Narrative Around Refugees And Asylum Seekers Appear Politically Insinuated

The narrative around refugees and asylum seekers across the globe appears politically insinuated.

 Because data tells a different story

Drowning in the Sea: Artwork by Faud, 14, a Syrian refugee. Black dots depict refugees in a stormy sea Courtesy: Art with refugees

 

Jaffer Latief Najar

UPDATED: 26 JUL 2023 8:04 AM

Recently on July 7, 2023, the Dutch government collapsed over radical yet opp­osing outlooks of coalition parties on the issue of a proposed new immigration policy. The mounting concerns over the problem of a housing crisis, high gas prices and inflation are developing a narrative that blames foreign migrants—international students, wealthier “expats” and particularly asylum seekers as the key cause. It has ensued into the formation of a policy proposal, pressing the Dutch government to introduce a new bill that appears to restrict the rights of family members to join refugees from countries temporarily at war.

The difference in the views of coalition parties over this new bill caused the collapse of the government. Akin to or even harsher than such a policy, the United Kingdom has already devised a plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda to ‘deter’ people from arriving in the UK. Notably, such a pattern indicates the upsetting concerns and narratives that are appearing against the “soaring outsider” in Europe, especially refugees and asylum seekers.

The subject that attracts less attention is the extent to which the refugees and asylum seekers are increasing the humanitarian cost or inflation of a state, and forcing countries to bring intense policy frames against the rights of refugees and asylum seekers. According to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), in 2022, 108.4 million people were forcefully displaced worldwide because of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order. Among these, 35.3 million (32.5 per cent) were refugees and 5.4 million (4.9 per cent) were asylum seekers. Should 5.4 million asylum seekers among a population of seven billion worldwide be a cause of concern; and can’t the economically powerful states (including European countries) even offer to provide assistance to a minute proportion of them, rather than render strident policies, and how are such minor populations destabilising economies, politics, and increasing inflation?

European Union statistics further indicate that the narrative and panic about refugees and asylum seekers appear politically insinuated, and not what the data suggests. For instance, in 2022, only 881,200 people sought asylum among all the countries of the European Union (EU). Should a minute population of 881,200 people among 447.7 million inhabitants in the European Union be a concern?

Compared to worldwide forceful displacement data of UNHRC, the number of asylum seekers amounts to merely 0.81 per cent (approximately). However, the EU data also suggest that there is a sharp rise of 52 per cent in asylum in 2022 in Euro­pean countries, as compared to the previous years, which appears to have been triggered by the war in neighbouring Ukraine.

Nevertheless, it is still a smaller amount as compared to the worldwide forceful displacement of people and asylum seekers. More importantly, the EU data also show that non-EU citizens are overrepresented in low-end and working- class occupations such as cleaners and helpers (11.4 per cent), personal services workers (7.3 per cent), personal care workers (5.5 per cent), building and related trade workers, excluding electricians (6.1 per cent), labourers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport (six per cent, food preparation assistants (2.6 per cent), agricultural, forestry and fishery labourers (2.4 per cent), while being underrepresented in comparatively privileged sectors such as public administration and defence, compulsory social security, education, human health and social work activities, professional, scientific and technical activities, teaching professionals, business and administration associate professionals, etc. While it indicates the disparity and inequality of representation and scope of work of non-EU citizens, it also accentuates the extent to which the refugees and asylum seekers are impacting the economy of the host countries in Europe. Relatively, it suggests how non-EU citizens contribute to the working class economy of the EU, reflecting the limited scope of influence and representation of refugees in the EU, challenging the dominant perspective.

The Refugee Perspective

At the receiving end, the community of refugees and asylum seekers in Europe appears to have experienced multiple obstacles, hierarchies, and discrimination. For instance, in one of my podcast episodes on European Union refugee policies on the Global Development Review Podcast, Anila Noor, a refugee herself and feminist activist, who closely works with the UN and EU on refugee rights, shared that refugees and asylum seekers are treated and recognised as a ‘burden’ in Europe, which undermines the human dignity and contribution of refugees. She further pointed out that there is a disconnect and deficit between policies, policymakers, and rights groups, restricting the refugees’ equal participation and voices for policies that are sought for them. She pointed out that rather than a human rights approach, there is a rise of border control approach in the recent policy reforms in Europe. Her key concern, as representative of a refugee networks in Europe, was that there is not enough space for refugees to share their views and contribute to the policies. Rather, a tokenistic approach—involving a few community members for the sake of representation—is being applied and observed, which benefits neither the state nor the communities. She insists, ‘Listen to us, our experience, our perspectives’.
Framing Refugees And Asylum Seekers As A ‘Burden’ Increases The Risk Of Harm To The Already Susceptible Groups.

My own observations and experience of ethnographic research and community engagement with undocumented workers, refugee groups, and working class migrants in Europe also signify that there are challenges that require policy and practice reforms in a way that provide safe, secure, and dignified access to the basic rights of refugees and migrants in Europe, not stern policy modifications.

For instance, I observed that refugees and undocumented migrants are facing obstacles in accessing proper health care services or benefits and the bureaucracy (with a systemic discriminatory attitude) offers limited space for refugees to access work, livelihood, employment, and welfare benefits. The housing crisis and rising prices also led to further financial worries and compromised living conditions. Lack of mental health support, disconnect with families/diaspora, and language barriers also appear to have been impacting the daily routines, well-being and experiences of refugees and asylum seekers. Notably, waiting and regular pushbacks at asylum and reception centres have also made refugee and asylum-seeking communities more susceptible, requiring them to explore alternative channels of access, which are unsecured, financially extractive, and exploitative in many forms.

Such pushbacks appear to have also been subtly placed in the recent policy attempt of the Dutch government or the UK’s plans (among others) that restrict the entry of refugees or their families. Such a pattern may also be observed in future policies in other countries of the European Union.

Yet, framing refugees and asylum seekers as a “burden” or “soaring outsiders” increases the risk of harm to already susceptible groups, communities, and individuals, who are escaping from persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations, or events seriously disturbing public order. While such framing may well benefit the politics and dominant narrative-building machinery to convince their anti-immigrant constituencies for domestic discourses or other gains, practically, it places a minor and repeatedly marginalised community of refugees and asylum seekers at the further threshold of the margins, increasing their susceptibilities and weakening their fundamental rights, even in the projected “advanced” democracies of Europe.

(Views expressed are personal)
(This appeared in the print as 'Striking Difference')

Jaffer Latief Najar is an ethnographer associated with the International Institute of Social Studies at the Hague in The Netherlands as a final year PHD researcher

How Climate Change Is Driving Mass Human Displacement

Climate change is driving mass human displacement and forcing the need to establish climate governance policies that go beyond the traditional perception of who is a 'refugee'

The sections that suffer the most when it comes to climate-displacement or climate-induced distress migration are women and children.

 

Latest Issue

Rakhi Bose
UPDATED: 26 JUL 2023

Assam resident Seher Ali’s life is a paradox. Three decades ago, Ali’s family lost their ancestral home in Charagaon due to a rise in water levels. A river now flows where Ali’s house had once stood. “Our village went underwater. Nothing of the house remains but that is still our official address in many documents,” Ali states.

