This Disintegration of North America

John Feffer

April 21, 2025

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Photo by Muhammed Nuri Çiçenoğlu

Almost exactly 30 years ago, Canadian Bacon depicted a U.S. president picking on his neighbor to the north to boost his sagging approval ratings. Starring Alan Alda, John Candy, and Rhea Perlman, the film was supposed to be a comedy. Director Michael Moore was trying to satirize the U.S. penchant for invading other countries. Taking that notion to its absurd limit, Moore chose to depict a skirmish with Canada.

Ah, the good old days, when you could laugh about such things.

Marx once wrote, with regard to the return of a Bonaparte, that “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” Obviously, Marx couldn’t have anticipated the rise of Donald Trump, who has made a political career of turning Marx on his head by transforming farce into tragedy. Just compare his first term (hah-hah!) to his second term (uh-oh!).

When it comes to Canada, Trump hasn’t yet sent the U.S. army across the border. But don’t rule it out—or the more likely possibility that he’ll dispatch military forces to Mexico to battle narcotraffickers (or stop Central American migrants in their tracks).

In the meantime, Trump has managed to use his beloved tariffs to disrupt economic relations with both Canada and Mexico. Amid boycotts of U.S. products and a steep decline in tourists heading south, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared that the U.S.-Canadian relationship, “based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over.”

Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, while talking tough on Mexican sovereignty, has taken a different tack by negotiating mano a mano with Trump. But disputes over water, drugs, and migrants nevertheless are pushing relations to a breaking point. Trump has already rushed U.S. troops to take control of land near the southern border. It wouldn’t take much for him to push them over the line.

The trade agreement that replaced NAFTA and that Trump himself touted so much when he signed it into law in 2020 is coming up for revision. It’s hard not to anticipate that the rancor Trump has stirred up to the north and south will doom this effort before it even begins.

Perhaps like a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Trump sees North America as a model that needs disruption. But usually such entrepreneurs have an alternative in their back pockets to substitute for the supposedly flawed status quo—Uber replacing taxis, say, or iPhones superseding flip phones.

What alternative could Trump possibly be proposing for North America?

Spheres of Influence

It’s popular in some circles to imagine that Donald Trump is a geopolitical strategist. Here, too, it’s a case of farce being overtaken by tragedy. Trump a foreign policy expert? What a joke. Oh, wait, it’s actually worse than that…

Consider, for instance, the notion that Trump is executing a “reverse Kissinger” with his policy toward Russia. Half a century ago, Richard Nixon, guided by his advisor Henry Kissinger, executed a rapprochement with China to put pressure on the Soviet Union. Today, according to this fanciful theory, Trump is pushing a détente with Russia in order to put pressure on China.

There’s no such hidden calculus in Trump’s wooing of Putin. The two leaders share ideological obsessions—love of territorial expansion and autocratic control, hatred of liberals and “woke” constituencies—and Trump wants to end the war in Ukraine by any means necessary. China occupies a different part of his mind: an economic competitor with little to no ideological overlap.

Now let’s consider another attempt to impose geopolitical sense on an otherwise disparate set of administration policies: that Trump wants to reestablish an older world order based on spheres of influence.

According to this notion, Trump would be happy to allow China to preside over an Asia-Pacific sphere. Russia would then administer the territory of the former Soviet Union. Europe would have to give up on Ukraine but it would get in return North Africa and perhaps all points south. Israel, as a kind of representative of Europe, would divide up the Middle East with the Saudis.

And the United States would reign supreme in North America—plus, according to the Monroe Doctrine, all of Latin America. Throw in Greenland and Trump would be looking to make the Americas great again.

Such a division of the world might well appeal to Trump’s business mentality, with countries substituting for corporate empires that control clearly demarcated markets.

But Trump is not withdrawing the United States from the Pacific theater any time soon. His administration is doubling down on its containment of China—through alliances, expansion of Pacific bases, and increased Pentagon spending. Perhaps he’s willing to tolerate Chinese control over the territory it claims, including Taiwan. But even that is not clear, given recent U.S.-Philippine combat drills in the South China Sea and the sanctions slapped on Hong Kong officials for facilitating the suppression of that territory’s democracy movement. Moreover, he hasn’t given up on other parts of the world—Ukraine, Africa—where he wants what’s underneath the ground.

