In Face of US Claims, Moscow Says "There Is No 'Russian Invasion' of Ukraine"

As the Biden administration continues to warn of a "looming" attack, anti-war advocates urge diplomacy and dedication to playing "a cooperative and constructive role in this new multipolar world."


A member of the U.S. Army speaks with Stefan Zemanovic, the spokesperson for the Slovakian armed forces, on February 17, 2022 in Kuchyna, Slovakia. (Photo: Zuzana Gogova/Getty Images)


JESSICA CORBETT

TRUTH OUT

February 17, 2022

Amid global demands for urgent diplomacy to de-escalate the Ukraine crisis, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday rebuffed allegations by the Biden administration—along with other Western governments and corporate media—that Russia intends to imminently invade its neighbor.

"Rather than invoking a global order that no longer exists, the Biden administration should consider an agreement that offers a path out of this mess."

"There is no 'Russian invasion' of Ukraine, which the U.S. and its allies have been announcing officially since last fall, and it is not planned, therefore, statements about 'Russia's responsibility for escalation' can be regarded as an attempt to exert pressure and devalue Russia's proposals for security guarantees," said the ministry in its official response to a U.S. statement issued last month on Moscow's security demands, including Ukraine's exclusion from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

"We are calling on the U.S. and NATO to return to compliance with international commitments in the area of upholding peace and security," the ministry's document explains, according to the Russian news agency TASS. "We expect concrete proposals from the alliance's members about the form and substance of the legal confirmation that further eastward expansion by NATO will be abandoned."

The Russian statement, which centralizes "practical measures on de-escalation," accuses the United States of failing to provide a constructive response to Moscow's demands, adding that "this approach and the accompanying narrative by U.S. officials are reinforcing substantiated doubts that Washington is really committed to rectifying the European security situation."

"In the absence of readiness of the U.S. side to negotiate solid, legally binding guarantees of our security by the US and its allies," the document states, "Russia will have to react, including via implementation of measures of military-technical nature."

The ministry's comments came the same day U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters that although "there's a clear diplomatic path" out of the crisis, he believes Russia will invade Ukraine "in the next several days."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday warned—though he provided no evidence—of "Russia's looming aggression against Ukraine" in remarks to the United Nations Security Council.

Along with repeating claims about a potential false flag operation by Russia as "​​a pretext for its attack," Blinken urged Moscow to make clear that it is not planning an invasion while also suggesting that such a statement would not be taken seriously by the U.S. administration.

As Blinken put it:
I have no doubt that the response to my remarks here today will be more dismissals from the Russian government about the United States stoking hysteria or that it has "no plans" to invade Ukraine.

So let me make this simple. The Russian government can announce today—with no qualification, equivocation, or deflection—that Russia will not invade Ukraine. State it clearly. State it plainly to the world. And then demonstrate it by sending your troops, your tanks, your planes back to their barracks and hangars and sending your diplomats to the negotiating table.

The U.S. diplomat also cast doubt on whether Russia is drawing down troops near its border with Ukraine, telling the international body that "we do not see that happening on the ground."

Various Western officials have made similar remarks since Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that "it's a partial withdrawal of troops from the areas of our exercises."

As The New York Times reports:
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday that troops had redeployed hundreds of miles away from the Ukrainian border areas after conducting military exercises.

The ministry's spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said that logistics units of the western military district had traveled more than 400 miles from the Kursk region, bordering Ukraine, and returned to their base in the town of Dzerzhinsk in central Russia.

Several other military groups traveled more than 900 miles by railway with their equipment and were redeployed to Chechnya and Dagestan, he said. The troops currently engaged in military exercises in Belarus, to Ukraine's north, will also return to their home bases once the drills are over, Gen. Konashenkov said in a statement.

Meanwhile, anti-war advocates around the world are imploring all parties to focus on de-escalating the conflict, particularly given the U.S. and Russia's nuclear capabilities.

The Nation's editor and publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, argued Tuesday in her weekly column for The Washington Post that "rather than invoking a global order that no longer exists, the Biden administration should consider an agreement that offers a path out of this mess."

Vanden Heuvel, also president of the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord, laid to waste Blinken's defense of NATO's "open door" admission policy, pointing out that "Ukraine is in no position" to "contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area," as the alliance's founding treaty requires.

Further countering Blinken's recent statements, she wrote that "the post-Cold War international order—with the United States as a unipolar power—is already over," noting that earlier this month, "Russian and Chinese leaders declared in a joint communique that they seek a 'new era' and will no longer accede to the American-led order."

"Finally, those principles that Blinken invokes apparently were meant to apply only to others," she added. "After its disastrous offensive war of choice in Iraq, the United States is not exactly the exemplar of a rules-based order. The Monroe Doctrine, the sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, the Cuba embargo, and even NATO itself all mock Blinken's strictures against spheres of influence and dictating other countries' policies."



Writing Thursday for Common Dreams, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies of the anti-war group CodePink noted that while the crisis could fizzle out or Russia could invade, the Ukrainian government could also escalate "its civil war against the self-declared People's Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR), provoking various possible reactions from other countries."

Their warning that "a Ukrainian government attack on the DPR or LPR could be passed off in the West as a 'false flag' provocation by Russia" came as pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian authorities on Thursday accused each other of violating a cease-fire in Ukraine's Donbas region, which has been embroiled in conflict since 2014.

Like vanden Heuvel, Benjamin and Davies also suggested that "however it ends, this crisis should be a wake-up call for Americans of all classes and political persuasions to reevaluate our country's position in the world."

