Is Israel Mad?

by Sheldon Richman Posted onMarch 14, 2024

Has Israel gone mad? Or has it always been mad? What is the country thinking?

The collective nouns seem reasonable in light of the widespread support in that country for the Israeli government’s appalling military assault on the people of the Gaza Strip for the last five months. How can Israel — and its outside supporters — cheer on the bombings (compliments of coerced Americans), the ground attacks, the mass starvation, the terror, and the rest of the crimes that we witness every day? The death toll is pushing 31,000, most of them infants, children, women, and old men, not fighters. So many more have been disabled for life. Gazans — including newborns — lack food, good water, medical services and equipment, and drugs, including anesthesia. The humanitarian aid is a small fraction of what they need. So many have been driven from their homes, to which they’ll never return because the buildings have been destroyed.

And there’s no end in sight! Will it take the murder of the last Gazan for it to stop? For clear-eyed observers watching helplessly from afar, it is heartbreaking. We cannot even stop the Biden administration from sending bombs, bullets, and spare parts to Israel — without which this could not go on.

Those are human beings in Gaza, for heaven’s sake! Stop the carnage!

Israel’s supporters may think that uttering the word Hamas provides all the justification required. That can’t be. Common-sense moral intuition possessed by virtually everyone says otherwise. Yes, Hamas committed horrible acts on Oct. 7. So this is the response? Mass death, injury, and destruction? Don’t say, “What else could Israel do?” Being unable to think of something else to do is not a license to kill tens of thousands of infants, children, the infirm, the elderly, and the rest. That makes no sense.

Hamas was nothing before the late 1980s. Why hadn’t Israel been willing to treat the Palestinians justly before that? Maybe we would have never heard of Hamas. But Israel encouraged Hamas, well before Netanyahu, because the Islamic organization was seen as a religious rival to the popular and secular PLO; hence Hamas could be used to split the Palestinians. Divide and rule. Advantage Israel.

History did not begin on October 7, 2023. It began more than a hundred years ago. Why? Because Arabs, both Muslims and Christians, dared to live in the Jewish Promised Land. Well, Zionism said in effect, “we’re back. Thanks for keeping an eye on things, but you can go now. And if you don’t go, we’ll ‘transfer’ you out by force.”

So Gaza was a pressure cooker set on its deadly schedule long ago. Later events, such as the Israeli blockade of the strip and repeated military assaults, made things worse. This is not an excuse but necessary information — the full context — for comprehending what’s going on.

Why is it going on? One reason, I think, is an aspect of Zionist and Israeli culture, which originated with some, not all, European (Ashkenazi) Jews many years ago. Zionism arose in Europe in the late 19th century; Jews lived in other places too, however. It embodied the conviction that European history — even before the genocidal Nazis — and the world’s alleged congenital hatred of Jewry made permissible anything seemingly necessary to survival. World opinion doesn’t matter — the world will hate “us” no matter what. So the rules are different. As Rabbi Stuart Federow said after Oct. 7, “What better proof is there that we are the servants of God who suffer because we’re God’s servants than what is going on in the world today? Why is there anti-Semitism? Because deep down in the recesses of their heart and soul, they know we’re right.”

I used the narrower terms Ashkenazi, Israeli, and Zionist culture, not the broader Jewish culture. That’s because Zionism was never anything like a unanimous Jewish view. Also, no single Jewish culture exists. Jews are of many cultures, languages, and nationalities. We’ve been encouraged to forget that. The Arab Jews (you read that right), the Mizrahi, saw things differently from the Ashkenazim because they had lived and prospered alongside their Arab Muslim neighbors for generations. Ask historian Avi Shlaim, the Iraqi-born Jewish historian. Ask Alon Mizrahi. The Arab Jews spoke Arabic, wore Arabic clothing, listened to Arabic music, and ate Arabic food. The Ashkenazi Israeli elite found them “too Arab” and worked to “Israelize” them when too few European and American Jews were willing to emigrate.

Another reason the words Zionists and Ashkenazi Israelis are more appropriate than the narrower Jews is that so many Jewish people are shocked by what Israel is doing. Look at who turns out en masse for and even leads the anti-Israel protests in the United States and other Western countries: Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. They wear shirts that cry out, “Not in Our Name.” Consider the religious backgrounds of many of the most prominent critics of the “Jewish state’s” mistreatment of the Palestinians. It is not Judaism versus the world. It’s Zionism versus Jews and the world. The ranks of anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews grow every day. It’s absurd to blame “the Jews” for Israel’s bad behavior. Memo to the relatively few real anti-Semites who sully the anti-Israel demonstrations: creep back into the shadows. You are not welcome.

Jewish anti-Zionism is as old as Jewish Zionism itself. The early Zionists, like their successors, believed that Jews constituted a single “race,” or blood group. According to this essentialism, one could not stop being Jewish. The Nazis later were happy to agree. To the extent anyone believes that today, Hitler has won.

