Is NATO Taking Over the Pacific?

By Ann Wright

June 6, 2024

Source: World BEYOND War


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30% of Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) Naval Forces are from NATO Europe

As the United States increases its military confrontation with China through new military bases on Guam and the Philippines and more land, sea and air exercises with countries in the Asia-Pacific, the world’s largest naval war exercises are going to be held in the mid-Pacific from June 26 to August 2, 2024-and NATO is in the middle of it.

29 countries are participating in the 2024 Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) naval war practice that will bring 40 ships, 3 submarines, over 150 aircraft, 14 national land forces and 25,000 personnel to the island of Oahu and the waters off Hawaii.
One-third of Countries in RIMPAC NOT from the Pacific, but are from NATO-Europe

Incredibly, one-third of the countries bringing ships, submarines and aircraft to the middle of the Pacific are not from Asia and the Pacific, but are from Europe–all members of the North ATLANTIC Treaty Organization (NATO).

European NATO members Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and the United Kingdom are joining the United States and Canada as the full NATO members in RIMPAC.

Along with the full members of NATO, five countries in the Pacific are NATO “partners”- Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea and Colombia. Each will be participating with ships, aircraft and personnel in RIMPAC.
Israel is in RIMPAC Despite its Continuing Genocide of Gaza-Perfectly Acceptable in the U.S. “Rules Based Dis-Order”

Because of its testing of US and NATO countries’ weapons on Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank, Israel has been given special status by NATO and keeps an office in NATO headquarters. The U.S. has continued its invitation to Israel to have a ship and personnel in Hawaii in RIMPAC despite the continuing Israeli genocide of Gaza with over 36,000 Palestinians killed, thousands dead in the rubble of destroyed buildings and over 100,000 injured.

Israeli impunity in its war on Palestinians is a harmful influence on militaries participating in RIMPAC and U.S. complicity in the genocide sends a signal to other countries that violation of international laws and norms are perfectly acceptable in the U.S. “rules based dis-order.”

Other countries sending ships, aircraft and military personnel to RIMPAC are Brazil, Brunei, Chile, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga.

NATO countries send ships on Freedom of the Seas Navigation Operations

Over the past two years, NATO countries have sent ships to the Western Pacific in tandem with the U.S. Freedom of the Seas navigation operations in the South China sea. In 2021, British HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier strike group and an American surface action group had exercises in the South China Sea. Britain’s Ministry of Defense described the strike group as the largest concentration of maritime and air power to leave the UK in a generation.

In May 2024, Germany sent two warships to the Indo-Pacific on the freedom of navigation and free passage missions as tensions are raised with China over the status of Taiwan and over disputed South China Sea islands.

RIMPAC Destroys on the Land as well as the Sea

RIMPAC war exercises harm marine life in the Hawaiian waters. Whales, dolphins and fish are harmed by the ships and their weapons. Ships are sunk by bombs, missiles and torpedoes. Onshore animals are killed during military beach assault landings. Pohakuloa Training Area on Hawaii Island, the largest U.S. military training area in the Pacific, is bombed from aircraft some of which fly thousands of miles to drop their bombs, artillery shelling, and troop training. Human rights advocates are very concerned about human trafficking with military troops in tourist areas in Hawaii when the thousands of military arrive from around the world for RIMPAC.

Citizens in the Pacific Challenge RIMPAC and the Militarization and Contamination of the Pacific by Military Forcesl

Citizens in most of the countries in the Pacific challenge the need for the hugely expensive and destructive RIMPAC war practice. Webinars, social media, conferences/town hall meetings and protests are held from San Diego, California in the eastern Pacific, through Hawaii and Guam to the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

In Hawaii, thousands of residents of Oahu are still dealing with the 2021 effects of fuel pollution from the giant underground Red Hill fuel tanks that leaked 19,000 gallons of toxic fuel into the drinking water and the 2014 leak of 27,000 gallons of fuel. Several lawsuits against the U.S. military for the long term damage to the health of those who ingested the contaminated water are in federal courts with the military arguing that the contamination did NOT cause widespread harm as military family members were hospitalized for severe reactions to the fuel-laced drinking water.

Additionally, residents of Hawaii are demanding the return of 29,000 acres of state land that was leased to the U.S. military 65 years ago for…..$1 !!! The lease of these areas on Oahu and Big Island ends in 2029.

Communities around U.S. military bases all over the Pacific are finding that their water sources have been contaminated by the U.S. military use of fire-fighting foam that contains PFAS, the “forever chemical.” Bases on Okinawa, Japan and South Korea where the U.S. has had military bases since World War II and the Korean war have found high levels of contamination from PFAS.

Why Not Diplomacy Instead of Military Confrontation?

Instead of using diplomacy to resolve security and economic issues, RIMPAC is one of hundreds of U.S. sponsored military war exercises that fuel dangerous confrontations in Asia and the Pacific.

It’s time for U.S. citizens to demand that elected officials/politicians use nonviolent methods to resolve conflicts—but we know we face great opposition to nonviolence from the manufacturers of violence, the weapons manufacturers who fuel the campaign coffers of politicians. Until we elect those who stand for peaceful resolution of issues instead of using war, we will continue to face an ever increasingly dangerous world.

The No to NATO: Yes to Peace coalition will be in Washington, DC July 5-11, 2024 as a counterweight to the 75th Anniversary celebrations of the founding of NATO in Washington, DC. The heads of state of the 32 NATO member states and “partner” and “wanna-be” states will convene at the Washington Convention Center July 9-11.

Preceding the arrival of the heads of state, NO to NATO: YES to Peace will hold a one-day conference on July 6 with speakers from around the world. July 7 will be a rally at Lafayette Square in front the White House. July 9-11 concerned citizens will be at the Washington Convention Center.