Trump’s tariffs point to a different strategy, not spheres of influence so much as anti-globalization, pure and simple. Trump is suspicious of any international effort that puts the United States at a table of equals, and he’s deaf to the reality that the United States was always first among equals when it came to globalization. Trump doesn’t like the UN, the IMF, the ICC. He doesn’t like the nervous system of economic globalization with its multilateral trade deals and regulatory superstructure. He much prefers bilateral relations where the United States can throw its weight around and intimidate weaker countries. He despises the EU because its gives smaller nations like Denmark the power to stand up to the United States.

Which brings us back to North America.

The Tariffs that Divide

Tariffs against Mexico and Canada don’t make any economic sense. It’s not just that they piss off friends, boost prices at home, and fail to raise the revenue that Trump fantasizes about.

It’s the nature of the economic relationship between the countries that render these tariffs self-defeating.

Consider the example of medical devices. Mexico is the third largest exporter of medical instruments in the world, and it sends nearly $12 billion worth of these instruments to the United States. Tariffs on these imports will raise the costs for U.S. hospitals and, by extension, the patients in these hospitals.

Ah, but guess what: those devices made in Mexico are heavily dependent on U.S. microchips. And the CHIPS Act under the Biden administration sought to tighten that relationship in order to reduce dependence on semiconductors produced in Asia. So, imposing tariffs on Mexican manufacturers will also penalize American companies that produce components for those medical devices. That means the disappearance of U.S. jobs and the U.S. competitive edge in high-tech exports. And that’s only one industry.

The same perverse economic logic applies to U.S. car manufacturing, since there is no such thing as a completely American-made car. About 40 percent of car parts are made overseas, with Mexico supplying last year about 42 percent of those parts and Canada 10 percent. Trump, apparently unaware of the reality of supply chains, stepped back recently to consider a temporary waiver on tariffs for car parts to help Detroit make the transition to U.S.-made parts. But why would anyone make those huge investments into car-part manufacturing plants in the United States if a future president—or the ever-mercurial Trump himself—might change economic policy and strand those assets?

So, forget about the advantages of creating a North American market that relies on comparative advantages (more hydroelectric power in Canada, a longer growing season in Mexico). Trump sees a trade deficit and believes that the country is ripping off the United States. (Wait, didn’t he go to the Wharton School? Did he skip Econ 101?)

Yes, there are problems with globalization, from a race to the bottom around labor and environmental standards to the ridiculous carbon emissions associated with the modern equivalent of sending coals to Newcastle. But Trump’s tariffs are not designed to address any of these defects.

Instead, Trump’s moves will simply reorient global trade around the United States, just like it’s a huge, stupid rock in the middle of a river. At the moment, fully three-quarters of Canadian and Mexican exports go the United States (and around a third of U.S. exports go to Canada and Mexico). Despite the convenience of exporting to a neighbor, Canada and Mexico are going to start looking elsewhere to sell their products. Other countries—China, Germany—are going to reap the advantages of Trump’s economic idiocy.

The Future of North America

Canada is not going to become the fifty-first American state. Even if Canadians favored such a move—and 80 percent strongly oppose it—the Republican Party would ultimately vote to keep Canada out. Republicans don’t even want to make Washington DC a state, for fear of adding two more Democrats to the Senate. They’re obviously not going to welcome all those left-of-center Canadians into the U.S. Congress.

Instead, Trump is pushing Canada further away. It will move closer to Europe. Despite current trade tensions with China, it might mend fences and form a stronger economic bond there as well.

U.S. relations with Mexico may also go south, very quickly. The Trump administration has been considering drone strikesagainst Mexican drug cartels. Although the two countries are coordinating surveillance of these cartels, Trump is reserving the right to strike unilaterally. “We reject any form of intervention or interference,” Claudia Sheinbaum has responded.

Ordinarily, the three countries would handle their disputes—the economic ones at least—through the revision of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the replacement of NAFTA that Trump himself supported. But Trump’s unilateral actions throw into question whether the USMCA will survive. The U.S. president might well threaten to withdraw from the agreement if Mexico and Canada don’t make future concessions, especially around keeping China out of their markets. Trump might aim for two bilateral treaties instead.

Bullying, alas, does often produce results. Trump can strong-arm weaker parties—Colombia, Columbia University—into making agreements. But that only works in the short term. Over time, the weak find stronger allies so that they can eventually stand up to the bullying.

China and the European Union are patiently watching Trump’s destruction of North America. Sure, they’ll suffer some collateral damage. But the opportunities that Trump’s disruptions are producing will turn Liberation Day for America into a Christmas bonanza for everyone else.

