We Don’t Want Our Islands to Be Used to Kill People

by Vijay Prashad / November 7th, 2024

Ōriwa Tahupōtiki Haddon (Ngāti Ruanui), Reconstruction of the Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, c. 1940.

For the past few weeks I have been on the road in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Australia at the invitation of groups such as Te Kuaka, Red Ant, and the Communist Party of Australia. Both countries were shaped by British colonialism, marked by the violent displacement of native communities and theft of their lands. Today, as they become part of the US-led militarisation of the Pacific, their native populations have fought to defend their lands and way of life.

On 6 February 1840, Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) was signed by representatives of the British Crown and the Māori groups of Aotearoa. The treaty (which has no point of comparison in Australia) claimed that it would ‘actively protect Māori in the use of their lands, fisheries, forests, and other treasured possessions’ and ‘ensure that both parties to [the treaty] would live together peacefully and develop New Zealand together in partnership’. While I was in Aotearoa, I learned that the new coalition government seeks to ‘reinterpret’ the Treaty of Waitangi in order to roll back protections for Māori families. This includes shrinking initiatives such as the Māori Health Authority (Te Aka Whai Ora) and programmes that promote the use of the Māori language (Te Reo Maori) in public institutions. The fight against these cutbacks has galvanised not only the Māori communities, but large sections of the population who do not want to live in a society that violates its treaties. When Aboriginal Australian Senator Lidia Thorpe disrupted the British monarch Charles’s visit to the country’s parliament last month, she echoed a sentiment that spreads across the Pacific, yelling, as she was dragged out by security: ‘You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back! Give us what you stole from us – our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. … We want a treaty in this country. … You are not my king. You are not our king’.

Walangkura Napanangka (Pintupi), Johnny Yungut’s Wife, Tjintjintjin, 2007.

With or without a treaty, both Aotearoa and Australia have seen a groundswell of sentiment for increased sovereignty across the islands of the Pacific, building on a centuries-long legacy. This wave of sovereignty has now begun to turn towards the shores of the massive US military build-up in the Pacific Ocean, which has its sights set on an illusionary threat from China. US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, speaking at a September 2024 Air & Space Forces Association convention on China and the Indo-Pacific, represented this position well when he said ‘China is not a future threat. China is a threat today’. The evidence for this, Kendall said, is that China is building up its operational capacities to prevent the United States from projecting its power into the western Pacific Ocean region. For Kendall, the problem is not that China was a threat to other countries in East Asia and the South Pacific, but that it is preventing the US from playing a leading role in the region and surrounding waters – including those just outside of China’s territorial limits, where the US has conducted joint ‘freedom of navigation’ exercises with its allies. ‘I am not saying war in the Pacific is imminent or inevitable’, Kendall continued. ‘It is not. But I am saying that the likelihood is increasing and will continue to do so’.

George Parata Kiwara (Ngāti Porou and Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki), Jacinda’s Plan, 2021.

In 1951, in the midst of the Chinese Revolution (1949) and the US war on Korea (1950–1953), senior US foreign policy advisor and later Secretary of State John Foster Dulles helped formulate several key treaties, such as the 1951 Australia, New Zealand, and United States Security (ANZUS) Treaty, which brought Australia and New Zealand firmly out of British influence and into the US’s war plans, and the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, which ended the formal US occupation of Japan. These deals – part of the US’s aggressive strategy in the region – came alongside the US occupation of several island nations in the Pacific where the US had already established military facilities, including ports and airfields: Hawaii (since 1898), Guam (since 1898), and Samoa (since 1900). Out of this reality, which swept from Japan to Aotearoa, Dulles developed the ‘island chain strategy’, a so-called containment strategy that would establish a military presence on three ‘island chains’ extending outward from China to act as an aggressive perimeter and prevent any power other than the US from commanding the Pacific Ocean.

Over time, these three island chains became hardened strongholds for the projection of US power, with about four hundred bases in the region established to maintain US military assets from Alaska to southern Australia. Despite signing various treaties to demilitarise the region (such as the South Pacific Nuclear Free Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Rarotonga in 1986), the US has moved lethal military assets, including nuclear weapons, through the region for threat projection against China, North Korea, Russia, and Vietnam (at different times and with different intensity). This ‘island chain strategy’ includes military installations in French colonial outposts such as Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia, and French Polynesia. The US also has military arrangements with the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau.

Christine Napanangka Michaels (Nyirripi), Lappi Lappi Jukurrpa (Lappi Lappi Dreaming), 2019.

While some of these Pacific Island nations are used as bases for US and French power projection against China, others have been used as nuclear test sites. Between 1946 and 1958, the US conducted sixty-seven nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands. One of them, conducted in Bikini Atoll, detonated a thermonuclear weapon a thousand times more powerful than the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Darlene Keju Johnson, who was only three years old at the time of the Bikini Atoll detonation and was one of the first Marshallese women to speak publicly about the nuclear testing in the islands, encapsulated the sentiment of the islanders in one of her speeches: ‘We don’t want our islands to be used to kill people. The bottom line is we want to live in peace’.

Jef Cablog (Cordillera), Stern II, 2021.

Yet, despite the resistance of people like Keju Johnson (who went on to become a director in the Marshall Islands Ministry of Health), the US has been ramping up its military activity in the Pacific over the past fifteen years, such as by refusing to close bases, opening new ones, and expanding others to increase their military capacity. In Australia – without any real public debate – the government decided to supplement US funding to expand the runway on Tindal Air Base in Darwin so that it could house US B-52 and B-1 bombers with nuclear capacity. It also decided to expand submarine facilities from Garden Island to Rockingham and build a new high-tech radar facility for deep-space communications in Exmouth. These expansions came on the heels of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) partnership in 2021, which has allowed the US and the UK to fully coordinate their strategies. The partnership also sidelined the French manufacturers that until then had supplied Australia with diesel-powered submarines and ensured that it would instead buy nuclear-powered submarines from the UK and US. Eventually, Australia will provide its own submarines for the missions the US and UK are conducting in the waters around China.

