In a Victory for Assange and First Amendment, UK Court Grants Right to Appeal

By Marjorie Cohn

May 30, 2024

Source: TruthOut

On Sunday 14 April 2024, supporters of imprisoned dissident Julian Assange gathered outside Belmarsh high security prison in south east London, sometimes referred to as " "Britain's Guantanamo Bay."



From the First Amendment to the European Convention on Human Rights, Assange’s defense relies on freedom of expression.

On May 20, a two-judge panel of the High Court of England and Wales handed WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange a significant victory. Justice Jeremy Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp granted him leave to appeal the U.K.’s extradition order on two grounds. The High Court will now schedule a hearing at which Assange will be allowed to argue that his rights to freedom of expression and to be free from discrimination based on his nationality would not be protected if he were extradited to the United States.

In the U.K., the right to appeal is not automatic. While they didn’t rule on the merits of Assange’s claims, Johnson and Sharp determined that the two issues have sufficient legal merit to be reviewed by the High Court.

“I welcome the High Court’s decision to allow the case to proceed to a full appeal,” said Alice Jill Edwards, UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. “This is a terribly complex case, but at the heart of it are issues around human rights and values we hold as a society and the protections afforded to those who disclose potential war crimes.”

Speaking outside the courthouse after the May 20 hearing, Stella Assange, Julian’s wife, said the ruling “marks a turning point” and “we are relieved as a family that the court took the right decision. Everyone can see what should be done here. Julian must be freed,” adding, “This case is shameful and it is taking an enormous toll on Julian.”

Assange has been imprisoned for five years in London’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison on an indictment filed by the Trump administration and pursued by the Biden administration. Assange stands charged with 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for WikiLeaks’s 2010-2011 revelation of evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. He faces 175 years in prison if extradited to the U.S., tried and convicted.

In March, Johnson and Sharp denied Assange permission to appeal on six of the nine grounds he raised, saying they did “not have any merit.” But the panel said that Assange had “a real prospect of success” on the three remaining grounds for appeal: If extradited to the U.S., Assange (1) would be denied the right to freedom of expression, (2) would be discriminated against because he’s not a U.S. citizen, and (3) could be sentenced to death.

The panel told counsel for the U.S. in March that if they provided the court with “satisfactory assurances” that Assange wouldn’t be denied any of these rights, he could be extradited to the U.S. without an appeal hearing. This was a departure from the High Court’s 2021 knee-jerk acceptance of U.S. “assurances” that Assange would be treated humanely if extradited, with no opportunity for the defense to rebut those assurances.

In April, the U.S. filed the following ineffective and unenforceable “assurances”:


ASSANGE will not be prejudiced by reason of his nationality with respect to which defenses he may seek to raise at trial and at sentencing. Specifically, if extradited, ASSANGE will have the ability to raise and seek to rely upon at trial (which includes any sentencing hearing) the rights and protections given under the First Amendment of the constitution of the United States. A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the US Courts.

The U.S. stated only that Assange could “raise and seek to rely upon” the First Amendment, but refused to say that Assange could rely on the First Amendment. The U.S. maintained that its “assurance” was adequate because judges would take “solemn notice” of it, while admitting that the assurance “cannot bind the courts.”

Even if U.S. prosecutors had provided unequivocal assurances, a U.S. court would not be bound by them because of the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers. The judicial (not the executive) branch of government makes the final decision about the admissibility of evidence.

At the May 20 hearing, Assange’s legal team accepted the U.S. assurance that Assange would not be subject to the death penalty. But defense attorney Edward Fitzgerald KC told the panel that the assurances on the other two issues were “blatantly inadequate” because “there is no guarantee that he will be even permitted to rely on the First Amendment.”

Johnson and Sharp agreed with Assange that the U.S. assurances on the First Amendment and discrimination issues were not satisfactory. The judges also refused to accept the U.S. argument that Assange’s appeal of those two issues should be limited to only 3 of the 18 counts against him. On May 20, they ruled, “We have decided to give leave to appeal on all counts.”
Freedom of Expression Under the European Convention on Human Rights

At a trial in the U.S., Assange would argue that his actions were protected by the First Amendment. “He contends that if he is given First Amendment rights, the prosecution will be stopped. The First Amendment is therefore of central importance to his defence,” the panel concluded in March.

Like Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the First Amendment provides “strong protection” for freedom of expression, the panel noted in its March ruling. Article 10 (1) of the convention says, “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.”

Johnson and Sharp wrote in March that if Assange “is not permitted to rely on the First Amendment, then it is arguable that his extradition would be incompatible with article 10 of the Convention.”
The U.K. Extradition Act Prohibits Discrimination Based on Nationality

Section 81(b) of the U.K. Extradition Act says that extradition is barred for an individual who “might be prejudiced at his trial or punished, detained or restricted in his personal liberty by reason of his … nationality.” Although Assange is an Australian citizen, his legal team argued that he should have the same right as a U.S. citizen to rely on the First Amendment at trial.

The panel noted in March that Prosecutor Gordon Kromberg, assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, stated that the prosecution might argue at trial that “foreign nationals are not entitled to protection under the First Amendment, at least as it concerns national defense information.” Professor Paul Grimm of Duke University School of Law, an expert presented by Assange’s defense team, confirmed that there is a line of legal authority that says a foreign national doesn’t have First Amendment rights, at least in relation to national security cases.

Moreover, as Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2020 case of Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International, “[I]t is long settled as a matter of American constitutional law that foreign citizens outside U.S. territory do not possess rights under the U.S. Constitution.”

On May 20, the U.S. argued to the panel that the Extradition Act bars only discrimination based on “nationality,” not “citizenship.” The defense said that was a distinction without a difference:


To discriminate on grounds that a person is a foreigner, whether on the basis that they are a foreign national or a foreign citizen, is plainly within the scope of the prohibition. “Prejudice at trial” must include exclusion on grounds of citizenship from fundamental substantive rights that can be asserted at the trial. On the U.S. argument, trial procedures could discriminate on grounds of citizenship.

Defense counsel Mark Summers KC stated, “In addition to being a non-U.S. citizen, Mr. Assange is a non-U.S. national as well. Whatever the distinction may be, and we don’t accept that there is any … it has no bearing whatsoever.”

In their March ruling, the panel concluded that due to the centrality of the First Amendment to Assange’s defense, “If he is not permitted to rely on the First Amendment because of his status as a foreign national, he will thereby be prejudiced (potentially very greatly prejudiced) by reason of his nationality.”
What Will Happen Next

“This was a watershed moment in this very long battle,” WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said after the May 20 ruling. “Today marked the beginning of the end of the persecution. The signaling from the courts here in London was clear to the U.S. government: We don’t believe your guarantees, we don’t believe in your assurances.”

Stephen Rohde, who practiced First Amendment law for almost 50 years, concurs. “The ruling by the High Court offers a glimmer of hope not only for Assange and not only for freedom of the press but for a welcome turn away from blind deference to the United States and in its place an insistence that the U.S. itself is not above the law,” he told Truthout.

The two-judge panel ordered the parties to agree by May 24 on a structure for the full hearing on Assange’s two appeal points. That agreement has not been made public. The judges will set the hearing date, probably sometime later this year. At that hearing, the parties will present evidence, call witnesses and file legal briefs with the High Court.

If Assange prevails at the hearing, he would be released from Belmarsh Prison and likely be sent to Australia as he is an Australian citizen. If he does not win the appeal, Assange could request leave to appeal to the U.K. Supreme Court. If that request is denied or an additional appeal fails, he can appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg and raise his other appellate issues that the High Court rejected.

Assange could seek urgent interim measures and request an order from the ECtHR prohibiting the U.K. from extraditing him until the European Court has ruled on his case. Interim measures are granted upon a showing of “exceptional circumstances” and are generally ordered only in cases involving the right to life or the prohibition on torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

ECtHR case law recognizes the vital role that publishing state secrets can play in a democratic society and that criminal prosecution and conviction for such publication will chill the press from playing its role of “public watchdog.” The indictment against Assange criminalizes essential journalistic practices and imposes a disproportionate sentence (175 years) – sometimes called death by incarceration – which amounts to a grave violation of Article 10 of the ECHR.

