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.

UN official slams Starmer—‘human rights lawyers shouldn’t be genocide deniers’

Francesca Albanese spoke to Arthur Townend about Israel's genocide and the West's failure to act

Francesca Albanese

By Arthur Townend
Wednesday 13 November 2024  

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue

United Nations (UN) special rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese has demanded the Labour government stop all arms sales to Israel—and slammed Keir Starmer as a “genocide denier”.

Albanese told Socialist Worker that Britain “has a clear obligation under international law, not to aid or assist the unlawfulness of the occupation or Israel’s connected endeavour”.

She argued that the Labour government “needs to stop trading weapons with Israel, transferring or buying arms and other harmful services”.

Britain “must also suspend its trade with Israel because there is, at least, a plausible risk of genocide, and human rights lawyers holding positions of power should not be genocide deniers”, added Albanese.

She has been speaking at various universities in Britain to detail the destruction Israel is waging on Palestine and help build the student Palestine movement.

At Queen Mary’s university in London, Albanese said that her mandate in the UN is unique because it’s the “first mandate that somewhat confronts the Western system”.

“The reason why Palestine epitomises injustice in such a massive way is because the political wheel does not allow Palestine into international law.”

Albanese said that it’s important to recognise that Israel’s actions before 7 October play a critical role in facilitating Israel’s ongoing genocide.

“The reason why we did not see the genocide coming has much to do with our ignorance, and our lack of understanding about what genocide is. There is agreement that there are stages that lead to genocide as physical and biological destruction of a group,” she said.

“Violence has always been there, but it was very disproportionate and it was state lead by Israel. Of course there has been violence against the Israelis, because their occupation was an oppressive system that generated violence in response.”

But despite many reports prior to 7 October detailing Israel’s atrocious, destructive and murderous actions in Palestine, none confronted the issue of self-determination.

“Even the most progressive reports, like that of Amnesty International, were missing the point that for the Palestinians self-determination is not something that can wait for negotiations.

“Self-determination is what enables people to negotiate, to have a voice, because it’s the right to exist, freely, as a people on a land.”

But how does Israel constrain the self-determination of Palestinians? For Albanese, “People in the West do not understand that Palestinians are framed as a security threat.

“Mass incarceration works through a draconian system, the criminalisation of basic freedoms and no access to justice. This is physical—Palestinians are segregated in their land. There are gates, fences and checkpoints.”

She added that Palestinians are “the most surveyed people on earth because they are guinea pigs for the system. Israel trains weapons and surveillance systems on them and then Israel sells it abroad.”

“So this is all the work Israel has been doing before the genocide. Israel enforced an apartheid system to push through its settler colonial project, which laid the foundations for its current genocide.”

Albanese also unpacked the report she published in March this year on Israel’s first five months of genocide, “which had been destructive beyond belief”.

The report analyses Israel’s use of violence. “Since the beginning, everything has been considered destroyable—anything that is necessary to live.

“The main conclusion of my first report was ‘humanitarian camouflage’—Israel is not denying what it is doing, but it is justifying its actions by capsizing the protection that international law affords and transforming Gaza into a place without civilians.”

“This is what is happening to Lebanon, you see the same script. In March, I said that if this is not stopped, it will become the new way to do wars.”

Israel’s violent and murderous warmongering in Lebanon shows how it is expanding its strategy in Palestine to wage further destruction in the Middle East.

In October, Albanese submitted another report to the UN’s human rights council. It argued that Israel’s direct intention to genocide the Palestinians “could not be more evident from Israeli conduct when viewed in its totality”, and that Israel’s “genocidal intent” has been “rationalised as self-defence”.

The report details how “systematic attacks on Gaza food sovereignty indicate an intent to destroy its population through starvation” and that Israel is targeting health facilities to target Palestinians.

The report concluded, “It is the entire state apparatus that has engineered, articulated and executed genocidal violence, through acts which in their totality may lead to the destruction of the Palestinian people. This must stop.

“This ongoing genocide is doubtlessly the consequence of the exceptional status and protracted impunity that has been afforded to Israel.”

Read the full report here.

Trump’s Hegseth Caper and the Delusion of ‘Peace Through Strength’

by David Stockman Posted onNovember  15, 2024

Well, you can say this much about the Donald’s off-the-wall pick of Fox’s weekend news commentator, Pete Hegseth, for Secretary of Defense: At least it wasn’t a hard-core neocon like House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala), Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) or the horrid Senator Tom Cotten of Arkansas. Better a cheerleader for patriotism and valorization of the military than war-mongering interventionists like those three blemishes on the Republican brand.

Well, maybe. Yet what this insensible pick also shows, if any more proof is needed, is that Donald Trump is a clueless, lightweight political demagogue who has no intention of bringing the Empire Home. Nor does he have the remotest chance of making the American economy great again. That’s because if you don’t dismantle the war machine and slash the hideously bloated national security budget by upwards of $500 billion per year, the already debt-saturated US economy is going to be KO’d by an exploding public debt.

For want of doubt, however, here is the Donald’s rationale for selecting a guy to run the $1 trillion/2.9 million employee Pentagon who has never managed anything bigger than a household of three successive wives and the accumulation of seven kids:

“Nobody fights harder for the Troops, and Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘Peace through Strength’ policy… Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country… With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice – Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down.

What unmitigated breast-beating rubbish!

For crying out loud, the last thing America needs is another Warrior for the Troops. Instead, what it really needs is a Fearless Slayer of the sacred cows and obese pigs of the military/industrial complex who gorge themselves at the Pentagon’s trough.

Likewise, the pointless, costly Forever Wars stem from too much of the false “strength” of a globe-spanning War Machine that thrives upon inventing enemies, exaggerating threats to national security and provoking conflicts. We are referring, for instance, to the Washington-funded and orchestrated coup in Ukraine during February 2014 that deposed a duly-elected, Russia-friendly President and fostered the hellacious civil war now raging in Ukraine.

The fact is, the very slogan “peace through strength” is a vestigial relic of the Cold War. In today’s world it is utterly irrelevant because subsequent to the Soviet Union’s disappearance into the dustbin of history there remains no rival military superpower which poses a remote threat to the liberty and security of the American homeland. In the year 2024 America doesn’t need “strength” to deter hostile like-sized enemies because, well, there are none.