Over the past few years, the US has also sought to draw Canada, France, and Germany into the US Pacific project through the US Pacific Partnership Strategy for the Pacific Islands (2022) and the Partnership for the Blue Pacific (2022). In 2021, at the France-Oceania Summit, there was a commitment to reengage with the Pacific, with France bringing new military assets into New Caledonia and French Polynesia. The US and France have also opened a dialogue about coordinating their military activities against China in the Pacific.

Yvette Bouquet (Kanak), Profil art, 1996.

Yet these partnerships are only part of the US ambitions in the region. The US is also opening new bases in the northern islands of the Philippines – the first such expansion in the country since the early 1990s – while intensifying its arm sales with Taiwan, to whom it is providing lethal military technology (including missile defence and tank systems intended to deter a Chinese military assault). Meanwhile the US has improved its coordination with Japan’s military by deciding to establish joint force headquarters, which means that the command structure for US troops in Japan and South Korea will be autonomously controlled by the US command structure in these two Asian countries (not by orders from Washington).

However, the US-European war project is not going as smoothly as anticipated. Protest movements in the Solomon Islands (2021) and New Caledonia (2024), led by communities who are no longer willing to be subjected to neocolonialism, have come as a shock to the US and its allies. It will not be easy for them to build their island chain in the Pacific.Email

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, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.

 

A Third Party Perspective on the Rightward Lurch of the US Body Politic

2024 Election Postmortem

by Roger D. Harris / November 7th, 2024

The chickens that the Democrats hatched in 2016 came home to roost in 2024. Back then, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), representing the party’s establishment, promoted Donald Trump as the Republican nominee. They thought him to be an easy mark who would be opposed by both the Republican Party establishment and most US voters.

That stratagem turned out to be correct about the Republican establishment but wrong about the electorate. In any case, Trump went on to not only capture the GOP but the archaic Electoral College as well.

The DNC reprised that strategy with the same suicidal results this year, putting all their deplorable eggs into the one basket of running on a platform of “not-Trump.”

Trump campaigned on the gambit of asking whether Americans felt they were better off now after four years of Joe Biden. The populace roared back a resounding “NO.” Pitching to a disaffected and dispossessed citizenry, he threw them reactionary red meat, scapegoating immigrants and others.

Kamala Harris flew the blue banner but her woke message that she was “not Trump” was less convincing. A red tsunami has swept the Democrats not only out of the White House but congress and many governorships. Trump is on track to win the popular vote.

This “triumph of the swill,” borrowing from the Dead Kennedys, will have consequences for the Supreme Court and the larger makeup of the US politics going into the future. MAGA has now firmly infected the body politic and threatens to metastasize. Hillary Clinton’s smug words in 2016, “Trump is the gift that keeps on giving,” turned out to be unintentionally prescient.

Would it have been any different had the DNC not rigged the 2016 presidential nomination for establishment candidate Clinton by sabotaging Bernie Sanders, who campaigned on issues of empowerment and economic benefit that also appealed to Trump voters? For them, the fear that Sanders could activate and organize genuine grassroots discontent into a social movement was greater than the risk of a Trump presidency.

But the faux independent senator from Vermont had a fatal flaw – “though shalt not do anything that harms the Democratic Party.” This was all the DNC needed to crush his campaign. His “Our Revolution” was domesticated, while Bernie shepherded progressives into the big blue tent.

Green Party campaign manager Jason Call, speaking personally on election night, said it was better to vote for a third party candidate who was opposed to the genocide in Palestine. Even if one accepts the bogus argument that doing so throws the election to Trump, in the larger picture, that would still be preferable to telling the Democrats, who are the party in power, that their conduct is acceptable.

Democratic Party supporters, of course, disagree. They claim that Trump is even more pro-Zionist than their candidate, which may be true. Although today the Democratic Party is arguably the leading war party, we will have cold comfort with the Republicans in power. And domestically the Democrats spout a better line on some social wedge issues that don’t threaten elite rule, such as women’s reproductive rights, although their walk is not as good as their talk.

Yes, things will get worse under Trump. But things would also get worse under Harris. This is because the entire political discourse has been staggering to the right regardless of which wing of the duopoly is in power.

In contrast, the voting public is well to the left of them on almost every issue, from universal public healthcare to opposition to endless war. By any objective measure, Jill Stein’s Green Party campaign was middle of the road compared to her corporate party competitors.

The lesser-evil voting strategy itself bears some degree of responsibility for this reactionary tide. By unconditionally supporting the Democrats, progressive-leaning voters become a captured constituency to be ignored. They incentivize the Democrats to scurry even further to the right to try to pick up the votes of the undecided and to further cater to the class interests of their corporate funders.

Wednesday morning quarterbacks (election day is on Tuesday) are saying that the Democrats should have given more emphasis in their campaign messaging to economic issues affecting working people. This ignores the fact that Harris, and Biden before her, had claimed that they had turned the economy around.

The debate on how much better the post-Covid economy is and who benefited leads to a deeper question. The current incarnation of capitalism, what is popularly called “neoliberalism,” has failed to meet the material needs of working people. This structural problem, not simply a question of policy, begs for another economic model.

The now manifest failure of the Democrats to offer a platform beyond “not Trump” exposes their bankruptcy. They do not even pretend to have an agenda to address the underlying economic distress, because the limits of the economic system that they embrace provides no succor.

In fact, neither of the major parties offer an alternative to neoliberalism. Both duopoly wings tend to campaign on cultural rather than substantive economic issues precisely because neither have solutions to the erosion of the quality of life for most citizens.

The Republican’s capitalized on popular discontent with the incumbents. But come the mid-term elections in two years, the tables will be turned. This drama is being played out abroad with social democrats getting the boot in places like Argentina and Austria, part of a larger blowback filling the sails of an international far-right insurgence.

