Washington DC: The Unaffordable and Unecessary War Capital of the World

by David Stockman Posted onMay 15, 2024

Ultimately, there is no mystery as to why the Forever Wars go on endlessly. Or why at a time when Uncle Sam is hemorrhaging red ink a large bipartisan majority saw fit to authorize $95 billion of foreign aid boondoggles that do absolutely nothing for America’s homeland security.

To wit, Washington has morphed into a freak of world history – a planetary War Capital dominated by a panoptic complex of arms merchants, paladins of interventionism and Warfare State nomenklatura. Never before has there been assembled and concentrated under a single state authority a hegemonic force possessing such unprecedented levels of economic resources, advanced technology and military wherewithal.

Not surprisingly, the world’s War Capital is Orwellian to the core. Its endless pursuit of war is always and everywhere described as the promotion of peace. Its jackboot of global hegemony is gussied-up in the form of alliances and treaties ostensibly designed to promote a “rules-based order” and collective security for the benefit of mankind, not simply the proper goals of peace, liberty, safety and prosperity within America’s homeland.

Unfortunately, the whole intellectual foundation of the enterprise is false. The planet is not crawling with all-powerful would-be aggressors and empire-builders who must be stopped cold at their own borders, lest they devour the freedom of all their neighbors near and far.

Nor is the DNA of nations infected with incipient butchers and tyrants like Hitler and Stalin. They were one-time accidents of history and fully distinguishable from the standard run of everyday tinpots which actually do arise periodically. But the latter mainly disturb the equipoise of their immediate neighborhoods, not the peace of the planet.

So America’s homeland security does not depend upon a far-flung array of alliances, treaties, military bases and foriegn influence operations. The whole framework of Pax Americana and the Washington based promotion and enforcement of a “rules-based” international order is an epochal blunder.

In that regard, the founding fathers got it right more than 200 years ago during the infancy of the Republic. As Brian McGlinchey recently noted,

Let’s review some key excerpts of Washington’s foreign policy guidance, starting with the principle he put above all others:

“Nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated.”

With this guidance, Washington echoed the wisdom of other American founders. Thomas Jefferson urged “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” John Quincy Adams approvingly said, “[America] has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings… She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

Needless to say, peaceful commerce is invariably far more beneficial to nations large and small than meddling, interventionism and military engagement. In today’s world it would be the default state of play on the international chessboard, save for the Great Hegemon on the banks of the Potomac. That is to say, the main disturbance of the peace in today’s world is invariably fostered by the self-appointed peacemaker, who, ironically, is inherently the least threatened large nation on the entire planet.

That is to say, the United States is essentially invulnerable to conventional military invasion and occupation. On the North American continent its $28 trillion GDP towers over the combined $3.8 trillion GDP of its Mexican and Canadian neighbors by more than 7X.

And on either shore arise the vast Atlantic and Pacific moats, which are even greater barriers to foreign military assault in the 21st century than they so successfully proved to be in the 19th century. That’s because today’s advanced surveillance technology and anti-ship missiles would consign an enemy armada to Davy Jones’ Locker nearly as soon as it steamed out of its own territorial waters.

The fact is, in an age when the sky is flush with high tech surveillance assets a massive conventional force armada couldn’t possibly be secretly built, tested and mustered for surprise attack without being noticed in Washington. There can be no repeat of the Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku strike force steaming across the Pacific toward Pearl Harbor sight unseen.

As a practical matter, even America’s ostensible “enemies” have no offensive or invasionary capacity at all. Russia has only one aircraft carrier—a 1980s era vessel which has been in dry-dock for repairs since 2017 and is equipped with neither a phalanx of escort ships nor a suite of attack and fighter aircraft – and at the moment not even an active crew.

Likewise, China has just three aircraft carriers – two of which are refurbished rust buckets purchased from the remnants of the old Soviet Union, and which carriers do not even have modern catapults for launching their strike aircraft.

Indeed, invasion of the American homeland would require a massive conventional armada of land, air and sea-based forces many, many times larger than the military behemoth that is now funded by Washington’s $900 billion defense budget. The logistical infrastructure that would be needed to control the vast Atlantic and Pacific Ocean moats surrounding North America and to sustain an invasion and occupation force of the US mainland is so mind-mindbogglingly vast as to be scarcely imaginable.

For want of doubt, the graphic below compares Washington’s 11 carrier battle groups, which cost about $25 billion each including their escort ships, suites of aircraft and electronic and missile capabilities. But self-evidently, none of the non-NATO countries shown in the red area of the graphic – China, India, Russia or Thailand – will be steaming their tiny 3, 2 and 1 carrier battle groups toward the shores of either California or New New Jersey any time soon. Any invasionary force that had any chance of surviving a US fortress defense of cruise missiles, drones, jet fighters, attack submarines and electronics warfare would need to be 100X larger.

