Dealing With Government Repression

By Ted Glick

November 15, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


Art by Jacob Lawrence


“Ultimately, what I have learned is that government repression can have a disruptive impact on our work, but we can turn a negative into a positive. The extent to which we can creatively, intelligently and fearlessly demonstrate the truth of what we are about when responding to what they are doing to us is the extent to which we will strengthen and build our movement.”

-from my book, Burglar for Peace: Lessons Learned in the Catholic Left’s Resistance to the Vietnam War.

(Much of what follows is an edited version of a section in the concluding chapter of the Burglar for Peace book.)

My first years of progressive activism and organizing took place during the presidency of Richard Nixon, without doubt one of, if not the, most repressive Presidential administrations we have experienced in the US in the modern era. It was under Nixon that the Republican Party with its “southern strategy” began its move toward becoming the kind of ultra-rightist entity that allowed pathological liar, racist and sexual predator Donald Trump to be elected President in November of 2016, and again two weeks ago.

During Nixon’s first term, from 1969 to 1973, he oversaw the use of government agencies to attempt to destroy groups like the Black Panther Party and Young Lords, including armed attacks by police leading to deaths. Newly-enacted conspiracy laws were used to indict leaders of the peace movement and other movements. An entirely illegal and clandestine apparatus was created to sabotage the campaigns of his political opponents in the Democratic Party, leading to the midnight break-in at the Watergate Hotel. This eventually led to the exposure of this apparatus and Nixon’s forced resignation from office in 1974.

I personally experienced this repressive apparatus primarily via my inclusion as a defendant in the Harrisburg 8 case. We were charged with a supposed anti-Vietnam War conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger and blow up heating tunnels under Washington, DC. When the case finally came to trial, the jury in conservative Harrisburg, Pa. was hung 10-2 for acquittal, after which the Nixon government dropped the case.

I learned during those Nixon years about how to deal with government repression. Unfortunately, given the reality of a second Trump administration about to take power, these are lessons very relevant for today.

There are a number of things which are essential to successful resistance to government repression. When I say “successful” I don’t mean that there won’t be casualties on our side, people behind bars, some for months or years, or people physically attacked and injured or worse, or job losses or greater economic hardship. We need to accept that under a Trump/MAGA regime this is all likely.

Several things which can lessen all of those negatives are these:

-good legal representation in court. I was glad to see the ACLU’s strong public statement about planning to do their job, and there are many other movement groups, like the National Lawyers Guild, and lawyers that I expect will do the same.

-a loving community of support. This can be within an organization, within the local area where we live, via social media or other forms of communication, and/or just within a family. We all need to do our best to help foster and strengthen these necessary support networks.

-broad community support when repression happens. If people and groups that are attacked, in whatever way, are not seen as, or do not come to be known as, honest and genuine human beings trying to be a positive force, it is going to be hard to rally and manifest the breadth of support probably necessary. Indeed, if we are such people already, attacks on us can immediately or over time serve to undercut support for the repressors, strengthen our movement of movements.

Another critical aspect is the need for us, white progressives in particular, to internalize the reality that there is a disparity between how repressive government deals with people of color, Black, Latino/a, First Nation and Asian, compared with people of European descent, white people. The historical realities of broken treaties, slavery, Jim Crow segregation, assumed white dominance and institutionalized racism continue to have their negative, discriminatory impacts. In 2024 it was manifested primarily by Trump’s repeated attacks on and threats to people of color immigrants.

Also, clearly, transgender people are right up there at the top of MAGA’s enemies list.

Those of us of European descent as well as all progressives must be conscious of these realities and act accordingly, ready to speak up and challenge unequal, discriminatory or explicitly racist, sexist and transphobic words and actions whenever they happen.

Another lesson as far as dealing with government repression is to not let it paralyze or divide organizations or movements.

This is one of the objectives of unjust governments trying to repress those who challenge its policies and practices. It is a known fact that government infiltrators are trained to look for differences within a group or movement and make efforts to deepen and harden them. That is why we need to be about the continued development of a movement culture which is respectful and healthy. Within such a cultural environment, it is much harder for people trying to create divisions to succeed.

It’s similar in regards to agent provocateurs, people who try to get others to engage in violent speech or action toward police or others representing government.

Anger against injustice and oppression is not just legitimate; it is a necessary component of successfully building a movement for real change. But anger needs to be used in a disciplined way. Those who are quick to call cops “pigs” to their face, engage in physical violence, or in other ways display anger negatively, ways which will be used to discredit and isolate us, are either government/corporate agents or are people who need an intervention. They need to be taken aside and spoken to in a direct, to-the-point and loving way about the counter-productiveness of what they are doing.

It’s a drag that we’re on the defensive on a national level and will be for at least a couple years to come, but that’s where we are. There are so many issues that we won’t be able to move forward on nationally, the deepening climate emergency being a huge one imho. But in this time of testing we owe it to the best within us and to those coming after us to stand as strong and gentle and loving as we can as we go about our essential work and activism. Generations past have pointed the way for us, and generations to come are counting on us.

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.

Bracing for Trump 2.0

Maleeha Lodhi 

November 11, 2024 

THE world was already bracing for Donald Trump’s return to power. And it is a stunning comeback. His clean sweep in the election, winning the White House, Senate and most likely the House of Representatives, will make him a more powerful president than he was in his first term, with a stronger mandate.

What his foreign policy will look like is being feverishly assessed across the world. Will it mimic his first term’s America First approach which translated into an America Alone policy? Will it prove as disruptive and destabilising as in the past?

Influencing assessments is the widespread view among the international community that Washington’s engagement with the world in recent years has neither been sustained nor consistent, which raises questions about US reliability. This at a time when the US is no longer the sole dominant power in an increasingly multipolar world, which places limits on its ability to shape global geopolitics and determine outcomes.

Trump’s unpredictable and impulsive personality will intensify uncertainty about the course of American policy especially given his penchant for suddenly changing course. His ‘America First’ unilateralist worldview created much discontinuity and volatility in foreign policy in his first term and dented America’s international standing. His isolationist approach also made the US retrench from its global role.

One certainty, with far-reaching implications for global stability and economy, is that Trump 2.0 will continue the well-established US policy of containment of China. A bipartisan consensus now sees China as a strategic adversary and challenge. Trump might escalate the confrontation over trade and technology issues. During the campaign he threatened to impose 60 per cent tariffs across the board on Chinese imports and end China’s most favoured-nation status. Whether he raises tariffs to this extent is doubtful as he will have to calculate its impact on American consumers; costlier imports would push up prices and that too when inflation is a challenge. It would also pose a risk to European economies as China is Europe’s biggest trading partner.

During the campaign, Trump also said he would seek a good relationship with Beijing. In a Fox News interview, he said while there was no greater critic of China than him, he respected China and President Xi Jinping. Though Trump will take a tough position on trade issues, his business instincts will urge him to be transactional and open to striking deals with China on trade and perhaps other contentious issues, including Taiwan. While intensifying the rivalry with China, Trump would want to avoid a collision course or military conflict over Taiwan. He has, in fact, been critical of Taiwan, saying it should pay the US for defending it.

