Gary, Indiana in 1993 is useful. I had not heard of this story before. Over the resistance of Gary’s mayor and city council, Trump got the Indiana gaming commission to approve the construction of a casino in Gary with promises (which he would not fulfill) of directing a portion of the casino’s profits to various charities, to renovate a dilapidated Sheraton hotel across the street from Gary’s city hall and to bring in local investors on the casino. The local investors later sued Trump for reneging on his promises, initially winning $1.3 million but the final ruling from the courts was that Trump’s promises were verbal and thus legally non-binding. I agree strongly with Masciotra’s denunciations of casinos as a very poor mode of economic development for rustbelt cities and other low-income areas around the country.

–his account of the Area Redevelopment Act is interesting. This was signed into law by President Kennedy in 1961 and, according to the author, was a highly successful jobs program focused on infrastructure development in rural areas. Funding for the legislation was derailed in June 1963 after powerful congressional southern Democrats threw a tantrum over Kennedy’s nationally televised speech endorsing civil rights. Masciotra notes that public universities are the largest employers in a number of states, which he argues is proof that the government can be an effective job creator. There is something to this last point although if he has in mind–as I think he does–the non-profit health care systems operated by public universities in different states, then I can only say that such models are not worthy of admiration.

–he describes a case of white flight from one of Chicago’s Illinois suburbs into exurbs in the 1990’s. In that case, after blacks began moving into a higher income suburb, local whites raised dog whistle protests about lower property values and higher crime rates. However, property values did not plunge, and crime did not rise. Local whites alleged a conspiracy among cops, city government and media to cover up the truth about crime and property values. They were determined to find any justification to flee from black folks to what they felt was the safety of exurbia.

–his reflections on megachurches and the irrational attachment of right wing white American males to semi-automatic weapons and heavy-duty trucks are highly sensible.

Limited Liberal Horizons

On the book’s weaknesses:

He harps constantly upon the threat to American democracy of exurban Trump voters with their racism, homophobia, transphobia, religious extremism and general authoritarian, anti-social worldview. I don’t disagree with him here.

However, In contrast, he seems to think the Democratic Party is nearly perfect. He insinuates that if only these jerks in the exurbs would stop voting for MAGA and instead vote Democrat, then the road would be open for the US to achieve an unprecedented, staggeringly high level of prosperity, equality and justice for all.

He elaborates at some length in defending Bill Clinton (but has comparatively little to say about Obama or Biden). He notes that certain unnamed far left thinkers have criticized Clinton but dismisses them without much consideration. To prove Clinton’s greatness, he notes that the latter lifted 4 million people out of poverty with the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit. He claims that balanced federal government budgets led to the US’s remarkable economic expansion during the late 90’s. As far as NAFTA is concerned, Masciotra pooh-poohs the idea that it led to the export of US manufacturing jobs overseas. Instead he cites studies showing that the United States has lost many of its manufacturing jobs because of automation. Automation, he says, is simply technological progress–a sign of advancing civilization–and nobody can do anything to stop it. So to summarize, Masciotra implies that nearly all US manufacturing job losses have been caused by automation and none of that job loss is Bill Clinton’s (or NAFTA’s) fault.

His unwillingness to seriously engage with left wing criticisms of Bill Clinton is disappointing. It is true that the late 90’s has been the only extended time period since the early 70’s when the real wages of the majority of American workers grew and did not stagnate. But that wage growth was based on something unsustainable: a tech bubble on the stock market. Clinton’s welfare reform of 1996–an event not mentioned by Mascriotra–led to a significant rise in children living in deep poverty. His 1994 crime bill–another landmark not mentioned by Mascriotra–caused deep harm in black and brown communities, fueling the country’s mass incarceration crisis. As far as NAFTA, it is true that a large number of US manufacturing jobs have been lost due to automation. But studies by progressive economists have also shown that NAFTA caused major manufacturing job losses in the US. It also lowered wages in the US.