For the Rich, One Nation Isn’t Rolling Out the Red Carpet

By Sam Pizzigati

June 7, 2024

Source: Inequality

Image by G Cardinal, Creative Commons 2.0

Do you think the rich have life easy, do you? Just try telling that to the deep pockets who’ve spent tens of millions buying condos at 432 Park Avenue, the 11-year-old Manhattan luxury tower that once rated as our hemisphere’s tallest residence. Condo owners in the tower have had to put up with “faulty elevators, leaky plumbing, and noise issues.” They’re now suing the building’s operator.

Or consider the plight of those fabulously wealthy souls who’ve had to pay millions to move their mansions off the sandy coast of Nantucket, the one-time hippie refuge that’s become a summer “holiday hot spot for billionaires.” The problem? With climate change raising water levels, seaside homes on this Massachusetts island now have a nasty habit of “falling into the ocean.”

Or contemplate what life would be like if you were a person of means who fell in love with a mega-yacht the length of a football field and just had to be able to call that yacht your own. The purchase sets you back well over $100 million. But now you’ve just realized you’ll be annually paying at least 10 percent of that purchase price to dock and staff and fuel and insure your oh-so-cute new plaything.

The one saving grace amid challenges like these: Things could be a lot worse. You could be a rich Norwegian.

Norway’s wealthiest have faced a wealth tax ever since 1892, and, over the generations since then, no nation in the world has taken taxing wealth as seriously. But that tradition came under a direct challenge just over a decade ago, in 2013, when a new conservative government came into power. Over the next eight years, that government set about cutting Norway’s richest some slack at tax time.

This conservative government, under prime minister Erna Solberg, trimmed down Norway’s wealth tax, eliminated the nation’s levy on inheritances, and slashed the tax rate on incomes. The predictable result: Norwegians with the greatest wealth, a Statistics Norway analysis found, saw the greatest gains.

“The richest have been given 100 times more in tax cuts than the lowest-paid under Erna Solberg,” the Norwegian Labour Party’s Hadia Talik would charge. “If you want less inequality, tax policies have to be distributive. That’s the fairest way and gives a better basis for the country to create value.”

In the 2021 elections, voters would agree. The center-left government they voted into power that year moved quickly to reverse the Conservative Party’s rich-people-friendly tax cuts. By 2023, the top wealth tax rate on Norway’s largest fortunes had risen from 0.85 to 1.1 percent, just one of a number of moves that distinctly displeased many of Norway’s richest, among them the industrialist Kjell Inge Røkke. Midway through 2022, Røkke announced he was moving to Switzerland.

Other rich Norwegians would follow Røkke out. By 2022’s close, over 30 of Norway’s richest had departed, more wealthy emigres than Norway had seen over the previous 13 years combined. But that exodus would only strengthen the resolve of tax-the-rich progressive lawmakers.

“The wealthiest should contribute more to society,” noted Bjørnar Moxnes, the Red Party leader, “and it’s important that Norway doesn’t let itself be held hostage by billionaires who threaten capital flight.”

Norway’s richest, the finance ministry state secretary Erlend Trygve Grimstad would add, have always had to pay more in taxes to help keep the nation’s world-class public services — including free health care — strong and vital.

“Those who enjoy success with this social model,” Grimstad posited, “must contribute more than others.”

Other Norwegians — like the Financial Times economics commentator Martin Sandbu — would directly challenge the case against raising taxes that Norway’s tax exiles were trying to make.

These exiles, Sandbu observed, tend never to say “that they just want to pay less” at tax time. They instead pose as the “geese that lay golden eggs.” They’re only moving, these rich insist, “because the wealth tax forces them to take capital out of their companies to pay it, and that, in turn, is bad for growth, business development, and employment where their companies are based.”

But Norwegian companies, Sandbu countered, show no signs of suffering from a lack of access to capital. The capital these companies need can “come from other sources than the original owners, and it may be precisely this dilution that rankles, especially for self-made entrepreneurs or family businesses.”

Those Norwegian wealthy who feel most rankled, Norway’s current legislative majority believes, do have every right to exit the nation. But they have no right to leave with all the wealth that Norway’s commitment to economic security — for everyone — has helped those rich amass.

How to keep wealthy exiles from jetting off with wealth they should be sharing? Norway’s progressive lawmakers have put together a new “exit tax” that will have wealthy exiles paying a loophole-free exit levy on unrealized capital gains. Exiles will have the option of paying their exit tax in interest-free installments over 12 years or paying the total due, with interest, after 12 years.

These exiles will, of course, have the option of returning home to Norway anytime they’d like. And if they do return, they’ll be reentering what may be the world’s most equal nation. One telling indicator of that equality: the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. On this list of the world’s 500 richest, only one Norwegian today appears — in 374th place.

In a few years, who knows, you might not find any Norwegian on that list at all.

Sam Pizzigati

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.

 

How Daniel Ellsberg’s Moral Power Remains Alive

A Year After His Death, He’s Still with Us

by Norman Solomon and Tom Engelhardt Posted onJune 11, 2024

Strange to think that, without Daniel Ellsberg, Watergate might never have happened, Richard Nixon might have remained president, and the war in Vietnam might have taken even longer to end. So many decades later, it’s easy to forget how, in June 1971, when Ellsberg released those secret government documents that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, and their shocking revelations about that distant war hit the front page of the New York Times, Nixon and crew were determined to move against him – and fast. It mattered not at all that he would be “indicted on 12 felony counts, including theft and violation of the Espionage Act,” and face up to 115 years in prison. That wasn’t enough for them. Nixon wanted to “try him in the press” and turned to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to investigate him.