The anti-Zionist Jews rejected essentialism. They understood that Judaism was (and is) a religion and the Jewish people its practitioners comprised of many “races,” ethnicities, and nationalities. In America the Reform Jewish movement agreed and explicitly renounced the claim that they were a diaspora longing to “return” to their national home in Palestine. In their view Judaism existed to spread God’s word and set an example for the world. Nationalism conflicted with that mission. Theirs was the prophetic universalist Judaism that had long clashed with tribalism and the ghetto mindset.

Most Orthodox Jews rejected Zionism for similar reasons. (My paternal grandfather was one.) In effect, they asked, “Where is it written that God would appoint the atheist Herzl or the atheist Ben-Gurion as the Messiah?” According to the Orthodox, God (using the Romans) exiled the Jews from Judea in 70 CE because they had sinned. The arrival of the Messiah, a man, king, and warrior, not a divine being, would herald the time for return. (Israeli historian Shlomo Sand shows that no evidence of an exile exists.)

The anti-Zionist Jews, both Reform and Orthodox, had three grounds for rejecting Zionism. First, it would turn Judaism into idolatry. Instead of Yahweh and the Torah, the object of adoration would be the state of Israel. To the dismay of the anti-Zionist Jews, an atheist nonpractitioner with a Jewish mother could, in the Zionists’ eyes, be a Jew in good standing (and qualify for Israeli citizenship) as long as he or she loved “the Jewish state.”

Second, the earliest anti-Zionist Jews pointed out that Palestine was not a “land without a people.” They knew that Arab Muslims, Christians, and secularists had lived there for generations. Further, they warned that the European Zionists’ palpable disdain for the locals and their arrogant coveting of the land would inevitably bring trouble. As Israeli historian Ilan Pappé says, “Jews had to escape from Europe to find a safe haven. But you cannot create a safe haven by creating a catastrophe [Nakba] for other people.”

Third, the Jewish anti-Zionists feared that Zionism and its so-called “Jewish state” would jeopardize the lives of Jews who were happily settled in the United States and other Western countries after valiant struggles for emancipation, acceptance, and assimilation. An exclusivist state would encourage anti-Semites, who would say in effect, “You Jews now have your own special state way over there. Let me help you pack your bags.” That was a genuine concern because much was at stake. (For more about the anti-Zionist Jews, see the Reform Alfred Lilienthal’s 1949 Reader’s Digest article, “Israel’s Flag Is Not Mine.” Also check out the still-active 81-year-old American Council for Judaism, founded by Rabbi Elmer Berger. Also check out the YouTube videos of the Orthodox anti-Zionist Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro.)

Shamefully, after 1948 the Israeli government and its American supporters worked to discredit the Jewish anti-Zionists because they told the public about the mass dispossession and even massacres of Palestinians by ruthless Zionist militias, which had future Israeli prime ministers in their ranks. Without that Nakba, no “Jewish state” could have come into existence through self-declaration. (Contrary to popular belief, the United Nations did not partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states because it lacked the power to do so. Rather, the General Assembly voted to recommend partition. See Jeremy R. Hammond’s “The Myth of U.N. Creation of Israel.”)

If Jewish Zionists are honestly concerned about a rise in anti-Semitism and are not, again, crying “wolf” merely to innoculate Israel from legitimate criticism, they ought to look to Israel’s mistreatment and humiliation of the Palestinians in Israel proper, the West Bank, and Gaza as a source. That may prove enlightening.

But are Jewish Zionists really worried about anti-Semitism? Golda Meir, the former prime minister of Israel who infamously denied the existence of the Palestinians, worried about what she said were the two dangers facing the Jewish people: annihilation and assimilation. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on June 17, 1972:

Meir Warns American Jews of Dangers of Assimilation

Premier Golda Meir has warned American Jewry of what she called the “dangers of assimilation and intermarriage.” The Premier told the opening session of the Zionist Organization of America’s 75th jubilee convention that she viewed the issues as seriously as she did the existence and security of Israel itself. She challenged the ZOA and other American Zionists: “Are you certain that your children and grandchildren will remain Jews?”…

“I dread the verdict of history on this generation if, given the opportunity which the State of Israel’s existence provides to strengthen the Jewish people, we fail. There could be no greater tragedy than this… The big question is: Can Jewishness flourish in free [i.e., tolerant–SR] societies? We now see that not only through hatred and oppression can the number of Jews be diminished, but also through love and freedom.”

The solution, Mrs. Meir said, was an intensive Jewish life in the diaspora, with Israel, Hebrew education and aspiration to aliya [i.e., permanent migration to Israel–SR] as its central features.

This is remarkable. Did she perhaps think that a little anti-Semitism could help prevent assimilation and intermarriage by strengthening Jewish identity? As Herzl said, the anti-Semites make “us” Jews. Anyone who thinks that Israel is essential to eliminating anti-Semitism and making Jewish people safe is sadly mistaken. Where are Jews less safe than in Israel? Certainly not America.

The Israeli Arab Jew Alon Mizrahi points out that Zionism should be judged by what it does, not by what it says. “Palestinians are, and forever will be, the foremost victims of Zionism,” he writes. “But for too long we have neglected to look at the terrible price Jews have been paying for it in terms of their humanity, their morality, their freedom and creativity and, tragicomically, their sense of place and belonging among our brothers and sisters of all races and places, including, yes, Palestine.”