He denounces folks on the left (like Bernie Sanders) and the MAGA right who possess the “pipe dream” of yearning for a return to America’s post-World War II golden age of good paying manufacturing jobs. He writes:

“While manufacturing employment continues to decline, home health care workers grow by the millions. The fast-food chain Arby’s currently employs more Americans than the entire coal industry. Millions of young Americans, including seven hundred thousand part-time college instructors, struggle to stay afloat in a freelance ‘gig economy.’ The growing ranks of the marginal, low-wage workforce need access to public goods and services, higher wages, dependable benefits and affordable education–not pipe dreams about the resurrection of the 1940’s.”

At this point I have a question for Masciotra which he did not answer in the book. Have the Democrats, when in office, engaged in an earnest effort to secure “public goods and services, higher wages, dependable benefits, and affordable education” for America’s working class? I would submit that they have not. Instead their policies going back to Bill Clinton–and even back further to Jimmy Carter–have generally tended toward an embrace of corporate friendly deregulation and budgetary austerity.

I’m not arguing that they have embraced these corporate friendly policies because big business bribes them with campaign contributions (although that is one among many layers of the problem). The truth is that when Joe Biden told Wall Street donors in 2019 that nothing would fundamentally change when he became president, he was reflecting the reality of the real world. Those donors are a force that holds overwhelming power in American society. Any political party in the US and the capitalist world at large needs the cooperation of the capitalist class to govern: they need business to invest and create jobs so as to keep the economy afloat. If a business or financial elite feels that a national–or state or local–government is not creating good conditions for investment, then they will create capital flight.

As the putative “left” party of the American political system, Democrats are in a constant battle to show business that they can create good conditions for capital accumulation, that they are not moving “too far to the left.” It is why, when Democrats deign to go through the motions of pursuing any mildly redistributive measures–e.g. the push for a $15 per hour minimum wage in 2021 or the extension of the Covid era child tax credit–they easily crumble before conservative opposition. It is why prominent Democrats have refused to eliminate the Senate filibuster–in spite of Republican abuse of it. It is why they refuse to “pack” the Supreme Court to dilute the power of its far-right majority. Democrats want to show American business that they fully respect all the conservative friendly guardrails of the American political structure.

Democrats and Popular Mobilization

While Masciotra spends much of this book zeroing in on the threat of Trump voters to America’s bourgeois democratic institutions, he never mentions the largest group of voters: non-voters. In the 2020 presidential election, the non-participation rate of eligible voters was one third although in most other presidential elections of recent decades the abstention rate has been closer to one half. In the 2022 midterm congressional elections, the non-participation rate was nearly 48 percent–in other recent mid-terms the non-participation has been closer to 60 percent. Local elections around the US typically have very low turnout.

It occurs to me that Democrats might be able to better fight the MAGA malignancy if they offered serious proposals to motivate the large non-participating voting eligible population to cast their ballot. The non-voting adult population is significantly poor and working class. What if Democrats at national, state and local levels offered serious, detailed proposals to give ordinary people substantial power to organize their workplaces; for apartment tenants to have strong protections from eviction and landlord abuses; for media to be removed from corporate control and placed in the hands of local communities; for free and comprehensive college education for everyone? What if they used their vast power to direct most of America’s defense budget out of the pockets of defense contractors and into the construction of democratically run public housing and free healthcare for working Americans? What if–before providing free health care–they used a portion of the defense budget to wipe out the $220 billion in medical debt held by Americans? What if–instead of fueling highway expansion and record oil exports–Democrats offered a comprehensive plan for seriously addressing the climate crisis (and a multitude of other social and economic ills) along the lines of the Green New Deal?

What if they used the vast resources at their disposal to mobilize tens of millions of Americans(not just during election season) to push for these measures–instead of their normal course (as with the union friendly PRO Act) of using progressive proposals as bait for voters during campaigns while shelving such proposals during legislative sessions when faced with the slightest opposition?