Along with specifically urging a wind-down of NATO, they wrote that "we must start thinking about how a post-imperial America can play a cooperative and constructive role in this new multipolar world, working with all our neighbors to solve the very serious problems facing humanity in the 21st century."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

CPGB

Is the crisis in Ukraine the beginning of a new world order?
The Putin-Xi summit on the eve of the Winter Olympics was only casually mentioned in the mainstream media, but has potentially far-reaching consequences, writes MARC VANDEPITTE

JUST before the start of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping issued a joint statement on international relations and on co-operation between China and Russia.

It is a document of about 10 pages that comes at a time of great tensions with Nato over Ukraine and of a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Games.

The text can be read as a plea for a new world order in which the US and its allies are no longer in charge, but in which the aim is to create a multipolar world, with respect for the sovereignty of countries.

“The sides oppose further enlargement of Nato and call on the North Atlantic Alliance to abandon its ideologised cold war approaches, to respect the sovereignty, security and interests of other countries, the diversity of their civilisational, cultural and historical backgrounds and to exercise a fair and objective attitude towards the peaceful development of other states,” it reads.

Similar signals have been sent out in the past, such as a joint statement in 1997, but it is the first time that both presidents have spoken out so clearly and have strengthened ties so closely. It is also the first time that China has explicitly spoken out against Nato enlargement.

To understand the scope of this document, it is useful to look back at recent history.

Hegemony

On the one hand, the first half of the 20th century saw the emergence of two new superpowers: the US and the USSR. On the other hand, there was the relative decline of the old colonial powers.

The US emerged victorious from World War II. Both the old superpowers and the USSR were completely broke. Washington dreamed of a new world order and exclusive control.

“To seek less than preponderant power would be to opt for defeat,” said Paul Nitze, top adviser to the US government. Alas, those plans were thwarted by the rapid reconstruction of the USSR and the breaking of the US nuclear monopoly.

After the cold war, the US finally became the undisputed leader of world politics and wanted to keep it that way. Half a century later, that dream came true with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dismantling of the USSR two years later. Henceforth there were no more obstacles to hegemony.

In 1992 the Pentagon left no doubt: “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival … We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”

At that time, the US saw no reason to keep a close eye on China yet. The Chinese economy was fairly underdeveloped and its GDP was only a third of the US.

Militarily, the country was also very weak. During that period, Washington mainly thought of Europe as a potential rival and worried about the possible resurrection of Russia.

Unbridled

After the fall of the USSR, the US opted for unbridled might. The invasion of Panama at the end of 1989 was a first exercise for what was to follow. Shortly afterwards war came to Iraq, Yugoslavia and Somalia — Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and Syria would follow soon after.

In addition to overt military interventions, the US has also increasingly waged hybrid wars or colour revolutions to implement regime changes, which have failed everywhere.

They did so in Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon and Belarus. In addition, more than 20 countries have been subjected to economic sanctions.

Nato, created in order to militarily enshrine US supremacy, was also steadily expanded after the dismantling of the USSR.

Since the 1990s, 14 states on the European continent have joined the treaty organisation. Other countries such as Colombia became Nato “partners.”

Containing China

So the US seemed to have the world to itself after the cold war, but then China came on the scene. For the first time in recent history, a poor, underdeveloped country rose in no time to become an economic superpower.

Over the past 30 years, China has experienced a remarkable economic expansion. Since joining the World Trade Organisation in 2001, the Chinese economy has grown more than fourfold. The leap forward was not only economic but also technological.

Until recently, the West, led by the US, had an absolute monopoly on technology, weapons of mass destruction, monetary and financial systems, access to natural resources and mass communications.

With that monopoly it could control or subjugate countries, especially those in the global South. The West and the US, its global policeman, are in danger of losing that monopoly now.

That is why the US has now identified China as its main enemy. In the context of the 2019 budget talks, Congress declared that “long-term strategic competition with China is a top priority for the US.”

It is a total strategy that has to be pursued on several fronts. The US is trying to thwart China’s economic and technological ascent, or, as they say, “blunt it.”

If necessary, this will be done with extra-economic resources. The military strategy towards China follows two tracks: an arms race and an encirclement of the country.

The US has more than 30 military bases, support or training centres around the country. Sixty per cent of the entire fleet is stationed in the region. This military containment has been going on for years.

In April 2020, the Pentagon released a new report advocating further militarisation of the region. The plan is to install ranged ballistic missiles at its own military bases or those of its allies.

If you also install cruise missiles on submarines, you can hit mainland China within 15 minutes. These are particularly dangerous developments.

As part of that entrapment strategy, the Pentagon is also strengthening military ties with countries in the region. In 2021, the US signed a security pact with Australia and Britain for the containment of China.

Enough is enough

Putin and Xi have had enough of all this. The eastward advance of Nato, the increasing military and hybrid warfare worldwide, the many economic sanctions and the encirclement of China, all this must stop.

Gone are the days that Nato, the G7 and the Western-dominated International Monetary Fund kept holding the reins. The unipolar world must make way for a multipolar world.

Rising aggression against both countries is driving China and Russia into each other’s arms.

China is home to almost a fifth of the world’s population, is a global economic power and is the most important trading partner of a majority of countries. Russia is the largest country in the world and is a nuclear superpower.

An alliance between these two countries is a serious counterweight to US supremacy. According to the Guardian: “The birth of this Sino-Russian axis, conceived in opposition to the US-led Western democracies, is the most globally significant strategic development since the USSR collapsed 30 years ago. It will define the coming age.”

It’s not just about these two countries, though. Russia is a member of several regional and multinational alliances. One of these, a military alliance, is the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), which is currently involved in “peacekeeping operations” in Kazakhstan.

Another is the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), which is a Eurasian political, economic and security alliance. In addition to Russia and China, India and Pakistan are also members.