John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus, where this article originally appeared.

Trans liberation

UK Supreme Court backs bigots and transphobes

Monday 21 April 2025, by Paris Wilder


On 16 April 2025, the UK Supreme Court ruled that “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 (the EA) refer to the sex assigned at birth in a case that was pushed for and funded by the UK gender critical movement. In essence, the judgment has found that being a woman entails having an XX chromosome, large gametes and the ability to produce children. This judgment means that trans women with gender recognition certificates (GRC) will no longer be legally defined as women under the EA.

This is a fundamental attack on the human rights of trans people.

The case was brought by the gender critical campaign group For Women Scotland (which is funded by J K Rowling). They argued that transgender women should not be viewed as “women” for the purposes of occupying places on public boards set aside for “women”.

Both the Scottish government and the Equality and Human Rights Commission intervened in this case to clarify that the term “woman” under the EA included trans women who hold GRCs. But today the Supreme Court has overturned those interpretations.

The immediate result is that trans women will no longer be able to sit on public boards in places set aside for “women” under the EA. But the decision has wide-reaching implications for how trans people live day-to-day.

The purpose of this ruling is to discriminate and force transgender people back into hiding, because the real fear has always been that heteronormative homogeny will collapse thus threatening the capitalist, patriarchal superiority by which our world is run.

This new ruling will be extremely detrimental to trans people across the country – both for those who have already gone through the very arduous process of getting their GRCs and for those who do not yet have GRCs or who do not intend to obtain a GRC. The judgment comes as the trans community faces attacks on their health care following the recent Cass review and record-high levels of violence from the everyday public (a 186% increase in half a decade). Whilst gender critical “feminists” believe that the ruling will provide security for cis women in its strict definition of what a woman is, the decision will only harm cis women and create even more insecurity for trans people.

In summarising the judgment, Lord Hodge was adamant that the act will continue to give transgender people “protection, not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and harassment in substance in their acquired gender”. However, this leads to further questions rather than concrete answers. How do you balance sex characteristics with gender reassignment characteristics? How do you prove sex discrimination when you are not recognized as that sex? What about gender non-conforming or non-binary people who do not align with their sex assigned at birth but do not ‘choose’ a gender to be reassigned to? And what of intersex people whose ‘biological sex’ does not fall easily into this rigid view of male and female.

Hate built on lies

The ruling reinforces the damaging falsehood that trans women are dangerous predators – men disguised as women to gain access to safe spaces – and that trans men are but long-lost lesbian sisters, confused and taken advantage of by the woke trans agenda. Both stereotypes strip transgender people of agency, safety, humanity and dignity.

The counter argument from the gender critical movement is one of ‘protecting women and girls’. The sentiment stems from a real problem in society of male oppression against women; it is not unfathomable to expect women to act out of fear. However, pitting a vulnerable group of women against the safety of all women is a falsehood peddled by wealthy, right wing, reactionary figures to fight against an ‘oppressive woke agenda’.

As Judith Butler, the famous gender theorist said, “feminism has been about contesting received notions of what a woman is”. The continuation of feminism rests on keeping this question open as a response to a society that tells women ‘you’re good for social reproduction & you’re good for housework’. So, closing this fundamental question about what a woman is, defies the work of feminists who have systematically fought for women’s liberation away from these oppressive gender norms that keep us enslaved under the capitalist system.

And what of the practical impacts that this ruling will have on cis women? What do we tell our young women when we say ‘a woman is only biological sex’, that a man is also only biological sex? That because of a man’s ’s biological sex, he is right to partake in oppressive structures of male hierarchy? That his desire to rape and sexually assault women is justified because of his biology?

This ruling is much more than a question of ‘who is being protected’ because it raises the question of ‘protected from who’. There is no evidence to suggest that cis women are at risk of violence from trans women. The high rates of sexual assault and rape on women from cis men are continually ignored. More rapes and assaults are suffered at the hands of family, friends and lovers than through assaults in single sex spaces like bathrooms.

Trans people, especially trans women and even more so racially oppressed trans women, are at especially high risk of assault and sexual assault. Framing them as the problem amounts to a shockingly cruel attempt to shift focus away from the social structures that put all women in danger. Additionally, cis women who do not conform to feminine sterotypes in their gender presentation are at risk of being ‘transvestigated’; there have been many instances of cis women, particularly butch lesbian women, being harassed and attacked when using women’s facilities because they are perceived to be ‘men’. This judgement will further empower those who wish to carry out harassment and attacks of this kind.