The Democratic Party, of course, is structurally incapable of getting anywhere near pursuing any of the courses of action outlined above.. Its patrons in the capitalist class will tolerate only the most incremental reforms, the mildest sandpapering of the rougher edges of neoliberalism. Business would look with horror if Democrats used their resources to mobilize poor and working-class Americans on a mass scale to achieve substantial redistributive measures. Mass radical popular movements might be able to exert such pressure as to extract concessions from Democrats; but then again, depending on circumstances, Democrats might repress such movements.

As upper middle-class liberals of Masciotra’s ilk remain satisfied with the smallest of progressive crumbs offered by the Democratic Party–as long as they keep celebrating a Biden economy where a large majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck–I believe their complacency will only help fuel what they rightly fear: the further metastasizing of MAGA or even worse movements. Mascriotra spends parts of the book meditating on such subjects as the virtues of progressive city planning (plenty of sidewalks in downtown cores and public resources for the humanities and arts), the virtues of small business integration with local communities and the progressive characteristics of microbreweries. While such subjects are not objectionable by themselves, his excessive focus on them indicates a mindset unable to seriously grasp the nature of the malaise in the United States.

In spite of his seemingly heavy complacency, Mascriotra rightly observes that the United States possesses a “transforming and, in some ways, decaying economy.” As the contradictions of capitalism grow deeper, it is absolutely essential that intelligent people like Masciotra develop a much deeper structural critique of American economic malaise. Such analysis will ideally lead to recognition of the need to fundamentally transform the American economy away from capitalism.

Trump’s Attempt at Planeticide Was Worse Than Hush Money Sex Pay-Off

By Juan Cole

May 31, 2024
Source: Informed Comment


Youth Grieve and Denounce Trump’s Election at UN Climate Talks COP22 | Image: John Englart






It is great good news, of course, that Trump was finally held accountable for his hush money pay off to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about their hook-up so as to win the 2016 presidential election. Had she gone public in October, 2016 in the wake of the release of the Hollywood Access tape about grabbing genitalia, he may well have lost. That he is now a felon invalidates his entire presidency. It does not erase all the harm he did, in reshaping the Supreme Court as a tool of white nationalist Christian patriarchy, and it won’t bring back the hundreds of thousands of people who died of COVID because of his wrongheaded public health policies. But it is some form of minor justice.

The conviction, however, underlines that American law and politics is still primarily about property rather than about the value of human life. Both Richard M. Nixon and Donald J. Trump went down over Lockean crimes. Nixon ordered a third rate burglary (twice!). Trump arranged for a pay-off to a porn star. Both committed their crimes in furtherance of their political careers. Nixon had the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Building in Washington, D.C. burgled. Trump had a catch and kill scheme implemented for Stormy Daniels’ memoirs. Ironically, likely neither needed to commit those crimes to win.

It is a little frustrating, however, that our priorities as a society are still so parochial and twentieth-century in character, and that we are not more outraged at the truly massive damage Trump did to our planet. He should have been tried and convicted of attempted planeticide.

1. Trump took the United States out of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord in November, 2020, trashing all the pledges the country had made to reduce its massive carbon footprint. The US, with 4.2% of the world’s population, produces nearly 14% of the world’s carbon dioxide, putting out twice as much CO2 as the 27 nations of the European Union. By leaving the Paris agreement, Trump encouraged other countries to slack off on their climate commitments, endangering the whole world.

2. Trump scrapped President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, his attempt to regulate CO2 emissions, and Trump’s rules would have put an extra half a billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over a decade. When we’re trying to cut CO2 to zero by 2050, that was a step in completely the wrong direction.

MSNBC: “‘Quid pro quo:’ Trump vowed to gut climate laws in exchange for $1B from oil bosses”




3. Trump also lowered auto emissions standards, helping the big car companies avoid going electric longer and adding another 450 million tons of CO2. Now that China has more advanced electric car technology than the US and can make EVs more cheaply for the world market, it becomes clear that Trump may have knee-capped the US preeminence in the global auto-manufacturing sector, for good. Since it is increasingly clear that auto emissions cause Alzheimers, Trump also damaged our brains to be more like his own.