China recently joined the largest economic partnership in the world, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This partnership in south-east Asia represents 30 per cent of the world’s population.

The new Silk Road is worth $900 billion in investments, loans, trade agreements and dozens of special economic zones. They are spread over 72 countries, representing a population of about five billion people or 65 per cent of the world’s population.

New world order?

With his essay the End of History and the Last Man, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama announced a new era based on Western hegemony.

The debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen, among others, show that this was a boast that reflected a lot of hubris.

An alliance between China and Russia is an important counterweight to US supremacy.

If the newly formed alliance consolidates and other countries join it, this time we may well be at the dawn of a new era.

Not the end of history, but the beginning of a new stage, in which power in the world is more decentralised — a new world order.

We live in times promising to be exciting, but also dangerous. More than ever, we need a strong peace movement.

MORNING STAR

US Is Effectively Stealing Billions From a Nation Ravaged by a US-Initiated War

People protest against recent remarks by President Joe Biden to freeze Afghanistan's assets, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on February 15, 2022.

SAHEL ARMAN / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY Ashleigh Subramanian-Montgomery, 

Truthout

February 18, 2022

President Joe Biden recently declared a national emergency in the name of addressing the dual threats of the massive humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan, as well as “the potential for a deepening economic collapse in Afghanistan.” He was right to do so.

In sharp contrast, his decision to unilaterally assert the U.S.’s authority to redistribute $7.1 billion of Afghanistan’s frozen funds as it sees fit was dead wrong. In declaring the national emergency, the president laid out his administration’s vision for Afghanistan’s funds should U.S. courts voice their approval: that half be made available, pending litigation, to the families of 9/11 victims who have claims against the Taliban for its role in harboring al-Qaeda. The remaining $3.5 billion would go towards humanitarian efforts.

Setting aside the moral and political problems inherent in the U.S. effectively stealing billions of dollars from a nation ravaged by a U.S.-initiated war and the resulting humanitarian and economic devastation, the president’s failure to make any of these funds immediately available to the people of Afghanistan in their hour of need is unforgivable. In abdicating responsibility to the courts, which may take months to decide how these frozen funds can be redistributed, the Biden administration is threatening the well-being of millions of Afghans, while also undermining the ability of civil society organizations to respond to the crisis. This is in direct opposition to the “beacon of human rights” the U.S. claims to be.

To say that Afghanistan is in urgent need is to understate the severity of the situation. Over 24 million Afghans, nearly 60 percent of the population, need humanitarian aid. Some 23 million face acute food insecurity, meaning their lives are in immediate danger, and over 1 million children are at risk of death due to severe acute malnutrition. While Afghanistan has faced humanitarian challenges for years as a result of conflict, U.S. occupation and natural disasters, the current situation is markedly worse, in no small part due to U.S. policies towards Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover.

When the Taliban took control of the country last August, the Biden administration froze $7.1 billion in Afghanistan’s foreign reserves held in the U.S. — money that belongs to the Afghan people — and that prior to the takeover, the Central Bank of Afghanistan (Da Afghanistan Bank) had been using to maintain economic stability.

The resulting liquidity crisis has led to massive inflation, alongside depreciation of the Afghani, whose value the Central Bank can no longer stabilize by selling off its foreign reserves. Many banks in Afghanistan have dramatically limited the amount of money account holders can withdraw, while others have closed entirely. Businesses, no longer able to pay their employees, have shuttered, leading to rampant unemployment. The price of food has risen, while the value of the Afghani has plummeted, leading to mass starvation.

As a further result of freezing these funds and of U.S. sanctions that have led risk-averse banks to severely limit access to financial services in Afghanistan, local and international aid groups and other civil society organizations in Afghanistan are struggling to pay their staff and provide services to the millions of Afghans in need.

Kate Phillips-Barrasso, director of humanitarian policy at InterAction, a network of humanitarian aid organizations, recently explained that financial service providers “just don’t want to get involved. There’s a lot of risk aversion. Financial institutions say that even with explicit permission, it still reeks of effort and risk, and it’s better to just not provide the service.” As a result, aid organizations are turning to informal cash transfer networks, which entail greater risk and higher fees. Some have also turned to cryptocurrency as another means of getting funds into the country, despite challenges arising from limited use of cryptocurrency among much of the population. While these workarounds have offered some relief, limited access to cash and financial services is still plaguing the humanitarian aid sector as a direct result of U.S. policy.

The Biden administration must urgently reconsider and correct its policies towards Afghanistan, and towards Afghanistan’s foreign reserves in particular. Shah Mehrabi, a member of the Supreme Council of Afghanistan’s Central Bank and a professor of economics at Montgomery College, has called on the administration to “allow the Central Bank of Afghanistan limited, monitored, and conditional access to $150m per month from Afghanistan’s foreign reserves,” citing the Central Bank’s “independen[ce] from the Afghan government,” and the U.S.’s ability to monitor how the funds are dispersed. Some form of a phased release of the frozen funds has widespread support, including from members of the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, and prominent international aid groups, human rights groups, and women’s human rights and peace groups.

Beyond releasing the frozen funds, the Biden administration must also lift sanctions on Afghanistan, which have done almost nothing to incentivize the Taliban to change its policies. Instead, sanctions have unleashed a chilling effect on national and international banking in Afghanistan by shutting down access to financial services, causing dire repercussions to Afghan lives and preventing civil society groups from addressing the crisis. While the U.S. Treasury Department has issued piecemeal general licenses aimed at enabling civil society organizations to continue their work in Afghanistan, these necessary but insufficient steps have failed to address the financial access issues caused by sanctions, let alone the liquidity crisis caused by freezing Afghanistan’s foreign reserves.

