The United States and the Middle East: Blatant U.S. Hypocrisy

by Robert Fantina

 August 23, 2024
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It is said that you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. The United States government seems intent on disproving that last condition.

For months, U.S. spokespersons have been saying how they are working tirelessly to arrange a ceasefire to end Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. Some candidates and elected officials decry the slaughter of innocent men, women and children in Gaza. Vice-President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has said she will not be silent about the suffering of innocents in Gaza. And yet, these are members of the same government that is supplying the very weapons causing that suffering.

Lame-duck president Joe Biden, often referred to as ‘Genocide Joe’, has sent hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons to Israel since the beginning of this genocide. The recent slaughter of over 100 Palestinian men, women and children, sheltering in a school and praying in a mosque, was done with U.S.-made bombs. These bombs shred their victims, forcing survivors to try to find the remains of their loved ones from the scraps of skin and bones remaining.

If these illustrious officials truly wanted peace in the Middle East, and sincerely believed that genocide is wrong in all cases, this slaughter would have ended months ago. All it would have taken is notification to Israel’s Prime Murderer Benjamin Netanyahu that the money tap from the U.S. was being turned off immediately. Without that source of funds, the Zionist entity is helpless. It is incapable of defending itself without significant assistance from the U.S. and other countries, as demonstrated when Iran, with prior notification to Israel, bombed it in April of this year. Israeli intelligence is flawed, as demonstrated by the extent of the resistance event on October 7, and how the government of the Zionist regime was caught completely off-guard.  The government doesn’t have the support of its people, as shown by the massive demonstrations prior to October 7, opposing Netanyahu’s proposed changes to the judiciary, and by those afterwards, demanding a ceasefire so the hostages could be released.  It cannot live in peace with its neighbors; despite the ‘normalization’ with some Arab countries, the people in those countries continue to oppose any association with the racist Zionist entity.

And now we are being told, by straight-faced U.S. imperialist leaders and their spokespeople, that the ceasefire agreement is in jeopardy due to Hamas’ unwillingness to agree to it. We can all see how this will be marketed: the ‘terrorist’ Hamas militants do not want peace and are willing to allow the continued slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians, and to see them starved to death, simply due to their hatred of Jews.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In June, Genocide Joe proposed an agreement that he said Israel agreed to. Hamas then agreed to it, with the terms of how it would be implemented still to be determined. Not so fast, said Netanyahu. He apparently didn’t think Hamas would agree, so once they did, he had to change the terms. He is now demanding control of the Gaza-Egypt border, major restrictions on movement of Palestinians in Gaza, and continued military presence of Israel within Gaza’s borders. These, of course, are totally unreasonable, and are conditions no nation would agree to.

The Prime Murderer isn’t interested in such trivialities as human rights and international law, the same as his main sponsor in genocide, the United States.

Let us look at a few facts:

The Leahy law “… refers to two statutory provisions prohibiting the U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights (GVHR).” According to Human Rights Watch:

“The Israeli Government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip, which is a war crime.

“Israeli officials have made public statements expressing their aim to deprive civilians in Gaza of food, water, and fuel – statements reflected in Israeli forces’ military operations.”

In October, Aljazeera reported the following: According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, in times of armed conflict, there is an overall requirement for the “…protection of people who do not take part in any hostilities – be it children, patients or healthy adult men. A number of its articles directly address the importance of medical support.” Israel has bombed every hospital in the Gaza Strip.

Bombing hospitals, depriving people of medical care, food and water are only some of the shocking violations of the human rights of the Palestinians that Israel is committing. Yet the U.S. government is not only continuing to fund Israel with hundreds of millions of dollars of deadly weaponry, it is increasing the amount being sent. So the U.S. is violating its own laws.

The occupation of Palestine is illegal under international law. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has said that “… Israel has no right to sovereignty of the territories, is violating international laws against acquiring territory by force and is impeding Palestinians’ right to self-determination.” The ICJ further stated “… other nations were obliged not to ‘render aid or assistance in maintaining’ Israel’s presence in the territory.” The United States is in violation of this international law.

Vice-President Kamala Harris stated the following in July: ““What has happened in Gazaover the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time.” This either demonstrates her ignorance, or her desire to control the narrative, because she said nothing about people who have been displaced for the tenth, twentieth or thirtieth time. Countless thousands take shelter where they can for a day or so, before being forced to flee to another location.

Is there ever a time when U.S. hypocrisy isn’t front and center on the world stage? After Israel assassinated the chief Hamas/Palestinian negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, on July 31, in Iran, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made sure to issue a warning to Iran. In reference to a possible ceasefire, National Review reported the following on August 19: “’It’s also time to make sure that no one takes any steps that could derail this process,’ he added, seemingly referring to Iran. ‘And so we’re working to make sure that there is no escalation, that there are no provocations, that there are no actions that in any way move us away from getting this deal over the line, or for that matter, escalating the conflict to other places and to greater intensity.’”