4. Trump actively promoted the production of the very dangerous atmospheric heating agent, methane, a greenhouse gas that prevents the heat caused by the sun’s rays from radiating back out into space at the old eighteenth-century rate. He removed government regulations requiring Big Oil to limit methane emissions from drilling.

5. Trump put a 30% tariff on solar panels, vastly slowing the expansion of solar power in the US and costing the country some 62,000 jobs in the solar industry. Since solar replaces coal and fossil gas for electricity generation, this is another way Trump promoted carbon dioxide emissions.

6. Trump’s corrupt Interior Department subsidized coal and fossil gas, but raised the rents for wind turbines on federal lands. Trump, fuelled by an irrational hatred of wind turbines, such that he falsely asserts that they cause cancer, was a constant worry tot he industry all the time he was in office.

7. The sum total of all Trump’s anti-climate regulations would have added 1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere had they not largely been reversed by the subsequent Biden administration. This one man tried to engineer an extra tonnage of CO2 emissions equal to the annual output of all of Russia.

I have suggested that we could get a better sense of how disgusting carbon dioxide and methane emissions are if we called them farts instead of using a fancy word like “emissions.” How many tons of CO2 did America fart out last year?

Trump, who spent much of his trial farting and dozing, tried to have us fart out an extra 1.8 billion tons of CO2.

Some small percentage of all the damage human-made climate change will do to the United States in the coming years will have been caused by one man. And if he can get into office again he will try to doom the planet.

Now that is an indictment.


Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three and a half decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context, and he has written widely about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. His books include Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires; The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East; Engaging the Muslim World; and Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East.


‘Tough-on-Crime’ Doesn’t Apply to People Like Trump

Trump’s conviction is not proof that the criminal justice system works. The joy and disbelief we may be feeling is because it was never intended to ensnare people like him.

By Sonali Kolhatkar

June 1, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


Image by Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons 3.0

Many Americans are celebrating the news of Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges in a hush-money incident that took place ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Newspaper headlines screamed “TRUMP GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS” and media reports relied on superlatives such as “historic” and “unprecedented” to label the unanimous jury verdict. Given that Trump has been unusually adept at avoiding accountability for a staggering number of alleged crimes, the verdict felt like a long-overdue comeuppance.

It was even more shocking than the news of Derek Chauvin’s conviction in the murder of George Floyd four years ago—but not by much. The United States criminal justice system was not designed to be applied equally across race and class. It was designed to protect men like Trump and Chauvin—powerful elites who bend laws to suit their purpose and the henchmen who serve them.

This is why the fact that Trump is now officially a “felon” feels so earth-shattering. For years people convicted of felonies were unable to vote in elections in many states. Felony disenfranchisement disproportionately impacts Black voters. According to Dyjuan Tatro, an alumnus of the Bard Prison Initiative, as of 2016 “Black Americans [were] disenfranchised for felony conviction histories at rates more than four times those of all other races combined.” It is highly unlikely that the U.S. would tolerate the disproportionate (or even proportional) disenfranchisement of wealthy whites.

Although many states are slowly overturning the loss of voting rights for people who have finished serving their sentences, in the vast majority of U.S. states people still cannot vote while incarcerated. Republicans tend to back felony disenfranchisement, perhaps because of the assumption that those marginalized populations that our criminal justice system targets tend not to favor them.

Florida, the state where Trump officially resides, has been ground zero for the battle over felony disenfranchisement. When Floridians in 2018 voted to restore the voting rights of those convicted of felonies, the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, effectively overturned the measure by forcing it to apply only to those who have paid off their debts. It was a clearly classist move, one that prison reform advocates dubbed “pay-to-vote.” Given the preservation of felony disenfranchisement in Florida, some have speculated that Trump may not be able to vote for himself in November depending on the sentence he is handed. But given that he was convicted in New York, he may ironically be able to cast a ballot in Florida thanks to New York’s ban against felony disenfranchisement laws.

Incredibly he can still run for president in spite of being labeled a “felon,” and could even be elected from within prison walls. But if he was a low-income person of color merely looking to rent an apartment or apply for a job as a janitor or schoolteacher, he would have likely been barred from doing so freely.