As it happened, though, Hoover was a buddy of Louis Marx, the father of Ellsberg’s wife and the head of a major toy company that, among other things, made plenty of toy soldiers. (Marx regularly gave Hoover toys that he could turn over to his employees for their kids at Christmas.) So when the FBI chief moved far too slowly on Ellsberg, Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, worrying about those Pentagon Papers revelations (even though they didn’t deal with Nixon’s own nightmarish role in the then-ongoing wars in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), decided to set up a White House Special Investigations Unit. It came to be known informally as “the Plumbers.”

Its first assignment would be to break into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in search of damaging information on him. (No luck, as it turned out, but when the judge in Ellsberg’s trial found out about that break-in, he dismissed the case.) Nine months later, that unit’s ultimate assignment would, of course, have nothing to do with Ellsberg. It would be the infamous break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in — yes! – the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C. The result was history that would have been inconceivable without – yes! – Daniel Ellsberg.

As TomDispatch regular Norman Solomon, author of War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, makes clear today, Ellsberg led quite a life thereafter before dying in June 2023. Let him rest in peace. (If only the rest of this planet could do the same!) ~ Tom Engelhardt

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The Absence – and Presence – of Daniel Ellsberg

by Norman Solomon

On a warm evening almost a decade ago, I sat under the stars with Daniel Ellsberg while he talked about nuclear war with alarming intensity. He was most of the way through writing his last and most important book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Somehow, he had set aside the denial so many people rely on to cope with a world that could suddenly end in unimaginable horror. Listening, I felt more and more frightened. Dan knew what he was talking about.

After working inside this country’s doomsday machinery, even drafting nuclear war plans for the Pentagon during President John F. Kennedy’s administration, Dan Ellsberg had gained intricate perspectives on what greased the bureaucratic wheels, personal ambitions, and political messaging of the warfare state. Deceptions about arranging for the ultimate violence of thermonuclear omnicide were of a piece with routine falsehoods about American war-making. It was easy enough to get away with lying, he told me: “How difficult is it to deceive the public? I would say, as a former insider, one becomes aware: it’s not difficult to deceive them. First of all, you’re often telling them what they would like to believe — that we’re better than other people, we’re superior in our morality and our perceptions of the world.”

Dan had made history in 1971 by revealing the top-secret Pentagon Papers, exposing the constant litany of official lies that accompanied the U.S. escalation of the Vietnam War. In response, the government used the blunderbuss of the World War I-era Espionage Act to prosecute him. At age 41, he faced a possible prison sentence of more than 100 years. But his trial ended abruptly with all charges dismissed when the Nixon administration’s illegal interference in the case came to light in mid-1972. Five decades later, he reflected: “Looking back, the chance that I would get out of 12 felony counts from Richard Nixon was close to zero. It was a miracle.”

That miracle enabled Dan to keep on speaking, writing, researching, and protesting for the rest of his life. (In those five decades, he averaged nearly two arrests per year for civil disobedience.) He worked tirelessly to prevent and oppose a succession of new American wars. And he consistently gave eloquent public support as well as warm personal solidarity to heroic whistleblowers — Thomas Drake, Katharine Gun, Daniel Hale, Matthew Hoh, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Jeffrey Sterling, Mordechai Vanunu, Ann Wright, and others — who sacrificed much to challenge deadly patterns of official deceit.

Unauthorized Freedom of Speech

Dan often spoke out for freeing WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, whose work had revealed devastating secret U.S. documents on America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the end of a visit in June 2015, when they said goodbye inside Ecuador’s embassy in London, I saw that both men were on the verge of tears. At that point, Assange was three years into his asylum at that embassy, with no end in sight.

Secretly indicted in the United States, Assange remained in the Ecuadorian embassy for nearly four more years until London police dragged him off to prison. Hours later, in a radio interview, Dan said: “Julian Assange is the first journalist to be indicted. If he is extradited to the U.S. and convicted, he will not be the last. The First Amendment is a pillar of our democracy and this is an assault on it. If freedom of speech is violated to this extent, our republic is in danger. Unauthorized disclosures are the lifeblood of the republic.”

Unauthorized disclosures were the essence of what WikiLeaks had published and what Dan had provided with the Pentagon Papers. Similarly, countless exposés about U.S. government war crimes became possible due to the courage of Chelsea Manning, and profuse front-page news about the government’s systematic violations of the Fourth Amendment resulted from Edward Snowden’s bravery. While gladly publishing some of their revelations, major American newspapers largely refused to defend their rights.

Such dynamics were all too familiar to Dan. He told me that the attitude toward him of the New York Times, which won a Pulitzer Prize with its huge Pentagon Papers scoop, was akin to a district attorney’s view of a “snitch” – useful but distasteful.

In recent times, Dan detested the smug media paradigm of “Ellsberg good, Snowden bad.” So, he pushed back against the theme as rendered by New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote a lengthy piece along those lines in late 2016. Dan quickly responded with a letter to the editor, which never appeared.

The New Yorker certainly could have found room to print Dan’s letter, which said: “I couldn’t disagree more with Gladwell’s overall account.” The letter was just under 300 words; the Gladwell piece had run more than 5,000. While promoting the “Ellsberg good, Snowden bad” trope, the New Yorker did not let readers know that Ellsberg himself completely rejected it:

“Each of us, having earned privileged access to secret information, saw unconstitutional, dangerously wrong policies ongoing by our government. (In Snowden’s case, he discovered blatantly criminal violations of our Fourth Amendment right to privacy, on a scale that threatens our democracy.) We found our superiors, up to the presidents, were deeply complicit and clearly unwilling either to expose, reform, or end the wrongdoing.

“Each of us chose to sacrifice careers, and possibly a lifetime’s freedom, to reveal to the public, Congress, and the courts what had long been going on in secret from them. We hoped, each with some success, to allow our democratic system to bring about desperately needed change.

