Why Kazakhstan's Crisis Matters to China


Giulia Sciorati
11 January 2022
https://www.ispionline.it/en

Scarcely two years after protesters redefined the political landscape in Kyrgyzstan, the country’s giant northern neighbour – Kazakhstan – has witnessed a series of uprisings that started in the Western city of Zhanaozen and soon spread to other Southern cities and, most importantly, the former capital of Almaty. Other scholars and journalists have written on the complexities of the protests’ motivations and their potential impact on the country’s President Kasym-Jomart Tokaev, now in his third year in power. Kazakhstan’s 2019 political transition, once lauded internationally in terms of stability vis-à-vis Uzbekistan’s, is now under scrutiny. China, in particular, looks with concern at the protests in Kazakhstan – even more so than it did the 2020 coup in Bishkek – in light of the close relationship the two countries have shared since the launch of the Silk Road Economic Belt in 2013 and the proximity of protesters to the border with Xinjiang.

China’s Understanding of the Kazakh Protests

Two frames can be primarily detected in China’s reaction to the Kazakh protests. On the one hand, Beijing has accepted the Kazakh leadership’s framing of protesters as terrorists (e.g., 恐怖分子 kongbu fenzi). On the other, the protests have been understood as an attempt at a colour revolution (颜色革命 yanse geming).

Others will open debates on the conceptual validity of using these terms to define the Kazakh protests. At this point, what is interesting to discuss is the context within which the terms have emerged, as they both display a substantial Chinese imprint.

Linking protests to terrorism is an established practice in China. Recent examples include the 2019 Hong Kong protests and the 2021 Myanmar coup, which Beijing formally identified as terrorist events. Finding a comprehensive application after the launch of the Global War on Terror, China’s protest-terrorism nexus has primarily been transposed to Central Asia through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). At the same time, the term “colour revolution” had a similar development process, as China has habitually interpreted Central Asian affairs through this prism,[1] especially since the 2005 Tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan, which has remained at the centre of China’s concerns for future spillovers in other Central Asian countries. Such conceptualisation has actually been shared by China and Russia at the international level on numerous occasions.

China’s Attitude to Russia-led Peacekeepers in Kazakhstan

Tokayev’s decision to ask for Vladimir Putin’s support in handling protesters and the deployment of Russia-led peacekeepers from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) have inspired inflated reactions from Western media, especially in terms of drawing connections with the 2014 Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

Some observers have asked for China to be galled by Russia’s intervention and, more generally, Kazakhstan’s decision to rely on Moscow to be evidence of a Russian sphere of influence, capable of trumping China’s engagement with its western neighbours. Although there might be some truth to these interpretations, an oversimplification of the China-Russia-Kazakhstan relation is risky because it does not consider the extensive concessions Beijing made in its dogmatic foreign policy since pursuing a more active role in the international system.

One should first take into account the regional context in which Kazakhstan’s protests unfolded, which still reflects China’s non-intervention in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of US troops. Despite expectations from Central Asian countries that Beijing (and potentially the SCO) would assume a more active role in regional security, China made its non-interventionist position crystal-clear. The military outpost financed in Tajikistan, for instance, is managed by China’s military police and not the army, signalling Beijing’s interest in internal rather than regional security. Consequently, Kazakhstan’s quest for support has been rationally directed elsewhere.

Second, despite China’s limited ability to compromise on its core foreign policy principles, the country has been known for making concessions on peacekeeping. Therefore, the government could easily tolerate the involvement of Kazakhstan-requested CSTO peacekeepers in the country. For example, Beijing’s government-related media reiterated the use of the term “peacekeeping” (维和 weihe), justifying China’s recent offer to support Kazakhstan in terms of law enforcement and security as the situation in Kazakhstan stabilises.

In Support of China-Russia’s Economy-Security Division of Labour in Central Asia

China’s approach to the Kazakh protests and Russia’s CSTO peacekeeping intervention confirms a trend in Beijing’s relations with Central Asia: a preference for limited military presence, especially outside formal UN peacekeeping missions. This attitude also bolsters the case for a functioning Russia-China division of labour in Central Asia, successfully perpetuating a model originally designed to ensure that China’s regional activities would not be perceived as conflictual by Russia. A model that – at least from Beijing’s perspective – is still valid and worthy of being pursued.

[1] This tendency is clearly detectable in the documents released after China’s annual academic conference on the relations with Central Asia.

Was the Kazakhstan uprising an attempted Jihadi takeover?

11 January 2022

THE SPECTATOR

Francis Pike

The Kazakh uprising is over. The stench of burnt-out vehicles and bombed out buildings in Kazakhstan’s most populous city and former capital, Almaty, has begun to dissipate. Life is returning to normal. Banks have reopened. Salaries and pensions are being paid. The internet is up and running again. Almaty airport is expected to reopen today.

As the fog of war lifts some clarity about these events is beginning to emerge. Officials have reported that 100 businesses and banks were destroyed along with 400 vehicles. Seven policemen died and hundreds more were wounded; 8,000 people have been arrested. Some 164 civilians were killed.

The government of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has survived and with some ease as it turns out. There will be no Maidan or Orange Revolution of the sort that overthrew the pro-Russian government of Ukraine. President Putin has made clear that he would not let anyone ‘destabilise the situation in our home and… allow the so-called colour revolution scenario to play out.’ Note the words ‘our home’, which is how he sees a country in which 20 per cent of the population is Russian — a not dissimilar proportion to Ukraine.

On the eve of US-Russian talks over Ukraine, the Kazakh uprising has been a gift to Russia’s leader. Putin grabbed the PR opportunity with alacrity. By sending 2,500 troops to help defend Kazakhstan, at a stroke Putin has validated his Collective Security Treaty Organisation, Central Asia’s equivalent of Nato. The other CSTO rulers of Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are likely to be impressed. If Russian troops return home as expected, former members such as Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan may consider re-joining. Even Turkmenistan’s isolationist and deeply unpopular ruling family may also consider the attractions of Russia’s protective embrace.

Apart from Putin, the other clear winner from recent events is President Tokayev himself. Although he took over the presidency in March 2019, his power was deeply circumscribed.