Was not the assassination of Mr. Haniyeh a provocation? Why was Blinken ‘seemingly referring to Iran’, when he should have been demanding that Israel make no further provocation?

Let us summarize. The United States is working tirelessly to end a genocide that it supports in every way possible. It wants Palestine to give up its decades-long struggle for self-determination, so that Israel can further oppress the Palestinian people. It will wage war to assure that none of Palestine’s allies are able to assist the people suffering there.

There are, of course, some people, mostly only within U.S. borders, who belief the myth of the U.S. as a beacon of freedom, human rights and international law. Their numbers are dwindling, but the U.S.’s imperial leaders aren’t paying attention. U.S. hypocrisy, always a hallmark of U.S. foreign and domestic policy (a topic for another essay), can hardly be denied by anyone today. The evidence is there, on social media, some ‘mainstream’ news channels, and in the accounts of eye-witnesses to the unspeakable slaughter occurring in Gaza, and the increased oppression in the West Bank.

U.S. efforts to thwart the work of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice must be opposed and defeated by the global community. If the U.S. is allowed to succeed, one can only wonder where the next U.S.-protected genocide will occur. The list of possible victims is, unfortunately, quite long.

Robert Fantina’s latest book is Propaganda, Lies and False Flags: How the U.S. Justifies its Wars.

AFL-“CIA” Reckoning with U.S. Labor’s Imperialist Past

by Joe Allen

 August 23, 2024
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Image by Museums Victoria.

Blue Collar Empire will be released on September 24, 2024 by Verso.

Soon after Israel launched its genocidal war in Gaza with the full support of the U.S. government, opposition emerged to the Biden administration in a place that many professional political commentators found confounding, within U.S. trade unions. President Joe Biden regularly boasts, “I am the most pro-union president in American history.” So, it was something of a surprise to outright shock that many unions, including major industrial unions such as the United Auto Workers (UAW) to an array of smaller local unions and leadership bodies, called for a ceasefire in Gaza. The most notable exception to this trend has been the Teamsters led by Sean O’Brien.

Yet, at the same time, trade union opposition to Biden’s support for Israel has been frustratingly limited, never really threatening to disrupt what the late historian Mike Davis called the “barren marriage” of the U.S. labor movement and the Democratic Party. Resolutions and public statements by union leaders haven’t led to strike action in vital industries to stop the manufacture and distribution of weapons destined for Israel, despite it being one of the demands of the Palestinian trade union movement. Shawn Fain, the President of the UAW, a union that represents many defense contractors, for example, undermined the union’s call for a ceasefire by endorsing Biden for reelection, then Kamala Harris after Biden dropped out.

However, the echo emanating for a ceasefire from U.S. unions has spread far and wide, surprising many. This is a dramatic change from the past when U.S. unions were reliable, if not enthusiastic supporters of U.S foreign policy, especially when it came to Israel. Historian Jeff Schuhrke has played an important role in chronicling the burgeoning labor opposition to the U.S. support for Israel in Jacobin, and other publications. Jeff teaches labor studies at Empire State College. His new book Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of U.S. Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade examines on a much grander scale the American labor movement’s support for U.S. imperialism.

Jeff sets out his goal early on in Blue Collar Empire:

“The same twentieth-century American labor movement that brought a measure of economic security and personal dignity to millions of working people also participated in some of the most shameful and destructive episodes in the history of U.S. imperialism. For decades, trade unionists in the United States have struggled to make sense of this, reluctant to discuss or even think about it. But, with the U.S. labor movement now undergoing a youth-led renaissance, and with renewed superpower rivalries threatening billions of lives amid a host of other planetary powers, it is long past time for a thorough reckoning.”

Indeed.

Verso calls Jeff’s book the “Untold Story,” yet he is the first to admit that parts of this seedy story have been told before, “Union activists, journalists, and scholars first began documenting US labor’s Cold War intrigues in the late 1960.” In the decades that followed many books on the subject have published, Ronald Radosh wrote American Labor and United States Foreign Policy ; Paul Buhle’s Taking Care of Business: Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the Tragedy of American Labor; Kim Scipes’ The AFL CIO’s Secret War Against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity Or Sabotage? I would even include in this list Hugh Wilford’s The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America as well as, El Golpe: US Labor, the CIA, and the Coup at Ford in Mexico by Rob McKenzie and Patrick Dunne published in 2022.

