Shawn Fain for VP!

By Stephen R. Shalom, Michael Albert 

July 26, 2024

Source: New Politics





In the short term, we are often caught between our dreams and realism. But there is a chance right now to offer a suggestion for the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential pick that would be both inspiring and eminently practical, namely, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers.

Everyone understands that the Democrat’s presidential hopes depend on winning back the white working class. Sanders and others are certainly right that this requires an emphasis on the parts of the Democratic platform that work to reduce the huge inequalities that plague our country. It also requires, however, a vice-presidential candidate that can convince voters that Democratic promises will not be ignored after the election. Political insiders understand this and that’s why they are looking for a candidate who might appeal to these voters. But each of the names being bandied about as part of the “short list” in fact has serious handicaps.

Josh Shapiro is the governor of Pennsylvania. In the words of the New York Times “The Morning Briefing,” “perhaps Shapiro’s biggest downside is that he could inflame divisions between moderate and liberal Democrats over the war in Gaza.” Senator Mark Kelly would, if he won, “trigger a special election in Arizona in 2026, potentially costing Democrats a Senate seat.” Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer says she doesn’t want the job. Andy Beshear from Kentucky doesn’t offer the Democrats an extra state in the win column. And Gov. Cooper of North Carolina has the problem that every time he leaves the state to campaign, his lieutenant governor, a very conservative Republican who is running for governor, becomes the acting governor.

Shawn Fain would electrify working class voters. He would thrill volunteers. He would be able to draw a sharp contrast between the fascistic faux populism of Trump and Vance and real pro-labor policies. As the leader of the historic UAW strike victories last year, there is no mistaking which side he is on. He has called for a general strike in 2028. And in May, he declared:

“The UAW will never support the mass arrest or intimidation of those exercising their right to protest, strike, or speak out against injustice. Our union has been calling for a ceasefire for six months. This war is wrong, and this response against students and academic workers, many of them UAW members, is wrong. We call on the powers that be to release the students and employees who have been arrested, and if you can’t take the outcry, stop supporting this war.”

But yet, Fain and the UAW endorsed Biden. Biden walked on their picket line. (In 2019, so did Harris.) So he is not so far beyond the pale that his selection would be inappropriate on a Democratic Party ticket. And when Donald Trump at the Republican convention called for Fain’s firing, he placed the union head in the national spotlight. Think of how Fain’s comments on Trump would resonate on the campaign trail:

“Donald Trump is a scab. Donald Trump is a billionaire and that is who he represents. If Donald Trump ever worked in an auto plant, he wouldn’t be a UAW member, he would be a company man trying to squeeze the American worker.”

Executive experience? He has run an organization of more than 400,000 members. Foreign policy experience? He doesn’t have much – but only Kelly on the list above does – and he’s been involved in trade issues, recently named to Biden’s Export Policy Council. Speaking ability? As Axios commented, “Fain speaks with the cadence and tone of an old-school preacher, calling on the world to embrace the UAW’s ‘righteous’ cause, referencing biblical heroes like Moses, and telling people to ‘stand up’ for justice.”

Shawn Fain is an outside-the-box choice. A few other commentators have mentioned him as a possibility. He ought to be on everyone’s short list.

And he ought to be the next vice president of the United States.

Stephen R. Shalom

Stephen R. Shalom (born September 8, 1948) is professor emeritus of political science at William Paterson University in NJ. Among other topics, he writes about U.S. foreign policy and political vision. He is on the editorial board of New Politics and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and the Real Utopia network.

In US, Netanyahu Spoke of “Democracy” But Offers Indefinite Apartheid

Palestinian activist Issa Amro says that without American support, Israel couldn’t sustain its occupation.

By Mike Ludwig

July 28, 2024
Source: TruthOut



Part of the Series: Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

Speaking before a joint session of Congress this week in an attempt to justify the mass destruction and death wrought by Israel’s war on Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu preached about his country’s “powerful and vibrant democracy” to applause from an audience dominated by Republicans as protests raged outside the Capitol.

Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist living under Israeli occupation in Hebron in the West Bank, said Americans should not be fooled. Military occupation and democracy are contradictory, Amro argued, and alleged war criminals such as Netanyahu have no right to talk about “democracy” when Palestinians living under illegal occupation face state-backed violence and displacement.

“For sure I live under Israeli apartheid and Israeli occupation and Israeli supremacy,” Amro told Truthout after the speech. “Netanyahu can’t talk about democracy when his government is occupying the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem and not allowing us to practice our own freedoms.”

Netanyahu’s words likely also rang hollow for thousands of Israelis who spent months before the war filling the streets in protest of anti-democratic judicial reforms by the prime minister’s far right governing coalition. The same extremist politicians are working with violent settlers to displace Palestinians on the West Bank and pushing to illegally annex the entire territory as they leverage the war on Gaza to reinforce occupation and apartheid across Palestine.

In his speech, Netanyahu slammed the International Criminal Court prosecutor seeking to arrest both him and his defense minister for war crimes and denied the allegations, which include intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza and using starvation as a weapon of war. (Three Hamas officials, including leader Yahya Sinwar, are also charged with war crimes for their role in the October 7 attacks.)

However, Netanyahu said little about the recent landmark opinion from the International Court of Justice in a separate case that declared Israel’s 57-year occupation of Palestine to be illegal under international law.

In its historic ruling, the World Court found Israel responsible for enforcing illegal apartheid conditions in occupied Palestine that human rights groups and activists such as Amro have documented for decades. Palestinian journalist and Truthout contributor Michel Moushabeck recently summarized the situation:


Over the past 57 years, successive Israeli governments have brutally terrorized Palestinians, demolished homes, confiscated large tracts of Palestinian lands, expanded Israeli settlements in the West Bank — considered illegal under international law — and added many new ones that effectively rendered the “two-state solution” impossible. Now West Bank settlers number more than 700,000; they are heavily armed and are constantly terrorizing Palestinian residents in neighboring villages in an effort to force them to leave, as described in a report by Amnesty International.

In a statement, Israel’s foreign ministry wrote that the court was “fundamentally wrong” and that the opinion “is completely detached from the reality of the Middle East.” It also noted that the opinion was an advisory one, and thus not legally binding. Israel has long denied that its system of occupation and segregation amounts to apartheid.

But Amro said he lives under apartheid every day. As a Palestinian, Amro does not have the same rights as Israeli citizens, including those living in the Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian territory that are considered illegal under international law.

To move about the West Bank, he must pass through security checkpoints and suffer invasive searches by military police while Israeli citizens drive along segregated roads on their way to gated communities. Settler violence and military raids routinely displace Palestinians from their homes and neighborhoods, which are often demolished so residents cannot return. Peace Now, a group that monitors displacement on the West Bank, reports that Israel has confiscated more Palestinian land in 2024 than any year in the past two decades.

Amro says Israel’s strategy is to make life so miserable that Palestinians leave their homeland and join the international diaspora, making way for more Jewish-only settlements.

Even as U.S. weapons sustain the occupation of Palestine, the West Bank remains a source of tensions between Israel and the Biden administration, which has placed financial sanctions on violent settler leaders and restored a policy that declares Jewish-only settlements to be “illegitimate” under international law. It’s no surprise that Netanyahu kept the focus on Gaza during his speech before Congress and meetings with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris this week.