“A successful prosecution would criminalize a great deal of the investigative journalism that is crucial to our democracy,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in a statement. “The Justice Department should never have charged Assange under the Espionage Act, and it should drop the charges now.”

Joe Biden stated last month that his administration is “considering” whether to dismiss the case against Assange. A week before the May 20 hearing, Hrafnsson said that Assange’s legal team had been pursuing a political resolution which “has been bearing fruit.”

Indeed, Biden should follow the path taken by the Obama-Biden administration, which refrained from indicting Assange out of First Amendment concerns, rather than the strategy pursued by the Trump administration, which exercised no such forbearance when it indicted Assange under the Espionage Act for revealing U.S. war crimes.



Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law, and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace. A member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, she is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.

Can Democracy and Billionaires Coexist?
Not on this planet.

By Sam Pizzigati

May 31, 2024

Source: Inequality





One person, one vote. The classic essence of democracy. But what if that one person happens to be a fabulously rich? Does that one person actually have just “one” vote? Can we have anything approaching democracy when some among us are sitting on fortunes grander than the rest of us can even imagine?

Americans have been actively debating questions like these for almost a century and a half, ever since we entered the era that Mark Twain quite artfully tagged the “Gilded Age.” We never totally ended that gilded epoch. But we came close. By the 1950s, Americans of massive means faced tax rates as high as 91 percent on their income over $200,000, the equivalent of about $2.4 million today.

In those same years, the wealth America’s wealthiest left behind when they entered the great beyond faced an estate tax top rate that could go as high as 77 percent. Wealthy married couples here in 2024, by contrast, can totally exempt as much as $27.22 million from any federal estate tax.

Our wealthiest today have good reason to be high-fiving these wealth-enhancing new tax realities. Top 1 percenters are now grabbing 21 percent of our nation’s income, over double the top 1 percent income share in 1976.

Back in that same 1976, the always helpful World Inequality Database reminds us, the 40 percent of Americans in the nation’s statistical middle held just over a third of America’s wealth, 33.7 percent. The top 1 percent’s considerably smaller share that year: 22.6 percent. Today’s story? Our richest 1 percent hold just about 35 percent of our nation’s wealth, our middle 40 percent less than 28 percent.

The wealthiest of our wealthy, a just-released report from Americans for Tax Fairness points out, are doing their best to keep these good times — for America’s rich — rolling.

“Just 50 billionaire families,” the new ATF report details, “have already injected more than $600 million collectively into the crucial 2024 elections, with that number sure to show accelerating growth in the final six months of the campaign.”

Stats like these, adds the report, offer “further proof that the nation’s richest families consider democracy just another commodity they can buy.”

Any transaction requires, of course, both buyers and sellers. In the buying and selling of our democracy, the sellers sit in Congress, and some have even called the White House home. This spring, one particular former president has been doing “selling” aplenty to get back to his former 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address.

In one recent private event, the Washington Post reports, Donald Trump “asked oil industry executives to raise $1 billion for his campaign and said raising such a sum would be a ‘deal’ given how much money they would save if he were reelected as president.”

At another event with deep-pocket donors, held at New York’s luxurious Pierre Hotel, Trump reminded all present that a re-elected Joe Biden would let Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the rich expire at the end of 2025. Warned Trump: “You’re going to have the biggest tax increase in history.”

What can we do to significantly limit how deeply political candidates can feed at the billionaire trough? The Billionaire Family Business — the new Americans for Tax Fairness report — advances two core recommendations.

The first: We need to reform our current campaign finance landscape. A good place to start would be ending our burgeoning “dark money” political contribution charade.

To end run our already feeble federal limits on political giving — and, at the same time, keep their donations secret — our contemporary billionaires have over recent years been advancing frightfully huge sums to non-profits that don’t have politics as their “primary” purpose. These non-profits have then been moving those dollars to billionaire-friendly candidates without having to publicly reveal the identity of the billionaires behind the contributions.

But closing gaping loopholes like this “dark money” two-step, the new Americans for Tax Fairness study recognizes, would only get us so far. The wealth of our richest, just like water, seeks its own level. Cut off one channel and that wealth will find another. To limit the impact of our wealthiest on our politics, in other words, we simply must limit the wealth of our wealthiest.

“We need,” as the new Americans for Tax Fairness paper puts it, “more effective taxation of billionaires.” And that more effective taxation must include moves to seriously tax the billionaire inheritances that “leave economic dynasties with plenty of spare cash to try to influence elections.”

Without those sorts of moves, the ATF concludes, we’ll continue to have “no practical limit to how much billionaire families can spend” on getting their “allies into office.”

Plutocracy can flourish in that environment. Democracy most definitely cannot.



Sam Pizzigati an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, has written widely on income and wealth concentration, with op-eds and articles in publications ranging from the New York Times to Le Monde Diplomatique. He co-edits Inequality.org Among his books: The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970 (Seven Stories Press). His latest book: The Case for a Maximum Wage (Polity). A veteran labor movement journalist, Pizzigati spent 20 years directing publishing at America’s largest union, the 3.2 million-member National Education Association.

Union Strategies Against Germany’s Far-Right

By Thomas Klikauer

June 1, 2024

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


(Photo: Christian Jungeblodt)


Germany’s unions are afraid of being infiltrated by AfD members. A recent case from the city of Hanover is currently pre-occupying many in Germany’s union movement.

In that case, a local AfD apparatchik who was elected to the local city council has also been running for the works council of a local waste disposal company [Abfallentsorger Aha].

In the works council election, the AfD man – Jens Keller – received the most votes from his staff. He is also an active member of Germany’s public service union Ver.di.

Yet, the union wants nothing to do with the neofascist AfD. It prefers to expel the right garbage worker and AfD apparatchik from the union. But stripping the AfD operative of his union membership turns out to be rather complicated. Many German trade unions are currently struggling with similar cases.

Some workers have even elected colleagues who express the racism of the AfD. Unions fear that migrant employees might be insulted, and minorities are discriminated against once there are AfD-members elected to works councils.

Such an AfD-influenced workplace would be defined by setting “them” (non-Germans) against us (Germans). Such a workplace climate might well be characterized by right-wing populist slogans, hate speech, and far-right conspiracy fantasies like the great reset.

Meanwhile, German trade unions’ works council representatives have set the limits of what can be said on factory premises, workplaces, and warehouses. The strategy is to prevent workplace from shifting to the far right. Increasingly, people who suffer from racism and discrimination turn to trade unions asking for help and support.

Worse, right-wing ideologies are an ever-increasing problem in many German companies. It is no longer a marginal problem.

The public service union Ver.di has already hired a special assistant for the former East-German states of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia to help. Many trade unions are also offering training courses on how best to deal with workplace racism.

The police union’s Jochen Kopelke recently argued that his union empowers its members by giving them arguments against the far-right. Meanwhile, the IG Metall union, too, recognizes that right-wing ideas have become a problem in many companies and that unions have to counteract that.

In accordance with the progressive and human rights tradition, unions credibly warn against racism, intolerance and far-right ideologies.

Unions openly and directly attack the AfD as the party-political embodiment of a far-right state of mind. Other social institutions in Germany are also gearing up against the AfD.

Germany’s churches, for example, have recently, and very publicly distanced themselves from the AfD calling on their members to leave the party. Even the powerful corporate lobbying institution “BDI” argues against the AfD outlining the AfD’s suicidal plan to leave the EU and Euro.

Virtually all of Germany’s democratic society agree that strong worded declarations against the AfD are necessary. Germany’s churches, for example, prefer to kick out believers of far-right ideologies as these contradict their Christian and humanitarian values. Germany’s churches fight those who are AfD members and are spreading their neofascist ideologies.

Historically, it is nothing new. Fascist has often pretended to be on the side of workers. Hitler’s Nazis of the 1930s even featured the word “socialism” in its party name while – once in power – killing thousands of socialists and trade unionists.

Today, the AfD, too, is celebrating itself as a new “workers’ party.” Interestingly, both – Germany’s trade unions and the AfD – have rather similar “social markers”. Both are dominated by male, middle-aged, skilled, and unskilled workers. Seemingly, this is where both groups overlap.