Amen.

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

 

Greenland Cascading 30 Million Tons Per Hour

by Robert Hunziker / March 15th, 2024

Free-floating ice floats jammed into the Ilulissat Icefjord during unseasonably warm weather on July 30, 2019 near Ilulissat, Greenland. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Facing Future.tv recently conducted an interview about spooky new developments in Greenland. The ice sheet is cascading/gushing at unheard of rates never dreamed possible at this stage of global warming, or at any stage for that matter.

The video opens with a statement by Peter Wadhams, professor emeritus Ocean Physics, Cambridge University, a leading authority on Arctic sea ice (A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic, Oxford University Press, 256 pgs):

Greenland’s rate of melt in summer was something that we knew about, and it was gradually increasing, then suddenly it’s multiplied itself by about 8 times; this is 30,000,000 tons an hour. When I was last up there it was more like 30,000,000 tons per day. That’s just something unheard of and so we’re really worried about what’s going on with Greenland.

As it happens, Dr. Wadhams’ expression “worried about what’s going on with Greenland” is a very strong candidate for ‘understatement of the year’ or maybe of the century. The rate of melt he discussed is 720,000,000 tons per day versus previous analyses of 30,000,000 tons per day.

The Facing Future.tv 25:33-min video is entitled: “Greenland: Ice Loss Accelerating, 30 Million Tonnes an Hour with Paul Beckwith and Peter Wadhams“, Hosted by Dale Walkonen March 3, 2024.

Question by the host: How serious is the situation in Greenland?

Answer (Wadhams):

Well, it’s very serious because it’s unprecedented that the rate of melt… Suddenly its multiplied itself by about seven or eight; it’s 30 million tons an hour, but when I was last up there it was 30 million tons per day… now gone to an hourly rate which used to be daily rate… when you’re up on the ice sheet you see big changes. There are always large meltwater streams, holes filling up with water. It’s a very dynamic scene but it’s not nearly as dynamic as it is now because everything is speeding up by a factor of about eight. It’s something unheard of… it’s not figured into the climate models used by the IPCC.

According to Paul Beckwith, climate system scientist, University of Ottawa, the High Arctic has been warming 5-8 times the global average for some time now as many scientists and newspaper reports erroneously claimed it was only two-three times, not 5-8 times. The High Arctic directly influences Greenland, and he claims there’s good data on Greenland and Antarctica via gravity anomaly satellites; e.g., NASA’s GRACE, CyroSat, and Copernicus Sentinel-3, that show melt rates doubling every decade for both regions.

Regarding the new data:

People are going to be very surprised at the accelerated growth of sea level rise in the next decade, or two, let alone if all of Greenland melted, it would be 25 feet of sea level rise. (Beckwith)

According to Beckwith: James Hansen (Earth Institute/Columbia University) some time ago said he would not be surprised if we had 5 meters (16 feet) of sea level rise by 2100. He said that years ago when the IPCC expected about one-half a meter by 2100.

It should be noted that current IPCC sea level rise statistics assume 1-4 feet this century, depending upon various input data.

Beckwith: We’re seeing huge acceleration in global warming, in ocean warming, estimates of sea level rise are going to be going up, up, up a lot, continually revised upwards. He believes Hansen’s 5 meters is an underestimate. If perchance that happens, what’ll it be by 2030 or 2040 or 2050? After all, Greenland’s melt rate is not static; it’s already off the charts at a baffling 30M tons per hour, formerly 30M tons by the day. Seemingly, that’s comparable to breaking the sound barrier at Mach 1.

Wadhams on Hansen:

I think Hansen is right in expecting a higher rate than models give; he always has a healthy contempt for models which I think is correct because nearly always, models are inadequate, especially the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC models.

As queried by the host, since most people listen to what the IPCC says, for example, setting nation/state policies, where can people go for accurate information?

Beckwith’s response to ‘the dilemma of where to go for accurate information’: Scientists are individually willing to discuss their own research but reluctant to talk about research by other scientists and only make projections based upon computer models, but computer models are based upon history, often stale information by the time used.

Not included in climate modeling, major wildfires in Canada and Russia last year spewed massive amounts of ash onto Arctic ice which accelerated melting beyond expectations as dark background absorbs solar radiation rather than reflecting it to outer space.

Another new factor impacting Greenland’s ice melt that’s downright spooky is Hansen’s recent statement about Earth’s energy imbalance, which is completely out of whack with more energy than ever before coming into the planet as absorbed sunlight rather than going out as heat radiated to outer space. This imbalance has doubled within only one decade, according to a study by NASA and the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration  This may be, probably is, the biggest ‘bad news of the year’.

Earth’s energy imbalance or “sunlight in” versus “sunlight out” is currently running at a frightful rate @ 1.36 W/m² (watts per square meter) as of the current 2020s decade, which is double the 2005-2015 rate @ 0.71 W/m^2.  (James Hansen).