To see how this judgment will harm cis women rather than protect them – as argued by the gender critical movement – we need look no further than the following recent example. In 2021, the gender critical movement attempted to remove Gillick’s Competence, a law that states that under 16 year olds can get medical treatment without their parents consent, claiming this was a gateway to young people transitioning. However, upon further inspection, this law is used mainly by young cis women trying to receive contraception without parental consent rather than by young trans people.

Prominent anti-trans gender critical “feminist” Kellie-Jay Keen (aka Posie Parker) spoke openly in favour of re-thinking Gillicks Competence not only in regards to anti-trans rights but also of children’s access to ‘dangerous contraceptives’ and ‘abortion’. On further investigation, it was found that Posie Parker’s tours were funded by the Conservative Political Action Coalition who spoke openly about the ‘eradication of transgenderism’. The gender critical movement directly aligns itself with far-right anti-abortion groups, opening the door to the far right under the guise of feminism and protection of women.

Not just trans women

Today’s interpretation of the act is not only obviously transphobic but also deeply queerphobic and misogynistic. The judgment seems to suggest that trans people will no longer be able to use single sex spaces that align with their gender.

The purpose of this ruling is to discriminate and force transgender people back into hiding, because the real fear has always been that heteronormative homogeny will collapse thus threatening the capitalist, patriarchal superiority by which our world is run.

The women in the gender critical movement act based on fear; fear that their position as women is under attack. They fail to recognise that their position as women is one of oppression under patriarchal capitalism and instead only entrench their own oppression further by using their power, and the history of feminist movements, to oppress another marginalised group. It is clear to anyone willing to see it, that it is much easier to move through the world as a cis man; there is simply no need for men to disguise themselves as trans women to gain access to women and take advantage of their bodies. We already live in a world where this is easy and expected. Our lack of rape and sexual assault convictions speak for themselves. In a world where a cis man can be found responsible for rape and still become President of the United States – twice – why would any cis male predator go through the difficulty of pretending to be trans in order to rape cis women?

This amendment ruling is a dark day for the trans community and intersectional, non-exclusionary feminists everywhere. It is a sign of the growing authoritarian views in society that reduce our powers to live as we want, instead forcing us into more and more narrow definitions of what it is to be human.

But we must continue to fight against it, call out the connections to far right hate groups, and name the real cause for the oppression of women and girls, including trans women and girls: capitalism.

AntiCapitalist Resistance 18 April 2025


Attached documentsuk-supreme-court-backs-bigots-and-transphobes_a8953.pdf (PDF - 913.6 KiB)
Extraction PDF [->article8953]

Paris Wilder
Paris Wilder is a member of AntiCapitalist Resistance in London


International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.

New Poll: Americans Reject Deporting Foreigners for ‘Wrongthink’ on Middle East

by Daniel McAdams Posted onApril 21, 2025

An important new public opinion survey taken by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has revealed very little American support for the deportation of legal foreign guests in the United States for expressing support for Palestine in its current conflict with Israel.

Responding to FIRE’s quarterly National Speech Index survey conducted by the Dartmouth Polarization Research Lab this month, a mere one-quarter of the respondents supported the deportation of non-citizens legally in the US for expressing pro-Palestine views. A solid majority of 52 percent are strongly opposed or opposed to such measures.

The survey result comes as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has boasted of revoking “at least 300” student visas for the “crime” of expressing a position on middle east politics that the current US Administration disagrees with. Derided by Rubio as “lunatics” for opposing ongoing US government support for Israel as Gaza is flattened, many foreign students have been arrested by masked, armed federal agents – who refuse to even identify themselves – and sent to a federal detention facility in Louisiana.

In the case of Turkish PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk, the State Department had already produced a report concluding that she neither supported terrorism nor anti-Semitism before masked federal agents accosted her on the street and arrested her.

Her “crime” was co-authoring an op-ed in her university newspaper a year earlier criticizing Israel.

In many cases these arrests are carried out based on lists provided to the federal government by a militant, extremist group called Betar. The group is so radical that it has even been added to the pro-Israel ADL’s “extremism” list, yet somehow it has the ear of the Trump Administration.

Commenting on the findings, FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens said, “deporting someone simply for disagreeing with the government’s foreign policy preferences strikes at the very freedoms the First Amendment was designed to protect. Americans are right to reject this kind of viewpoint-based punishment.”