Disruptions in US policy are likely at a time when the world is already in a state of chaos.

Trump has proposed a 10 to 20pc tariff on all imported goods, which will strain relations with America’s European allies, who Trump treated with derision in his first term, casting them as free-loaders. Aimed at all countries that have a trade surplus with the US, this would nonetheless be hard to implement. It would be a blow to developing economies and dampen global economic growth.

While Trump is an avowed protectionist, the question is how far he will go to press this agenda. According to economic experts, his plan to raise tariffs and order mass deportations of immigrants will further fuel inflation that Trump has promised to tackle.

Where a radical change in US policy is likely is on the Ukraine war. Often claiming he can end the war “in a day”, Trump is expected to push for talks to end a conflict he says “should never have happened”. This is cause for concern for Europe. Trump has said he will press Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin to enter negotiations for a peace deal. He may not be averse to an outcome that favours Moscow in which Ukraine has to cede territory. He is unlikely to respond to reservations of European nations in this regard.

Trump has frequently chastised Nato allies for not sharing the defence burden. He has also said in his second term, America will fundamentally rethink “Nato’s purpose and mission” and ask European nations to reimburse the US billions of dollars for military supplies it sent to Ukraine. This may be bluster but there is little doubt that Trump and the Republican Party do not want to continue military funding to Ukraine.

European allies, therefore, have much to worry about. They have to deal with a president who has shown little commitment to European security, and who declared during the campaign that “in many cases, our allies are worse than our so-called enemies”. Trump sees European countries not contributing enough to their own security and taking advantage of the US, a situation he wants to end. He has no patience with alliances. Or with multilateralism.

The crisis in the Middle East presents a clear and present challenge that Trump might seek to address by forcing a ceasefire in Gaza. While avoiding specifics, he repeatedly said during the campaign he wants to see peace in the region and Israel should end the war quickly — by winning it and “finishing the job”. He is even more pro-Israel than President Joe Biden and has no empathy for the plight of the Palestinians (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once called Trump the best friend Israel ever had in the White House).

Nor has Trump shown any commitment to a two-state solution even though that remains the US position. Any deal he might push for will be on Israel’s terms and will also aim to goad other Arab countries to accede to the Abraham Accords — his signature Middle East initiative in his first term. This will principally involve encouraging Saudi Arabia to normalise ties with Israel, although Riyadh has made it clear this will only be possible once a Palestinian state is established.

Unpredictability is likely to be the hallmark of Trump’s foreign policy. But because he has a transactional view of international relations that would also open his policies to pragmatic possibilities. The world can expect disruptions in US policy at a pivotal time when wars and crises hang in the balance in what UN Secretary General António Guterres calls an “age of chaos”.

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2024

Trumped again

Mahir Ali 

Published November 13, 2024

DAWN

DONKEYS are reputed to be stubborn beasts. That possible misinterpretation of their instinct for self-preservation characterises a party that has utilised Equus asinusas a symbol since Andrew Jackson embraced a hostile description of himself as a jackass back in 1828.

The Democrats’ election symbol might be an insult to a species whose intelligence has been underrated since donkeys were domesticated 6,000 years ago, but its traditional implications accurately reflect the party hierarchy’s mindset after last week’s devastating defeat.

The post-mortems began pouring in as soon as it became obvious that Kamala Harris had been trounced by Donald Trump. Yesterday, the president-elect was due to be hosted in the Oval Office by a man who had described him as a dire threat to democracy.

Joe Biden’s claim wasn’t exactly inaccurate, but it ignored his own party’s contribution to the promotion of plutocracy. It may not have been initiated by the Democrats, but they ran with the neoliberal trend exe­mplified by the Reagan administration.

The Democrats have enabled him once more.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama lent their imagined heft to the Harris campaign, and both ignored the issues whereby their presidencies led, respectively, to George W. Bush and Trump. The Clinton presidency did not deviate all that much from the Reagan era, and Obama effectively pursued both the neoconservatism and neoliberalism of his Republican predecessor.

No one can claim with any certainty that the 2024 result would have been different had Biden butted out after the 2022 midterm elections, in which the Democrats did not fare quite as badly as the polls and the mainstream media projected, but they might have made amends that bolstered their support two years later. No such luck. Biden did propose some healthy measures on the economic and renewable energy fronts, but they made no immediate difference to most of those who were suffering from the consequences of the Covid pandemic and its inflationary aftermath.

The Democrats offered no alternative to the status quo beyond gradual improvement over the years, bolstered by pundits who proclaimed that the economy was going gangbusters, with rising employment and declining inflation. Too many voters did not feel the joy that Harris sought to project, recalling that their grocery bills were lower before Biden took over. Among the many promises Trump is unlikely to fulfil, he vowed to bring down grocery bills, cut taxes and end all wars.

Back in 2016, he emerged as a potential disruptor of a status quo that wasn’t working for most Americans. He could not reclaim the perch in 2020, after four years in power. That he was able to achieve a far more convincing victory than eight years ago is a testament to the decrepitude of the Democrats.

That does not only mean that Biden ought to have ruled himself out a couple of years ago on the basis of his senescence, but also that his successor should have diverged from a self-defeating formula by offering viable alternatives to both an economy whose supposedly thriving aspects are not trickling down to most voters, and to a foreign policy that involves prolonging a nasty war in Europe and promoting a genocide in the Middle East.

Harris focused, instead, on slamming Trump and saying that she wasn’t Biden — the latter of which was obvious given her gender and ethnicity, but less so when it came to her ideology. Much of the Democratic elite that has ridiculed Bernie Sanders for accurately claiming that the working class was only returning the favour when it deserted the De­­mocrats have also claimed that Har­ris ran a wonderful campaign but was der­ailed by unavoidable obstacles. That’s nonsense. It’s true she had only 100 days to stake her claim, thanks to her geriatric chieftain’s obduracy and his party’s inexplicable obeisance, but her rallying cries consisted of little more than hollow platitudes, and her oratorical skills don’t match those of Barack Obama.

Sanders consistently reminds the electorate that real wages haven’t increased since the 1970s, the minimum wage is far too low, and it’s a travesty that so many citizens of the world’s richest nation live in poverty despite full-time jobs, and struggle to pay their medical bills and education debts. While the Republicans’ ridiculous response is to privatise everything, the Democrats are petrified by the prospect of proposing anything more than a bit of tinkering on the edges of neoliberalism.

It’s easy to empathise with the likeliest victims of Trump’s non-consecutive second term, an achievement previously pulled off only by Grover Cleveland in the 19th century. And he was a Democrat back when the Republican Party was relatively progressive.

Trump’s unpredictability means we can only wait and see how far he will go in carrying out his threatened atrocities at home and his promised peacemaking abroad.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2024

An apocalypse Trump won’t see

Jawed Naqvi 

November 12, 2024 

DAWN

ON one of Donald Trump’s last days as lame-duck president in 2020, senior Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi rushed to US military generals to caution them against heeding any command from him that could start a nuclear war.