States have generally enabled legalized discrimination against people convicted of felonies. Aside from the loss of voting rights, it is acceptable to engage in housing and employment discrimination against them. It’s no wonder that the label “felon,” has been considered by human rights advocates in recent years as deeply dehumanizing. The same is true for terms such as “inmate,” “parolee,” “offender,” “prisoner,” and “convict.”

This is why Trump’s conviction is so astonishing. And this is why abolitionists—those who want to dismantle the entire criminal justice system and replace it with a system based on equity and the sharing of collective resources as a means of promoting public safety—are watching with bated breath if the former president will actually be ensnared by a system intended to reward people like him and instead serve prison time. In general, we live in a system where “the rich get richer and the poor get prison.” It is a rare exception for someone of elite status to be criminalized.

Each felony count against Trump carries a maximum sentence of four years which could be served concurrently. He could also be sentenced to house arrest or be put on probation. The minimum sentence is zero. The Associated Press is reporting that “Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to say whether prosecutors would seek prison time.” In other words, in spite of Trump’s clear guilt, it is possible he could face no punishment whatsoever. His fate lies in the hands of Judge Juan Merchan who will hold a sentencing hearing on July 11.

“Without law and order, you have a problem,” said Trump in 2016 months before he won enough electoral college votes to be deemed president. “And we need strong, swift, and very fair law and order,” he added. Such rhetoric remains common among Republicans (as well as centrist Democrats such as current president Joe Biden). It is the sort of language that marginalized people understand is aimed at them. But in rare instances when the system functions in the way it was never meant to—when it ensnares powerful elites or law enforcement—the “tough-on-crime” crowd shows its hand in myriad ways.

Those who are emotionally invested in the notion that we live in a society with equal justice under the law see it as proof that the system works, even if it can benefit from some reforms. Trump’s verdict is apparently “a triumph for the rule of law.” But, it has been eight years since the Wall Street Journal first reported that Trump arranged to pay off Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence over their affair. Since then, he has remained free, even as low-income people of color are jailed before trial at the drop of a hat for far lesser alleged crimes.

Others, such as Republican supporters of the former president, see Trump’s verdict as a “shameful” exception that proves the system is “corrupt and rigged”—against the wealthy and powerful, not the untold numbers of wrongfully convicted Black and Brown people.

Meanwhile, Trump has engaged in ethical breaches and criminal acts faster than the system can respond. Just weeks before his conviction, Trump was reported to have overtly demanded a $1 billion bribe from oil and gas executives at a fundraiser. Barely did Senate Democrats have time to launch an investigation into the apparent quid-pro-quo when he did it again. His hubris stems from an implicit belief that the system was never designed to hold people like him accountable. He’s right, it wasn’t.

Erica Bryant at the Vera Institute of Justice pointed out that the U.S. would be “one of the safest nations in the world” if mass incarceration was an effective way to protect us from crime. “[W]hy do we have higher rates of crime than many countries that arrest and incarcerate far fewer people?” she asked. A Vera Institute poll found that a majority of U.S. voters prefer a “crime prevention” approach to safety rather than a system based on punishment, one that prioritizes fully funding social programs rather than traditional “tough-on-crime” policies like increased policing and mass incarceration.

Those of us who understand that Trump’s conviction is neither welcome proof that a “tough-on-crime” approach works, nor evidence that it’s rigged against elites are nonetheless celebrating the headlines. It is akin to watching an overzealous and greedy hunter step into one of his own traps. The ultimate goal is to end the hunt even as it feels incredibly satisfying to see Trump cut down to size.

Trump’s emergence in the U.S. political system and his (nearly) successful avoidance of accountability for so long is clear evidence that our democracy and its criminal justice system are rigged against us in favor of wealthy elites. The fact that there is still no guarantee that he will be punished or even disqualified from the presidency in a nation that zealously criminalizes marginalized communities ought to be all the proof we need that our criminal justice system does not deserve our faith.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.


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Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her most recent book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization.