The Kremlin and Tokayev have accused ‘terrorists’ of acting with unspecified foreign agents

His predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbayev, had held the post for 29 years since the break-up of the Soviet Union and was not intending to give up power. On the day that Tokayev assumed the presidency Nazarbayev’s daughter, Dariga, already a major political figure, was elected to Tokayev’s former position as chairman of the Senate. Throughout Central Asia the rumour was that new President Tokayev was simply keeping the seat warm for Dariga.

The predecessor Nazarbayev retained control of the Kazakh army through his chairmanship of the National Security Council. He continued to lead the ruling Nur Otan party and remained a member of the Constitutional Council, an Athenian-style council of elders which, in theory at least, retains guardianship over Kazakhstan’s government.

However, Tokayev refused to follow the prescribed playbook. He kicked against the traces and tried to assert his independence. Dariga was sacked as chairman of the Senate. Rival presidential courts began to grow. A brief truce was observed when Nazarbayev, Dariga and President Tokayev made a show of unity at Nur Otan’s party conference in November 2019, two months before parliamentary elections in January 2020.

The uneasy truce remained until last week. As recently as Christmas, in an informal conference of regional leaders hosted by Putin in Moscow, both Tokayev and Nazarbayev were invited.

But last week, with popular protest on the streets calling for the ‘old man out’ (meaning Nazarbayev), Tokayev pounced. The Kazakhstan cabinet, hand-picked by Nazarbayev, was sacked. Meanwhile the former president was removed from the chairmanship of the Security Council. A purge of Nazarbayev loyalists was begun. The head of Kazakhstan’s intelligence services was sacked on 6 January. He has now been arrested for treason.

Nazarbayev and Dariga have disappeared into the ether, though rumour has it that they are still in Kazakhstan. If evidence were needed as to who now runs the country, the fact that Presidents Putin and Xi Jinping have only addressed their congratulations to President Tokayev is conclusive proof that an internal transition of power has taken place. Xi praised him for being strong and decisive and for ‘being highly responsible for your country and your people’.

Other issues are less clear. Who was doing the fighting in the streets? Some have suggested that the fighting was related to Tokayev’s ‘palace coup’. Unlikely. A palace coup would happen around the government buildings, which is in the new capital city, Astana. In Kazakhstan the riots started in the remote south west, more than 1,500 miles away. In any case, how credible is it that fuel-price protestors reached immediately for guns and bombs?

The Kremlin and Tokayev have accused ‘terrorists’ of acting with unspecified foreign agents. The US has largely assumed that the finger of blame is being pointed at them. Rather defensively, White House press secretary Jen Psaki complained that rumours of US involvement were ‘crazy’.

What has largely been overlooked is the possibility that violence in Kazakhstan, on the back of popular protests about the rising price of petrol, was indeed orchestrated by ‘foreign terrorist’ groups — Jihadi groups. There is significant circumstantial evidence.

There was violence in 19 of Kazakhstan’s 31 cities; 15 of these cities were close to foreign borders, notably Kyrgistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and China’s Uighur populated Xinjian Autonomous Region. About 1.5 per cent of Kazakhstan’s population is Uighur and there is growing resentment throughout Central Asia that their governments have yielded to Chinese pressure to render Uighur dissidents.

Muslim terrorist groups that operate throughout Central Asia include the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islam (party of Islamic Liberation), the Jamaat of Central Asian Mujahidin and the Uighur Islamic party of eastern Turkestan. Foreign based groups such as the Taliban are also allegedly present in the region. Along with Isis and the Muslim Brotherhood, there are estimated to be 19 Jihadi groups operating in Central Asia.

The fall of Isis in Syria has brought trained ‘talent’ back to Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan officials alone reported 863 returnees from conflicts in Syria and Iraq between 2010 and June 2016. All Central Asian governments, which are secular but with majority Muslim populations, have been reporting increased jihadi activity in recent years.

Although Kazakh Muslims are historically moderate, Sufi and apolitical with only around 10 per cent believing in Sharia law (compared to 43 per cent in the UK), nevertheless the Kazakh government has become increasingly alive to the threat posed by Jihadis. In 2013 Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee established an anti-terror centre. As far back as 2014, the Central Asian Caucasus Institute concluded that ‘Kazakhstan’s problem of radicalization is no longer limited to in-country malcontents.’

More than 60 Jihadi attacks have been thwarted in Kazakhstan over the last decade. For Europeans, Jihadi attacks such as that on the Bataclan in Paris are global events and the perpetrators are roundly abused. Double standards abound. Similar attacks in Central Asia and China go unreported and the response, if any, from the West is normally concerned with the ‘human rights’ of the perpetrators.

In his virtual address to fellow CSTO leaders yesterday President Tokayev made it clear that he was blaming ‘foreign militants from Afghanistan and the Mideast countries’. Thus far this is not the narrative being given by a sceptical western media. The problem is that we tend to assume, for good reason, that President Putin and all his Central Asian stooges always tell lies. Jihadi involvement in the Kazakh uprising is as yet still unproven — but Tokayev’s laying the blame on radical Islamic groups is credible. Astonishing as it may seem, a Central Asian despot may actually be telling the truth.

WRITTEN BY

Francis Pike
Francis Pike is a historian and author of Hirohito’s War, The Pacific War 1941-1945 and Empires at War: A Short History of Modern Asia Since World War II.

THE SPECTATOR IS A UK RIGHT WING PUBLICATION

France Fines Facebook and Google For Violating the EU Cookie Law: You Need to Make it As Easy to Refuse as a Cookie, as it is to Accept One

By Jenny L. Colgate on January 10, 2022

France recently fined Alphabet Inc’s Google $169 million and Meta Platform’s Facebook $67 million on grounds that the companies violated the EU e-Privacy directive (aka the EU “Cookie Law”) by requiring too many “clicks” for users to reject cookies. The result was that many users just accepted the cookies, thus allowing the identifiers to track their data. The French regulator gave the companies three months to come up with a solution that makes it as easy to reject cookies as it does to accept cookies. This is an important message for all companies as they review their cookie compliance in 2022 – make it as easy to refuse a cookie as it is to accept one.

