Meeting the 'OneCure': 10,000 Ton Tankers Take BC

Meeting the 'OneCure'

by Ingmar Lee - 10,000 Ton Tanker

October 29, 2018

Today I set out to meet the American ATB (articulated tug/barge) petroleum tanker, "OneCure."

I intercepted the tanker as it passed abeam of Gale Pass, about I mile north of the wreck site of the American ATB tanker, " Nathan E Stewart," which sank there about 2 years ago.

To this day, in the aftermath of the NES wreck, the waters of Seaforth Channel continue to be polluted and are off-limits to seafood harvesting.

This is the second incursion into Seaforth Channel, Return Passage, Johnson Channel and Fitzhugh Channel by the ATB "OneCure" in the last 2 months, and they are the first ATB passages through these waters since the NES wreck.

Today, the "OneCure" was pushing the "Zidell Marine 277," -which is the same 10,000 deadweight-ton capacity petroleum barge which broke apart from the ATB tanker, "Jake Shearer," exactly one year ago, and which then drifted, fully loaded and out of control to within a stones throw of the Goose Islands group, also near here.

I called the the American ATB tanker, "OneCure" 3 times on Channel 16, after which I was informed by Prince Rupert Coast Guard radio that the "OneCure" only monitors Channel 11...

The "OneCure" is equipped with the very same PROVEN FAILED "Articouple" locking pins which failed so dramatically in its identical twin sistership ATB "Jake Shearer."

The only reason that the "OneCure" has begun seeking shelter in the Inside Passages of the BC Central Coast, is because these rickety vessels simply cannot handle even rather ordinary Hecate Strait sea conditions, such as the Gale that is currently blowing outside this evening.

There has never been any Transport Canada investigation, or any other investigation for that matter, on why, and how those "Articouple" locking pins failed in the "Jake Shearer." For the powers that be, a maritime oil disaster is only a legitimate problem if it actually crashes and leaks. No crash, no leak? Business as usual.

Currently, the "OneCure" has made a "HailMary" dash across Cape Caution, -because there's no sheltered alternative- and is now steaming through Queen Charlotte Sound.

Once again, an American ATB tanker is threatening the entire BC Coast. Just as they do, on average, once every two weeks, Once again, nothing was learned and once again, nothing has changed.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Yves Engler, Michael Parenti*, Janine Bandcroft November 1, 2018

This Week on GR

by C. L. Cook - Gorilla-Radio.com

November 1, 2018

Last week saw yet another far right government ascend the World stage. Whether neo, crypto, or proto fascist, Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro represents a further ebbing of Latin America's so-called Pink Tide movement.

It's a trend that's seen political reversals already in Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, and Honduras, and now threatens the Sandinista and Bolivarian revolutions of Nicaragua and Venezuela.

The bitter fruits of this social change can be seen on the faces of the thousands currently fleeing Central America, desperate to escape the counter-revolution regimes put in place, ironically enough, through the agency of El Norte countries like ours, Canada.

Listen. Hear.

Yves Engler is a Montréal-based activist, essayist, and author. His articles appear at Dissident Voice, The Palestine Chronicle, Rabble.ca, and Pacific Free Press among other places. The latest of his ten books, 'Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada' is freshly off the presses and questions, Why, despite all evidence to the contrary, Canadians still suffer under the delusion that they and their nation’s government are "a benevolent force in the world"?

Yves will be at UVic tonight at 7pm in the Hickman Building for a presentation on, and book launch of 'Left, Right, Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada'.

Yves Engler in the first half.

And; from GR's wayback files, Michael Parenti from February 2003:

All that’s missing from media reports of the long-rumoured Battle of Civilizations, (coming to a TV screen near you) is Reason. Rarely mentioned, and presumably soon to be forgotten, is any information providing a context for the conflict in the middle east. Amid the rabid rhetoric emanating from the Bush administration and its media organs, you may be forgiven your struggle to make sense of it all. Michael Parenti is one of America’s most astute, and persistent critics of U.S. domestic and foreign policy. ‘Democracy for the Few’, ‘Against Empire’, and ‘History as Mystery’, are just a few of his many books.

Michael Parenti provides a bit of context for the coming storm and to discuss his newest book, ‘The Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond’ in the second half.

And; Victoria-based activist and CFUV Radio broadcaster at-large, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin with some of the good things to do in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Yves Engler and marching to the Imperial beat.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca.  He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/

Fly in the Social Media Ointment: NeoCon Insider Spills, Facebook Censorship "Just the Beginning"

Facebook Censorship of Alternative Media "Just the Beginning," Says Top NeoCon Insider

by Max Blumenthal and Jeb Sprague  - GrayZone Project

October 22, 2018

At a Berlin security conference, hardline neocon Jamie Fly appeared to claim some credit for the recent coordinated purge of alternative media. 

This October, Facebook and Twitter deleted the accounts of hundreds of users, including many alternative media outlets maintained by American users.

Among those wiped out in the coordinated purge were popular sites that scrutinized police brutality and U.S. interventionism, like The Free Thought Project, Anti-Media, and Cop Block, along with the pages of journalists like Rachel Blevins.

Jamie Fly, a senior fellow and director of the
Asia program at the influential think tank the
German Marshall Fund

Facebook claimed that these pages had “broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior.” However, sites like The Free Thought Project were verified by Facebook and widely recognized as legitimate sources of news and opinion. John Vibes, an independent reporter who contributed to Free Thought, accused Facebook of “favoring mainstream sources and silencing alternative voices.”

In comments published here for the first time, a neoconservative Washington insider has apparently claimed a degree of credit for the recent purge — and promised more takedowns in the near future.

“Russia, China, and other foreign states take advantage of our open political system,” remarked Jamie Fly, a senior fellow and director of the Asia program at the influential think tank the German Marshall Fund, which is funded by the U.S. government and NATO.

“They can invent stories that get repeated and spread through different sites. So we are just starting to push back. Just this last week Facebook began starting to take down sites. So this is just the beginning.”

Fly went on to complain that “all you need is an email” to set up a Facebook or Twitter account, lamenting the sites’ accessibility to members of the general public. He predicted a long struggle on a global scale to fix the situation, and pointed out that to do so would require constant vigilance.

Fly made these stunning comments to Jeb Sprague, who is a visiting faculty member in sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara and co-author of this article. The two spoke during a lunch break at a conference on Asian security organized by the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin, Germany.

In the tweet below, Fly is the third person from the left who appears seated at the table.

 Garima Mohan
@GarimaMo

A rare opportunity to discuss Asian security in Berlin, 

with an excellent group of experts from the region @SWPBerlin

The remarks by Fly — “we are just starting to push back” — seemed to confirm the worst fears of the alternative online media community. If he was to be believed, the latest purge was motivated by politics, not spam prevention, and was driven by powerful interests hostile to dissident views, particularly where American state violence is concerned.