“Without American support, Israel would not be able to sustain the occupation and apartheid for that long,” Amro said.

For months, Netanyahu has been under fire abroad and at home for failing to outline a plan for Gaza after the war and for allegedly prolonging the conflict in order to appease the far right parties keeping him in power — and potentially out of jail.

In his speech before Congress, Netanyahu laid out a vision for “total victory” over Hamas, one in which Israel effectively maintains a military occupation with no end in sight, a goal that critics say is both impossible and antithetical to the “two-state solution” favored by the Biden administration.

Netanyahu has said that Israel would not attempt to “settle” Gaza after the war. In other words, his plan would not see Jewish settlers attempting to colonize Gaza as they have in the past. But members of the settler movement supported by Netanyahu’s extremist allies have declared their intention to do just that. Netanyahu said the Israeli military must maintain “overriding security control” of Gaza until the remaining population “deradicalized” and “demilitarized,” an extremely vague goal that he suggested could take generations to achieve.

“Those twin words, demilitarization and deradicalization, those two concepts were applied to Germany and Japan after World War II, and that led to decades of peace, prosperity and security,” Netanyahu said.

It’s not the first time Netanyahu has compared Israel’s destruction of Gaza to World War II, even though it was Israel that originally forced Palestinians from their ancestral lands and into the Gaza refugee camps where resistance has brewed for decades. Experts say the comparison is simply an ahistorical excuse for brutality and genocide. Even Germany, a stalwart ally of Israel, has criticized Netanyahu’s postwar plans for Gaza as incompatible with international agreements and a path toward peace.

Netanyahu suggested Palestinians who agree not to attack Israel could set up a civilian administration to govern the Gaza after the war. However, much of infrastructure for life — homes, hospitals, schools, mosques and hospitals — has been destroyed by bombs made in the U.S., and the prime minister has refused to give the job to the Palestinian Authority, which partners with Israeli security forces to govern parts of the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Authority is controlled by Fatah, which is the main Palestinian political party along with Hamas.

Fatah recently put aside its bitter rivalry with Hamas and agreed to form a governing coalition for Palestine. The two parties have a fraught history but share the same goal of ending the Israeli occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state.

A senior Hamas official told Reuters Netanyahu’s speech makes clear that he is not interested in reaching a ceasefire deal in Gaza, despite his repeated assurances to the Biden administration that Israel is negotiating in good faith. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority leader President Mahmoud Abbas, said the “Palestinian people … are the only ones who decide who rule them.”

“Our permanent stance is that the only solution to achieve security and stability is the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital,” Rudeineh said.

Netanyahu’s coalition is broadly opposed to a Palestinian state and is instead using the war on Gaza to put as much territory under control of the Israeli military and outposts run by violent settlers as possible. For this reason and many others, some liberal Israelis urged congressional Democrats to boycott Netanyahu’s speech. About half of all Democrats skipped the speech, and progressives condemned Netanyahu’s leadership outright.

“In my view, his right-wing, extremist government should not receive another nickel of U.S. taxpayer support to continue the inhumane destruction of Gaza,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) in a statement ahead of Netanyahu’s speech.

Last week, Israeli lawmakers overwhelmingly voted against Palestinian statehood, further frustrating Democrats who support Israel but also back a “two-state solution.” Yet the Democrats in the Biden administration have not threatened to withhold weapons and aid to Israel in order to pressure Netanyahu toward a ceasefire, at least publicly. In early July, White House officials told reporters that a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas was within reach. But three weeks later, on July 25, White House spokesman Admiral John Kirby said ceasefire negotiations were ongoing as Netanyahu met with Biden and Harris at the White House.

“There’s still more work to be done, we believe that we are closer now than we have been before, and we think it’s absolutely achievable for getting things over the finish line,” Kirby told skeptical reporters.

Biden and Harris want a ceasefire and hostage swap long before U.S. voters head to the polls in November, when Harris hopes to be the Democratic presidential nominee now that Biden has stepped aside. Despite months of frenzied negotiations and multiple overseas tours by U.S. diplomats, Kirby said both Israel and Hamas still need to soften their positions and compromise.

“It’s time to end the war,” Kirby said.

This came just a day after Netanyahu stood in front of the U.S. Congress and repeated his maximalist demands for “total victory” and an indefinite military occupation of Gaza, terms which Hamas has said for months it cannot accept. Whether a ceasefire can be achieved under Netanyahu’s leadership remains to be seen, but history shows that his coalition has only pushed Israel further to the right.

The High Cost of Protectionism: AI Edition

By Dean Baker

July 28, 2024

Source: CEPR



Economists go on endless diatribes against tariffs and quotas as costly policies that raise prices to consumers and slow economic growth. There is considerable truth to this story, even if economists and politicians often exaggerate their case to push favored policies. While virtually all economists will go to their graves touting the evils of protectionism they almost all ignore the most costly forms of protectionism: government-granted patent and copyright monopolies.

Most tariffs raise the price of the protected items by somewhere in the range of 10-25 percent. By contrast, patent and copyright monopolies often raise the price of protected items by 1000 percent, or even 10,000 percent. Many high-priced drugs that enjoy patent monopolies or related protections can sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Their generic versions might sell for $30 or $40 a prescription.

There is a similar story for copyrights. Items that could be transferred at near zero cost over the Internet can instead sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. This is most evidence with costly software, but also true for recorded music and video material, video games, and a variety of other material subject to copyright protections.

There is a clear rationale for patent and copyright monopolies, these monopolies provide an incentive for innovation and creative work. But every type of protectionism has a rationale, having a rationale doesn’t prevent a trade tariff or quota from being a protectionist policy.

The point here is that these government-granted monopolies are huge interventions in the market. They arguably are justified, but it is close to nuts to just assert they are the free market. (Alternative mechanisms are discussed here and in chapter 5 of Rigged [it’s free]).

It is understandable that people on the right, who generally support policies that redistribute income upward, would try to hide patent and copyright monopolies as just the natural working of the market. It is absolutely mindboggling that many on the left also perpetuate this blatant misrepresentation of reality.

Anyhow, let’s get the playing field set. Granting these monopolies is a choice by governments, they can set different policies. In the case of AI, the New York Times reports that it seems as though China is rapidly catching up, and possibly even taking the lead, by pursuing open-source policies rather than relying on patents, copyrights, and related protection.

The idea of open-source with reference to AI is that all the coding is freely available to anyone to review and build upon. It is understandable that this could be a more effective way to advance the technology since breakthroughs could quickly be built upon by others working in the same area. Also, researchers could learn from failures as well and avoid pursuing similar dead-ends. (This would be a great approach to drug or vaccine development.)

The other obvious development is that the finished product is very cheap. The developer may look to recover costs by charging servicing fees and/or relying on direct government support. Either way, end users will not be prevented from being able to take advantage of a useful product by its high price.

Anyhow, given all the hype in the business world around AI it would certainly be ironic if Chinese firms surged past their leading U.S. competitors because they relied on an open-source process whereas our firms relied on old-fashioned protectionism. Who knows, maybe even the “free trader” economists would notice one day.


Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. Dean previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. He has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and the OECD's Trade Union Advisory Council.