Beckwith highlighted another major concern for Greenland as the change in jet streams at 20-40,000 feet altitude is altered, as a result of loss of Arctic sea ice, into vast wavey troughs that trap heat over Greenland. This never happened in the past. Another new dynamic, according to Beckwith, is a lot of rain in the Arctic instead of snow, thanks to global warming. And atmospheric rivers, like those that drenched the West Coast, hitting Greenland, accelerating the melt process.

It’s an understatement to conclude that Greenland is in trouble and conventional views of sea level rise are way too conservative.  Unfortunately, by extension of these new facts, coastal cities are more vulnerable to flooding than ever before.

According to Climate Central, widespread areas are likely to see storm surges on top of sea level rise reaching at least 4 feet above high tide by 2030, and 5 feet by 2050. Nearly 5 million U.S. residents currently live on land less than 4 feet above high tide, and more than 6 million on land less than 5 feet above. Portland’s high tide broke all-time records, reaching 14 feet at the same time as record-breaking floods hit the US East Coast, January 14th, 2024. NOAA expects sea levels along US coasts to rise as much over the next 10 years as they did over past 100 years.

But the Climate Central study doesn’t include calculations for Greenland’s 30M tons per hour or Antarctica suddenly losing sea ice extent at a record-setting pace 2022, 2023, 2024 in succession. Once again, Earth’s climate system outmaneuvers climate science research, leaving scientists bent over at the knees, coughing in its dust. It’s too fast for scientists to keep up.

Bottom line, it’s nice to assume everything will be okay, “we’ll get through it, there’s still time to fix it,” blah-blah-blah, but several new earth-shattering indicators, especially at both poles, are not waiting for that illusive fixit.

Frankly, nobody knows how bad, how soon this worldwide melt-off develops as both poles, the Arctic and Antarctica, experience unbelievably rapid change in concert with land-based melt-offs in the Alps, Patagonia, Andes, Himalayas, Caucasus, and all other mountain ranges worldwide. Meanwhile many of Europe’s famous ski resorts closed in February, even snow cannons stopped working due to high temperatures.

For the record, here’s the James Hansen sea level projection, as mentioned by Paul Beckwith:

In what may prove to be a turning point for political action on climate change, a breathtaking new study casts extreme doubt about the near-term stability of global sea levels. The study—written by James Hansen, NASA’s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields—concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, brings new importance to a feedback loop in the ocean near Antarctica that results in cooler freshwater from melting glaciers forcing warmer, saltier water underneath the ice sheets, speeding up the melting rate. Hansen, who is known for being alarmist and also right, acknowledges that his study implies change far beyond previous consensus estimates. In a conference call with reporters, he said he hoped the new findings would be “substantially more persuasive than anything previously published.” I certainly find them to be. (“Earth’s Most Famous Climate Scientist Issues Bombshell Sea Level Warning“, Slate, July 20, 2015.)

Nine years later, increasingly it looks like Hansen will be right once again.

If he’s right about “at least 10 feet” within 50 years, which would be by 2065, then what will it be in 2050, 2040, or 2030? In rough numbers, sometime between 2030-40 it would surpass the IPCC highest estimate for 2100. That’s a big-time headache for every coastal city, right around the corner. Hopefully, a magic potion drops into Earth’s atmosphere and makes this go away like a bad dream.

And as long as the magic potion is around, why not use it to strip the world’s teeny-weeny percentage of the world’s population billionaires of some of their riches to buy renewable energy for the world marketplace and finance science projects to help combat Hot House Earth. It’s coming.

For the faint of heart, cheer up, there are plenty of respected climate scientists that disagree with the expectations stated in this article.  Still, over time, somebody will be right; maybe it’ll be them but maybe don’t count on that, wondering what they’d say about Greenland’s turbo-charged 30 Million/Tons/Hour.

Nevertheless, one solution that can help solve global warming is “kill Citizens United” that allows corporate interests to spend unlimited funds to influence elections, politicians, and policy (they’ve made the worst possible choices) … before it’s too late to do anything, or is it?

Robert Hunziker (MA, economic history, DePaul University) is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He can be contacted at: rlhunziker@gmail.com. Read other articles by Robert.

 

DRC Bleeds Conflict Minerals for Green Growth

by Alexandria Schaner / March 15th, 2024

Activists in Goma denounce state and international inaction after savage attacks by a Rwandan-backed militia. Photo: LuchaCongo.org

“Inside every phone is the blood of a Congolese person.” These words from Pascal Mirindi, a student and activist in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), encapsulate the deadly links between war, the plunder of resources, and climate breakdown.

Nowhere is this more devastatingly clear than in the DRC, where M23 militias financed by the Rwandan government, which is in turn funded by the UK, USA, and many more, are committing mass murder and ecological destruction as they surge into the east of the country.

On the rare occasion that the mainstream media covers the DRC, it is portrayed as a poor nation with a “complicated” conflict-riven backstory. But this framing omits the catalyst for the region’s violence since its colonization – resource robbery.