“The truth is there are no whistleblowers, in fact no one on earth, with whom I identify more closely than with Edward Snowden.

“Here is one difference between us that is deeply real to me: Edward Snowden, when he was 30 years old, did what I could and should have done – what I profoundly wish I had done – when I was his age, instead of 10 years later.”

As he encouraged whistleblowing, Dan often expressed regret that he hadn’t engaged in it sooner. During the summer of 2014, a billboard was on display at bus stops in Washington, D.C., featuring a quote from Dan — with big letters at the top saying “DON’T DO WHAT I DID. DON’T WAIT,” followed by “until a new war has started, don’t wait until thousands more have died, before you tell the truth with documents that reveal lies or crimes or internal projections of costs and dangers. You might save a war’s worth of lives.” Two whistleblowers who had been U.S. diplomats, Matthew Hoh and Ann Wright, unveiled the billboard at a bus stop near the State Department.

A Grotesque Situation of Existential Danger

Above all, Daniel Ellsberg was preoccupied with opposing policies that could lead to nuclear war. “No policies in human history have more deserved to be recognized as immoral. Or insane,” he wrote in The Doomsday Machine. “The story of how this calamitous predicament came about and how and why it has persisted for over half a century is a chronicle of human madness.”

It’s fitting that the events set for Daniel Ellsberg Week (ending on June 16th, the first anniversary of when Dan passed away) will include at least one protest at a Northrop Grumman facility. That company has a $13.3 billion contract to develop a new version of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which – as Dan frequently emphasized – is the most dangerous of all nuclear weapons. He was eager to awaken Congress to scientific data about “nuclear winter” and the imperative of shutting down ICBMs to reduce the risks of nuclear war.

Five years ago, several of us from the Institute for Public Accuracy hand-delivered paperbacks of The Doomsday Machine – with a personalized letter from Dan to each member of the House and Senate – to all 535 congressional offices on Capitol Hill. “I am concerned that the public, most members of Congress, and possibly even high members of the Executive branch have remained in the dark, or in a state of denial, about the implications of rigorous studies by environmental scientists over the last dozen years,” Dan wrote near the top of his two-page letter. Those studies “confirm that using even a large fraction of the existing U.S. or Russian nuclear weapons that are on high alert would bring about nuclear winter, leading to global famine and near extinction of humanity.”

Dan’s letter singled out the urgency of one “immediate step” in particular: “to eliminate entirely our redundant, vulnerable, and destabilizing land-based ICBM force.” Unlike air-launched and sea-based nuclear weapons, which are not vulnerable to attack, the ICBMs are vulnerable to a preemptive strike and so are “poised to launch” on the basis of “ten-minute warning signals that may be – and have been, on both sides – false alarms, which press leadership to ‘use them or lose them.’”

As Dan pointed out, “It is in the power of Congress to decouple the hair-trigger on our system by defunding and dismantling the current land-based Minuteman missiles and rejecting funding for their proposed replacements. The same holds for lower-yield weapons for first use against Russia, on submarines or in Europe, which are detonators for escalation to nuclear winter.”

In essence, Dan was telling members of Congress to do their job, with the fate of the earth and its inhabitants hanging in the balance:

“This grotesque situation of existential danger has evolved in secret in the almost total absence of congressional oversight, investigations, or hearings. It is time for Congress to remedy this by preparing for first-ever hearings on current nuclear doctrine and ‘options,’ and by demanding objective, authoritative scientific studies of their full consequences including fire, smoke, nuclear winter, and famine. Classified studies of nuclear winter using actual details of existing attack plans, never yet done by the Pentagon but necessarily involving its directed cooperation, could be done by the National Academy of Sciences, requested and funded by Congress.”

But Dan’s letter was distinctly out of sync with Congress. Few in office then – or now – have publicly acknowledged that such a “grotesque situation of existential danger” really exists. And even fewer have been willing to break from the current Cold War mindset that continues to fuel the rush to global annihilation. On matters of foreign policy and nuclear weapons, the Congressional Record is mainly a compendium of arrogance and delusion, in sharp contrast to the treasure trove of Dan’s profound insights preserved at Ellsberg.net.

Humanism and Realism to Remember

Clear as he was about the overarching scourge of militarism embraced by the leaders of both major parties, Dan was emphatic about not equating the two parties at election time. He understood that efforts like Green Party presidential campaigns are misguided at best. But, as he said dryly, he did favor third parties – on the right (“the more the better”). He knew what some self-described progressives have failed to recognize as the usual reality of the U.S. electoral system: right-wing third parties help the left, and left-wing third parties help the right.

Several weeks before the 2020 election, Dan addressed voters in the swing state of Michigan via an article he wrote for the Detroit Metro Times. Appearing under a headline no less relevant today – “Trump Is an Enemy of the Constitution and Must Be Defeated” – the piece said that “it’s now of transcendent importance to prevent him from gaining a second term.” Dan warned that “we’re facing an authoritarian threat to our democratic system of a kind we’ve never seen before,” making votes for Joe Biden in swing states crucial.

Dan’s mix of deep humanism and realism was in harmony with his aversion to contorting logic to suit rigid ideology. Bad as current realities were, he said, it was manifestly untrue that things couldn’t get worse. He had no intention of ignoring the very real dangers of nuclear war or fascism.

During the last few months of his life, after disclosing a diagnosis of inoperable pancreatic cancer, Dan reached many millions of people with an intensive schedule of interviews. Journalists were mostly eager to ask him about events related to the Pentagon Papers. While he said many important things in response to such questions, Dan most wanted to talk about the unhinged momentum of the nuclear arms race and the ominous U.S. frenzy of antagonism toward Russia and China lacking any sense of genuine diplomacy.