There is room for honest debate about precisely how, not if, these frozen funds should be returned to the people of Afghanistan, and which, if any, sanctions should remain in place — however, there is no room, or time, to cling to a status quo that is starving Afghanistan’s people and its economy.

Campaigning for Democracy And Socialism

Great Power War in Europe, An Insane Idea. Stop It!


The graphic at the left is useful in several ways.

First, it shows the redivison of Europe following the collapse of the USSR. NATO has expanded, Russia is reconstituted but weaker.

Second, the current crisis tells us NATO wants to continue expanding, planning to take the largest and most resource-rich country in Europe, under its wing. Russia is likely to resist, and not just with words.

Third, NATO's Article Five says if one is attacked, all are attacked. That means local war immediately becomes Europe-wide war, with both sides with nuclear arms.

Fourth, the last Europe-wide war, while destroying fascism, had a very high price--tens of millions dead, economies destroyed. No one wanted a repeat, so the United Nations and its Charter were set up to avoid armed conflict and negotiate solutions, no matter how long it took. It was a wise idea against insanity. It still is. Put it on top of today's agendas.

Lies About Ukraine Conflict Are Standing in the Way of a Peaceful Resolution

U.S. soldiers disembark from a C-17 Globemaster cargo plane on the tarmac of Poland's Rzeszów–Jasionka Airport on February 16, 2022. The soldiers are part of a deployment of several thousand sent to bolster NATO's eastern flank in response to tensions with Russia.

WOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY Ivan Katchanovski, Truthout

PUBLISHED February 16, 2022

The Ukraine-Russia conflict has escalated to a very dangerous point The possibility that it can turn into an armed conflict, or even a war, has increased significantly and is real. But the Russian invasion, which was basically announced by the U.S. and British governments and media for February 16, has not happened, and Russia declared the partial withdrawal of its forces. Such war is hardly inevitable and can be avoided. However, the peaceful resolution of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine is greatly complicated by the dominant narratives of the Ukraine conflict.

The narratives that are propagated by the Western governments and the mainstream media concerning the origin and the nature of the Ukraine conflict are truly Orwellian. They state that the pro-Russian government in Ukraine was ousted as result of peaceful mass Euromaidan protests in February 2014 and that President Viktor Yanukovych fled Ukraine because he ordered the massacre of the peaceful Maidan protesters by government forces. These protests took place on the main square in Kyiv, which is called Maidan, and they were directed against the Yanukovych government and his decision to suspend signing the EU association and free trade agreement. According to these narratives, Russia then annexed Crimea by using pure military force and launched a war with Ukraine in Donbas. These narratives assert that Ukraine is a sovereign democratic state which has a right to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the future and that Russia plans to invade Ukraine within days or weeks.

Various evidence presented in studies by Western scholars who have researched the Ukraine conflict shows that these narratives are false. This mass killing of the Maidan movement’s own supporters — perpetrated by the oligarchic and far right elements of the Maidan alliance — made it possible for Maidan leaders to falsely blame the pro-Russian Yanukovych government and its police and security forces for the killing and then seize power in Ukraine. Western governments backed this undemocratic overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian government.

The absolute majority of wounded Maidan protesters testified at the Maidan massacre trial and investigation in Ukraine that they and other protesters were massacred by snipers from the Hotel Ukraina and other buildings, which were seized by the Maidan opposition alliance, or that they witnessed such snipers there. Synchronized videos show that specific times and directions of the shooting of the majority of specific protesters did not coincide with specific times and directions of shooting by Berkut anti-riot police officers who were charged in Ukraine with their massacre. The investigation and the media revealed no evidence of any order by Yanukovych or his ministers and commanders to massacre the Maidan protesters. In contrast, 14 self-admitted members of the Maidan sniper units confessed that they themselves or other Maidan snipers massacred the police or protesters, and that this mass killing was done under the orders of Maidan leaders and former leaders of the pro-Western government of Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia. Several Maidan leaders and activists testified about specific involvement of Maidan leaders in this mass killing.

Moreover, two leaders of Ukraine’s far right Svoboda party stated that a representative of an unnamed Western government told them and other Maidan leaders a few weeks before the massacre that Western governments would turn on the Yanukovych government after casualties among protesters reached 100. The killed Maidan protesters were immediately called the “Heavenly Hundred” and Western governments blamed Yanukovych and his forces, and recognized the new Maidan government.

In return, Russia escalated the conflict by annexing Crimea, where the majority of the population is ethnically Russian. Russia used a covert military intervention in this region. But public opinion polls showed that the absolute majority of Crimeans before and after the annexation supported joining Russia.

A poll conducted shortly before the start of the war in Donbas showed that most of its residents supported separatism, ranging from autonomy within Ukraine to independence or joining Russia. The majority of scholars who researched this conflict classify the war in Donbas as a civil war with direct Russian military interventions in support of pro-Russian separatists in August 2014 and January-February 2015. It is revealing that satellite photos and videos of deployment of Russian troops, and Western intelligence reports about such deployment currently near Ukraine, in Belarus and Transnistria now confirm that there are no Russian military units in Donbas, whereas there are currently many Russian military units stationed in Crimea.Resolution of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine is greatly complicated by the dominant narratives of the Ukraine conflict.

An actual Russian-Ukrainian war would be devastating for Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin might use the current large military buildup near Ukraine either to try to force a peace deal on his preferred terms or to resort to some kind of military option. Such options might sooner or later include recognition of independence of separatist republics in Donbas and deployment of Russian military forces there, a limited armed conflict or even a full-scale war.