“The conflict, which has persisted in the east of the DRC for almost 30 years, and is the deadliest since the Second World War, is mainly economic,” explains Nobel Laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege. Since 1996, more than 10 million people have been killed, with countless more being displaced, raped, or forcibly recruited (even as children) into armed groups. “The link between exploitation and the illegal trade in minerals is recognized as a root cause.”

On International Women’s Day, Congolese activists in the city of Beni demand justice for the women suffering violence in DRC. Photo: @luchaRDC

Rich nation, poor nation

The current fighting has now displaced more than 10 million people, triggering another wave of indiscriminate killings, mass rape, and disease, while militia armies ransack the country’s rainforests with illegal logging and poaching.

Though the Congolese people have long been vampirized by extractivism, with over 70% living on less than $1.90/day, the DRC is not a poor nation – it is a robbed nation. In fact, the DRC is considered the world’s richest country in terms of wealth in natural resources.

DRC’s fossil fuels have been profitably exploited by foreign corporations and co-opted local elites for decades, leaving communities like Muanda, which is uncoincidentally both the original site of fossil fuel extraction and the poorest city in the country, scarred by dispossession, disease, and environmental degradation.

After the deadly Kalehe flood in South Kivu province last May, which killed hundreds and affected another 50,000 people in the flood zone, student activists from Extinction Rebellion Goma University launched the Pétrole Non Merci campaign in order to highlight that the DRC is already suffering the effects of climate catastrophes and that this suffering will only increase if the fossil fuel industry’s expansion is not stopped.

The students traveled thousands of miles across the width of the country, mobilizing communities to oppose the sale of 30 new oil and gas blocks, most of which overlap protected areas and would be transported by the ecocidal EACOP pipeline. A major focus of their efforts has been to facilitate ongoing educational exchanges on how to claim their rights through nonviolence and to hold officials and corporations accountable to local communities.

The continued work of building grassroots power to counter resource and human exploitation is now facing crucible conditions. Goma activists are spending long hours caring for the massive influx of internally displaced people amid food shortages and cholera outbreaks. Others in their networks have been displaced and suffered violence and even death. “This crisis only reinforces that the struggle for environmental justice is inextricably linked to the struggle against the cycles of violence that we continue to experience,” explains an activist with LUCHA, a non-violent and non-partisan youth civil society movement in Goma.

Green growth, red trail

As global finance gears up for “green growth”, the DRC’s resource wealth has again brought violence, robbery, and ecological destruction. The world’s largest coltan reserves, vast caches of copper, diamonds, tin, gold, and more than 63% of global cobalt are prized by armed gangs who sell them to corporations and wealthy states wanting to manufacture phones, computers, batteries and increasingly, renewable energy technologies.

In the chaos orchestrated by the militias, minerals are more easily siphoned to Rwanda, where they are exported and bought by multinational firms like Glencore. Nicolas Kazadi, DRC’s finance minister, claims that Rwandan mineral smuggling costs the DRC $1bn per year. The US Treasury estimated that last year more than 90% of DRC’s gold was smuggled to countries including Rwanda and Uganda, where it is refined and exported, mainly to the United Arab Emirates. Rwanda is also somehow the world’s primary exporter of coltan, despite being one of the lowest mineral producers in Africa. Without conflict minerals, the numbers just don’t add up.

Efforts to regulate conflict minerals and ensure responsible supply chains have been laughable in their inadequacy, and typical in their market-oriented approach that prioritizes profits while ignoring Congolese perspectives and outcomes. “The case of conflict minerals poses questions about how global supply chain capitalism, conflict resolution, and consumer ethics intersect with postcolonial friction and violence,” writes Josaphat Musamba and Christoph Vogel in Dissent Magazine. “Both international and Congolese interveners and elites have contributed to simplistic and misleading imageries of the problem and its solution, in a quest for a quick and seemingly hands-on, human rights–inspired PR operation.”

Until a decolonized approach that centers communities and ecology is adopted, extraction will inevitably lead to conflict. It is not possible to clean up a supply chain that begins with dirty motives, just as it is not possible to build regional stability and heal generations of trauma in the context of manipulation and structural inequity, better known as ‘development and aid’.

A rally in Nairobi, Kenya calls out Rwandan aggression in DRC. Photo: @luchaRDC

Donor darling, donor orphan

Though this long regional conflict is often portrayed as Rwandans vs Congolese, Hutu vs Tutsi, or even Muslim vs Christian, the primary generator of endless suffering is a more universal clash – power and profit vs people and planet. Colonialism never really ended, it simply now works remotely via economic imperialism. A look at the history of foreign intervention in the region clearly shows that the sources of underlying tensions, that have so far been inescapable, are not due to some inherent failing of Congolese or Rwandan people – it’s structural.

“Several studies point to the erroneous perceptions of outsiders to explain why their interventions have been unable to address the root causes of conflict in the African Great Lakes region. However, few authors focus on the impact of UN and donor activities on regional fragility,” says policy analyst Léopold Ghins at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa. “It is chiefly through these activities that outsiders have become part of the problem they [supposedly] seek to resolve.”