Whatever be the truth about the Democrats’ worry, the world was on edge. Then, the shoe was on the other foot. Biden followed a needle-and-thread policy — threading cavalier alliances and needling Russia and China into a rage. Much of the worried world responded by gravitating to BRICS. Biden and his secretary for state woke up every day to arm and finance the most gruesome slaughter of women and children since Hitler in Gaza. The Democrats thus helped Trump seem less menacing to the voters.

The Doomsday Clock is still at 90 minutes to midnight with Trump’s second win, continuing to remind humanity that the threat from manmade apocalypse hasn’t receded. The president-elect did sound unusually benign and even faux inclusive in his victory speech. On the flip side, he pres­sed the accelerator on the unfolding environmental catastrophe. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like that,” he exulted to cheering supporters, listing the cultural and ethnic mix that voted him to office. The thought alone should worry Democrats, who regard multiculturalism as their exclusive turf, in contrast to Trump’s white supremacist calling.

“They came from all corners. Union, non-union; African, Hispanic, Asian, Arab, Muslim; we had everybody, and it was beautiful,” he croaked. It’s always disturbing to hear gilded words from autocrats. Has a compulsively sectarian Trump bucked the trend to project himself as a leader of all Americans equally? In which case, the rivals are in deeper trouble than one thought.

The Doomsday Clock has kept a watch on signs of manmade calamity that Albert Einstein had feared. Global warming is somehow only now, and grudgingly, being seen as an existential threat to mankind, though Noam Chomsky had presciently called it as lethal as the bomb. Trump walked out of two momentous agreements in his first term, making the world insecure on both counts.

He ditched the Paris Agreement on climate change, and even today, remains unconvinced that the destruction Hurricane Helene wreaked on North Carolina during the election campaign could be a sign of nature paying back in kind. He also tore up the Iran pact, making it a factor today in war-gaming an Iran-Israel nuclear exchange as a possibility. Iranian officials say that a fatwa against the bomb could be lifted if the war with Israel so demands.

Trump’s cavalier comments in his victory speech on the primacy of fossil fuel ‘to make America great again’ could send shivers down the spine of climate activists gathered in Baku this week for the fortnight of deliberations at COP29. In one fell swoop, Trump destroyed any hopes environment activists may have had from Robert Kennedy Jr in the new team. He all but declared that the environment lawyer, who doubles as an anti-vaccine campaigner, could be assigned the health portfolio. Calling Kennedy to the stage, Trump anointed him. “He is going to make America healthy again.”

As for Kennedy’s concern for climate change, Trump pre-empted trouble. “Bobby, leave the oil to me. We have more liquid gold — oil and gas — We have more liquid gold than any country in the world; more than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia. Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold. Other than that, go have a good time, Bobby.”

Trump’s second win reminds humanity that the threat from manmade apocalypse hasn’t receded.

Trump’s astounding return, completely, albeit unsurprisingly, missed by pollsters, has brought unforeseen responses. An American-Canadian friend says she is surrendering her US citizenship because she finds Trump insufferable. Google searches for ‘move to Canada’ surged 1,270 per cent in the 24 hours after the US East Coast polls closed on Tuesday. Similar searches about moving to New Zealand climbed nearly 2,000pc, while those for Australia jumped 820pc.

It’s not dissimilar to a whole host of people who have left or are leaving India with the advent of Narendra Modi, heading not to Pakistan, where his rabid cheerleaders would have wanted dissenters to go, but to trickier climes. The recent repatriation by the Biden administration of dozens of illegal migrants from India is a good example.

Trump’s denial of climate change is envied by many of his fans who do not have the means to be as brazen. On the global stage, Narendra Modi, an ardent Trump fan, presents himself as a keen environment buff. “India is committed to clean energy and environment,” he said at the recent G20 summit in Delhi. Yet it is no secret that India will use coal for decades to come, even as it explores renewables to move towards net zero in 2070.

Three days before COP27 in Egypt, India’s finance minister showcased the doublespeak. “India needs greater investment in coal production,” said Nirmala Sitharaman at the Delhi launch of the country’s biggest-ever coal mine auction, where 141 new sites for coal mines were on offer. The move was rehearsed at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow. That’s when India, backed by China, made a last-minute intervention to water down the language of the final agreement, changing the commitment to “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal power.

The fallout is palpable in the neighbourhood and beyond. The Maldives archipelago faces a watery doom, and vast swathes of Bangladesh would become uninhabitable as the sea encroaches. Pakistan, too, is reeling from the effects of climate change, not least since the 2022 flood fury.

The prime minister’s point person for environment, Romina Khurshid Alam, was preparing Pakistan’s talking points for Baku when Trump was drooling over the oil resources of America he had inherited in his victory. Ms Alam’s terror at the speed with which the mighty glaciers of the Hindu Kush are melting contrasts apocalyptically with the sight of Trump drooling over the oil wealth he plans to plunder to make America great again.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2024

The real issues

Bisma Tirmizi 

Published November 9, 2024

DAWN

THERE is nothing complicated about Donald Trump’s win as much of the mainstream media would like the world to believe. If you live in America you know the truth, and if you watch TikTok anywhere in the world, you know the truth and more.

While the liberals have a tantrum and try to complicate the reasons behind why the Americans chose to paint their country Red this time, and in essence decided to cosy up to the Draconian Blond, the reality is easy to decipher for first-time voters, seasoned baby boomers and all generations in between.

It was as simple and down to earth as ‘roti, kapra aur makan’.

Election 2024 is a clear indication that after all is said and done, after all the soap opera, the theatrical and manufactured issues, dramatic hyperbole, staged debates, and woke issues that need no oxygen or air time, politics is still about only the real issues.

One may choose to hate Trump for his crassness or his politics, but he ran on what matters to an average American — no foreign wars, no inflation, no crime, no illegal immigration and the impact on a household. In contrast, Kamala Harris ran on feelings, vague abstract vibes, oxygenating fears, a high horse with a Hollywood saddle, constant virtue signalling, appearances on SNL, and a zero-sum issue-driven campaign. Being uncharismatic didn’t help. She lacked authenticity and charisma and the Democrats’ overall message was focused on vilifying Trump and the Republican voter. That backfired.

This time it was all about making sure that Harris lost.

She clearly chose not to separate from her boss on most agendas. Plus the constantly invoked moral high ground — ‘We are better than the Republicans’ — did not work when tens of thousands of unarmed people were being obliterated in a genocide on her watch. And endorsements from the likes of warmonger Dick Cheney, which should have caused revulsion, were worn like a badge of honour. Bizarre!

Flashback 2020: Biden picked a losing vice-president in order to ensure he would do eight years. Her campaign had zero momentum from the get-go and a late arrival left no runway time for the campaign to take flight. She is no Barack Obama. And while Obama’s politics may not be ideal, his persona was absolutely dynamic.