 

The Imperialists Will Tolerate a Two-State But Not a One-State Solution in Palestine-Israel

by Roger Copple / May 31st, 2024

A two-state solution (that is, having two independent separate nations) in Palestine-Israel would definitely be an improvement. However, it would not challenge and threaten the forces of imperialism because Zionist Israel and Hamas would still be allowed to exist if there are two separate nations. Furthermore, land disputes between the two nations would continue. The forces of imperialism include the imperial nations such as the United States, the military-industrial complex, and NATO.

Jerusalem in Palestine-Israel is a holy city for Christians, Muslims, and Jews. If we can solve the problems in this region of the world, everything else will be a piece of cake. What happens in Palestine-Israel has repercussions throughout the world, which is why it is so important to learn more about Zionism, imperialism, and the Middle East crisis, especially now considering the catastrophic situation in Rafah, Gaza.

According to Kuna.net, 36,224 Palestinians have been killed, and 81,777 have been injured in Gaza as of May 30, 2024, since October 7, 2023 when the Israel-Hamas War began. The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 killed 1,139 Israeli citizens (revised from 1,400).

The United Nations Partition Plan  was adopted on November 29, 1947. Part I of the plan stipulated that the British Mandate (that lasted from 1922 to 1948) would be terminated as soon as possible.  The Arab Palestinians considered the UN partition plan to be pro-Zionist with 56% of the land allocated to the Jewish state, while the Arab Palestinian population was twice the Jewish population at that time. “In 1920 the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian population was Arab, mostly Sunni Muslim,” according to  British Palestine Police.org.UK.

The British mandate ended on May 15, 1948. The day before in the afternoon of May 14, 1948, the Zionist State of Israel was declared in Tel-Aviv.

After the United Nations adopted its partition plan on November 29, 1947 for Palestine, it caused the 1947-1948 civil war  between Arabs and Jews.  Then after the  British Mandate  ended and the State of Israel was declared, the very next day the surrounding Arab nations declared war on Israel, and that war is referred to as the  1948 Arab-Israeli War.  The Arab-Israeli War resulted in the  Nakba, which was the catastrophe in which 80% of the population (more than 700,000 Palestinians) were expelled or fled from their homes.

Middle East Eye.net : The Nakba: All you need to know explained in five maps and charts–May 15, 2024

Even the fairest two-state partition plan will not eliminate the bitterness and hatred between Arabs and Jews that developed  increasingly when Jewish Zionists started immigrating into the Arab land of Palestine.  When Jews started immigrating into Palestine, they did not just integrate with the Arab Palestinians.  Instead, the Jewish immigrants remained separate. Zionism is anchored in the belief that Jews, through their nationality and religion, deserve and have a right to reclaim their ancestral homeland, Israel. Eventually the Zionist Jews developed a plan (Plan Dalet, or Plan D for short) for the systematic removal of Palestinians, also referred to as the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

The rivalry between Jews and Arabs has its roots in the ancient biblical account of Isaac and Ishmael. However, Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Palestine had gotten along just fine under the Ottoman Empire, which was dissolved at the end of World War I.

The imperial forces and nations can tolerate a two-state solution because Zionist Israel would still be allowed to exist as one of the two states. But the imperial forces will absolutely not tolerate having one democratic nation for all Palestinians, Jews, and Christians. That would threaten to end the conflict between Zionists and Hamas advocates, which the imperialists need.  Zionist Israel gives the imperial nations a base and an ally to keep the Middle-East under its control.

Currently the Zionist Israeli Jews have much control over the Palestinian territories, which is exactly how they and the imperialists want it to be. Creating two independent nations would definitely be an improvement, but it has some serious shortcomings. With even the best partition plan for Israel and Palestine as two separate nations, Zionism in Israel would still be allowed to exist, and the land disputes between Israel and Palestine would continue. So a two-state solution would be tolerable (but not preferable) to the imperialists.  However, if all the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian residents of Palestine-Israel could have an equal vote in a national government, this would be totally unacceptable to the imperialists because they need Zionist Israel as a base and ally for their operations.