A major left-liberal concern is the supposed imminent threat of fascism. Their fear is focused on Trump’s dysfunctionality and his “deplorable” working class minions; not on the security apparatus of the state, which they have learned to love. However, fascism is not a personality disorder. The ruling class – whether its nominal head wears a red or blue hat – has no reason to impose a fascist dictatorship as long as people embrace rather than oppose the security state.

The New York Times reported: “US stocks, the value of the dollar, and yields on Treasury bonds all recorded gains as Mr. Trump’s victory became clear.” That is good for the ruling class but not so much for the rest of us.

Lesser-evil voting contributes to the rightward trajectory of US politics at this time when structural change is needed. Absent a third-party alternative, the two-party duopoly doesn’t even recognize existential threats, such as global warming or nuclear annihilation, let alone address them.

Meanwhile, the US military launched a test hypersonic nuclear missile right after the polls closed on November 5. The scariest thing about their “reassurance” to the American public regarding this practice run for World War III was that it was “routine.”

Roger D. Harris is on the state central committee of the Peace and Freedom Party, the only ballot-qualified socialist party in California. The views expressed here are his own.  

If Trump Can Be Believed, His Return to the White House Could be a Good Thing…at least Internationally

A left view of the election from an expat in the UK

by Dave Lindorff / November 8th, 2024

TRUMP VOTER IN New Hampshire

Cambridge, UK — As the voting results started coming in here from Virginia at 4 am (GMT, which is five hours later than Eastern Time in the US), I went to bed, having seen enough to know that Kamala Harris’s  crash campaign for the White House was failing.

I knew what was coming.  I’d experienced it four times already. In 1968 I watched Richard Nixon, the notorious House version of Commie-hunter Sen. Joe McCarthy rouse what he dubbed  the “Silent Majority” of right-wing white bigots and pro-Vietnam War super-patriots and defeated Hubert Humphrey (an earlier VP who the Democratic party chose as their nominee when their incumbent president after, Lyndon Johnson decided not to seek re-election).

There was a sense of hopelessness on the left the morning after Nixon’a election.

It happened again in 1980, with the surprise win by Republican Ronald Reagan, who defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter.  That morning, I got up early and went down to Broadway from my 11th-floor apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Walking down the largely empty sidewalk like a zombie, I passed a few people headed the other way, their faces looking similarly shell-shell shocked, until a neighborhood friend, John Hess, a spritely, gray-bearded retiree N.Y. Times staffer, bounded up to me cheerfully. “Isn’t it great?” He said with a smile. “The Republicans also took the Senate!”

“What’s so great about that?” I asked, astonished that this radical leftist journalist would say such a thing.

“Because,” he explained, “If the Democrats control Congress, Reagan can’t blame all his disasters on them. Now he won’t have the ability to blame anyone but himself!”

Actually, in the event, Reagan managed to serve out two terms, and even accomplished some positive things including negotiating with House Majority Leader Democrat Tip O’Neill a rescue of the underfunded Social Security program and ending the Cold War and (at least temporarily) the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union.

Then, of course, there was the Supreme Court which in 2000 stole the election for George W Bush by halting the vote counting in Florida, where it was clear that Democratic Vice President Al Gore, who had already won the popular vote, would also have won the state and its Electoral College total. Instead, the feckless top court gave the White House to Bush and Dick Cheney.

And finally there was the night Donald Trump stunned the pundits and himself by winning the White House and defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

So waking up Wednesday morning to see that Trump would be president for another nightmare four-term had for me a definite “Groundhog Da” feel to it — but without the guy-gets-girl happy ending to it).

Actually, this time Trump 2.0 is worse than those four earlier Republican wins. This time the Republican president will have solid control of both houses of Congress, with a Senate so overwhelmingly Republican that it will be able to pass almost any piece of legislation without Democrats blocking it, and will likely remain in Republican hands for Trump’s full term.  This time around, the Supreme Court too is solidly controlled 6-3 by hard-right justices, and Trump has made it clear that every cabinet office and every government agency will be run  by “loyal’ lackeys of his choosing, with even civil service employees either replaced or cowed into submission — including at such normally independent agencies as the Pentagon, CIA, Justice Department and EPA.  Even the late irrepressible John Hess would have  had a hard time finding a bright side to this Election Day outcome.

Nonetheless I’m going to give it a try.

First a reality check:  What we see in the 2024 election result is that a majority of Americans — men and women, rich and poor, white and people of color, educated and uneducated,  religious and atheist —  are either ready to gamble on a self-involved sociopathic, racist and misogynist criminal billionaire with anger issues or are too concerned with just getting by with their daily lives  to to worry about elections that never seem to change their lives for the better or that even make them harder. Analysis of the voting shows that a huge percentage of late voting younger people went for Trump. And a tidal wave of women voting for Harris didn’t materialize. More women voted than men, as usual, but plenty of them went for the pussy-grabbing rapist Trump. Trump also did better with Black men than he did in 2016 and 2024 and significantly improved his tally among Latinos (or as he calls them “Hispanics”). In the end Harris’s larger share of women voters was the same as Trump’s larger share of  men, making the predicted gender war a wash-out.

Here in the UK, where I am living for the next nine months, I can see what the results of such so-called populist voting trends can be. British voters in 1979 elected a hard-right Prime Minister named Margaret Thatcher and allowed her and her Conservative Party to set off a seismic shift of the country’s politics away from social democracy and a rather classical conservatism into a two-party Neo-liberal dystopia where both parties accepted the notion that capitalism, unfettered markets, and a coddled business elite managing things was the best option for society.