It seemed Harris only ran on the abortion issue, and despite her calls from the pulpit, the country figured out that Trump is not really pro-life, as the Democratic rhetoric would like them to believe. Trump ran an intelligent campaign and perceptively pulled ahead of the Democratic rhetoric by clearly rejecting a countrywide abortion ban.

What was Harris left with?

She beat the drum on ‘cry wolf’, when the wolf wasn’t really there. The wolf wasn’t interested in eating the sheep.

Another sensitive issue that Harris championed was the gender choice for minors — an issue that did not sit too well at the ballot box regardless of what the pundits or the extreme left wing might have had the campaign believe. The Red sweep clearly told the Democrats that if a child can’t get a tattoo before the age of 18 without parental presence, then something as consequential, life-altering and monumental as gender change has to be off the table.

And here we are today and America has made its choice. It chose to let a felon into the White House, and as a friend (who hails from occupied Kashmir, and has faced persecution) said, “America decided it did not want undocumented immigrants no matter how persecuted they feel in their country of birth. Misogyny does not bother the majority, hate speech and da­­ngerous rhetoric isn’t that bad, reproductive rights for wo­­m­en aren’t that big of a deal after all, and the list goes on.

But nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to normalising a yearlong genocide. Liberals worked overtime to make a fascist sound normal to the people who do not agree with what has been going on this past year. They thought we could focus on safe abortions instead.

He might turn out to be just like his predecessors and continue America’s Middle East policy, but he won’t feed the world lies about it. Those who did not vote for Kamala or simply abstained as an act of defiance or for the lack of a better choice, you have my respect.’’

Cue the Muslims in the US who chose to make their voice heard.

While in 2016 there was a feeling of deep depression at Trump winning, this time it was all about making sure that Harris lost. America voted, and it voted for a better life by tuning out the noise.

And while the mainstream media looks for more rhetoric as to why Trump won, the answer is simple; real issues always trump vague feelings. Period.

The writer has published two books and is a freelance journalist.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2024

The Donald supremacy

An empire unravels as the "short-fingered vulgarian" reclaims the throne.

Asad Rahim Khan

Published November 8, 2024
DAWN

It wasn’t even close. But also, it was never going to be.

As the 2024 polls conclude, the global hegemon may be entering its own late Soviet Union phase: ancient leaders, vomiting soldiers, and the collapse of a rules-based order that, even in its prime, never quite applied to those writing it.

And yet such obituaries are a risky business: while the West’s neoliberals make up the dying regime today, they’re not going the way of the communist bloc just yet.

After all, America remains the greatest economy, the mightiest military, and the uncrowned keeper of the world’s reserve currency. It is empire, and empire is everywhere.
America picks Trump, again

But one would be hard-pressed to think, after yet another toxic election, that the American experiment isn’t flailing hard. Described over three decades ago as a “short-fingered vulgarian” in Vanity Fair, Donald Trump is displaying a different sort of hand gesture to elite magazines these days.

Fresh from a hero’s journey grosser than the reality TV he headlines, Trump is cruising past two assassination attempts, two impeachments, even a criminal conviction, to become the 47th president of the United States. “We love winners,” he said during his last term. “We love winners. Winners are winners.”

And losers are losers. Surely, asked The Guardian, didn’t the world see “Kamala Harris’s competence and expertise, her decency and grace, her potential to be the first female president?”

If the world saw it, the voter didn’t, handing the God & Oil Party its first popular victory in two decades. And the emotional meltdown on the other side is silly, self-indulgent, and self-delusional.


Because Kamala Harris was never going to win. Let’s face it: how many times has it happened in America that an unpopular incumbent won amid economic anxiety? Kamala hadn’t to distinguish herself from Trump so much as from Sleepy Joe. She decided not to. She couldn’t attack Trump’s corruption. Biden was corrupt. His harassment of women; Biden did that too. His age: Biden is ancient. His mental acuity: Biden is demented.

So Kamala was left with Kamala, and a politburo of Pelosis and Obamas lurking in the hall — a dizzy ex-prosecutor that had never won a single primary, couldn’t carry her own state in 2020, had no recognisable ideas as vice-president, had no core beliefs in general, and sold out each of her positions from the wall to Palestine. Should she have run?

Because the core theme of this election, same as the one before it, was simple: if Bill Clinton’s boys had come up with “It’s the economy, stupid”, the same dinosaurs were now too high up the managerial class to let Kamala know it was the economy again, and that those amid it were suffering.

Instead, the donors, operators, and hopey-changey Ivy Leaguers that form the Dems’ shadow party — the ones that knifed Biden when his brain froze on the debate stage — went on and on about Joe’s economic miracle: more growth, more jobs, more recovery all around.

And if median income was taking a beating, and food insecurity was at a high, and health insurance was on the wane, who cared? As Charles Schumer shrugged in 2016, for every blue-collar Democrat that dropped off, the party would snatch up two suburban Republicans. It was a poor trade to make, and it wasn’t going to work anyway, given the massive workers’ exodus from the left across the board.

“It should come as no great surprise,” said Bernie Sanders, forever the thwarted king across the sea, “that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

And how: nearly 80 per cent of voters that thought the economy was their top issue voted for Trump.
Racist orange billionaire beats deep state genocide enabler

In the other corner was Harris as a sad parody of Hillary — courting vapid celebrities over unions, and vile chicken-hawks like Liz Cheney over decent human beings. Say what you want about the state of Biden’s brain, he’d been in politics long enough to do a populist feint when needed, from laying track to splurging on jobs (all watered down once in office).

Not Kamala — she was content with just saying she’d be better than the brownshirts coming back. And why not; standing against something is still a stand. It’s just that the last time America defeated fascism, it required a titanic reorientation of the entire economy, near-full employment, and a war that killed 4pc of the world’s population.

What Kamala had were bumper stickers. “Never again,” she enjoyed telling crowds. “Never again. Never again.”

Interestingly, it may well have been never again: as of this writing, Trump is bagging the same number of votes as his losing bid in 2020, if not less. In essence, the Dems lost more than Trump won.

Yes, a fair few wealthy suburbanites feared, correctly, that Trump would take a gold-plated wrecking ball to their democracy. For everyone else, however, there were more immediate crises at hand. (“Did America really elect a dictator because Frosted Flakes hit $7.99 at the grocery store?” asked the Jacobin.)

But inflation’s a desperately dull subject, one almost as dull as social stratification — the kind that breeds status anxiety; the realisation that a certain standard of life can now only be the province of rich idiots that live in gated communities, go to the same schools, inter-golf, and inter-marry. Why not vote for Trump?


Instead, the rest of the world gets to listen to how America’s rotten id let the Donald win again — a triumph of racism, sexism, fascism, this-ism, and that-ism; that the barbarians have disarmed lady Liberty, and the Capitol will be toppled next. If it was Jan 6 then, it’ll be blood in the streets now.

The hysteria is so loud, it’s almost as if this hasn’t happened before: that a void so carefully nourished over generations — a culture that sanctifies capital, and a politics bereft of class — wouldn’t be filled by right-wing populists.