Yet, nobody really knows exactly how many AfD supporters trade unions have in their ranks. Unions tend not to conduct a “mindset test” among their millions of members. A second problem is that it would not be easy to force union members to disclose their political party affiliation.

The third problem is that while being deeply anti-democratic, the neofascist AfD is not yet officially banned. This makes it more difficult to exclude union members who support the AfD.

In the case of Germany’s police union, for example, membership numbers have recently increased. The GdP is now Germany’s fifth largest union. The union has received a lot of praise from its members, from the media and from society for its “clear line against the right”.

Yet, it seems inevitable to find unionists – like those organized in the GdP – supporting the AfD. Already in Germany’s federal election (2021), 12.2% of the union members gave their vote to the AfD. Yet, the AfD only received 10.3% in overall support.

Among such support for the AfD, there is a marked gender gap. Among the female unionists, support for the AfD was 8.3% while for male unionists it was 14.6%.

In other words, a high proportion of workers can be found to support the AfD. These AfD supporters can be characterized by poorer working conditions, a lack of recognition, low trust in institutions and a relatively high degree of anxiety and stress compared to voters of democratic parties.

Many of these union members and AfD voters show a belief in xenophobic ideologies while also supporting the restriction of immigration. Both have become priorities for many of them.

Meanwhile on the institutional side, right-wing groups are still a rather marginal phenomenon in one of Germany’s most important workplace institutions: works councils.

This can indeed be seen as a success for trade unions. Right-wing influence has – so far – been kept within limits.

Yet, companies can also be catalysts for right-wing mobilization. Workplaces can be a location where shady right-wing mobilization collides with democratic political activities often organized by trade unions. This is not restricted to workplaces.

In the realm of politics, the wave of anti-right and anti-AfD rallies that soared through Germany during early 2024 is undoubtedly an encouragement for trade unions.

Yet, the immediate impact of these mass rallies remains uncertain. The AfD seems to have been pushed back – from polling just above 20% in voter support (2023) to a 16% to 18% range (mid-May 2024).

On this, trade unions think that this optimism needs to be stabilized – even if the results at the ballot box should not turn out as hoped. Elections are scheduled for June (EU parliament), and September (three states in the former East-Germany) and many expect – despite the mass rallies against the AfD – to make substantial gains.

In all of this, trade unions distinguish between short-term activities and long-term strategies against the AfD. Next to parliamentarian elections, trade unions are also facing virtually the same task inside companies and in works council elections.

Much of this is about combating the slowly but steady spreading of right-wing ideologies even into companies and workplaces.

One of the most prominent examples is the so-called “Zentrum” (center) – a right-wing extremist association affiliated with the AfD. Deceptively called “Zentrum Automobil” and in operation since 2009, it has been competing in works council elections – nationwide but mainly in the automotive industry.

Although the Zentrum has been able to win seats at works councils in past elections, the Zentrum and adjacent right-wing associations are far from reflecting the AfD’s election successes.

Currently, the Zentrum and its bedfellows are targeting other industries, and they are also trying to gain a foothold in the social and health sector.

To contain right-wing forces inside companies and to convince colleagues to stand up for anti-fascist and solidarity-based solutions, the IG Metall union also supports the “Association for the Preservation of Democracy“.

The VBD is tasked with analyzing and mobilization of workers inside companies and to develop approaches for trade unions for “right-wing de-mobilization”.

Unions agree that all this must begin at the causes of discrimination, individual devaluation, dehumanization, and racial insults. This means the empowerment of workers which will – almost by definition – collide with the incapacitation of employees based on asymmetrical and hierarchical power relations inside capitalist companies.

When corporate management structurally and deliberately disempowers workers in everyday working life – often through the use of authoritarian corporate structures, deceptive corporate communication and management control – the formation of pro-active attitudes and democratic behaviors needed to fight the radical right are blocked.

This works the other way around as well. In companies where participation and collective co-determination achieves success, self-esteem, a willingness to take care of others and commitment grow.

In short, the more positive and successful democracy and commitment are perceived in companies, the lower the tendency to devalue others and to turn to right-wing ideologies.

Such a commitment to active democracy – both inside and outside of companies – will work towards the demobilization of the far-right. Obviously, what happens inside companies cannot be separated from social and political developments in the public sphere.

No less urgent are measures against the electoral successes of the parliamentary arm of Germany’s far-right: the AfD. The clear and present danger to democracy and to workplaces is real and imminent.

Still, much of this is not too likely to affect the upcoming state elections in Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony.

The unions’ most minimum goal is that the AfD is not getting involved in any state government. Unions do not want state governments making themselves indebted to the ideological whims of the rather dubious and deceitful AfD.

If the AfD were to get into a state government, the AfD and its far-right as well as neo-Nazi supporters will take advantage of additional state resources. As Hitler’s propaganda minister – Joseph Goebbels – once said,

“We are entering the Reichstag, in order that we may arm ourselves with the weapons of democracy from its arsenal. We shall become Reichstag deputies in order that the Weimar ideology should itself help us to destroy it.”

To achieve this aim, the AfD and its far-right apparatchiks – once in government – will gain access to areas of influence and will also have the opportunity to shape official policies.

Worse, they will be able to fill public offices with right-wing extremists. They will also be able to block parliamentary proceedings and cut funding for projects that further democracy as well as slashing funding for Holocaust education and memorials.

Beyond such electoral goals, the aim of many trade union initiatives against the AfD is to prevent people whose worldviews are not yet firmly locked in right-wing thought patterns from electing the AfD. Of course, it would be preferable if undecided and potential voters of the AfD be convinced to vote for democratic parties.

The demobilization of the far-right camp, as far as possible, is the order of the day. Every vote that does not strengthen right-wing is a good vote – even if it ends up in the trash.

The task is to move from right-wing anger to courage. In the medium term, union policies are also about integrating social groups that have not yet been reached into the mobilization of social progress in companies and in society.

In other words, the battle Rosa Luxemburg was fighting (1914-1918) is still not won. This is the battle between “class” vs. “nationalism”. In 1914 Luxemburg lost that battle.

Nationalism won and millions were killed on the altar of ultra-nationalistic ideologies. In 1933, unions lost again and even more millions had to die on the altar of the worst form of nationalism the world has ever seen: Hitler’s Nazism.

In the long term, there is no way for Germany’s progressive and democratic forces – including trade unions – to avoid problematizing such ideologies as well as the structurally fragile relationship between corporate capitalism and democracy.

A neoliberal-economic development model such as capitalism inevitably and repeatedly produces economic losers. It also manufactures corporate-managerial minorities that can dominate society because of their – largely uncontrolled – access to the media and power.

Such a model will not be able to shake off the temptation of authoritarian strategies to deal with the frequent crisis of capitalism. It is not about human values, democracy and morality. As German philosopher Max Horkheimer said in 1939,


if you do not want to talk about capitalism

you should also keep silent about fascism.

Beyond all that, a kind of “double strategy” of a “clear line” against the AfD and an “open door” policy to return people back into Germany’s democratic society could promise positive outcomes: A Clear Position: a “strong union policy” for an aggressive and confrontation strategy against those who carry right-wing populist ideologies like the AfD inside companies and in society.
Open-Door Policy: this means an open door offering to participate in company-internal and societal counter-far-right movements for those who have been made to feel insecure and angry. This Union strategy seeks to reintegrate them back into the realm of solidarity, the common interest of all workers and progressive projects.

Such a union strategy is not about simply “picking up” those who are called “angry citizens” – the infamous Wutbürgber – through seemingly “programmatic concessions”.

This has been done by conservatives and liberals – sometimes to the point of self-denial. Making concessions to Wutbürger may well be a failed strategy that might even have strengthens those on the far-right side of politics.

Instead of this, a potentially more successful union strategy is about an offer to participate in an inclusive, solidarity-based and participatory policy that promises democratic solutions to problems.

Still, ideological attachments and consent to right-wing worldviews do not just “run above one’s head” (read: being theoretical issue). Hence, union counterstrategies need to respond to this directly through support for an increase in minimum wage, strengthening collective bargaining, and workers’ democracy.This would mean bringing the democratic movement into the world of work in the form of workplace and industrial democracy and into people’s everyday lives in the form of participatory democracy. This uses democracy to fight the anti-democratic forces of the AfD.