While he can no longer speak to the world about the latest developments, Dan Ellsberg will continue to speak directly to hearts and minds about the extreme evils of our time – and the potential for overcoming them with love in action.

A free documentary film premiering now, “A Common Insanity: A Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg About Nuclear Weapons,” concludes with these words from Dan as he looks straight at us: “Can humanity survive the nuclear era? We don’t know. I choose to act as if we have a chance.”

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, and Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars: The Untold Story.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include War Made Easy, Made Love, Got War, and most recently War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine (The New Press). He lives in the San Francisco area.

Copyright 2024 Norman Solomon

Sheinbaum Will Be Mexico’s Next President, But The Military Holds The Reins

By Dawn Marie Paley, Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar 

June 8, 2024

Source: Ojalá


Rosa Icela Guzmán at the polling place where she is to cast her vote. Instead of spoiling her ballot, she wrote in the name of her son Luis Ángel López Guzmán, who is disappeared. By dignifying her vote with his memory, she hopes to help make her son and the thousands of disappeared in Mexico more visible. (Photo: María Ruíz)

Claudia Sheinbaum’s electoral victory on June 2 marked a turning point in Mexican history by electing the country’s first female president. But it is imperative to go beyond the symbolism in the country’s top office to examine the balance of forces that condition presidential power today.

There has been talk of a transformation of society and an end to neoliberalism and to the war on drugs since the six-year term of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) began in December 2018. This was his much vaunted “Fourth Transformation.” However, the government did not make the deep changes in the political system that it promised.

The most progressive achievement of AMLO’s government is arguably the increase in the minimum wage. But the broader economic model that it embraced leaves much to be desired. The extractive industries remain intact. Almost half of federal spending goes to Pemex, the state oil company. The wealthiest continue not to pay the taxes they should. Foreign investment in maquilas and the promotion of mass tourism—both built on the exploitation of the working class and environmental dispossession and devastation—are put forward as the great hopes for the country’s future. Today, in the midst of the hottest spring in history, 85 percent of the country’s municipalities are suffering from drought, while private companies are hoarding water in aquifers. This is how the most violent six-year presidential term in recent decades is coming to a close.

For the first time, families of some of the more than 114,000 people disappeared—most of them since 2007—called on Mexicans to write-in the name of a disappeared person on their ballots. They made this call after AMLO had disillusioned them with his broken promises. In this election, approximately 1.3 million ballots were annulled, 100,000 more than in 2018.

As president, Sheinbaum will inherit a series of longstanding problems: the hyper-exploitation of workers, the lack of access to quality education and public healthcare, water scarcity, misogynist violence, paramilitary control on behalf of organized crime and extractive corporations in large parts of the country and an increasingly aggressive neighbor to the north.

But the new commander of the Armed Forces will face an additional problem: Mexico’s immensely powerful generals.

 
Growing militarization

Under López Obrador, militarization has expanded beyond anything in living memory.

During his term, the government increased the budgets of the Secretariat of National Defense and the Secretariat of the Navy by 150 percent. It used much of that public money to subsidize the unprecedented entry of the Armed Forces into the business of moving goods and passengers, tourism, and port and customs operations. This is one of the most significant changes that occurred during his six-year term, which ends on September 30.

“Between 2007 and August 2023, lawmakers presented 87 constitutional and legislative reforms designed to transfer civilian functions or budgets to the armed forces in Congress,” according to the National Militarization Inventory. “Of these, 77 percent were presented between September 1, 2018 and August 31, 2023.” These figures indicate that the militarization of civilian life is not new, but that it greatly expanded during AMLO’s time in office.

Morena, AMLO’s party, has an opportunistic attitude toward party alliances. This has assured it a supermajority in Congress and left it a handful of votes short of a supermajority in the Senate. A supermajority, made up of two-thirds of lawmakers, is enough to pass constitutional changes. If lawmakers use this majority to enshrine the militarization of public security into the Constitution, the outcome will be devastating.

Candidates said little about militarization during the presidential campaign. In a press conference shortly after the launch of her campaign, Sheinbaum denied the militarization of the country and minimized the army’s role in the National Guard. The National Guard was touted as a civilian-run force that would replace the Federal Police, but from its foundation in 2019 it has been under army control and led by a retired general. Today most of its 107,000 members are soldiers.

When Sheinbaum takes office in October, the Armed Forces will align itself with the executive branch, as it has done for almost 80 years. However, maintaining their loyalty will become much more costly thanks to the immense political and economic influence that the army and the marines gained under the leadership of López Obrador and his Morena party.
Who can say no to the generals?

As we recover from the post-election hangover, one question haunts us: who can say no to the Armed Forces?

Let’s take a concrete example, bearing in mind that we are talking about a country in which public hospitals lack medicine and basic supplies.

In April, the Ministry of Defense (SEDENA) used a company it controls to request $21 billion pesos (US$1.18 billion) for the purchase of airplanes for Mexicana de Aviacion, the formerly bankrupt airline that it was charged with rebuilding in 2023. This is a huge sum of money. By way of example, it’s nearly double what the Mexican Institute of Social Security spent on daycares in 2021. The day after the elections, Mexicana announced the purchase of 20 new airplanes from Brazil.

In the current six-year term, it became clear that the army gets what it asks for, but that the same does not apply the other way around. When civilians make requests from the army, they come away empty handed, even when the civilian in question is their commander in chief.

For decades, the armed forces have violently repressed popular, Indigenous, student and workers’ movements on behalf of the party in power while enjoying total impunity for their actions. Even after the democratization that occurred in 2000, it was impossible to get any justice for the thousands of victims of state violence that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. These are facts that any leftist in Mexico understands in their bones.