Additionally, the shocking arrests and incarceration of legal residents or guests for committing no crime beyond expressing a particular point of view has begun to eat away at Americans’ confidence that the Trump Administration can be trusted to uphold the First Amendment. From Inauguration day until the FIRE poll this month, a majority of Americans have now lost confidence in the Trump Administration’s respect for our most sacred right of free expression:

Many Americans mistakenly believe government “grants” rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and that it grants them to American citizens only. Constitutional scholar Andrew Napolitano dismisses such claims, writing:

We know from the writings of James Madison – who authored the Bill of Rights – that the Founders regarded the freedom of speech as a personal individual natural right. It is also, of course, expressly protected from government interference and reprisal in the First Amendment. The courts have ruled that it protects all persons – no matter their immigration status – who may think as they wish, say what they think, publish what they say, worship or not and associate with whomever they choose.

While many supporters of the Trump Administration are currently applauding the arrest and deportation of legal foreign residents who express political views they do not support, they would do well to keep in mind that the vicissitudes of the American body politic may well soon turn against them and their views, and – particularly given President Trump’s stated intent to begin deporting American citizens as well – once the trap of a precedent is set they may not be able to wiggle out of it.

Indispensable pro-liberty intellectual Jim Bovard expressed it best in a recent article:

What legal perils will pro-freedom protestors face in the coming years if the Ozturk rule is canonized, entitling federal officials to crush any disfavored opinion? Big-spending Democrats may consecrate Modern Monetary Theory and demonize anyone who criticizes the Federal Reserve. I took this ‘Kill the Central Bank’ photo of Ron Paul supporters at a 2008 Capitol Hill event for his presidential campaign. If the same protestors had peacefully carried the same banner within a half mile of the Capitol on January 6, they likely would have been nailed on a bevy of federal charges. Many politicians have made stark their hatred of libertarians and freedom advocates.

As long as anyone is sitting in shackles in a federal detention center simply for writing an op-ed, freedom of speech is not safe for anyone in the United States.

While a trip into the bowels of social media suggests a torch-bearing mob rallying to send those guilty of the “wrongthink” of the day to some El Salvadorian gulag, the good work of the freedom of expression organization FIRE reassures us that cooler heads continue to prevail. However, by no means does that suggest we can afford to let our guard down for a minute. This is not an issue of partisanship, but of principle. The mob – whether left or right – must not be allowed to take over.

Reprinted from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Daniel McAdams is Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and co-Producer/co-Host, Ron Paul Liberty Report. Daniel served as the foreign affairs, civil liberties, and defense/intel policy advisor to U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, MD (R-Texas) from 2001 until Dr. Paul’s retirement at the end of 2012. From 1993-1999 he worked as a journalist based in Budapest, Hungary, and traveled through the former communist bloc as a human rights monitor and election observer.

USA

Lessons of abductions and terror

Sunday 20 April 2025, by Against the Current Editors


The abduction of Mahmoud Khalil — the Palestinian graduate student and green card holder seized March 8 at his Columbia University residence — is now multiplied by other high-profile detentions and deportation threats, and dozens or even hundreds of unpublicized cases. Secretary of State Marco Rubio openly boasts as much.


These arrests and disappearances highlight a reign of terror confronting student visa and even green card holders. They pull together multiple interwoven aspects of the five-alarm civil and human rights emergency in the United States and the global U.S. empire:

• The U.S.-Israeli genocide in Palestine, which now openly threatens the forced depopulation of Gaza and the mass ethnic cleansing and Israel’s pending annexation of the West Bank.

• The drive to criminalize protest actions against the genocide, especially on college campuses.

• The collusion of the pro-Israeli Zionist and Christian-nationalist far right including Campus Watch, Betar USA, and Canary Mission identifying student and faculty activists for government targeting, expulsion and/or deportation.

• The intention of the Trump administration to destroy U.S. universities as institutions of scientific, cultural and critical thought — and the spectacular cowardice of college administrations at Columbia, the University of Michigan and others in capitulating to these attacks.

• The lawless conduct of the Trump gang, including blatant evasion of court orders blocking deportations.

• The connections between the far-right campaigns in both the United States and Israel, aimed at consolidating authoritarian rule in both countries.

We’ll discuss some specific cases. First, however, there’s no denying the overall terrifying moment facing targeted groups in the United States, to say nothing of Palestine — or tens of millions of people globally facing mass epidemics or starvation from the peremptory cutoff of U.S. funding of critical survival programs.