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Thomas Klikauer has over 800 publications (including 12 books) and writes regularly for BraveNewEurope (Western Europe), the Barricades (Eastern Europe), Buzzflash (USA), Counterpunch (USA), Countercurrents (India), Tikkun (USA), and ZNet (USA). One of his books is on Managerialism (2013).

Univ. of Toronto Protesters Vow to Continue Gaza Encampment as Admin Demands Police Clear It

By Mohammad Yassin, Deb Cowen , Amy Goodman 

May 31, 2024

Source: Democracy Now!

A judge in Canada this week ruled that a student protest encampment could remain standing at the University of Toronto until at least mid-June, when a top court will decide on an injunction filed by the school requesting the police to clear the pro-Palestinian protesters off campus. Students and faculty launched the encampment on May 2 to protest Israel’s war on Gaza. It quickly became one of the largest encampments in North America with 175 tents, hundreds of campers, and a sacred fire led by Indigenous elders. Administrators at the University of Toronto, Canada’s largest university, had wanted to clear the encampment before graduation ceremonies begin in early June. “We know what we’re doing is just. And all of us are willing to stand our ground no matter what happens,” says Mohammad Yassin, a graduating senior, spokesperson for Occupy University of Toronto and a member of the student negotiating team. Yassin is Palestinian with family members currently in Gaza. We also speak with geography professor Deb Cowen, part of the Jewish Faculty Network, who says the encampment is a “precious learning space” bringing students together. “We have maybe never seen our campus be so alive with the spirit of debate, of creative thought, of rigorous conversation and dialogue,” Cowen says.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We go now to Canada, where a judge yesterday responded to an injunction filed by the University of Toronto for the police to clear a pro-Palestinian encampment on its downtown campus. The judge set the injunction hearing dates for June 19th and 20th. In the court filing, the judge acknowledged that those dates do not accommodate the university’s interest in clearing the encampment before graduation ceremonies begin in early June, but he said a fair opportunity must be given to the protesters to make their case.

Students launched the encampment, known as “The People’s Circle for Palestine,” on May 2nd. It quickly became one of the largest encampments in North America with 175 tents, hundreds of campers, and a sacred fire led by Indigenous elders. The camp is supported by faculty, university staff, alumni and others.

AMY GOODMAN: Last week, the university issued a trespass notice to protesters, threatening disciplinary measures for students and staff supporting the camp, threatening an unprecedented mass termination of faculty. On Tuesday, dozens of faculty members held a news conference to speak out against the university’s request for the police to clear the encampment.


DEBORAH COWEN: We say to our administration, if you decide to move against the students, you’ll have to go through us first.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Deb Cowen, a professor of geography and planning at the University of Toronto. She joins us now from Toronto. She’s also a steering committee member of the Jewish Faculty Network. And we’re joined by Mohammad Yassin, a graduating senior at the University of Toronto studying economics and statistics. He’s a media spokesperson for Occupy University of Toronto and a member of the student negotiating team. Yassin is a Palestinian with family members currently in Gaza.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! We’re seeing a replay of what’s happening in the United States in Canada. You have these professors bringing police onto college campuses, as they’re being hauled before — in the United States, it’s Congress. In Canada, the president of University of Toronto — right? — just spoke, professor Deb Cowen, before the Canadian Parliament. You said that the police have to go through you, the faculty, before getting the students in the encampment. Mohammad Yassin, can you start off by talking about what are your demands?

MOHAMMAD YASSIN: Yeah. First off, thank you for having us.

You know, our demands are very clear, and they’re very simple. Our first demand is for the University of Toronto to disclose all investments held in endowments, short-term working capital assets and other financial holdings. The second demand that we have is for them to divest their endowment capital assets and other financial holdings from all direct and indirect investments that sustain Israeli apartheid, occupation and illegal settlements of Palestine. Our third demand is for the University of Toronto to terminate all partnerships with Israeli academic institutions that operate in settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or support or sustain the apartheid policies of the state of Israel and its ongoing genocide in Gaza.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Deb, could you talk about the level of faculty support at the University of Toronto, how you became involved with this, and how you’ve been working with students?

DEBORAH COWEN: Oh, for sure. And thank you so much for having me. It’s a true honor to be here with one of the brilliant students, Mohammad here, and also as a very small part of what is a groundswell, a massive groundswell of support on our campus and well beyond. In addition to the hundreds of faculty that have been actively supporting the People’s Circle for Palestine, there are staff, there are alumni, there are — excuse me — honorary doctrines who have been stepping forward.

And the quote that you shared with me about standing with faculty in front of and to protect the students from any kind of police raid of the camp actually was an echo of something that was said the day before in an extraordinary labor rally by Laura Walton, who’s the president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, which represents a million workers and 45 unions. And she said, “If you move against the students, you’ll have to go through workers first.” So, on Tuesday at the faculty rally, we echoed that same commitment to defend and protect our students in their very righteous, courageous stand.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Mohammad, could you describe — describe the encampment, how the tents were set up, how all of the students organized, and what prompted the organization of the students at this time. To what extent were you inspired by what began at Columbia University right here in New York?

MOHAMMAD YASSIN: Yeah. So, with regards to, you know, what inspired us to do this, obviously, we did take heavy inspiration from our fellows at Columbia. But organizing at the University of Toronto, at least from our student segment, has been going on for at least seven months, at least in our capacity. We’ve had our demands sent to the university and the president directly, who continued to ignore us for about six months, until we had similar actions, including the occupation of the president’s office for about 36 hours. This encampment is simply an escalation on that, as the university has refused to meet with Palestinian students and meet our demands, you know, even more simply than that.

With regards to the encampment itself, it was a night in which a lot of people came together. And at about 4:00 in the morning, we entered King’s College Circle, as it was called, now the People’s Circle for Palestine, which was fenced off by the university in anticipation of something like this. When things started happening at Columbia, the University of Toronto set up a fence around the circle, expecting us to take that area, knowing that it’s the heart of the university, right in front of the building in which the administration meets, in which President Meric Gertler has his office. And as such, they tried to prevent us from taking that space. As students, we, you know, have all the right to be there. It’s our university. It’s our space. And so, at early morning on May 2nd, at 4:00 in the morning, we entered that space anyways and set up all of our tents.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Deb Cowen, if you could explain: How is the Faculty Association at U of T responding to faculty, such as yourself, who have shown solidarity with the encampments? What is the level of faculty support? And how has the administration responded so far to faculty who have supported the encampments, the pro-Palestine encampments?

DEBORAH COWEN: Yeah, like Mohammad here, I would want to say that the faculty support has been long-standing. And certainly, faculty organizing around Palestinian liberation has taken place for many, many years on the University of Toronto campus. In fact, I think one of the reasons why we’ve seen such strong and such united faculty support for the student-led movement is because of many years of relationship building, of collaboration between a series of networks, including the Jewish Faculty Network, a Healthcare Alliance for Palestine and the Faculty for Palestine group itself, and even before that. So, those groups have been working together for many years. We had a major censure of our campus just a few years ago for the unhiring of Valentina Azarova at the Law Faculty because of her work on the Occupied Territories. And even well before that, the University of Toronto campus is known for having been the place where Israeli Apartheid Week was first founded and where BDS campaigns were led by graduate students, you know, decades ago. So, I think there’s a long tradition of relationship building, of trust building and of, I think, very powerful solidarity between students, staff, librarians, faculty and wider community members.

And I can say the Faculty Association responded to preemptive threats from the administration accusing any potential student encampment of being unauthorized, of being an act of trespass. And also the Faculty Association wrote a letter also suggesting that the kinds of — the language of the kind of threat and unsafety was also deeply racialized language, which is not insignificant, given that the student movement is led primarily by students of color, and, in particular, Palestinian, Arab, Black, Muslim and Indigenous students, and, of course, many, many Jewish students — all groups that have either been — that have been historically or ongoing in terms of the racialized stigmatization. So, the Faculty Association challenged the whole university framing of the illegality and unauthorized nature of the protest. And that legal letter that was sent to the administration over a month ago now has never actually received response.