Because it’s hard to imagine it was Nazis that re-elected the Squad: Rashida Tlaib, who refused to endorse Kamala, was returned to Congress by the same Michigan voter that had so humiliated Harris, in a stunning 20,000-vote swing away from Biden’s haul in 2020.

“Genocide is bad politics,” said an activist in Dearborn. Unless, of course, we believe the Democrats: that the minorities have turned into white supremacists overnight. Could it be, instead, that they sensed the liberal order’s self-immolation in Gaza; that the bodies of shredded children on hooks was no longer international law as usual?

It was hard to come to any other conclusion, especially with Bill Clinton being trotted out to tell potential voters their family members deserved ethnic cleansing at the hands of Eretz Zion. Incidentally, the man thought best-suited to soothing Muslim horror over an ongoing genocide was the same president that had let Serbs slaughter their way to the last Bosnian enclave before stirring himself awake (and was still celebrated by the Muslim street for it).

In fact, the Republican Party, despite boasting the world’s most diverse range of war criminals — from Kissinger to Rumsfeld to Bolton — sounded more moderate on killing kids overseas than the Democrats this round. And if the Kamala voter was being expected to ignore a genocide, why should the Trumpist be made to blush over race riots?

As for policies at home, the blues seem to have decided that victory, via a happy left-wing, would still be worse than defeat by grandpas in red hats. If there was a coalition the Democrats wanted to win over last week, it was, well, the Republican coalition. And the Republican coalition couldn’t even recognise itself: the neocons were dead, the blazers-and-slacks bunch was cowed, and the MAGA Trumpers were legion.

Because politics in America is no longer about bettering social conditions; it hasn’t been since Reagan. Politics in America is about target selection — a perverse culture war that helps people forget what’s attributed to Tanzania’s Julius Nyrere: that the US is a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.

So it is that a racist orange billionaire beats a deep state genocide enabler, in what the press calls our “most crucial election” — even as both are united on backing Israel, fighting China, protecting guns from their victims, deporting illegals en masse, drilling record amounts of hydrocarbon, and building up defence-tech. The big stuff is settled.

If there are differences, it’s on the second-string issues — tax cuts for the rich, anti-trust enforcement, crackdowns on even-legal immigrants, and whether or not Elon Musk is a white replacement weirdo.

And yet, if Trump remains the anti-war provincial he pledges to be, that will be more than enough for millions of innocents so removed from his universe — the kind of indifference that drove Bush-era torturers like Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales into the Democrats’ loving arms.

As for Pakistan — and depending on the politics of the Pakistani saying so —he’s a breath of fresh air for the country’s largest party, the PTI, and bodes well for the imprisoned Imran Khan; alternatively, say those partial to the current regime’s jailers, Pakistan’s not important enough to care about anyway. The first assumption is still premature; the second is already wrong.

What’s beyond argument is that the Donald returns older, angrier, and more extreme. He’s mopped the floor with America’s traditional dynasties, the Bushes and the Clintons, and carries a party remade entirely in his image. Meanwhile, the Senate has flipped red; the House is on knife-edge; and a third of the Supreme Court sits as his appointees. A broader realignment, towards the populist roar, is ensuring his surname becomes an era.

“This will truly be the golden age of America,” he says. Ever since its supervillains took the controls in 2000, it hasn’t been.



The author is an advocate at the Lahore High Court. He is a partner at Ashtar Ali LLP, where he focuses on constitutional law and commercial litigation. He is also a columnist at Dawn.

HOW THE US SUSTAINS ISRAEL’S WAR CRIMES

The financial and military support that America has offered to Israel for decades is the reason why the Zionist state is able to

DAWN/EOS
Ejaz Haider 

November 3, 2024

“For generations to come, all will be told of the miracle of the immense planes from the United States bringing in the materiel that meant life to our people.”
— Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on the United States airlift during the 1973 War

“Things did not go particularly well for Israel over the next couple days, but as Israel started to push back the daily advances, the Nixon administration initiated Operation Nickel Grass, an American airlift to replace all of Israel’s lost munitions. This was huge — planeload after planeload of supplies literally allowed munitions and materiel to seemingly re-spawn for the Israeli counter effort. 567 missions were flown throughout the airlift, dropping over 22,000 tons of supplies. An additional 90,000 tons of materiel were delivered by sea.”

— How Richard Nixon Saved Israel from Nixonfoundation.org

PREAMBLE

The above quotes are facts about Operation Nickel Grass, a United States (US) airlift that was bigger than the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49, and about how Israel found itself fighting for its survival. Since the United Nations Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine under Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, the US has been a major ally and supporter of Israel. However, the 1973 War helped change the entire dynamic of that relationship. Since that airlift, the US has committed itself fully and unequivocally to Israel’s defence.

Even when there have been differences about Israel’s conduct, the US has, for the most part, ensured that there must be “no daylight” between the two sides, a phrase attributed to the outgoing US President Joe Biden who self-describes himself as a “proud Irish-Christian Zionist.”

Two days after the publication of this article, the US will be electing a president. Among many other policy concerns, including domestic, a burning question for many Arab and Muslim American voters is which of the two candidates will be a better fit for bringing peace to the Middle East and force Israel to stop its savage genocidal war.

That concern, while totally justified, is largely, if not wholly, misplaced for structural reasons — the US system, which represents the current power relationships, is controlled by what political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt called “the Israel Lobby” in a 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.

Mearheimer and Walt call the US-Israel relationship and the US support for Israel a “unique” relationship unparalleled in US history. They also argue that this relationship is not really “based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives”, as is normally assumed, but “is due almost entirely to US domestic politics, and especially to the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’.”

There is a lot of literature on how the Israel lobby works. Organisations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in combination with big money, Christian Zionists and Israeli hasbara [public diplomacy techniques], work towards damaging politicians, activists and even scholars who are critical of Israel and its policies.

An October 24 report in The Intercept by Akela Lacy, ‘How Does AIPAC Shape Washington: We Tracked Every Dollar’ says AIPAC has “embraced a new strategy” — “It would use its vast funds to oust progressive members of Congress who have criticised human rights abuses by Israel and the country’s receipt of billions of US dollars in military funding.”

Lacy says that “AIPAC’s approach to electoral spending is bipartisan.” The strategy is to support candidates that are pro-Israel and defeat those who are not. Anyone familiar with how Washington DC works knows how legislation and actions by any administration can be influenced if the right people are available in the power corridors.

In addition to financial and military support, the US has lent Israel unqualified diplomatic support since 1972. Globalaffairs.org has estimated that “The US has vetoed resolutions critical of Israel more than any other council member — 45 times as of December 18, 2023, according to an analysis by Blue Marble.” Thirty-three of these resolutions “pertained to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories or the country’s treatment of the Palestinian people.”