FTC Chair Lina Khan Isn’t Scared of Billionaire Bullies

Billionaire donors are pressuring Kamala Harris to fire Lina Khan, whose term as FTC chair has seen aggressive antitrust actions against tech giants. 

David Sirota interviewed Khan about her anti-monopoly agenda and the corporate efforts to shut it down.

By Lina Khan, David Sirota

July 28, 2024

Source: The Lever





Editor’s Note: On Wednesday, billionaire tech tycoon and Democratic donor Reed Hoffman called on Vice President Kamala Harris, if she becomes president, to oust Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan, who’s taken an aggressive approach to enforcing antitrust laws — and is currently scrutinizing a merger involving two of Hoffman’s companies. On Friday, another media tycoon called Khan “a dope.” Meanwhile, presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Harris herself has remained silent on the issue.

What does Khan think about all this? And what would an administrative shake-up — by way of former President Donald Trump’s reelection or Harris’ potential staffing changes — mean for antitrust enforcement, consumer protection, and monopoly power in the United States? The Lever’s founder and editor-in-chief David Sirota spoke with Khan to learn her thoughts.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

DAVID SIROTA: What are things that you haven’t been able to do yet that you want to do?

LINA KHAN: We have a whole set of work underway that we need to see through. We proposed a rule to ban junk fees that we got 60,000 comments on. We’re reviewing those, and we’ll look to see how we can finalize that.

We proposed a rule that would require that companies make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one. We’ve seen all of these companies do these subscription traps where you can sign up with one click — and then to cancel, you have to phone somebody, but nobody ever picks up so you have to send an mail. And that really adds up for people, right? Hundreds of dollars a month stuck in subscriptions they want to escape.

We have proposed and we have finalized a rule to ban noncompete clauses that’s now being litigated, and we’re gonna see that litigation through because we think it’s critical that American workers have freedom and are not trapped in jobs through these coercive contracts.

So that’s just some of the work on the rulemaking front. We have a whole bunch of cases underway right now against Amazon for illegal monopolization and against this firm for doing an illegal roll-up of anesthesiology practices in Texas.

We’ve shared publicly that we’re scrutinizing pharmacy benefit managers; we worry they may be inflating drug costs for Americans and squeezing independent pharmacies. So that’s all work underway that we’re excited to see through.

Follow us on Apple News and Google News to make sure you see our stories first and to help make sure others see our breaking news as well.

SIROTA: How much of that work can be unwound if the administration changes? We’ve been trying to talk about the stakes of all that.

KHAN: So once the rulemakings are final, you have to go through a process if you actually want to undo it that can be challenged in court as well. Cases, in theory, could be yanked from the courts. But historically, cases have continued across administrations. Of course, if somebody comes in wanting to tear it all down and undo all the protections we’ve gotten for working people, there are ways to do that.

SIROTA: What do you make of the Reid Hoffman comment about how you gotta go in the next administration?

KHAN: I mean, look, the FTC is focused on delivering for working people and standing up for them against corporate abuse. We think that’s good for our country, that’s good for our economy. And it makes sure people feel free rather than bullied in the marketplace. So I think that’s work that everybody should be able to get behind. Unless you’re one of the monopolies or abusive corporations.

SIROTA: JD Vance has said nice things about you — do you think the election is necessarily a pivot point for the FTC? Or in the sense of the old paradigm of if the Republicans get in, they’ll just sort of not want to do anything? Has that changed in your mind?

KHAN: There’s no doubt that there is deep bipartisan agreement that when you allow illegal monopolies to run amok, that hurts working people. And if you want to protect working people from corporate abuse, you need to have an aggressive and assertive FTC.

You know, I’ve had the privilege of testifying before Congress a few times. And each time, I’m just struck by how there is deep bipartisan concern about how unfair methods of competition and these coercive practices can really hurt people. It means that they’re paying more, earning less, entrepreneurs have less of an opportunity to compete on a level playing field, and our economy and democracy are weaker because of that. So we’re just focused on continuing our work.

We’re building a reader-supported investigative news outlet that holds accountable the people and corporations manipulating the levers of power. Can you spare a few dollars to help?

SIROTA: One last quick question. Are you ever surprised or did you always expect to get the pushback?

KHAN: Look, the FTC has embedded within it a mandate to fight illegal monopolies. We’ve long known that monopolies not only have economic power, but use that power to buy political power. That was one of the reasons that the lawmakers passed the antitrust laws and our founders were deeply concerned that unlawful economic power can corrupt not just our economy, but also our democracy.

And so embedded within the FTC’s DNA is when it’s doing its job standing up for consumers, workers, and small businesses against corporate abuse, that’s going to trigger pushback.

SIROTA: Thanks so much.

KHAN: Thank you. Thanks for all your great work. Really appreciate it.

The Plutocrats are Overplaying Their Hand: How About Doing Something About It?

The growing power of the small group of far-right-American oligarchs is slowly grinding our democratic institutions into dust.

By Steven Day

July 28, 2024

Source: Common Dreams


When will big money’s corruption of democracy become so obnoxious people will find it intolerable?

Perhaps a couple of troubling “hypothetical” examples will do the trick. Let’s pretend, as absurd as it sounds, that an American citizen, the wealthiest person in the world, happens to also be a rabid conspiracy theorist and, frankly, a bit of a political nutcase. And let’s further hypothetically pretend this person decides that by throwing enough of his money around he, together with other far-right billionaires, can effectively turn America into a plutocrat’s Shangri-La.

Unfortunately, this Shangri-La will be run by an authoritarian leader who throws his political opponents into jail, reverses environmental regulations while all but embracing climate change, subverts the Constitution, makes the ridiculously wealthy even more ridiculously wealthy, finishes the job of stuffing the federal courts with ultra-right political hacks, and so much more. To accomplish this, he will join with other ultra-right billionaires in opening his checkbook to help propel former U.S. President Donald Trump back into the White House. He is doing this by way of his own pro-Trump PAC. (He now denies making a $45-million-a-month commitment).

The combination of power and money easily grows into greater power and greater money, and both can continue to grow until they become unbreakable.

Or how about when another group of wealthy individuals—admittedly less rich, less nutty, and less evil in a Lex Luthor sense—decide to publicly join together to put pressure on the incumbent Democratic president to get out of the race by withholding campaign contributions? Now, to be hypothetically fair to this hypothetical group, unlike the Lex Luthor wannabe, most of these folks’ hearts are largely in the right place. But, leaving aside whether asking President Joe Biden to withdraw was politically wise, does it bother anyone that they felt so free to try to dictate to the broader electorate who should run for president? Is that a privilege we really want to cede to the wealthy?

But if we don’t want either of these things, where’s the public outrage?

Do we as a nation really believe the fact someone inherits a fortune, or makes a fortune through stock manipulation, creates a hot new internet startup, makes popular movies, or even builds a fortune through wise business practices means that person is wiser and more knowledgeable than everyone else about… well, everything?

Think how much more power Elon Musk (the unnamed billionaire/Lex Luthor imitator mentioned above, of course) has to impact government policy on issues such as climate change, education policy, and economic policy and taxation than the most talented experts in these fields?