Jamie Fly, rise of a neocon cadre

Jamie Fly is an influential foreign policy hardliner who has spent the last year lobbying for the censorship of “fringe views” on social media. Over the years, he has advocated for a military assault on Iran, a regime change war on Syria, and hiking military spending to unprecedented levels. He is the embodiment of a neoconservative cadre.

Like so many second-generation neocons, Fly entered government by burrowing into mid-level positions in George W. Bush’s National Security Council and Department of Defense.

In 2009, he was appointed director of the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a rebranded version of Bill Kristol’s Project for a New American Century, or PNAC. The latter outfit was an umbrella group of neoconservative activists that first made the case for an invasion of Iraq as part of a wider project of regime change in countries that resisted Washington’s sphere of influence.

By 2011, Fly was advancing the next phase in PNAC’s blueprint by clamoring for military strikes on Iran. “More diplomacy is not an adequate response,” he argued. A year later, Fly urged the US to “expand its list of targets beyond the [Iranian] nuclear program to key command and control elements of the Republican Guard and the intelligence ministry, and facilities associated with other key government officials.”

Fly soon found his way into the senate office of Marco Rubio, a neoconservative pet project, assuming a role as his top foreign policy advisor. Amongst other interventionist initiatives, Rubio has taken the lead in promoting harsh economic sanctions targeting Venezuela, even advocating for a U.S. military assault on the country. When Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign floundered amid a mass revolt of the Republican Party’s middle American base against the party establishment, Fly was forced to cast about for new opportunities.

He found them in the paranoid atmosphere of Russiagate that formed soon after Donald Trump’s shock election victory.

PropOrNot sparks the alternative media panic

A journalistic insider’s account of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Shattered, revealed that “in the days after the election, Hillary declined to take responsibility for her own loss.” Her top advisers were summoned the following day, according to the book, “to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up … Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”

Less than three weeks after Clinton’s defeat, the Washington Post’s Craig Timberg published a dubiously sourced report headlined, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news.'” The article hyped up a McCarthyite effort by a shadowy, anonymously run organization called PropOrNot to blacklist some 200 American media outlets as Russian “online propaganda.”

The alternative media outfits on the PropOrNot blacklist included some of those recently purged by Facebook and Twitter, such as The Free Thought Project and Anti-Media.

Among the criteria PropOrNot identified as signs of Russian propaganda were “Support for policies like Brexit, and the breakup of the EU and Eurozone” and “Opposition to Ukrainian resistance to Russia and Syrian resistance to Assad.” PropOrNot called for “formal investigations by the U.S. government” into the outlets it had blacklisted.

According to Craig Timberg, the Washington Post correspondent who uncritically promoted the media suppression initiative, Propornot was established by “a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds.” Timberg quoted a figure associated with the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, Andrew Weisburd, and cited a report he wrote with his colleague, Clint Watts, on Russian meddling.

Timberg’s piece on PropOrNot was promoted widely by former top Clinton staffers and celebrated by ex-Obama White House aide Dan Pfeiffer as “the biggest story in the world.” But after a wave of stinging criticism, including in the pages of the New Yorker, the article was amended with an editor’s note stating,

“The [Washington] Post… does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet.”

PropOrNot had been seemingly exposed as a McCarthyite sham, but the concept behind it — exposing online American media outlets as vehicles for Kremlin “active measures” — continued to flourish.

The birth of the Russian bot tracker — with U.S. government money

By August, a new, and seemingly related initiative appeared out of the blue, this time with backing from a bipartisan coalition of Democratic foreign policy hands and neocon Never Trumpers in Washington. Called the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), the outfit aimed to expose how supposed Russian Twitter bots were infecting American political discourse with divisive narratives. It featured a daily “Hamilton 68” online dashboard that highlighted the supposed bot activity with easily digestible charts. Conveniently, the site avoided naming any of the digital Kremlin influence accounts it claimed to be tracking.

The initiative was immediately endorsed by John Podesta, the founder of the Democratic Party think tank the Center for American Progress, and former chief of staff of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Julia Ioffe, the Atlantic’s chief Russiagate correspondent, promoted the bot tracker as “a very cool tool.”

Unlike PropOrNot, the ASD was sponsored by one of the most respected think tanks in Washington, the German Marshall Fund, which had been founded in 1972 to nurture the special relationship between the US and what was then West Germany.

The German Marshall Fund is substantially funded by Western governments, and largely reflects their foreign-policy interests. Its top two financial sponsors, at more than $1 million per year each, are the U.S. government’s soft-power arm the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the German Foreign Office (known in German as the Auswärtiges Amt). The U.S. State Department also provides more than half a million dollars per year, as do the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and the foreign affairs ministries of Sweden and Norway. It likewise receives at least a quarter of a million dollars per year from NATO.

US government and NATO are top donors to the German Marshall Fund

Though the German Marshall Fund did not name the donors that specifically sponsored its Alliance for Securing Democracy initiative, it hosts a who’s who of bipartisan national-security hardliners on the ASD’s advisory council, providing the endeavor with the patina of credibility. They range from neocon movement icon Bill Kristol to former Clinton foreign policy advisor Jake Sullivan and ex-CIA director Michael Morell.

Jamie Fly, a German Marshall Fund fellow and Asia specialist, emerged as one of the most prolific promoters of the new Russian bot tracker in the media. Together with Laura Rosenberger, a former foreign policy aide to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, Fly appeared in a series of interviews and co-authored several op-eds emphasizing the need for a massive social media crackdown.

During a March 2018 interview on C-Span, Fly complained that “Russian accounts” were “trying to promote certain messages, amplify certain content, raise fringe views, pit Americans against each other, and we need to deal with this ongoing problem and find ways through the government, through tech companies, through broader society to tackle this issue.”

Yet few of the sites on PropOrNot’s blacklist, and none of the alternative sites that were erased in the recent Facebook purge that Fly and his colleagues take apparent credit for, were Russian accounts. Perhaps the only infraction they could have been accused of was publishing views that Fly and his cohorts saw as “fringe.”

What’s more, the ASD has been forced to admit that the mass of Twitter accounts it initially identified as “Russian bots” were not necessarily bots — and may not have been Russian either.

“I’m not convinced on this bot thing”

A November 2017 investigation by Max Blumenthal, a co-author of this article, found that the ASD’s Hamilton 68 dashboard was the creation of “a collection of cranks, counterterror retreads, online harassers and paranoiacs operating with support from some of the most prominent figures operating within the American national security apparatus.”

These figures included the same George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security fellows — Andrew Weisburd and Clint Watts — that were cited as experts in the Washington Post’s article promoting PropOrNot.