It is interesting to note that these recent fines were not issued under GDPR, but rather under the older e-Privacy directive which has been in effect since 2002. Unlike the GDPR, which only allows regulators to fine companies that have their European headquarters in that country, regulators can issue fines under the e-Privacy directive against any company that does business in its jurisdiction.

The EU Cookie Law (which is not actually a law, but a directive) came into effect in 2002 and was amended in 2009 (amendment effective since 2011). This directive regulates the processing of personal data in the electronic communications sector, and specifically it regulates the use of electronic cookies on websites by conditioning use upon prior consent of users. Unless cookies are deemed strictly necessary for the most basic functions of a website (e.g., cookies that manage shopping cart contents), users must be given clear and comprehensive information about the purposes of processing data, storage, retention, and access, and they must also be able to give their consent and be provided with a way to refuse consent.

Facebook reveals how it really collects and uses your data with new Privacy Center

By Charlotte Edwards,

 The Sun UK
January 9, 2022 

Meta has faced backlash over its approach to privacy and data in the past.

Chesnot/Getty Images

Facebook has just revealed a new Privacy Center feature that aims to provide an insight into what the app does with data.

Privacy Center is currently only available for a small number of US users but there are plans to roll it out further in the coming months.

Meta, which owns Facebook, said: “Today, we’re introducing Privacy Center to educate people on their privacy options and make it easier to understand how we collect and use information.

“In Privacy Center, you can learn about our approach to privacy, read up on our Data Policy and learn how to use the many privacy and security controls that we offer.”

If you’re based in the US, you may spot the Privacy Center on the desktop version of Facebook.

It should also become available on the app once the feature rolls out to more people.

Privacy Center is currently separated into five categories.

These are Security, Sharing, Collection, Use and Ads.

Each section contains guides and controls to help you learn about your privacy on Facebook and how you can try and control it.

For the Use section, Meta says: “Learn more about how and why we use data, and explore the controls we offer to manage how your information is used.”

For Ads it explains: “Learn more about how your information is used to determine the ads you see, and make use of ad controls like Ad Preferences.”

The Privacy Center should become available on the app once the feature rolls out to more people.

Mohssen Assanimoghaddam/picture alliance via Getty Images

Privacy Center will be located under Settings and then Privacy.

Meta concluded: “As we expand Privacy Center, we will add more ways to access it in places where you may have privacy concerns.

“We’ll continue to update Privacy Center and add more modules and controls to help people understand our approach to privacy across our apps and technologies.”

Meta has faced backlash over its approach to privacy and data in the past and is working on being more transparent with its users.

Mozilla wants to show just how much Meta and Facebook tracks you

By Sead Fadilpašić 

TECHRADAR

JAN 11, 2022

The world can't wait for Meta to do the right thing, researchers say

(Image credit: Facebook / Meta)

Firefox maker Mozilla has announced a wide-ranging new program aiming to discover the scope and depth of tracking services used by Facebook parent company Meta.

Led by Rally, Mozilla’s privacy-first data-sharing platform, The Facebook Pixel Hunt will be conducted together with The Markup Team, an American non-profit data-driven journalism organization, covering the ethics and impact of technology on society, as well as Mozilla volunteering users.

“According to its own privacy policy, Facebook may collect information about you across the web even if you don’t have a Facebook account,” the project’s website reads. “One way Facebook performs this tracking is through a network of “pixels” that may be installed on many of the sites you visit. By joining this study, you will help Rally and The Markup investigate and report on where Facebook is tracking you and what kind of information they are collecting.”

Raising awareness

To help the two organizations, users need to install Rally (which you can do on this link), and then sign up for the Facebook Pixel Hunt on this link. After that, it’s business as usual. They surf, the data gets generated, collected, and sent to the two companies for analysis.

Mozilla launched Rally in June 2021 as an extension for the popular browser that aims to raise awareness of the value of people’s data.

The data that gets created through the use of the extension will be used to support various studies. Among the first ones was a study by Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy’s on news and misinformation about politics and Covid-19 on digital services, and the Stanford University Graduate School of Business study on how people consume news and the impact ads have on the consumers.

The Markup, however, will be the first time Rally’s partnered up with an organization that doesn’t come from academia.

According to AdWeek, Rally product lead at Mozilla, Ted Han, said in a statement that the world cannot wait on platforms to “do the right thing, especially when so much depends on it”.

“This partnership seeks to lead the way in providing new and critical ways of illuminating the reality of the internet, led by the people who make it. This partnership comes at a time when the consequences of fragmented awareness have never been more stark.”

At the time of increased risk of identity theft, protecting one's online data has never been more important. Internet users are often advised to be careful who they share their personal information with, to use strong authentication methods whenever possible, and to connect to the internet via VPN in order to encrypt the communication channel.

Facebook has often been criticized for the way it handles user data, with one of the bigger incidents happening between 2013 and 2016. Back then, it was uncovered that the company provided British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica access to user data, without their consent, for the purpose of political advertising, ahead of the 2016 US presidential elections.

UK Weather: Brace Yourself For Thundersnow

The Met Office issues yellow alert for Scotland and northern England.

By Graeme Demianyk

Snow covered fields and rooftops in Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland.
OWEN HUMPHREYS - PA IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES

Forecasters have warned so-called “thundersnow” – a thunderstorm that produces snow instead of rain – could hit large swathes of Scotland and northern England, knocking homes off the power grid.

The Met Office has warned of dangerous weather conditions on Thursday and Friday, and the forecaster said there could be as much as 10cm of snow falling on the highest ground, as well as the risk of dangerous icy patches and of lightning strikes from isolated thunderstorms.

Thundersnow is not meteorologically different to thunder in the summer, but rather than hail or rain there is snow which can affect the acoustics of the thunder.

The Met Office added that the prospect of thundersnow was driven by the same conditions which cause thunder in the summer, the difference in temperature between the ground and the air surrounding it.

Grahame Madge, spokesman at the Met Office, said: “Because you have got that differential it’s possible, quite easily, for warm air at ground level when it heats up to start to rise very quickly up through the cold air and that’s what creates the potential for thunderstorms, so we are likely to see along with the other wintery showers, likely to see hail and snow.”