AMY GOODMAN: Mohammad, before we end, I want to ask how your family is in Gaza right now and what your plans are to the end? I mean, it looks like the injunction is — there’s going to be a court hearing right around graduation in a few weeks.

MOHAMMAD YASSIN: Yeah. With regards to my family in Gaza, I’m in communication with them whenever, you know, they get the chance to talk. Obviously, they’re not in a situation where they can constantly respond to us. We do get mail from them. They’re watching our encampment very closely, actually. They send us letters that are heartbreaking. You know, anytime I read them, I quite literally can’t stop crying. The sentiment is shared by everybody in the camp who I read these letters to.

But, you know, it’s because of that that we have faith in what we’re doing. We know what we’re doing is just. And all of us are willing to stand our ground, no matter what happens. Everybody went into this expecting that a police response is a possibility. Our fellows in other universities up in Alberta were brutalized by the police when they had their stands at their encampments. We’re ready to face the same, because what we understand is that anything that we go through is not even a fraction of what our brothers and sisters in Gaza are going through.

My family in particular, you know, they’ve had to eat leaves and grass because they have no food to eat. You know, they’ve had to wake up every single day under bombardment. Their children are terrified constantly. They’ve lost all of their innocence. They can’t even live normally day to day.

Yet we’re expected to sit here and just watch. You know, we can’t do that. And as students and as faculty, I’m sure, and as labor workers who have come together for this, we all understand that we have a duty to these people. We have power in our hands. We are put here in a specific position, in this specific time and place, where we can exercise some sort of ability to make a change. And we are all more than committed to do that, no matter the consequences.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Professor Cowen, when the Canadian Parliament holds hearings on antisemitism, if you can respond, as a member of the Jewish Faculty Network?

DEBORAH COWEN: I mean, I think those hearings have been widely dismissed as quite the sham, compared to having fossil fuel hearings entirely staffed or entirely constituted by pro-fossil fuel or pro-oil companies. I mean, there is not a single member or group represented that diverges from a pro-Israel, a strong pro-Israel lobby. And many groups are even boycotting those hearings.

And I’d like to just bring it back to what the camp has been doing, which is — in some senses, it’s even baffling that we have to have this conversation, that we’re facing these threats of discipline, and even termination for tenured faculty, and certainly various kinds of discipline for students, because, from my perspective and, I think, from the perspective of many faculty who have been teaching at the university for years and years, we have maybe never seen our campus be so alive with the spirit of debate, of creative thought, of rigorous conversation and dialogue and debate. It is, for me, one of the most precious learning spaces I’ve ever experienced.

And that’s in the context — our president likes to keep saying that, you know, convocation must happen, our graduation ceremonies must happen, because this is the COVID generation, and they need those kinds of spaces. Well, it’s the COVID generation that has built this camp. And they have built a space of multifaith collaboration. We’ve had Shabbat. We’re planning our fifth Shabbat for Friday night, where we have prayers in both Arabic and Hebrew. We have these incredible spaces of conversation, of learning. And the learning goes all directions. It’s not one direction.

So, the very promises of our university, which were, of course, compromised deeply during lockdowns — and I think the university almost seems to prefer the disconnected, heavily managed student body, as opposed to what is really a manifestation, a kind of emboldening of our institution’s Statement of Institutional Purpose that is happening at the Circle for Palestine, the People’s Circle for Palestine. So, many of us not only defend the basic rights of our students in their stand, in their protest and in their rights to freedom of speech and assembly, but we feel incredibly protective of the beautiful, beautiful experiment in relationships, in learning, and in a future that is very, very different from what the world is giving us. And we feel a personal stake in defending that space.

AMY GOODMAN: Deb Cowen, we want to thank you for being with us, professor of geography and planning at University of Toronto and steering committee member of the Jewish Faculty Network, and Mohammad Yassin, graduating senior at the University of Toronto studying economics and statistics, media spokesperson for Occupy University of Toronto, a member of the student negotiating team. Yassin is Palestinian with family members currently in Gaza.

The Student Intifada Links Racism, Mistreatment of Indigenous People, Policing, Global Warming, Anti-Colonial Struggles Around the World, Capitalism and Imperialism

By Gary Olson

June 1, 2024

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

Gaza solidarity campus encampment




Those protesters have started a fire that’s going to burn straight through the whole system. Shahid Bolsen


Palestine has become the icon of freedom for the people of the world. Author Unknown


The protest movements — which have spread around the globe —are not built around the single issue of the apartheid state of Israel or its genocide against Palestinians. They are built around an awareness that the old world order, the one of settler-colonialism, western imperialism and militarism used by the countries of the Global North to dominate the Global South, must end. They decry the hoarding of natural resources and wealth by industrial nations in a world of diminishing returns. These protests are built around a vision, and the commitment to it, that will make this movement not only hard to defeat but presages a wider struggle beyond genocide in Gaza. Chris Hedges

The national security state is alarmed by recent student protests. Alex Karp, ardent Zionist and CEO of Palentir, an advanced data mining company whose customers include the CIA, NSA, FBI and Israel, recently shared this fear: “We think these things that are happening across college campuses are a sideshow. No, they are the show. If we lose the intellectual debate, we will be unable to deploy the army in the West, ever.”

We are indebted to Max Blumenthal at The Grayzone for interpreting the elite’s penultimate nightmare as follows: If this model spreads and succeeds, the U.S. will not be able to maintain its imperial army and 800 bases around the world and the U.S. will begin to resemble a normal country. This, of course, is impermissible because empathy devoid psychopaths like Karp and the rest of the parasitic elite would no longer be the recipients of corporate welfare at the expense of the rest of us. The students, and allies who agree with their demands, are an existential threat to the system because they’re hitting the third rail.

Our ideological gatekeepers expend prodigious amounts of time and resources to create empathy-deficient cultural programming that dampens any public empathic engagement. As suggested above, the parasitic elite fear an empathy epidemic. However, they’ve been overwhelmed by 24/7 images from Gaza and the campus protests. We see that the dominant cultural narrative is not hermetically sealed from efforts to produce counter-narratives that connect to other struggles. For example, at M.I.T., students stress that their Gaza protest is not a separate struggle but one struggle synchronizing resistance movements against white supremacy, patriarchy, and issues involving Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the exploitation of resources in the Congo. (Austin Cole, Black Agenda Radio, 5/24/24). Interviews with protesters across the country reveal that students have done their due diligence and frequently salted their explanations with “academic terms like intersectionality, colonialism and imperialism, all to make the case that the plight of Palestinians is the result of global power structures that thrive on bias and oppression.“

Ilf Jones, a first year student at Emory University in Atlanta linked her activism to the civil rights movement in which her family had participated. “The only thing missing was the dogs and the water, she said. Another student, Katie Rueff a first year student at Cornell, linked it to climate justice, saying “It’s rooted in the same struggles of imperialism, capitalism — things like that. I think that‘s very true of this conflict, of the genocide in Palestine.” (The New York Times, 5/2/24)

At Emory, protesters occupying the quad chanted “Free Palestine,” along with opposing the Atlanta Public Training Facility or “Cop City,” an enormous $90 billion dollar, 318 acre site just outside Atlanta. It’s on land stolen from the Muscogees while Israel‘s “Little Cop City” is on land in the Negev stolen from the Palestinians. Emory students see a considerable overlap between greater justice in policing and what’s happening in Gaza as hundreds of police trainees are sent from the U.S. to Israel to train with their counterparts under the guise of “homeland security.” Israel’s military connection to iAtlanta is emblematic of the partnership between the two countries in approaching unrest. Much of the cost of Cop City is being footed by corporations like Delta, Amazon, Wells Fargo, Waffle House, J.P. Morgan, UPS and Chick-fil-A.

Further, revealing the widespread complicity of university research for the Pentagon is one reason for the swift and harsh response to the protests as this is something that can’t be negotiated away under the existing system. For example, in 2024,Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh had received more than $2.8 billion for research from the Pentagon since 2008, only the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Johns Hopkins University have received more, at $18 billion and $15.billiion. MIT does research for the Israeli Ministry of Defense, a fact not lost on protesters there.