Weisburd, who has been described as one of the brains behind the Hamilton 68 dashboard, once maintained a one-man, anti-Palestinian web monitoring initiative that specialized in doxxing left-wing activists, Muslims and anyone he considered “anti-American.” More recently, he has taken to Twitter to spout off murderous and homophobic fantasies about Glenn Greenwald, the editor of the Intercept — a publication the ASD flagged without explanation as a vehicle for Russian influence operations.

Watts, for his part, has testified before Congress on several occasions to call on the government to “quell information rebellions” with censorious measures including “nutritional labels” for online media. He has received fawning publicity from corporate media and been rewarded with a contributor role for NBC on the basis of his supposed expertise in ferreting out Russian disinformation.

 Clint Watts has urged Congress to “quell information rebellions”

However, under questioning during a public event by Grayzone contributor Ilias Stathatos, Watts admitted that substantial parts of his testimony were false, and refused to provide evidence to support some of his most colorful claims about malicious Russian bot activity.

In a separate interview with Buzzfeed, Watts appeared to completely disown the Hamilton 68 bot tracker as a legitimate tool. “I’m not convinced on this bot thing,” Watts confessed. He even called the narrative that he helped manufacture “overdone,” and admitted that the accounts Hamilton 68 tracked were not necessarily directed by Russian intelligence actors.

“We don’t even think they’re all commanded in Russia — at all. We think some of them are legitimately passionate people that are just really into promoting Russia,” Watts conceded.

But these stunning admissions did little to slow the momentum of the coming purge.

Enter the Atlantic Council

In his conversation with Sprague, the German Marshall Fund’s Fly stated that he was working with the Atlantic Council in the campaign to purge alternative media from social media platforms like Facebook.

The Atlantic Council is another Washington-based think tank that serves as a gathering point for neoconservatives and liberal interventionists pushing military aggression around the globe. It is funded by NATO and repressive, US-allied governments including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Turkey, as well as by Ukrainian oligarchs like Victor Pynchuk.

This May, Facebook announced a partnership with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) to “identify, expose, and explain disinformation during elections around the world.”

The Atlantic Council’s DFRLab is notorious for its zealous conflation of legitimate online dissent with illicit Russian activity, embracing the same tactics as PropOrNot and the ASD.

Ben Nimmo, a DFRLab fellow who has built his reputation on flushing out online Kremlin influence networks, embarked on an embarrassing witch hunt this year that saw him misidentify several living, breathing individuals as Russian bots or Kremlin “influence accounts.” Nimmo’s victims included Mariam Susli, a well-known Syrian-Australian social media personality, the famed Ukrainian concert pianist Valentina Lisitsa, and a British pensioner named Ian Shilling.

In an interview with Sky News, Shilling delivered a memorable tirade against his accusers.

“I have no Kremlin contacts whatsoever; I do not know any Russians, I have no contact with the Russian government or anything to do with them,” he exclaimed.

“I am an ordinary British citizen who happens to do research on the current neocon wars which are going on in Syria at this very moment.”

With the latest Facebook and Twitter purges, ordinary citizens like Shilling are being targeted in the open, and without apology. The mass deletions of alternative media accounts illustrate how national security hardliners from the German Marshall Fund and Atlantic Council (and whoever was behind PropOrNot) have instrumentalized the manufactured panic around Russian interference to generate public support for a wider campaign of media censorship.

In his conversation in Berlin with Sprague, Fly noted with apparent approval that, “Trump is now pointing to Chinese interference in the 2018 election.” As the mantra of foreign interference expands to a new adversarial power, the clampdown on voices of dissent in online media is almost certain to intensify.

As Fly promised, “This is just the beginning.”

Jeb Sprague is a visiting faculty member at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of “Globalizing the Caribbean: Political economy, social change, and the transnational capitalist class” (Temple University Press, 2019), “Paramilitarism and the assault on democracy in Haiti” (Monthly Review Press, 2012), and is the editor of “Globalization and transnational capitalism in Asia and Oceania” (Routledge, 2016). He is a co-founder of the Network for the Critical Studies of Global Capitalism.

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, The Fifty One Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza, and The Management of Savagery, which will be published later this year by Verso. He has also produced numerous print articles for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie and the forthcoming Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded the Grayzone Project in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

The Grayzone relies on readers like you. Become a Patron here and help us produce more original investigative journalism like this.

China "Steps Up" Preparation for War

Chinese president tells military to prepare for war

by Peter Symonds - WSWS

30 October 2018

In another sign of rapidly rising US-China tensions and the danger of conflict, President Xi Jinping has told his country’s military to prepare for war. His speech last Thursday to the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Southern Theatre Command was a response to the Trump administration’s aggressive actions not just in intensifying trade war, but overtly readying for military conflict with both China and Russia.

Xi, who is also the Chinese military commander-in-chief, stressed the need for military forces that can “fight and win wars” and told the command to “concentrate [on] preparations for fighting a war.”
US Carrier Group, Pacific
Photo: DoD

Xi declared:

“We have to step up combat readiness exercises, joint exercises and confrontational exercises to enhance servicemen’s capabilities and preparation for war.”

“You’re constantly working at the front line, and playing key roles in protecting national territorial sovereignty and maritime interests,” Xi declared. The command had a “heavy military responsibility” to “take all complex situations into consideration and make emergency plans accordingly,” he said.

The PLA’s Southern Theatre Command is responsible for the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait—two dangerous flashpoints for war. Under the Trump administration, the Pentagon already has conducted more provocative Freedom of Navigation operations in the South China Sea—eight in all—than under President Barack Obama.

The latest US provocation, earlier this month, resulted in a close encounter between a Chinese warship and the USS Decatur, which deliberately challenged Chinese maritime claims by sailing within the 12-nautical mile limit of Chinese-controlled islets in the Spratly Islands. Needless to say, if Chinese warships conducted such operations off the US coastline in the vicinity of sensitive military bases, that would provoke an outcry in Washington and a clamour for retaliation.

The US is also sending an increasing number of warships through the narrow Taiwan Strait that separates China from Taiwan, which Beijing has long claimed at its territory. The Trump administration is deliberately inflaming tensions over Taiwan by strengthening military ties with Taipei.

Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe declared last week that Taiwan “touches upon China’s core interests.” He bluntly warned:

“On this issue, it is extremely dangerous to repeatedly challenge China’s bottom line. If someone tries to separate out Taiwan, China’s military will take the necessary actions at any cost.”

Yet that is exactly what the Trump administration is doing. Earlier this month, CNN reported that the US Navy was preparing for “a major show of force” in November as a warning to China. The draft proposal recommended a concentrated series of operations over a week involving the dispatch of US warships and warplanes near Chinese territorial waters in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.

Such plans are part of far broader US preparations for war with China, which along with Russia, the Pentagon branded at the beginning of the year as “a revisionist power” and strategic competitor. In a bellicose speech earlier this month, US Vice President Mike Pence signalled a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s confrontation with China, which has already led to a worsening trade war.