At the same time, vital services provided by federal government agencies and their work forces are being shredded on a daily basis with pending disastrous consequences for public health, military veterans’ care, public schools, the postal service, and soon Social Security and Medicare.

How to resist a multi-front assault that’s clearly designed to have such a paralyzing effect? First, it’s necessary to recognize the systemic and coordinated character of the attacks, so that the targets aren’t compartmentalized and the defense efforts isolated and divided.
The Targets

Mahmoud Khalil, Dr. Rasha Alawieh and Prof. Badar Khan Suri are not separate cases from, say, the threatened cut of $175 million in federal grants to the University of Pennsylvania for the crime of a transgender athlete participating in women’s sports, or a presidential decree annulling federal workers’ union contracts and bargaining rights.

Those interconnections are part of what brought out an estimated several million people April 5 demanding “Hands Off” into the streets of hundreds of U.S. cities and towns — large and small, blue states, red states and purple states — furious at the crimes of the Trump-Musk gang, and aghast over the astonishing market free-fall precipitated by Trump’s tariff rampage against the world economy.

The staying power of this popular resistance remains to be tested, but April 5 was one hell of a start.

To review some basic facts: Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia graduate with a green card and eight-months pregnant wife Noor Abdalla, was grabbed by Department of Homeland Security plainclothes agents as the couple returned to their university-owned residence.

Columbia had ignored Khalil‘s requests for protection as he’d sensed he was being followed. A prominent activist during last year’s encampment and a negotiator for the peaceful resolution of the occupation, Khalil has never been charged with any crime or university disciplinary action.

Upon being told his “student visa” (nonexistent) and then his green card were “revoked,” Mahmoud was taken to New Jersey and whisked to an isolated Louisiana detention facility before courts could intervene. A federal judge ordered the case to be moved back to New Jersey. These days, whether the Trump regime will obey this and other rulings remains to be seen.

Columbia student Yunseo Chung, 21, is a permanent resident who has lived in the United States since age 7. Now at an undisclosed location, she’s suing to prevent being deported after ICE agents raided and searched Columbia residences on the pretext that the school or its residences are “harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus.”

Neither “illegal” nor charged with anything, under what conceivable legal theory is Ms. Chung subject to deportation? Supposedly, participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations makes her “a detriment to U.S. foreign policy objectives” under the terms of a 1952 McCarthy-era law authorizing deportation on those grounds.

Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a kidney specialist, surgeon and assistant professor at Brown University Medicine, returning from a trip to Lebanon, was detained for 36 hours and then put on a return flight — in violation of an emergency court order barring her deportation.

The ostensible “grounds for removal”: Dr. Alawieh’s attendance at the funeral of Hasan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader assassinated by Israel, where tens of thousands of Lebanese were present.

These are far from the only cases of Trump’s agents evading a court order, as illustrated by the mass removal of alleged Venezuelan or Salvadoran “gang members” — absent proof or any shred of legal process — to the deadly “super-max” prison in El Salvador.

Despite admitting an “administrative error,” the government says the courts have “no jurisdiction” to order the return of the wrongfully deported Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a father living with protected status in the United States, who was picked up March 12 in Baltimore after finishing his factory shift.

Ranjani Srinivasan, a student from India whose doctoral work in urban planning is almost completed, was “disenrolled” by Columbia after ICE agents arrived at her apartment and, failing to gain entry to detain her, said her visa was cancelled and informed her that she had 15 days to leave the country.

Now seeking asylum in Canada but not disclosing her location to protect her safety, she told CBC News that she had no actual involvement in campus protests (she was apparently spotted in a crowd last spring at a time when her campus residence had been blocked off).

Grant Miner, president of the Columbia graduate student union and a fifth-year doctoral student, was fired from his job the day before bargaining on union’s contract began and expelled for pro-Palestinian activity.

Columbia’s despicable behavior in suppressing and expelling students last year is now compounded with its cowardly kowtowing to a set of draconian demands from the Trump White House. These measures include enhanced campus police powers, and banning masks and placing its highly regarded Middle East, African and Asian Studies center under external “trusteeship.”

It is strongly suspected that members of the university Trustees board actually fingered Khalil to the government. As professor emeritus and renowned historian Rashid Khalidi wrote in The Guardian (March 25, 2025):

“After Friday’s capitulation, Columbia barely merits the name of a university, since its teaching and scholarship on the Middle East, and soon much else, will soon be vetted by a ‘senior vice provost for inclusive pedagogy,’ in reality a senior vice provost for Israeli propaganda.