One additional damning truth, and one that bears explication in the future, is the US empire manger’s longterm project for imperial primacy in the region. That is, the tripartite security pact of U.S., Saudi Arabia and Israel that was temporarily derailed by Hamas’ 7 resistance attack and Israel’s response. This grand bargain or “deal of the century,” a phrase coined by Egypt’s president Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, would entail Riyadh normalizing relations with Israel. In turn, the U.S. would turn on the spigot of offensive weapons heading to the Kingdom — a major boon to the American war industry. Israeli officials estimate an eventual benefit of trade with Saudi Arabia amounting to $45 billion. For now, “Plan B” is that Israel be excluded from the pact until Gaza is resolved. If this arrangement occurs, it will mean more injustice for the Palestinians, including stepped up Zionist violence in the West Bank, and because the deal is so unpopular with the “street Arabs,” even more oppression of people under autocratic US allies in the region.

The1960s and 1970s witnessed powerful movements centered around racism and the Vietnam War. Many of us older folks were radicalized by this period and it has defined our lives ever since. However, over time, powerful elites were able to reimagine these events as one-offs, in part, because we treated them as such and failed to identify them as endemic to the system of capitalism itself and required dismantling the empire.

Ted Morgan, a scholar of the 1960s social movements, told me via an e-mail that “1960s activism was largely wiped out by a combination of distorted media coverage, a potent right-wing, corporate backlash, and a cooptive narcissistic culture of consumption and entertainment. In 1968, the US war helped to trigger the global protest movement — well documented in Tariq’s Ali’s “1968.” However, 1968 was also the turning point for the rise of neoliberalism and the New Right in US politics. The neoliberal order was resisted again and again against the U.S. role in Central America, against the nuclear arms race, against the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the climate crisis and global warming and ecocide and by the Occupy Movement and Black Lives Matter. However, it wasn’t until the rising global movement against the genocidal Israeli attack on Gaza and the West Bank— and US complicity in that assault — that the potential of 1968 has been revived.” (For more, see, Edward P. Morgan, What Really Happened in the 1960s, University of Kansas Press, 2011).

When the “student intifada” of campus encampments sprang up, we could say, along with The Electric Intifada’s Susan Abdulhawa, “This time is different from the uprisings of the 1960s and 1970s. There is a new sense of global interconnection, an emerging class consciousness and foundational political analyses predicated on post-colonial studies and intersectionality.”

We also know that members of Generation Z (18-29) are far more distrustful of the media than older adults and according to Gallup/Knight they pay close attention to an outlet’s transparency of facts and research . Students have been informed by information outside of mainstream sources like The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN, which act as the U.S. government’s echo chamber. Many have turned to Al Jazeera which has 1.0 million followers on TikTok and 4.6 million on Instagram. Cameron Jones an organizer with Jewish Voices for Peace at Columbia University told The New York Times ”There’s a fair amount of misinformation and just a clear bias when it comes to the Palestinian issue.” And Hussein Irish of the Arab States Institute in Washington, added that “There’s a third worldish, anti-imperialist point of view, that many college kids have adopted.”

An encouraging sign for this summer and evidence that encampments are not the end, is the Coalition to March on the DNC in Chicago which already has 76 organizations on board and looks to have 200+ by August. Gaza is the catalyst bringing together immigrant, women, LGBT, union reps and opponents of police repression. This helps to cement the connection between domestic and international affairs.

As suggested earlier, it’s this growing capacity of students, and allies who agree with their demands, to begin connecting the dots — and sharing that insight with clear, concise language — that constitutes the real fear of the ruling class. It explains their hysterical response like attempts to ban TikTok, police state crackdowns, rending of the First Amendment, demonization of anti-war protesters, blaming “outside agitators,” and the media’s weaponizing of antisemitism.

Given the above, the potential for identifying with “the other” has never been so auspicious. If combined with critical thinking, patience, ingenuity in communication and Gramsci’s “optimism of the will,” we dare to say that the possibility for transforming Gaza into a broader class struggle lies before us for the taking.


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Gary Olson
Chair, Department of Political Science, Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pa.

Indigenous People of Guam Are Fighting US Militarism and Environmental Ruin

US military activities are damaging the environment and livelihoods of Indigenous CHamoru people.

By Sara Mar

June 1, 2024

Source: Truthout





The Indigenous Pacific Islander community in Guam — known as CHamorus — has long called out the United States military for the environmental and cultural damage enacted on their homeland. This process of occupation and destruction began when Guam was colonized in 1898 and continues to this day, as nearly one-third of the 30-mile long island remains occupied by the U.S. military.

Several years ago, I traveled to Guam on a reporting fellowship and spoke with CHamoru community members about the sacred area of Litekyan, located on the northwestern coast of the island. Among the idyllic white sands, lush forests and turquoise waters, lie two imminent threats to CHamoru land: a live-fire training range complex and an open burning and detonation zone.

The firing range was built to train approximately 5,000 U.S. Marines being relocated to Guam from Okinawa, Japan. The Marines, who started arriving to Guam in 2023, are stationed at nearby Camp Blaz where more than 1,000 acres of limestone forests were destroyed to create the base. Nearly 4,000 acres of land on Andersen Air Force Base will be used for the range and more than 5 million rounds of ammunition will be fired every year.

Parts of Litekyan and the open ocean lie in the surface danger zone, where munitions could ricochet or land. These munitions, such as bullets from machine guns, contain a range of heavy metals, including lead. Over time, lead from these bullets can accumulate in the soil and eventually contaminate the aquifer located below the firing range. Guam only has one aquifer that supplies 80 percent of all drinking water to its residents, meaning contamination of the aquifer could threaten access to clean drinking water across much of the island.

Along with environmental contamination, the firing range poses direct threats to the ancestral and cultural heritage of the CHamoru people. At least 20 archeological sites listed in the National Registry of Historic Places could also be directly and adversely impacted by this military project. And while the Department of Defense put $12 million toward establishing a cultural repository, this will result in the disinterment of CHamoru remains from their original and sacred burial grounds. When I discussed this with a community member, she pointed to a nearby rock lightly covered with moss and said, “It’s like the moss. You don’t take that and put that in a repository. It’s not going to thrive in the same way.”

In addition to the firing range, the U.S. Air Force applied to renew a permit with the Guam Environmental Protection Agency that would allow them to openly burn and openly detonate (OB/OD) 35,000 pounds of bombs and other munitions on Tarague Beach, another Indigenous area in Litekyan. These munitions, classified as reactive hazardous wastes, are largely leftover from World War II. The presence and disposal of this waste can release toxic vapors, with the potential to cause respiratory problems, skin irritation, and in more severe cases, cancer.

CHamoru community members are currently engaged in a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Air Force. The lawsuit cites that Anderson Air Force Base failed to conduct a proper analysis of the environmental impacts of OB/OD operations and did not consider other alternatives for disposal. According to Monaeka Flores, a CHamoru organizer involved in the lawsuit, the OB/OD site is “close to everything. Migratory birds, sea turtles, fisheries … traditional medicines that grow in that area … and our water of course.” Similar to the firing range, the OB/OD site lies above Guam’s aquifer. Detonation of munitions could contaminate the land with heavy metals and toxic “forever” chemicals like PFAS, which may leach into the groundwater below.

In March 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a proposed update to their OB/OD guidance — the first revision since the 1980s — stating that OB/OD facilities must consider alternatives for treating these types of hazardous waste. Various alternative treatment technologies exist, including removing the reactive material or freezing and fracturing the munition. However, until the U.S. Air Force properly evaluates (and implements) alternative methods at the site, open detonation will continue to be allowed at Tarague Beach.

Community members across Guam have been speaking out against these military projects for generations, demanding an end to the environmental destruction and the return of their Indigenous land. Nonprofits like Prutehi Litekyan are actively working to stop the firing range and OB/OD activities by educating community members, organizing protests, circulating petitions and writing letters to policy makers.

For many CHamorus, resisting militarization is part of a larger vision to decolonize Guam and regain their sovereignty. Since 1946, Guam has been listed by the United Nations as a nonself-governing territory, meaning they lack full self-determination. For example, Guam residents cannot vote in U.S. presidential elections and they do not have voting representation in Congress. Groups like Independent Guåhan have organized CHamoru members to testify at the United Nations to speak about decolonization and the environmental impacts of more than a century of U.S. militarization.