The Trump administration has also taken two major military steps this month that certainly would have sounded alarm bells in Beijing.

A day after Pence’s speech, the Pentagon released a report that can be interpreted only as the economic preparation for total war. It urged an end to US dependence on imports of strategic materials and items, particularly from rivals such as China, and the establishment of “a solid defence industrial base and resilient supply chains” in order to sustain a protracted military conflict.

The second move—Trump’s decision to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty—is even more inflammatory. The treaty signed between the US and the former Soviet Union in 1987 formally prohibited the development of short- and medium-range nuclear missiles. By pulling out of the agreement, Donald Trump signalled his intention to massively expand the US nuclear arsenal directed not only against Russia, but above all, at ringing China with nuclear weapons based in Asia.

The growing danger of a nuclear conflict between the US and China was the subject of an article in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs entitled “Beijing’s nuclear option: Why a US-Chinese war could spiral out of control.” Analyst Caitlin Talmadge concluded that any US conventional conflict would necessarily threaten China’s relatively small nuclear arsenal.

If that were the case, the Chinese military would be confronted with the choice of using its nuclear weapons or losing its ability to retaliate against a US nuclear attack. Talmadge dismissed the Pentagon’s routine assurances that there was no likelihood of a nuclear war between the US and China.

“If deployed against China, the Pentagon’s preferred style of conventional war [to knock out an enemy’s military assets] would be a recipe for nuclear escalation,” he warned.

There is nothing progressive about the response of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to the threat of US aggression. The CCP regime represents the interests of the tiny layer of super-rich oligarchs who have amassed enormous wealth though the processes of capitalist restoration that began in 1978. As such, Beijing is organically incapable of making any appeal to the working class in China and internationally to mount a unified class offensive against capitalism and its outmoded nation-state system. Instead, Xi has sought to appease US imperialism, offering concessions, while at the same time accelerating China’s own military build-up—a recipe for war.

The US drive to war against China, initiated under Obama and accelerated under Trump, is a product of the deepening crisis of global capitalism, centred in the United States. In a desperate attempt to counteract its own historic decline, US imperialism regards China as the chief current threat to its world hegemony and will stop at nothing to subordinate China to its economic and strategic interests.

The rising danger of nuclear war must be answered through the building of a unified anti-war movement of the working class in China, the United States and internationally based on a socialist perspective to put an end to the capitalist system that threatens to plunge humanity into barbarism.

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Just Feelin' Nostalgic

War Pimp Renaissance

by Lard

October 30, 2018

Who Spawned Bolsonaro?

Brazil, Fascism and the Left Wing of Neoliberalism 

by Rob Urie - CounterPunch

October 29, 2018 

With Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral victory in Sunday’s runoff election for president of Brazil, a global resurgence of the radical right is indisputable. Mr. Bolsonaro is a particularly ugly representative of this movement, both politically repressive and culturally intolerant.

The question being asked in the bourgeois press is: what psychological malady is taking hold that could persuade voters to elect such a person?

Photo: Agência Brasil Fotografias | CC BY 2.0 


The framing poses the resurgence as inexplicable, as the result of the fundamental flaw of democracy: the voters. A litany of failures is redistributed downward.

Because Mr. Bolsonaro is politically repressive and culturally intolerant, the electorate must want political repression and cultural intolerance. Because Mr. Bolsonaro is a gender bully and homophobic, voters must be gender bullies and homophobic.

Missing from explanations of the rise of Mr. Bolsonaro is that for the last decade Brazil has experienced the worst economic recession in the country’s history (graph below). Fourteen million formerly employed, working age Brazilians are now unemployed. As was true in the U.S. and peripheral Europe from 2008 forward, the liberal response has been austerity as the Brazilian ruling class was made richer and more politically powerful.

Since 2014, Brazil’s public debt/GDP ratio has climbed from 20% to 75% proclaims a worried IMF. That some fair portion of that climb came from falling GDP due to economic austerity mandated by the IMF and Wall Street is left unmentioned. A decade of austerity got liberal President Dilma Rousseff removed from office in 2016 in what can only be called a Wall Street putsch. Perhaps Bolsonaro will tell Wall Street where to stick its loans (not). 

Graph: Brazil entered recession in 2008 along with much of the rest 

of the world in the global financial crisis. It re-entered recession in 2012 

in what turned into the worst economic downturn in the country’s history. 

The liberal response, sponsored by Wall Street and the IMF, was a decade of austerity. 

Source: St. Louis Federal Reserve.

Back in the U.S., everyone knows that the liberalization of finance and trade in the 1990s was the result of political calculations. That this liberalization was/is bipartisan suggests that maybe the political calculations served certain economic interests. Never mind that these interests were given what they asked for and crashed the economy with it. If economic problems result from political calculations, the solution is political— elect better leaders. If they are driven by economic interests, the solution is to change the way that economic relationships are organized.

Between 1928 and 1932 German industrial production fell by 58%. By 1933, six million formerly employed German workers were begging in the streets and digging through garbage looking for items to sell. The liberal (Socialist Party) response was half-measures and austerity. Within the liberal frame, the Depression was a political problem to be addressed in the realm of the political. Centrist accommodation defined the existing realm. Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the pit of the Great Depression.

In Brazil in the early-mid 2000s, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula, implemented a Left program that pulled twenty million Brazilians out of poverty. The Brazilian economy briefly recovered after Wall Street crashed it in 2008 before Brazilian public debt was used to force the implementation of austerity. Dilma Rousseff capitulated and Brazil re-entered recession. Rousseff was removed from power in 2016. Hemmed in by Wall Street and IMF mandated austerity, any liberal government that might be elected would meet the same fate as Rousseff.

In Italy in the 1920s, repayment of war debts from WWI led to austerity and recession that preceded the rise of fascist leader Benito Mussolini. In Germany, payment of war reparations and repayment of industrial loans limited the ability of the Weimar government to respond to the Great Depression. Liberal governments that facilitated the financialization of industrial economies in the 1920s were left to serve as debt collectors in the capitalist crisis that followed.

Since 2008, the fiscal structure of the EU (European Union) combined with wildly unbalanced trade relationships led to a decade of austerity, recession and depression for the European periphery. In the U.S., by 2009 Wall Street was pushing austerity and cuts to Social Security and Medicare as necessary to fiscal stability. The consequences of four decades of financialized neoliberal trade policies were by no means equally shared. Internal and external class relations were made evident through narrowly distributed booms followed by widely distributed busts.

With the presumed shared goal of ending the threat of fascism:

• The ideological premises behind the logic that claims fascists as the explanation of fascism emerge from liberalism. The term here is meant as description. Liberalism proceeds from specific ontological assumptions. Within this temporal frame, a bit of social logic: If fascists already existed, why didn’t fascism? The question of whether to fight fascists or fascism depends on the answer.