But then again, who cares? What matters here is the consolidation of a political project at any cost. Who better to guarantee the Fourth Transformation than “the people in uniform,” with their vertical organization, their training in waging war against the people, and their presence in nearly every neighborhood in Mexico?

We know that over the last six years López Obrador asked the army to give the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts, which was investigating the disappearance of the 43 teaching students from Ayotzinapa, files relevant to the case. The army refused, of course. The president later stated publicly that the military didn’t participate in the disappearance of the 43 students, even though eight soldiers are charged with disappearance based on their involvement in the events in question.

On June 3, as soon as his successor was elected, AMLO met with the families of the 43, along with the secretaries of defense, navy and various civilians. They handed the families 15 of the 800 missing documents pertaining to what took place the night of the attacks in Iguala, Guerrero. Reporter Pablo Ferri notes that AMLO acknowledged the existence of the other documents, which he had previously denied, but went on to say that they are under reserve.

Days before Sheinbaum’s inauguration, the country will mark the tenth anniversary of the brutal disappearance of the young college students. Ten years and two presidents have allowed the crime to go unsolved, because neither the military’s special legal jurisdiction nor its impunity could be overcome.

When she takes office on October 1st, it is likely that we will again be told to be patient, to stay hopeful, to hold our breath and let the president do her work. We’ll be told that change is right around the corner. The problem is that Sheinbaum’s six-year term will begin with an original sin that will be difficult to correct: it will begin tightly bound to the armed forces, which are the most violent, conservative and anti-democratic organizations in México.

A Renewable Energy Transition that Doesn’t Harm Nature? It’s Not Just Possible, It’s Essential

By Brendan Wintle, Andrew Rogers , James Watson , Michelle Ward , Sarah Bekessy 

June 7, 2024

Source: The Conversation


Image by Reegan Moen, Public domain

Earth is facing a human-driven climate crisis, which demands a rapid transition to low-carbon energy sources such as wind and solar power. But we’re also living through a mass extinction event. Never before in human history have there been such high such rates of species loss and ecosystem collapse.

The biodiversity crisis is not just distressing, it’s a major threat to the global economy. More than half of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) directly depends on nature. The World Economic Forum rates biodiversity loss in the top risks to the global economy over the next decade, after climate change and natural disasters.

Human-driven climate change damages nature – and loss of nature exacerbates climate change. So if humanity’s efforts to mitigate climate change end up damaging nature, we shoot ourselves in the foot.

Australia, however, must face up to an uncomfortable truth: we are putting renewable energy projects in places that damage the species and ecosystems on which we depend.
Renewables on the run

Renewable energy projects are being developed that damage nature and culturally significant sites. Others are resented by communities, or fail at regulatory hurdles.

Environmentally damaging projects put another nail in the coffin of species and ecosystems already under immense pressure. Even those that affect a relatively small area contribute to nature’s “death by a thousand cuts”.

Take, for example, the proposed Euston wind farm in southwest New South Wales. It would entail 96 turbines built near the Willandra Lakes World Heritage area, potentially affecting threatened birds.

And in North Queensland, the Upper Burdekin wind farm proposal will remove 769 hectares of endangered species habitat relied on by Sharman’s wallabies, koalas and northern greater gliders. The cleared area would be almost 200 times bigger than the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The simple overlay below, which we prepared, illustrates the problem in Queensland. The analysis, part of a research project funded by Boundless Earth, shows in stark detail the crossover between energy projects, transmission lines and nationally listed threatened species habitats and ecosystems.
The ‘fast-track’ can also be the good track

In their understandable haste to get more clean energy projects built, state and federal governments are promising to “streamline” approvals processes. Fast-tracked approvals will only provide net social benefit if they are based on good data, sound analysis and genuine community engagement.

Two successive reviews of our national environmental laws, most recently by Graeme Samuel, identified what’s needed to improve the efficiency of development approvals and get better outcomes for nature. The answer? Good planning at the regional scale, underpinned by good data.

At a minimum, we need to know the locations of threatened or culturally significant species and places, high-value agriculture and valuable natural areas. A proposed new federal body, Environmental Information Australia, would seek to centralise existing biodiversity data. But significantly more data are required to fill important knowledge gaps.

Good planning can create shared purpose and bring positive environmental and social outcomes, including certainty to developers and conservationists. In Queensland, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has enjoyed strong planning support based on good data and high community participation for more than 30 years, with some conservation success.

In contrast, poor planning polarises stakeholders and communities. It erodes trust between stakeholders, developers and government by reducing the integrity and quality of planning decisions. This leads to ongoing conflict over land use, as has been observed in Queensland.

A proposal to build a renewable energy microgrid in Queensland’s Daintree rainforest is a case in point. It is causing pain for local communities, pitting renewable energy advocates against conservation organisations.

When projects fail to gain community support and necessary approvals, the proponent’s money is wasted, and we lose precious time in the urgent transition to renewables.
Renewables projects should enhance nature

It’s surprising and disappointing how few proponents of Australian renewables projects actively seek to enhance the habitat values of the land their projects occupy.

In part, this is because planning regulations are still firmly focused on avoiding impacts to nature, and offsetting damage when it occurs.

Instead, we need policies and laws that compel nature-positive approaches that regenerate biodiversity.

In California, for example, a test project to grow native plants under solar panels is restoring prairie land and pollinator habitat at the site of a decommissioned nuclear power station. In Australia, there are occasional signs we may move in a similar direction.

It’s not hard to envisage a renewables rollout that prioritises projects on degraded, ex-agricultural land, avoiding damage to critical habitats and benefiting nature. Wind turbines should be built away from natural vegetation and migratory routes for birds and bats.

Our mapping for potential wind and solar projects in southern Queensland shows strong potential west of the Great Dividing Range for energy generation without the same level of land-use conflict with natural values and productive agriculture.