The war profiteers need the regional instability created by the Zionist State of Israel to increase their profits and increase their control of the region. As conflicts increase, more weapons of war must be produced, and this is profitable for those who are invested in the weapons industry.  Zionists and imperialists need each other.

If Zionism is democratically removed from the State of Israel, and Hamas is democratically removed from Gaza, peace and harmony in the Middle East could actually become a reality. But creating peace would be an enormous threat to the military-industrial complex that makes money from endless wars, that makes money from conflicts that are deliberately created. In 2009 Ron Paul explained in this 1-minute video that Israel encouraged and helped start Hamas!

The imperial nations do not want peace in Palestine-Israel unless it is on their terms. They don’t want to give Muslims and Christians the same rights and privileges as the Zionist Israeli Jews have. To maintain the status quo and accomplish their long-term objectives, the imperial nations create division and discord in the Middle East. They use a strategy of divide and conquer.

Imperialists want to keep controlling the world as they have since ancient times, but they do not yet have total control, which is what they want. Imperialists love to infiltrate, destabilize, and even create the collapse of a nation because then they can create changes in that nation that allow them to further their interests and achieve their long-term goals.  The imperial forces are sinister and evil, if not satanic.

The integration of Jews, Muslims, and Christians into a secular one-state nation would be a win-win situation for everyone except the war profiteers of the military-industrial complex.

Having two independent nations (the two-state solution) would help the Palestinians the most because Israel currently has much control over the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza.  But a two-state solution is not the best solution. Integrating Jews, Muslims, and Christians into a secular one-state nation would be the best solution and the highest achievement. Considering the current tensions and hostilities between Arab Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, a secular one-state solution could create a safe homeland for Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

If all the Jews, Muslims, and Christians have equal rights in a national government, the beliefs and practices of Zionism and Hamas will not be implemented by popular vote. Ideally the citizens of Palestine-Israel could have a unicameral legislature and equally-empower the 7 largest political parties and give those political parties proportionate control of the mainstream media. Maximizing democracy could be a model for other nations as well.

How can we create healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews?

We must work to promote a secular national government for all Jews, Muslims, and Christians that live in Palestine-Israel.  This would remove the imperialist base in Zionist Israel, and it would ideally eliminate the influences of Zionism and of Hamas.

In an article entitled “Christians, Muslims, and Jews for a Secular One-State Solution in Palestine-Israel,” I discuss other dimensions of this subject.

The imperial nations deeply invested in the Middle East crisis dearly love the current situation in which Zionist Israel has much control over the Palestinian territories. For Muslims, Jews, and Christians living in Palestine-Israel, a two-state solution would be better, but a one-state solution would be best.

Roger Copple retired in 2010 at the age of 60. As a high school special education teacher, he taught algebra, English, and history. As a general education teacher he taught mostly 3rd grade. His website www.WorldWithoutEmpire.com was created the same year he retired with his son’s help. Roger renewed his Christian faith on September 17, 2023 in an evangelical church after being enamored with yoga philosophy and Buddhism for many years. However, for the last 3 months, he has identified as a mainline Presbyterian, no longer claiming to be an evangelical. Roger lives in Gulfport, Florida. Read other articles by Roger.

The Unfinished Journey of Palestinian Statehood

BY DANIEL WARNER

 MAY 31, 2024
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On May 22, Palestine was recognized as a state by Norway, Ireland, and Spain, bringing the number of countries recognizing Palestine as a state to over 140 of the 193 members of the United Nations. Yet, Palestine is still not a legal state. Moreover, the current political consensus is that the best solution to the Israel/Hamas conflict is a two-state solution. Already in 2016, the U.N. Security Council reaffirmed support for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. But in order to have a two-state solution, there must be two states.

Why hasn’t full Palestinian recognition happened?

The United States accepts the theoretical two-state solution but at this point rejects Palestinian statehood.  Following the recent recognition of Palestinian statehood by the three countries, “a U.S. official familiar with the discussions stressed that Washington had made clear to the three … that recognizing a Palestinian state would not be useful,” Politico reported.