The essentialist view is that characteristics intrinsic to fascists make them fascists. This is the basis of scientific racism. And it underlies fascist race theory. The theory of a strongman who exploits people who have a predisposition towards fascism is essentialist as well if receptivity is intrinsic, e.g. due to psychology, genetics, etc.

Liberal-Left commentary in recent years has tended toward the essentialist view— that fascists are born or otherwise predisposed toward fascism. Unconsidered is that non-fascists are equally determined in this frame. If ‘deplorables’ were born that way, four decades of neoliberalism is absolved.

The problem of analogy, the question of what fascism is and how European fascism of the twentieth century bears relation to the present, can’t be answered in the liberal frame. The rise and fall of a global radical right have been episodic. It has tied in history to the development of global capitalism in a center-and-periphery model of asymmetrical economic power. Finance from the center facilitates economic expansion until financial crisis interrupts the process. Peripheral governments are left to manage debt repayment with collapsed economies.

Globally, debt has forced policy convergence between political parties of differing ideologies. European center-left parties have pushed austerity even when ideology would suggest the opposite. In 2015, self-identified Marxists in Greece’s SYRIZA party capitulated to the austerity and privatization demands from EU creditors led by Germany. Even Lenin negotiated with Wall Street creditors (on behalf of Russia) in the months after the October Revolution. In a political frame, the solution from below is to elect leaders and parties who will act on their rhetoric.

The practical problem with doing this is the power of creditors. Debtors that repudiate their debts are closed out of capital markets. The power to create money that is accepted in payment is a privilege of the center countries that also happen to be creditors. Capitalist expansion creates interdependencies that produce immediate, deep shortages if debts aren’t serviced. Debt is a weapon whose proceeds can be delivered to one group and the obligation to repay it to another. The U.S. position was expressed when the IMF knowingly made unpayable loans to Ukraine to support a U.S. sponsored coup there in 2015.

Fascist racialization has analog in existing capitalist class relations. Immigration status, race and gender define a social taxonomy of economic exploitation. Race was invented decades into the Anglo-American manifestation of slavery to naturalize exploitation of Blacks. Gender difference represents the evolution of unpaid to paid labor for women in the capitalist West. Claiming these as causing exploitation gets the temporal sequence wrong. These were / are exploitable classes before explanations of their special status were created.

This isn’t to suggest that capitalist class relations form a complete explanation of fascist racialization. But the ontological premise that ‘freezes,’ and thereby reifies racialization, is fundamental to capitalism. This relates to the point argued below that the educated German bourgeois, in the form of the Nazi scientists and engineers brought to the U.S. following WWII, found Nazi racialization plausible through what has long been put forward as an antithetical mode of understanding. Put differently, it wasn’t just the rabble that found grotesque racial caricatures plausible. The question is why?

Propaganda was developed and refined by Edward Bernays in the 1910s to help the Wilson administration sell WWI to a skeptical public. It has been used by the American government and in capitalist advertising since that time. The idea was to integrate psychology with words and images to get people to act according to the desires and wishes of those putting it forward.

The operational frame of propaganda is instrumental: to use people to achieve ends they had no part in conceiving. The political perspective is dictatorial, benevolent or otherwise. Propaganda has been used by the American government ever since. Similar methods were used by the Italian and German fascists in their to rise to power.

Since WWI, commercial propaganda has become ubiquitous in the U.S. Advertising firms hire psychologists to craft advertising campaigns with no regard for the concern that psychological coercion removes free choice from capitalism. The distinction between political and commercial propaganda is based on intent, not method. Its use by Woodrow Wilson (above) is instructive: a large and vocal anti-war movement had legitimate reasons for opposing the U.S. entry into WWI. The goal of Bernays and Wilson was to stifle political opposition.

Following WWII, the U.S. brought 1,600 Nazi scientists and engineers (and their families) to the U.S. to work for the Department of Defense and American industry through a program called Operation Paperclip. Many were dedicated and enthusiastic Nazis. Some were reported to have been bona fide war criminals. In contrast to liberal / neoliberal assertions that Nazism was irrational politics, the Nazi scientists fit seamlessly into American military production. There was no apparent contradiction between being a Nazi and being a scientist.

The problem isn’t just that many committed Nazis were scientists. Science and technology created the Nazi war machine. Science and technology were fully integrated into the creation and running of the Nazi concentration camps. American race ‘science,’ eugenics, formed the basis of Nazi race theory. Science and technology formed the functional core of Nazism. And the Nazi scientists and engineers of Operation Paperclip were major contributors to American post-war military dominance.

A dimensional tension of Nazism lay between romantic myths of an ancient and glorious past and the bourgeois task of moving industrialization and modernity forward. The focus of liberal and neoliberal analysis has been on this mythology as an irrational mode of reason. Missing is that Nazism wouldn’t have moved past the German borders if it hadn’t had bourgeois basis in the science and technology needed for industrial might. This keeps the broad project within the ontological and administrative premises of liberalism.

This is no doubt disconcerting to theorists of great difference. If Bolsonaro can impose austerity while maintaining an unjust peace, Wall Street and the IMF will smile and ask for more. American business interests are already circling Brazil, knowing that captive consumers combined with enforceable property rights and a pliable workforce means profits. Where were liberals when the Wall Street that Barack Obama saved was squeezing the people of Brazil, Spain, Greece and Portugal to repay debts incurred by the oligarchs? Liberalism is the link between capitalism and fascism, not its antithesis.

Having long ago abandoned Marx, the American Left is lost in the temporal logic of liberalism. The way to fight fascists is to end the threat of fascism. This means taking on Wall Street and the major institutions of Western capitalism.

Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book Zen Economics is published by CounterPunch Books.

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Brazil: Election Honeymoon Is "Hammerin' Time"

Far-right candidate Bolsonaro elected as Brazil’s president

by Miguel Andrade - WSWS

29 October 2018

Brazil’s presidential run-off election Sunday confirmed what had been anticipated in the first round vote earlier this month and by subsequent electoral polls, with the election of the fascistic reserve Army captain and seven-term federal representative for the state of Rio de Janeiro, Jair Bolsonaro, as president.

Bolsonaro won 58 million votes, or 55 percent of the total, against 47 million, or 45 percent, for Workers Party (PT) candidate Fernando Haddad.

The run-off also saw a repeat of the record abstention and spoiled ballots of the first round, with over 40 million out of a total of 146 million adults able to vote choosing not to cast a ballot for either candidate.

The election of Bolsonaro, an open defender of the US-backed, 21-year military dictatorship that ruled Brazil until 1985, and of its murderous and barbaric repression, marks a thorough-going breakdown of the regime of civilian bourgeois democratic rule that emerged in Brazil after the military ceded power.