Yet there is no GDP in the world – $2 trillion for Russia, $3.5 trillion for India or $18 trillion for China – that is even remotely close in size to the $50 to $100 trillion GDP that would be needed to support such an invasionary force without capsizing the home economy.

At the same time, the 11 US carrier battle groups, which will cost upwards of $1.2 trillion over the next decade, would have no role in a continental Fortress America defense at all. They would be sitting ducks in the blue waters, and far less effective than aircraft and missile defenses based in the North American interior.

In short, these massively expensive forces have no purpose other than global power projection and the conduct of wars of invasion and occupation abroad. That is, they are military accoutrements of the War Capital, not even remotely relevant to a proper Fortress America defense.

In today’s world the only theoretical military threat to America’s homeland security is the possibility of nuclear blackmail. That is to say, a First Strike capacity so overwhelming, lethal and effective that an enemy could simply call out checkmate and demand Washington’s surrender.

Yet there is no nation on earth that has anything close to the First Strike force that would be needed to totally overwhelm America’s triad nuclear deterrent, and thereby avoid a retaliatory annihilation of its own country and people if it attempted to strike first. After all, the US has 3,700 active nuclear warheads, of which about 1,770 are operational at any point in time. In turn, these are spread under the sea, in hardened silos and among a bomber fleet of 66 B-2 and B-52s – all beyond the detection or reach of any other nuclear power.

For instance, the Ohio class nuclear submarines each have 20 missile tubes, with each missile carrying an average of four-to-five warheads. That’s 90 independently targetable warheads per boat. At any given time 12 of the 14 Ohio class nuclear subs are actively deployed, and spread around the oceans of the planet within a firing range of 4,000 miles.

So at the point of attack that’s 1,080 deep-sea nuclear warheads to identify, locate and neutralize before any would be blackmailer even gets started. Indeed, with respect to the “Where’s Waldo?” aspect of it, the sea-based nuclear force alone is a powerful guarantor of America’s homeland security.

And then there are the roughly 300 nukes aboard the 66 strategic bombers, which also are not sitting on a single airfield Pearl Harbor style waiting to be obliterated, but are constantly rotating in the air and on the move. Likewise, the 400 Minutemen III missiles are spread out in extremely hardened silos deep underground. Each missile currently carries one nuclear warhead in compliance with the Start Treaty, which would also need to be taken out by would be blackmailers.

Needless to say, there is no way, shape or form that America’s nuclear deterrent can be neutralized by a blackmailer. And the best thing is that the nuclear triad will cost only about $75 billion per year to maintain over the next decade, including allowances for periodic weapons upgrades.

As shown below, therefore, the heart of America’s military security requires only 7% of today’s massive military budget. Indeed, the heart of the nuclear deterrent – sea-based ballistic missiles – is estimated by CBO to cost just $188 billion over the next decade, or 1.9% of the $10 trillion national defense baseline.

10-Year Cost Of US Strategic Nuclear Deterrent Per CBO Estimates, 2023 to 2032

Here’s the thing. The actual cost of the national security budget is $1.3 trillion per year. Yet if you allow an ample $250 billion per year for a Fortress America continental defense and $75 billion for the triad strategic deterrent, the question recurs. Where does all the rest – $975 billion – go?

As we will amplify in the next article, it goes to the War Capital’s pursuit of global military and political hegemony and to fund the deferred cost of past overseas policing operations, neither of which were and are necessary for America’s homeland security. And beyond that, tens of billions more slop-over into pure budget maintenance: That is, military contractor lobbying and bribes, think tank studies and advocacy programs and NGO and national security agency propaganda and influence operations all around the planet.

Still, just consider the implications of the chart below. About $346 billion of the $1.3 trillion national security budget is for veterans compensation, health and other benefits. These programs serve upwards of 6.2 million disabled veterans and dependents and 9.2 million enrollees in the Veterans health care system.

Yet absent all the unnecessary wars that have occurred since the Cold War went into full force in 1948-1949, the US would have only 60,000 veterans of foreign wars today, of which just 11,448 ar currently receiving disability benefits. Even when you add in their dependents, the total of WWII era vets receiving disability compensation is just 34,265 or 0.6% of the total beneficiary roll of 6.159 million.

At average compensation and health care cost of $35,000 per beneficiary, the total cost would be $1.2 billion currently and barely $10 million per year by 2035 when only 311 WWII vets are projected to remain.

That’s right. The FY 2024 cost of veterans benefits owing to unnecessary wars, such as the 1.385 million Vietnam vets on disability and the 3.37 million Gulf War vets receiving disability payments and VA health care, is $345 billion.