So today’s $1.4 trillion national security budget – including $70 billion for foreign aid and operations and $380 billion for the deferred cost of the Forever Wars in the form of veterans benefits – is a colossal, unaffordable waste. And it is the preponderant source of the very thing which Washington should be backing down from – namely, the America’s existentially threatening runaway public debt.

That figure was $1 trillion when Ronald Reagan took office; $19 trillion by the time the Donald stumbled into the White House; stands at $36 trillion today; will top $60 trillion by the end of the next decade based on current built-in spending and borrowing; would exceed $70 trillion by the same point (2034) under the sweeping tax cuts and spending increases already proposed by the Donald; and will hit $150 trillion by mid-century under the CBO’s latest Rosy Scenario outlook.

Yet the Donald chooses to appoint to the single most crucial fiscal job in the entire Federal government a flag-waving champion of military glory. And one who is also an ill-informed hawk who foolishly thinks America is imperiled by enemies on every side and that we can bomb our way to safety, even in the case of a third-rate power like Iran that poses no military threat to the American homeland whatsoever.

Nevertheless, Hegseth sounded like Curtis LeMay in an interview during the Donald’s last stint in the Oval:

After the Soleimani assassination, Pete Hegseth called on Trump to bomb Iran’s energy production facilities, ports, and nuclear facilities. He said Trump should even bomb mosques, hospitals, and schools if deemed necessary.

More importantly, his top priority seems to be rooting-out DEI and wokish nonsense from the armed forces:

“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Hegseth said, referring to Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. “Any general, any admiral, whatever,” who was involved in diversity, equity and inclusion programs or “woke shit” has “got to go,” Hegseth said.

Well, yes, the current Joint Chiefs of Staff to the last man ought to be fired all right, but for not telling the President and Congress that the demolition derby in Ukraine is pointless, unwinnable and risks the threat of nuclear war, DEI or no.

But you can’t send the equivalent of a Pom-Pom Boy who valorizes destructive military combat like that carried out by Washington in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (sic!) to do a man’s job of draining the vast Swamp on the Pentagon side of the Potomac. You need someone who knows why the whole idea of Washington’s global hegemony is wrong, obsolete and not remotely necessary for securing the safety and liberty of the American homeland.

Stated differently, America First amounts to nothing more than flag-waving and nationalist boasting unless it is predicated on bringing the Empire Home, dismantling the War Machine and drastically slashing the national security budget as part of a comprehensive plan to stem the tsunami of red ink flooding from the banks of the Potomac.

The starting point for that task, of course, is that in the present world order there are no technologically-advanced industrial powers who have either the capability or intention to attack the American homeland. To do that you need a massive land armada, huge air and sealift capacities, a Navy and Air Force many times the size of current US forces and humongous supply lines and logistics capacities that have never been even dreamed of by any other nation on the planet.

You also need an initial GDP of say $50 trillion to sustain what would be the most colossal mobilization of weaponry and materiale in human history. And that’s to say nothing of being ruled by suicidal leaders willing to risk the nuclear destruction of their own countries, allies and economic commerce in order to accomplish, what? Occupy Denver?

The entire idea that there is a post-cold war existential threat to America’s security is just nuts. For one thing, nobody has the GDP or military heft. Russia’s GDP is a scant $2 trillion, not the $50 trillion that would needed for it to put invasionary forces on the New Jersey shores. And its defense budget is $75 billion, which amounts to about four weeks of waste in Washington’s $900 billion monster.

As for China, let us not forget that even its communist rulers sill believe it is the “Middle Kingdom” and therefore already occupies the most important territory on the entire planet. Why would they want to patrol the streets of Cleveland OH or Birmingham AL for dissenters from Chairman Xi’s thought?

More importantly, they ain’t got the GDP heft to even think about landing on the California shores, notwithstanding Wall Street’s endless kowtowing to the China Boom. The fact is, China has accumulated in excess of $50 trillion of debt in barely two decades!

Therefore, it didn’t grow organically in the historic capitalist mode; it printed, borrowed, spent and built like there was no tomorrow. The resulting simulacrum of prosperity would not last a year if its $3.6 trillion global export market – the source of the hard cash that keeps its Ponzi upright – were to crash, which is exactly what would happen if it tried to invade America.

To be sure, its totalitarian leaders are immensely misguided and downright evil from the perspective of their oppressed population. But they are not stupid. They stay in power by keeping the people relatively fat and happy and would never risk bringing down what amounts to an economic house of cards that has not even a vague approximation in human history.

Moreover, the nuclear blackmail card can’t be played by China or Russia, either. Neither has anything close to the First Strike force that would be needed to totally overwhelm America’s triad nuclear deterrent, and thereby avoid a retaliatory annihilation of its own country and people if it attempted to strike first.

After all, the US has 3,700 active nuclear warheads, of which about 1,770 are operational at any point in time. In turn, these are spread under the sea, in hardened silos and among a bomber fleet of 66 B-2 and B-52s – all beyond the detection or reach of any other nuclear power.

For instance, the Ohio class nuclear submarines each have 20 missile tubes, with each missile carrying an average of four-to-five warheads. That’s 90 independently targetable warheads per boat. At any given time 12 of the 14 Ohio class nuclear subs are actively deployed, and spread around the oceans of the planet within a firing range of 4,000 miles.

So at the point of attack that’s 1,080 deep-sea nuclear warheads to identify, locate and neutralize before any would be blackmailer even gets started. Indeed, with respect to the “Where’s Waldo?” aspect of it, the sea-based nuclear force alone is a powerful guarantor of America’s homeland security.

And then there are the roughly 300 nukes aboard the 66 strategic bombers, which also are not sitting on a single airfield Pearl Harbor style waiting to be obliterated, but are constantly rotating in the air and on the move. Likewise, the 400 Minutemen III missiles are spread out in extremely hardened silos deep underground across a broad swath of the upper mid-west, which would also need to be taken out by would be blackmailers.

Needless to say, there is no way, shape or form that America’s nuclear deterrent can be neutralized by a blackmailer. And the best thing is that according to the most recent CBO estimates the nuclear triad will cost only about $75 billion per year to maintain over the next decade, including allowances for periodic weapons upgrades.

The heart of America’s military security thus requires only 7% of today’s massive military budget. Indeed, the key component of the nuclear deterrent – sea-based ballistic missiles – is estimated to cost just $188 billion over the next decade, or 1.9% of the $10 trillion national defense baseline.