It also represents a shipwreck for all of the parties that previously held power, first and foremost the PT, which served as the preferred instrument of rule for the Brazilian bourgeoisie for 13 years. Also decimated was the party that emerged out of the former legal opposition to the dictatorship, the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), and the country’s former main right-wing party, the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB). The first round had already seen the Congressional elections cut both the PSDB’s and MDB’s caucuses in half, and a drop of 20 percent in the number of seats held by the PT.

The election marks widespread opposition to the whole political setup dominated by the PT and the former right-wing opposition, which is seen by wide layers of Brazilians as responsible for the worst economic crisis in the country’s history—with an 8 percent GDP drop between 2015 and 2016 and the slowest recovery ever since. The unemployment rate has remained stagnant at 12 percent—with some 13 million jobless—and extreme poverty and infant mortality are on the rise.

Moreover, the PT and the other two main bourgeois parties are seen as co-responsible for wholesale corruption, with the MDB swinging between the other two to give them support for almost 30 years. Since the PSDB first came to the presidency in 1994, being succeeded by the PT from 2002 for four terms, corruption schemes have spanned from vote-buying in Congress by the PT and PSDB, to fraudulent privatizations under the PSDB, to bribes and kickbacks for public contracts involving construction, industrial and energy monopolies under the rule of the PT—the central scheme uncovered by the Lava-jato (Carwash) investigation, whose tentacles have spread as far as the United States, Africa and virtually the whole of the rest of Latin America.

Against this backdrop, Bolsonaro was able, with populist criticisms of corruption and cronyism, to pose as the sole opposition to the anti-working class policies of these three parties. With a candidacy backed by an array of senior military officers and gradually embraced by big business, Bolsonaro’s election will mark the first time since 1985 that the reviled Brazilian military, formerly completely demoralized by the exposure and abject failure of its brutal repression and class war policies, will play a dominant role in government.

Following first-round trends, the electoral breakdown showed the PT being roundly defeated in virtually all of its former strongholds, where it first gained strength in the 1980s and from which it finally rose to national power. This was most notable in the so-called ABC region of industrial cities surrounding São Paulo, as well as the so-called “red belt” of working class areas in the city’s outskirts.

Traditionally left-wing states that used to give the PT electoral victories long before it took control of the national government, such as Rio Grande do Sul and Rio de Janeiro, gave Bolsonaro stunning victories of over 63 percent.

The city of São Bernardo in the ABC region, where the PT was born and where its former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—now jailed on charges related to the Carwash probe—led metalworkers in a series of major strikes beginning in 1978, leading to the end of the dictatorship, gave Bolsonaro 60 percent of the vote, while other ABC cities gave him up to 75 percent.

The PT was only able to retain support in the country’s impoverished and neglected northeast, a region it first penetrated in Lula’s presidential victory of 2002 and where it has been associated with modest, IMF-approved poverty reduction schemes.

In the run-up to the election, Bolsonaro issued a series of provocative statements declaring that his opposition in the PT, whom he described “red criminals,” would have to choose between either exile or prison. He similarly vowed to stage a “clean-up the likes of which has never been seen in Brazilian history.”

Bolsonaro’s vice-presidential running mate, the right-wing general Hamilton Mourão, who retired from the military only this year after making speeches affirming the need for “military intervention” to secure “law and order,” stated bluntly on the eve of the election that the first task of the new government would be to carry out economic adjustment programs, including a sweeping pension “reform.”

The general said that the new government would take advantage of the “honeymoon” after it takes office to “hammer in some nails.”

Following the release of the results of the election, Bolsonaro delivered a rant on social media denouncing socialism and communism. Shortly afterwards, he appeared on national television vowing his support for the democratic rule of law and property rights as well as fiscal responsibility.

He also signaled that he would more closely align Brazil’s foreign policy with that of Washington. He added that he had received a congratulatory call from US President Donald Trump, who said that the two could reach “great partnerships.”

The election of Bolsonaro clearly signals a sharp turn to the right by the Brazilian bourgeoisie in confronting the deepest economic crisis in the country’s history and steadily rising class tensions.

His path to power was paved by the PT, which over its 13 years of rule allied itself with Bolsonaro and a whole series of right-wing politicians in Congress to impose economic policies demanded by the IMF that placed the full burden of the country’s economic crisis onto the backs of the working class.

Many had pointed to the jailing of Lula—which barred him from running again for the presidency—as the principal cause for the PT’s defeat. Polls, however, have indicated that a majority of the Brazilian population believes that he should be jailed, and the PT itself dropped his image from the campaign in the second round, while changing the party’s trademark color of red to the same green and yellow of the Brazilian flag used by Bolsonaro.

The reality is that the election represented a stunning rejection of the PT by masses of Brazilian workers, many of whom voted for Bolsonaro and even more of whom refused to vote for anyone out of disgust with the entire political setup.

The PT was itself unable and unwilling to make any class appeal to workers to oppose the right-wing threat posed by Bolsonaro’s coming to power. No attempt was made to bring workers out into the streets in advance of the second-round vote, and if there had been, it is unlikely that many would have answered a call from the PT. Instead, the party pitched its appeal to a broad “democratic front,” attempting to pick up support from the discredited parties of the bourgeoisie, which themselves had lost whatever small popular base they once had.

The entire pseudo-left in Brazil attempted to give this bankrupt and reactionary policy a “left” façade, portraying a vote for Haddad as the only means of stopping the advent of fascism in Brazil. This attempt to corral workers back under the wing of the party that had betrayed them over the course of decades proved an abject failure.

The reality is that the right-wing social and economic policies that Bolsonaro will now attempt to introduce would have been adopted by an incoming PT government as well. And his move to bring the military into the government also would have been seen under a PT government, with Haddad making one of his first visits after the first-round vote to the chief of staff of the Brazilian Armed Forces for a political discussion.

It will take far more than an election to impose a fascist dictatorship over a country of some 210 million people. Great class battles lie ahead. The decisive question confronting the working class is to assimilate the lessons of the decades of betrayals at the hands of the PT, its affiliated union confederation, the CUT, and the coterie of pseudo-left groups that orbit around them. A new revolutionary movement must be built, based on the program of socialist internationalism and the fight to link up the struggles of Brazilian workers with those of the working class throughout the Americas.

Thinking Through Antisemitism & Hate Crime

On Antisemitism, Critical Thinking, And Conspiracy Theories

by Caitlin Johnstone - Rogue Journalist

October 28, 2018

Today a gunman attacked a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania while shouting the words “All Jews must die”. The suspect, Robert Bowers, reportedly had a history of making antisemitic posts on social media, and was taken into custody alive with multiple gunshot wounds.

As of this writing, eleven people were killed in the attack.

I don’t have anything interesting or insightful to say about America’s mass shootings, other than to repeat the point I always make that the effects of modern war propaganda on American psychology are wildly under-appreciated and ignored by scientific research.