After 30 years, he still has nothing more than an address without a home. He now lives in a temporary shanty on the outskirts of Niz Baghbar, four kilometres north-east of Baghbar hillock in the (currently flooded) Barpeta district of Assam. This year, the flood situation in Barpeta has left 43,000 people affected. Ali fears that he and his family might once again end up in relief camps where they have spent much of their lives. “We have become like refugees in our own land,” he says. But as per international refugee law, Ali does not qualify to be called a refugee, neither does he get disaster relief-rehabilitation at home.

Ali is one of the lakhs of people in India who have lost their homes and livelihoods to climate-related phenomena in the past few decades. In 2021 alone, nearly 50 lakh people were internally displaced in India due to climate change and disasters, as per the annual Global Trends Report by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

Lost in Terminology

The scope of the global refugee crisis has more than doubled in the past few decades. However, much of the data on refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) does not include “climate refugees” or “environmental refugees”. This is because traditionally, a refugee is associated with persecution based on caste, class, race, gender, ethnicity and/or political allegiance. Refugees also need to technically cross an international boundary and enter a destination nation to be identified as refugees.

Refugee Status Determination (RSD) is a vital part of helping refugees realise their rights under international law. However, climate refugees are not recognised as refugees under international law and there is no specific template for the protection and rehabilitation of climate-displaced persons. This means that climate refugees and climate displaced remain outside of the purview of rights guaranteed to refugees.

So, who is a climate refugee? The Global Governance on Climate Change defines climate refugees (or environmental refugees) as people who are compelled to leave their habitats (immediately or in near future), because of sudden or gradual alterations in their natural environment related to at least one of three impacts of climate changes—sea-level rise, extreme weather events, drought, and water scarcity. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that there could be as many as 200 million environmental refugees by 2050.
In The Absence Of Official Refugee Status, Those Who Get Displaced Or Lose Their Livelihoods Due To Environmental Phenomena Are Often Left To Fend For Themselves.

In the absence of official refugee status, those who get displaced or lose their livelihoods due to environmental phenomena are often left to fend for themselves. “It isn’t easy to rebuild once you have lost everything. But I tried,” Ali recalls. About 15 years ago after moving from relief camp to temporary housing, Ali arrived in Baghbar with the hopes of rebuilding his life. He managed to purchase 400 bighas of land. But “home” would remain elusive.

What he didn’t know was that the land had been allotted for animal husbandry. Due to delay in setting up of the proposed pig farm on the area, touts started selling plots to erosion-affected/displaced people like Ali. Last winter in December, the government in Assam evicted Ali along with 48 other families from those plots. He has lost his father and elder brother in past few years. Having lost the little he had managed to rebuild, Ali, who had no papers for the property, moved to a tent on the village’s periphery, reduced once again to an outsider, living on the outskirt.

International Institute for Environment and Development climate researcher Ritu Bharadwaj, who has been studying the impact of environmental change on communities in India, states that international climate refugees have barely any rights in the destination country due to the lack of international accordance, meaning that upon entering destination country, they are likely to be dubbed “illegal settlers”.

During a recent study she and her team conducted in the environmentally-vulnerable Kendrapara area of Odisha, they found several climate refugees from Nepal and Bangladesh. While other climate displaced in India may avail advantages like MNREGA or disaster relief, climate refugees get nothing. “Just because they don’t have a legal climate refugee status, they are illegal immigrants,” she states.

Forced into Statelessness

Climate displacement can also render people “illegal” within their home country. The issue of “illegality” emerges strongly in Assam where the ‘National Register of Citizens’ exercise threatens to disenfranchise millions based on their ability or inability to prove their citizenship. Thus, adverse climate impact can lead to not just homelessness but also induce what Assam-based activist Faruk Khan calls “statelessness”.

The D-voter electoral category in Assam includes thousands of people whom the government disenfranchises on the account of their inability to show proper citizenship credentials. D voters do not have voting rights and are essentially deemed as foreigners. In 2021, 1.08 lakh persons were declared D-voters in Assam. Khan claims that among them, thousands of these D-voters are actually climate displaced persons.

“In Assam, security forces and state authorities keep tabs on migrants. Whenever a person comes to a new area, they are marked. And many times, they are put under the “foreigner” category based on biased suspicions,” Khan, who runs a non-profit organisation called ‘D-Voter Forum’, states, adding that once a person loses their own home, it becomes very hard for them to establish their identity anywhere else. They forever remain “outsiders”, seen and perceived with suspicion. “Such suspicions, of course, are allayed by communal and xenophobic narratives,” Khan adds.

The sections that suffer the most when it comes to climate-displacement or climate-induced distress migration are women and children.
In the Sundarbans delta complex shared between West Bengal and Bangladesh, for instance, village after village in Sagar Island and Ghoramara Island have become submerged due to rising sea level and rapid land erosion. About 75 per cent of Ghoramara Island now submerged and soon, the whole island is expected to disappear. Many like Chitto Das, who belonged to Khasimara village, have had to move to inland villages like Goshaba, in another part of the Sundarbans.

The Sections That Suffer The Most When It Comes To Climate-Displacement Or Climate-Induced Distress Migration Are Women And Children.

In most of these climate migrant households, women have been left alone to deal with recurrent cyclones and floods, and tend to inundated soil while their husbands migrate to urban centres like Kolkata for work. As per the Rural Household Survey, over 25 per cent of the principal earners (majority male) of individual families have migrated out of their homes in the islands and temporarily searching for work or working elsewhere.

Manju Sarkar, who runs an SHG in Goshaba, states that several women who migrated to Goshaba from the submerged villages like Khasimara, Lohachara, Baishnabpara, now live on rented plots or shanties in other villages and try to raise the family on meagre incomes while the husbands work in faraway cities as labourers. Even those who live in further inland areas like Goshaba have been affected by environmental change as recurrent flood and cyclone water has left their farms salinated and unfit for farming.

Another dire impact is the incidence of child trafficking, child marriages, debt bondage and other social ills in families affected by environmental change. Rafiqul Islam, who works extensively to curb child marriages in Assam, states that in most cases of trafficking in environmentally vulnerable zones, families often have no means to take care of the children and even voluntarily allow trafficking of one child to feed the rest.

“The one school in Charagaon is in shambles. There are about 3,500 people living in the area and not a single school above Class 5. There are no employment opportunities for youth so even if a trafficked child is managed to be rescued, they are likely to be pushed back into trafficking or into crime,” Islam states, adding that the state as well as central government has remained more or less apathetic to the needs of children affected by climate change.

Invisibility of Distress Migration

Two kinds of events cause climate induced movement. Rapid onset events typically include flash floods, cyclones, hurricanes, flash droughts, or even heat waves now in India. These events have high visibility and empirical data is more easily available to measure ‘Loss and Damage’, which is useful in estimating the economic and property losses. Slow onset events, on the other hand, typically include sea level rise, salination, desertification and prolonged drought. These events produce more long-term impact including loss of home or livelihood. These events also drive deeper distress migration, which refers to the voluntary movement of people in anticipation of impending environmental adversity or ongoing crisis. “As opposed to opportunistic migration, distress migration often leads to migrants facing issues with renegotiation of space. This can be in the form of discrimination faced in urban spaces, of the loss of identity and cultural belongingness,” states Bhardwaj.