But there is still a possibility for a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict. Recent visits by French and German leaders to Russia and Ukraine represent such efforts. A peaceful conflict resolution can be done via an international agreement that offers Ukraine European Union membership prospects provided that it fulfills accession criteria (such as democracy) in exchange for neutral status and resolving the conflict in Donbas based on the Minsk agreements. The Minsk agreements, which were signed in the Belarus capital, specify a ceasefire and granting a special status within Ukraine and self-government to the separatist-controlled part of Donbas after the elections there. But such peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict requires recognizing that its dominant narratives and its origins are false.

THIRD WORLD USA
Rashida Tlaib  Introduced a Landmark Bill to Dramatically Slash Child Poverty

BYMATT BRUENIG

JACOBIN

Last week, Rashida Tlaib and Mondaire Jones introduced the End Child Poverty Act in Congress. It's a watershed bill that would bring the US in line with social democratic countries that boast the world's lowest child poverty rates.
Representative Rashida Tlaib speaks during a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on December 1, 2021. (Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

On Thursday, Rashida Tlaib and Mondaire Jones introduced the End Child Poverty Act. The ECPA is by far the best child allowance proposal introduced in Congress and should serve as a blueprint for future Democratic efforts in this area of policy.

Current law delivers basic cash benefits to American families through three main tax credits: the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and the Credit for Other Dependents. These credits are extremely complicated, duplicative of one another, and not available to the poorest families in the country.



The ECPA replaces this current tax credit mess with the following new programs:
A universal monthly child allowance set equal to the difference between the one-person poverty line and the two-person poverty line, which is currently $393 per month. This benefit would be paid out by the Social Security Administration (SSA) using the same rules that the SSA currently uses to pay out Supplement Security Income (SSI) and Survivors benefits to children. Children would be enrolled in the program at birth at the same time that they apply for their Social Security number.

An annual $600 fully refundable credit for adult dependents. This replaces the current nonrefundable $500 credit for adult dependents.

An annual $600/$1,200 fully refundable credit for single/married tax filers that phases out at $20,000/$40,000 of income. This replaces the non-child aspects of the current EITC and ensures that no family is cut back from their current level of tax credit benefits.

This policy would dramatically reduce child poverty in the United States. Relative to the current baseline, I estimate that child poverty would decline by two-thirds.

More importantly, the child allowance contained in this bill fully eliminates what we might call the child component of poverty, meaning that, after its enactment, no family would ever find themselves below the official poverty line solely because they have children. They may be in poverty for some other reason, such as unemployment, which should be addressed through other policymaking. But they will never be in poverty because of their children.

The universal design of the child allowance would make the program dramatically easier to administer. Because the SSA would not have to apply an income test, it would not need to gather any information from families other than what is necessary to send money to the relevant parent or guardian. It would not need to know the parent’s marital status, their income for the year, what tax filing status they will use, or other similar bits of information used in other programs.

Once enrolled at birth, the child benefit would go out every month until a child’s nineteenth birthday. Families would only ever need to interact with the SSA to update their banking information or the custody status of their child. This is contrasted with means-tested tax credit programs that require families to file paperwork every year.

This kind of program would bring the US child benefit system up to the level seen in countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, which have the lowest child poverty rates in the world. This is a proven design with a proven track record of success, and the United States would be wise to bring the program to its residents.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matt Bruenig is the founder of People's Policy Project.

Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard Acquisition Won’t Save the Games Industry

BY ALEXANDER ROSS

JACOBIN

Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard will make things worse for game workers — and entrench some of the most dystopian trends in video games.

On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced it will be acquiring Activision Blizzard. This deal — struck for a record-setting $68.7 billion — will give Microsoft control of some of the most popular gaming franchises in the world. (Sean Do / Unsplash)

In 1995, Microsoft produced a truly bizarre pitch video for the press and the gaming public. Opening with footage from Doom, id Software’s iconic first-person shooter, the camera pulls back from the violence to reveal that it’s not Doom’s lone space marine gunning down possessed soldiers, but instead Microsoft’s chairman Bill Gates, who has been digitally inserted into Doom through the magic of blue screen. Wearing an ill-fitting black trench coat and wielding a shotgun, Gates speaks in a halting, flat monotone: “These games are getting really realistic. Next year I might even play in the big Doom tournament.” The video ends with a peal of ominous laughter and the question, “Who do you want to execute today?”

The video was made to promote Windows 95 as a gaming platform, but the real message from Gates seems to be, “I can take control of the games you play.” It took on new resonance when Microsoft announced in 2020 that it was acquiring id Software and several other game studios belonging to ZeniMax Media. Microsoft now owns Doom.

Microsoft has always been a highly defensive player in the games industry, making moves to avoid being dislodged from its monopoly position in the tech economy by upstart rivals. When Bill Gates inserted himself into Doom, he was doing it at a time when Doom was installed on more personal computers than Windows 95. The original Xbox video game console was developed over concerns that Sony’s PlayStation would conquer the living room and turn people away from Windows PCs. In both instances, Microsoft was able to secure a crucial circuit of capital for itself. Through Windows 95’s DirectX technology, Microsoft was able to create and enforce a set of convenient technical standards for graphics and sound cards, consolidating its hold on the majority of the computer gaming market. With the Xbox, Microsoft gave itself a foothold in the “console wars” and the future of online play through its Xbox Live subscription service.


Over the decades, Microsoft’s bid to consolidate more of the games industry for itself has only intensified. On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced it will be acquiring Activision Blizzard. This deal — struck for a record-setting $68.7 billion — will give Microsoft control of some of the most popular gaming franchises in the world: StarCraft, Warcraft, Diablo, Call of Duty, and Candy Crush.

This acquisition is good for Microsoft, which will now be the third-largest firm in games behind Sony and Tencent. But it’s bad for game workers at Activision Blizzard, who are fighting for their rights at a company that is synonymous with workplace abuse in the games industry.