Several European countries, including major powers like France, have been hesitant to recognize Palestine as well, arguing that important conditions have not yet been met. “This decision [by Spain, Ireland, and Norway] must be useful, that is to say allow a decisive step forward on the political level,” French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné said in a statement. “France does not consider that the conditions have been met to date for this decision to have a real impact on this process,” she added.

Recognizing Palestine is not “useful”? Will not “have a real impact”? The Spanish prime minister disagreed. “Recognition of the state of Palestine is not only a matter of historic justice…it is also an essential requirement if we are all to achieve peace,” Pedro Sanchez explained.

States formally exist through decisions by other states. If you are as others see you, who are the “others” who will determine Palestine’s statehood? There is no formal legal process by which statehood is established. While political entities may announce their statehood through declarations, a form of self-determination, the recognition of statehood depends on others. Self-declarations are necessary, but not sufficient for statehood.

For example, in February 2008, the Kosovo Assembly declared Kosovo’s independence as the Republic of Kosovo. That status is recognized by seventy-four members of the United Nations. Yet, the Republic of Kosovo is not a universally recognized legal state. In fact, several countries have said they will never recognize Kosovo as a state, including Serbia, Russia, Argentina, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and Libya.

State recognition is a political decision. Although an entity may have what is necessary to be considered a state – people, territory, government and sovereignty – it is the political decision of other states that allows a state to be officially recognized.

The most obvious avenue to formal recognition is through the United Nations. Following a 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence which was recognized by more than seventy countries, Palestine applied for U.N. membership in 2011. The U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) voted to upgrade Palestine’s status from “observer” to a “non-member Permanent Observer State” in 2012, like the Holy See, but no more.

(Interestingly, the upgrading happened on the same day, according to UN News, “that the UN observed the annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Established in 1977, the Day marks the date in 1947 when the Assembly adopted a resolution partitioning then-mandated Palestine into two States, one Jewish and one Arab.”)

Recent attempts to grant Palestine full U.N. membership and legal status have accelerated as a result of Israel’s overwhelming reaction to the October 7 Hamas attack. The UNGA adopted a resolution in early May declaring that Palestine qualifies for full-member status at the United Nations by a vote of 143 to 9 with twenty-five abstaining. “The vast majority of countries in this hall are fully aware of the legitimacy of the Palestinian bid and the justness of their cause,” declared the U.A.E. Ambassador Mohamed Abushahab at the time.

But full membership in the United Nations goes beyond a General Assembly decision; it needs approval by the Security Council, with its five permanent members having veto power. As it has done in the past on issues involving Israel and Palestine, the United States vetoed a Security Council vote to have Palestine recognized as a full member of the U.N. The vote was twelve in favor and one — the United States — opposed, with abstentions from Britain and Switzerland.

Why the U.S. veto? U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan presented President Biden’s position on Palestinian statehood following the three countries’ latest recognition: “He [Biden] has been equally emphatic on the record that the two-state solution should be brought about through direct negotiations through the parties, not through unilateral recognition, that’s a principled position that we have held on a consistent basis.” he said.

According to the United States, therefore, it will only recognize Palestinian statehood after direct negotiations between the parties. Negotiations between which parties? Sullivan did not elaborate who will directly negotiate and under whose authority Palestinian statehood will happen.

“You are as others see you” is a general phrase that lacks a definition of the others. The recognition of statehood is based on politics, privilege, and positions of power. The United States alone can block Palestinian U.N. full membership and statehood recognition. This is neither democratic nor objective. Will the new dynamic favoring Palestine in light of Israel’s horrific aggression overcome the United States’ position? Despite that dynamic, as the former Swiss Ambassador to Israel Jean-Daniel Ruch perceptively observed: “a Two-States solution remains desirable and is technically feasible…the political will to make the brave and risky investments to open a genuine peace perspective is nowhere as massive as it should be.”

Daniel Warner is the author of An Ethic of Responsibility in International Relations. (Lynne Rienner). He lives in Geneva.