This  narrowed political playing field has led over the ensuing decades to a long period British economic doldrums, and to a turning away by Brits from the rest of Europe, as resentment and hostility towards outsiders, including eastern Europeans, and especially people from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean — all of them willing to work for less and to leave countries that had it even worse — availed themselves of the lack of borders across Europe  to flock to the UK. This latter phenomenon led to the narrow victory of a referendum that resulted inBritain’s removing itself from the European Union. Called Brexit, this abrupt anti-immigrant “secession” has wreaked havoc on the nation’s economy and living standards, as well as the operation of key services like the country’s once vaunted National Health System.

Just this past July, British voters, frustrated  with a country and government where “nothing works anymore,” turned out the Conservatives after 15 straight years of Tory rule and handed a landslide win to the Labour Party and its new Prime Minister Keir Starmer.  How that new government will fare in its effort to right the ship of state and its stagnating economy, given the incredible decades-long disinvestment and privatization it is hoping to reverse, remains to be seen.

I suspect the US, under a second Trump administration, this time emboldened by a political realignment at least as profound as was Thatcher’s 1979 win in the UK, will soon be similarly strip-mined and privatized.

The one bright spot, however, if President-re-elect Trump, a shameless liar, can be taken at his word, would be if he actually were to brings an end to the decade of US military aid political  brinksmanship in pushing Ukraine to break away from neighboring Russia’s sphere of influence and to join NATO, the US-led anti-Russian alliance created way back at the start of the Cold War of he 1950s. Trump says, quite logically, that US efforts to pull Ukraine into NATO, a mutual protection pact whose very existence is an existential threat to Russia, and the Ukraine government’s now ten-year old armed conflict with first its ethic Russian minority and then, when Russia responded by invading Ukraine, with Russia, a leading nuclear power,  has led to a war in which Ukraine’s military is largely underwritten by US arms and financial banking interests. It is a war that the US knows poses a high risk of provoking a devastating and potentially world-ending nuclear conflict between ther world’s two nuclear superpowers.

During the just concluded election campaign, Trump promised to bring an end to that bloody military conflict immediately before even waiting for his second inauguration in January.  He has also promised to end the one-sided slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, though without specifying how.

I am no fan of Trump, but I have to say should he successfully cut short those two bloody conflicts, or even ends the Ukraine war while at least not making things worse in Gaza, his new presidency would be off to a great start. He should follow that up by returning the US to the treaty relationship on nuclear weapons that his Republican predecessor Ronald  Reagan worked out with former Soviet and Russia leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which effectively, if all too briefly,  ended the two countries’ nuclear standoff and raised humanity’s hopes for an end to nuclear weapons altogether. Trump should also follow through with his prior effort to pull the US out of NATO, which long ago morphed into a cover for and participant in US global military actions around the world and simply serves as an excuse for ploughing over a trillion dollars a year into the coffers of the US arms industry.

Martin Luther King, a year to the day before the day in 1968 that he was assassinated (my birthday) he gave a speech at the Riverside Church in New York titled Beyond Vietnam:A Time to End the Silence.” In it he correctly identified the US, at that time conducting a bloody aggressive war in Indochina, as being “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”  It has remained so, Indeed its endless wars and “interventions,” have reportedly killed well over 6 million people, mostly civilians, around the world in the eight decades since WWII.

Trump knows this and has talked of pulling US forces back from the hundreds of places they are based in foreign lands (though that idea was at one point linked by him to the idea of using them against American dissidents here at home — NOT a Great idea!).

He should pull them back and decommission them.

Trump has said on a number of occasions that he does not want wars — that as a businessman, he wants the US to do business with other nations, on a level playing field.  That is a great sentiment, and it’s one that his base, those MAGA voters, some of whom I know and have had conversations with,. Trump should be held to that promise, and should downsize the US military to a size appropriate to a country that is not facing any threat of invasion and that stops meddling militarily in other countries and maintaining bases around the globe. That is a position a lot of Trump’s MAGA backers agree with.

For now though, all we have from President-elect Trump are promises like  “I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars,” and unless acted upon these cannot be taken seriously. But that said, I have to say the words themselves are welcome, and it’w a promise that I’ve never heard the likes of coming from any other president-elect of either party.. (Okay, Richard Nixon claimed during his first presidential race that he had a “secret plan’ for ending the war in Vietnam, but that “plan” turned out to be to massively carpet-bomb North Vietnam using B-52s. expand the war  into Laos and Cambodia and to ship more US combat troops into the country. Once elected, he kept the war going until he resigned from office in disgrace.)

We on the left are facing an existential crisis with Trump’s election victory but also an opportunity

Supporting the Democrats and their chosen candidate Kamala Harris as a tactical move to preserve freedom to organize and to protest was clearly unsuccessful as her poorly performed campaign did worse than Hillary Clinton did against Trump eight years before. Indeed, she lost not just in the Electoral College tally but in the popular vote, which Clinton at least won.  The Democratic Party has been shown once again to be a pathetic joke as a political opponent. Sen. Bernie Sanders,  who won a resounding re-election to the Senate in Vermont, identified right before Harris’s concession speech on Thursday, the party’s problem:  It is owned by billionaires and moneyed consultants wedded to corporate interests, and is  dismissive or even hostile to the interests of the working class.

But the pathetic showing of third party candidates in this,  as in prior elections,  has shown that building a third party is also a fool’s errand in a country where the political system is structured to prevent them.

That leaves us with the option of building a large movement outside of political parties focussed around broad popular issues that would bring working-class people together common goals like peace and demilitarization, significantly raising the minimum wage, improving and protecting Social Security, making Medicare universal for all ages, passing the Equal Rights Amendment and protecting every women’s right to control her own body and health and seriously addressing the climate crisis.

Trump has made it clear that he wants unrestrained power, without the hindrances of a Constitution or a Congress composed of members who might think for themselves and perform their intended constitutional role as a check and balance on the Executive Branch. Trump’s history of lying, criminality, racism and misogyny and his willingness to appeal to American citizens’ basest instincts are well known. But we are stuck with him. He cannot be defeated in the courts because he has a bunch of sycophants packing the Supreme Court and in the lower level federal courts.  Impeachment cannot happen and is a waste of time and effort. The weakened Congressional Democrats can no longer even put on a impeachment committee hearing this time.