And that deferred cost figure for the Forever Wars amounts to 116% of China’s current $298 billion defense budget, 425% of India’s $81 billion, 480% of Russia’s $72 billion (pre-Ukraine) 595% of Germany’s $58 billion and 690% of South Korea’s $50 billion military budget, notwithstanding the madman who rules across the DMZ.

Yet it only gets worse from there. By the end of the 10-year budget window, the $550 billion baseline cost of veterans benefits will amount to 50,000 times more than what a Fortress America homeland security policy would have generated over the past seven decades.

Needless to say, that begs the question for Part 2: Why in the world has Washington become the War Capital of the World, generating hideously excessive costs that the taxpayers of America neither benefit from nor can remotely afford?

David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He’s the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back, and the recently released Great Money Bubble: Protect Yourself From The Coming Inflation Storm. He also is founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner and David Stockman’s Bubble Finance Trader.

POLICE SERVICE OF NORTHERN IRELAND

PSNI accused of acting like Stasi after documents reveal eight ‘troublemaker’ journalists were under surveillance

‘The industrial-scale harvesting of sensitive journalistic comms data by the PSNI is akin to East German secret police in the early 1980s,’ Trevor Birney’s solicitor said.



Journalists Barry McCaffrey (left) and Trevor Birney (right) speaking to media after leaving the Royal Courts of Justice, in London, following an Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) hearing over claims they were secretly monitored by police, on Tuesday May 7, 2024

 (Credit: Victoria Jones/PA Wire)

Allison Morris

Today 

Eight journalists based in Northern Ireland considered “troublemakers” were under routine surveillance by the PSNI, according to documents released as part of a high-profile case being heard in London this week.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), sitting in the Royal Court of Justice, heard that the PSNI was engaging in six-monthly trawls of journalists’ phone data.

The IPT is examining allegations that two investigative reporters in Northern Ireland were subject to unlawful covert intelligence by the police as part of Operation Yurta.

Evidence presented to the tribunal today suggested that the PSNI spying operation extended to several other reporters operating in Northern Ireland.

The documents show the surveillance started in 2007/8 and went on for a decade, involving a small group of journalists who were, in the words of one detective, “always looking for a story”.

Documents seen by the Belfast Telegraph show eight redacted names of those under surveillance by the PSNI.

Documentary makers Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney were controversially arrested in 2018 by police investigating the alleged leaking of confidential documents that appeared in a film they made about the Loughinisland Massacre.

The PSNI was later forced to apologise and agreed to pay £875,000 in damages to the journalists and the film company behind the documentary No Stone Unturned.

In 2019, Mr Birney and Mr McCaffrey lodged a complaint with the IPT asking it to establish whether there had been any unlawful surveillance of them.

The PSNI had asked Durham Constabulary to take the lead in the investigation into the leaked Police Ombudsman document that appeared in the documentary on the 1994 loyalist paramilitary gun attack.

Last week it was revealed that journalist Vincent Kearney was also under surveillance during his time at the BBC.

The BBC has now instructed lawyers to contact the tribunal over claims one of its ex-investigative reporters, now working as RTE’s Northern Editor, was spied on by police.

New evidence released to the tribunal included a Durham Constabulary minute of a meeting between the senior investigating officer Darren Ellis, and two PSNI detective sergeants working in intelligence operations.

Ben Jaffey KC, representing Mr McCaffrey, revealed that the note made reference to what was described as a PSNI “defensive operation” against journalists in the region.

“It appears to disclose the existence of what the PSNI call a defensive operation involving the cross-referencing of billing with police telephone numbers on a six-monthly basis of what appears to be a group of Northern Irish journalists who have written unobliging things about the PSNI," he told the tribunal.

Mr Jaffey said the PSNI had yet to offer a response to the material disclosed by Durham Constabulary.

“But if this is what has been going on, we obviously say it's unlawful to go and take a list of troublemaker journalists, get their billing every six months and cross-reference it with a list of police telephone numbers, and see if those journalists have got any new police sources is plainly unlawful.

“A defensive operation can only be what we say is a slightly Orwellian euphemism.”

Mr Jaffey said the fresh evidence disclosed to the tribunal suggested Mr McCaffrey could have been subjected to many more covert spying bids.

“I think I made a cheap joke last time around that I'd lost count of the number of times that Mr McCaffrey has had his communications data obtained,” he said.

“That's no longer really, unfortunately, a joke.”

The barrister said the documents also raised a series of other incidents of concern, including:An attempt by police to access data from Mr Birney's wife,
A police consideration of accessing his solicitor Niall Murphy's personal data; and
A bid to secure international intelligence on Mr McCaffrey in relation to a trip he and Mr Birney had taken to France in 2016.