What’s happening in Guam is just one example among many across the country, and the world, of the work of Indigenous people to secure and reclaim rights to their homeland.

As we close out Asian Pacific Islander Heritage month, we must stand behind the Indigenous people of Guam and other Pacific Islanders living in the U.S. territories in their fight against the ongoing militarization of their occupied homeland.

The Real Trap of Consumerism

By Our Changing Climate

June 1, 2024

Source: Our Changing Climate

In this Our Changing Climate climate change video essay, I look at the real trap of consumerism. Specifically, I dive into why consumerism is not actually the real cause of exploitation and the climate crisis, but instead a symptom of capitalism. Capitalist overproduction drives companies and corporations to create false needs and desires, which leads to overconsumption. We need to shift our attention away from consumerism and overconsumption and towards overproduction.

Norman Solomon Admonishes the Flawed American Special Policy Towards Israel That Causes Us All Harm

Author & activist Norman Solomon discusses America's Israel hypocrisy. The war in Gaza is immral, and we are complicit.

By Norman Solomon, Egberto Willis

 June 1, 2024

Source: Politics Done Right

To Continue The Gaza Genocide, Israel And The US Must Destroy The Laws Of War

The world's two highest courts have made an implacable enemy of Israel in trying to uphold international law and end Israeli atrocities

By Jonathan Cook

June 1, 2024

Source: Middle East Eye

The world’s two highest courts have made an implacable enemy of Israel in trying to uphold international law and end Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

Separate announcements last week by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) should have forced Israel on to the back foot in Gaza.

A panel of judges at the ICJ – sometimes known as the World Court – demanded last Friday that Israel immediately stop its current offensive on Rafah, in southern Gaza.

Instead, Israel responded by intensifying its atrocities.

On Sunday, it bombed a supposedly “safe zone” crowded with refugee families forced to flee from the rest of Gaza, which has been devastated by Israel’s rampage for the past eight months.

The air strike set fire to an area crammed with tents, killing dozens of Palestinians, many of whom burnt alive. A video shows a man holding aloft a baby beheaded by the Israeli blast.

Hundreds more, many of them women and children, suffered serious injuries, including horrifying burns.

Israel has destroyed almost all of the medical facilities that could treat Rafah’s wounded, as well as denying entry to basic medical supplies such as painkillers that could ease their torment.

This was precisely the outcome US President Joe Biden warned of months ago when he suggested that an Israeli attack on Rafah would constitute a “red line”.

But the US red line evaporated the moment Israel crossed it. The best Biden’s officials could manage was a mealy-mouthed statement calling the images from Rafah “heart-breaking”.

Such images were soon to be repeated, however. Israel attacked the same area again on Tuesday, killing at least 21 Palestinians, mostly women and children, as its tanks entered the centre of Rafah.
‘A mechanism with teeth’

The World Court’s demand that Israel halt its attack on Rafah came in the wake of its decision in January to put Israel effectively on trial for genocide, a judicial process that could take years to complete.

In the meantime, the ICJ insisted, Israel had to refrain from any actions that risked a genocide of Palestinians. In last week’s ruling, the court strongly implied that the current attack on Rafah might advance just such an agenda.

Israel presumably dared to defy the court only because it was sure it had the Biden administration’s backing.

UN officials, admitting that they had run out of negatives to describe the ever-worsening catastrophe in Gaza, called it “hell on earth”.

Days before the ICJ’s ruling, the wheels of its sister court, the ICC, finally began to turn.

Karim Khan, its chief prosecutor, announced last week that he would be seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders.

Both Israeli leaders are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including attempts to exterminate the population of Gaza through planned starvation.

Israel has been blocking aid deliveries for many months, creating famine, a situation only exacerbated by its recent seizure of a crossing between Egypt and Rafah through which aid was being delivered.

The ICC is a potentially more dangerous judicial mechanism for Israel than the ICJ.

The World Court is likely to take years to reach a judgement on whether Israel has definitively committed a genocide in Gaza – possibly too late to save much of its population.

The ICC, on the other hand, could potentially issue arrest warrants within days or weeks.

And while the World Court has no real enforcement mechanisms, given that the US is certain to veto any UN Security Council resolution seeking to hold Israel to account, an ICC ruling would place an obligation on more than 120 states that have ratified its founding document, the Rome Statute, to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant should either step on their soil.

That would make Europe and much of the world – though not the US – off-limits to both.

And there is no reason for Israeli officials to assume that the ICC’s investigations will finish with Netanyahu and Gallant. Over time, it could issue warrants for many more Israeli officials.

As one Israeli official has noted, “the ICC is a mechanism with teeth”.
‘Antisemitic’ court

For that reason, Israel responded by going on the warpath, accusing the court of being “antisemitic” and threatening to harm its officials.

Washington appeared ready to add its muscle too.

Asked at a Senate committee hearing whether he would support a Republican proposal to impose sanctions on the ICC, Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state, replied: “We want to work with you on a bipartisan basis to find an appropriate response.”

Administration officials, speaking to the Financial Times, suggested the measures under consideration “would target prosecutor Karim Khan and others involved in the investigation”.

US reprisals, according to the paper, would most likely be modelled on the sanctions imposed in 2020 by Donald Trump, Joe Biden’s predecessor, after the ICC threatened to investigate both Israel and the US over war crimes, in the occupied Palestinian territories and Afghanistan respectively.

Then, the Trump administration accused the ICC of “financial corruption and malfeasance at the highest levels” – allegations it never substantiated.

Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor at the time, was denied entry to the US, and Trump officials threatened to confiscate her and the ICC judges’ assets and put them on trial. The administration also vowed to use force to liberate any Americans or Israelis who were arrested.

Mike Pompeo, the then US secretary of state, averred that Washington was “determined to prevent having Americans and our friends and allies in Israel and elsewhere hauled in by this corrupt ICC”.
Covert war on ICC

In fact, a joint investigation by the Israeli website 972 and the British Guardian newspaper revealed this week that Israel – apparently with US support – has been running a covert war against the ICC for the best part of a decade.

Its offensive began after Palestine became a contracting party to the ICC in 2015, and intensified after Bensouda, Khan’s predecessor, started a preliminary investigation into Israeli war crimes – both Israel’s repeated attacks on Gaza and its building of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their lands.

Bensouda found herself and her family threatened, and her husband blackmailed. The head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, Yossi Cohen, became personally involved in the campaign of intimidation. An official briefed on Cohen’s behaviour likened it to “stalking”. The Mossad chief ambushed Bensouda on at least one occasion in an attempt to recruit her to Israel’s side.

Cohen, who is known to be close to Netanyahu, reportedly told her: “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.”

Israel has also been running a sophisticated spying operation on the court, hacking its database to read emails and documents. It has tried to recruit ICC staff to spy on the court from within. There are suspicions at the ICC that Israel has been successful.

Because Israel oversees access to the occupied territories, it has been able to ban ICC officials from investigating its war crimes directly. That has meant, given its control of the telecommunications systems in the territories, that it has been able to monitor all conversations between the ICC and Palestinians reporting atrocities.

As a result, Israel has sought to close down Palestinian legal and human rights groups by designating them as “terrorist organisations”.

The surveillance of the ICC has continued during Khan’s tenure – and it is the reason Israel knew the arrest warrants were coming. According to sources that spoke to the Guardian and 972 website, the court came under “tremendous pressure from the United States” not to proceed with the warrants.

Khan has pointed out that interference in the court’s activities is a criminal offence. More publicly, a group of senior US Republican senators sent a threatening letter to Khan: “Target Israel and we will target you.”

Khan himself has noted that he has faced a campaign of intimidation and has warned that, if the interference continues, “my office will not hesitate to act”.

The question is how much of this is bravado, and how much is it affecting Khan and the ICC’s judges, making them wary of pursuing their investigation, expediting it or expanding it to more Israeli war crimes suspects.
Legal noose

Despite the intimidation, the legal noose is quickly tightening around Israel’s neck. It has become impossible for the world’s highest judicial authorities to ignore Israel’s eight-month slaughter in Gaza and near-complete destruction of its infrastructure, from schools and hospitals to aid compounds and bakeries.