With a mass movement we can pressure Trump and his Congressional supporters to do what they promised. If they go back on those promises, we can work to peel away those people who just voted for him as a “change disrupter,” especially as they begin to discover he really doesn’t give a damn about them.

Meanwhile we need to do the hard work of organize]ing wide support for resisting Trump’s worst ideas — the ones that will harm the defenseless and that will grievously contribute to climate change. For example, we need to support a campaign to protect undocumented people living in the USA from brutal arrest, detention and forced deportation, especially in cases that break up families.  We clearly need to build a mass movement to protect programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.  A key here is that most of Trump’s own voting base depend on those programs and on the Affordable Care Act. Trump and his advisers know this. This is why Trump vowed during his campaign not to cut them. He needs to be held to that promise. And we need to call out every Trump effort to worsen climate change by the reversal of what climate saving measures have been introduced, and by trying to sack or silence those civil service employees responsible for measuring or ameliorating climate change.

Trump, by making this false promises he won’t keep in order to win the election has handed us what we need to organize this same people.Email

Dave Lindorff has written for the NY Times, Nation, FAIR, Salon, London Review of Books and Rolling Stone. Dave cofounded the LA Vanguard, ran the LA Daily News county bureau and was a BusinessWeek Asia correspondent. He currently writes a Substack: ThisCantBeHappening!. Read other articles by Dave.

"Misinterpretation of events": Hindu Forum Canada rejects allegations against 'peaceful protest' in Brampton

November 08, 2024 


Brampton : The Hindu Forum for Canada (HFC) has rejected the allegations of 'inciting speech' during the peaceful protest against attack on Hindu temples in Brampton, and said it is "deeply disturbed" by the "misinterpretation of events"

The forum has also demanded the Brampton Mayor to retract his accusations and recognise the Hindu community as a "peaceful, law-abiding" part of Canadian society.

"Hindu Forum Canada is deeply disturbed by the recent misinterpretation of events surrounding a peaceful protest at a temple, where the words of a respected priest have been unfairly distorted to project a narrative of incitement and violence. The priest's message was clear, heartfelt, and devoid of any hostility," said Hindu Forum Canada in a post on X.
https://x.com/canada_hindu/status/1854595199860666687

On November 3, an Indian consular camp was met with "violent disruption" allegedly by Khalistani separatists, in response, a priest and other community members protested against the violence, where they were interrupted.

Following this, thousands of Canadian Hindus held a protest, expressing their outrage following repeated attacks on Hindu temples in the country and pressed the Canadian administration to take stricter actions against the extremists attacking the religious sites.
On November 5, the Hindu Sabha suspended priest Rajinder Parsad for "controversial involvement" with a protest at the temple premises which was held on November 3.

The Hindu Forum for Canada claimed that the priest was interrupted and other people started to speak, which was then misinterpreted to be hateful rhetoric said by the priest himself.


"This interruption has been wrongly interpreted as incitement, despite the fact that the priest himself never said anything that could reasonably be construed as promoting violence. Multiple video recordings from various angles confirm that Hindus were gathered peacefully within their place of worship--a right protected under Canadian law--and were simply exercising their freedom to assemble," the forum stated.

In response to the clashes near the Hindu Sabha temple, Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown highlighted the suspension notice of the priest and a statement by the Ontario Sikhs and Gurdwara Council.

"The Ontario Sikhs and Gurdwara Council denounced the acts of violence at the Hindu Sabha on Sunday night. Remember we all have more in common than what divides us. In tense times, we can't let the agitators fuel the flames of division. The leadership of both Sikh and Hindu communities in the GTA do not want this division, hate and violence," Brown said in a statement on X.
https://x.com/patrickbrownont/status/1853931743646253359

"I am asking everyone in the community to not respond to violence and hate. Law enforcement will be there to respond. This is their job. We must continue to be the country where the rule of law is followed," the Mayor added.

The Hindu Forum for Canada also expressed disappointment over the public handling of the situation by the mayor.

"Hindu Forum Canada demands that Mayor Brown retract these unfounded accusations and recognize the Hindu community as a peaceful, law-abiding part of Canada's multicultural society. We stand united in our commitment to peace, justice, and a fair, factual approach to public service, and we call for accountability and truth in this matter," it stated

"Not only has he remained silent in the face of rising Hinduphobia and recent attacks on temples, but he has used a suspension letter--a document that, by Ontario employment standards, should remain private--as a tool to unfairly cast Hindus in a negative light. This act singles out the Hindu community, labeling their peaceful gatherings as "violent," while similar assemblies by other communities are celebrated as their right to free expression," the statement read.

Canada: Police arrests three during protests against Khalistani intimidation, anti-Hindu hatred

By : Agency

First Published : Monday, Nov 04, 2024 

Photo Source: ANI
Canada: Police arrests three during protests against Khalistani intimidation, anti-Hindu hatred

Brampton [Canada], November 4, 2024 (ANI): The Peel Regional Police in Canada said that they have arrested three individuals following a demonstration held by the Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA) in protest against the "Khalistani intimidation" and "anti-Hindu" hatred after the recent attacks on Hindu temples in Canada.

In an official statement released on Monday, Peel Regional Police stated that the demonstration "subsequently" relocated to two different locations within the city of Mississauga and the charges would be investigated by their 21 Division Criminal Investigation Bureau along with the 12 Division Criminal Investigation Bureau. The individuals were arrested under criminal charges, the police added.

"Earlier today, Peel Regional Police were present at a demonstration held at a place of worship in Brampton. The event was subsequently relocated to two different locations within the city of Mississauga. As a result of these demonstrations, three individuals have been arrested and criminally charged for their actions. Several acts of unlawfulness continue to be actively investigated by our 21 Division Criminal Investigation Bureau along with 12 Division Criminal Investigation Bureau," the statement read.