Mr Birney said the hearing made clear that the PSNI was “absolutely obsessed with journalists and their sources”.

“And I think we need to remind the PSNI and remind the authorities back in Belfast that journalism isn't a crime, that journalists all over the world have sources and that is lawful and that is absolutely what journalists are there to do,” he added.

His solicitor Niall Murphy said: “The revelations exposed in court are chilling. The industrial-scale harvesting of sensitive journalistic comms data by the PSNI is akin to East German secret police in the early 1980s.

"I fear that this is the thin edge of a wedge and that in time, a Kafkaesque systemic policy of police surveillance of journalists and lawyers will be exposed.”

Following the hearing, Mr McCaffrey said the PSNI had been practising the “dark arts”.

“The dark arts were supposed to be gone after the Good Friday Agreement, it seems that they're still here and they're thriving and they seem to be in charge, that can't be allowed to go on.”

His solicitor John Finucane added: “Durham police have provided the legal teams with disclosure which points to PSNI undertaking routine and industrial-scale surveillance on a six monthly basis against those journalists they criticised as “always looking a story”.

“The PSNI stands accused of unlawfully going after journalists and their sources on numerous occasions over a prolonged period.

"They also stand accused of lacking candour in how they have met these proceedings and that includes the potential compromising of Chief Constable John Boutcher, whose previous public statement on the scale of surveillance on journalists has been undermined by the disclosure we have received.

“Journalism is not a crime despite the actions and intent of PSNI, Durham and the MET,” he added.

The PSNI has been asked for a comment.

National Union of Journalists (NUJ) spokesman Ian McGuinness said: “Journalists exist to hold power to account and that includes writing stories about the PSNI which that force may not like.

“Writing a story about the PSNI and protecting your confidential sources whilst doing so is not a crime.

"The NUJ is calling, yet again, for the PSNI to come clean. In particular, the force needs to state when it started spying on multiple journalists’ phone data, who the journalists were, and how many times each journalist was spied upon and must give a commitment that it will desist from doing this ever again, simply to uncover legitimate sources for stories.”

RSF calls on police in Northern Ireland to fully cooperate with investigation into alleged surveillance of journalists

Barry McCaffrey (L) and Trevor Birney (R) outside London's High Court on 8 May

Police in Northern Ireland may have regularly checked the phone records of multiple journalists in an attempt to uncover their sources, a London tribunal investigating the alleged surveillance of journalists has heard. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on police to cooperate fully with the long-overdue tribunal, and account for any breaches of journalists’ vital right to protect their sources.

The UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) - a body which hears complaints about surveillance by public bodies - is investigating the treatment by police of two journalists from Northern Ireland, Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, who were arrested in 2018 on suspicion of stealing police documents - arrests that were later ruled unlawful by Northern Ireland’s High Court.

At a hearing on Wednesday 8 May attended by RSF, McCaffrey’s lawyer Ben Jaffey KC said that last week he received 600 new pages of evidence which threw up yet more questions about Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI)’s covert surveillance. One document mentioned “defensive operations”, apparently in place at the end of 2017, against a small group of local journalists which involved “cross-referencing billing with police telephone numbers on a six-monthly basis”. Eight names - redacted in the document shown in court - were listed.

Calling for a full explanation of the new allegations, Jaffey also pointed to a request to access data from Birney’s wife, a request to secure intelligence on a trip Birney and McCaffrey had taken to France, and inconsistencies between the dates when data was obtained and the dates authorisations for that data collection were issued.

Next month will mark five years since Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney lodged a complaint with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal yet they are still waiting for clear answers about what appear to be deeply shocking breaches of their rights as journalists. The right of reporters to protect their sources is fundamental to public interest journalism, and if police have acted unlawfully, the public has a right to know. The PSNI must stop dragging its feet and fully cooperate with the tribunal, so that any serious violations of press freedom in Northern Ireland come to light.
Fiona O'Brien
Bureau Director, RSF UK

Three UK police forces - Durham Constabulary, PSNI and the Metropolitan Police - are implicated in the IPT’s investigation. Lawyers for Birney and McCaffrey have repeatedly complained about delays in the production of evidence, in particular from PSNI. Birney said what had emerged at the tribunal was revealing of the underlying attitude of police to journalists.

“It’s shocking that journalists going about their business lawfully were treated by the PSNI so unprofessionally,” he said after the hearing. “Ultimately, I think it’s an undermining of freedom of the press in Northern Ireland, an undermining of the relationship between the PSNI and journalists. Why did the police think this was acceptable?”

Last week, lawyers for the BBC said they had also contacted the tribunal over claims the PSNI had also tried to identify the sources of a former BBC reporter, Vincent Kearney, when he worked on a programme about the Police Ombudsman’s Office in 2011.