One way in which the imperial core exacerbates regional fragility is through unbalanced aid allocations. From 2003-16, Rwanda received about 130% and 50% more aid in per capita terms than the DRC and Burundi respectively. Rwanda was dubbed a ‘donor darling’, while the DRC and Burundi were considered ‘donor orphans’.

Donors now see Rwanda as a useful regional hegemon through which to carry on with the plunder of African resources. Its economy is growing, its infrastructure is developing at speed, and yet this celebrated growth has only benefitted a tiny elite.

It’s necessary to look up from the accounting books, step out of the board room and into the streets to take notice, but if Rwandans are so happy with their “development success”, why is there a black-clad, machine-gun toting policeman on every second street corner in Kigali? Over the last 24 years under President Kagame, the government has become unashamedly authoritarian with mounting human rights abuses.

Unhoused Rwandans and those caught begging have been forcibly exiled to a “rehabilitation island” in the middle of Lake Kivu, also known as Rwanda’s Alcatraz. Dozens of journalists have been banned from the country, arrested, and killed. Opposition politicians are routinely locked up, while civil society groups are not allowed to operate independently. Rwanda’s involvement in the destabilization of the DRC, the plundering of its resources, and the commission of the most serious crimes, including the use of sexual violence as a method of war and as a strategy of terror, is widely documented, notably by the United Nations.

Yet this outcome is touted a development success as the EU and other international institutions cozy up to Kigali for more business as usual, even striking a high-profile advertising deal with FC Arsenal where players wear a “Visit Rwanda” slogan on their jerseys. Sure, visit Rwanda – but only if you don’t plan on asking too many questions and steer clear of the military’s infamous detention and torture camps (whose existence is denied by the government). They will really ruin your holiday.

Again, activists seem to be doing better investigative journalism than the mainstream media, and are not fooled by spectacle. In a recent solidarity action both outside and inside the UK’s Parliament, activists from Extinction Rebellion UK denounced their government for giving Rwanda vast sums to service its extreme asylum policies, and therefore indirectly enabling mass violence and the theft of $24 trillion in natural resources from the DRC.

XR activists outside the UK Parliament protest the financing of violence in the DRC. The hand gesture, used by Congolese protesters to call out inaction of international and regional powers, represents being silenced with a gun to your head. Photo: @XRebellionUK

Zoom in, zoom out

The closer you look, the more you see when it comes to the ripple effects of foreign intervention – but out of the complexity, a clear pattern of disregard and disrespect emerges to untangle the mess.

For example, a second by-product of donor policies is the core-periphery structure that has emerged in the Great Lakes. At the core is the Kigali-Kampala axis, with eastern DRC, Burundi, and North-Western Uganda together forming the periphery. Mirroring global relations, people living in the regional core face lower security risks and have higher incomes in comparison to those in the periphery. “This situation has entrenched the notion that areas in the periphery are ‘lagging behind’, and reinforces perceptions of the DRC as ‘an inscrutable and unimprovable mess’,” explains Ghins.

If we turn from development to peacekeeping, the effects of MONUSCO (Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en République démocratique du Congo) were yet another channel through which outsiders aggravated regional fragility. With a budget of $1.5bn a year, and employing 20,000 uniformed staff, the UN peacekeeping force was the largest mission in the organization’s history. Yet, over its 14+ years in the DRC, it was infamous for protection failures and struggled for credibility.

Of course, 20,000 staff can’t exist in a vacuum. The presence of large numbers of UN personnel in cities like Goma created dual labor markets for service sector jobs like cooks, cleaners and drivers. High expatriate salaries led real estate prices to soar. Yes, billions of dollars were spent on “peacekeeping”, but it was not guided by affected communities and could not be responsive to their needs. Ghins describes the outcome: “Not only did MONUSCO divert resources away from productive foreign investments in the Congolese economy, but it distorted local markets and may have impeded on the kinds of ‘autonomous recovery’ processes that conflicts are sometimes found to induce.”

Today, we are witnessing the eruptions that have been kept simmering, waiting for ignition, in no small part by a paradigm of imposed peacekeeping which is ineffective at community-driven peacebuilding. Relying on MONUSCO, Kinshasa had limited incentives to expand its own military capacity in the east. By protecting the main urban centers, MONUSCO bases mostly prevented any armed group from overpowering others. “Even if the UN mission played an essential role in civilian protection, it also ‘condemned’ myriad rebel formations to coexist indefinitely,” says Ghins. A 2019 independent strategic review of MONUSCO agreed that the military aspect of the peacekeeping mission had come to overshadow its civilian and political components. The political process to demobilize and negotiate with armed groups had, in actuality, been stuck for several years.

As MONUSCO’s presence has come to a close, it is this lack of community focused peacebuilding which is being exploited for profit by President Kagame and other local elites who use a combination of hate speech, scarcity, and fear to ignite passions on their behalf. The international community, or more specifically the imperial core, seems to find the situation amenable to an easy flow of cheap and minimally regulated resources. A united region that could leverage its own collective power over the largest trove of natural resources on the planet, would be far less convenient.