In its press release, Microsoft touts that it will “bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone, across every device.” Microsoft is framing the deal as ushering in a new era of community and convenience, when it actually represents control — control of technology, of audiences, of market share, and most importantly, control over workers.
Undermining Worker Power

The acquisition comes at a time of significant turmoil for the games industry’s second-largest publisher. Activision Blizzard is currently facing a lawsuit from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) and a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation, for presiding over a systemic culture of sexual harassment, abuse, discrimination, and retaliation against female employees. The range of abuses is truly monstrous in its scope. The DFEH lawsuit describes a disturbing “frat boy” culture where female employees at Activision Blizzard and its subsidiaries were regularly subjected to groping and unwanted sexual advances at work and professional events by their male coworkers, often with the encouragement of work supervisors. Complaints to HR were ignored or led to significant retaliation against the complainants.

Despite Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick professing ignorance about these events, a Wall Street Journal report in November confirmed that Kotick knew about the widespread misconduct at Activision Blizzard and did nothing. In fact, Kotick himself once issued a death threat against a female assistant in 2006. These events have led to walkouts, strikes, and the formation of collective workers’ group the ABK Workers Alliance, and has also seen the attempted unionization of quality assurance (QA) workers at subsidiary Raven Software.

While current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella praises Kotick for his “commitment to real culture change,” Activision Blizzard continues to do everything it can to put a stop to growing worker power within the company. Activision Blizzard refuses to recognize Raven Software’s QA union, Game Workers Alliance, and has also demanded that all 300 employees at Raven should have a say in whether or not the studio should be unionized, a clear union-busting tactic. Game workers at Activision Blizzard have already filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) due to threats, intimidation, and discipline employees have received for publicly discussing and organizing against the company’s abusive practices.

Recently, Activision Blizzard’s VP of quality assurance posted a message in the company’s Slack channel criticizing ongoing unionization efforts, stating that “a union doesn’t do anything to produce world-class games, and the bargaining process is not typically quick, often reduces flexibility, and can be adversarial and lead to negative publicity.” Shockingly, Bobby Kotick has been allowed to remain CEO of Activision Blizzard until the acquisition closes in 2023 despite being at the center of Activision Blizzard’s abusive work culture.

Microsoft’s own history of poor labor practices should indicate that the tech giant will not be receptive to organizing efforts at Activision Blizzard. In December, Microsoft launched Halo Infinite, the latest installment in its flagship first-person-shooter franchise, but the development and launch of the game was anything but smooth. A report from Bloomberg on the game’s troubled development details the problems created by an overreliance on contract labor and a Microsoft policy that prevents contractors from working for more than eighteen months. Bug testers on contract to Microsoft saw their jobs terminated after they successfully unionized in 2014.

When asked about ongoing unionization efforts at Activision, Microsoft’s CEO of gaming, Phil Spencer, declined to give any specific comment, saying he wasn’t an expert on unions. It is galling but unsurprising that amid some of the worst abuses in a famously abusive industry, efforts by workers to establish real accountability and protection for themselves continue to be undermined.
Enter the Micro-verse

In an interview with the Washington Post’s Gene Park, Spencer outlines the real priorities of Microsoft’s acquisition: “I was looking at the IP list, I mean let’s go!” He struck a very different tone last November, when he criticized the “horrific events and actions” at Activision Blizzard and stated that Microsoft would be reevaluating its relationship with the company. Most people probably did not suspect that reevaluating its relationship meant fully absorbing the troubled publisher. But as Activision Blizzard’s share price plummeted amid multiple scandals, it appears that Microsoft saw its most significant opportunity to stake a claim in the tech world’s latest fad — “the metaverse” — ahead of its competitors.

The metaverse has become the tech industry’s go-to buzzword for the next “iteration” of the internet, a nebulously defined conceptual space of avatars, virtual worlds, and virtual reality in which to work, play, and shop. Although sold as a utopian vision of freedom and social connection, what it really means is doubling down on the creation of proprietary platforms with “value-added” services. One of the big promises of the metaverse is “interoperability” — the idea being that if you buy a cool, customizable costume in one proprietary virtual space, your avatar be able to wear it in another. Microsoft’s recent run of acquisitions from Mojang Studios (creators of Minecraft) to ZeniMax to Activision Blizzard reveal what this will look like in practice. There may very well be some kind of “interoperability” of purchased game items but only within the walled garden of your chosen video game monopoly.

The metaverse being built by Facebook, Microsoft, and other big tech firms should be seen as an intensification of what Nick Srnicek calls “platform capitalism,” a term highlighting how digital platforms and the users (and data) they aggregate have become central actors, and resources, in many high- and middle-income capitalist economies. Under platform capitalism, creating and maintaining audiences that can be mined for data and future profit is of the utmost importance. Microsoft’s Game Pass, a “Netflix for games” subscription service that allows players to download and play hundreds of games for a monthly fee, already boasts 25 million users, and Microsoft is looking to bolster these numbers before competitors like Sony begin to roll out their own versions. The 400 million monthly users that Activision Blizzard attracts to its most popular games are just as important to Microsoft as their intellectual property rights.

The focus on keeping audiences engaged so that they may be tempted to purchase cosmetics and other micro-commodities exerts further pressure on workers. Games are no longer discrete experiences, but now “live services” that must be continually updated. Issues like “crunch,” which sees game workers forced into punishing amounts of unpaid overtime, are exacerbated by the need to maintain the recursive consumption of free-to-play online games. This means 60-plus hour workweeks, no sleep, and burnout.