I believe the subject of US gun control is a bit outside my sovereign boundaries as an Australian writer as it only affects Americans, so I don’t really have anything to contribute in the primary debate surrounding the attack. It’s a debate for Americans to have with one another, so I tend to avoid it.

What I do have to offer is a brief description of my experience with conspiracy theories about Judaism and Jewish people as a fringe blogger who writes a lot about conspiracies, and the impression those encounters have left me with.

To be clear, when I talk about antisemites I mean the actual bigots who promote hatred of Jewish people, paranoia about Jewishness, or any type of violence against or mistreatment of Jews as a race. I do not mean people who voice legitimate criticisms of Israel and its government, I do not mean people who criticize the way Zionism is used as a tool of manipulation to advance geopolitical agendas, I do not mean people who question the justification for the creation of Israel in the first place, I do not mean people who defend Palestinians, and I do not mean people who voice valid, factual criticisms of George Soros or any other billionaire who happens to be Jewish.

I make this distinction because when I try to talk about antisemitism publicly I get critics of Israel confusing the two groups, saying they only ever encounter people who absurdly call you an antisemite for condemning the slaughter of unarmed Palestinians by sniper fire, not people who actually promote the hatred of Jews. And that may indeed be true for them in their case, but as someone who writes a lot about oligarchy, the media, and war in the Middle East I most definitely find myself brushing up against the pernicious mind virus of antisemitism on a regular basis.

It typically happens one of two ways:

1) I’ll be there minding my own business happily attacking CNN or decrying war propaganda against Syria or whatever, and then BAM! Some random asshole splats one of those Jewish caricature memes on the lovely post I spent lots of time and energy creating. It’s always jarring and feels creepy and invasive in the same way as receiving an unsolicited dick pic.

2) They sort of sidle up alongside me on social media, making vague, side-mouthed insinuations which become increasingly specific over time, and before I know it they’re telling me I need to “name the Jew” and talk about “the JQ”.

I fucking hate antisemites. Hate them, hate them, hate them. Not only are they vile racists whose particular brand of hatred should be easily recognized as uniquely toxic by anyone who’s ever skimmed a history book, but they heap other layers of personal obnoxiousness on top of that as well. They’ll accuse you of being a “coward” if you reject their pet medieval superstitions, but they themselves speak only in coded language and oblique, side-mouthed innuendo because they are too cowardly to come right out and state their points in plain language. They’re arrogant, they’re condescending, and they’re impervious to reason, and they always expect you to treat their vapid, slug-brained perspectives with the same respect you’d treat someone who is making real arguments using actual facts.

More annoyingly, they derail some of the most important conversations that critical thinkers and skeptics of establishment narratives need to be having in the new media environment. The foundations of oligarchy and imperialism have nothing whatsoever to do with Jews or Jewishness but with the way the dynamics of money and power interact with human behavioral tendencies, which I discuss at length in the article hyperlinked here.

One need only to look at the way Jeff Bezos, who is not Jewish, rose to the top of the plutocratic class and began instantly buying up media and forming alliances with intelligence and defense agencies to see how the dynamics of oligarchy play out with no difficulty when Jewishness is completely removed from the equation. One need only look at the prominence and influence of bloodthirsty psychopath John Bolton, who is not Jewish, to see the how dynamics of neoconservative warmongering play out with no difficulty when Jewishness is completely removed from the equation.

Conspiracies happen all the time in the upper echelons of power, and it’s important to examine and talk about the aspects of this reality that are visible to the general public. But the fact that there’s a group of idiots moving throughout conspiracy circles who insist those conspiracies have something to do with Jewish people having some sort of predisposition toward nefarious behavior or global domination gums up the gears of that dialogue, and is used to discredit perfectly legitimate skepticism toward establishment-endorsed narratives about the world and how it works.

Money rewards the sociopath’s ability to step on anyone and do whatever it takes to get ahead, and large amounts of money can be used to buy up political influence. In a dynamic wherein money both rewards sociopathy and translates directly to political power, we naturally wind up ruled by sociopaths who have no problem keeping everyone poor to ensure the dominance of the plutocratic class and creating chaos throughout the world for power and profit.

One of the many reasons antisemitic conspiracy theories gain traction is because those who are devout acolytes of the cult of capitalism will often be resistant to the idea that it is in this way responsible for the worst problems on earth, so to avoid cognitive dissonance they cook up theories about a greedy race of subhumans who suck up power and money because they are intrinsically evil. It allows them to blame Jews for the problems of money and power dynamics. Because Jews as a culture have tended to be generally decent at finance (a trend that probably emerged exactly because of their persecution), they make convenient scapegoats.

In the same way, patriots and nationalists who like to think of their country as sovereign and independent will be resistant to the idea that the lines between nations are increasingly irrelevant at the highest levels of power. The notion that their country is just one branch of a giant, globe-spanning empire of which Israel is also another branch will be far too challenging for their worldview, so they cook up theories about their nation being ruled by a Jewish state via lobbying, media influence and conspiracies. In reality, the globe-spanning empire which includes Israel and the US is not ultimately controlled by any nation or government, but by a class of nationless corporate and financial powers with no loyalty to anyone but themselves. Functionally Israel is nothing more than the Middle Eastern military branch of the empire, and it is so deeply involved in military conflicts because the Middle East is such a strategically crucial region to control. Zionism is just one of the propaganda narratives used to help manufacture support for that branch, and lobbying and media psyops are just the glue which holds the empire together.

There are many other reasons that make it cognitively and egoically comfortable to blame the world’s problems on a historically persecuted minority. All of them are toxic, and, as we were once again reminded today, all of them are dangerous. Hatred of Jews is the result of bad thinking, bad research, emotional stupidity and lazy inner work, and it should be condemned on all fronts. As long as important conversations about conspiracies are being bogged down by these dopey narratives, our hive mind’s ability to shine the light of truth on the world together will be experiencing that much inertia. Let’s get smarter and reject this ignorant nonsense.

__________________________

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Artifice and Armaments: Invictus Sponsors Vertically Integrate

The Arms Behind the Invictus Games

by Binoy Kampmark - Dissident Voice

October 28th, 2018

The origins of the Invictus Games (“For our Wounded Warriors,” goes the slogan) lies in war. Wars that crippled and caused depression and despair.

The games became a project of grand distraction and worth, a form of emotional bread for servicemen and women. Do not let wounds, mental or physical, deter you. Move to the spirit of William Ernest Henley, an amputee who, during convalescence, penned those lines which speak to a Victorian stubbornness before adversity: “I am the master of my fate;/I am the captain of my soul.”

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, was supposedly inspired by a trip to the United States in 2013 by how, as the Invictus Games Foundation explains, “sport can help physically, psychologically and socially those suffering from injuries and illness.”