It is tempting to think Elon Musk’s motive in at least claiming to intend to invest substantial funds in politics is purely for the fun of making a splash. What’s a few hundred million dollars to a guy worth around $200 billion? His actual political spending probably works out to a lower percentage of his annual income than many people spend on golf or bowling. This sort of pure joy in projection of power could also explain why he overpaid $40 billion dollars for Twitter only to then destroy much of its value by turning it into a swamp increasingly filled with far-right lunatics. He gets to play the King of Twitter (yeah, I know, X), or if you prefer, mayor of Crazyville, leaving him free, whenever he pleases, to share his political nonsense with millions of readers. But, of course, there is almost certainly more at play in his political investments than fun and games. Follow the money, as they say. Donald Trump’s election would save Elon Musk billions of dollars through tax and regulation changes. It must also never be forgotten that much of Musk’s profits come from the federal government. What’s a few dollars in contributions compared to all that?

If we truly want to preserve democracy for the long-term this has to change. True, the immediate threat is Donald Trump, but even if he loses, American democracy is far from safe. The growing power of the small group of far-right-American oligarchs is slowly grinding our democratic institutions into dust. Money from these economic grandees, and their predecessors going back decades, has financed right-wing organizations, advocacy groups, political campaigns, media sources, think tanks, and more.

Their money built the Federalist Society, and with the help of Republican presidents and senators has also created the right-wing Supreme Court majority. This in turn led to the court’s constitutional sanctification of money in politics with Citizens United. Thanks to these wealthy conservatives’ money, and the court that money helped to buy, it is now constitutionally established that money in politics is speech, subject to protection under the First Amendment. Personal liberties of actual human beings haven’t always done that well before the court, but the power of money, in all its glory, always wins. To the court’s majority nothing smells as sweet as the stench of money in politics.

With only the fewest of exceptions, election to political office requires this money—and in increasingly large piles. And with economic inequality growing like pancreatic cancer, big money is increasingly concentrated in relatively few hands. Ambitious politicians know better than to get on the wrong side of this group of wealthy donors. Small donors are important, but support from those with substantial assets remains critical to most candidates for major office and increasingly for minor offices as well.

This is true for the left as well as the right. It’s hard not to think this has something to do with the fact liberalism in recent decades has been so closely associated with social, rather than economic, issues—abortion rights are very important and a major focus as opposed to union rights, also very important, but less of a focus. Democrats are, of course, much better than Republicans on union rights, and got even better under Biden, but economic inequality has continued to grow during Democratic as well as Republican administrations. And as this inequality grows stronger, democracy grows weaker. The combination of power and money easily grows into greater power and greater money, and both can continue to grow until they become unbreakable.

I wrote a novel a few years ago titled, The Patriot’s Grill. It was anything but a best seller, but its topic, a recounting of a future post-democratic America, is relevant here. One sentence in particular: “The truth is no one took freedom from us. In the end, we just gave it away.”

I guess that is the ultimate question. Are we prepared to work to save our democracy, first, by defeating Donald Trump, then, second, by struggling to build a fairer and with it more democratic nation, or in the end, will we end up just giving it away?

Steven Day practices law in Wichita, Kansas and is the author of The Patriot's Grill, a novel about a future America in which democracy no longer exists, but might still return.

Humanity Has Two Choices: Political Unification or Mass-Suicide

By Sovaida Maani Ewing

July 28, 2024

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





The intensifying cascade of global crises including intractable wars, massive human rights atrocities, nuclear proliferation, climate change and environmental degradation, the growing inequality between the rich and the poor, recurring bouts of global financial instability, and the increasing risks of pandemics to name but a few, call to mind the warning sounded by Arnold Toynbee, one of the most highly-regarded authorities and foremost experts on international affairs and world history in the 20th century, that humanity would be faced with an existential crisis followed by his recommendation as to what we, the family of nations, should do in response.

Toynbee contended that in the atomic age, humanity would have to choose between political unification and mass-suicide. He believed the chief obstacle to political unification was a long-standing destructive habit of the West which he referred to as the habit of “divisive feeling” to which we tended to easily succumb as opposed to reaching for our more recently adopted habit of “world-mindedness.” The good news, he said, was that just as new habits could be adopted, old ones could also be modified or abandoned. He stressed that as a general rule we humans would opt to abandon even our most deeply rooted habits once it became clear that clinging to them would spell disaster.

He recommended that we replace our outworn habit of divisive feeling with a new habit of common action on a world-wide scale through the creation of some form of limited world-state that would be empowered to act in humanity’s collective interest in certain narrow fields of endeavor. Already, as far back as the 1970’s, he believed that the global community needed to engage in common action on a world-wide scale in at least two areas: to control atomic energy through a World Authority and to administer the production and distribution of food through another World Authority. Now, 50 years hence, we can confidently add climate change to this list.

Toynbee predicted that global circumstances we unwittingly created through our technological advancements would eventually force us to submit to a limited world government once we realized it was our only hope for salvation in the face of an existential threat. He believed we would wait until the 11th hour before making a radical shift to establish such a government even though we would do this kicking and screaming all the way.

He was very clear in recognizing our visceral fears about and knee-jerk reaction in opposition to a world government that might become a draconian centralized bureaucracy imposing its will on local governments around the world. He made the following compelling arguments to dispel these fears.

First, that a world government should be minimal and should be limited in its sphere of action. World leaders should therefore confine the authority of a world government they established only to that which was strictly necessary for their self-preservation right now.

Second, he stressed that in the atomic age, world government should come about voluntarily through the mutual consent and cooperation of world powers rather than by force. He warned that any attempt to impose political unity by force would be ineffective as it would only lead to stiff resistance and a resurgent nationalism as soon as an opportunity to revolt presented itself.

Third, the prerequisite for such an endeavor to succeed lay in the universal adoption of an ideology of world-mindedness that we had never achieved before.

Toynbee believed that the structure of a limited world state would likely be a federal one in which previously independent units would voluntarily come together in a global union. He argued that this was the most likely scenario given that states generally prefer to preserve their identity and retain their autonomy to act locally; they would likely be willing to cede some power to a world government only in limited areas in which it served their collective interests to do so.

Finally, he believed that humanity needed to forge some unity of thought as to what constituted right and wrong. In other words, it was necessary to adopt a shared set of moral values that would serve to harmonize the disparate social and cultural heritages that had evolved independently of each other over the course of human history. Without fundamental agreement on moral issues he argued, it would be difficult to achieve political unification.