Jeff argues that there was a narrowness to many of the earlier studies. He writes:

“Early studies and exposé characterized the AFL-CIO as being little more than a puppet of the US government. The spotlight was especially shone on labor’s shadowy ties to the CIA. Many assumed the spy agency was corrupting hapless union leaders, while many others mockingly called the labor federation the ‘AFL-CIA.’ More recent studies have demonstrated how the CIA was only the most notorious government entity that organized labor partnered with. In reality, the AFL-CIO became closely allied with almost the entire US foreign policy apparatus—not simply the CIA, but also the State Department, Agency for International Development, and the National Endowment for democracy.”

American labor leaders were partners in this international criminal operation, not dupes or paid-off lackeys. They were true believers in the anti-Communist crusade. What makes Jeff’s book unique is that he provides us with a century long history—with an emphasis on the post-WWII era—that chronicles the hand-in-glove workings of the AFL-CIO and various U.S. government, most importantly the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the covert and later overt ways that the U.S. unions operated abroad. It’s illuminating and shocking. Reckoning with this history and changing it is a challenge given that American trade unions continue to have a significant presence in countries around the globe.

I don’t want to recount the whole sordid story here. You should read the book. But, I think it worth saying that this alliance between the U.S. government and American trade unions would not have been possible without the crucial role played by ex-Communists, most notoriously by Jay Lovestone, the former leader of the U.S. Communist Party, ex-socialists like Walter or Roy Reuther of the UAW (who later became critics of the CIA connection), or the octogenarian leader of the Socialist Party, Norman Thomas, in the 1950s and 1960s. They provided the U.S. government with inside knowledge on the union movement, the left, international connections, and political cover for U.S. government operatives abroad.

There are two areas in Jeff’s book that I’m critical of. I think he looks back to the founding of the World Federation of Trade Unions in 1945 as a lost moment in international solidarity. “With the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), communist and noncommunist labor organizations attempted to build the kind of international that might have served as a powerful rebuke to the Cold War, but the AFL and the CIO sabotaged this vision.” While Jeff is correct that the AFL and CIO sabotaged the WFTU, the member unions from the former USSR and other “socialist” countries were state controlled trade unions, pursuing their own countries foreign policy interests, especially the USSR’s.

This leads to a second problem, which is a bigger issue for the left internationally. Jeff writes:

“If they are to be serious vehicles for strengthening and protecting the working class both at home and abroad in this era of overlapping crisis, today’s AFL-CIO and its affiliates must adopt the kind of principles labor internationalism that would inevitably bring them into conflict with U.S. foreign policy instead of reflexively serving it. But a labor movement that places class struggle and anti-imperialism ahead of deference to Washington’s international designs will not come into being unless workers, both within and outside the AFL-CIO, built it themselves.”

I wholeheartedly agree with Jeff, but how do we do this without the existence of the mass based revolutionary working class parties, the kind of parties spawned by the Russian Revolution of 1917 and had a short-lived existence during the early years of the Communist International? We have lived with the deadening legacy of Stalinism and Social Democracy for many decades, only to be followed by the collapse of both, along with the unraveling of the older industrial union movement across Europe and North America. These have been some of the most difficult decades for the class struggle and anti-imperialism in modern history. Rebuilding an socialist, anti-imperialist, working class movement is an international task.

The roots of the current opposition can be traced back in a herky-jerky manner to opposition to Bush’s invasion of Iraq, and even further back to Reagan’s wars in Central America in the 1980s and the closing years of the Vietnam War. War weariness is widespread in the United States today, a product of two decades of the “Forever Wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with an expanding and visible social crisis at home. Issues I have written about and participated in. Much work needs to be done. The world is a much more dangerous place now than just a few years ago. Jeff’s book is an important contribution to how we got here and how we can move forward.

JOE ALLEN is the author of The Package King: A Rank and File History of United Parcel Service.

 

UN experts challenge Vietnam’s treatment of Montagnard minority

Rapporteurs call for a response to concerns following the trial of 100 people in connection with a 2023 attack.

By RFA Vietnamese
2024.08.23

The trial of about 100 Montagnards in Dak Lak on Jan. 16, 2024.STR/Vietnam News Agency/AFP

United Nations experts are calling on Vietnam to answer their concerns over the trial of 100 Montagnards in January, in connection with a 2023 attack on government offices in which nine people were killed.

The special rapporteurs wrote to the government on June 14, and released the letter after a customary 60 days.

They said there were indications the Jan. 20 trial in Dak Lak did not meet fair trial standards under international human rights law.

They addressed allegations of illegal arrest and detention in connection with the case, torture and ill-treatment of Montagnard suspects, unexplained deaths in custody, allegations of terrorism, restrictions on freedom of expression and media participation, discrimination against indigenous peoples and repression of Montagnards’ religion and beliefs.