The financial and military support that America has offered to Israel for decades is the reason why the Zionist state is able to carry out the ongoing genocide in Palestine and war crimes in Lebanon. Regardless of whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris wins the election on November 5, this US support for its client state will continue, making the US and its Western allies as culpable for Israel’s crimes against humanity

It is instructive to contrast the US’ actual behaviour with its platitudes about a two-state solution as an imperative for peace. The US has also, as I have noted in this space previously, consistently vetoed the push for Palestine’s statehood and full membership of the UN, because statehood bestows on Palestine sovereignty and the right to self-defence. That is not acceptable to either Israel or the US.

COROLLARY

Before proceeding with further details, I want to put the proposition already proved upfront: Israel could not have sustained itself, its unending wars in the Middle East and the structured violence against the Palestinian people without the unique support it gets from the US and some Western allies of the US.

That support spans the entire gamut of diplomatic, financial and military. This is also true of the current iteration of the Palestinians’ generational war against Zionism. Israel could not have sustained its continuing war without the full and unconditional diplomatic, financial and military support of the US.

That fact gives us a simple reality: the US is not an honest broker and cannot be expected to work towards an equitable resolution of the Palestine problem. It is complicit in everything Israel does and, by shielding it from the consequences of its crimes against humanity, the US is answerable for those crimes. This is also true of the ongoing war.

This also means what I have previously said in this space: this war will continue with its many ebbs and flows. It can only end with the end of Zionism.

ISRAEL’S DESPERATION: A PAGE FROM HISTORY

An American Patriot missile defence system on display during a joint US-Israel military exercise on March 8, 2018: Israel has privileged access to the most advanced US military platforms and technologies | AFP

At 1400 hours on October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack against Israel, along the Golan Heights and across the Bar Lev Line on the eastern bank of Suez Canal. Egyptian forces overran the presumably invincible Bar Lev line in just two hours, even though Israeli defence minister Moshe Dayan had famously called it “one of the best anti-tank ditches in the world.”

In the months leading up to the War, the Egyptians and Syrians had modernised their forces by purchasing Scud Surface-to-Surface Missiles from the Soviet Union to offset Israel’s air superiority. The first few days of the war saw dozens of Israeli fighter jets, tanks and APCs destroyed.

The US Department of State archives have a Memorandum of Conversation from October 9, 1973 between Israeli ambassador to the US, Simcha Dinitz, his military attaché Gen Mordechai Gur, and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Gen Brent Scowcroft, deputy assistant to the US president for national security affairs. The contents of that conversation give a clear sense of Israeli losses and the panic that was setting in:

Dinitz: “We got a message which sums up our losses until 9am Israeli time. In planes, 14 Phantoms, 28 Skyhawks, 3 Mirages, 4 Super Mysteres — a total of 49 planes. Tanks — we lost something like 500 tanks. Some were lost on the way.”

Kissinger: “500 tanks! How many do you have? [to Scowcroft:] We should get Haig here. Well, we can give him the figures….

Kissinger: Explain to me, how could 400 tanks be lost to the Egyptians?“

Gur: “We were in a very big hurry to bring them to the front line. That’s why we say some were lost on the way to the battle.”

Dinitz: “Some got out of commission because of moving so fast.”

Scowcroft: “Do you know how many were battle losses?”

Gur: “Some were hit by artillery fire on the Suez Canal. They have heavy artillery fire. We don’t know the exact numbers. I assume the biggest number were put completely out of action.” [Gen Gur then pulls out a map and sits beside Kissinger.]


According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Israel is spending much more per month on the military — from $1.8 billion before October 7, 2023, to around $4.7 billion by the end of last year. According to several Israeli economists, the Gaza war alone has cost the Israeli economy over $67.3 billion.

This conversation also coincided with the October 9 Israeli counterattack that failed. Kissinger was concerned that an Israeli defeat would increase the prestige and footprint of the Soviets in the Middle East. This was also Nixon’s concern, though he also, initially, did not want to antagonise the Gulf monarchies.

The US secretary of defence, James Schlesinger, who went along with the decision, was not particularly in favour of US support to Israel. As the October 6 ‘Minutes of Washington Special Actions Group Meeting’ show, Schlesinger said, “We can delay on this. Our shipping any stuff into Israel blows any image we may have as an honest broker.”

Schlesinger also sent a memorandum to President Nixon on November 1. Subject-lined ‘Impact of the Mideast War’, Schlesinger wrote, “This memorandum provides my initial reaction to the recent Mideast crisis and to the transfer of military equipment to Israel… I am concerned… by the degradation of our conventional deterrent due to the loss of critical materiel.” [Emphasis added]

Kissinger was very unhappy with Schlesinger’s objections and told the White House Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig, “They [Israelis] are anxious to get some equipment which has been approved and which some SOB in [the Department of] Defence held up which I didn’t know about.” Golda Meir had made a panicked phone call to President Nixon. That call became the basis for the massive US airlift of materiel to resupply Israel to offset its losses in the first few days of the war.

Kissinger would bring in other arguments, particularly the broader strategic concerns about the Soviet Union but, in the end, it was about Israel itself and America’s pledge to defend it. The dialogue in the Golda biopic about Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) telling Golda (Helen Mirren) that he is an American first, secretary of state second and a Jew only third, and Golda telling him that, in Israel, “we read from right to left”, was not just for dramatic purposes. It was an actual conversation that Kissinger would often narrate.

That support has continued. But how does it work?

HOW DOES THE US SUPPORT ISRAEL MILITARILY?

President Richard Nixon with Israeli prime minister Golda Meir at the White House in Washington on Sept 25, 1969: following Meir’s panicked phone call to Nixon, the US airlifted materiel to resupply Israel to offset its losses in the first few days of the Yom Kippur War|AP

The two countries do not have a mutual defence pact, but Israel has privileged access to the most advanced US military platforms and technologies. In cumulative terms, Israel has been the largest recipient of US foreign aid since its founding and has received over $300 billion in economic and military assistance.

According to a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) report, “The United States provided Israel considerable economic assistance from 1971 to 2007, but nearly all US aid today goes to support Israel’s military, the most advanced in the region. The United States has provisionally agreed, via a memorandum of understanding (MOU), to provide Israel with $3.8 billion per year through 2028.”

As Mearsheimer and Walt have noted, “This largesse is especially striking when one realises that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.”

The CFR report also mentions that, since October 7, 2023, the US “has enacted legislation providing at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel, which includes $3.8 billion from a bill in March 2024 (in line with the current MOU) and $8.7 billion from a supplemental appropriations act in April 2024.”

The yearly military aid is actually grants under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programme. While Israel must use these funds to purchase US military equipment and services, it can use about 25 percent of these funds to buy equipment from Israeli defence firms. It also buys US equipment outside of the FMF facility. Until last October, as per the Biden administration, “Israel had nearly 600 active FMF cases, totalling around $24 billion.”

Separately, an annual $500 million fund is slated for Israeli and joint US-Israeli missile defence programmes. These programmes involve joint collaboration “on the research, development and production of these systems used by Israel, including the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow II. Iron Dome was solely developed by Israel, but the United States has been a production partner since 2014.”