In any event, that 7% piece of the Warfare State is actually what dissuades both Moscow and Beijing from attempting nuclear blackmail and therefore invasion by nuclear checkmate. That is to say, America’s security lies in nuclear deterrence – the linch-pin called MAD (mutual assured destruction) that has worked for 70 years. And it worked even at the peak of the cold war when the Soviet Union had 40,000 nuclear warheads and leaders far more unstable than either Cool-Hand Vlad or Xi Jinping.

At the end of the day, it is the triad nuclear deterrent and the relative economic diminutiveness of Russia and China that keep the American homeland secure and safe from hostile foreign encroachment. Indeed, when it comes to the threat of a conventional military invasion the vast Atlantic and Pacific moats are even greater barriers to foreign military assault in the 21st century than they so successfully proved to be in the 19th century.

That’s because today’s advanced surveillance technology and anti-ship missiles would consign an enemy armada to Davy Jones’ Locker nearly as soon as it steamed out of its own territorial waters.

The fact is, in an age when the sky is flush with high tech surveillance assets a massive conventional force armada couldn’t possibly be secretly built, tested and mustered for surprise attack without being noticed in Washington. There can be no repeat of the Japanese strike force steaming across the Pacific toward Pearl Harbor sight unseen.

Indeed, America’s ostensible “enemies” actually have no offensive or invasionary capacity at all. Russia has only one aircraft carrier – a 1980s era vessel which has been in dry-dock for repairs since 2017 and is equipped with neither a phalanx of escort ships nor a suite of attack and fighter aircraft – and at the moment not even an active crew.

Likewise, China has just three aircraft carriers – two of which are refurbished rust buckets purchased from the remnants of the old Soviet Union, and which carriers do not even have modern catapults for launching their strike aircraft.

In short, none of the non-NATO countries will be steaming their tiny 3, 2 and 1 carrier battle groups toward the shores of either California or New Jersey any time soon. An invasionary force that had any chance at all of surviving a US fortress defense of cruise missiles, drones, jet fighters, attack submarines and electronics warfare would need to be 100X larger.

Again, there is no GDP in the world – $2 trillion for Russia, $3.5 trillion for India or $18 trillion for China – that is even remotely close in size to the $50 to $100 trillion GDP that would be needed to support such an invasionary force without capsizing the home economy.

At the same time, the 11 US carrier battle groups, which will cost upwards of $1.2 trillion over the next decade, would have no role in a continental Fortress America defense at all. They would be sitting ducks in the blue waters, and far less effective than aircraft and missile defenses based in the North American interior.

In short, these massively expensive forces have no purpose other than global power projection and the conduct of wars of invasion and occupation abroad. That is, they are military accoutrements of the Global Hegemon not even remotely relevant to a proper Fortress America defense.

Most of the rest of the massive $900 billion defense budget is based on false predicates, fabricated threats and the budget-grabbing prowess of its own marketing (i.e. think tanks) and advocacy (i.e. defense contractors) arms.

For instance, why in the world do we still have NATO 32 years after the Soviet Union perished?

The only real answer is that it is a mechanism to sell arms to its 30-member states. Indeed, Europe had long ago proved it did not really fear that Putin would be marching his armies through the Brandenburg Gates in Berlin. That’s why Germany spent only 1.4% of GDP on defense, and was more than happy to buy cheap-energy via Russian delivered pipeline gas.

Germany’s current quasi-warlike posture vis-a-vis Russia is actually not what it is cracked-up to be by the US pro-war media, either. The truth is, the German Green Party – which is what kept the Scholz social democrat government in power until last week – has gone full retard war-mongering for the most hideous of reasons: To wit, the Greens live to end the era of fossil fuel, and what better way to do it than cut off the cheap oil and gas supplies from Russia on which German’s fossil-fueled economy is based.

Likewise, one thing anyone who has read a smattering of European history knows is that Russians and Poles hate each other and have for a good long stretch of wars and bloody altercations. So Vlad Putin may not be a Russian Gandhi, but he is sure as hell way too smart to attempt to occupy Poland. Ditto France, Germany, the Low Countries, Iberia and the rest.

In short, Washington doesn’t need NATO to protect our allies in Europe because they are not facing any threat that can’t be handled by their own ways and means, preferably of the diplomatic variety. In fact, the whole disaster in Ukraine today is rooted in the War Party’s mindless expansion of NATO in violation of all of Washington’s promises to Gorbachev to not expand an inch to the east in return for the unification of Germany. Yet NATO now includes all of the old Warsaw Pact nations and even attempted to extend its reach to two of the former Soviet Republics (i.e. Georgia and Ukraine).

Can the same thing be said of America’s so-called allies in East Asia?

Why, yes it can. Just as the definitely not sacrosanct borders of Ukraine were drawn by long dead Soviet tyrants (i.e. Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev) that America’s homeland security has no reason to defend, the same is true of Taiwan.

Chiang Kia-Shek lost the Chinese civil war fair and square in 1949, and there was no reason to perpetuate his rag-tag regime when it retreated to the last square miles of Chinese territory – the island province of Taiwan. The latter had been under control of the Chinese Qing Dynasty for 200 years thru 1895, when it was occupied by the Imperial Japan for 50 years, only to be liberated by the Chinese at the end of WWII.

That is to say, once Imperial Japan was expelled the Chinese did not invade or occupy Taiwan–it had been Han for centuries. It is separated from the mainland today only because Washington arbitrarily made it a protectorate and ally when the loser of the civil war set up shop in a small remnant of modern China, thereby establishing an artificial nation that had no bearing whatsoever on America’s homeland security.

In any event, the nascent US War Party of the late 1940s decreed otherwise, generating 70 years of tension with the Beijing regime that accomplished nothing except bolster the case for a big Navy and for US policing of the Pacific region for no good reason of homeland defense.

That is to say, without Washington’s support for the nationalist regime in Taipei, the island would have been absorbed back into the Chinese polity where it had been for centuries. It would probably now resemble the booming prosperity of Shanghai – something Wall Street and mainstream US politicians celebrated for years.

And, no, a Red Taiwan will not stop selling semiconductor chips to the US. For crying out loud, the entire Red Ponzi of China is predicated upon being an industrial supply base to America.