Montagnard is a term coined by French colonialists to describe a grouping of about 30 ethnic minorities in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. Since 1975, after the Vietnam War, the government has implemented a migration policy, bringing more than three million people to the region. 

According to government statistics in 2019, indigenous Montagnards accounted for 39% of Dak Lak province’s total population of 5.8 million.

The January trial followed attacks on June 11, 2023 when dozens of Montagnards, divided into two groups, attacked the headquarters of the People’s Committee and the police of Ea Tieu and Ea Ktur communes in Dak Lak province. Four police officers, two commune officials, and three civilians died in the attacks.

The trial was attended by 94 defendants with19 lawyers, while six defendants were tried in absentia. U.N. experts noted that the six had no legal representation in court.

At the end of the trial, 10 people were sentenced to life in prison on charges of terrorism against the government.

Forty-three people received prison sentences ranging from six to 20 years on terrorism charges. A further 45, including the six tried in absentia, received prison sentences ranging from three-and-a-half to 11 years on terrorism charges. Two others were sentenced to prison terms ranging from nine months to two years on charges of concealing criminals and helping others illegally enter and exit Vietnam.

The rapporteurs said most coverage by Vietnamese media relied on information provided by the Ministry of Public Security under the direction of the Central Propaganda Department, leading to censorship and self-censorship.

“Senior Vietnamese government officials made highly prejudicial pretrial public comments about the defendants’ perceived responsibility for terrorist crimes, and state-controlled media (including television) both reported on the defendants as ‘terrorists’ and published images of some of the recently captured defendants,” the experts said in their letter.

The rapporteurs also questioned the use of a “mobile court” for the Dak Lak trial.

“Vietnamese law has never sought to regulate the use of mobile court procedures, such that they lack an adequate legal basis and are necessarily arbitrary in operation,” they said, noting that the court didn’t follow procedures prescribed by international law, which requires similar cases to be treated the same way.

“An apparent purpose of ‘mobile trials’ is to ‘educate’ the public about the law,” the rapporteurs said. 

“However, we are concerned that the proceedings did not perform a legitimate educative function but resulted in publicly embarrassing, shaming, humiliating or degrading the defendants and their families before other members of their community.”

On Aug. 15, Vietnam’s Permanent Mission to the U.N. requested a two-month extension to respond to the questions in the letter. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not answer RFA’s calls seeking comment.

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‘Ethnic divisions’

The U.N. experts said they were also concerned the defendants didn’t have adequate access to lawyers during their long detention and when the trial took place, only 19 lawyers were assigned to 100 defendants who didn’t have the right to choose their own lawyers.

They also said there were indications that some arrests weren’t based on reasonable grounds backed with evidence. 

“We are concerned that the heavy security response after the 11 June 2023 attacks, including the state’s co-option of civilian vigilantes (of majority Kinh ethnicity), may have resulted in the arrest of innocent people,” they said. 

“These risks were accentuated by ethnic divisions, with Montagnards being publicly blamed by state officials and media, encouraging potential profiling and arrests on the basis of minority ethnic status. We note that arrests of detention on discriminatory grounds are arbitrary and unlawful.”

Vietnam accused all those involved of having links with U.S. and Thai-based Montagnard organizations who they say helped plan the 2023 attack..

On March 6, 2024, the Ministry of Public Security designated the group Montagnards Stand for Justice, or MSFJ, a terrorist organization. It was established in Thailand in 2019 with a representative in the U.S. 

Vietnamese authorities said the group operates by spreading propaganda to recruit members, providing training and funding attacks with the aim of establishing an autonomous state in the Central Highlands.

The government said MSFJ organized the 2023 attack with the aim of establishing Montagnard state.

MSFJ rejected the charges saying they are aimed at preventing the group from documenting rights abuses against Montagnards.

Founding member Y Quynh Bdap, who has been living in Thailand since 2018, is on remand in Bangkok, facing possible extradition at Vietnam’s request, to serve a 10-year sentence for “terrorism” in connection with the attack. Vietnam sent public security officers to attend his trial.

The rapporteurs said they were worried for the safety of Montagnards in Thailand given reports of illegal abductions by Vietnamese security agencies of activists such as blogger Truong Duy Nhat and freelance journalist Duong Van Thai.

They said international human rights law prohibits forcing people back to places when there are grounds for believing they would be at risk of “irreparable harm on account of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, or other serious human rights violations.”

They concluded by noting signs of continued discrimination against Montagnards in the Central Highlands.

“The excessive response to the 11 June 2023 attack, the unfair mass trial of January 2024, the listing MSFJ as terrorist in March 2024, and the alleged intimidation of Vietnamese refugees in Thailand in March 2024 seem to be part of a larger and intensifying pattern of discriminatory and repressive surveillance, security controls, harassment and intimidation against the Montagnard indigenous minority peoples.”

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.