A major challenge to energy project development in Queensland, as in some other parts of Australia, is a lack of transmission infrastructure, or “poles and wires”, in the places where renewable energy and nature could most happily coexist. This infrastructure should urgently be developed in a way that does not impact natural vegetation and species habitats.

Rapidly reaching net zero is not negotiable to avoiding the worst ravages of climate change. But doing so in a way that damages nature is self-defeating. We have the planning tools and data needed to create a nature-positive climate transition. Now we need adequate state and Commonwealth government investment, leadership and political will.

Five Digital Strategies of Germany’s Neo-Fascists

By Thomas Klikauer

June 7, 2024

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


Image by DT Rocks, Creative Commons 4.0


Germany’s far-right extremist party – the AfD – has achieved a domineering presence on “social media” – commercial online platforms like Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, etc. And breaking the digital power of the AfD is an urgent task for all democrats.

Imagine Germany’s Chancellor Herr Scholz, Finance Minister Herr Lindner, and Foreign Minister Frau Baerbock answer the following question, “what can people do who are unhappy with the current government?”, with a video that shows their combined answer, “vote AfD”.

Of course, Germany’s chancellor, vice-chancellor, and foreign minister would never utter these words – as all three belong to democratic parties. Yet, this scenario of a faked online election clip – using artificial intelligence (AI) – was one of the suggestions made by AfD apparatchiks to tempt unsuspecting voters to vote for the AfD.

Worse, the AfD has already posted a total of twenty-four of such “fake clips” in what the AfD calls “a digital advent calendar” – an online platform propaganda trick in the run-up to Christmas.

The AfD’s online propaganda shows the most successful use of AI in party communications ever undertaken in Germany. In fact, Germany’s neo-fascist AfD is the “pioneer” in the use of AI for electoral purposes, for fake news, far-right propaganda and otherwise.

That the AfD’s manipulative online strategy is leading voters – and the electoral process as a whole – into a destructive and undemocratic direction that includes gaslighting and fake TikTok clips, should hardly be surprising.

Many younger AfD apparatchiks have grown up as “digital natives” – people who are born in the “Age of the Internet” and are accustomed to the Internet. These AfD flunkies prefer to focus on direct communication with the electorate.

As awareness of the success of the AfD’s online strategy started to kick in, there were plenty of media reporting on the AfD’s dominance in online political advertising. Yet, the stratospheric advantage the AfD has achieved over Germany’s democratic parties barely becomes clear through numbers and figures alone.

What complicates this is the fact that the numbers of AfD fans, supporters and online followers alone do not provide concrete information about the actual reach and impact of the AfD’s online propaganda.

On TikTok, for example, an AfD video averaged 435 viewers in 2022 and 2023. By comparison: the videos of Germany’s conservatives (the CDU) averaged at just 90 – this is the second-best result! Yet, it still is way behind the AfD reaching five times as many people.

The most successful TikTok video of the neo-fascist AfD reached a whopping 6.6 million viewers. This propaganda video was entitled “This politics is crazy”.

It contains an excerpt from a speech by the AfD parliamentarian Martin Sichert. His far-right rhetoric is a political propaganda masterpiece. He falsely claimed that an Ukrainian refugee, driving a Mercedes-Benz S-Class, receives more state-financial support in Germany than a single mother.

This is not new. Hitler’s speeches presented an endless number of falsehoods. Yet millions believed the antisemitic nonsense of an Aryan race being threatened by a non-existing ‘worldwide conspiracy of Jews’. None of those twisted conspiracy fantasies ever occurred but millions were killed. As Madeleine Albright once said,


“it is easier to remove tyrants and destroy concentration camps

than to kill the ideas that gave them birth”.

To spread its dehumanising ideology, the AfD has become “the” champion of YouTube, TikTok, and so on. Worse, the far-right party also shows manipulative propaganda videos on its own TV channel called “AfD TV”. With this, the AfD reaches the highest number of people among all of Germany’s political parties.

The most successful YouTube videos of the AfD can reach an audience of millions. One of the AfD’s more disturbing propaganda videos, for example, is entitled “The income of politicians – simply UNFAIR!” It received 3.1 million viewers.

In it, the AfD attacks the compensation of democratically elected politicians. The AfD does not attack the rich and super-rich but politicians. Perhaps, the AfD’s goal is to eliminate such compensations so that only the rich can enter the parliament.

The next most popular AfD propaganda video is “The Weidel hammer” by – now officially labelled – “nazi-bitch” Alice Weidel. The video had 2.5 million viewers.

Apart from all this, Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) are also online platforms where the AfD has the highest number of interactions and the highest reach with its unscrupulous self-marketing postings.

Until today, the “online superpower” AfD remains the unchallenged titleholder when it comes to the Internet far outmanoeuvring all other parties. Worse, it holds this title on “all” relevant social media platforms. With its individualised contributions, the AfD is able to address an audience of millions.

From a strategic point of view, the AfD’s dominant presence on TikTok, for example, seems to be of great importance. In Germany’s 2021 election, the AfD only received 6% among first-time voters. The AfD’s overall result was: 12.6%. Since then, the AfD’s TikTok activities have significantly expanded to capture the pool of young voters.

The AfD has done this at all levels: federal, state, and local. This has contributed to better results among young voters. In the former East-Germany state of Saxony, for example, the AfD was supported by 21% of young voters – ahead of the Greens (20%) – the traditional home of Germany’s young voters.

These are some of the most outstanding successes of the AfD’s digital propaganda. Structurally, the electoral victories of Germany’s right-wing populists can largely be attributed to its popularity on social media platforms.

Yet, there is also a strong link between being relevant for online algorithms and displaying the typical characteristics of right-wing populism. This is the point where right-wing sensationalism meets the commercialism of online platforms.