Moreover, it still is not too late. Absent Washington’s arms and threats, the Taiwanese would surely prefer peaceful prosperity as the 24th province of China rather than a catastrophic war against Beijing that they would have no hope of surviving.

By the same token, the alternative – US military intervention – would mean WWIII. So what’s the point of Washington’s dangerous policy of “strategic ambiguity” when the long-term outcome is utterly inevitable? And yet and yet: Every one of the Donald’s national security appointees to date (save for Tulsi Gabbard) are foaming at the mouth China hawks, and Pete Hegseth is no exception.

But if you foolishly believe the self-serving military-industrial complex and Warfare State propaganda holding that the already tottering Red Ponzi is a military threat you are unlikely to be persuaded to slash anything from the defense budget. That’s because nearly the entire $250 billion annual cost of the Navy/Marines and much of the rationale for the two-and-one-half wars $185 billion Army is based on fighting a war with China in the Far East.

In short, the only sensible policy is for Washington to recant 70-years of folly brought on by the China Lobby and arms manufacturers and green-light a Taiwanese reconciliation with the mainland. Even a few years thereafter Wall Street bankers peddling M&A deals in Taipei wouldn’t know the difference from Shanghai.

Likewise, we think it is pretty evident that the Chinese do not like the Japanese and the South Koreans do not like the Japanese for the same reasons which go back to Imperial Japan and its invasions and occupations of both countries between 1895 and 1945. Yet 75 years have now passed and all three nations have become booming centers of economic prosperity and modern technologically-based civilization.

To be sure, the War Party on the Potomac can’t seem to understand that most of mankind would prefer peaceful commerce to bloody warfare or even permanent political and military mobilization. So the fact is, the only way these three great Asian nations would go to war today is if it were instigated and funded by Washington.

We’d bet, however, that this is the silver lining of the historic Ukraine fiasco now unfolding. No nation in its right mind – and these Asian folks are self-evidently in their right mind – would volunteer to become a Ukraine-style weapons testing range for the Washington War Machine.

In short, there is no need whatsoever for America’s massive conventional armada and its nearly $1.4 trillion annual expense. Easily $500 billion could be cut from that bloated military monster,

Yet what has the Donald proffered to save America from the impending fiscal calamity it fuels? Why, a flag-waver whose first priority is apparently getting the girls out of the trenches, when no American – he, she, them or they – needs to be in the battlefield trenches anywhere on the planet in the first place.

David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He’s the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back, and the recently released Great Money Bubble: Protect Yourself From The Coming Inflation Storm. He also is founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner and David Stockman’s Bubble Finance Trader.

ANTIWAR.COM

 

CONSPIRACY THEORIES NES PAS

A Bizarre Kind of Executive Action: The Suppression of Epochal Documentaries

by Edward Curtin / November 14th, 2024

The old lie: Dulce et decorum est /Pro patria mori
(It is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one’s country”)

– Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est“

Yes, it seems fitting that I am writing these words on November 11, Veterans Day in the U.S. and Remembrance Day in Commonwealth countries, a day that began as Armistice Day to celebrate the ending of World War I, the “war to end all wars.”

That phrase has become a sardonic joke in the century that has followed as wars have piled up upon wars to create a permanent condition, and the censorship and propaganda that became acute with WW I have been exacerbated a hundredfold today. The number of dead soldiers and civilians in the century since numbs a mind intent on counting numbers, as courage, love, and innocence wails from skeletons sleeping deep in dirt everywhere. The minds of the living are ravished at the thought of so much death.

Almost a year ago I reviewed a film – Four Died Trying – about four American men who were assassinated by the U.S. government because they opposed the wars upon which their country had come to rely: President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. I wrote of this documentary film, directed by John Kirby and produced by Libby Handros, that it was powerful, riveting, and masterful, the opening 58 minute prologue to a film series meant to be released at intervals over a few years. This prologue was released at the end of 2023 to great applause.
I wrote of it:

Today we are living the consequences of the CIA/national security state’s 1960s takeover of the country. Their message then and now: We, the national security state, rule, we have the guns, the media, and the power to dominate you. We control the stories you are meant to hear. If you get uppity, well-known, and dare challenge us, we will buy you off, denigrate you, or, if neither works, we will kill you. You are helpless, they reiterate endlessly. Bang. Bang. Bang.

But they lie, and this series of films, beginning with its first installment, will tell you why. It will show why understanding the past is essential for transforming the present. It will profoundly inspire you to see and hear these four bold and courageous men refuse to back down to the evil forces that shot them down. It will open your eyes to the parallel spiritual paths they walked and the similarity of the messages they talked about – peace, justice, racism, colonialism, human rights, and the need for economic equality – not just in the U.S.A. but across the world, for the fate of all people was then, and is now, linked to the need to transform the U.S. warfare state into a country of peace and human reconciliation, just as these four men radically underwent deep transformations in the last year of their brief lives.

This 58 minute prologue touches on many of themes that will follow in the months ahead. Season One will be divided into chapters that cover the four assassinations together with background material covering “the world as it was” in the 1950s with its Cold War propaganda, McCarthyism, the rise of the military-industrial complex, the CIA, red-baiting, and the ever present fear of nuclear war. Season Two will be devoted to the government and media coverups, citizen investigations, and the intelligence agencies’ and their media mouthpieces’ mind control operations aimed at the American people that continue today.

Then in March of this year I wrote about the second film in the series, The World As It Was, that explores the very disturbing history of the 1950s in the U.S.A., a decade that lay the foundation of fear upon which the horrors of the 1960s were built, and from which we now are reaping the flowers of evil that have sprung up everywhere we look because the evils of those decades have never been adequately addressed.

But I was hopeful that if enough people got see to see these illuminating and brilliantly done films, built on more than one hundred and twenty interviews over six years with key historical figures, including many family members of the four men, change was possible because more people would demand accountability. That the movies were also entertaining, despite their profoundly serious content, boded well for their reaching a wide audience.

Just recently, I was again asked by the filmmakers, as were others, to preview the third film, Jack Joins the Revolution, about John F. Kennedy, from his youth to the hope he inspired when he entered politics in 1947 until his death on November 22, 1963 and the shock and despair that overtook the nation and the world. This third film matched the brilliance of the first two, but I did wonder why there had been a lapse of more than six months between this one and the previous.

It seemed to me that this was the perfect time for these films to be released in quick succession to have a profound effect.