Over thousands of pages, a complex and detailed analysis of policy would reveal something fundamentally wrong with a development model that benefits a tiny few at the expense of most, while ravaging ecosystems. But, this structural error is equally apparent via a handful of case studies – and perhaps is less likely to get lost in the details. Over the decades, a series of top-down imposed “solutions”, whether in the name of peace or development, were consistently unaccountable to and unrepresentative of the actual communities at which they were aimed. They never failed to do more harm than good.

First justice, justice first

Whether a political economy of war was intentionally arranged, a result of good intentions but ill-conceived policy, or a combination of both – it clearly exposes a structure that has driven endless conflict. Underlying racism and the blanket pursuit of growth to fuel profits, regardless of social and ecological costs, created this context and continues its reproduction.

“We see the height of cynicism in terms of geostrategy and a policy of double standards,” says Mirindi in Goma. “We see what is happening in Ukraine, what is happening in Gaza. Why not, what is happening in the DRC? Why aren’t there sanctions against Rwanda which officially, visibly, supports these militias?”

The security and humanitarian situation is becoming more and more dire each day.

Clashes have intensified in recent days between M23 and Congolese government forces in the territories surrounding Goma, the regional capital home to over a million people. Goma airport was bombed twice. Internally displaced people continue to arrive in droves.

On his way back to one of the crowded refugee camps on the outskirts of the city, Mirindi describes an outbreak of a skin infection that is spreading like wildfire among the displaced children. He is seeking a way to organize medical aid, though he is not a doctor. Out of a resilience born both of necessity and of vision, he and fellow activists, artists, students, and friends are experienced in organizing as a practice of strategy as well as care, yet stress is taking its toll.

In between patient explanations of history, context, corruption, and atrocities, snippets of existential concern very near at hand slip into focus: “Last night and again today it has become more complicated with the security situation.” And, “The price of food has almost tripled in Goma. We fear that this will continue because all of the surrounding territories and villages that produce food for the city are under M23 control and the population has fled.” Heartwrenchingly, “Young children are dying of dehydration from cholera.” Yet in every conversation, we inevitably return to ordinary people aiding one another in extraordinary ways – the makings of a paradise built in hell.

Speak truth, act now

From this brutal context, activists in the DRC are calling for the international community to immediately stop funding Rwanda’s aggression and to hold all who are complicit accountable. Refusing to abandon their right to a future, they are urgently calling for a green transition that puts justice first, not new revenue streams, and that dismantles colonial exploitation once and for all. “Otherwise,” warns Dr. Mukwege, “the so-called green energy transition will remain red with the blood of Congolese men, women, and children” – collateral damage to enrich the same old racist elites.

Democratic Republic of Congo players silently protested before their AFCON semi-final match against Ivory Coast. Photo: @fecofootcg

In a silent protest in February, DRC soccer players stood before their Africa Cup of Nations semi-final match against Ivory Coast. They chose not to sing their national anthem, opting instead to cover their mouths with their hands and place two fingers from their left hands to their temples, a display of unity and solidarity with all Congolese people – silenced, with a gun to their heads.

This hand gesture is not a resignation, it is condemnation and a challenge. The DRC will no longer be silenced. When asked for the first step towards solidarity, Mirindi urges that, “It is really essential that we talk about this situation again and again, to attract the attention of the international community, organizations, public figures and to have more mobilization. If we can continue like this… that way, it will be better.”

[Goma Actif is organizing a fund drive ‘SOS Congo’ to help support displaced people.]

This powerful music video by members of Goma Slam Session, a collective of young poets and rappers from the DRC, is part of a campaign to seek justice for the crimes committed in the country from 1993 to date, including those documented in the UN Congo Mapping Project report.
Bosembo translates as: justice, truth, peace, right, impartiality, fairness, objectivity, honesty, serenity, tranquility, and goodness.
Goma’s youth continues to be a powerhouse of creativity and resilience, proving that art can be one of the viable alternative strategies that activists can use to organize, communicate, mobilize and influence.

The author would like to recognize activists from XR Goma University, LUCHA RDC, and XR Global Support for their contributions to this article and for their struggle for environmental and social justice.

Original quotations were translated from French by the author.

Alexandria Shaner (she/her) is a sailor, writer, & organizer. She is a staff member of ZNetwork.org and active with Extinction Rebellion, Caracol DSA, & the Women’s Rights & Empowerment Network. Read other articles by Alexandria.

 

UN Workers

by Visualizing Palestine / March 16th, 2024

Israeli forces have killed a record number of United Nations (UN) employees, making Gaza the deadliest place to be a UN worker in the 79-year history of the UN. Additionally, we now know that Israeli forces detained, tortured, and coerced UN employees to make false statements against UNRWA as part of a smear campaign against the largest humanitarian organization in Gaza that led to 16 countries freezing $450 million in essential aid.

Unaccompanied Children

by Visualizing Palestine / March 15th, 2024

Every Palestinian child in Gaza has a story of exposure to unimaginable Israeli military violence, including killings, traumatic injuries, mass displacement, hunger, destruction of whole neighborhoods, and separation from family members, which leaves lasting scars and trauma. No child should have to endure such burdens.