Wednesday’s hearing of the secretive tribunal was only the second to be held in public. The substantive hearing is scheduled to begin in October.

The UK is ranked 23rd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2023 World Press Freedom Index. Northern Ireland is one of the most difficult regions for journalists to operate.

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.

Is US Officialdom Insane?

by Kim Petersen / April 29th, 2024

Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, April 26, 2024. Photo: Xinhua

A foreboding article was published on April 24. It was pointed out that China had provided a berth to a Russian ship Angara that is purportedly “tied to North Korea-Russia arms transfers.”

Reuters cited Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) – that boasts of itself to be “the world’s oldest and the UK’s leading defence and security think tank” – which claims Angara, since August 2023, has transported “thousands of containers believed to contain North Korean munitions,” [italics added] to Russian ports.

Container ships transport containers, and along the way they dock in certain harbors. Until satellite photos have X-ray capability any speculation about what is inside a container will be just that: speculation. Discerning readers will readily pick up on this.

Despite China repeatedly coming out in favor of peace, Reuters, nonetheless, plays up US concerns over perceived support by Beijing for “Moscow’s war” (what Moscow calls a “special military operation”) in Ukraine.

And right on cue, US secretary-of-state Antony Blinken shows up in Beijing echoing a list of US concerns vis-à-vis China.

Blinken had public words for China: “In my meetings with NATO Allies earlier this month and with our G7 partners just last week, I heard that same message: fueling Russia’s defense industrial base not only threatens Ukrainian security; it threatens European security. Beijing cannot achieve better relations with Europe while supporting the greatest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War. As we’ve told China for some time, ensuring transatlantic security is a core US interest. In our discussions today, I made clear that if China does not address this problem, we will.”

It would seem clear that the Taiwan Straits is a core China interest, no? Or is it only US core interests that matter?

Blinken: “I also expressed our concern about the PRC’s unfair trade practices and the potential consequences of industrial overcapacity to global and US markets, especially in a number of key industries that will drive the 21st century economy, like solar panels, electric vehicles, and the batteries that power them. China alone is producing more than 100 percent of global demand for these products, flooding markets, undermining competition, putting at risk livelihoods and businesses around the world.”

It sounds like sour grapes from the US that China’s R&D and manufacturing is out-competing the US. Take, for example, that the US sanctions Huawei while China allows Apple to sell its products unhindered in China. China has hit back at the rhetoric of “overcapacity.”

Blinken complained of “PRC’s dangerous actions in the South China Sea, including against routine Philippine maintenance operations and maritime operations near the Second Thomas Shoal. Freedom of navigation and commerce in these waterways is not only critical to the Philippines, but to the US and to every other nation in the Indo-Pacific and indeed around the world.”

Mentioning freedom of navigation implies that China is preventing such. Why is freedom of navigation in the South China Sea critical to the US? Second Thomas Shoal is a colonial designation otherwise known as Renai Jiao in China. The “routine Philippine maintenance operations and maritime operations” that Blinken speaks of are for a navy landing craft that was intentionally grounded by the Philippines in 1999. Since then, the Philippines has been intermittently resupplying its soldiers stationed there.

Blinken: “I reaffirmed the US’s ‘one China’ policy and stressed the critical importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

How does the US stationing US soldiers on the Chinese territory of Taiwan without approval from Beijing reaffirm the US’s commitment to a one-China policy? The Shanghai Communiqué of 1972 states “the United States acknowledges that Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States does not challenge that position.”

Blinken: “I also raised concerns about the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy and democratic institutions as well as transnational repression, ongoing human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet, and a number of individual human rights cases.”

Evidence of human rights abuses in Xinjiang? This is a definitive downplay from the previous allegations of a genocide against Uyghurs. It would be embarrassing to continue to accuse China of a genocide in Xinjiang due to a paucity of bodies which is a sine qua non for such a serious allegation as a genocide; meanwhile the US-armed Israel is blowing up hospitals and schools with ten-of-thousands of confirmed Palestinian civilian bodies. Even if there are human rights abuses in Xinjiang (which should be deplored were there condemnatory evidence), the US would still be morally assailable for its selective outrage.

Blinken: “I encouraged China to use its influence to discourage Iran and its proxies from expanding the conflict in the Middle East, and to press Pyongyang to end its dangerous behavior and engage in dialogue.”

Is the US militarily backing a genocide of Palestinians a “conflict.” Are US military maneuvers in the waters near North Korea “safe behavior”?