Given the rapid disintegration of countries and societies around the world and the accelerating fragmentation and polarization that are rending apart the fabric of our global society, is it not time for us to step up and make the choice to collaborate, cooperate and deepen our integration as a global society? To this end is it not time we take a step in the direction of collective maturity by voluntarily consenting to political unification by forming a limited democratic federal world government? Imagine what we could achieve if we engaged in collective and consultative decision-making to meet the pressing needs and the greatest global challenges of our time as opposed to opting for what Toynbee coined the “Great Refusal” that would inevitably result in carnage and devastation on a scale never before seen.

~~~~~~~~~`

Sovaida Maani Ewing, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is an international lawyer, author and the founding director of the Center for Peace and Global Governance.

Project 2025 Isn’t Just Anti-Abortion. It Attacks Surrogacy, IVF, Contraception.

The right’s 922-page policy agenda for a Trump presidency offers an extremist plan for rolling back reproductive rights.

By Eleanor J. Bader

July 28, 2024

Source: TruthOut


From left to right: Cody Carnley of Crenshaw County, Alabama; Carrie McNair of Mobile; Veronica Wehby-Upchurch of Birmingham and Lindsey Shaw of Birmingham hold signs at a rally in aupport of legislation to protect in vitro fertilization on Feb. 28, 2024 in Montgomery, Alabama. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)

Early childhood educator Sammi Gerken, a married mother of a 3-year-old, became a surrogate in late 2022 and calls the experience “rewarding on all fronts.” “I was proud and happy to give a couple who had struggled with infertility for 11 years what they’d dreamed of — a baby — something that would have been impossible without me,” she told Truthout.

Even as a child, Gerken says that she was fascinated by birth, pregnancy and motherhood. “I used to watch YouTube videos, which is where I learned about in vitro fertilization, surrogacy and infertility. Watching people struggle to achieve a healthy pregnancy pulled at my heart. I couldn’t imagine longing for a baby and not being able to have one. After a successful pregnancy with my daughter in early 2021, I felt it was time to explore becoming a surrogate.”

And, although Gerken said that she had to go through numerous medical procedures, including hormone injections, to sustain the pregnancy, she is “beyond glad” she did it.

She is also thrilled that she and the receiving family continue to be in touch. Throughout the pregnancy, Gerken said that they exchanged daily texts and frequently met over Zoom. Then, after the baby was born, she pumped breast milk for four months. “It was a beautiful way to stay connected,” she said. “Although we no longer text as often, I’ll see them in August for the baby’s first birthday. We all want to have a lifetime relationship. Our hearts will forever be connected.”

As Gerken speaks, it’s obvious that she is passionate about the efficacy of surrogacy. This is why Project 2025, a 922-page right-wing wish list and game plan that is explicit about its intent to impose a nationwide ban on abortion and limit access to contraceptives, IVF and surrogacy, enrages her. “Why should outsiders decide how people grow their families?” she asks. “Surrogacy is love. It’s a valid way to build a family.”

The right-wing, of course, disagrees — even as the Republican National Committee’s official platform strategically steers clear of a direct attack on reproductive autonomy. But Project 2025 is far more explicit, and its authors are hell-bent on creating what Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the organizational mastermind behind Project 2025, calls “the second American revolution.”

For Heritage and the more than 100 organizations that endorse the plan, that revolution involves the creation of a policy agenda for the first 180 days of a GOP presidency and lays “the groundwork for a White House more friendly to the right.” The plan also includes the creation of a personnel database of conservative movers and shakers, something that Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project at Heritage and Trump’s former director of the Office of Personnel Management, likens to a LinkedIn or Facebook for the right. Should this roster include people new to government, he says, a Presidential Administration Academy has been established to train potential staffers for every federal agency. A series of free, online, asynchronous classes covers everything from how to get a security clearance, to “the dangers of the administrative state,” to how federal budget processes and procurements work. This, of course, is to ensure that a well-trained workforce is ready to jump in on day one to serve the MAGA cause.

What’s more, Project 2025 provides an agency-by-agency playbook that explains what each government department will advocate for and do.

In an interview with The Washington Stand, the daily news site of the Christian nationalist Family Research Council, Dans stressed that,


We want new folks to come in and serve, essentially, but to do that they need to know how this game is played and the rules of the road. That’s what we are hoping to do. We’re going to identify talent and then we’re going to teach you essentially what our core group of beliefs is…. We need to have an entire army of conservatives coming to Washington.… In the past, the transition effort has really been the second thought for the candidate.

But not this year.

“We want every potential applicant to curate his or her own page and upload their resume, list their social media, take some background diagnostic tests,” and make themselves known, Dans told The Washington Stand.

Unsurprisingly, anti-abortion credentials and a commitment to eroding access to reproductive health care are feathers in the cap of job applicants.
Project 2025 Threatens Reproductive Care

According to Media Matters for America, a media literacy and watchdog organization, the Project 2025 plan, officially called the “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” aims to remove the word “abortion” from all federal laws and regulations; roll back the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of medication abortion; use the Comstock Act, a Victorian-era law that was passed in 1873, to ban the mailing of abortion pills and stop clinics from receiving shipments of supplies and equipment; and limit access to birth control, in vitro fertilization and surrogacy. Moreover, Project 2025 seeks to end research using fetal tissue and stop the sale of nonprescription emergency contraception, including the popular over-the-counter pill Ella, which it erroneously claims is an abortifacient.

The Media Mattersreport, “Inside Project 2025’s Attacks on Reproductive Rights,” further states that Project 2025 hopes to elevate draconian state policies, like a Louisiana law that makes “carrying abortion medication without a prescription” a crime, into federal law.

Additionally, Media Matters zeroes in on Project 2025’s promotion of fallacies, among them that taking a daily birth control pill causes infertility; that IVF is unregulated; and that frozen embryos are children. Media Matters also points out that “at least 17 partner organizations of Project 2025 have published and publicly presented anti-surrogacy arguments,” including the idea that surrogacy is “morally wrong.”

“From the moment of conception,” Project 2025 states “every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development, race or abilities.”

This statement is a particularly bitter pill to swallow for Stetson Law School professor Robyn M. Powell, a nationally recognized expert on disability law and its intersection with reproductive justice. “The anti-abortion movement has used disabled people as pawns for years, and the idea that legal abortion encourages eugenics — policies that dictate who is fit and who is unfit to have children — is absurd,” Powell told Truthout. “People with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by anti-abortion policies that tell us what we can and can’t do with our bodies.”

In addition, she says that despite lip service about the value of every human life, those who oppose abortion do little to nothing to support or improve the lives of those living with disabilities. “As disabled people, we understand that attacks on the rights of the poor, the LGBTQIA+ community and women are attacks on us since we are part of multiple marginalized communities,” she said.

In addition, Powell sees Project 2025’s emphasis on deregulation as another potent area of attack, since eliminating federal agencies such as the Department of Education and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — long-standing goals of the Heritage Foundation as well as many others on the right, and explicitly advocated in Project 2025 — would cause irreparable harm to the disabled.

“Project 2025 impacts everything,” Powell told Truthout. “It is infuriating.”

Andrew Beck, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, agrees that the project has deep tentacles, but is keeping his eyes on Project 2025’s implications for abortion access. “Despite Trump’s efforts to obfuscate the issue, abortion is on the ballot this year,” Beck told Truthout. He calls Project 2025 “a 900-page nightmare,” and says that some of the document’s most egregious provisions are buried deep within it.

“The Comstock Act is never mentioned by name,” Beck noted. (Instead, the document references “long-standing federal laws that prohibit the mailing and interstate carriage of abortion drugs.”)