But having watched this third film, I discovered to my great surprise that it has not been released, nor, even more shockingly, has the second one that I previewed eight months ago. Why?  I do not know, but it is very odd, to put it mildly. I do know that by not releasing them now a significant opportunity is being lost. These films would be of great help to the country, because they depict what a truly populist presidency looks like and the malign forces that oppose him.  But alas, for reasons that are hard to fathom, the films are being suppressed by someone.  We can only hope that the filmmakers will be successful in their efforts to free the films in time for them to be of value at this crucial moment in our history.

It is well known that JFK was a naval war hero in WW II, but less well known that his war experience turned him fiercely against war, that to end all wars was a fundamental theme of his for the rest of his life.

Jack Joins the Revolution explores this and reminds the viewer that Kennedy was well acquainted with death, having almost died eight times before he was assassinated, something he knew was coming. He was courageous in the extreme. Thus my earlier reference to Veterans Day, for JFK was a veteran of exceptional courage who not only saved his comrades when their PT boat was sunk by the Japanese in the south Pacific, but tried to the end to save his country and the world from the madness of the endless wars that have followed his death at the hands of the CIA and the U.S. warfare state.

This film clearly shows why he became such an obstacle to the imperial war machine and the CIA that to this very day have a huge stake in suppressing the truth about the man. If the film (and the others) is not released, these forces will have been successful. It will be another posthumous assassination.

For what is most striking about this episode is the light it sheds on John Kennedy’s forceful, long-standing anti-colonial and anti-imperial convictions for which he was attacked by politicians of both parties. It is suggested, and I think rightly, that this grew out of his Irish roots, for Ireland’s long fight for independence from British colonial occupation was dear to his heart and also a fundamental inspiration in the following decades for anti-colonial freedom fighters everywhere. It still is.

To listen to the film’s clips of his speeches on these topics is a revelation for those unfamiliar, not only with his radical views for a politician, but to his passionate eloquence that is sorely missing today. Attacking the policies of support for dictators and the coups against foreign leaders under the Eisenhower administration and the CIA led by Allen Dulles, JFK called for freedom and independence for people’s everywhere and the end of colonialism supported by the U.S. and other nations. Algeria, Iran, Cuba, Latin America, Africa – it’s a long list.

Even before he became president, in 1957, then Senator Kennedy gave a speech in the U.S. Senate that sent shock waves throughout Washington, D.C. and around the world. He came out in support of Algerian independence from France and African liberation generally, and against colonial imperialism.

As chair of the Senate’s African Subcommittee in 1959, he urged sympathy for African and Asian independence movements as part of American foreign policy. He believed that continued support of colonial policies would only end in more bloodshed because the voices of independence would not be denied, nor should they be.

That speech caused an international uproar, and in the U.S.A. Kennedy was harshly criticized by Eisenhower, Nixon, John Foster Dulles, and even members of the Democratic party, such as Adlai Stevenson and Dean Acheson. But it was applauded in Africa and the Third World.

Yet JFK continued throughout his 1960 presidential campaign to raise his voice against colonialism throughout the world and for free and independent African nations. Such views were anathema to the foreign policy establishment, including the CIA and the burgeoning military industrial complex that President Eisenhower belatedly warned against in his Farewell Address, delivered nine months after approving the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in March 1960; this juxtaposition revealed the hold the Pentagon and CIA had and has on sitting presidents, as the pressure for war became structurally systematized and Kennedy was removed through a public execution for al the world to see.

Many voices speak to this and other issues in the film: Oliver Stone, James W. Douglass, RFK, Jr., Robert Dallek, Monica Wiesak, his niece Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Peter Dale Scott, James Galbraith, his nephew Stephen Smith, David Talbot, Peter Janney, and others.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaks about the 1953 U.S. coup against the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossaddegh of Iran and of the approximately 72 CIA-led known coups the United States engineered between 1947 and 1989; author Stephen Schlesinger of the Dulles brothers’ work for the United Fruit Company and their subsequent involvement in the 1954 coup d’état against the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz who was instituting land reform that threatened United Fruit’s hold on so much of the country. In both cases, and many others, the U.S. supported vicious dictators and decades of terrible bloodshed and civil wars. We see a clip of JFK himself condemn the U.S. support of the Cuban dictator Batista, who was finally overthrow by Fidel Castro and his rebel compatriots, the Cuban Revolution that Kennedy understood and sympathized with.

All this just leading up to Kennedy’s presidency, which will be covered in the next film.

Watching this riveting documentary, one cannot but be deeply impressed with a side of John Kennedy few know – his hatred of oppression, colonialism, imperialism, war, and his love of freedom for all people. One comes away from the film knowing full well why the CIA had branded him an arch-enemy even before he took office, and then when in office he rattled their cage so much more in the cause of peace.

And one is left asking: why then has this film (and its predecessor about the right-wing witch hunt and crackdown on dissent in the 1950s) not been released to the public at a time when nothing could be more timely?

It is a very strange kind of executive action, considering the brilliance and importance of these films for today – this very moment in history.FacebookTwitteRedditEmail

Edward Curtin writes and his work appears widely. He is the author of Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies. Read other articles by Edward, or visit Edward's website.

An undercover investigation reveals the deception of “humane”-certified farms

Regulators had a chance to fix the meat industry’s false advertising problem. They failed.

by Kenny Torrella

VOX

Nov 14, 2024,


A flock of large white broiler chickens, approximately 10 weeks old, are ready to be processed. 

Monica Fecke/Moment via Getty Images


An overwhelming majority of Americans say they’re concerned about the treatment of animals raised for meat, and many believe they can help by simply selecting from one of the many brands that advertise their chicken or pork as “humane.” But such marketing claims have long borne little resemblance to the ugly reality of raising animals for meat.


Nearly all farmed animals in the US live on mega factory farms, where they’re mutilated without pain relief and fattened up in dark, overcrowded warehouses before being shipped off to the slaughterhouse. Only a tiny sliver of livestock are actually reared on the small, higher-welfare farms that many companies conjure on their packaging with quaint red barns and green rolling hills — and even those operations can be rife with animal suffering.

This summer, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) had an opportunity to fix the false advertising problem pervasive in the meat aisle when it published updated guidelines that companies must follow when making animal welfare claims on their labels. Instead, its new guidance barely changed anything.