Blinken responded to a question: “But now it is absolutely critical that the support that [China’s] providing – not in terms of weapons but components for the defense industrial base – again, things like machine tools, microelectronics, where it is overwhelmingly the number-one supplier to Russia. That’s having a material effect in Ukraine and against Ukraine, but it’s also having a material effect in creating a growing [sic] that Russia poses to countries in Europe and something that has captured their attention in a very intense way.”

Are the ATACMS, Javelins, HIMARS, Leopard tanks, drones, artillery, Patriot missile defense, etc supposed to be absolutely uncritical and have no material effect on the fighting in Ukraine? And who is posing a threat to who? European countries are funding and arming Ukraine and sanctioning Russia not vice versa? It sounds perversely Orwellian.

*****

From Biden to Harris to Yellen to Raimondo to Sullivan to Blinken, US officials again and again try to browbeat and put down their Chinese colleagues.

At the opening meeting on 18 March 2021 of the US-China talks in Anchorage, Alaska, the arrogance of Blinken and the US was put on notice by the rebuke of Chinese foreign affairs official Yang Jiechi: “[T]he US does not have the qualification to say it wants to speak to China from a position of strength.” It doesn’t seem to have sunk in for the American side.

The Russia-China relationship is solid. China’s economy is growing strongly. Scores of countries are clamoring to join BRICS+ and dedollarization is well underway. Yet, the US continues to try to bully the world’s largest – and still rapidly growing – economy. This strategy appears to affirm the commonly referred to aphorism about the definition of insanity: trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

US Congress Makes Downpayment on World War III

US President Proclaims Enduring Peace

by Roger D. Harris / April 29th, 2024

The US Congress authorized a $95 billion military aid package for continuing the wars in Ukraine and Gaza as well as for war preparations against China. This represents, in effect, a downpayment on World War III. US President Joe Biden, reading from a playbook that could well have been scripted by George Orwell, announced: “it’s a good day for world peace.” And in order to dispel any doubt, he added, “for real.”

Biden proclaimed: “It’s going to make the world safer.” In fact, the bipartisan authorization, passed on April 23, could nudge the doomsday clock a little closer to midnight.

Lest there be any confusion about what the head of the US empire means by making the world safer, Biden explains: “it continues America’s leadership in the world.”

US leadership is the crux of the matter. That is, at a time of increasingly challenged US hegemony, the official US strategy is still global “full spectrum dominance.” No longer does the empire justify itself as leading the crusade against communism, or even against what it considered “terrorism,” or its “war on drugs.” Today, the official national security doctrine is naked “great power competition.”

Continuing the Orwellian theme, the US president backed up his claim about US world leadership, saying, “everyone knows it.”  This was not reflected in the UN General Assembly vote on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, where the US side was trounced by an overwhelming 153 in favor. Besides the US and Israel, only eight others voted against and a mere 23 abstained.  On any number of issues, the majority of the world’s population opposes the US.

Biden’s boast that “Ukraine has regained over half the territory that Russia took from them” is not particularly reflected by the Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, which concluded that the current deadlock “plays to Russia’s strategic military advantages and is increasingly shifting the momentum in Moscow’s favor.”

Hailing the “brave Ukrainians,” Biden overlooks that 650,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age have fled the country.

Diminishing prospects for a decisive US/NATO victory in Ukraine have precipitated a particularly dangerous response from Washington, which rejects a negotiated settlement. The current administration’s plan is not to pull for peace but to push for more war. This is spun as a strategy “to stop Putin from drawing the United States into a war.” Yet it is the US, which is doing its part feeding the conflict by giving yet more armaments to the military effort.

The expansion of NATO, contrary to earlier US assurances not to advance east, is hailed in Biden’s speech. Yet, this march of NATO toward the Russian border is the very cause that Russian President Putin gave for his country’s incursion into Ukraine. This abundantly articulated Russian “redline” should be well known in Washington.

Yet, Biden in his speech goes on to ominously raise NATO’s Article Five for mutual defense which declares “an attack on one is an attack on all.” This is plainly a taunt for a war with another nuclear power. Veterans for Peace antiwar activist and author Dee Knight calls the military aid package “an open-ended commitment to the NATO war against Russia.”

In yet another spin on reality, Biden condemns “a brutal campaign” that has “killed tens of thousands” and “bombed hospitals.” If you think he is referring to Israel’s US-enabled war on Gaza, guess again.

Biden is not about to call a halt on the genocide of the Palestinians, though he could. In 1982, for instance, Israel bombed civilians. Then US President Ronald Reagan called his counterpart in Tel Aviv and told him to stop what he explicitly called a “holocaust.”

Twenty minutes later Israel ordered cessation of its bombardment. In contrast, The New York Times reports that a member of Israel’s war cabinet predicts the current war may last “a year, a decade or a generation.”