“For many decades, the Comstock Act was assumed to have no application whatsoever for abortion care,” Beck said. “But in the last few years, a drumbeat has been heard and echoed by Project 2025 to use Comstock, a law that is already on the books, as a back door to a nationwide abortion ban. This statute makes it a crime to mail or ship ‘any article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.’ If they use Comstock, they do not need Congress to pass an abortion ban.” Project 2025, he continues, is also “gunning for medication abortion. This has been a target of anti-abortion politicians for a long time, but now that two-thirds of all U.S. people who have abortions use pills, this goal has been heightened.”

Beck further notes other potential incursions that could impact reproductive health, including the desired weakening of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), passed in 1996 to keep medical information from being shared without the patient’s permission, and an end to the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraceptives.

“The ACLU is doing all it can to raise the alarm about Project 2025 to elevate public concern about a second Trump administration,” Beck said. “We’re also working with members of Congress to address the threat the Comstock Act poses.”
Repealing Comstock

That effort got a boost from Tina Smith (D-Minnesota), who introduced the Stop Comstock Act into the Senate in June. The bill has 18 co-sponsors: A companion bill was introduced in the House by Representatives Becca Balint (D-Vermont), Cori Bush (D-Missouri), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-New Jersey), Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) and Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pennsylvania).

Reproductive justice activists and care providers know that getting the Stop Comstock Act passed is important — albeit a long shot in a GOP-controlled House of Representatives — but they also know that much more is needed to keep Project 2025’s policies at bay.

“Abortion is a vehicle to access our full humanity,” Merle Hoffman, president and CEO of Choices Women’s Medical Center in New York City, told Truthout. As a care provider since 1971, when New York State first legalized abortion, Hoffman says, “We need a unified movement to fight a defensive battle.” She explains that one way to do this is to train and mentor the next generation of physicians, midwives, nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants and social workers — something that Choices has made part of its mission.

“The people behind Project 2025 are serious and they believe wholeheartedly in what they’re advocating,” she said. “Heritage has worked on this agenda for decades and the pro-choice movement has underestimated them and treated their aspirations as ridiculous and unachievable. At the same time, the Democrats have certainly not been knights on white horses. They’ve allowed abortion to be referred to as something that should be safe, legal and rare rather than a normal part of reproductive health care. They’ve allowed the Hyde Amendment to cut off Medicaid funding for abortion. They have never been our saviors … neither they nor the courts will save us.”

She and others are working tirelessly to fight back and she is cheered that the newly formed Abortion Access Now coalition has unveiled a 10-year plan to win back abortion access and move beyond what Roe v. Wade provided. The $100 million initiative will bring nine groups together. Among them are the ACLU, the Center for Reproductive Rights, In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, Planned Parenthood and Reproductive Freedom for All. These groups pledge to work together to build “a future where abortion, and all sexual and reproductive healthcare, is not only legal but also accessible, affordable and free from stigma or fear.” The Hill reports that the 10-year plan includes “lobbying efforts, grassroots organizing and public education initiatives” to “build a long-term federal strategy to codify the right to abortion.”

Despite this formation, Hoffman concedes that the magnitude of the attacks on reproductive freedom can feel overwhelming but says we can’t let fear and demoralization keep us from organizing and educating people about the threats we’re facing. “It’s all of our responsibility to fight for abortion and reproductive justice without borders,” she says.

With Project 2025 and Agenda 47, the USA’s Coups Come Home to Roost

The authoritarian, dystopian settings that the U.S. created in so many places across the world are being reconceived by ultra-conservative forces affiliated with Trump for the purpose of introducing them here.

By CJ Polychroniou

July 28, 2024

Source: Common Dreams

Since the rise of the United States into a global power, U.S. policymakers have been keen on halting the spread of popular government abroad by undermining democratic institutions; overthrowing or assassinating elected leaders; and installing brutal, vicious military dictatorships. Indeed, the fact of the matter is that the United States has invaded more countries, organized more coups, and installed more military dictatorships than any other imperialist power in the course of history. During the Cold War alone, Washington staged dozens of invasions, orchestrated or sponsored numerous coups that installed subservient governments, and engaged in total in over 70 attempts at regime change.

U.S. involvement in foreign coups was so widespread that a common joke was that there has never been a coup d’état in the United States because there is no U.S. Embassy there. Of course, the joke was before the political era of former U.S. President Donald J. Trump and thus has lost some of its sting. Because what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a coup attempt incited by the rhetoric of an outgoing president as part of his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Moreover, Trump has warned voters of a “bloodbath” for the country if he is not elected in November 2024.

The roosters have come home to roost. The U.S. is sleepwalking toward democratic collapse and into a Trump proto-fascist dictatorship. If Donald Trump gets elected in November, “the gloves are off… its four years of scorched earth,” as Republican National Committee boss Lara Trump proudly announced to an audience a few months ago. Never mind people like John Bolton who tried to make the argument that Trump did not attempt a coup on January 6 because he is not competent enough to have done so. Those who entertain such thoughts seem to imply that it takes brilliance to destroy democracy. Yet, a reactionary revolt against democracy (or what’s left of it in the U.S.) has been underway since Trump gained control of the GOP. Trump encouraged violence during his 2016 campaign and levied harsh attacks against his opponents. Upon assuming office as president, he exhibited blunt authoritarian tendencies and levied attacks against the press. And when he lost a free and fair election in 2020, he tried to block a peaceful transfer of power.


There should be little doubt in any concerned citizen’s mind that the reactionary forces in this country, led by one of the most authentic con artists in political history, are as close as they have ever been to dismantling U.S. democracy.

But even if Trump isn’t capable enough to draw up a plan on his own for the dismantling of our democracy from within, there are plenty of extreme right-wingers able and willing to show him how it can be done. Indeed, the authoritarian, dystopian settings that the U.S. created in so many places across the world from the end of the Second World War to the present—through Washington’s support of oppressive political regimes that committed massive violations of human rights against their own citizens and forced them to live under constant threat—are being reconceived by ultra-conservative forces affiliated with Trump for the purpose of introducing them here inside the United States. This is precisely the aim of Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation plan to reshape the United States in a manner consistent with the ideology and vision of neoliberal proto-fascism.

Project 2025 is not Trump’s plan, but a plan for Trump. It’s also fair to point out that Trump has publicly denied knowing anything about the dystopian Project 2025. Yet, many of the people who worked in high-level positions during his presidency served as authors of the project. In fact, CNN reported finding some 240 people “with ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump.” It is thus ludicrous for Trump to claim ignorance of this extreme far-right agenda and having “no idea who is behind it.” Also, Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project at The Heritage Foundation and who had previously served in the Trump administration as the chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management, said on a radio show during the Republican primary race last year that “Trump’s very brought in with this.” Last week, the same person suddenly claimed that the idea that Trump is attached to Project 2025 is a “hoax.”

More important, while Trump and his campaign staff have pointed out that Agenda 47 is their official policy platform for the 2024 presidential election, Project 2025 and Agenda 47 have a lot of overlap in terms of ideas and policy plans. They both contain plans for the reshaping of U.S. government and civil society that can only be described as “fascist.” They both assert that the mission they serve is to rescue the country from the influence of the radical left.