The updated rules “remain insufficient to combat misleading label claims used to market meat and poultry products,” as the nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute put it, allowing companies “to essentially make up their own definitions with no repercussions.” (The one improvement, the organization noted, was a clearer definition of the term “pasture raised,” though that label remains poorly enforced and does not guarantee animals were raised humanely.)

Here’s how the USDA’s guidelines work: If a meat company wants to make an animal welfare or environment-related claim on its packaging, it must fill out a form with an illustration of its label and an explanation as to how the animals are raised to justify the claim; how the company will ensure the claim is valid from birth to slaughter to sale; and whether or not an independent, third-party organization certified the claim, which is optional. The USDA never conducts surprise audits, or any audits at all, to verify the company is telling the truth. It is, in essence, an honor system.

The USDA also has an incredibly low, and often nonsensical, bar for what passes as humane treatment.


The agency states, for example, that a chicken company can use the term “humanely raised” if it feeds its birds an all-vegetarian diet, which has virtually no bearing on their welfare (chickens are omnivores).


Similarly, the agency says pork can be labeled “humanely raised” if the company provides its pigs with “proper shelter and rest areas.” By that definition, standard factory farms — which produce practically all US pork — are humane because they provide ample shelter in the form of vast, crowded warehouses where the animals have nothing to do but rest on the same concrete flooring where they defecate and urinate.

Chickens raised for meat at an operation in Maryland. Edwin Remsberg/The Image Bank via Getty Images

Pigs at a breeding farm. Chayakorn Lotongkum/iStock via Getty Images


“I think that a lot of this is out of touch with what consumers are really thinking these claims mean,” P. Renée Wicklund, co-founder of Richman Law & Policy — a law firm that takes meat, dairy, and egg companies to court over false claims — told me.


Over the last decade, the Animal Welfare Institute has requested from the USDA the applications that meat companies submitted for 97 animal welfare claims. For the overwhelming majority of them, there were either no records at all or the justifications for the labels had little to no relevance to animal welfare.


The USDA declined an interview request for this story and didn’t directly respond to numerous detailed questions. Instead, it sent a statement that read in part: “USDA continues to deliver on its commitment to fairness and choice for both farmers and consumers, and that means supporting transparency and high-quality standards.”


To be fair to the agency, it doesn’t have the authority to conduct on-farm audits, which would require an act of Congress. But it does have authority to define animal welfare claims — an authority it rarely exercises. Instead, it allows companies to define animal welfare claims themselves.


The USDA also added that it “strongly encourages” companies to validate animal welfare claims using third-party certifiers — private organizations that audit conditions on farms and license the use of their own humane labels. But a recent undercover investigation into one of the nation’s biggest “humane-certified” poultry companies shows how low third-party certification standards can be.

Chickens kicked and run over with forklifts: Inside a “humane-certified” poultry farm


Foster Farms, the 11th largest chicken company in the US, advertises meat from animals raised with supposedly “better care.” On its packaging, chickens are shown roaming free on pasture, even though the company’s conventionally raised birds will never step foot onto grass. On its website, Foster Farms says its farming is “safe, sustainable, and humane” and that its chickens are “raised on local West Coast farms” with “strenuous, high standards.”


The company also promotes its chicken as “cage-free” with “no added hormones or steroids ever.” But touting these aspects is misleading because chickens raised for meat in the US are not kept in cages — only those raised for eggs are — and it’s illegal to feed chickens hormones or steroids.


“They’re feel-good words, but they don’t have any real meaning,” veterinarian Gail Hansen told Vox.


This summer, an undercover investigator with the animal rights group Animal Outlook worked for a month on the company’s catch crew, a job that entails grabbing chickens on farms, stuffing them into crates, and loading them onto trucks bound for the slaughterhouse.


Over the course of more than a dozen shifts at multiple Foster Farms facilities, the investigator — who requested anonymity due to the covert nature of undercover investigations — documented workers slamming birds into crates, kicking and hitting chickens, and numerous instances of forklift drivers running over birds.


The investigator recalled making eye contact with a bird shortly after they were run over by a forklift. “They were being crushed and everything was being pushed forward, and they had their beak open, and they had this look on their face like they knew that they were dying. And then I watched them flap and struggle for a moment before passing,” the investigator told me.

“From a veterinary perspective, some of the things are just horrific,” Hansen said.


The investigator chalked up most of the cruelty to the chaotic, fast-paced work environment imposed by supervisors during long, grueling shifts.


After Animal Outlook released its investigation last month, Foster Farms fired several employees and reported them to county law enforcement. In a statement to a chicken industry news site, the company said it would also hire for more roles focused on animal welfare, retrain employees on animal welfare, and conduct more audits. Foster Farms did not respond to Vox’s multiple requests for comment.


Cheryl Leahy, who was executive director of Animal Outlook when the investigation was released but has since left the organization, said the company’s problems go much deeper than just a few employees.

Related:The “humanewashing” of America’s meat and dairy, explained
Undercover audio of a Tyson employee reveals “free-range” chicken is meaningless
“Wild-caught,” “organic,” “grass-fed”: What do all these animal welfare labels actually mean?


Cruelty is “woven into the culture,” Leahy said. “It is a feature, not a bug. It is a business practice. There is a decision made to go with volume and speed” over animal welfare.


In recent years, the USDA has cited Foster Farms for 18 incidents of violating federal animal welfare laws. Numerous other investigations into Foster Farms facilities have found cruel conditions and practices that, to be fair to the company, have also been documented across the US poultry industry.


Foster Farms’ announced reforms in response to Animal Outlook’s latest investigation are unlikely to do much to improve overall conditions, Leahy said. It has already taken similar actions — penalizing workers and increasing training — in the wake of previous investigations. More importantly, the company’s animal welfare standards are already at rock bottom, in line with the rest of the chicken industry.


But you wouldn’t know that from its marketing or its “American Humane” certification.

How misleading marketing — enabled by the USDA — tricks consumers


For years, Foster Farms has bolstered its humane image through a certification from the nonprofit American Humane — the kind of third-party organization that the USDA “strongly encourages” meat companies making humane claims to work with. As of the late 2010s, the company paid American Humane $375,000 annually for its certification, and a lawsuit claimed that American Humane would give Foster Farms seven to 14 days’ notice of an audit, allowing them to prepare for the visits.