“My commitment to Israel, I want to make clear again, is ironclad,” says the US politician who is by far the “biggest recipient in history of donations from pro-Israeli groups.”

The aid package schizophrenically commits tax-payer dollars to both lethal weapons and humanitarian aid for “the innocent people of Gaza, who are suffering badly.” No recognition is given to what is obvious – that an immediate and permanent ceasefire is the first step for relieving the suffering.

War may not be good for most of humanity, but it is bonanza for US military contractors. As Biden brags, the weapons are “made by American companies here in America…in other words, we’re helping Ukraine while at the same time investing in our own industrial base.” That is, our own merchants of death are making a killing.

Biden has over-performed in his promise to make sure the weapons shipments “start right away.” Without legal pre-authorization, the US has supplied both Ukraine and Israel with proscribed weaponry.

Most of the funds, according to economist Jack Rasmus, are for weapons that have already been delivered or from military stocks that are in the process of being shipped. “Only $13.8 billion of the $61 billion is for weapons Ukraine doesn’t already have!” In a tweet embarrassing to the US-backed war effort and subsequently deleted, CBS News suggested only about 30% of US military aid for Ukraine ever reaches the front lines, in part due to pervasive corruption.

“Everything we do,” the US president explains is, “setting the conditions for an enduring peace.” The question his proclamation raises is what does this vision of a militarily imposed pax Americana look like?

Is it Haiti, where under Yankee benevolence they do not even have a government and even the disgraced appointed prime minister just resigned? Or is it Libya, where a US-led colonial coalition overthrew a major force for African unity and replaced it with military factions allowing slaves to be openly bartered on the streets? Or is it Afghanistan, where the US engineered the overthrow of a socialist government that stood for women’s emancipation, occupied the land for two decades, and then withdrew leaving a humanitarian disaster?

In short, the Biden’s promise of “enduring peace” looks a lot like chaos and “endless war.” “History will remember this moment,” he predicts. And well it may.

Amnesty condemns UK for ‘appalling’ domestic policies in damning report

‘The UK is deliberately destabilising the entire concept of universal human rights’

Hannah Davenport 

Yesterday
Left Foot Forward

The world’s leading human rights organisation has issued a damning condemnation of the UK government’s domestic policies and failure in Gaza, accusing the UK of “deliberately destabilising” global human rights.

In a truly bleak assessment, Amnesty International said Britain had breached international human rights commitments at a “perilous” time in global history, as a result of the UK government’s policies targeting asylum seekers and protesters.

Amnesty’s 2024 annual global report notes Britain’s weakening global and domestic human rights protections for the sake of the government’s own political gain, and at a time when the global community is failing to uphold international law.

Amnesty also accused the UK Government of ‘grotesque double-standards’ for bolstering the actions of Israel and the US in Gaza, as the UK continues to arm Israel while failing to condemn Israel’s actions in the region which ‘likely amounts to war crimes’.

The UK’s weak support for the international criminal court (ICC) investigation into human rights violations in Israel and Palestine was also condemned, along with its failure to stand up as a strong voice in the UN to stop human rights violations in Gaza.

Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s chief executive said: “There’s no doubt in my mind that the UK will be judged harshly by history for its failure to help prevent civilian slaughter in Gaza.”

When it comes to the ability to defend human rights at home, Amnesty lists the UK among countries affected by new laws which restrict citizens’ rights to freedom of expression.

Furthermore the universal application of human rights had in effect been ended by the UK government, as Amnesty said the Illegal Migration Act, and government rhetoric around it, were in conflict with the UK refugee convention and European convention on human rights – “switching off” protections for refugees.

The report also noted the increased use of facial recognition technology to police public protest and sporting events in the UK, along with India, Brazil and Argentina, and how this discriminates against marginalised communities.

In the hard-hitting review Deshmukh said: “The UK is deliberately destabilising the entire concept of universal human rights through its appalling domestic policies and politicking.”

What a legacy the Tory government will leave behind.

Amnesty International’s 2024 State of the World’s Human Rights report documents human rights concerns last year in 155 countries.

(Image credit: Richard Potts / Flickr)

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward

Baroness praised for cutting takedown of Rwanda bill and Tory attacks on the vulnerable

'With a desperate flailing government bereft of ideas, and philosophy without principles, this house will keep being tested'

Hannah Davenport 

23 April, 2024 

Left Foot Forward News

Last night MPs and representatives from the House of Lords made impassioned speeches regarding the controversial Safety of Rwanda Bill as it was eventually passed through.

With widespread condemnation and outrage from human rights groups and politicians, the plan to remove asylum seekers and send them to the east African country has provoked powerful words from those defending the rights of the people who will have their lives severely affected as a result of the bill.