In another statement, the Peel Regional Police stated that the protest was relocated to the Westwood Mall area in the City of Mississauga and again to Airport Road and Derry Road in Mississauga.

They further mentioned that they had arrested one individual during the management of the protest, in which a police officer sustained minor injuries.

"Police believe that the same protestors relocated to the Westwood Mall area in the City of Mississauga. During the management of the protest, an individual was arrested which resulted in an officer sustaining minor injuries. The same group of protestors have since relocated to the area of Airport Road and Derry Road in Mississauga," the statement read.

Meanwhile, Canadian Hindu organisations have called for a "peaceful protest" following the recent attacks at Hindu temples in Canada against the "Khalistani intimidation" and "anti-Hindu" hatred.

The protest was called at the Hindu Sabha Temple in Brampton and the Laxmi Narayan Temple in Surrey.Earlier on Sunday, an Indian consular camp at the Hindu Sabha Temple in Canada's Brampton witnessed a "violent disruption" in Brampton, near Toronto.

Following the attacks, the Hindu Canadian Foundation, a non-profit organisation working for the Hindu community in Canada, shared a video of the attack on the temple and said that the Khalistani terrorists attacked kids and women.

The Indian High Commission in Canada condemned the "violent disruption" by 'anti-India' elements outside a consular camp. The high commission also said that any further events will be organised "contingent on security arrangements" made by the local authorities.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also condemned the recent attack on the Hindu Sabha temple in Brampton by Khalistani extremists.Emphasizing the importance of religious freedom, Trudeau asserted that every Canadian has the right to practice their faith freely and safely.

Sharing a post on X, Trudeau wrote, "The acts of violence at the Hindu Sabha Mandir in Brampton today are unacceptable. Every Canadian has the right to practice their faith freely and safely. Thank you to the Peel Regional Police for swiftly responding to protect the community and investigate this incident." (ANI)

RACISM AND ISLAMOPHOBIA

Ombudsman warns Finland's refugee quota plan discriminatory to Muslims

Finland to reduce number of refugees accepted from Muslim-majority countries and boost those from Christian nations, says government

Leila Nezirevic |08.11.2024 - TRT/AA


LONDON

Finland’s Non-Discrimination Ombudsman warned Thursday that the country’s refugee quota plan is likely discriminatory on religious grounds.

The assessment came after the government announced that it will reduce the number of refugees accepted from Muslim-majority countries while increasing the number from Christian countries.

According to the Ombudsman, the Interior Ministry’s instruction to prepare the quota plan conflicts with the Finnish Constitution as well as laws on discrimination.

“The Interior Ministry instructed officials to prepare the quota refugee plan for 2025 in a way that is in conflict with the prohibition of discrimination in the Constitution and laws on discrimination,” said Deputy Non-Discrimination Ombudsman Robin Harris.

The country’s Interior Minister, Mari Rantanen, and acting Interior Minister Lulu Ranne had directed officials to prepare to exclude quota refugees from countries such as Afghanistan while increasing the number of those from Venezuela, the local newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported.

In July, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) suggested that Finland should prioritize quota refugees from Afghanistan and Syria, according to the Ombudsman’s statement.

“However, the political leadership of the Ministry of the Interior instructed officials to prepare a quota distribution that deviates from the UNHCR proposal so that Christian refugees would be prioritized and places would be allocated to refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Venezuela, for example,” the statement said.

The warning follows the Ombudsman’s announcement in October that it will investigate the ministry’s refugee quota plans.

In seeking to forge new relations, Venezuela's Maduro congratulates Trump on election win

By Mark Moran & Darryl Coote
Nov. 8, 2024 / 


Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro celebrates after partial results were announced by the electoral council, in Caracas, Venezuela in 2024. Maduro has extended an olive branch to U.S. President-elected Donald Trump following Trump's victory Tuesday, widely seen a move to improve relations between Venezuela and the U.S. in Trump's second term. File Photo by Ronald Pena R./EPA-EFE

Nov. 7 (UPI) -- The hard-line Venezuelan leader who once called Donald Trump a "racist cowboy" has congratulated the president-elect on his election win over Vice President Kamala Harris -- a gesture being seen as the extension of an olive branch.

Nicolas Maduro, the authoritarian leader of the South American country, has made several comments since Trump's election victory on Tuesday night that suggest an eagerness to patch up their adversarial relationship.

His foreign ministry first congratulated the American people and Trump on his election in a statement, saying Venezuela "will also be willing to establish good relations with U.S. government, framed in a spirit of dialogue, respect and common sense."

Then, on his radio program Con Maduro de Repente, which translates to Suddenly with Maduro in English, Maduro commented that Trump has "a golden opportunity ... to pacify the world" and to change the relations the United States has had with Latin American countries, according to state-owned Agencia Venezolana de Noticias news agency.

He called Trump's election an "historic return" and an opportunity to end wars, and foster relationships with other nations.

During Trump's first term in office, the American president waged a "maximum pressure" campaign of sanctions and threats against Maduro in a failed attempt to oust Venezuela's authoritarian leader.

Maduro acknowledged in the radio program that Trump's first term "did not go well for us" but added that "this is a new beginning where we are betting on a win-win scenario, for the United States to do well and for Venezuela to do well," AVN reported.

Moisés Naím, a Venezuelan writer and former minister, told The Guardian that to Maduro, Trump represents "a lifeline."

"He desperately needs international recognition and legitimacy," Naím said of Maduor. "He doesn't want to be a pariah."

However, if Trump attempts to normalize relations with Maduro, Naím expects opposition from South Florida's "deeply anti-Maduro" Venezuelan immigrant community, who are members of Trump's base.

Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, said on X that Maduro is "clearly betting on a fully transactional approach" with Trump.

"He'll likely be disappointed, but [it] highlights an early test to the new admin's balance of democracy vs. migration vs. energy interests with Caracas."