Visualizing Palestine is the intersection of communication, social sciences, technology, design and urban studies for social justice. Visualizing Palestine uses creative visuals to describe a factual rights-based narrative of Palestine/Israel. Read other articles by Visualizing Palestine, or visit Visualizing Palestine's websit

 

Siding with Spotify: The European Commission Fines Apple

by Binoy Kampmark / March 16th, 2024

It will come as little surprise that colossal Apple has been favouring its own music streaming service in snuffing and stuffing competitors.  The company, it has been alleged, has prevented app developers from informing users of less expensive methods to purchase subscriptions outside the scope of Apple’s own services.  Its cosmos was all.

Central to these claims is the ongoing battle between Apple and the Swedish music streaming service, Spotify, a largely amoral gladiatorial encounter of drain, pinch and seizure that saw the latter draw customers away from Apple’s iTunes.  Territorial skirmishes have ensued over the years, with gains and losses evident on both sides.  In 2015, Apple’s release of its own streaming service, Apple Music, enraged Spotify as an anticompetitive move.  The tech behemoth, so the charge went, was able to undercut the prices of competitors as it could avoid paying the same App Store fees as others.

Not to worry.  Spotify initiated its own assault in 2019, marked by disbursing US$500 billion worth of funds at podcast start-ups, in the process acquiring such outfits as Gimlet and Anchor.  And as this was happening, a façade of decency was erected, keeping the battle between the two companies in boardrooms and backrooms.

Then came the tidal turn.  Apple, along with the other apocalyptic agents of Big Tech, started becoming the source of much ire for politicians in the EU.  The latest success by Spotify to convince the European Commission that Apple’s restrictions and fees imposed on developers wishing to list their apps in the App Store were too onerous, is merely one example of European disgruntlement.

Spotify’s 2019 filing with the European Commission against Apple’s practices was described by the company’s CEO and founder, Daniel Ek, as necessary so “that companies such as ours [can] operate in an ecosystem in which fair competition is not only encouraged, but guaranteed.”  In his view, Apple’s introduction of various rules to the App Store had “purposely” limited choice and stifled innovation “at the expense of the user experience – essentially acting as both a player and referee to deliberately advantage other app developers.”

In its response at the time, Apple self-glorified, praising its own contribution to technological civilisation.  Monopoly masquerading as benign, technological diversity is a form of reasoning familiar to all monopolists who tolerate competition on their terms.  But for the company, Spotify had been less than clean on its dealings, “keeping all the benefits of the App Store ecosystem – including the substantial revenue that they draw from the App Store’s customers – without making any contributions to that marketplace.”

The European Commission was not to be convinced.  The fine of 1.84 billion euros was imposed on Apple for its ban on developers from “fully informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services outside of the app”.  In a statement from the EU’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager, the company was said to have “abused its dominant position in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps through the App Store.”  This was achieved “by restricting developers from informing consumers about alternative, cheaper music services outside the Apple ecosystem.”

Ek was delighted, suggesting that an industrious punter had gotten exactly what he wanted.  Apple, in no uncertain terms, had “decided that they want to close down the internet and make it theirs, and they view every single person using an iPhone to be their user and they should be able to dictate what that user experience should be”.  In this modern game of tech robber barons and conquistadores, mumbling about human experience is hardly convincing.  The feeling here is that Spotify and Apple treat their user base as mice chasing cheese in a maze.  Apple lacks the glint and shine of virtue, but Ek is not exactly a knight in brilliant, shining armour.

In a statement responding to the Commission finding, the crew at Apple were combative, surly and resentful.  “The decision was reached despite the Commission’s failure to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm and ignores the realities of a market that is thriving, competitive and growing fast.”  Despite eight years of investigating Apple’s corporate conduct, no “viable theory” had been “yielded” on “explaining why Apple has thwarted competition in a market that is so clearly thriving.”

There were also barbed words reserved for Spotify, a company with “the largest music streaming app in the world”, and one engaged in “more than 65” meetings with the Commission “during this investigation.”  While Apple’s treatment is hardly bound to exercise the tear ducts, there is something smelly about conduct verging on connivance on the European side of the bargain – in this case, of a patriotic, underhanded sort.

Apple also suggested that Spotify had been an App Store triumph, something they were always bound to say.  “They have a more than 50 percent share of the European market, and on iOS, Spotify has an even higher share than they do on Android.”  The European Commission, it was felt, had intended this as an effort to enforce the Digital Markets Act (DMA) ahead of it coming into force.

Other questions have also been asked.  If one is really looking at an open internet concept (such an idea has always been a glorious fancy and a deceiving fluff), the feeling that Spotify has been aided by a regulator in terms of its own market arrangements is hard to dispel.  “Ironically, in the name of competition,” claims Apple, the “decision just cements the dominant position of a successful European company that is the digital music market’s runaway leader.”  The mask of digital patriotism has been unmasked, and we await where the next blow will come from.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.