Animal advocacy groups like Animal Outlook argue that American Humane’s standards largely mirror that of the typical chicken factory farm, not the higher-welfare conditions a consumer would reasonably expect.


Hansen, the veterinarian, echoed that sentiment: “The daylight between them is pretty narrow.”



American Humane’s “standards are not meant to actually bring these companies up to a level of palatability for the public,” Leahy said. “What they’re trying to do is stop the criticism.”


A former American Humane executive is now an owner and partner of a PR firm that defends factory farm interests and executive director of a related pro-factory farming organization. American Humane did not respond to multiple requests for comment.


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A 2015 class action lawsuit, alleging that Foster Farms misleads consumers with its American Humane Certified label, demonstrates how the USDA’s low standards enable such deception: In a 2018 decision, a three-judge panel rejected an appeal in part because the USDA had already approved the label.


“The Foster Farms of the world can say, ‘Look, this was approved by a government agency,’”said Wicklund. (Wicklund’s law firm, Richman Law & Policy, has represented and co-counseled with Animal Outlook in meat labeling lawsuits; earlier this year, it filed a legal complaint against Foster Farms over its animal welfare claims, which is ongoing.)


The recently released Animal Outlook investigation reported that Foster Farms employees — and, according to the undercover investigator, its supervisors, too — did violate some of American Humane’s poultry handling standards, which are laid out in a dense 115-page document. However, Foster Farms remains certified by American Humane — when companies are in violation of the organization’s standards, there are seemingly no penalties. They have to fill out a form explaining how they’ll meet full compliance in the future and alert American Humane when that’s been done. Companies can still obtain certification even if they don’t fully pass their annual audit. (And numerous investigations into poultry companies have found that rough handling appears to be the industry norm, not the exception).


While some animal certification programs do set standards above the industry norm, what makes especially weak third-party certifications like American Humane’s so fundamentally inadequate — and deceptive — is that they permit the worst systemic abuses of poultry farming: cruel breeding practices, overcrowding, and especially inhumane slaughter methods.


Virtually all chickens raised for meat in the US have been bred to grow so big so fast that they’re in constant pain. Many have difficulty walking or even standing and are more likely to suffer from leg deformities, heart attacks, and other health issues when compared to heritage breeds that grow at a normal pace. Animal Outlook’s investigator alleged that many of the birds in the Foster Farms operations couldn’t walk and that some had broken legs. American Humane’s standards allow for these rapid-growth chickens, which animal rights activists call “Frankenchickens.”

The group’s standards also allow for overcrowding, giving birds a little more space than the industry standard but what still amounts to almost 20 percent less space than what animal advocacy groups argue should be the bare minimum. American Humane allows for the standard chicken slaughter process: shackling chickens upside down, dunking them in a bath of electrified water to stun them unconscious, slitting their throats, and then placing them in a scalding vat to loosen their feathers.


Despite all that, the resulting meat can still be advertised as humane, sustainable, and produced from healthy birds.


The empty claims many meat companies make on their labels and in their advertising stem from forces bigger than the USDA and third-party certifiers. Currently, chickens and other poultry birds have zero federal legal protections while on the farm or in the slaughterhouse, and third-party certification programs make an exceptionally weak substitute for this legal gap. If we wanted truly “humanely raised” chicken, we’d have to fundamentally change how chickens are farmed, which would require significant anti-cruelty legislation from Congress. That would substantially raise the price of chicken, making it more of a delicacy than a staple.


But the USDA, the poultry giants, and the dubious third-party certification schemes would like us to believe otherwise — that wholesome marketing and hollow honor systems can fix the horrific reality of what it is to be a farmed animal in the US.

Kenny Torrella is a senior reporter for Vox’s Future Perfect section, with a focus on animal welfare and the future of meat.

 

Why Cuba Hasn’t Adjusted to US Sanctions after Six Decades

by Roger D. Harris / November 11th, 2024

For the thirty-second time in so many years, the US blockade of Cuba was globally condemned at the UN General Assembly’s annual vote in October. Only Tel Aviv joined Washington in defending the collective punishment, which is illegal under international law.

For the vast majority of Cubans, who were born after the first unilateral coercive measures were imposed, life under these conditions is the only normalcy they have known. Even friends sympathetic to socialism and supporters of Cuba may question why the Cubans have not simply learned to live under these circumstances after 64 years.

The explanation, explored below, is that the relatively mild embargo of 1960 has been periodically intensified and made ever more devastatingly effective. The other major factor is that the geopolitical context has changed to Cuba’s disadvantage. These factors in turn have had cumulatively detrimental effects.

Cuba in the new world order

 The Cuban Revolution achieved remarkable initial successes for a small, resource-poor island with a history of colonial exploitation.

After the 1959 revolution, the population quickly attained 100% literacy. Life expectancy and infant mortality rates soon rivaled far richer countries, through the application of socialized medicine, prioritizing primary care. Cuba also became a world sports powerhouse and made noteworthy advances in biotechnology. At the same time, Cuban troops aided in the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa, among many other exercises of internationalism.

Cuba did not make those advances alone but benefitted from the solidarity of the Soviet Union and other members of the Socialist Bloc. From the beginning of the revolution, the USSR helped stabilize the economy, particularly in the areas of agriculture and manufacturing. Notably, Cuba exported sugar to the Soviets at above-market prices.

The USSR’s military assistance in the form of training and equipment contributed to the Cuban’s successfully repelling the US’s Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. In addition, the Socialist Bloc backed Cuba diplomatically in the United Nations and other international fora. East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, for example, also assisted with economic aid, investment, and trade to help develop the Cuban economy.

The implosion of the Socialist Bloc in the late 1980s and early 1990s severely impacted Cuba.

No longer buffered by these allies, the full weight of the US-led regime-change campaign sent Cuba reeling into what became known as the “Special Period.” After an initial GDP contraction of about 35% between 1989 and 1993, the Cubans somewhat recovered by the 2000s. But, now, conditions on the island are again increasingly problematic.

A new multipolar world may be in birth, but it has not been able to sufficiently aid Cuba in this time of need. China and Vietnam along with post-Soviet Russia, remnants of the earlier Socialist Bloc, still maintain friendly commercial and diplomatic relations with Cuban but nowhere the former levels of cooperation.

Ratcheting up of the US regime-change campaign

 The ever-tightening US blockade is designed to ensure that socialism does not succeed; to strangle in the cradle all possible alternatives to the established imperial order.