On the campaign trail, Trump stayed relatively mum when it came to Venezuela, aside from focusing on migrants trying to enter the United States from the South American country.

In a statement following Trump's election win, Ramsey said that while it is likely that the president-elect will adopt a more confrontational rhetoric with Venezuela, "he may see more value in containing the outward flow of migration and securing a U.S. and Western footprint in Venezuela's oil sector than in reverting to a maximum-pressure approach."

Venezuela: Court Rejects Appeal By Left-Wing Opposition To Publish Presidential Election Results

By Federico Fuentes

November 7, 2024

Source: Green Left


María Alejandra Díaz (left) and Nicolas Maduro. 

Photo: @_TribunaPopular/X and Wikipedia

More than two months after the passing of a 30-day legal deadline, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) has still not published the full results of the July 28 presidential election.

Despite this, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) rejected an appeal on November 4 calling on it to request the CNE comply with Article 155 of the Organic Law of Electoral Processes and the TSJ’s own August 22 ruling that the electoral body “publish definitive results for the electoral process”.

Instead, the TSJ fined María Alejandra Díaz, the lawyer who lodged the appeal on behalf of various left-wing organisations, and suspended her from professional duties.

According to the CNE, incumbent president Nicolás Maduro won the presidential election with more than 51% of the votes. However, the right-wing opposition has disputed the result, claiming alleged voting centre tally sheets in its possession indicate victory for its candidate, Edmundo González.

Given conflicting claims, publication of the results is required to verify who won.

CNE head Elvis Amoroso promised to do just that on election night, saying this would happen “in the next few hours, as has traditionally occurred” and “in accordance with the law”.

But more than three months on, the CNE’s failure to do so led to the Popular Democratic Front (FDP) lodging its appeal.

The FDP includes left-wing parties and organisations such as Redes, the Popular Historic Bloc, the Communist Party of Venezuela, The Other Campaign, Anti-imperialist Voices, Alternative Popular Movement, In Common and the National Front of Working Class Struggle.

Former presidential candidate Enrique Márquez, who also co-signed the appeal, explained in a November 3 Televen interview that its purpose was to request that the TSJ “demand the CNE publish the results so that not only I as a candidate, but the people can know exactly what occurred”.

He added that “perhaps no one should be more interested in this happening than the government itself, as it would generate clarity about the results, [and] clarity about its own legitimacy based on those results.

“But so far that has not happened. All this does is generate more and more doubts.”

The TSJ instead ruled that by lodging the appeal, Díaz was “questioning and disrespecting the power vested” in the TSJ and “seeking to generate anxiety and commotion in the population”.

As a result, a disciplinary procedure has been opened up against the former legal adviser to the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, with the threat of further punishment hanging over her head.

Díaz denounced the court’s decision in a post on X as “not only an abuse of power, but an overreach and a clear warning to those wanting to exercise their political rights…

“Who will now want to defend political and social causes such as this, if they face such punishment?”

Numerous organisations and individuals have come out in defence of Díaz, including left-wing human rights organisation Surgentes.

In their statement, Surgentes notes that if anyone has been “responsible for generating anxiety and commotion” it has been the CNE “by not publishing the full electoral results and failing to fulfil its legal obligations of transparency and auditability”.

It added the state as a whole was also culpable, for continuing to “insist that the population accept a government that cannot demonstrate that it was elected by a majority [of voters]”.

The decision by the TSJ to reject the appeal is just one of the latest actions taken by the Venezuelan state to repress those who have dared to question Maduro’s victory.

For example, the National Assembly is currently discussing proposed reforms to the electoral system that, according to interior minister Diosdado Cabello, would ban anyone “who does not recognise the results announced by the [CNE]” from being able to participate in elections.

Meanwhile, about 2000 people remain in jail after being arrested during the wave of post-election protests demanding that the people’s vote be respected.

The majority of those in jail, which includes 69 adolescents, hail from poor working-class areas that traditionally voted for Maduro. Most are facing charges of “terrorism” and “inciting hate”.

According to Marquez, this is “the largest number of political prisoners in the entire history of Venezuela. Even if we go back to the time of [military dictator Marco] Pérez Jiménez, there were not as many prisoners…

“This is how the government intends to lead our country, through terror [and] by force.”

Marquez explained: “Those who have been imprisoned have had all their rights violated, they are not allowed visits, they are not allowed to have a private lawyer, they are not allowed the right to a defence, access to the judge is by telephone.

“Imagine a hearing … being held by telephone, where the accused is not even allowed an appearance before the judge.

“Not only are the rights established in the Constitution being violated, but everything established in the Organic Code of Criminal Procedure is being violated. These people are wrongly imprisoned and should be released as soon as possible.”



Federico Fuentes is editor of the Bolivia Rising blog and a regular contributor on Latin American politics.

Why young, Black and Latino men turned up in droves to vote for Trump

MACHISMO AND MISOGYNY 


Elon Musk and Joe Rogan helped boost Trump's standings with 54 percent of men voting for the Republican, up from 51 percent that supported him in 2020, according to exit polling by NBC. — AFP

Friday, 08 Nov 2024 


WASHINGTON, Nov 8 — Putting abortion rights front and center in her campaign, Kamala Harris thought she found a winning formula in courting women voters.

But it was Donald Trump who found victory, running up the margins on American men — particularly young men.

That young people as a whole tend to be more liberal was no deterrent to a US presidential campaign that capitalised on youth masculinity — tapping into interests such as fighting sports and cryptocurrency, as well as making appearances on male-dominated podcasts.

“If you are a man in this country and you don’t vote for Donald Trump, you’re not a man,” said Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist long focused on the youth vote.


Donald Trump won the presidency with 54 percent of men voting for the Republican, up slightly from the 51 percent that supported him in 2020, according to exit polling by NBC.