Project 2025 envisions the end of the administrative state by placing the entire federal bureaucracy under direct presidential control. In other words, the plan is for Trump to rule as a Unitary Executive, long considered a pathway for autocracy. Likewise, Trump’s plan in Agenda 47 is to dismantle what it calls the “deep state” by firing thousands of civil servants and replacing them with party hacks (though in Agenda 47 they are called “patriots who love America”). In doing so, Trump claims, federal bureaucrats and politician will be “held accountable to the American people.” Not to the president, mind you, who will now have complete control of the federal bureaucracy, but to the American people. Of course, not a single word is mentioned in Agenda 47 about how the “people” even enter the power equation of holding bureaucrats and politicians accountable to the popular will. But authoritarian leaders and wannabe dictators have always been masters of propaganda who engineer techniques of mass manipulation through the politics of illusion. And no propaganda tool is more effective in the authoritarian playbook than the one that justifies the dismantling of checks and balances as “corrupt obstacles to the popular will.”

State control over public education and teachers has always been an integral component of fascist ideology and strategy. In the neoliberal proto-fascist mentality that guides the thinking of the architects of Project 2025, the contention made however is that federal intervention in education should be severely limited and that, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated. This is because their reactionary vision for the future of the United States would not object to the conversion of public schools into religious zones and calls for the rejection of “gender ideology” and the banning of “critical race theory.” Thus, it is of paramount importance that complete authority over primary and secondary education, including funding, transfers to the state and local level. Likewise, Project 2025 also endorses universal school choice and allowing families to access public funds to pay for private school tuition. Moreover, Project 2025 wants to ban any public education employee or institution from using a pronoun in addressing a student that does not “match a person’s biological sex” without the written permission of a student’s parents or guardians.

The call for the banning of “critical race theory” is utterly revealing of the ideological underpinnings of the architects of Project 2025. They want to see “critical race theory” forced out of classrooms because, they argue, its emphasis on the racist history of the United States “disrupts the values that hold communities together.” It’s rather shameful though that they omitted mentioning slavery as one of the values that should “hold communities together.”

As for higher education, which comes under severe attack by the reactionary minds behind Project 2025 for being “hostile to free expression” and “American exceptionalism,” student loans and grants should be placed into the hands of the private sector. They also call on the next president to downplay the value of a bachelor’s degree by removing it as a requirement for any federal job unless it is specifically demanded.

Agenda 47 is an even more extreme version of Project 2025 on the issue of education and comes much closer to authentic fascism. Trump’s proposals for K-12 schools call for, among other things, ending federal funding to any school teaching “critical race theory,” certifying only teachers who embrace “patriotic values,” firing Department of Education employees deemed radical zealots and Marxists, pushing prayer in public schools, and abolishing teacher tenure.

Trump’s Agenda 47 and Project 2025 also share the same extremist views on immigration and climate change. Project 2025 wants to demolish the entire U.S. immigration system while Trump wants to engage in draconian measures against undocumented immigrants, which includes a pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States.

Regarding climate change, Project 2025 is all about a project that backs a fossil fuel agenda and wants to go so far as to eliminate the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration because it’s “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” Trump’s stance on energy and climate as expressed in Agenda 47 is in full alignment with Project 2025 and can be summarized by three words: “DRILL, BABY, DRILL.”

Finally, both the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and Trump’s Agenda 47 (along with his already established record on the matter) make abundantly clear that serving the interests of a plutocracy is of equal importance to them as destroying the environment and turning back the clock on social and cultural progress through the implementation of extreme authoritarian measures. Among other major changes to the tax system, Project 2025 calls for reducing the corporate tax to 18% and cementing the tax on capital gains and dividends at 15%. A second Trump presidency would most certainly also see another round of tax cuts targeted at the very rich.

In sum, there should be little doubt in any concerned citizen’s mind that the reactionary forces in this country, led by one of the most authentic con artists in political history, are as close as they have ever been to dismantling U.S. democracy and replacing it in turn with a dystopian setting guided by the very same vision, values, and even tactics that have been the hallmark of U.S. imperialist efforts to install and support neo-fascist regimes around the globe.

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CJ Polychroniou

C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He has published scores of books and over one thousand articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).

The Official Death Toll In Gaza Is A Lie. 

The Casualty Numbers Are Far, Far Higher

The figures have been stalled for months. The goal is to minimise Israel’s barbarism, while lulling western publics into a false sense of complacency

By Jonathan Cook

July 31, 2024

Source: Jonathan Cook Substack



The death toll in Gaza is way too low by every imaginable metric. We need to be stressing this – all the more so when Israel’s apologists are vigorously engaged in a disinformation campaign to suggest that the figures are inflated.

On 6 May, 7 months into Israel’s slaughter, there were reported to be 34,735 dead. That was an average of 4,960 Palestinians killed each month.

Today, nearly three months on, the reported death toll stands at 39,400 – or an increase of 4,665.

It should not need a statistician to point out that, were the rise linear, the expected number of deaths would stand by this point at around 49,600.

So, even by the simplest calculation, there is a large shortfall in deaths – a shortfall that needs explaining.

Such an explanation is easy to provide: Israel destroyed Gaza’s institutions and its medical infrastructure, including its hospitals, many months ago, making it impossible for officials there to keep track of how many Palestinians are being killed by Israel.

The death toll figures started to stall in the spring, around the time Israel completed its destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and kidnapped much of the enclave’s medical personnel.

More than a month ago, Save the Children pointed out that some 21,000 children in Gaza were missing, in addition to the 16,000 known to have been killed by Israel. Many are likely to have suffered lonely, terrifying deaths under rubble – gradually suffocated to death, or dying slowly from dehydration.

But again, even those shocking figures are likely to be a severe undercount.

The linear figure entirely misses the bigger picture. How?

1. Because in addition to the continuing Israeli bombardments, Palestinians have had to endure three more months of an intensifying famine. With each day of a famine, more people die than died the day before. The deaths in a famine are not linear, they are exponential. If 5 people died yesterday of starvation, 20 people will die today, and 150 tomorrow. That is how prolonged famines work. The longer you are starved, the higher the probability you will die of starvation.

2. Because Palestinians have had three more months deprived of medical care after Israel destroyed their hospitals and medical institutions. If you have a chronic illness – diabetes, asthma, kidney problems, high blood pressure, and so on – the longer you are forced to go without medical attention, the greater the chance you will die from an untreated condition. Again, the death rate in such circumstances is exponential, not linear.

3. Because without medical care, all sorts of other things that happen in everyday life become more dangerous. Childbirth is the most obvious example, but even cuts and grazes can become a death sentence. So given the fact that Palestinians now have even less access to medical care than they had in the first six months of Israel’s war on Gaza suggests that people are being killed by life-events in even greater numbers than was the case earlier in Israel’s slaughter.4. Because, for exactly the same reasons, those injured by Israel’s continuing bombardments are likely to have poorer outcomes than those similarly injured in earlier attacks. Fewer doctors means less chance of treatment, means greater chance of dying from your wounds.

5. Because we know that – given the insanitary conditions, the lack of water and food, the weakened health status of the population, and the destruction of hospitals – epidemics now are breaking out. The WHO has already warned of a likely outbreak of polio, but there are sure to be other diseases emerging such as cholera, typhoid and dysentery that have yet to be isolated and identified. Even the common cold can become a killer when people’s health status is this compromised.

A letter from researchers to the Lancet medical journal this month warned about the likely massive undercount of the dead in Gaza, even relying, as they had to, on the established death toll.