“Partisans of Israel, infuriated that scholarship on Palestine had found a place at Columbia, once named it ‘Bir Zeit on the Hudson.’ But if it any longer merits the name of a university, it should be called Vichy on the Hudson.” [Bir Zeit is the leading Palestinian university on the West Bank. “Vichy” refers to the World War II French puppet regime under Nazi occupation —ed.]

Badar Khan Suri is a Georgetown professor and postdoctoral scholar on religion and peace processes in the Middle East and South Asia, legally in the United States on a research scholarship and professorial visa. An Indian national who lives with his U.S. citizen wife and three children in Rosslyn, Virginia, when he arrived home March 17 after a Ramadan iftar meal celebration, Suri was taken into custody by masked federal agents without being accused of any crime.

In just over 72 hours, he was transferred to multiple immigration detention centers and then to an ICE staging center in Alexandria, Louisiana. Prof. Suri’s colleagues suspect that the government’s real target is his Palestinian-American wife Mapheze Saleh, who’s a citizen and can’t be rounded up for deportation.

On March 25, masked DHS agents similarly grabbed Tufts student activist Rumeysa Ozturk from the sidewalk, pulling her into an unmarked car. Like Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa was transported to an ICE Louisiana detention center without the knowledge of her lawyers or family.

Using the excuse of “Jewish safety” and the need to combat allegedly widespread and persistent antisemitism (a bonkers exaggeration, if there ever was one) at Harvard, Columbia, etc., should also be seen as a version of a standard rightwing ploy.

It is perversely aimed at getting the targets of these illegal and undemocratic assaults to “blame the Jews.” This is being done to deflect from the Right’s own agenda (that of MAGA, Christian Zionists, etc.) to destroy the authority of the liberal academic institutions; to detract attention from genuine antisemitism on the Right and in the Trump administration itself; to prohibit truth-telling about what is happening in Gaza; to engage in a campaign of increasing white supremacist ideology in education and elsewhere; and more.

We must stand up to the capitulators in academe and elsewhere who give credence to this lie, and not allow this crass exploitation of Jewish identity to happen — for the sake of Palestinian lives and for everyone’s future. A powerful example was set April 2 by Jewish Columbia students who chained themselves to the campus fence demanding freedom for their friend Mahmoud Khalil.
Crisis and Emergency Fightback

The present course — from rule by executive decree to terrorizing immigrant communities and pro-Palestinian activists to abolishing birthright citizenship — leads toward the substantive destruction of constitutional government in the United States, leaving some decorative wallpaper in place to disguise the rot.

Alongside the cowardice of many college administrations is that of some leading law firms capitulating to Trump. In contrast, civil liberties organizations and attorneys for targets of deportation are energetically intervening in court cases and sounding the alarm in media outlets. But from the top leadership of the Democratic Party comes deafening silence on the destruction of Palestine.

Senator Cory Booker’s March 31-April 1 speechathon pointed to multiple Trump-Musk abuses, but found no time to reference the slaughter in Palestine. Nor did this new hero of the Democrats join the 15 Senators who voted for Bernie Sanders’ resolution to disapprove the new massive shipment of U.S. weapons for Israel. And while dozens of Democratic members of Congress have issued a letter challenging Mahmoud Khalil’s detention, minority leader Hakeem Jeffries’ name is conspicuously absent.

To be sure, the repression we’re witnessing is embedded in a much broader crisis. It includes the blatant white-supremacist assaults on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs; the erasure of Black history and struggle from the Smithsonian museums, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Defense Department website and elsewhere.

There’s also the potential for Trump’s tariff mania to ignite a U.S., North American and world economic slump. Some of these issues are discussed in this issue of Against the Current, including Kim Moody’s article on the economy and the Democrats’ inability to effectively respond.

The fightback is up to the grassroots, and begins with the defense of all those in the crosshairs of Trump’s repressive rampage. Of course, any supporter of basic First Amendment rights should be demanding Mahmoud Khalil’s immediate release, whatever their views of activism for Palestine.

At the same time, the agitation and activism for Palestinian freedom and against the genocide will and must continue, inspired by Khalil’s own example and courage.

We must insist that the fate of the Palestinian people as a mass human sacrifice on the altar of political cynicism, imperialism and settler colonialism is no isolated matter. It is inextricably tied to the struggles in our own society and the future of us all.