Many tens of thousands of Palestinian children have been killed, maimed and orphaned in the rampage, and hundreds of thousands more are being gradually starved to death by Israel’s aid blockade.

The role of the World Court and the War Crimes Court are precisely to halt atrocities and genocides before it is too late.

There is an obligation on the world’s most powerful states – especially the world’s superpower-in-chief, the United States, which so often claims the status of “global policeman” – to help enforce such rulings.

Should Israel continue to ignore the ICJ’s demand that it end its attack on Rafah, as seems certain, the UN Security Council would be expected to pass a resolution to enforce the decision.

That could range from, at a minimum, an arms embargo and economic sanctions on Israel to imposing no-fly zones over Gaza or even sending in a UN peacekeeping force.

Washington has shown it can act when it wishes to. Even though the US is one of a minority of states not a party to the Rome Statute, it has vigorously supported the arrest warrant issued by the ICC against Russian leader Vladimir Putin in 2023.

The US and its allies have imposed economic sanctions on Moscow, and supplied Ukraine with endless weapons to fight off the Russian invasion. There is evidence, too, that the US has been waging covert military operations targeting Russia, most likely including blowing up the Nordstream pipelines supplying Russian gas to Europe.

The Biden administration has orchestrated the seizing of Russian state assets, as well as those of wealthy Russians, and it has encouraged a cultural and sporting boycott.

It is proposing to do none of that in the case of Israel.
Divisions in Europe

It is not just that the US is missing in action as Israel advances its genocidal goals in Gaza. Washington is actively aiding and abetting the genocide, by supplying Israel with bombs, by cutting funding to UN aid agencies that are the main lifeline for Gaza’s population, by sharing intelligence with Israel and by refusing to use its plentiful leverage over Israel to stop the slaughter.

And the widespread assumption is that the US will veto any Security Council resolution against Israel.

According to two former ICC officials who spoke to the Guardian and 972 website, senior Israeli officials have expressly stated that Israel and the US are working together to stymie the court’s work.

Washington’s contempt for the world’s highest judicial authorities is so flagrant that it is even starting to fray relations with Europe.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has thrown his weight behind the ICC and called for any ruling against Netanyahu and Gallant to be respected.

Meanwhile, on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his outrage over Israel’s attacks on Rafah and called for them to stop immediately.

Three European states – Spain, Ireland and Norway – announced last week that they were joining more than 140 other countries, including eight from the 27-member European Union, in recognising Palestine as a state.

The coordination between Spain, Ireland and Norway was presumably designed to attenuate the inevitable backlash provoked by defying Washington’s wishes.

Among the falsehoods promoted by the US and Israel is the claim that the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel’s military actions in Gaza because neither of them have recognised Palestine as a state.

But Palestine became a state party to the ICC way back in 2015. And, as Spain, Ireland and Norway have highlighted, it is now recognised even by western states usually submissive to the US-imposed “rules-based order”.

Another deception promoted by Israel and the US – a more revealing one – is the claim that the ICC lacks jurisdiction because Israel, like the US, has not ratified the Rome Statute.

Neither believes international law – the legal foundation constructed in the aftermath of the Second World War to stop future Holocausts – applies to them. Which is yet more reason to discount their assurances that there is no genocide in Gaza.

But in any case, the argument is entirely hollow: Palestine is a party to the ICC, and the Rome Statute is there to protect its signatories from attack. It is only violent bullies like the US and Israel who have no need for the ICC.
Might makes right

Both the ICJ and the ICC are fully aware of the dangers of taking on Israel – which is why, despite the dissembling complaints from the US and Israel, each court is treading so slowly and cautiously in dealing with Israeli atrocities.

Pick at the Israeli thread of war crimes in Gaza, and the entire cloth of atrocities around the world committed and promoted by the US and its closest allies starts to unravel.

The unspoken truth is that the “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign and years of brutal occupation of Iraq by US and British troops, and the even lengthier and equally bloody occupation of Afghanistan, eviscerated the legal constraints that would have made it harder for Putin to invade Ukraine and for Israel to put into practice the erasure of the Palestinian people it has dreamed of for so long.

It is Washington that tore up the rulebook of international law and elevated above it a self-serving “rules-based order” in which the only meaningful rule is might makes right.

Faced with that stark axiom, Moscow had good reason both to take advantage of Washington’s acts of vandalism against international law to advance its own strategic regional aims and to suspect that the relentless military expansion of a US-led Nato towards its borders did not have Russia’s best interests at heart.

Now, as Netanyahu and Gallant risk being put in the dock at The Hague, Washington is finally finding its resolve to act. Not to stop genocide. But to offer Israel protection to carry on.
War crimes overlooked

For that reason, Khan did everything he could last week to insulate himself from criticism as he announced that he wants Netanyahu and Gallant arrested.

First, he made sure to weigh the accusations more heavily against Hamas than Israel. He is seeking three Hamas leaders against two Israelis.

In his indictment, he implicated both the Hamas political and military wings in war crimes and crimes against humanity over their one-day attack on Israel on 7 October and their hostage-taking.

By contrast, Khan completely ignored the Israeli military’s role over the past eight months, even though it has been carrying out Netanyahu and Gallant’s wishes to the letter.

Notably too, Khan charged the head of Hamas’ political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, who is based in Qatar, not Gaza. All the evidence, however, is that he had no foreknowledge of the attack on 7 October and certainly no operational involvement.

Further presenting Hamas in a worse light, Khan levelled more indictments against its leaders than Israel’s.

That included a charge rooted in a prominent western establishment narrative: that Israeli hostages held in Gaza have faced systematic sexual assault and torture. There appears to be little persuasive evidence for this allegation at this stage, unless Khan has access to facts no one else appears to know about.

By contrast, there is plenty of objective evidence of Palestinians being kidnapped off the streets of Gaza and the occupied West Bank and subjected to sexual assault and torture in Israeli prisons.

That, however, was not on the charge sheet against Netanyahu or Gallant.

Khan also ignored plenty of other Israeli war crimes that would be easy to prove, such as the destruction of hospitals and United Nations facilities, the targeted killing of large numbers of aid workers and journalists, and the fact that 70 percent of Gaza’s housing stock has been made uninhabitable by Israel’s US-supplied bombs.
Taking on Goliath

In making the case against Israel, Khan clearly knew he was taking on a Goliath, given Israel’s stalwart backing from the US. He had even recruited a panel of legal experts to give its blessing, in the hope that might offer some protection from reprisal.

The panel, which unanimously endorsed the indictments against Israel and Hamas, included legal experts like Amal Clooney, the nearest the human rights community has to a legal superstar. But it also included Theodor Meron, a former legal authority in the Israeli government’s foreign ministry.

In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, explaining his reasoning, Khan seemed keen to preempt the coming attacks. He noted that an unnamed senior US politician had already tried to deter him from indicting Israeli leaders. The prosecutor suggested that other threats were being made behind the scenes.

The ICC, he was told, was “built for Africa and thugs like Putin” – a criticism of the court that echoed complaints long levelled against it by the Global South.

In Washington, the ICC is expected to serve as nothing more than another institutional tool of US imperialism. It is not there to uphold international law dispassionately. It is there to enforce a US ‘rules-based order’ in which the US and its allies can do no wrong, even when they are committing atrocities or a genocide.

The predictably skewed framing of the interview by Amanpour – that Khan needed to explain and justify at length each of the charges he laid against Netanyahu and Gallant but that the charges against the Hamas leaders were self-evident – was one clue as to what the court is up against.

The ICC prosecutor made clear that he understands all too well what is at stake if the ICC and ICJ turn a blind eye to the Gaza genocide, as Israel and the US want. He told Amanpour: “If we don’t apply the law equally, we’re going to disintegrate as a species.”

The uncomfortable truth is that such disintegration, in a nuclear age, may be further advanced than any of us cares to acknowledge.

The US and its favourite client state give no sign of being willing to submit to international law. Like Samson, they would prefer to bring the house down than respect the long-established rules of war.

The initial victims are the people of Gaza. But in a world without laws, where might alone makes right, all of us will ultimately be the losers.



Jonathan Cook
British writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His books are Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (Pluto, 2006); Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto, 2008); and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed, 2008).