To win the game, the workers must defeat the bosses. The ABK Workers Alliance continues to organize and fight on. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) helped organize Raven Software’s QA union and have called for a further investigation of Activision Blizzard for misleading investors after it claimed to the SEC recently that it did not know of any labor issues. Raven Software’s QA union is also filing for an election with the NLRB, even as Activision Blizzard tries to stifle it by assigning members of the QA team to other studios. Only when game workers can fully exercise collective power will the bosses of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard be truly doomed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander Ross is a writer and PhD candidate based at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. He specializes in studying the influence of digital platforms on the games industry.

Canada's Trans Mountain says pipeline expansion cost surges to C$21.4 billion

By Nia Williams

Steel pipe to be used in the oil pipeline construction of the Canadian government’s Trans Mountain Expansion Project lies at a stockpile site in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada June 18, 2019. REUTERS/Dennis Owen


CALGARY, Alberta, Feb 18 (Reuters) - The cost of the Canadian government-owned Trans Mountain pipeline expansion has increased by 70% to C$21.4 billion ($16.79 billion) due to the impact of COVID-19 and extreme weather in British Columbia, Trans Mountain Corp said on Friday.

The company said it expects to finish the expansion in the third quarter of 2023, nine months later than previously scheduled. The previous cost estimate, made in February 2020, was C$12.6 billion.

Once completed, the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) will nearly triple the capacity of an existing oil pipeline running from Alberta to the Pacific Coast to 890,000 barrels per day.

But since its conception the project has been beset by regulatory delays and fierce opposition from indigenous peoples and environmentalists. In 2018 the Canadian government bought it to help ensure it gets finished.

"I want to assure Canadians that there will be no additional public money invested in Trans Mountain Corp," Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said following the company's announcement.

Freeland said Trans Mountain Corp will instead secure the necessary funding with third-party financing, with public debt markets or financial institutions.

The government has engaged BMO Capital Markets and TD Securities to provide financial advice.

"Their analyses confirm that public financing for the project is a feasible option that can be implemented swiftly. They have also confirmed that the project remains commercially viable," Freeland added.

Freeland reiterated that the Canadian government did not plan to be the long-term owner of the pipeline, and would launch a sale process in due course.

Trans Mountain said Chief Executive Ian Anderson will retire from the company and its board, effective April 1.

The company blamed the delays and increased costs on the COVID-19 pandemic and devastating flooding in British Columbia in November that washed out roads across the south of the province and temporarily shut down the existing pipeline.

"The progress we have made over the past two years is remarkable when you consider the unforeseen challenges we have faced including the global pandemic, wildfires and flooding," Anderson said in a statement.

BREAKING: Federal government ceases funding to the Trans Mountain pipeline

350.ORG

This morning we received some huge news.

First, the government-owned Trans Mountain corporation issued a press release announcing that the cost of the project had nearly doubled from $12.6 billion to $21.4 billion.1 Within minutes, the federal government announced that it would cease any further funding to the publicly owned Trans Mountain pipeline project.2

This is a huge moment and it’s all thanks to you! You were part of a mass-movement of people that challenged this climate-wrecking project from Day 1.

Now, this is our chance to finally put an end to Trans Mountain once and for all. Send a message to Trudeau right now and tell him to cancel this pipeline once and for all.

Trans Mountain never made any sense to build during a climate crisis. Now, after a year where the pipeline was delayed by climate-fueled fires, heat, floods and landslides, the government is finally suspending public funding to this project.

The opportunity to cancel this climate-wrecking pipeline has never been clearer.

Since it was first proposed, the Trans Mountain pipeline has been opposed by a massive, national, Indigenous-led movement that has fought the project on the streets, in the courts, and on the frontlines. Ever since the Trudeau government stepped into purchase the project from Texas oil giant Kinder Morgan, people like you have spoken up to demand transparency around the true cost of Trans Mountain and immediate action to defund the project.

Without our pressure, today’s massive win would not have been possible: federal funding to Trans Mountain has been suspended. Let that sink in.

This victory has shown us what we can accomplish when we act together but we can’t stop now. We need immediate action in support of a just transition. Will you take action to demand that the Trudeau government deliver the Just Transition act they have promised us for years?

The Starbucks Union Drive Is Spreading With Impressive Speed

BY ALEX N. PRESS

JACOBIN

In just the last two months, workers at more than 50 Starbucks locations across 19 states have filed for union elections. The movement is being driven by rank-and-file workers and so far has brushed aside organizing challenges and management fearmongering.

A Chicago Starbucks became the first in the Midwest to request union certification. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

On December 9, 2021, workers at a Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize in an NLRB election. In doing so, they became the first of the company’s nearly nine thousand corporate-owned stores across the United States to go union (one additional Buffalo Starbucks union has since been certified; a third Buffalo store narrowly voted against unionization). In a development out of former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s nightmares, their decision inspired thousands of their colleagues, with the movement spreading like wildfire.

Fifty-four stores in nineteen states have now filed for NLRB elections. One location in Mesa, Arizona, just finished voting, with ballots set to be counted on February 16, despite Starbucks’ appeal to block the vote, with the company arguing, as it unsuccessfully did in New York, that a single store is not an appropriate bargaining unit.

The number of unionizing Starbucks locations is ticking up so quickly that it may well have changed by the time you’re reading this article. On the final day of January alone, Workers United, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) affiliate that is organizing the Starbucks campaign, announced fifteen new NLRB filings. On that same date, contract negotiations began at the first unionized Buffalo location.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the campaign’s speed thus far. Each Starbucks location employs a small number of workers (around thirty) and, had the victory remained isolated to one or two stores, the company could have closed those stores or otherwise stalled and derailed the bargaining process until the union deteriorated. Many unions in the United States never win a first contract, and plenty of restaurant and café owners prefer to shutter their locations entirely rather than cede the slightest ground to workers. Instead, Starbucks workers spread the organizing drive so quickly that it has become impossible for the company to send high-level managers to every location to dissuade workers. That means the company must rely on lower-level managers to be its shock troops, a role that some of them have objected to so strenuously that they have chosen to quit rather than wage a war they do not believe in.