But what raised eyebrows was among younger voters aged 18-29, where 49 percent of men voted Trump — shattering previous images of young people generally leaning left.

As Elon Musk — tech bro, wealthy businessman and major Trump backer — put it on Election Day: “the cavalry has arrived.”

Trump’s gains come as a gender divide makes itself felt among young people at-large: women under 29 had a massive 61-37 Harris-Trump split.

“There is a lot of latent sexism in the US electorate, male and female members alike,” Tammy Vigil, an associate professor of media science at the University of Boston, told AFP.

“Trump’s campaign gave people permission to indulge their worst impulses and embrace divisiveness of many sorts.”

‘Tough’ Trump seen as a ‘leader’

Spencer Thomas, who voted for Harris, said the economy was on the mind of many of his peers who voted for Trump.

“They focused more on the economic policies and different things of that nature, rather than abortion rights,” said the student at Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington.

The macho energy of the Trump presidential run — eschewing political correctness, “wokeness” or other forms of liberal hand-wringing — won over plenty of Black men, despite the campaign’s outright racism at times.

Among Black men under 45, about three out of 10 voted for Trump — double the rate of the 2020 vote and blowing yet another hole in the Democrats’ traditional base.

As Democrats embark on their postmortem, trying to figure out what went wrong, there won’t be one simple explanation.

But “Black and Latino men could possibly overlook the racism of the Trump campaign because Trump appealed to their sense of machismo,” Vigil offered.

Trump going on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where listeners overwhelmingly skew young and male, “was about trying to motivate young men to turn out,” said Kathleen Dolan, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

“The rest of his performance of masculinity was to appeal to his base, women and men, who like him because they think he is ‘tough’ and a ‘leader’ and clearly aren’t offended by the things he says,” she told AFP.

Whatever Trump’s x-factor was, it scratched an itch.

According to exit polling from Edison Research, some 54 percent of Latino men voted for Trump on Tuesday — a whopping 18 percentage point gain for Republicans compared to 2020.

WE CAN ONLY HOPE

Opinion

How Trump's victory could accelerate women's departure from evangelicalism

(RNS) — Evangelical Christian pastors looking to mimic Trump’s appeals to young men will only drive the gender gap in the church further apart.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump listens at a campaign town hall at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center & Fairgrounds, Oct. 14, 2024, in Oaks, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Katelyn Beaty
November 7, 2024

(RNS) — Weeks before the 2024 presidential election, disgraced and self-rehabilitated pastor Mark Driscoll came out in support of Donald Trump. He shared a photo of himself shaking Trump’s hand before gleefully announcing that Trump was forming an evangelical Christian faith advisory board as the former president had in his previous campaigns.

It’s a match made in machismo heaven.

Driscoll is one of many vocal pro-Trump leaders who use brash, testosterone-is-my-testimony branding to make Christianity more appealing to men. Others include Idaho’s Douglas Wilson, Midwest megachurch pastors Joe Rigney and Michael Foster and Right Response Ministries’ Joel Webbon, who has said he forbids his wife to read a book he hasn’t read first.

Their appeals mirror Trump’s bid, by appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast and other “bro media,” to disaffected young men.
PODCAST: The Menfolk Aren’t Doing So Hot. Why Should We Care?

The pastors’ appeal seems to be working. The gender gap in American Christianity has flipped. Among Gen Z Christians, men are now attending church in greater numbers than women, who are leaving in droves. The gender gap in the church mirrors the gender gap at the U.S. polls. According to psychologist Jean Twenge, the number of young men who identify as conservative is at an all-time high of 65%.

For decades, church leaders have complained of a “feminized” Christianity that’s too soft and emotional. Hence resources like David Murrow’s “Why Men Hate Going to Church,” events like the Stronger Men’s Conference, with its pyrotechnics and monster trucks, and a podcast ecosystem wherein pastors mimic the latest talking points from Rogan and Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson.

Aaron Renn, a writer and consultant on urban policy and culture, notes that religion in America is “right-coded,” which is translating into: “Male = conservative = religious; Female = liberal = non-religious.”

He criticizes evangelical churches for judging men’s sins more harshly than women’s. He argues that today’s “manosphere” is one of the few places that take men’s and women’s differences seriously and teach men how to attract “high value” women.

Christian leaders who think they can simply mimic this performative masculinity in service of the gospel are morphing Christianity into something pre-Christian, turning it into another institution that sidelines women. That women, who have long formed the backbone of the local church, are turning away is a canary in the church’s coal mine.

Jesus’ ministry unfolded against the backdrop of the Roman Empire. There, sexual dominance and unmitigated violence were everyday realities. Women were seen as less than human and unfit for education or participation in society. Other vulnerable people — children, the disabled — were literally discarded.

By contrast, the early church, taking its cues from Jesus, saw women as fully human and welcomed their gifts and leadership. Church leaders taught monogamy as a family model that protected women and children. Widows were cared for by their spiritual family.

A Christianity that denigrates women in order to boost up men is a far cry from the teachings and example of Jesus. One wonders if Trump would consider Jesus, as he termed Howard Stern after he had Kamala Harris on his show — a “beta male.” Sure, Jesus defeated sin and death and Satan in the most dramatic way. But Jesus also compared himself to a mother hen, taught his followers to turn the other cheek and entrusted women with the Good News.

Today, Christian communities will thrive insofar as they create cultures where women and men can flourish together. Where their concerns are heard, and where they are told, You belong here. A church that tells women to keep silent and let men do the heavy lifting comes across as woefully out of touch with women’s incredible inroads over the last century. A church that tells men that being a man means lording power over others fails to disciple men in distinctly Christian ways.

Driscoll and his pastoral ilk will only drive the gender gap in the church further apart. Leaders who are strong enough to be gentle like Jesus will be better for the church in the long haul.

Katelyn Beaty. Photo courtesy of Beaty
(Katelyn Beaty is the author of “Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church” and a co-host of the RNS podcast “Saved by the City.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)