While transfers of US military equipment to Israel are subject to relevant US laws and scrutiny by the Congress, in reality Israel gets a clear pass from US administrations. For instance, during the ongoing war, multiple rights organisations, UN bodies and the International Court of Justice have determined constant violations by Israel of International Law and International Humanitarian Law. Despite clear evidence, the Biden administration has continued to shield Israel, including from the application of US laws such as the Leahy Law.

US State Department official Stacy Gilbert quit last May and told the media that her resignation was precipitated by an administration report to Congress that, she said, falsely stated Israel was not blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza. The true picture would have brought the Leahy Law into action and prevented further US military aid to Israel.

Just days ago, Maryam Hassanein, a political appointee at the US Department of the Interior, quit over the war on Gaza, saying, “I saw a policy that was really harming Palestinians through this kind of blind, destructive support of Israel and its occupation.”

While the US Congress can block a sale through a joint resolution, this has never happened in the case of Israel. In fact, since this war, as with special cases, Biden has bypassed the congressional review and used this waiver process both for Ukraine and Israel.

Additionally, the US has another special arrangement for Israel called ‘qualitative military edge’ (QME), which was formalised through a 2008 law. The law reads: “The [US] President shall carry out an empirical and qualitative assessment on an ongoing basis of the extent to which Israel possesses a qualitative military edge over military threats to Israel. The assessment required under this sub- section shall be sufficiently robust so as to facilitate comparability of data over concurrent years.”

The CFR report calls QME “a conceptual backbone of US military aid to Israel.” The 2008 law “requires the US government to maintain Israel’s ability ‘to defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damage and casualties.’”

In simple terms, it means that the US must not provide any weapons or platforms to any state in the Middle East that could compromise Israel’s QME. Or, if it does in some way, it must provide counter-measures to Israel, to offset any disadvantage to Israel.

The US also maintains a strategic stockpile of weapons in Israel since the 1980s. Israel has been drawing from that stockpile during its ongoing war. Given Israel’s consumption of interceptors, the US also “agreed to lease Israel two Iron Dome missile defence batteries that Washington had previously purchased from the country.”

The military aid provided to Israel by the US, the UK, Germany and France includes tank and artillery ammunition, bombs, rockets, small arms, interceptors, surveillance drones, night-vision goggles, body armour etc. At least $18 billion of aid, including 50 F-15 fighter jets are also in the pipeline, though that supply won’t materialise for some years.

This is by no means an exhaustive treatment of US support for Israel. There are hundreds of assessments out there and most are available to any diligent researcher. The essential point is that, without this unconditional military, financial and diplomatic support, Israel could neither sustain its current war nor its place in the comity of nations through the hubris it has consistently displayed. This hubris includes Israel’s government declaring the UN Secretary-General persona non grata, the Israeli military targeting UN aid workers and premises, and its Knesset (parliament) legislating to ban the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) — the primary agency delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza — from the areas under Israeli control.

It should also be clear that this sustainment works at two levels: the Israeli lobby’s ability to influence US domestic politics sustains the presence of pro-Israel politicians within US power structures; and the presence of those politicians, in turn, helps preserve the unique US-Israel relationship, which allows Israel to sustain its wars, violate international norms and continue to repress the Palestinians.

So, why is sustainment important? What does it mean?

WHAT IS SUSTAINMENT?

Sustainment is the ability of a nation and its military to fight and sustain that fight. Sustainment in a non-kinetic sense also means the ability of a state to override international legal norms and act independently, without suffering any consequences. Since the point about sustainment at the second level should already be obvious, I will stick to military sustainment.

This point, as any student of war knows, is crucial. Attritional wars are all about sustainment. Wars are expensive; long wars are very expensive. They take a toll on men and materiel.

To quote from a 1942 US Naval College report titled ‘Sound Military Decision’: “Success is won, not by personnel and materiel in prime condition, but by the debris of an organisation worn by the strain of campaign and shaken by the shock of battle. The objective is attained, in war, under conditions which often impose extreme disadvantages.” [Emphasis added]

Initial planning can go awry; initial supplies can run dry or troops can run low on them; logistics are crucial — you can have the best troops and equipment, but battles take their toll. Men get killed; materiel gets destroyed. Nothing remains in prime shape.

Modern war requires a very complex logistics and supply system with multiple tiers. The Table of Organisation and Equipment (TOE), a document in modern militaries, not only details the wartime mission, capabilities, organisational structure, and mission-essential personnel, but also supply and equipment requirements for military units.

Tanks, armoured personnel carriers and self-propelled artillery — all essential components of manoeuvre warfare — are very logistics-heavy. A typical armoured division would have supplies based on troop strength, such as rations; items listed and identified in the TOE (clothing, personal equipment, vehicle replacements, etc); POL (petrol, oil, lubricants); supply requirements for damaged equipment which cannot have a fixed quantity and would depend on attrition rates; and, yes, ammunition.

This brings us to the nexus between fighting and sustaining a war and a state’s economy. To quote US Rear Admiral Henry Eccles, “logistics is the bridge between military operations and a nation’s economy.” The linkage is not just about existing stocks and how reduced human resources and materiel can be replenished, but also the industrial base that can supply to the fighting troops what they need.

Rations, POL, replacement of damaged equipment, cannibalising equipment and vehicles, replenishing ammunition, evacuating casualties — the list of what needs to be done is long and everything that needs to be done gets done (or doesn’t) under fire. But most importantly, all of it requires money and a pipeline.

Israel’s extensive use of aerial platforms, including fighter jets, is a very expensive proposition. For instance, according to the US Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency that provides information to the US Congress, the per-hour flight cost of an F-16 Fighting Falcon is $26,927, while that for an F-35 is $41,986.

The calculation metrics involve repair parts, depot and field maintenance, contract services, engineering support and personnel, plus “other things”, such as sortie-generation rate, pilot training etc. This cost might differ with different air forces but is a good benchmark to roughly monetise Israel’s use of aerial platforms over a year against targets in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

Similarly, the Tamir interceptor for the Iron Dome system costs $50,000-100,000 per interception. According to Brig-Gen Ram Aminach, the former financial adviser to the Israeli chief of staff, “the cost of defence last night [April 13 Iran attack] was estimated at between four to five billion shekels [$1.08-1.35B].” He was speaking to the Israeli Hebrew-language newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Israel is spending much more per month on the military — from $1.8 billion before October 7, 2023, to around $4.7 billion by the end of last year. According to several Israeli economists, the Gaza war alone has cost the Israeli economy over $67.3 billion.

Yet another crucial aspect of how the US sustains Israel’s war is the close cooperation between US Central Command (CENTCOM) and Israeli military and intelligence agencies.

Since January 2021, following a Pentagon decision to shift Israel from US European Command (EUCOM) to CENTCOM — an arrangement described by YnetNews.com in an August 24, 2024 report as “the American wall of defence around Israel” — the US is sharing intelligence with Israel and providing it complete air defence support against Iran. That support has been on display in the two direct rounds exchanged between Iran and Israel since April this year.