How thundersnow is formed.
PA GRAPHICS VIA PA GRAPHICS/PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES

The yellow weather warning is set to be in place at 8pm on Thursday until 11am on Friday, and the alert, which includes Glasgow, stretches along the east of Scotland and into the north of England beyond Manchester. It also includes part of Northern Ireland, the Met Office said.

‘Furnace’: Argentina roasts in record-setting heat wave

Published: Jan 12, 2022
By Juan Bustamante 

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina is facing a historic heat wave with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius (104°F), making the country for a while the hottest place on the planet, straining power grids and forcing residents to seeking sanctuary in the shade.



With temperatures up around 45°C (113°F) in parts of the South American nation, hundreds of thousands of people were left without electricity when power grids failed in and around populous capital city Buenos Aires.

“I came home and we were without electricity and the house was a furnace,” said Jose Casabal, 42, who whisked his children off to find somewhere to cool down. “So I took them off to their grandmother’s house to swim in the pool.”

The temperatures in Argentina, where dry hot weather driven by the La Nina weather pattern is already hitting crops, meant that for several hours it was the hottest place on earth, taking over from parts of Australia that cooled during its night.

“Even early morning it was very hot, around 31 degrees,” said Gustavo Barrios, 34, from Tigre as he sat in the shadow of some trees. “I do not have air conditioning at home and we were with just the fan blowing hot air. It’s unbearable.”

Local leaders warned residents to stay out of the sun in the hottest part of the day, wear light clothes and stay hydrated.

“We have to be very careful these days,” said Buenos Aires city mayor Horacio Rodriguez Larreta.

Meteorologist Lucas Berengua said that the heat wave was off the charts and could set records in the country.

“This is a heat wave of extraordinary characteristics, with extreme temperature values ​​that will even be analyzed after its completion, and it may generate some historical records for Argentina temperatures and persistence of heat,” he said.

For some it raised questions about climate change and more extreme weather. Argentina in recent years has seen unusual amounts of wild fires around its main river delta and the major Parana River drop to a nearly 80-year low water level.

“I was always born here in a temperate climate and I saw how the temperature changed over the years, and it is not what we’re used to,” said Marta Lorusso, 59, an architect.

“This with the low pressure really kills me, I can’t stand it. I drink liters of water and do what I can. And on top of it all, without electricity. I don’t know what to do.”



(Reporting by Juan Bustamante; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Sandra Maler)

Hero rat Magawa sent from Africa to Asia to sniff out landmines dies in retirement

12 January 2022 - BY PRAK CHAN THUL

Magawa, the landmine detection rat, eats corn at the APOPO 

Visitor Center in Siem Reap, Cambodia, June 10, 2021. 

File Photo
Image: CINDY LIU/Reuters

Landmine-sniffing rat Magawa, who found more than 100 landmines and explosives during a five-year career in Cambodia, has died at the age of 8, leaving a lasting legacy of saved lives in the Southeast Asian nation.

Magawa, who died over the weekend, was the most successful "HeroRAT" deployed by international charity APOPO, which uses African giant pouched rats to detect landmines and tuberculosis.

"Magawa was in good health and spent most of last week playing with his usual enthusiasm, but towards the weekend he started to slow down, napping more and showing less interest in food in his last days," the non-profit organisation said in a statement.

The African giant pouched rat received a gold medal in 2020 from Britain's People's Dispensary for Sick Animals for "lifesaving bravery and devotion to duty".

Scarred by decades of civil war, Cambodia is one of the world's most heavily landmined countries, with more than 1,000 sq km (386 sq miles) of land still contaminated.

It has among the highest number of amputees per capita, with more than 40,000 people having lost limbs to explosives.

Illustrating the extreme risks involved, three Cambodians working to clear mines died on Monday in Preah Vihear province, bordering Thailand.

The three from the Cambodia Self-Help Demining group were killed by blasts from anti-tank mines, which also wounded two others, said Heng Ratana, director-general of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre.

APOPO said Magawa's contribution allowed communities in Cambodia to live, work, and play more safely.

"Every discovery he made reduced the risk of injury or death for the people of Cambodia," APOPO said.

The African giant pouched rat even received a gold medal in 2020 from Britain's People's Dispensary for Sick Animals for "lifesaving bravery and devotion to duty".

Magawa, who retired in June 2021, was born in Tanzania and moved to Siem Reap in Cambodia in 2016 to begin clearing mines.

"A hero is laid to rest," APOPO said. 

Why is so little known about the 1930s coup attempt against FDR?

Business leaders like JP Morgan and Irénée du Pont were accused by a retired major general of plotting to install a fascist dictator

‘The planned coup was thwarted when Butler reported it to J Edgar Hoover at the FBI, who reported it to FDR.’ 

Photograph: Bettmann Archive

Sally Denton
Tue 11 Jan 2022

Donald Trump’s elaborate plot to overthrow the democratically elected president was neither impulsive nor uncoordinated, but straight out of the playbook of another American coup attempt – the 1933 “Wall Street putsch” against newly elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

America had hit rock bottom, beginning with the stock market crash three years earlier. Unemployment was at 16 million and rising. Farm foreclosures exceeded half a million. More than five thousand banks had failed, and hundreds of thousands of families had lost their homes. Financial capitalists had bilked millions of customers and rigged the market. There were no government safety nets – no unemployment insurance, minimum wage, social security or Medicare.

Economic despair gave rise to panic and unrest, and political firebrands and white supremacists eagerly fanned the paranoia of socialism, global conspiracies and threats from within the country. Populists Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin attacked FDR, spewing vitriolic anti-Jewish, pro-fascist refrains and brandishing the “America first” slogan coined by media magnate William Randolph Hearst.

On 4 March 1933, more than 100,000 people had gathered on the east side of the US Capitol for Roosevelt’s inauguration. The atmosphere was slate gray and ominous, the sky suggesting a calm before the storm. That morning, rioting was expected in cities throughout the nation, prompting predictions of a violent revolution. Army machine guns and sharpshooters were placed at strategic locations along the route. Not since the civil war had Washington been so fortified, with armed police guarding federal buildings.