Towards Climate Governance

Last year, Pradyut Bordoloi, Congress parliamentarian from Assam’s Nagaon, introduced the Climate Migrants (Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill as a private member’s bill. The Bill outlines a framework for the protection and rehabilitation of climate-displaced persons by providing for a dedicated climate fund and for periodic surveys in climate change-prone areas to assess the scale of the displacement. The bill has been dubbed ‘doomed to not pass’ by media and sceptics and does not inspire much hope among climate change activists or those working with climate migration. But it’s a starting point.

Professor Parthankar Choudhary, Dean and former Head of the Department of Ecology & Environmental Science at the E. P. Odum School of Environmental Sciences at Assam University, also highlights that India’s Disaster Management Act 2005 has been more or less effective in mitigating the fallout of natural disaster.

“Global temperature rise, excessive precipitation, drought, and the like can broadly be categorised under climatic hazards. Thus its effects inter alia fall under the category of Disaster, and ideally are dealt with under the Disaster Management Act, 2005,” he states. But while the DM Act might help victims of short-onset events, the act fails to provide much relief to victims of long-offset events. Additionally, social stratification and marginalisation often compound the issues and deny people even the rights and safeguards that the government provides.

Climate governance is likely to become top of the agenda of governments globally in coming years due to the inevitability of climate change necessitating extensive systems to deal with it. The world has already realised it. Even the most conservative estimates of annual climate-induced displacement and impact speak for themselves. The question is, how long can governments remain in denial?

(This appeared in the print as 'Addresses Without Homes')

Sinead O'Connor's Letter To Miley Cyrus Warning Her Against Being 'Pimped' Goes Viral

An open letter penned by Sinead O'Connor to Miley Cyrus has gone viral following the Irish music legend's death aged 56. The two infamously had a feud a decade ago after comments made by Cyrus.

https://www.outlookindia.com/
UPDATED: 29 JUL 2023 

An open letter penned by Sinead O'Connor to Miley Cyrus has gone viral following the Irish music legend's death aged 56. The two infamously had a feud a decade ago after comments made by Cyrus.

The feud took place 10 years ago in 2013, when Cyrus, then 20, told Rolling Stone magazine that the video for her hit track, 'Wrecking Ball', which included a lot of nudity, was inspired by Sinead's song 'Nothing Compares 2 U'.

Cyrus's famous video sees the star in various stages of undress riding on a wrecking ball. In some scenes, she is seen crying into the camera while singing, much like the video for 'Nothing Compares 2 U'.

Apparently O'Connor was not impressed with the comparison or the video at the time, Mirror UK reported.

In response to the article, O'Connor wrote publicly to Cyrus, warning her of the dangers of the music industry and how "nothing but harm will come in the long run from allowing yourself to be exploited".

In the letter, which was originally published on her website, O'Connor wrote: "I wasn't going to write this letter, but today I've been dodging phone calls from various newspapers who wished me to remark upon your having said in Rolling Stone your Wrecking Ball video was designed to be similar to the one for Nothing Compares.

"So this is what I need to say … And it is said in the spirit of motherliness and with love.

"I am extremely concerned for you that those around you have led you to believe, or encouraged you in your own belief, that it is in any way 'cool' to be naked and licking sledgehammers in your videos.

"It is in fact the case that you will obscure your talent by allowing yourself to be pimped, whether its the music business or yourself doing the pimping.

"Nothing but harm will come in the long run, from allowing yourself to be exploited, and it is absolutely NOT in ANY way an empowerment of yourself or any other young women, for you to send across the message that you are to be valued (even by you) more for your sexual appeal than your obvious talent."

In the powerful letter, O'Connor continued: "The music business doesn't give a shit about you, or any of us. They will prostitute you for all you are worth, and cleverly make you think it's what YOU wanted… and when you end up in rehab as a result of being prostituted, 'they' will be sunning themselves on their yachts in Antigua, which they bought by selling your body and you will find yourself very alone.

She completed the letter with the lines: "Whether we like it or not, us females in the industry are role models and as such we have to be extremely careful what messages we send to other women.

"The message you keep sending is that its somehow cool to be prostituted … it's so not cool Miley… its dangerous. Women are to be valued for so much more than their sexuality."

At the time, Cyrus didn't react well to the letter - comparing O'Connor to the troubled star Amanda Bynes, who has had several mental health episodes.

On social media, Cyrus also re-shared pictures of the star in 1992 when she tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II on US TV show 'Saturday Night Live', sparking a ferocious backlash.

O'Connor then penned several follow-up letters, and even threatened legal action against Cyrus.

However, later that year Cyrus seemed to call a truce with the star, saying on The Today Show that the spat "didn't really matter" and it was "all good".

In a recent interview, Cyrus told Vogue how she "carried some guilt and shame around myself for years" as a result of the Wrecking Ball and VMAs twerking controversies.

O'Connor's letter is being re-circulated as hundreds of fans paid tributes to the late singer on both sides of the Irish Sea on Thursday night following her shock death.

Did Nazis consider Iranians to be ‘Aryans’?

SARDARI PROJECT

JULY 31, 2023
ARASH AZIZI

A German teacher singles out a child with "Aryan" features for special praise in class. picture: 

DIZ Muenchen GMBH, Sueddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. This well-known saying in the English language is well-suited to the study of history. As dangerous as outright fabrications can be, partial and selective facts can sometimes be even more misleading. A case in point is in the Nazi conception of the Aryan race and whether Nazi officials considered Iranians to be included in it. Throughout time, many misleading claims, often for politicized purposes, have been made about this question. In this article, I rely on the work of relevant scholars to show what Nazis really thought of Iranians and what they meant by the concept of the ‘Aryan’ race.

What does Aryan mean?

Like many terms and symbols used and abused by the Nazis, the term ‘Aryan’ or ‘Ariya’ has a distinct history that goes back centuries. The term was an ethnic self-designation used by various peoples in ancient India and Iran. It thus appears in sacred texts of Hinduism and Zoroastrianism that go as far back as the 2nd millennium BCE as well as inscriptions of antiquity. A notable example of the latter is an inscription found at the burial site of Dariush the Great, an ancient monarch ruling over Iran who died in 486 BC. Giving something of a biography of himself, Dariush tells the posterity that he is “an Aryan, of Aryan lineage”.

Centuries later, with the development of modern linguistics in the 18th century, scholars discovered that many languages of India, Iran and Europe had a common ancestor and could all be classified together as belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. Many languages around the world are connected together since populations have moved around in a variety of ways over centuries. But, in the decades to come, nationalist thinkers in Europe, the US, India and Iran would use this linguistic category to claim, without evidence, that “Indo-European” was actually a biological ‘race’, now often called the ‘Aryan race’. This worldview intensified in the nineteenth century, as scientific racism and sharp division of human beings into “races” became popular amongst many European thinkers. German explorer Julius Klaproth claimed “Aryans” or “Indo-Germanics” were an ancient light-skinned people while French philologist Frederic Eichhoff opined that “evidence of both physiology and linguistics” shows that all Europeans “came from the Orient”.

Racist European thinkers of the 19th century later influenced Nazi racial ideology. One of the most influential examples was Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a British-German philosopher whose popular 1899 book, The Foundation of the Nineteenth Century, was compulsory reading for teachers in Germany under Emperor Wilhelm II and later a major influence on Hitler and Nazis.

Importantly, European racists who propagated the Aryan theory often also believed that contemporary peoples of Iran and the Middle East were no longer “pure Aryans” as evident by their non-white skin. In simpler words, they did not belong to the supposedly superior race of ‘Aryans’. In mid to late nineteenth century Germany, a new version of the Aryan myth claimed that Aryan roots were actually in northern Europe. As contemporary Iranian-German historian David Motadel explains, these German thinkers believed that ‘Aryans’ had moved from Europe to Asia “and founded the ancient civilizations of the East” while “on the Asian fringes they degenerated through mixing with foreign races”. This meant that by the 20th century, “only the ‘Nordic race’, the core race in central and northern Europe, remained purely ‘Aryan’.”

Nazis and the Aryan myth

During the 1920s and 30s, the Nazis made a version of this belief in an “Aryan race” central to their ideology. In his manifesto Mein Kampf, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler called ‘Aryans’ a ‘culture-bearing race’ and claimed that they had come from northern Europe and had founded civilizations around the world but had disappeared because of mixing with others. The Nazis heavily promoted the Aryan myth as part of their propaganda that asserted ancient roots for the German people and a supposed return to stolen glory. Hitler and other German Nazis made it clear that the modern Iranians were not considered to be pure Aryans. Speaking on Iranians, Hitler would later falsely assert: “Nations which did not rid themselves of Jews, perished. One of the most famous examples of this was the downfall of a people who were once so proud – the Persians [the old European name for Iranians].”

More crudely, Hitler would tell the German army command in 1939: “We will continue to stir up unrest in the Far East and in Arabia. We must think as Masters and see in these peoples at best lacquered half-apes, who want to feel the whip.”

Top Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg further expounded on this separation between ancient and modern peoples of Iran. In his 1930 book, The Myth of the Twentieth Century, Rosenberg wrote that ancient Iranians were “Aryans with northern blood” but added that they had degenerated because of mixing with “lower races”.

Rosenberg wrote: “Once, the Persian king gave order to cut into the rock face of Behistun [in Iran] the following words: ‘I, Darius the Great King, King of Kings, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage’ Today the Persian muleteer [a person who drives a mule] pulls ahead soullessly by this wall: he represents thousands – culture and personality are born together with race and also die with it.”

In other words, ancient Iranians were superior “Aryans” while Iranians of today, like the “Persian muleteer” who was passing by, had lost that ancient glory by diluting their stock. As Motadel explains: “Most National Socialist ideologues agreed with the idea that ‘Aryans’ – in their attempt to cultivate the Orient – perished as a result of infiltration (Überfremdung) by ‘Semitic races’.”

Nazis in power

When the Nazis came to power in Germany in January 1933, they began to legislate on the basis of their racist worldview. A central goal of Nazi policy was exclusion and, ultimately, annihilation of Jews. As regards to people who were neither Jewish nor “Aryan”, a variety of ideas existed amongst various Nazis. While this article is focused on Iranians, many other populations, such as the Romani and Black Africans, were also considered racially inferior by the Nazis.

In 1933, a Civil Service Law, the Law for the Restroration of Professional Civil Service, was passed that limited certain rights to those Germans classified as Aryans. Defining “Aryan” for the purposes of this law, Nazi official Albert Gorter wrote: “The Aryans are… divided into the western (European), that is the German, Roman, Greek, Slav, Lett, Celt [and] Albanesen, and the eastern (Asiatic) Aryans, that is the Indian (Hindu) and Iranian (Persian, Afghan, Armenian, Georgian, Kurd).”

But many Nazis didn’t accept such an expansive concept of Aryan that included many non-Europeans. As explained above, they didn’t see the contemporary Iranians as belonging to the ‘master race’ with its supposed Nordic origins. Additionally, foreign governments such as Iran complained that the “Aryan paragraph” discriminated against their citizens. Even if the ‘paragraph’ seemed to include Iranians, Iranian students living in Germany were hardly protected. In one incident, the Iranian foreign ministry lodged a formal complaint when Nazi thugs attacked Iranian students on the streets of Berlin. As a result of domestic and foreign pressure, the Nazis went on to pass new racial laws. In November 1934, a meeting of various Nazi agencies debated the continued use of ‘Aryan’ as a legal category. Representatives of the Interior Ministry suggested that it could be simply replaced with “non-Jewish” which was less complicated. Haans Seel, from the ministry, discussed the issue in detail and argued that the term Aryan was “highly controversial and scientifically not clarified.” When the Nuremberg Race Laws were promulgated in 1935, they didn’t refer to “Aryan” but instead to “German or kindred blood” and “Jews and other non-kindred people”. The latter category now faced a slew of new restrictions; most importantly, they were stripped of their German citizenship, even decorated war veterans. These laws also banned marriage and sexual relations between “Jews and other non-kindred people” with “German or kindred blood”

Iranians and the ‘Aryan’ concept

The nineteenth-century circulation of Aryan as a racial concept wasn’t limited to Europe, and many in the nationalist Iranian intelligentsia also adopted a version of it. In trying to curry diplomatic favor with the Iranian state, Nazis would also opportunistically use the concept. In 1934, when a ceremony was held in Berlin to commemorate the 1000th birth anniversary of Iranian poet Ferdowsi, Nazi mayor Henrich Sahm pointed to the “surprising similarity” of Ferdowsi’s work with “German heroic sagas” and attributed this to common “Aryan” ancestry. Iranian diplomats would also often insist to their German counterparts that they were “Aryans” and should be considered “kindred” blood with Europeans

The government of Iran at the time had extensive relations with Germany, which predated the Nazi rise to power. Jennifer Jenkins, a historian at the University of Toronto and a leading authority on the history of Iranian-German relations in the interwar and World War II period, has argued that the basis of these relations was economic not racial-ideological. Motadel says: “The common belief that Nazi Germany enjoyed an outstanding reputation in Iran and kept strong relations with the Pahlavi government is hardly accurate” and points to the fact that many in the Iranian cabinet had pro-Allied tendencies. This was the case even before 1941 when the Anglo-Soviet invasion overthrew the Reza Shah’s government and replaced him as monarch with his son.

Still, in aiming their propaganda at Iran, the Nazis were careful to use ‘Aryan’ themes. Erwin Ettel, a German ambassador to Iran from 1939 to 1941, emphasized the use of such themes in his “general guidelines for propaganda to Iran” while he also insisted that “Germany’s battle against World Judaism” should also be directed “against the Jews in Iran, who want to force the Aryan Iranian people under their knout [yoke]”.

In 1936, as Nazi Germany prepared to host the Berlin Olympics, it tried hard to make sure as many nations as possible would attend the games. It also postponed prosecutions under the Nuremberg Race Laws until after the Games. Meanwhile, the German foreign ministry assured Egyptians they would not be excluded from the games on account of their race.

A mistaken media report led to further clarification.

In June 1936, a French newspaper reported that the Germans had decided to categorize Turks as “Aryans” while not including Egyptians, Iraqis, or Iranians in this category. This story led to a diplomatic crisis and protests by diplomats from these three countries. But the report turned out to be a hoax; in fact Nazis had merely included Turks as an “European people” which had no practical consequences since foreign citizens (so long as they were non-Jewish) were not targeted by the Nuremberg Race Laws anyway. As Motadel writes: “Berlin had… never classified an entire nation as ‘Aryan’ or ‘non-Aryan’, and indeed was very cautious in using the term ‘Aryan’ in official texts at all after 1934.”

Still, the Iranian government protested as did the governments of Iraq and Egypt. Tehran’s ambassador to Turkey contacted the German legation in Ankara and threatened diplomatic escalation while the Iranian ambassador complained at the Foreign Office in Berlin. In response, Walter Gross, head of the German Office of Racial Policy, declared that “The envoy can, on no account however, expect that the Iranians, lock, stock and barrel, be declared as Aryans.” He suggested for the issue to be settled in a verbal conversation with the Iranian ambassador. When they met the week after, the Iranian ambassador insisted to Gross that Iranians were not only a “kindred people” but “ancestors of the Aryan race”. But, as Motadel explains, “Gross was unimpressed” and Iranians were not to be officially classified as ‘Aryans’ by the Nazi regime. All Gross did was affirm that the Nuremberg Laws wouldn’t apply to marriages between non-Jewish Iranians and Germans; which was a moot point since these laws didn’t apply to non-Jewish foreign citizens anyways. The same guarantee was given to Egyptian and Iraqi governments.

“Aryan” propagandas

But while Nazis didn’t consider Iranians to be “Aryans” for domestic purposes, they were ready to use the “Aryan” myth to attempt to bring Iranians to their side during the Second World War. In the same vein, even though Hitler used extremely racist language about other non-white peoples such as Arabs and Indians, the Nazis occasionally attempted to collaborate with some nationalists from the Arab world or India when it was useful.

The Germans also helped fund pro-Nazi Iranian publications and radio broadcasts that utilized the ‘Aryan’ theme. Two examples help illustrate this strategy. Abdulrahman Seif Azad was an Iranian journalist who had lived in Germany for many years before the Nazis came to power and had published journals in various languages that promoted trade between Iran and Germany. In the 1930s, the Nazis had helped him publish a journal called Iran-Bastan (Ancient Iran) which utilized racist ‘Aryan’ themes. In 1941, he would go back to Iran to continue publishing this journal with its many racial themes. Davud Munshizade is another example. An Iranian political activist who moved to Germany in 1937, he was employed by the Nazis to start Persian-language radio propaganda broadcasting toward Iran in 1939, spreading pro-Nazi themes. In the post-war years, Munshizade returned to Iran and founded Sumka, the Iranian Nation-Socialist Party, in 1951. Sumka was explicitly modeled on the Nazi Party and, alongside other far-right groups such as the Pan-Iranist Party, it sponsored attacks on local Jews and leftists in Iran while boasting about the ‘Aryan’ race that the majority of Iranians supposedly belonged to.

Today, the ‘Aryan myth’, the idea that there is a ‘master race’ that connects peoples of Europe with those of Iran and India has been thoroughly discredited around the world. Inevitably, some Iranians, Indians and Europeans still hold on to versions of the myth of biological superiority. But, as the current article tries to show, the Nazis did not consider contemporary Iranians to belong to a superior race.

The Military Dangers of AI Are Not Hallucinations

by Michael Klare and Tom Engelhardt Posted onJuly 20, 2023

Originally posted at TomDispatch.

I give myself credit for being significantly ahead of my time. I first came across artificial intelligence (AI) in 1968 when I was just 24 years old and, from the beginning, I sensed its deep dangers. Imagine that.

Much as I’d like to brag about it, though, I was anything but alone. I was, in fact, undoubtedly one of millions of people who saw the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick from a script written with Arthur C. Clarke (inspired by a short story, “The Sentinel,” that famed science-fiction writer Clarke had produced in – yes! – 1948). AI then had an actual name, HAL 9,000 (but call “him” Hal).

And no, the first imagined AI in my world did not act well, which should have been (but didn’t prove to be) a lesson for us all. Embedded in a spaceship heading for Jupiter, he killed four of the five astronauts on it and did his best to do in the last of them before being shut down.

It should, of course, have been a warning to us all about a world we would indeed enter in this century. Unfortunately, as with so many things that are worrying on planet Earth, it seems that we couldn’t help ourselves. HAL was destined to become a reality – or rather endlessly multiplying realities – in this world of ours. In that context, TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, who has been warning for years about a “human” future in which “robot generals” could end up running armed forces globally, considers wars to come, what it might mean for AI to replace human intelligence in major militaries globally, and just where that might lead us. I’m not sure that either Stanley Kubrick or Arthur C. Clarke would be surprised. ~ Tom Engelhardt

---

Human Extinction as Collateral Damage

By Michael Klare

A world in which machines governed by artificial intelligence (AI) systematically replace human beings in most business, industrial, and professional functions is horrifying to imagine. After all, as prominent computer scientists have been warning us, AI-governed systems are prone to critical errors and inexplicable “hallucinations,” resulting in potentially catastrophic outcomes. But there’s an even more dangerous scenario imaginable from the proliferation of super-intelligent machines: the possibility that those nonhuman entities could end up fighting one another, obliterating all human life in the process.

The notion that super-intelligent computers might run amok and slaughter humans has, of course, long been a staple of popular culture. In the prophetic 1983 film “WarGames,” a supercomputer known as WOPR (for War Operation Plan Response and, not surprisingly, pronounced “whopper”) nearly provokes a catastrophic nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union before being disabled by a teenage hacker (played by Matthew Broderick). The “Terminator” movie franchise, beginning with the original 1984 film, similarly envisioned a self-aware supercomputer called “Skynet” that, like WOPR, was designed to control U.S. nuclear weapons but chooses instead to wipe out humanity, viewing us as a threat to its existence.

Though once confined to the realm of science fiction, the concept of supercomputers killing humans has now become a distinct possibility in the very real world of the near future. In addition to developing a wide variety of “autonomous,” or robotic combat devices, the major military powers are also rushing to create automated battlefield decision-making systems, or what might be called “robot generals.” In wars in the not-too-distant future, such AI-powered systems could be deployed to deliver combat orders to American soldiers, dictating where, when, and how they kill enemy troops or take fire from their opponents. In some scenarios, robot decision-makers could even end up exercising control over America’s atomic weapons, potentially allowing them to ignite a nuclear war resulting in humanity’s demise.

Now, take a breath for a moment. The installation of an AI-powered command-and-control (C2) system like this may seem a distant possibility. Nevertheless, the U.S. Department of Defense is working hard to develop the required hardware and software in a systematic, increasingly rapid fashion. In its budget submission for 2023, for example, the Air Force requested $231 million to develop the Advanced Battlefield Management System (ABMS), a complex network of sensors and AI-enabled computers designed to collect and interpret data on enemy operations and provide pilots and ground forces with a menu of optimal attack options. As the technology advances, the system will be capable of sending “fire” instructions directly to “shooters,” largely bypassing human control.

“A machine-to-machine data exchange tool that provides options for deterrence, or for on-ramp [a military show-of-force] or early engagement,” was how Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics, described the ABMS system in a 2020 interview. Suggesting that “we do need to change the name” as the system evolves, Roper added, “I think Skynet is out, as much as I would love doing that as a sci-fi thing. I just don’t think we can go there.”

And while he can’t go there, that’s just where the rest of us may, indeed, be going.

Mind you, that’s only the start. In fact, the Air Force’s ABMS is intended to constitute the nucleus of a larger constellation of sensors and computers that will connect all U.S. combat forces, the Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control System (JADC2, pronounced “Jad-C-two”). “JADC2 intends to enable commanders to make better decisions by collecting data from numerous sensors, processing the data using artificial intelligence algorithms to identify targets, then recommending the optimal weapon… to engage the target,” the Congressional Research Service reported in 2022.

AI and the Nuclear Trigger

Initially, JADC2 will be designed to coordinate combat operations among “conventional” or non-nuclear American forces. Eventually, however, it is expected to link up with the Pentagon’s nuclear command-control-and-communications systems (NC3), potentially giving computers significant control over the use of the American nuclear arsenal. “JADC2 and NC3 are intertwined,” General John E. Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated in a 2020 interview. As a result, he added in typical Pentagonese, “NC3 has to inform JADC2 and JADC2 has to inform NC3.”

It doesn’t require great imagination to picture a time in the not-too-distant future when a crisis of some sort – say a U.S.-China military clash in the South China Sea or near Taiwan – prompts ever more intense fighting between opposing air and naval forces. Imagine then the JADC2 ordering the intense bombardment of enemy bases and command systems in China itself, triggering reciprocal attacks on U.S. facilities and a lightning decision by JADC2 to retaliate with tactical nuclear weapons, igniting a long-feared nuclear holocaust.

The possibility that nightmare scenarios of this sort could result in the accidental or unintended onset of nuclear war has long troubled analysts in the arms control community. But the growing automation of military C2 systems has generated anxiety not just among them but among senior national security officials as well.

As early as 2019, when I questioned Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan, then director of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, about such a risky possibility, he responded, “You will find no stronger proponent of integration of AI capabilities writ large into the Department of Defense, but there is one area where I pause, and it has to do with nuclear command and control.” This “is the ultimate human decision that needs to be made” and so “we have to be very careful.” Given the technology’s “immaturity,” he added, we need “a lot of time to test and evaluate [before applying AI to NC3].”

In the years since, despite such warnings, the Pentagon has been racing ahead with the development of automated C2 systems. In its budget submission for 2024, the Department of Defense requested $1.4 billion for the JADC2 in order “to transform warfighting capability by delivering information advantage at the speed of relevance across all domains and partners.” Uh-oh! And then, it requested another $1.8 billion for other kinds of military-related AI research.

Pentagon officials acknowledge that it will be some time before robot generals will be commanding vast numbers of U.S. troops (and autonomous weapons) in battle, but they have already launched several projects intended to test and perfect just such linkages. One example is the Army’s Project Convergence, involving a series of field exercises designed to validate ABMS and JADC2 component systems. In a test held in August 2020 at the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, for example, the Army used a variety of air- and ground-based sensors to track simulated enemy forces and then process that data using AI-enabled computers at Joint Base Lewis McChord in Washington state. Those computers, in turn, issued fire instructions to ground-based artillery at Yuma. “This entire sequence was supposedly accomplished within 20 seconds,” the Congressional Research Service later reported.

Less is known about the Navy’s AI equivalent, “Project Overmatch,” as many aspects of its programming have been kept secret. According to Admiral Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, Overmatch is intended “to enable a Navy that swarms the sea, delivering synchronized lethal and nonlethal effects from near-and-far, every axis, and every domain.” Little else has been revealed about the project.

“Flash Wars” and Human Extinction

Despite all the secrecy surrounding these projects, you can think of ABMS, JADC2, Convergence, and Overmatch as building blocks for a future Skynet-like mega-network of super-computers designed to command all U.S. forces, including its nuclear ones, in armed combat. The more the Pentagon moves in that direction, the closer we’ll come to a time when AI possesses life-or-death power over all American soldiers along with opposing forces and any civilians caught in the crossfire.

Such a prospect should be ample cause for concern. To start with, consider the risk of errors and miscalculations by the algorithms at the heart of such systems. As top computer scientists have warned us, those algorithms are capable of remarkably inexplicable mistakes and, to use the AI term of the moment, “hallucinations” – that is, seemingly reasonable results that are entirely illusionary. Under the circumstances, it’s not hard to imagine such computers “hallucinating” an imminent enemy attack and launching a war that might otherwise have been avoided.

And that’s not the worst of the dangers to consider. After all, there’s the obvious likelihood that America’s adversaries will similarly equip their forces with robot generals. In other words, future wars are likely to be fought by one set of AI systems against another, both linked to nuclear weaponry, with entirely unpredictable – but potentially catastrophic – results.

Not much is known (from public sources at least) about Russian and Chinese efforts to automate their military command-and-control systems, but both countries are thought to be developing networks comparable to the Pentagon’s JADC2. As early as 2014, in fact, Russia inaugurated a National Defense Control Center (NDCC) in Moscow, a centralized command post for assessing global threats and initiating whatever military action is deemed necessary, whether of a non-nuclear or nuclear nature. Like JADC2, the NDCC is designed to collect information on enemy moves from multiple sources and provide senior officers with guidance on possible responses.

China is said to be pursuing an even more elaborate, if similar, enterprise under the rubric of “Multi-Domain Precision Warfare” (MDPW). According to the Pentagon’s 2022 report on Chinese military developments, its military, the People’s Liberation Army, is being trained and equipped to use AI-enabled sensors and computer networks to “rapidly identify key vulnerabilities in the U.S. operational system and then combine joint forces across domains to launch precision strikes against those vulnerabilities.”

Picture, then, a future war between the U.S. and Russia or China (or both) in which the JADC2 commands all U.S. forces, while Russia’s NDCC and China’s MDPW command those countries’ forces. Consider, as well, that all three systems are likely to experience errors and hallucinations. How safe will humans be when robot generals decide that it’s time to “win” the war by nuking their enemies?

If this strikes you as an outlandish scenario, think again, at least according to the leadership of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a congressionally mandated enterprise that was chaired by Eric Schmidt, former head of Google, and Robert Work, former deputy secretary of defense. “While the Commission believes that properly designed, tested, and utilized AI-enabled and autonomous weapon systems will bring substantial military and even humanitarian benefit, the unchecked global use of such systems potentially risks unintended conflict escalation and crisis instability,” it affirmed in its Final Report. Such dangers could arise, it stated, “because of challenging and untested complexities of interaction between AI-enabled and autonomous weapon systems on the battlefield” – when, that is, AI fights AI.

Though this may seem an extreme scenario, it’s entirely possible that opposing AI systems could trigger a catastrophic “flash war” – the military equivalent of a “flash crash” on Wall Street, when huge transactions by super-sophisticated trading algorithms spark panic selling before human operators can restore order. In the infamous “Flash Crash” of May 6, 2010, computer-driven trading precipitated a 10% fall in the stock market’s value. According to Paul Scharre of the Center for a New American Security, who first studied the phenomenon, “the military equivalent of such crises” on Wall Street would arise when the automated command systems of opposing forces “become trapped in a cascade of escalating engagements.” In such a situation, he noted, “autonomous weapons could lead to accidental death and destruction at catastrophic scales in an instant.”

At present, there are virtually no measures in place to prevent a future catastrophe of this sort or even talks among the major powers to devise such measures. Yet, as the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence noted, such crisis-control measures are urgently needed to integrate “automated escalation tripwires” into such systems “that would prevent the automated escalation of conflict.” Otherwise, some catastrophic version of World War III seems all too possible. Given the dangerous immaturity of such technology and the reluctance of Beijing, Moscow, and Washington to impose any restraints on the weaponization of AI, the day when machines could choose to annihilate us might arrive far sooner than we imagine and the extinction of humanity could be the collateral damage of such a future war.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, and Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars: The Untold Story.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. He is the author of 15 books, the latest of which is All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change. He is a founder of the Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy.

Copyright 2023 Michael T. Klare

‘War’ Coming to Russia: Zelensky

THE SILENCE OF NATO IS DEAFNING

A Ukrainian soldier attaches a grenade on a drone before an

 attack on Russian positions. 

Photo: AFP

 

STAFF WRITER WITH AFP FOLLOW ON TWITTER
JULY 31, 2023

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Sunday that “war” was coming to Russia after three Ukrainian drones were downed over Moscow.

“Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia – to its symbolic centers and military bases, and this is an inevitable, natural, and absolutely fair process,” Zelensky said on a visit to the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk.

“Ukraine is getting stronger,” he added, warning however that the country should prepare for new attack on energy infrastructure in winter.

“But we must be aware that, just as last year, Russian terrorists can still attack our energy sector and critical facilities this winter,” Zelensky said, adding that preparations for “all possible scenarios” were discussed in Ivano-Frankivsk.

Zelensky spoke after three Ukrainian drones were downed over Moscow early on Sunday, the Russian defense ministry said. The attack damaged two office towers and briefly shut an international airport.

Separately, Moscow said on Sunday its forces had thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to attack Russia-annexed Crimea with 25 drones overnight.


The attacks reported Sunday were the latest in a series of recent drone assaults – including on the Kremlin and Russian towns near the border with Ukraine – that Moscow has blamed on Kyiv.

Ukraine Brings War Deep Into Russia With Attacks On Moscow

Russia has also blamed Ukrainian forces for attacking border areas, and on Sunday, the governor of one such region, Bryansk, said a Ukrainian strike damaged a pig breeding complex and injured three people.

Ukraine Again Reported Bringing War Deep Into Russia Photo: AP/Evgeniy Maloletka

AP
UPDATED: 31 JUL 2023


Ukraine brought the war far from the front line into the heart of Russia again Sunday in drone penetrations that Russian authorities said damaged two office buildings a few miles (kilometers) from the Kremlin and a pig breeding complex on the countries' border.

The attacks, which Ukraine didn't acknowledge in keeping with its security policy, reflected a pattern of more frequent and deeper cross-border strikes the Kyiv government has launched since starting a counteroffensive against Russian forces in June.

A precursor and the most dramatic of the strikes happened in May on the Kremlin itself, the seat of power in the capital, Moscow. Sunday's was the fourth such strike on the capital region this month and the third this week, showing Moscow's vulnerability as Russia's war in Ukraine drags into its 18th month.

The Russian Defence Ministry said three drones targeted the city in an “attempted terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime”. Air defences shot down one drone in Odintsovo in the surrounding Moscow region, while two others were jammed and crashed into the Moscow City business district.

Photos and video showed that a drone had ripped off part of the facade of a modern skyscraper, IQ-Quarter, located 7.2 kms (4.5 miles) from the Kremlin. When the drone hit, sparks, flames and smoke spewed from the building, with debris falling on the sidewalk and street. Windows were blown out, and metal window frames were mangled. A security guard was injured, Russia's state news agency Tass reported, citing emergency officials. Russia's Ria-Novosti news agency reported the building's tenants included several government agencies.

Flights were temporarily suspended at Moscow's Vnukovo airport, and the airspace over Moscow and the outlying regions was temporarily closed. President Vladimir Putin, who was in his hometown of St. Petersburg at the time of the attempted attacks for meetings with African leaders and a naval celebration, was briefed, his spokesman said.

Ukrainian officials didn't acknowledge the attacks but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address: “Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia — to its symbolic centres and military bases, and this is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process.” A Ukrainian air force spokesman also didn't claim responsibility but said the Russian people were seeing the consequences of Russia's war in Ukraine.

“All of the people who think the war doesn't concern them' — it's already touching them,” spokesperson Yurii Ihnat told journalists on Sunday. “There's already a certain mood in Russia: that something is flying in, and loudly,” he said. “There's no discussion of peace or calm in the Russian interior any more. They got what they wanted.”

Ihnat also referenced an early Sunday drone attack on Crimea, Ukrainian territory which Russia occupied and illegally annexed in 2014. The Russian Defence Ministry announced it had shot down 16 Ukrainian drones and neutralised eight others through electronic jamming. No casualties were reported. Zelenskyy has vowed to take back all land Russian forces have occupied, including Crimea, and his efforts have been strengthened by the receipt and deployment of increasingly advanced Western weapons.

In the earlier attacks on Moscow, Russia's Defense Ministry reported shooting down a Ukrainian drone outside the city on Friday. Four days earlier, two drones struck the Russian capital, one of them falling in the centre of the city near the Defence Ministry's headquarters along the Moscow River about 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the Kremlin. The other drone hit an office building in southern Moscow, gutting several upper floors.

In another attack on July 4, the Russian military said air defences downed four drones on Moscow's outskirts and jammed a fifth that was forced down. Russia has also blamed Ukrainian forces for attacking border areas, and on Sunday, the governor of one such region, Bryansk, said a Ukrainian strike damaged a pig breeding complex and injured three people.

In Ukraine, the air force reported Sunday it had destroyed four Russian drones above the Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk regions. Information on the attacks could not be independently verified. Meanwhile, a Russian missile strike late Saturday killed two people and wounded 20 in the city of Sumy in northeast Ukraine. A four-story vocational college building was hit, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said. Local authorities said that dormitories and teaching buildings were damaged in the blast and a fire that followed.

How Would Canadians Perceive Russian Troops On Their Border?

by Yves Engler Posted onJuly 20, 2023

The Canadian government’s plan to double its semi-permanent military force on Russia’s border ratchets up tensions that should be reduced. It highlights the West’s betrayal of promises made to Soviet officials and Canada’s addiction to stationing troops in Europe.

On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada will ramp up its military presence in Latvia. The government will add about 1,200 military personnel to the nearly 1,000 Canadians already deployed on Russia’s border. As part of the announcement, Trudeau committed $2.6 billion over three years to expand Latvia-focused Operation REASSURANCE. “Canada will also procure and pre-position critical weapon systems, enablers, supplies and support intelligence, cyber, and space activities,” the prime minister said in a statement. Last month Ottawa announced the deployment of 15 Leopard 2 battle tanks to Latvia.

In 2017 Canada took charge of one of four Eastern European NATO battle groups. In June 2021 Canada opened a $19 million headquarters in Latvia and by the end of the current commitment Canadian Forces will have been stationed there for a decade.

The semi-permanent stationing of Canadian forces on Russia’s border represents a flagrant violation of the promises made to Mikhail Gorbachev at the end of the Cold War. In 1990 the Soviet/Russian leader agreed not to obstruct German reunification, to withdraw tens of thousands of troops from the east, and for the newly whole Germany to be part of NATO in return for assurances that the alliance wouldn’t expand “one inch eastward.” A 1990 Ottawa Citizen wire article quoted West Germany’s foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, saying, “the West is agreed that with a unification of Germany, there will not be any eastward extension of NATO,” which was ostensibly a defence arrangement against the Soviet Union.

As I’ve detailed, Ottawa led the charge for NATO expansion despite the promises made to Gorbachev. Soon after taking office in 1993, Prime Minister Jean Chretien began promoting Poland’s ascension into NATO and Ottawa has led the push to double the size of the alliance by expanding into eastern and northern Europe. Ottawa has also promoted Ukraine’s inclusion in the alliance and has trained its military to be interoperable with NATO.

Alongside ending the stated objective for NATO, the dissolution of the Soviet Union undercut Canada’s rationale for stationing troops in Europe. From the early 1950s to the 1990s over one hundred thousand Canadian troops rotated through bases in France and Germany. In the late 1960s the Royal Canadian Air Force had over 250 U.S. atomic bombs at its disposal in Europe.

Incredibly, the U.S.-led war in Korea was the initial justification for stationing Canadian troops in Europe (and rearming the colonial powers as they suppressed independence movements with Canadian NATO mutual assistance program weaponry). According to defence minister Brooke Claxton, “NATO owes the fact that it was built-up to the Communist aggression in Korea … To meet the challenge of Korea required a buildup of our forces comparable to what was needed to meet our commitments to Europe.” As per the Washington/Ottawa storyline, the North Korean leadership’s effort to unite the country under its direction in mid-1950 was part of a worldwide communist conspiracy. Who controlled that distant, impoverished country was of limited import to most North Americans so U.S./Canadian decision makers claimed Moscow stoked the conflict in Korea to divert attention from its plan to invade Western Europe. In response, thousands of Canadian troops were dispatched to France and Germany in 1951. They would remain in Europe until 1993.

Of course, Canada previously sent large numbers of troops to Europe during World War I and II. Between 1917 and 1920 six thousand Canadian troops invaded Russia. About 600 Canadians fought in Murmansk and Archangel where the British used chemical agent diphenylchloroarsine, which causes uncontrollable coughing and individuals to vomit blood.

More than half a century earlier Canadians had fought the Russians. Much of the British garrison in Canada left for Crimea during the 1853-56 war and many Canadians also volunteered for British units fighting Russia. In “How the Crimean War of 1853 Helped Shape the Canada of Today,” historian C.P. Champion describes how the naval base on Vancouver Island was greatly expanded in response to the war. He also quotes historian John Castell Hopkins explaining that the Militia Act of 1855, which formed the basis for today’s army, was “a result of the feeling aroused by the Crimean War.”

Canada has a history of belligerence towards Russia. Given that, this country stationing its troops near Russia’s border is perceived as threatening by Moscow. Remember that Russia shipping some missiles to Cuba resulted in an American naval blockade and almost caused a nuclear holocaust in the early 1960s.

A nation committed to peace must try to understand the viewpoint of potential adversaries. A nation planning war increases tension and prolongs every military standoff. Exactly the way Canada has acted towards Russia for many decades.

Yves Engler’s latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People’s History of the Canadian Military

GUNRUNNERS BY ANY OTHER NAME

NATO Is a Warfare Alliance, Not a Force for Global Peace or Stability

by Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd Posted onJuly 19, 2023

At his speech during the NATO Summit in Lithuania, President Biden called the U.S. and Europe "anchors for global security" when in reality there are no anchors during this increasingly dangerous and polarized time of never-ending war in Europe. Our NATO allies are not, as Biden would suggest, anchors in a turbulent sea of demons but rather catalysts stirring the cauldron of war on behalf of US empire.

The instability of the NATO alliance was evident in the controversy over the key issue of Ukraine membership. Biden and his administration tried to work both sides of the street. On the one hand, Biden insisted that "Ukraine’s future lies at NATO." But then the US teamed up with Germany to make sure the summit made only a vague statement about Ukraine joining when allies agree and "conditions are met," incurring the wrath of a fuming President Zelensky. Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN that everyone "needs to look squarely at the fact" that allowing Ukraine to join NATO at this point "means war with Russia."

But this does not mean that Biden, or NATO, are ready to endorse peace talks. On the contrary. The NATO Summit came on the heels of Biden’s much-scorned decision to send banned cluster bombs to Ukraine. And at the Summit, France announced plans to send new long-range strike missiles; Germany announced a new round of military aid, including tanks and artillery shells; and 11 NATO countries pledged to train Ukrainian pilots to fly nuclear-capable F-16 fighter jets. In short, Ukraine’s Zelensky walked away from the NATO summit with a declaration of years of military subsidies, a virtual blank check to make Ukraine a forever proxy to maintain US hegemony. As NATO members send Ukraine more and more destructive weapons, the terrifying possibility of a wider war, even a nuclear war, casts a shadow over the entire globe.

Instead of seeking a negotiated solution to Russia’s criminal invasion, NATO has shunned peace talks that might address key issues such as neutrality for Ukraine, referendums on the future of the Donbas and Crimea, a demilitarized zone along the border between Ukraine and Russia, and nuclear disarmament agreements that would remove Russia’s short-range nuclear weapons from Belarus in exchange for removal of US anti-ballistic missiles in Romania.

NATO has pushed the world towards greater militarization precisely at this delicate moment in history when we need to invest our resources in thwarting the climate crisis that threatens the future of this planet with collapsing ecosystems, wildfires and floods. Moreover, the tens of billions of dollars spent to continue the Russia-Ukraine war could be invested in alleviating global poverty that affects the daily well-being of millions of families worldwide.

Once again, we see that NATO’s modus operandi is war. NATO has never been a defensive alliance. It invaded Yugoslavia in 1999 without a mandate from the UN Security Council. NATO waged a 20-year war in Afghanistan, leaving the people dirt poor and back in the hands of the Taliban. NATO illegally toppled the government of Libya in 2011. In addition to the present war with Russia, it has its sights set on China, building up a provocative Asia-Pacific military alliance with South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand to counter China. NATO is also a cash cow for arms manufacturers, and it is the enemy of nuclear disarmament in its opposition to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Next year, the NATO summit will be held in Washington DC to mark NATO’s 75th anniversary. It would be a good time for the emergence of a global peace movement that says 75 years of nuclear proliferation, war and gifts to military contractors is enough. Without NATO, Europe would build its own security architecture to address the security concerns of all stakeholders, including Russia. Without NATO, there are greater chances to avoid a confrontations with China. Without NATO, the world would be a safer place. In a world where people are desperate to end war and anxious to see a transfer of public funds from the military to human needs, NATO should indeed become a relic of the past.

Medea Benjamin is co-founder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace. She is the co-author, with Nicolas J.S. Davies, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict.

Marcy Winograd is co-chair of the Peace in Ukraine Coalition and coordinator of CODEPINK CONGRESS, which organizes Capitol Hill calling parties to mobilize co-sponsors and votes for peaceful foreign policy legislation.

Author: Medea Benjamin

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace and Global Exchange. View all posts by Medea Benjamin