The fanfare attending the campaign’s momentum also means Starbucks can’t dig in its heels without risking a major reputational hit. Starbucks markets itself as a liberal company — no matter that this has little relation to its actual practices along the supply chain, from slave labor on coffee plantations linked to the company to its low pay and stringent control over baristas’ duties. And it has drawn on downwardly mobile and highly educated millennials to staff its stores — the very class fraction moving to the left in recent years, as Bernie Sanders supporters and Democratic Socialist of America members, and now as organizers of the union drive. Live by the progressive image, and die by it.

Rather than negotiate a top-down brokered agreement, the sectoral bargaining that has been a goal of other low-wage service sector organizing campaigns such as the Fight for $15, the Starbucks union drive is going through the constricting NLRB election process: store by store, one at a time, but with a momentum that could ultimately set a national pattern.

The union drive sweeping Starbucks goes much of the way to explain why corporations fight the earliest hints of organizing with what can seem like an inordinate amount of firepower. This is what employers fear: workers coming up with an idea of their own and running with it, uncowed by long odds or management’s threats.

At Starbucks, this meant an aggressive anti-union campaign, with frequent captive-audience meetings, high-level executives rerouted to Buffalo to generally menace workers, and, eventually, Schultz himself coming to town to give one of history’s weirdest anti-union speeches. But in this heavy-handed response, Starbucks is not alone. When workers at a single Dollar General store voted four to two to unionize in 2017, the company shut down the location. The story of Amazon’s anti-union campaign in Bessemer, Alabama, is by now well known.

There are many more stores to go, and the battle for a contract has only just begun. To win the fight will take the collective resources of the labor movement, a recognition that it is in the interest of not only every union but every worker that the campaign succeeds. The food service sector in the United States is particularly resistant to unionization, with exceedingly high turnover making it hard to build momentum. But so long as these jobs are nonunion, the wages and working conditions will never be livable: the model is predicated on an endlessly renewable supply of labor from which employers can draw as locations churn through workers.

Despite those obstacles, Starbucks workers have gotten their feet under them. Whether they can keep it up is a question for all of us. So far, support has been significant: labor leaders are publicly cheering the campaign, and workers say the communities in which the stores are located have their back, too. Indeed, just this week a friend sent me a photo taken outside one of the unionizing Starbucks in Chicago: management was subjecting workers to a captive-audience meeting, so supporters picketed the location, holding pro-union signs visible to baristas through the store’s windows, a reminder that while workers may be compelled to hear managers’ fearmongering, they need not be cowed by it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alex N. Press is a staff writer at Jacobin. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Vox, the Nation, and n+1, among other places.

 'The Informal Colonialism of Egyptology: From the French Expedition to the Security State', in: Marc Woons and Sebastian Weier (eds.), Critical Epistemologies of Global Politics, Bristol: E-International Relations Publishing 2017, pp. 182-202.

Christian Langer

2017, Marc Woons & Sebastian Weier (eds.). Borders, Borderthinking, Borderlands: Developing a Critical Epistemology of Global Politics

2023 ViewsPaperRank: 5.9241 Pages

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Critical Theory,

History,

Ancient History,

Cultural Studies,

Archaeology,

Egyptology,

Anthropology,

International Relations,

Philosophy,

Political Philosophy,

Public Archaeology,

Middle East Studies,

Cultural Heritage,

Heritage Studies,

Political Science,

Ideology,

Nationalism,

Turkish and Middle East Studies,

Egypt,

Middle East Politics,

History of Egyptology,

Middle East,

Decolonial Thought,

Decolonization,

Arab Spring (Arab Revolts)

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Location: Bristol

More Info: pp. 182-202

Publisher: E-International Relations Publishing

Publication Date: Jun 1, 2017

Publication Name: Marc Woons & Sebastian Weier (eds.). Borders, Borderthinking, Borderlands: Developing a Critical Epistemology of Global Politics

 

Theories of Resistance: Anarchism, Geography and the Spirit of Revolt

Simon Springer

Richard J White

6115 ViewsPaperRank: 7.0269 Pages

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Sociology,

Political Sociology,

Social Movements

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Space is never a neutral ‘stage’ on which social actors play their roles, sometimes cooperating with each other, sometimes struggling against each other. Space is a product of interrelations, and is always under construction. Its co-constitutive role in the development of social relations is multiple and complex: a reference for identity-building and re-building; a material condition for existence and survival; a symbol and instrument of power. However, as much as space has been made instrumental for the purposes of heteronomy (from class exploitation to gender oppression to racial segregation), space (spatial re-organisation, spatial practices and spatial resources) is also a basic condition for human emancipation, i.e. for autonomy and freedom. Recognising the way space has been used for resistance, especially in those more specifically left-libertarian contexts (from the early anarchist organising efforts in the 19th century, to the Paris Commune, to the early kibbutzim, to the makhnovitchina in Ukraine, to the socio-spatial revolution during the Spanish Civil War, to the contemporary re-birth of left-libertarian and sometimes specifically anarchist praxis among social movements such as Mexican Zapatistas) is important. Here, a greater understanding of space can teach a great deal about both limits and potentialities, particularly in relation to the possibilities and tasks of re-purposing and re-structuring the built environment, changing images of place, and overcoming old and new boundaries of all sorts.