FDR thought government in a civilized society had an obligation to abolish poverty, reduce unemployment, and redistribute wealth. Roosevelt’s bold New Deal experiments inflamed the upper class, provoking a backlash from the nation’s most powerful bankers, industrialists and Wall Street brokers, who thought the policy was not only radical but revolutionary. Worried about losing their personal fortunes to runaway government spending, this fertile field of loathing led to the “traitor to his class” epithet for FDR. “What that fellow Roosevelt needs is a 38-caliber revolver right at the back of his head,” a respectable citizen said at a Washington dinner party.

In a climate of conspiracies and intrigues, and against the backdrop of charismatic dictators in the world such as Hitler and Mussolini, the sparks of anti-Rooseveltism ignited into full-fledged hatred. Many American intellectuals and business leaders saw nazism and fascism as viable models for the US. The rise of Hitler and the explosion of the Nazi revolution, which frightened many European nations, struck a chord with prominent American elites and antisemites such as Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford. Hitler’s elite Brownshirts – a mass body of party storm troopers separate from the 100,000-man German army – was a stark symbol to the powerless American masses. Mussolini’s Blackshirts – the military arm of his organization made up of 200,000 soldiers – were a potent image of strength to a nation that felt emasculated.

A divided country and FDR’s emboldened powerful enemies made the plot to overthrow him seem plausible. With restless uncertainty, volatile protests and ominous threats, America’s right wing was inspired to form its own paramilitary organizations. Militias sprung up throughout the land, their self-described “patriots” chanting: “This is despotism! This is tyranny!”

Today’s Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have nothing on their extremist forbears. In 1933, a diehard core of conservative veterans formed the Khaki Shirts in Philadelphia and recruited pro-Mussolini immigrants. The Silver Shirts was an apocalyptic Christian militia patterned on the notoriously racist Texas Rangers that operated in 46 states and stockpiled weapons.
A divided country and FDR’s emboldened powerful enemies made a plot to overthrow him seem plausible

The Gray Shirts of New York organized to remove “Communist college professors” from the nation’s education system, and the Tennessee-based White Shirts wore a Crusader cross and agitated for the takeover of Washington. JP Morgan Jr, one of the nation’s richest men, had secured a $100m loan to Mussolini’s government. He defiantly refused to pay income tax and implored his peers to join him in undermining FDR.

So, when retired US Marine Corps Maj Gen Smedley Darlington Butler claimed he was recruited by a group of Wall Street financiers to lead a fascist coup against FDR and the US government in the summer of 1933, Washington took him seriously. Butler, a Quaker, and first world war hero dubbed the Maverick Marine, was a soldier’s soldier who was idolized by veterans – which represented a huge and powerful voting bloc in America. Famous for his daring exploits in China and Central America, Butler’s reputation was impeccable. He got rousing ovations when he claimed that during his 33 years in the marines: “I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and for bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”

Butler later testified before Congress that a bond-broker and American Legion member named Gerald MacGuire approached him with the plan. MacGuire told him the coup was backed by a group called the American Liberty League, a group of business leaders which formed in response to FDR’s victory, and whose mission it was to teach government “the necessity of respect for the rights of persons and property”. Members included JP Morgan, Jr, Irénée du Pont, Robert Sterling Clark of the Singer sewing machine fortune, and the chief executives of General Motors, Birds Eye and General Foods.

The putsch called for him to lead a massive army of veterans – funded by $30m from Wall Street titans and with weapons supplied by Remington Arms – to march on Washington, oust Roosevelt and the entire line of succession, and establish a fascist dictatorship backed by a private army of 500,000 former soldiers.

As MacGuire laid it out to Butler, the coup was instigated after FDR eliminated the gold standard in April 1933, which threatened the country’s wealthiest men who thought if American currency wasn’t backed by gold, rising inflation would diminish their fortunes. He claimed the coup was sponsored by a group who controlled $40bn in assets – about $800bn today – and who had $300m available to support the coup and pay the veterans. The plotters had men, guns and money – the three elements that make for successful wars and revolutions. Butler referred to them as “the royal family of financiers” that had controlled the American Legion since its formation in 1919. He felt the Legion was a militaristic political force, notorious for its antisemitism and reactionary policies against labor unions and civil rights, that manipulated veterans.

The planned coup was thwarted when Butler reported it to J Edgar Hoover at the FBI, who reported it to FDR. How seriously the “Wall Street putsch” endangered the Roosevelt presidency remains unknown, with the national press at the time mocking it as a “gigantic hoax” and historians like Arthur M Schlesinger Jr surmising “the gap between contemplation and execution was considerable” and that democracy was not in real danger. Still, there is much evidence that the nation’s wealthiest men – Republicans and Democrats alike – were so threatened by FDR’s policies that they conspired with antigovernment paramilitarism to stage a coup.

The final report by the congressional committee tasked with investigating the allegations, delivered in February 1935, concluded: “[The committee] received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country”, adding “There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”

As Congressman John McCormack who headed the congressional investigation put it: “If General Butler had not been the patriot he was, and if they had been able to maintain secrecy, the plot certainly might very well have succeeded … When times are desperate and people are frustrated, anything could happen.”

There is still much that is not known about the coup attempt. Butler demanded to know why the names of the country’s richest men were removed from the final version of the committee’s report. “Like most committees, it has slaughtered the little and allowed the big to escape,” Butler said in a Philadelphia radio interview in 1935. “The big shots weren’t even called to testify. They were all mentioned in the testimony. Why was all mention of these names suppressed from this testimony?”

While details of the conspiracy are still matters of historical debate, journalists and historians, including the BBC’s Mike Thomson and John Buchanan of the US, later concluded that FDR struck a deal with the plotters, allowing them to avoid treason charges – and possible execution – if Wall Street backed off its opposition to the New Deal. The presidential biographer Sidney Blumenthal recently said that Roosevelt should have pushed it all through, then reneged on his agreement and prosecuted them.

What might all of this portend for Americans today, as President Biden follows in FDR’s New Deal footsteps while democratic socialist Bernie Sanders also rises in popularity and influence? In 1933, rather than inflame a quavering nation, FDR calmly urged Americans to unite to overcome fear, banish apathy and restore their confidence in the country’s future. Now, 90 years later, a year on from Trump’s own coup attempt, Biden’s tone was more alarming, sounding a clarion call for Americans to save democracy itself, to make sure such an attack “never, never happens again”.

If the plotters had been held accountable in the 1930s, the forces behind the 6 January coup attempt might never have flourished into the next century.

Sally Denton is the author of The Plots Against the President: FDR, a Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right. Her forthcoming book is The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land

Book Review: Mario Vargas Llosa Takes On a Coup in Guatemala

BY NICK BURNS
JANUARY 12, 2022

The Peruvian novelist brings Central America’s bloody Cold War past to life – with a surprising political angle.

Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, after being ousted in a coup, speaks with reporters in Paris in 1955.

One of the most sinister episodes in the history of U.S. entanglement in Latin America forms the subject of Mario Vargas Llosa’s latest novel, Harsh Times. The scene is Guatemala during the first decade of the Cold War when, as U.S. fears of Soviet influence ramped up, President Jacobo Árbenz’s plan for land reform worried the powerful, U.S.-run United Fruit Company.

Vargas Llosa describes what happened next in a narrative that draws both on historical records and his own imagination. United Fruit concluded that Arbenz was not a communist, but that his program would damage their interests in the country, which had been favored by previous military rulers. So they devised a campaign to persuade the U.S. government of something they believed not to be true: that Árbenz represented a communist threat in the American hemisphere.

“The danger, gentlemen, lies in setting a bad example. Not so much communism as democracy in Guatemala.” So Vargas Llosa imagines the plan might have been described by Edward L. Bernays, the “father of public relations” and a key figure in the United Fruit–sponsored propaganda campaign against Árbenz.

The campaign was largely successful, and the CIA went on to carry out Operation PBSuccess, supporting an invasion of the country in 1954 led by Carlos Castillo Armas. The invasion toppled Árbenz’s government and ushered in a chaotic period of violence and anticommunist purges.

Harsh Times picks through these events by following the trajectories of two real people caught in the maelstrom of Guatemalan politics: a dictator’s henchman with a penchant for sex and the occult, and the doctor’s daughter with whom he becomes entangled. The book is made up of short chapters from different perspectives arranged in nonchronological order, which can make it hard to read in places. A dizzying array of generals, coups and assassinations don’t make for easy comprehension.

But Vargas Llosa, assisted by an able translator in Adrian Nathan West, makes up for it with his many gifts. Vivid characterization, dramatic timing, and the right amount of juicy detail combine to keep the narrative exciting.

The author has his own opinions on Guatemalan history. Vargas Llosa confirms in an epilogue that he is “certain that the United States erred terribly in preparing a coup against Árbenz,” and adds that “the North American invasion of Guatemala held up the continent’s democratization for decades at the cost of thousands of lives.” He believes the U.S.’s intervention in Guatemala offered a fateful lesson to a young Che Guevara – present in Guatemala at the time – that to be successful a revolution would have to carry out mass executions in the army and ally itself with the Soviet Union. Such was the road taken in Cuba half a decade later.

Harsh Times was published in Spanish in 2019, two years before Pedro Castillo was elected president of Peru in April 2021, beating Keiko Fujimori in a race that saw Vargas Llosa putting aside decades-old grievances against the Fujimori political clan to throw his support behind Keiko. After losing by a hair’s breadth, she alleged fraud – and Vargas Llosa wrote that he believed there had been “grave irregularities” in the election in an article in El País. He later supported right-wing candidate José Kast, who lost the recent Chilean presidential election to Gabriel Boric.

Vargas Llosa’s support for Árbenz might accordingly seem incongruous to some on the left with his contemporary political stances. But perhaps this simply illustrates how deep are the wounds left by American intervention in Latin America during the Cold War. Even staunchly anticommunist intellectuals of the right can’t forgive a betrayal like Operation PBSuccess. But in any case, the book’s careful touch, administered to a very difficult subject matter, provides enough of a delight to make the author’s political inclinations seem a secondary concern.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Burns is editor and production manager at AQ.

 

The Killer That Stalked New York (1950) and the 1947 smallpox outbreak: “Every effort must be made. …”

David Walsh

WSWS.ORG

The Killer That Stalked New York (1950), directed by Earl McEvoy, is a fictionalized account of the 1947 smallpox outbreak in New York City and the systematic, citywide vaccination program in April of that year that brought the immense danger to an end.

At a time when health and public officials in the US still felt some responsibility for the well-being of the general population, New York authorities organized a campaign against the smallpox threat. According to Dr. Israel Weinstein, the city’s new commissioner of health, writing in the November 1947 AmericanJournal of Public Health, “In a period of less than a month more than 6,350,000 people were vaccinated in New York City, over 5,000,000 of them within the two week period following the appeal for universal vaccination made by the Mayor [William O’Dwyer]. Never before had so many people in one city been vaccinated in such a short time and on such short notice.”

Weinstein continued, “Because of the virulence of the disease and its high communicability, it is little short of remarkable that there were only 12 cases in the entire outbreak.” Only two deaths were reported. The health commissioner concluded that “as soon as a case of smallpox is suspected in a community, every effort must be made to have everyone vaccinated without delay.”

New York's mayor (Roy Roberts) announcing vaccination program on radio

“Every effort must be made. …”

Not to reassure the stock market, but to protect the population and extend the life of every citizen.

Last Friday, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Rochelle Walensky relayed the “encouraging news” that “over 75 percent” of COVID-19 deaths in the US “occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities…people who are unwell to begin with.” Ezekiel Emanuel, Chair, Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board from November 2020 to January 2021, has made a name for himself by denouncing the “religious fervor of prolonging life for as long as possible,” which he has described as “misguided and potentially destructive.”

What these repulsive figures have expressed in words, the American ruling elite has energetically put into practice, allowing more than 800,000 men, women and children to die needlessly, with countless more deaths to come.

No American official in 1947 or 1950 would have dared to advance views similar to those expressed by Walensky and Emanuel. Although politically hamstrung by the official labor organizations, the American working class had demonstrated its immense combativity in the immediate postwar years, proving in no uncertain terms it had no intention to return to the misery and destitution of the Great Depression.

Moreover, the atrocities of the Nazi regime—including among them its Euthanasia Program, the murder of hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities, those considered “unworthy of life”—were too fresh in the minds of wide layers of the world’s population. The International Military Tribunal, in which 24 leaders of the Third Reich were placed on trial, had only recently concluded, in October 1946. The fragility and preciousness of human life were on the minds of masses of people.

The Killer That Stalked New York is a well-made and effectively tense film, with many talented people involved, as was typical of the time. It appeared during the richest and most realistic period of American filmmaking, 1946 to 1951, before the anti-communist purges transformed conditions in Hollywood and made critical attention to contemporary social life, and the life of the working class in particular, far more problematic and even hazardous.

Harry Essex’s script for The Killer That Stalked New York invents a suspenseful, psychologically intriguing framework for presenting the smallpox danger. A young woman, Sheila Bennet (Evelyn Keyes), returns to New York City from a trip to Cuba. She is smuggling diamonds, an operation masterminded by her musician boy-friend, Matt Krane (Charles Korvin), who has now, however, secretly taken up with her younger sister, Francie (Lola Albright). Sheila has been followed by a US Customs agent, who loses her when she sneaks out of a midtown Manhattan hotel.

New Yorkers lining up for vaccinations April 1947

Sheila is ill, unbeknownst to her, stricken with smallpox. She begins to spread the contagious disease. Health officials gradually become aware of the menace they face. Alerted to the potential disaster, the health commissioner, the mayor and the city government mobilize resources and initiate a program aimed at inoculating the entire population of 8 million people. Hundreds of thousands line up for a shot.

Now, both Customs and health department officials are hunting for Sheila, although at first independently of each other. By this time horribly ill and almost delirious, Sheila remains determined to exact revenge on the philandering Krane, especially after the suicide of her sister. This burning desire, as much as anything else, prevents her from seeking assistance. The number of the gravely ill begins to rise.

As noted above, the film, from Columbia Pictures, is based on the 1947 outbreak and a non-fiction account of it by Milton Lehman that appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine in April 1948.

In the actual case, the carrier of the disease was a 47-year-old businessman, Eugene Le Bar, who had lived in Mexico for six years. He became ill during the five-day bus ride from Mexico City to New York. Four days after his arrival, he entered Bellevue Hospital and was later transferred to Willard Parker Hospital, the communicable disease hospital in Manhattan, where he died. Several others were also hospitalized with similar symptoms. A definite diagnosis of smallpox was not made for several weeks, until confirmed by doctors at the US Army Medical School Laboratory and Western Reserve University.

Smallpox is one of the deadliest diseases in world history. Medical historians estimate that 300 million died from smallpox in the 20th century alone. As recently as the early 1950s, an estimated 50 million cases of smallpox worldwide occurred annually. The disease killed between 20 and 60 percent of all those infected, including as many as 80 percent of children.

As the National Geographic website explains: “Smallpox is an acute contagious disease caused by the variola virus. It gets its name from the Latin word for ‘spotted,’ referring to the raised, pustular bumps that break out over the face and body of those affected. Historically the virus killed around 30 percent of people who caught it. Those who survived were often left blind, sterile, and with deep pitted scars, or pockmarks, on the skin.” A mass global vaccination campaign announced by the World Health Organization in 1959 finally put an end to the affliction in 1977—'making it the first disease ever eradicated” (American Museum of Natural History).

Evelyn Keyes

The makers of The Killer That Stalked New York decided to create the Bennet character and the tale of smuggling and the fury of “a woman scorned” for fairly evident reasons. In inimitable late-1940s Hollywood fashion, the hardboiled opening narration gets right to the point: “Death didn’t sneak into town riding the rods or huddled in a boxcar. It came in on a streamliner, first class, extra fare, right into the Pennsylvania Station [one of New York’s railroad stations], big as life. And when it finally stepped out of its drawing room and onto the platform, it was something to whistle at. It wore lipstick. Nylons and a beautifully tailored coat that sported a silver dancing girl. Souvenir of Cuba. Its name was Sheila Bennet. A pretty face with a frame to match.”

However, before anyone piously wags a finger, a good word might be put in for the screenwriter’s general approach, if not every single choice. American filmmaking was still capable at the time of “dissolving the politics [or, in this case, the history] into the poetics.” The Killer That Stalked New York conscientiously brings out the public essence of the April 1947 crisis, while more or less convincingly creating a set of characters, from different social backgrounds, whose private lives are affected by the appearance of the deadly disease.

The film invents a Manhattan doctor, Ben Wood (William Bishop), who inadvertently comes into contact with Sheila and, later, some of the smallpox victims. He, together with a colleague, Dr. Cooper, first consider the frightening possibilities.

In a conversation, Cooper exclaims worriedly to Wood, “Suppose we were in those medieval days again. When plagues wiped out whole cities. Before x-ray, vaccine and anesthesia. And the symptoms were a headache, backache, fever and rash. What would they have meant?” Wood replies, “Smallpox. … But here, in the middle of New York City? Why, I’ve never even seen a case.”

Cooper, played by veteran Viennese-born actor Ludwig Donath, responds, “Well, I have. In Europe, as a child. Hundreds of them. Screaming and twisting creatures. Doomed to be fed to a huge bonfire that was kept going for weeks.”

Waiting to be vaccinated, New Yorkers form line outside the Brooklyn Headquarters Building of the Department of Health

Some of the characterizations rely heavily on New York film typology: a benevolent Irish cop, a grasping, busybody landlady, a desperate immigrant mother, a milkman’s nagging wife. Nonetheless, even the clichés still have some life in them here. Within limits, the film draws a convincing picture of urban realities.

The artistic experience that could be mobilized in Hollywood even for a relatively minor project like this one was immense. The director, Earl McEvoy, is one of the least-known quantities. He was primarily a second unit/assistant director or associate producer for MGM and Columbia in the 1940s. He only directed two other films, the last one in 1949. The date perhaps has significance. In 2010, the New York Post ’s Lou Lumenick posed the question, for which he didn’t have an answer, “Was he [McEvoy] blacklisted?”

Two of the leading performers in The Killer That Stalked New York certainly were: the Hungarian-born Korvin (born Geza Korvin Karpathi) and Art Smith (who plays the fence Anthony Moss), a regular member of the left-wing Group Theatre and, years later, the original “Doc” in West Side Story on Broadway in 1957.

The lively Evelyn Keyes, who first made a name for herself playing Scarlett O’Hara’s younger sister in Gonewiththe Wind (1939), had been a member of the Committee for the First Amendment, the group of Hollywood lefts and liberals that protested against the “red scare” hearings held by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, along with her husband of the time, John Huston. Other husbands included director Charles Vidor ( Gilda, 1946) and bandleader Artie Shaw. Keyes featured prominently in The Face Behind the Mask (Robert Florey, 1941) and Johnny O’Clock (Robert Rossen, 1947), and even more notably in Joseph Losey’s The Prowler (1951) and Phil Karlson’s 99 River Street (1953).

The skilled performers in The Killer That Stalked New York also include Albright, generally an underestimated presence, best remembered for her role on the Peter Gunn television series; Dorothy Malone, still limited to secondary roles in 1950, here a nurse to Dr. Wood; Jim Backus, who appeared in innumerable plays, films, radio programs and voiced cartoons; and with more than 900 films and television series between them, indispensable “character actors” Whit Bissell, Roy Roberts, Barry Kelley, Carl Benton Reid and Connie Gilchrist.

The gifted cinematographer Joseph Biroc, a New York native, eventually associated in particular with directors Robert Aldrich and Samuel Fuller, elegantly captured the city at its most menacing in The Killer That Stalked New York ’s nighttime sequences, as well as something of its complex vibrancy in the daytime street scenes. Biroc began his career as a cameraman in the US Army. In 1945, he filmed the horrors of the Dachau concentration camp in Germany while serving as captain of the sixth detachment alongside director George Stevens’s Special Motion Picture Coverage Unit.

In this regard, even the narrator deserves a note. The mellifluous-voiced Reed Hadley, longtime film, television and radio actor, also provided the commentary in 1945 for The Nazi Plan, a documentary compiled from captured Hitlerite propaganda and newsreel image and sound recordings that was used as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials.

Lola Albright and Evelyn Keyes

The film’s score was composed by Hans J. Salter. A biography explains, “Born in Vienna, Austria on January 14, 1896, [Salter] gained his education from the Vienna Academy Of Music, and studied composition with Alban Berg, Franz Schreker, and others. He was Music Director of the State Opera in Berlin before being hired to compose music at UFA studios. Salter emigrated to America in 1937 and was quickly put under contract at Universal, where he worked for nearly 30 years, arranging, composing, conducting, and serving as musical director.”

In other words, there were reasons why many American films of the period had artistic, moral and intellectual weight.

The response of the mayor (Roberts) in The Killer That Stalked New York, based on O’Dwyer, who by the time of the film’s release in December 1950 had resigned in a corruption scandal, no doubt has an exaggerated or myth-making quality. But apparently also has some basis in fact.

The health commissioner (Reid) and his aides visit the mayor on a Sunday. Informed of the crisis, he jumps into action. The dialogue goes like this:

–All right, you have eight million arms to vaccinate. What do you need?

–An extra thousand doctors.

–You’ve got them. What else?

–Facilities for vaccinations.

–[To other officials] You’re donating your police stations for clinics. The same for the fire houses in all the boroughs. I take it the Commissioner of Hospitals has something to offer.

–Every city hospital and staff on call 24 hours a day.

–All right then. We’re ready.

–Not quite.

–How much?

–We’ll need half a million dollars to get underway. Vaccinations are free.

–At six cents a life, that’s a buy. You’ll start with me.

The narrator takes over, “The mayor didn’t waste any time. A few hours later he had his sleeve rolled up and took the big scratch. And after the headman set the example for his town, the health commissioner took to the air. If you were tuned in, you heard the opening gun on a fight-to-the-finish war, and if you couldn’t hear it, you could read about it. The newspapers got the facts, the who, the what, the where, the when and the why. The biggest headlines we’d seen since V-Day hit the town right between the eyes.”

The Killer That Stalked New York

In addition to the city’s “BE SURE! BE SAFE! GET VACCINATED!” program, as the narrator notes, Dr. Weinstein appeared on radio delivering remarks directed toward those who were hesitant about getting vaccinated. By all accounts, Weinstein was a remarkable figure. Historian Mimi Eisen notes that he was “a bacteriologist, physician, and lifelong New Yorker. In the early 1900s, as a child growing up on the Lower East Side, he had seen communities ravaged by smallpox outbreaks. Weinstein was just months into his post as health commissioner when smallpox reappeared.”

The hesitancy and related social backwardness referred to receive brief treatment in the film. In a scene set in a barber shop, several customers deliver a negative verdict on the vaccination program. One man argues “Two cases of smallpox don’t make no epidemic,” while another suggests that the mayor’s campaign is “Nothing but publicity!” The first goes on, “What right has the mayor got to spend the taxpayers’ money like this? Do you know what it’ll cost, all this free vaccinating? Millions!”

A third barber shop customer intervenes, “You ever been in a smallpox epidemic, mac? Ever seen one?” He goes on, “Look at that guy there on that chair. He could have picked up the pox from one of them people in the hospital. Have it and not even know it, see? All right, you come along. You sit in that same chair. Blooey, you got the pox from just sitting there.” A fourth customer thereupon rushes out to line up for his vaccination!

Over protest signs, “Stop Vaccinations! Vaccine is poison!,” the narrator intones, “Sure, there were some who didn’t believe in the city’s fight. But the ball was rolling, and whether you liked it or not. Unless you grabbed for the life insurance that only cost a 10-minute wait in a line, you were out of fashion. Not in style. An aching arm told your neighbor you had good sense. The count went up. [Images of huge crowds in New York] One million vaccinated. Two million. But smallpox is never a local affair. It concerns the world. Washington, London, Paris, all waited for the news our mayor was punching out on the home grounds.”

Sheila Bennet has the strength to see Krane brought to justice of a sort. The narration concludes: “Before Sheila passed on in a last blinding burst of fever, she found the strength to tell the doctors what they had to know. And smallpox, the ancient killer, was forced back into the Middle Ages from whence it had sprung. There were the dead, but eight million lived on.”

The Killer That Stalked New York is dedicated in a title “To the men and women of public health—the first line of defense between mankind and disease.”