Addressing members of the House of Lords on Monday evening, former leader of the Green Party Baroness Bennett was praised for her “magnificent” takedown of the policy, as she also heeded a warning to MPs to “stand up” and defend their principles.

In her speech to the chamber, Baroness Bennett said: “I rise with a heavy heart given the lack of further amendment to this dreadful, international law busting bill.

“I note that Amnesty International warned airline companies that many members of the public take an extremely negative view of the content of the policy.

“Those were unnecessary words, because no company of any repute whatsoever is going to take part in implementing this dreadful policy, that’s a measure of this bill and the disgraceful, despicable actions it represents.”

Speaking of their role in the House of Lords, Bennett argued that, just because it is an unelected chamber of parliament, “does not mean this house is without moral or legal responsibility”.

“I have asked this house a number of times, if not now when, what will it take to make this house say here we take a stand?”

Bennett then went on to lay into the Tory government’s record of legislative attacks on vulnerable people in society.

“We’ve had the abomination of the elections act, the elements of the policing act that targeted Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people explicitly, we’ve had multiple indefensible restrictions on the right to protest. Now, we are letting through an attack on some of the most vulnerable, desperate people on this planet.

“What more will we let through? I suggest to noble lords as they leave this chamber tonight to ask themselves that question.

“With a desperate flailing government bereft of ideas, and philosophy without principles, this house will keep being tested.

“So I ask these empty benches, you might be waiting for an election, but what kind of country will it be if you don’t stand up now?”

You can watch the full video here.

(Image credit: Twitter screenshot)

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward, focusing on trade unions and environmental issues

‘A stain on the UK’s moral reputation’: How human rights groups have reacted to the passing of Rwanda bill

'A national disgrace'

Basit Mahmood 

23 April, 2024 

Left Foot Forward

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The passage of the Rwanda Bill late last night, after a parliamentary showdown ended between the Commons and the Lords, has been met with condemnation and outrage by a number of human rights groups.

Rishi Sunak’s emergency Rwanda Bill finally passed, with the Prime Minister saying that the first flights removing asylum seekers who arrive illegally to the UK to the east African country are due to take off in 10-12 weeks time.

Sunak’s Safety of Rwanda Bill, which forms a key part of his plan to stop small boat crossings across the channel, has faced a number of legal setbacks, after the Supreme Court ruled last year that it could lead to human rights breaches. Sunak has brought forward emergency legislation, in a bid to force the policy through, compelling judges to treat Rwanda as a safe country and giving ministers the powers to disregard sections of the Human Rights Act.

Forcing courts to treat Rwanda as a safe country and to disregard evidence to the contrary, while also ignoring the UK’s commitments to human rights laws has caused major concern.

The legislation orders the courts to ignore key sections of the Human Rights Act in an attempt to sidestep the Supreme Court’s existing judgment. It also orders the courts to ignore other British laws or international rules – such as the international Refugee Convention – that stand in the way of deportations to Rwanda.

Reacting to the passage of the legislation, Amnesty International called it a ‘national disgrace’.

It said in a statement: “The UK parliament has passed a bill that takes a hatchet to international legal protections for some of the most vulnerable people in the world and it is a matter of national disgrace that our political establishment has let this bill pass.

“The bill is built on a deeply authoritarian notion attacking one of the most basic roles played by the courts – the ability to look at evidence, decide on the facts of a case and apply the law accordingly. It’s absurd that the courts are forced to treat Rwanda as a ‘safe country’ and forbidden from considering all evidence to the contrary.

“Switching off human rights protections for people who the Government thinks it can gain political capital from attacking sets an extremely dangerous precedent.”

Enver Solomon, CEO of the Refugee Council, said the passage of the bill was an Orwellian Act which will simply exacerbate chaos in the asylum system.

He continued: “Even on the Government’s best-case scenario, the Rwanda scheme will remove no more than 5,000 people a year out of the tens of thousands of people shut out of the asylum system. Inexplicably, the Government would rather pay to look after them indefinitely than simply grant them a fair hearing on UK soil to decide who can settle here. “What’s more, the Government has never been able to produce any evidence that the Rwanda scheme will deter refugees coming to the UK. The Prime Minister reportedly believed the ‘deterrent won’t work’ when he was Chancellor.”

The Council of Europe’s human rights watchdog has also condemned Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda scheme, saying it raises “major issues about the human rights of asylum seekers and the rule of law”.

The body’s human rights commissioner, Michael O’Flaherty, was cited in the Guardian warning that the UK was prohibited from subjecting, even indirectly, people to “refoulement” – the act of forcing a refugee or asylum seeker to a country or territory where he or she is likely to face persecution – including under article 3 of the European convention on human rights, under the refugee convention, and under “a range of other international instruments”.

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward