My Heart Makes My Head Swim

by Vijay Prashad / May 16th, 2024

Malak Mattar (Palestine), Hind’s Hall, 2024.

The title of this newsletter, ‘My heart makes my head swim’, comes from Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952). In a chapter called ‘The Fact of Blackness’, Fanon writes about the despair that racism produces, the immense anxiety about living in a world that has decided that certain people are simply not human or not sufficiently human. The lives of these people, children of a lesser god, are assigned less worth than the lives of the powerful and the propertied. An international division of humanity tears the world into pieces, throwing masses of people into the fires of anguish and oblivion.

What is happening in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, is ghastly. Since October 2023, Israel has ordered 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to move southwards as the Israeli armed forces have steadily moved their gunsights across the Wadi Gaza wetlands down to the edge of Rafah. Kilometre by kilometre, as the Israeli military advances, the so-called safe zone moves further and further south. In December, the Israeli government claimed, with great cruelty, that the tent city of al-Mawasi (west of Rafah, along the Mediterranean Sea) was the new designated safe area. A mere 6.5 square kilometres (half the size of London’s Heathrow airport), the supposed safe zone within al-Mawasi is nowhere near large enough to house the more than one million Palestinians who are in Rafah. Not only was it absurd for Israel to say that al-Mawasi would be a refuge, but – according to the laws of war – a safe zone must be agreed upon by all parties.

Ismail Shammout (Palestine), Odyssey of a People, 1980.

‘How can a zone be safe in a war zone if it is only unilaterally decided by one part of the conflict?’, asked Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA); ‘It can only promote the false feeling that it will be safe’. Furthermore, on several occasions, Israel has bombed al-Mawasi, the area it says is safe. On 20 February, Israel attacked a shelter operated by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, killing two family members of the organisation’s staff. This week, on 13 May, an international UN staff member was killed after the Israeli army opened fire on a UN vehicle, one of the nearly 200 UN workers killed in Gaza in addition to the targeted assassination of aid workers.

Aref El-Rayyes (Lebanon), Untitled, 1963.

Not only has Israel begun to bomb Rafah, but it hastily sent in tanks to seize the only border crossing through which aid dribbled in on the few trucks a day that were allowed to enter. After Israel seized the Rafah border, it prevented the entry of aid into Gaza altogether. Starving Palestinians has long been Israeli policy, which is of course a war crime. Preventing aid from entering Gaza is part of the international division of humanity that has defined not only this genocide, but the occupation of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank since 1967 and the system of apartheid within the borders defined by Israel following the 1948 Nakba (‘Catastrophe’).

Three words in this sentence are fundamentally contested by Israel: apartheid, occupation, and genocide. Israel and its Global North allies want to claim that the use of these words to describe Israeli policies, Zionism, or the oppression of Palestinians is tantamount to anti-Semitism. But, as the United Nations and numerous respected human rights groups note, these are legal descriptions of the reality on the ground and not moral judgments that are made either in haste or out of anti-Semitism. A short primer on the accuracy of these three concepts is necessary to counter this denial.

Nelson Makamo (South Africa), Decoration of the Youth, 2019.

Apartheid. The Israeli government treats the Palestinian minority population within the borders defined in 1948 (21%) as second-class citizens. There are at least sixty-five Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel. One of them, passed in 2018, declares the country a ‘nation state of the Jewish people’. As the Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm wrote, through this new law, the Israeli government ‘formally endorses’ the use of ‘apartheid methods within Israel’s recognised borders’. The United Nations and Human Rights Watch have both said that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians falls under the definition of apartheid. The use of this term is entirely factual.

Laila Shawa (Palestine), The Hands of Fatima, 2013.

Occupation. In 1967, Israel occupied the three Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. From 1967 to 1999, these three areas were referred to as part of the Occupied Arab Territories (which at different times also included Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Syria’s Golan region, and southern Lebanon). Since 1999, they have been termed the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). In UN documents and at the International Court of Justice, Israel is referred to as the ‘occupying power’, which is a term of art that requires certain obligations from Israel toward those whom it occupies. Although the 1993 Oslo Accords set up the Palestinian Authority, Israel remains the occupying power of the OPT, a designation that has not been revised. An occupation is identical to colonial rule: it is when a foreign power dominates a people in their homeland and denies them sovereignty and rights. Despite Israel’s military withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 (which included the dismantling of twenty-one illegal settlements), Israel continues to occupy Gaza by building a perimeter fence around the Gaza Strip and by policing the Mediterranean waters of Gaza. Annexation of parts of East Jerusalem and the West Bank as well as the punctual bombing of Gaza are violations of Israel’s obligation as the occupying power.

An occupation imposes a structural condition of violence upon the occupied. That is why international law recognises that those who are occupied have the right to resist. In 1965, in the midst of Guinea Bissau’s struggle against Portuguese colonialism, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 2105 (‘Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples’). Paragraph 10 of this resolution is worth reading carefully: ‘The General Assembly… [r]ecognises the legitimacy of the struggle by the peoples under colonial rule to exercise their right to self-determination and independence and invites all States to provide material and moral assistance to the national liberation movements in colonial Territories’. There is no ambiguity here. Those who are occupied have the right to resist, and, in fact, all member states of the United Nations are bound by this treaty to assist them. Rather than sell arms to the occupying power, who is the aggressor in the ongoing genocide, the members states of the United Nations – particularly from the Global North – should aid the Palestinians.

Abdulqader al-Rais (United Arab Emirates), Waiting, c. 1970.

Genocide. In its order published on 26 January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that there was ‘plausible’ evidence of Israel committing genocide against Palestinians. In March, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese, published a monumental report called Anatomy of a Genocide. In this report, Albanese wrote that ‘there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met’. ‘More broadly’, she wrote, ‘they also indicate that Israel’s actions have been driven by a genocidal logic integral to its settler-colonial project in Palestine, signalling a tragedy foretold’.

Intent to commit genocide is easily proved in the context of Israel’s bombardment. In October 2023, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said that ‘an entire nation out there is responsible’ for the attacks on 7 October, and it was not true that ‘civilians [were] not… aware, not involved’. The ICJ pointed to this statement, among others, since it expresses Israel’s intent and use of ‘collective punishment’, a genocidal war crime. The following month, Israel’s Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza was ‘an option’ since ‘there are no non-combatants in Gaza’. Before the ICJ ruling was published, Moshe Saada, a member of the Israeli parliament from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, said that ‘all Gazans must be destroyed’. These sentiments, by any international standard, demonstrate an intent to commit genocide. As with ‘apartheid’ and ‘occupation’, the use of the term ‘genocide’ is entirely accurate.

Vijay Prashad presents Frantz Fanon’s daughter, Mireille Fanon Mendès-France, with a poster of the cover of the new isiZulu edition of her father’s classic, The Wretched of the Earth, in Paris, France, 2024.

Earlier this year, Inkani Books, a Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research project based in South Africa, published the isiZulu translation of Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, Izimpabanga Zomhlaba, translated by Makhosazana Xaba. We are so proud of this accomplishment, bringing the work of Fanon into another African language (it has already been translated into Arabic and Swahili).

When I was last in Palestine, I spoke with young children about their aspirations. What they told me reminded me of a section from The Wretched of the Earth: ‘At twelve or thirteen years of age the village children know the names of the old men who were in the last rising, and the dreams they dream in the douars [camps] or in the villages are not those of money or of getting through their exams like the children of the towns, but dreams of identification with some rebel or another, the story of whose heroic death still today moves them to tears’.

Children in Gaza will remember this genocide with at least the same intensity as their ancestors remembered 1948 and as their parents remembered the occupation that has loomed over this narrow piece of land since their own childhood. Children in South Africa will read these lines from Fanon in isiZulu and remember those who fell to inaugurate a new South Africa thirty years ago.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.

 

Gaza Genocide 2.0

by Paul Larudee / May 17th, 2024

The most widely reported figure currently used for Palestinian casualties in Gaza since October 7, 2023, is more than 35,000 killed and 78,000 wounded. These are only the civilian casualties, reported by the Ministry of Health. More than two-thirds are women and children. Combatant casualties are not included. The Ministry of Health maintains a list of the casualties, by name, gender and age classification (e.g. “infant”). This usually means that a medical professional has tended to the individual, usually at a hospital. The list is conservative in the extreme: it reports only the casualties that it can identify and confirm.

The inevitable consequence of this sort of tally is that while it provides hard data, it vastly undercounts the actual total, since most of the hospitals have been destroyed, and many of the medical personnel either killed or taken captive. The uncounted casualties are therefore necessarily at least 200 or 300% greater than those reported, as Ralph Nader has pointed out, and as I discussed in “Not all of the genocide is being live-streamed” more than three months ago.

How many have died without ever being reported to the Ministry of Health? How many on the list of wounded die later for lack of treatment, but are never reported as dead from weapons of war? How many are nameless and unidentified bodies? How many are corpses that have not even been found? How many are newborn infants that died without ever having a registered name?

But there is another category, potentially even greater, that is becoming the new focus of Israel’s genocide: deaths by starvation, disease, exposure, and dehydration. These are not currently included in the Ministry of Health statistics, and they are largely anonymous deaths.

Israel loves anonymous deaths. It interprets condemnation of its genocide project as mainly an image problem, generating pressure to stop the elimination of the population in Gaza. Israel therefore loves deaths that do not appear on Al-Jazeera or even in social media. The media are only interested in death from the skies, demolition of neighborhoods, massacres of civilians, masses of refugees fleeing on foot with their few remaining possessions. Deaths due to “natural causes” are not this dramatic.

This is why Israel has modified its plans for the invasion of Rafah: fewer bombs, more starvation and deprivation. The first step was to capture and occupy the Rafah border crossing, in violation of Israel’s treaty with Egypt. This has enabled Israel to entirely stop relief supplies to the people of Gaza, whose limited farms and food production had already been destroyed along with their homes. Then they destroyed the hospitals and the sanitation and health services. In addition, they forced the population – many of them already living in makeshift tents – to flee once again, this time to more desolate locations with even fewer (zero) amenities, such as the barren al-Mawasi sand dunes, and thus more conducive to death by “natural causes”.

This quieter form of genocide suits Israel’s US accomplices in the Biden administration, as well. President Biden and Secretary Blinken have been under public pressure and criticism that they and their allies in the Israel lobby have been unable to quell by control of the news media, censorship of social media, or repression of freedom of speech and assembly, notably in the student movement. They are reluctant to withhold the tools of genocide from Israel, but welcome any change that might reduce the public outrage (and improve their chances in the November presidential elections).

Israel seems to think that removing and preventing the means to sustain life in Gaza, as an alternative to bullets, bombs and explosives, may achieve that objective. They seem to be taking a page from the Armenian genocide, which herded large numbers of the unwanted population into the Syrian desert and abandoned them there, or the native American genocide, where the food supply was destroyed.

If the list of casualties grows more slowly while a vastly larger number of Palestinians die uncounted, this will further the goal of killing and/or expelling the population of Gaza, and advances the day when an empty Gaza can be annexed to Israel, for developers to build beach condos for Zionist settlers, with subsidies and low-cost loans from the US and Germany.

POST SCRIPT: As this article heads for publication, the completion of the US floating pier on the shore of central Gaza was announced. Its ostensible purpose is to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinians. We are permitted to be skeptical. Why create such a cumbersome procedure to deliver aid, when mountains of supplies are waiting at the Egyptian border?

Why indeed? Some possibilities:

• To put the US and Israel in total control of Gaza and shut out the UN
• To export the Palestinians from Gaza
• To create a “Guantanamo East” US naval base
• To garner votes of the faithful for Biden before the election and then let Israel toss the Palestinians into the sea

I don’t have answers or even good speculations at this point, but stay tuned for Gaza Genocide 3.0

Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. Read other articles by Paul.

Is the U.S. blackmailing India over assassination allegations to be more hostile toward China and Russia?

by Finian Cunningham / May 17th, 2024

The United States and its Western allies have stepped up a media campaign to accuse India of running an assassination policy targeting expatriate dissidents.

The government of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, has furiously denied the allegations, saying there is no such policy.

Nevertheless, the American Biden administration as well as Canada, Britain and Australia continue to demand accountability over claims that  New Delhi is engaging in “transnational repression” of spying, harassing and killing Indian opponents living in Western states.

The accusations have severely stained political relations. The most fractious example is Canada. After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly accused Indian state agents of involvement in the murder of an Indian-born Canadian citizen last year, New Delhi expelled dozens of Canadian diplomats.

Relations became further strained this month when The Washington Post published a long article purporting to substantiate claims that Indian security services were organizing assassinations of U.S. and Canadian citizens. The Post named high-level Indian intelligence chiefs in the inner circle of Prime Minister Modi. The implication is a policy of political killings is sanctioned at the very top of the Indian government.

The targets of the alleged murder program are members of the Sikh diaspora. There are large expatriate populations of Sikhs in the U.S., Canada and Britain. In recent years, there has been a renewed campaign among Sikhs for the secession of their homeland of Punjab from India. The New Delhi government views the separatist calls for a new state called Khalistan as a threat to Indian territorial integrity. The Modi government has labeled Sikh separatists as terrorists.

The Indian authorities have carried out repression of Sikhs for decades including political assassination in the Punjab territory of northern India. Many Sikhs fled to the United States and other Western states for safety and to continue their agitation for a separate nation. The Modi government has accused Western states of coddling “Sikh terrorists” and undermining Indian sovereignty.

Last June, a prominent Sikh leader was gunned down in a suburb of Vancouver in what appeared to be a professional hit-style execution. Hardeep Singh Nijjar was murdered by three assailants outside a religious temple. Indian state media described him as a terrorist, but Nijjar’s family denied he had any involvement in terrorism. They claim that he was targeted simply because he promoted Punjabi separatism.

At the same time, according to The Post report, the U.S. authorities thwarted a murder plot against a well-known American-Sikh citizen who was a colleague of the Canadian victim. Both men were coordinating efforts to hold an unofficial referendum among the Sikh diaspora in North America calling for the establishment of a new independent state of Khalistan in the Punjab region of northern India.

The Post article names Vikram Yadav, an officer in India’s state spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), as orchestrating the murder plots against the Sikh leaders. The Post claims that interviews with US and former Indian intelligence officials attest that the killings could not have been carried out without the sanction of Modi’s inner circle.

A seemingly curious coincidence is that within days of the murder of the Canadian Sikh leader and the attempted killing of the American colleague, President Biden was hosting Narendra Modi at the White House in a lavish state reception.

Since the summer of last year, the Biden administration has repeatedly pressured the Modi government to investigate the allegations. President Biden has personally contacted Modi about the alleged assassination policy as have his senior officials, including White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA director William Burns. Despite New Delhi’s denial of such a policy, the Modi government has acceded to American requests to hold an internal investigation, suggesting a tacit admission of its agents having some involvement.

But here is where an anomaly indicates an ulterior agenda. Even U.S. media have remarked on how lenient the Biden administration has been towards India over what are grave allegations. It is inconceivable that Washington would tolerate the presence of Russian or Chinese agents and diplomats on its territory if Moscow and Beijing were implicated in killing dissidents on American soil.

As The Washington Post report noted: “Last July, White House officials began holding high-level meetings to discuss ways to respond without risking a wider rupture with India, officials said. CIA Director William J. Burns and others have been deployed to confront officials in the Modi government and demand accountability. But the United States has so far imposed no expulsions, sanctions or other penalties.”

What appears to be going on is a calculated form of coercion by the United States and its Western allies. The allegations of contract killings and “transnational repression” against Sikhs in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia and Germany are aimed at intimidating the Indian government with further embarrassing media disclosures and Western sanctions. The U.S. State Department and the Congress have both recently highlighted claims of human rights violations by the Modi government and calls for political sanctions.

The objective, it can averred, is for Washington and its Western allies to pressure India into toeing a geopolitical line of hostility towards China and Russia.

During the Biden administration, the United States has assiduously courted India as a partner in the Asia-Pacific to confront China. India has been welcomed as a member of the U.S.-led Quad of powers, including Japan and Australia. The Quad overlaps with the U.S. security interests of the AUKUS military partnership with Britain and Australia.

Another major geopolitical prize for Washington and its allies is to drive a wedge between India and Russia.

Since the NATO proxy war blew up in Ukraine in February 2022, the United States has been continually cajoling India to condemn Russia and to abide by Western sanctions against Moscow. Despite the relentless pressure, the Modi government has spurned Western attempts to isolate Russia. Indeed, India has increased its purchase of Russian crude oil and is importing record more quantities than ever before the Ukraine conflict.

Furthermore, India is a key member of the BRICS forum and a proponent of an emerging multipolar world order that undermines U.S.-led Western hegemony.

From the viewpoint of the United States and its Western allies, India represents a tantalizing strategic prospect. With a foot in both geopolitical camps, New Delhi is sought by the West to weaken the China-Russia-BRICS axis.

This is the geopolitical context for understanding the interest of Western powers in making an issue out of allegations of political assassination by the Modi government. Washington and its Western allies want to use the allegations as a form of leverage – or blackmail – on India to comply with geopolitical objectives to confront China and Russia.

It can be anticipated that the Western powers will amplify the media campaign against India in line with exerting more hostility toward China and Russia.

• First published in Strategic Culture Foundation

Finian Cunningham is a former editor and writer for major news media organizations. He has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages Read other articles by Finian.

Promising the Impossible: Blinken’s Out of Tune Performance in Kyiv

by Binoy Kampmark / May 17th, 2024

Things are looking dire for the Ukrainian war effort.  Promises of victory are becoming even hollower than they were last summer, when US President Joe Biden could state with breathtaking obliviousness that Russia had “already lost the war”.   The worst offender in this regard remains the United States, which has been the most vocal proponent of fanciful victory over Russia, a message which reads increasingly as one of fighting to the last Ukrainian.

Such a victory is nigh fantasy, almost impossible to envisage.  For one thing, domestic considerations about continued support for Kyiv have played a stalling part.  In the US Congress, a large military aid package was stalled for six months.  Among some Republicans, in particular, Ukraine was not a freedom loving despoiled figure needing props and crutches.  “From our perspective,” opines Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, “Ukraine should not and cannot be our problem to solve.  It is not our place to defend them in a struggle with their longtime adversary, Russia.”  The assessment, in this regard, was a matter of some clarity for Paul.  “There is no national security interest for the United States.”

Despite this, the Washington foreign policy and military elite continue to make siren calls of seduction in Kyiv’s direction.  On April 23, the Senate finally approved a $US95.3 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, with the lion’s share – some US$61 billion – intended for Ukraine’s war effort.

On April 24, a press release from US Secretary State Antony Blinken announced a further US$1 billion package packed with “urgently needed capabilities including air defense missiles, munitions for HIMARS, artillery rounds, armored vehicles, precision aerial munitions, anti-armor weapons, and small arms, equipment, and spare parts to help Ukraine defend its territory and protect its people.”

On May 14, in his address to the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Blinken described what could only be reasoned as a vast mirage.  “Today, I’m here in Kyiv to speak about Ukraine’s strategic success.  And to set out how, with our support, the Ukrainian people can and will achieve their vision for the near future: a free, prosperous, secure democracy – fully integrated into the Euro-Atlantic community – and fully in control of its own destiny.”  This astonishingly irresponsible statement makes Washington’s security agenda clear and Kyiv’s fate bleak: Ukraine is to become a pro-US, anti-Russian bastion, with an open cheque book at the ready.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has made the prevention of that vision an article of faith.  While Russian forces, in men and material, have suffered horrendous losses, the attritive nature of the conflict is starting to tell. While Blinken was gulling his audience, the military realities show significant Russian advances, including a threatening push towards Kharkiv, reversing Ukrainian gains made in 2022.

There are also wounding advances being made in other areas of the conflict.  US and NATO artillery and drones supplied to Ukraine’s military forces have been countered by Russian electronic warfare methods.  GPS receivers, for instance, have been sufficiently deceived to misdirect missiles shot from HIMARS launchers.  In a number of cases, the Russian forces have also identified and destroyed the launchers.

Russian air power has been brought to bear on critical infrastructure.  Radar defying glide bombs have been used with considerable effect.  On the production and deployment front, Colonel Ivan Pavlenko, chief of EW and cyber warfare at Ukraine’s general staff, lamented in February that Russia’s use of drones was also “becoming a huge threat”.  Depleted stocks of weaponry are being replenished, and more soldiers are being called to the front.

Despite concerns, one need not scour far to find pundits who insist that such advances and gains can be neutralised.  Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace admits to current Russian “material advantage” and holding “the strategic initiative,” though goes on to speculate that this “may not prove decisive”.

The gong of deceit and delusion must, however, go to Blinken.  Americans, he claimed, understood “that our support for Ukraine strengthens the security of the United States and our allies.”  Were Putin to win – and here, that old nag of appeasement makes an undesirable appearance – “he won’t stop with Ukraine; he’ll keep going.  For when in history has an autocrat been satisfied with carving off just part, or even all, of a single country?”

Towards that end, “we do have a plan,” he coyly insisted.  This entailed ensuring Ukraine had “the military that it needs to succeed on the battlefield”.  Biden was encouraged by Ukrainian mobilisation efforts, skipping around the logistical delays that had marred it.  Washington’s “joint task” was to “secure Ukraine’s sustained and permanent strategic advantage”, enabling it to win the current battles and “defend against future attacks.  As President Biden said, we want Ukraine to win – and we’re committed to helping you do it.”

Even by the standards of US Secretaries of States, Blinken’s conduct in Kyiv proved brazen and shameless.  A perfect illustration of this came with his musical effort alongside local band, 19.99, involving a rendition of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

Local indignation was quick to follow.  “Six months of waiting for the decision of the American Congress” had, fumed Bohdan Yaremenko, legislator and former diplomat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party, “taken the lives of very, very many defenders of the free world”.  What the US was performing “for the free world is not rock ’n’ roll, but some other music similar to Russian chanson.”

As for the performance itself, the crowd at Barman Dictat witnessed yet another misreading – naturally by a US politician – of an anthem intended to excoriate American failings, from homelessness to “a kinder, gentler machine gun hand”.  Appropriately, the guitar, much like the performer, was out of tune.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

The Dignity Deficit of Rocking Out in Kiev

by James Carden Posted onMay 17, 2024

The first thought that came to mind while watching, albeit very reluctantly, a video of Secretary of State Antony Blinken “rocking out” on his guitar in a bar in Kiev was: What is wrong with these people?

A friend and fellow journalist who I forwarded the video to responded with a one word email: “Gross.”

“There’s colors on the street; Red, white and blue; People shufflin’ their feet; People sleepin’ in their shoes…”

Blinken was playing along to Neil Young’s cynical anthem of post-Reagan America, Rockin’ in the Free World, in which Young surveys the American scene and finds, beneath all the self-congratulation on our much touted “victory” in the Cold War, a kind of Hell-scape of poverty, drug abuse and despair: Think Sir Angus Deaton Deaths of Despair but as a pretty good – but by Young’s standards, not that good – rock song.

The irony of Blinken, whose career is – if nothing else – a monument to the neoliberalism that Young skewers, performing such a song hard to miss.

Obtuse? Sure.

But what makes it morally offensive is that Blinken was more or less partying on a pile of corpses – corpses from a war he himself played no small role in helping to bring about.

Our Boomer overlords (as The American Conservative’s Jude Russo pointed out yesterday) suffer from, among other maladies, a surfeit of self-importance. More striking still is what we might call a dignity deficit – particularly compared with the generation of Americans who once governed and who are now passing from the scene.

But this is true everywhere you look among the governing elite – and not just among Boomers.  Whose idea was it, for instance, to make a vacuous millennial  like Vendant Patel or, before him, a sneering imbecile like Ned Price, the face of the State Department ? Why did that staffer think it was appropriate to attend a meeting with the US Secretary of State and the Chinese Foreign Minister with purple hair?

Time was when there was a generation in power that expected certain things of themselves and of others. They behaved a certain way. They believed in certain things—as de Gaulle with France, they had a certain idea of America. Service in the national interest wasn’t simply another notch on the resume—a mere way station to a seven figure job at Google or Netflix.

Here’s an anecdote that helps reveal the distance our elites have traveled in a relatively short period of time.

As part of an oral history project for the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, former US Ambassador Thomas Miller recalled that when George Shultz was Secretary of State, he would invite new ambassadors to his office for a quick chat.

As Miller recalls it: 

And he’d say, “OK, Mr. Ambassador or Madame Ambassador, you’ve passed all the tests. You’ve been confirmed by the Senate and you’ve passed your security investigation. You’ve done all the things to get the position of ambassador, but you have to pass my test. I have one more for you.” And he’d take them over in the Secretary’s office to where there was this massive globe, and he’d say, “I’m going to spin the globe and I want you to put your hand on your country.” 

Shultz would tell this story, and he said, “Every single one of them failed. But I let them go anyway.” Because whenever he spun the globe and he’d say, “I want you to put your hand on your country,” they’d always put their hand on the country that they were going out to. His point was your country is the United States.

Ask yourself: Do you think guitar hero Tony Blinken does that with newly minted Ambassadors?

Back then, there was an expectation of a certain kind of comportment – some semblance of dignity among high government officials.

Today, we get Tony and his guitar.

James W. Carden is a columnist and former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the U.S. Department of State. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd, The National Interest, Quartz, The Los Angeles Times, and American Affairs.

Viral ‘courtesy’ letter American Airlines gives flight attendants shows how little they make


CNN Business· Scott Olson/Getty Images


Nathaniel Meyersohn

CNN
Fri, May 17, 2024

America’s cost of living crisis has stung new flight attendants, many of whom haven’t had an opportunity to renegotiate their contracts since the inflation spiral began several years ago.

An employment verification letter American Airlines gives to some newly hired flight attendants documenting their salary has been circulating on Reddit, drawing attention to their low wages.

The letter states that a new American Airlines flight attendant will have a “projected annual salary [of] $27,315 per year before incentives and taxes” and concludes, “Any courtesy you can provide would be appreciated.”

The union representing American Airlines workers, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), verified the authenticity of the letter, which is given to potential landlords or for other services where attendants need to verify their employment and income. The union represents 28,000 American Airlines flight attendants, and it is working on their first new contract in five years – a deal that stretches back before the pandemic and the inflation crisis.

American Airlines did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

Even as price increases are slowing down, the letter shows how, for some Americans, a little inflation relief isn’t nearly enough. The low wages for starting flight attendants – a job once seen as glitzy – underscores how many people are still struggling, despite what on paper looks like a strong economy and job market.

This salary is above the federal poverty line of $15,060 for a single-person household. But that’s a national level and doesn’t take into account regional price differences, including in major metro areas where the cost of living can be significantly higher.

In some states, such as Massachusetts, new flight attendants would qualify for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, commonly referred to as food stamps. For a single-person household, Massachusetts residents earning less than $30,120 a year are eligible for SNAP benefits.

The union says that flight attendants’ low salaries compared to top airline executives is a prime example of “corporate greed.”

New flight attendants at American Airlines start at $27,000 per year. Robert Isom, the CEO of American Airlines, earned $31.4 million last year — 1,162 times more than a new attendant.

“We have flight attendants who are sleeping in their cars,” APFA communications director Paul Hartshorn told CNN.

American Airlines flight attendants have not gotten a raise since 2019, and the union is escalating its push for a new contract to raise wages.

Flight attendants for United Airlines, Alaska Airlines and other carriers are also pushing for new contracts to raise wages. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean annual wage for flight attendants in 2023 was $71,000.

While being a flight attendant is a full-time job, many flight attendants only get about 75 hours of hourly pay a month. For many flight attendants, hourly pay basically begins when the plane’s door closes. They do not get paid for the hours they need to be at the airport or on the plane during boarding and deplaning.

APFA is proposing a 33% pay increase to top out at $91 an hour during the first year of a new contract and increases of 5%, 4% and 4% for the remaining years of a four-year agreement. The union is also calling for full retroactive pay raises based on how much attendants flew during five years of negotiations.

Under federal law, flight attendants cannot go on strike without permission from the government. The law, which is known as the Railway Labor Act, requires union members at airlines, among other certain industries, to remain on the job until after federal mediators declare an impasse in talks.

But the union is calling on President Joe Biden and congressional leaders to urge the National Mediation Board to allow the union to pursue a potential strike. The National Mediation Board is a federal agency that oversees labor-management relations in the US railroad and airline industries.

“American Airlines is not going to come to the table with an economic proposal that meets our needs unless they have the threat of a strike,” Hartshorn said. “Management needs the threat of a strike to move in the direction we need them to.”

Flight attendants at Southwest Airlines last month ratified a new contract that includes pay raises totaling more than 33% over four years.

“We expect to be compensated along the lines of Southwest,” he said.

A different way to address student encampments

The Conversation Canada
Thu, May 16, 2024

Last week, police descended on the University of Calgary campus with riot gear like shields, tear gas, batons and rubber bullets to forcibly remove protesters from an encampment set up on campus. According to the University of Calgary, the community has the right to free speech and protest, but temporary structures and “overnight protests are not permitted” due to safety concerns. The university said students were given a written trespass warning.

The encampment was one of many that have sprung up on university campuses across North America (and globally), as student protesters demand action from their governments and universities on the atrocities in Gaza.

Their demands include calling on their institutions to financially divest assets tied to Israel or connected to companies supplying weapons and technology to Israel’s government.

Collectively, they are one of the largest mass protests in recent history.

At the heart of it is: 1,200 Israelis killed by Hamas and 250 taken hostage on Oct. 7 and the subsequent and ongoing attack on Gaza by Israel. According to the United Nations, that onslaught has resulted in the killing of 35,000 Palestinians and famine conditions for the majority of Gaza.

What we’re seeing across the country are thousands of students risking their future, refusing to stop speaking their minds and demanding more ethical actions from their governments and universities.

In many cases — including at the University of Calgary, as well as Columbia University in New York City, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT in Cambridge — we’ve watched police descend, sometimes using violence to disperse demonstrators.

It’s been hard to watch for a lot of us. But Pratim Sengupta didn’t just watch it — he lived it. He is a professor of learning sciences at the University of Calgary, where he says social justice is at the centre of every project he works on. Last week, as police descended on his campus, Sengupta was there. He’s one of our guests on today’s Don’t Call Me Resilient podcast.

Book cover for ‘Are You Calling Me a Racist?’ NYU Press

Our other guest is a university leader who has been watching what’s been happening at University of Calgary and other campuses from afar. She’s my sister, Sarita Srivastava. She is currently Dean of the faculty of arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU). She has also just finished a run as Provost, the top academic officer of the school. Srivastava is also a scholar in sociology with a focus on race and social movements, a longtime activist herself and author of the recently published book, Are you Calling Me a Racist? Why We Need to Stop Talking about Race and Start Making Real Antiracist Change.

Together, we look at what’s been happening on campuses across North America — and another way forward than the one we’ve been witnessing.
Resources

“Encampments at Canadian university campuses” (CBC)

“Quebec Superior Court judge rejects McGill injunction request to remove encampment” (CBC)

An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 2013)

“U.S. Student Pro-Palestine Demonstrations Remain Overwhelmingly Peaceful” – Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED)

“Anti-Palestinian racism, antisemitism, and solidarity: considerations towards an analytic of praxis” (Studies in Political Economy, May 2024 by Abigail B. Bakan and Yasmeen Abu-Laban)
Go deeper

Read more: Divesting university endowments: Easier demanded than done

Read more: What students protesting Israel's Gaza siege want — and how their demands on divestment fit into the BDS movement
Listen and follow

You can listen to or follow Don’t Call Me Resilient on Apple Podcasts (transcripts available), Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts.

We’d love to hear from you, including any ideas for future episodes.

Join the Conversation on Instagram, X, LinkedIn and use #DontCallMeResilient.

Don’t Call Me Resilient is produced by a team that includes Ateqah Khaki (associate producer), Jennifer Moroz (consulting producer) and Krish Dineshkumar (sound designer).

President tells Gaza protesters that University of B.C. must remain neutral

The Canadian Press
Fri, May 17, 2024 

VANCOUVER — The president of the University of British Columbia has told pro-Palestinian protesters that the school must remain neutral on the Gaza conflict.

Benoit-Antoine Bacon says in response to demands by the organizers of a protest encampment on the Vancouver campus that professors and students hold a broad range of opinions and the university can't "presume to speak for everyone."

Bacon says if the university took a position, it would undermine the rights of people who hold different views to express themselves.

He says the university isn't engaging in "moral relativism," and it hopes for a ceasefire and a lasting peace in the Middle East.

A handwritten set of the protesters' demands shared by Bacon says they want UBC to "condemn and demand an end" to what they call "the genocide in Gaza."

Other demands include the university divesting from companies associated with Israel and its actions in Gaza, a boycott of Israeli institutions, a ban on the RCMP on campus, and an affirmation of "Palestinians' right to resist."

Bacon says that UBC is willing to engage on divestment, but its endowment fund does not directly own stocks in companies identified by the movement.

On the matter of a boycott, he says the university respects faculty members who want to engage in academic partnerships.

He says UBC has been "measured and restrained" on the issue of police at protests, and he wants to "better understand" the demand about affirming Palestinian rights.

Dozens of tents have been pitched at the university's MacInnes Field since April 29 when the protest encampment began.

It is among encampments at multiple universities across Canada and elsewhere protesting the actions of Israel in the Gaza conflict.

New York City said 'no injuries' at Columbia arrests; students' medical records say otherwise

Updated Fri, May 17, 2024 

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -After the arrests of pro-Palestine student protesters occupying a Columbia University building last month, New York Mayor Eric Adams and senior police officials repeatedly said there were "no injuries," no "violent clashes" and minimal force used.

But at least nine of the 46 protesters arrested inside the barricaded Hamilton Hall on April 30 sustained injuries beyond minor scrapes and bruises, according to medical records, photographs shared by protesters, and interviews. The documented injuries included a fractured eye socket, concussions, an ankle sprain, cuts, and injured wrists and hands from tight plastic flexicuffs.

All of the 46 protesters arrested inside Hamilton were charged with third-degree trespass, a misdemeanor.

The arrests came after Columbia President Minouche Shafik, in a hotly debated decision, called in police hours into the occupation at the epicenter of a student protest movement that has spread to campuses around the world. Other university officials across the country also have called in police to quell pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protest camps.

Reuters shared details of the protesters' injuries and accounts with the mayor's office, New York police and Columbia. None disputed the injuries. The mayor's office and the police said officers acted professionally.

At least three injured protesters arrested inside Hamilton were taken by police to hospitals that night while still in custody, time-stamped hospital records show.

Other protesters, who are demanding Columbia divest from arms makers and other companies that support Israel's government, had their injuries documented by volunteer doctors who provide support to people arrested by police and met them outside moments after their release from custody on May 2. Some then sought medical attention at clinics.

"I was slammed downward to the ground and, when I turned my head to see if there were any comrades who needed assistance, an officer kicked me in the eye and I went straight down, and there was that buzzing and sharp ringing in the ears," said Christopher Holmes, a 25-year-old graduate student at the Columbia affiliate college Union Theological Seminary.

Moments later, an officer slammed the left side of his forehead into the floor of Hamilton Hall, Holmes said.

His eye still swollen days after his release, Holmes, also known as Iam, was taken by a friend to a Manhattan hospital. Hospital records show doctors determined his eye socket was fractured and that he was concussed.

'WE ARE UNARMED!'

Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for the mayor, declined to say when the mayor first learned that protesters had been injured. At a May 1 press conference with police leaders, Adams said the arrests were "organized, calm, and that there were no injuries."

Mamelak wrote in an email that the arrests, which involved hundreds of armed officers in riot gear, were "a complicated operation" handled "with professionalism and respect."

A police spokesperson, who declined to give their name, also did not dispute the protesters' injuries, writing in an email that officers responded "swiftly, professionally, and effectively."

Both spokespeople declined to provide unedited videos from officers' body-worn cameras and use-of-force and injuries reports from the arrests. That night, police ordered students outside Hamilton into dormitories and forced journalists off campus.

Columbia spokesperson Ben Chang did not respond to queries after a promising a response by May 10. In an email after this report was published, he wrote that Columbia thanks the police department "for their support of our community and neighborhood throughout this challenging time."

He added that the university "would take seriously any complaints of inappropriate behavior and would investigate them."

As police used electric saws to cut through barricades of heavy furniture and bike chains, several protesters said they sat on the floor in Hamilton's lobby, hands raised. Police threw in a flash-bang grenade, setting off disorienting loud bangs and bursts of light, before rushing through the doors.

Gabriel Yancy, a 24-year-old research assistant who has since been fired from his job in a Columbia neuroscience laboratory, said he watched officers throw some protesters to the ground, step on at least three protesters, and kick at least one in the torso.

Aidan Parisi, a 27-year-old student in Columbia's social work department, recalled police "stepping on top of people, throwing people," and said that several protesters yelled, "We are unarmed!"

Several students said officers knelt forcefully on their backs. New York City passed a law in 2020 prohibiting police from using knee restraints that compress the diaphragm.

Gideon Oliver, a civil rights lawyer who now represents some of the arrested students, was involved in a reform agreement that the New York state attorney general reached with the New York Police Department last year to end its "pattern of excessive force" against protesters.

"Now is the time for the city and for the police department to deescalate and to stop engaging in tactics on the streets that appear designed to chill protests," Oliver said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Leslie Adler and Bill Berkrot)

CAPITALI$M 101

Bill Gates-Backed Battery Tech Company Files For Bankruptcy Amid 9% Decline In Energy Sector Investments In 2023


Caleb Naysmith
Thu, 16 May 2024 

Bill Gates-Backed Battery Tech Company Files For Bankruptcy Amid 9% Decline In Energy Sector Investments In 2023

Ambri Inc., a Massachusetts-based company specializing in battery technology and supported by prominent investors such as Bill Gates through his company, Gates Frontier, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The company, under a stalking horse purchase agreement, aims to secure higher bids to fund its operations during the sale process, expected to conclude by July 2024.

"Ambri continues to make progress on advancing cell technology into its 3rd generation and moving towards its objective of establishing a commercial business," said Dan Leff, Executive Chair and President of Ambri. "We are taking steps to build on this progress by strengthening our financial position and working with our lenders to support our future success."

The decision to declare bankruptcy was made during a special board meeting on May 3, with the official filing occurring on May 5 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

Ambri was "founded with seed money from Bill Gates," after Gates saw the Leff's online lectures at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and "mentioned if there were a startup company based on the liquid metal battery research, he would be interested in helping fund the company," according to their website.

In addition to Gates's company, who invested via his $40 billion investment firm fund, Gates Frontier, Ambri also attracted investments from firms such as Paulson Partners, and Reliance New Energy. The company raised $211 Million, according to Crunchbase.

Despite raising such substantial amounts from investors since they were founded, Ambri faced difficulties securing additional funding in 2023 for its Series F round. Their attempt to raise $50 million in financing fell through when a potential $8 million investment was withdrawn, leading the company into financial distress.

Ambri’s technology, which revolves around patented liquid metal battery innovations with over 103 issued and pending patents, represents a significant advancement in energy storage solutions. However, the company struggled to transition from research and development to market viability.

According to Global Ventures, Energy startups saw a 9% decline in corporate-backed investments in 2023 compared with 2022. This trend reflects a broader cautious approach among investors due to uncertain market conditions.

"In 2023, we have really slowed down our investments, waiting for the markets in cleantech to follow the rest of the VC sectors, but suspect it still has some way to go (down). I do believe investment from us might pick up again by H2 of 2024," says Geert van de Wouw, the head of Shell Ventures.