The initial restrictions imposed by Dwight Eisenhower in 1960 banned US exports to Cuba, except for food and medicine, and reduced Cuba’s sugar export quota to the US. Shortly before the end of his term in 1961, the US president broke diplomatic relations.

He also initiated covert operations against Cuba, which would be significantly strengthened by his successor, John Kennedy, and subsequent US administrations. Since then, Cuba has endured countless acts of terrorism as well as attempts to assassinate the revolution’s political leadership.

John Kennedy had campaigned in 1960, accusing the Eisenhower-Nixon administration of failing to sufficiently combat the spread of communism. Kennedy was determined to prevent communism from gaining a foothold in America’s “backyard.” He made deposing the “Castro regime” a national priority and imposed a comprehensive economic embargo.

After Kennedy’s failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis the following year, he initiated Operation Mongoose. The president put his brother Robert Kennedy in charge of attempting to overthrow the revolution by covert means. This CIA operation of sabotage and other destabilization methods was meant to bring to Cuba “the terrors of the earth.”

Post-Soviet era

Subsequent US administrations continued the policy of blockade, occupation of Guantánamo, and overt and covert destabilization efforts.

Former CIA director and then-US President George H.W. Bush seized the opportunity in 1992 posed by the implosion of the Socialist Bloc. The bipartisan Cuban Democracy Act passed under his watch. Popularly called the Torricelli Act after a Democratic Party congressional sponsor, it codified the embargo into law, which could only be reversed by an act of congress.

The act strengthened the embargo into a blockade by prohibiting US subsidiaries of companies operating in third countries from trading with Cuba. Ships that had traded with Cuba were banned from entering the US for 180 days. The economic stranglehold on Cuba was tightened by obstructing sources of foreign currency, which further limited Cuba’s ability to engage in international trade.

The screws were again tightened in 1996 under US President Bill Clinton with the Helms-Burton Act. Existing unilateral coercive economic measures were reinforced and expanded.

The act also added restrictions to discourage foreign investment in Cuba, particularly in US-owned properties that had been expropriated after the Cuban Revolution. The infamous Title III of the act allowed US citizens to file lawsuits in US courts against foreign companies “trafficking” in such confiscated properties.

Title III generated substantial blowback and some countermeasures from US allies, such as the European Union and Canada, because of its extraterritorial application in violation of international trade agreements and sovereignty. As a result, Title III was temporarily waived.

Later, US President Barack Obama modified US tactics during his watch by reopening diplomatic relations with Cuba and easing some restrictions, in order to unapologetically achieve the imperial strategy of regime change more effectively.

But even that mild relief was reversed by his successor’s “maximum pressure” campaign. In 2019, US President Donald Trump revived Title III. By that time, the snowballing effects of the blockade had generated a progressively calamitous economic situation in Cuba.

Just days before the end of his term, Trump reinstated Cuba onto the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) after Obama had lifted it in 2015. The designation has had a huge impact on Cuba by reducing trade with third countries fearful of secondary sanctions by the US, by cutting off most international finance, and by further discouraging tourism.

President Joe Biden continued most of the Trump “maximum pressure” measures, including the SSOT designation, while adding some of this own. This came at a time when the island was especially hard hit by the Covid pandemic, which halted tourism, one of Cuba’s few sources of foreign currency.

In the prescient words of Lester D. Mallory, US deputy assistant secretary of state back in 1960, the imperialists saw the opportunity to “bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

US siege on Cuba perfected

In addition to the broad history outlined above of incessant regime-change measures by every US administration since the inception of the Cuban Revolution, some collateral factors are worthy of mention.

Major technological advances associated with computer technology and AI have been applied by the US to more effectively track and enforce its coercive measures. In addition, the fear of US fines for violation of its extraterritorial prohibitions on third-country actors has led to overcompliance.

Uncle Sam has also become ever more inventive. Visa-free entry (VWP) into the US is no longer available to most European and some other nationals if they stopped in Cuba, thereby significantly discouraging tourism to the island.

The internal political climate in the US has also shifted with the neoconservative takeover of both major parties. Especially now with the second Trump presidency, Cuba has fewer friends in Washington, and its enemies now have even less constraints on their regime-change campaigns. This is coupled by a generally more aggressive international US force projection.

Under the blockade, certain advances of the revolution were turned into liabilities. The revolution with its universal education, mechanization of agriculture, and collective or cooperative organization of work freed campesinos from the 24/7 drudgery of peasant agriculture. Today, fields remain idle because, among other factors, the fuel and spare parts for the tractors are embargoed.

Cuba’s allies, especially Venezuela, itself a victim of a US blockade, have been trying to supply Cuba with desperately needed oil. Construction of 14 oil tankers commissioned abroad by Venezuela, which could transport that oil, has been blocked. Direct proscriptions by the US on shipping companies and insurance underwriters have also limited the oil lifeline.

Without the fuel, electrical power, which run pumps to supply basic drinking water, cannot be generated. As a consequence, Cuba has recently experienced island-wide blackouts along with food and water shortages. This highlights how the blockade is essentially an economic dirty war against the civilian population.

Cumulative effects on Cuban society

Life is simply hard in Cuba under the US siege and is getting harder. This has led to recently unprecedented levels of out migration. The consequent brain-drain and labor shortages exacerbate the situation. Moreover, the relentless scarcity and the associated compromised quality of life under such conditions has had a corrosive effect over time.

Under the pressure of the siege, Cuba has been forced to adopt measures that undermine socialist equality but which generate needed revenue. For example, Obama and subsequent US presidents have encouraged the formation of a small business strata, expanding on the limited “reforms” instituted during Raúl Castro’s time as Cuba’s president.

 The Cubans will surely persevere as they have in the past. “The country’s resilience is striking,” according to a longtime Cuba observer writing from Havana.

Besides, the imperialists leave them little other choice. A surrender and soft landing is not an option being offered. The deliberately failed state of Haiti, less than 50 miles to the east, serves as a cautionary tale of what transpires for a people under the beneficence of the US.

Now is an historical moment for recognition of not what Cuba has failed to do, but for appreciation of how much it has achieved with so little and under such adverse circumstances not of its making.

Roger D. Harris was an international observer for Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election. He is with the US Peace Council and the Task Force on the Americas. Read other articles by Roger.