Their point was that indirect deaths – of the kind I enumerate above – need to be factored in as well as the direct deaths from Israeli bombs. They very conservatively estimate that the total number who will die over the coming months – not just from bombs but as a result of the lack of medical care, insanitary conditions and famine – is 186,000, or 8 per cent of the population.

But that figure assumes that Israel’s current slaughter and starvation policies come to an immediate halt, and that international organisations are able to bring in emergency aid. There are precisely no signs that Israel is going to allow any of that to happen – or that western states are going to put any pressure on Israel to do so.

The medical researchers suggest a less conservative estimate could ultimately put the death toll in Gaza nearer 600,000, or a quarter of the population. Again, that assumes Israel reverses course immediately.

Remember too that for every person killed, several others are maimed or badly wounded. According to the current figures, more than 91,000 Palestinians are reported injured, many of them missing limbs. But again, that is likely to be a massive undercount too.

Harrowing as these figures are, they are just numbers. But Gaza’s dead are not numbers. They were human beings, half of them children, whose lives have been snuffed out, their potential erased forever, their loved ones left with an all-consuming grief. Many victims died alone in extreme pain, or endured unimaginable suffering.

None of their lives should be reduced to cold statistics on a graph. But if that is where we are at, and sadly it is, then at the very least we need to point out that the headline figures are a lie, that Israel’s barbarism is being grossly minimised, and that we are being lulled into a false sense complacency.



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

UK

The Labour Party Is Promising More Misguided Austerity

The Labour Party’s chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, is arguing for austerity on the grounds that the government is broke. In fact, the UK’s economic woes are due in large part to a decade-plus of insufficient public investment.

By Grace Blakeley

July 31, 2024

Source: Jacobin

Rachel Reeves at the World Economic Forum (Photo: WEF)

Britain is broke. This is the message that Rachel Reeves has just delivered to the nation as she announced forthcoming cuts to public spending and investment. Reeves claims that the Tories left the country in a much greater fiscal mess than the Labour Party could have realized while they were in opposition — and it’s now up to her to fix it.

Her claim is reminiscent of that made by the Tories in 2010. David Cameron and George Osborne justified their austerity agenda based on the argument that Labour’s reckless spending had damaged the nation’s economy and that tough choices would have to be made to get things back on track. Pat McFadden echoed Cameron’s language today, when he said that the chancellor was going to have to make some “very difficult spending decisions.”

A swathe of proposed infrastructure projects are set to be axed — including plans to build forty new hospitals laid out by Boris Johnson and plans to sell off yet more publicly owned property.

Reeves has also chanced upon some more positive revenue-generating measures. She plans to curb nonessential spending on private consultants, who have spent decades pushing the marketization of the public sector — an agenda that has reduced efficiency and accountability while increasing costs. The road tunnel bypassing Stone Henge is also set to be dropped, which, as Siân Berry has already pointed out, is the right decision made for all the wrong reasons.

These measures will, however, only get Reeves so far. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, the problem with neoliberalism is that you eventually run out of public assets to sell.

More cuts will be coming down the road. And we are certainly not likely to see much-needed increases in spending on areas like health, social care, and decarbonization. After more than a decade of Tory austerity, everyone knows that when a government says it has to make “tough choices,” it intends to be much tougher on working people than on the wealthy.

None of this will, of course, achieve Reeves’s alleged aim of improving the public finances. As hundreds of economists — not to mention trade unionists, environmentalists, and historians — warned in 2010, austerity always and everywhere fails on its own terms.

The idea behind austerity is that day-to-day public spending cannot exceed the amount collected in taxes over a long period of time. The issue is not that the government might “run out of money” — everyone knows that sovereign central banks can create money to finance a government’s spending needs.

The issue is that excessive public spending can fuel inflation, and relatedly, expectations of excessive public spending can reduce investors’ demand for government debt, driving up borrowing costs. Over the long term, this cycle of rising debt, inflation, and interest rates can create the kinds of sovereign debt crises often seen in poor countries in the past.

These are real economic issues — no government can, as some argue, simply create money ad infinitum. At a certain point, excessive and wasteful public spending will start to drive up inflation — and investors’ demand for government debt is likely to have fallen even before that point.

But similar economic problems can also be caused by insufficient public spending.

The reason higher public spending can cause inflation is that it can increase demand at a much faster rate than the supply of resources in an economy permits. If a government decides to employ millions of workers to build bridges to nowhere, then wages will increase without a commensurate rise in productivity. Over the long run, inflation will increase, and investors will start to question the nation’s solvency.

But the same problem can be caused by a long-term dearth of productive public sector investment. If a government spends decades cutting spending on public services, allowing infrastructure to degenerate without being replaced, and cutting spending on research and development, then the supply of productive resources in the economy dwindles. There are fewer productive, healthy, well-educated workers, fewer roads, bridges and ports to transport people and goods to where they are needed, and fewer new technologies for businesses to exploit.

The end result is that economic growth stalls and, in this brittle economic context, an external shock — like a pandemic or a war or an environmental catastrophe — can send inflation soaring. Investors then realize that a country is experiencing a long-term economic malaise due to a persistent dearth of investment and low productivity, making any investments in that country less desirable.

The worst possible scenario is some combination of the two — cuts to productive investment alongside increasingly wasteful public spending decisions that do not increase long-term productivity. This scenario is, as you might have guessed, not some far-off possibility. It describes our current economic reality. Successive governments have dished out billions to the wealthy and powerful while allowing the resources everyone else needs to survive to collapse.
An Alternative Economy

For many years now, we have been forced to choose between excessive and wasteful public spending on the one hand and austerity on the other hand. But there is an alternative.

Rather than wasting money on private sector consultants, unnecessary and polluting infrastructure projects, or just outright corruption, the government could prioritize investments that would actually expand the supply of available resources over the long run. What would such an approach look like?

It would mean fewer massive, glamorous infrastructure projects that made use of expensive private sector financing and advice, and many more smaller, more sustainable investments. Investments like improving existing public transport capacity in areas currently underserved by our woeful privatized bus and rail services; or expanding renewable energy across the country; or funding desperately needed research into the climate crisis, and the development of new technologies to tackle it.

Neoliberals point out that the problem with public investment is that the government often makes mistakes when it attempts to allocate resources. While the intention might be to boost economic capacity through sensible, sustainable investment, you end up with white elephants that make politicians look good.

This is an argument with which I sympathize. Politicians use their power to promote their own interests, which often leads to wasteful public spending decisions. But the solution to this problem is not to cut public spending and investment. The solution is to democratize it.

Workers, communities, and citizens know precisely where public funding is lacking, and have near-endless creative ideas as to how this money could be used. Allowing public sector workers and service users a say in how education and health spending was allocated would promote efficiency and reduce waste. Allowing local communities to come together and decide how to spend money in their local areas would improve outcomes as well as strengthen democracy. In fact, it already has. Just look at places like Porto Alegre in Brazil, or Reykjavik in Iceland, where participatory budgeting has been hailed as a huge success.

Big government is not, as some on the Left have often argued, the solution to all society’s problems. But neither, as some on the Right have often argued, is small government. The only way out of the economic mess in which the UK currently finds itself in is to hand power over the economy back to the people who make up that economy. The result would be the precise opposite scenario to that which has prevailed over the last forty years: less wasteful spending that benefits the rich and more productive spending that benefits everyone.