Both attract each other. Right-wing populists deliver emotional, polarised, sensational and provocative contents. These are promptly rewarded by online algorithms creating – almost automatically and definitely “by default” – an extremely high visibility.

In addition to these favourable conditions, there are also several very specific reasons for the success of the AfD on online platforms. In essence, five factors can be identified:

1. Resources:

Firstly, the AfD spends an extremely high level of resources in terms of finance, personnel, and technology on its digital propaganda. The AfD was also the first political party to set up a professional studio for video production on its parliamentarian premises in Berlin.

With this, the AfD has gained a competitive advantage on old (Facebook) and new (TikTok, Telegram) platforms. It also utilises the “first mover” position to systematically communicate its far-right propaganda.

2. Propaganda instead of Information, Debate and Democratic Engagement:

Secondly, the AfD follows a strong self-understanding as a political party of PR. This understanding drives the AfD’s far-right propaganda strategy. In its digital propaganda strategy, the AfD’s plan is to substitute – ideally to eliminate or at least replace – independent journalism.

As one of the AfD’s top-Führers, Alice Weidel, once said, the goal is to make people watch “AfD –not ARD”. ARD is Germany’s most watched public TV channel. Once Germans have moved from independent TV channels to the propaganda channel of the AfD, the AfD is on a winning ticket. Goebbel-style Gleichschaltung of the media – like in Poland or Hungary – would no longer be needed.

True to its right-wing populism, on the AfD’s very own propaganda website “AfD-TV.de”, the AfD announced, Germany’s “old media and old parties distort the truth … therefore, we have launched AfD-TV.de”. In a classical Orwellian twist, the very opposite is true. The AfD has launched AfD-TV to distort the truth. Its goal is a Poland-like and Hungary-like “illiberal” state.

The propaganda strategy of AfD seeks to eliminate the division between party-PR and independent journalism. As with Goebbel’s dictatorship, both are set to become one and the same.

Contrary to the authoritarianism favoured by the AfD, the separation between party-PR and independent journalism is necessary for a democracy to work. Yet, the AfD does not want democracy to work.

3. The AfD’s Counter-Audience:

Thirdly, the strategic prioritisation in online platforms that is pushed by the AfD is supported by the guiding ideas of creating a right-wing counter-public. Inside such a counter-public, AfD politicians present themselves in terms of right-wing aesthetics, style, and appealing formats.

This PR strategy also includes the use of well-known influencers like Albanian AfD lackey Enxhi Selizacharias and supporter of the neo-fascist and deeply racist “Identitarian Movement” Roger Beckamp.

Both are known for using influencer-like propaganda. Beyond that, the AfD also relies on a huge number of young activists and media professionals from Germany’s digital-oriented far-right.

The AfD’s youth organisation is called “Young Alternative”. The JA works in close association with the even more radical “Identitarian Movement” (IM). Both outfits run their own high-reach channels using their very own influencers, i.e. manipulators.

IM and JA are also important cornerstones of the AfD’s right-wing extremist digital networks. These networks have become a kind of “right-wing influencer agencies”. These far-right online networks are able to coordinate political actions, mob violence, far-right rallies and electoral campaigns.

4. Building a new Volksgemeinschaft:

One of the more chilling examples of the success of the AfD’s online strategy was the Germanic-Austrian “Pride Month” campaign of 2023. It was set to build a right-wing extremist alternative to the progressive “Pride Parade”. The AfD’s idea was to counter, attack, and intimidate LGBTQ people. The purpose of this campaign was about building a white-power-style right-wing identity.

The AfD is constructing a far-right collective identity – a new Volksgemeinschaft – merging party ideology with its hallucination of a far-right nationalistic community. This is the AfD’s fourth success factor.

In its Facebook propaganda, for example, a well-designed chauvinistic “we” is constructed. This nationalistic “we” shapes almost 75% of recent posts. A sense of a right-wing community has been developed by the party for a socio-cultural and racial homogeneity built on history, race, and tradition.

5. The AfD as a Digital Propaganda Party:

As for the fifth propaganda strategy, negative emotions like fear, anger, indignation and resentment as well as “positive” (!) aspects like racial/white superiority are conjured up. Key to much of this is the AfD’s success in what is known as “message transfer”.

This means that the AfD’s propaganda talks inside Germany’s parliament are seamlessly being transferred to its online platforms. In other words, AfD politicians deliver pre-planned “platform-compliant” speeches in Germany’s parliament. These speeches and shouting matches are not designed for democratic engagement. They are designed for far-right propaganda.

Key parts of AfD speeches are deliberately and purposefully pre-formulated with regards to a statement’s length (60 to 90 seconds) and form (completed, short, pointed, simplifying, emotional and sensational). The format needs to be perfect for short videos to be posted on online platforms.

While Germany’s democratic parties are kept in the belief that the AfD is engaging in open debates, seeks conflict resolution, is interested in finding common ground and favours democratic commitment, the AfD has only one goal in mind: far-right propaganda.

In a subsequent step, these propaganda clips are distributed on its platforms with very eye-catching, pointed, and sensationalised headings. The primary target audience of such AfD speeches is not to be found in Germany’s parliament. Such speeches are designed to generate rage, fear, and resentment. They are made for the party’s “digital rage chambers”.

Fake news, false information, disinformation, images of imagined enemies and the strategy that one’s own party propaganda should replace independent journalism defines AfD’s manipulative hype.

While other political parties are democratic parties, the AfD is a “digital propaganda party”. One set of political parties works in the framework of democracy. The neo-fascist parties work in the framework of far-right propaganda.


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Born on the foothills of Castle Frankenstein, 

Thomas Klikauer (PhD) is the author of  a book on “The AfD”.

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).