Against the Current 12 March 2025

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The Pope Has Died, and the Palestinian People Have Lost an Important Advocate

Notes from the Edge of the Narrative Matrix

by Caitlin Johnstone / April 21st, 2025

Pope Francis has died after using his Easter Sunday address to call for peace in Gaza. I don’t know who the cardinals will pick to replace him, but I do know with absolute certainty that there are transnational intelligence operations in the works to make sure they select a more reliable supporter of Israel. They’ve probably been working on it since his health started failing.

Anyone who’s been reading me for a while knows my attitude toward Roman Catholicism can be described as openly hostile because of my family history with the Church’s sexual abuses under Cardinal Pell, but as far as popes go this one was decent. Francis had been an influential critic of Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza, calling for investigation of genocide allegations and denouncing the bombing of hospitals and the murder of humanitarian workers and civilians. He’d been personally calling the only Catholic parish in Gaza by phone every night during the Israeli onslaught, even as his health deteriorated.

In other words, he was a PR problem for Israel.

I hope another compassionate human being is announced as the next leader of the Church, but there are definitely forces pushing for a different outcome right now. There is no shortage terrible men who could be chosen for the position.

*****

https://x.com/caitoz/status/1913617746052386854

*****

Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Omer Dostri told Israel’s Channel 12 News on Saturday that a deal with Hamas to release all hostages was a non-starter for the Israeli government, because it would require a commitment to lasting peace.

“At the moment, there can’t be one deal since Hamas isn’t saying: ‘Come get your hostages and that’s that,’ it’s demanding an end to the war,” Dostri said in the interview.

This comes as Hamas offers to return all hostages, stop digging tunnels, and put away its weapons in exchange for a permanent ceasefire. This is what Israel is dismissing as unacceptable.

The Gaza holocaust was never about freeing the hostages. This has been clear ever since Israel began aggressively bombing the place where the hostages are living, and it’s gotten clearer and clearer ever since. Last month Netanyahu made it clear that Israel intends to carry out Trump’s ethnic cleansing plans for the enclave even if Hamas fully surrenders.

When Washington’s podium people say the “war” in Gaza can end if Hamas releases the hostages and lays down their arms, they are lying. They are lying to ensure that the genocide continues.

When Israel apologists say “Release the hostages!” in response to criticisms of Israeli atrocities, they are lying. They know this has never had anything to do with hostages. They are lying to help Israel commit more atrocities.

It was never about the hostages. It was never about Hamas. What it’s really about was obvious from day one: purging Palestinians from Palestinian land. That’s all this has ever been.

*****

After executing 15 medical workers in Gaza and getting caught lying about it, the IDF has investigated itself and attributed the massacre to “professional failures” and “operational misunderstandings”, finding no evidence of any violation of its code of ethics.

It’s crazy to think about how much investigative journalism went into exposing this atrocity only to have Israel go “Yeah turns out we did an oopsie, no further action required, thank you to our allies for the latest shipment of bombs.”

*****

The death toll from Trump’s terrorist attack on a Yemen fuel port is now up to 80, with 150 wounded. Again, the US has not even tried to claim this was a military target. They said they targeted this critical civilian infrastructure to hurt the economic interests of the Houthis.

Those who are truly anti-war don’t support Trump. Those who support Trump aren’t truly anti-war.

I still get people telling me I need to be nicer to Trump supporters because they’re potential allies in resisting war, which to me is just so silly. What are they even talking about? Trump supporters, per definition, currently support the one person who is most singularly responsible for the horrific acts of war we are seeing in the middle east right now. Telling me they’re my allies is exactly as absurd as telling me Biden supporters were my allies last year would have been, except nobody was ever dumb enough to try to make that argument.

If you still support Trump in April 2025 after seeing all his monstrous behavior in Gaza and Yemen, then we are on completely opposite sides. You might think you’re on the same side as me because you oppose war in theory, but when the rubber meets the road it turns out you’ll go along with any acts of mass military slaughter no matter how evil so long as they are done by a Republican. We are not allies, we are enemies. You side with the most egregious warmonger in the world right now, and I want your side to fail.

*****

People say “It’s the Muslims!” or “It’s the Jews!”

No, it’s the Americans. The US-centralized empire is responsible for most of our world’s problems.

It says so much about the strength of the imperial propaganda machine that this isn’t more obvious to more people.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Caitlin Johnstone has a reader-supported Newsletter. All her work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. Her work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece and want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. All works are co-authored with her husband Tim Foley. Read other articles by Caitlin.