By all evidence, Israel does not have the stocks to fight a long war, nor can it produce them in the volumes it requires. The fact that must be known and constantly reiterated is simple: Israel’s war has been sustained by the US and its Western allies.

The corollary is simple: even as the US has been mouthing its desire for a ceasefire, it has been perpetuating Israel’s war. And given the savagery of this war, it is also complicit in every war crime committed by Israel.

The writer is a journalist interested in security and foreign policies. X: @ejazhaider

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 3rd, 2024

Overshot and Kaput: Humankind Wears Out Its Welcome

John Kendall Hawkins

 November 6, 2024

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

When Noam Chomsky deflected questions about 9/11 — refused to speculate like a common theorist of conspiracies — but, in short, directed us to the Truth: We have bigger fish to fry and have to get to it ASAP.  No doubt, he wouldn’t deny that there were such men in the world who would be happy to be Insiders with sticks of dynamite. That shit built the world we know. People who spread opines like, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. This election is too important for the people to decide.” The Kissinger Doctrine, once so beloved, now junk.

Kissingers have been breeding like quazy wabbits since “we” double-tapped the Japs in ‘45. That is the way of the world.  The world we must change. What Chomsky wanted to draw our attention to was what we still had limited time to do something about, his Three Big Concerns: Climate Change, nuclear war, and the end of democracy. Any one of these could bring an end to the experiment/accident called human life on planet Earth. How do we force our leaders to address this problem?

In Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown (Verso 2024) by Andreas Malm and Wim Carton, we get a clear picture of where we, as a globe, are at regarding Climate Change policy. What we knew, when we knew it, and what we are doing about the crisis that definitely has Doom as a consequence of limited or non-action.  Malm and Carton begin by telling the reader that mitigation is what they mean by overshoot.  They write,  “Overshoot is here not a fate passively acquiesced to. It is an actively championed programme for how to deal with the rush into catastrophe: let it continue for the time being, and then we shall sort things out towards the end of this century.” This strikes Malm and Carton as hideous and maybe insane.

If mitigation, such as it is, doesn’t work, and it won’t, there is a post-mitigation plan.  “The dominant classes have to come up with secondary, backup measures for managing the consequences of excess heat.” Reassuring, isn’t it? they seem to enquire of the reader. The backup includes three options (or phases of bankruptcy, depending on how you look at it): Adaptation, carbon removal, and geoengineering.  “All three are also replete with repercussions, ranging from the annoying to the apocalyptic,” write the pair, who plan on publishing a separate analysis of the three backup options, already calling it The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late. “It will pay special attention to the psychic dimensions of the climate crisis,” they write, “notably the tremendous capacity of people in capitalist society to deny, and, when this no longer works, repress it.”

The authors focus on fossil fuels.  They can see that warnings fall on deaf ears.  They note that the world had a chance to take advantage of the proverbial silver lining that came with Covid-19 and its lockdown regimen.  They write,

“In 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, something highly unusual took place: global CO2 emissions fell…The lockdowns that closed the highways of the world economy cut their total by some 5 or 6 per cent…coincidentally, the pandemic broke out just as the wave of climate mobilisations on streets from Berlin to Bogotá and Luanda to London crested – in 2019, this had been ‘the fastest-growing social movement in history’ – and so proposals were floated for using the pandemic to start the transition by then long overdue. These came to nothing.”

Came to nothing.  Miracles from God have been precious few for  millennia — this we all know — but seeing the CO₂plummet in 2020 was almost like a sign from heaven that our so-called covenant since Noah was still solid. But no. Selfishness rules.

The authors continue the chronicle of our planet’s demise.  In 2021, “CO₂ emissions rose by 6 per cent, or two gigatonnes.” Then the authors got trippy.  To picture an abstract gigatonne as a concrete image, they wrote, see a gigatonne as a unit of mass “which equals the weight of over 100,000,000 African elephants.” Two gigatonnes, then, would be the equivalent of 200,000,000 African elephants. Phew, I whistled. That would be heaven on Earth for the Mbuti pygmies of the Ituri Forest, but then I actually pictured two-thirds of the American population replaced by African elephants. That’s a lot of elephant shit. And methane. Phew, I held my nose.

The authors list the damage done already by climate catastrophe ignored for what it is — potentially eschatological in scope — “The double blow of a cyclone and an early monsoon …one third of Bangladesh under water…Pantanal, the planet’s largest wetland..enveloped in flames…in the Atlantic – thirty named storms; within a fortnight, two hurricanes lacerating Nicaragua…for the first time, a hurricane struck Somalia…(cities more deeply flooded) or introducing novelties (wetlands ablaze)…Swathes of ,,,Turkey and Greece…aglow, while in the Chinese province of Henan, a year’s worth of rain fell in three days – downpours ‘unseen in the last 1,000 years’ – but in southern Madagascar, drought forced eight in ten inhabitants to fill their stomachs with leaves, cacti and locusts.”  Almost there. Almost at the point where a plague of locusts arrives and is welcomed as a much-needed meal served up.

Overshoot is divided into a Preface and three main sections: The Limit Is Not a Limit; Fossil Capital Is a Demon, and Into the Long Heat. What we have going as mitigation is not enough; it’s not even a start. The culprit is the one we all know: Big Oil. The Long Heat means our children and children’s children will have to live underground to survive.  That’s what the book tells. Methodically. With detail. Last Chapter, like in its resignation to our fate. But — it does hold out the notion that some shock to the system’s dominant classes’s control of the shituation (h/t Peter Tosh) can lead to real mitigation.

I recall reading Daniel Ellsberg’s memoir, The Doomsday Machine. In it he relates how he and a RAND colleague went to see Dr. Strangelove when it came out, and how he and his companion agreed that the crazy shit they’d just seen came across as “essentially a documentary.”  In the film, one of the strangest scenes is the one where Dr. Strangelove explains how everyone, after the war, will have to live underground, but the good news is each man will be given a set of 10 beautiful women to restock the world with humans. Preferably of Nordic persuasion and pedigree. It is crazy thinking.

Some public policies are way too important for the elites and bloviators and technocrats to be put in charge of or to be ceded implicit control by the state in exchange for more and more money and power. In his most recent book, The Age of AI: And Our Human Future, a book co-written by ex-Google wonk Eric Schmidt and Henry Kissinger, wherein Schmidt writes, “AI…is being applied to more elements of our lives; it is altering the role our minds have traditionally played in shaping, ordering, and assessing our choices and actions.” Schmidt, who, in his previous book Empire of the Mind (later re-titled to The New Digital Age), envisioned hologram machines in the dens of dominant class families, so that spoiled kids could go on field trips to the slum of Mumbai, is all for ceding control of mind to machines.

I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a planet go to shit due to the irresponsibility of its elites. This crisis – these myriad crises — are too important for the dinosaur people to deride. It’s time to get tough, pinky. Where up against false Darwinism and stolen plans. The time for clownin’ around and making faces is over.

John Kendall Hawkins is an American ex-pat freelancer based in Australia.  He is a former reporter for The New Bedford Standard-Times.