The games came into being the next year, embodying “the fighting spirit of wounded, injured and sick Service personnel and personifies what these tenacious men and women and achieve post injury.”

As they opened in Sydney, something rather troubling lurked in the undergrowth of those keen to promote the games. This was an occasion for the sponsors to hop on in numbers, to insist on that piffle called values.

“We are excited,” goes the organisers’ statement, “to be on the journey to our Games with the fantastic support of our family of Invictus Games partners. Their support not only helps us deliver a great Games, but also builds initiatives that inspire connected, healthy and active lifestyles for those facing mental health and physical challenges.”

Names like Saab, Leidos, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are prominent corporate entities that stud the show, a sort of murderous family of patrons. (You were victims of our products; we are thinking of you.)

Company statements attempt to link the Invictus show to the myth of company values and mutual benefit, a point bound to leave those aware of any nexus between arms production and casualty celebration queasy: the company produces the murderous hardware – war is business and stock value after all – but it also brings back the injured into the fold.

Jaguar Land Rover, for instance, notes “a commitment to furthering their legacy of support to the armed forces by helping former military personnel transition into civilian careers through job opportunities.” The company was proud in recruiting “over 700 ex-service men and women since 2013, creating opportunities to employees globally seeking bright futures in the automotive industry.”

Boeing, for its part, cheers “these warrior-competitors, honour their families, and help educate Australians about the contributions and sacrifices of military personnel here in Australia and around the world.”

As it backs the Invictus Games, the company’s own website smoothly advertises its role in serving “the US Air Force, US Navy, the Marines and many US allies by producing and integrating precise, long-range and focused munitions.”

There are always various moments the promoters could look to in terms of how these warrior competitors perform. What mattered was turning up, and providing a good show of heart string pulling and tear jerking reaction.

During the Sydney Invictus games, several opportunities presented themselves. There was the wheelchair tennis player Paul Guest, whose PTSD was triggered by the whirring of an overheard helicopter. Dutch veteran Edwin Vermetten, a fellow competitor, was on hand to comfort him as paralysis took over, offering support by singing Let it Go from the movie Frozen.

“We saw what mateship really looks like,” reflected the Duke of Sussex at his closing speech.

Prior to its opening, Nick Deane, writing in New Matilda, was troubled by the games’ throbbing sub-text, its colosseum air and undertone of manipulation.

“There is a whiff of triumphalism in this (it is in the name of the games). Their spirit may be unconquered but they have, without exception, been severely beaten. Giving them a special name does not alter that.”

Servicemen and women for Australia, in particular, were being celebrated, but had suffered in wars that lacked the backbone of necessity, lending a heavily tragic air to the proceedings.

“In an objective assessment of them,” Deane notes, “no service personnel [participating] can legitimately claim to have been wounded in the defence of Australia.”

That entire spirit goes to those who promote the games: the very companies who prove indispensable to the military industrial complex that creates its global casualties.

It is they who are also unconquerable, forever leaving behind the broken in their wake, they who place those in, to remember the words of William Ernest Henley, “a place of wrath and tears” where “the Horror of the shade” looms.

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

Human and Non-Human Rights: Billionaires and Biodiversity

Billionaires and Biodiversity

by Mazin Qumsiyeh - palestinenature.org

October 28, 2018

One report just published shows World billionaires’ wealth increased 20% last year (billionaire’s now have accumulated wealth of $9 trillion!).

The rich continue to get richer and the poor poorer and politics follow monied interests and that is why Oman, Saudi Arabia and others normalize with apartheid “Israel”. That's also why Trump is not shy to say “we have more money than anyone else” so we can get our way.

Why does the genocide of Yemen (by the Saud royals) and Gaza (by the Netanyahu criminal enterprise) continue? Directly related to treachery. Like King Leopold of Belgium in Congo or Christopher Columbus of Spain in America, history repeats itself because we learn not from it. (That is also why Brazil is about to elect a right wing president who will destroy the Amazon rain-forest to please rich people.)

But the stakes are higher now. That is why Homo sapiens may go extinct…. UNLESS we the people get our act together quickly and RESIST. As Gandhi said "You must be the change you want to see in the world".

Every day here, we get inspired despite the sad news.

Last week, eight Palestinian civilians were murdered by the occupation army, 20 children drown in the rain flooding near the Dead Sea, and 11 Jewish were killed by a racist in a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

News cycles continue to be unfavorable to justice and human rights.

Thousands of civilians are murdered in Yemen and hardly any Western Media pays attention (they even now dropped the high profile murder of Jamal Khashokji as they refocus on bombs sent to democrats etc). But in this thinking globally, I am always working and thinking locally.

We have eight staff members and dozens of volunteers at the museum (palestinenature.org). Each is an inspiring story to tell despite the obstacles. Everyone can tell you of how they suffered. Lands confiscated, arrests and torture of relatives, personal loss, and much more. Each can also tell you a story of growth and transcending challenges to achieve great things in a remarkable team spirit.

The many internationals who visit us every week are inspired by what they see as achieved by this team. Today and the next three days we are training six researchers and a few others in cultural heritage collection and preservation. We held three other workshops of training last week on monitoring and evaluation for projects, design of gardens, and on developing biodiversity conservation indicators.

Yesterday we completed a desk study on a UNESCO world heritage site (Battir and Al-Makhror Valley) towards biodiversity conservation and sustainability (via ecoagriculture and ecotourism) and we did some nice field and lab research in the same valley producing great results (e.g. 12 recorded species of bats).

We visited Khan Al-Ahmar in solidarity (a place of partial success so far in resisting ethnic cleansing). We submitted two more manuscripts for publication. Contractors are making progress on our community garden and playground infrastructure. We finished the olive harvest successfully with nearly twice the production from the museum garden than last year. I could go on but my point is that the work on the ground is the many candles lighted instead of cursing the darkness.

We invite you to join us.

James Buchanan behind wealth concentration:
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america
[The Chicago school of ideology graduated the likes of war criminal Henry Kissinger who supported Zionism and believe in "social Darwinism"]

Human Rights Watch on repression in the Palestinian areas:
https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/10/23/two-authorities-one-way-zero-dissent/arbitrary-arrest-and-torture-under

An example of a good event that connects the dots; rally in Ohio to stop US support for the wars on the people of Gaza and Yemen (linked) Read more at (and better yet do one in your city like this). Stop US military support for the regimes in “Israel” and “Saudi Arabia”:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1851763898237043/

Nora Lester Murad and Danna Masad produced a remarkable inspiring book, 'Rest in My Shade, a poem about roots'. It is an 8"x8" hardback gift book (48 pages) about displacement featuring 18 prominent Palestinian artists living around the world. I'm attaching a press release for the book, which includes early praise from Naomi Shihab Nye and others.

More information is available at the book's site: www.restinmyshade.com

Stay Human

Mazin Qumsiyeh
A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
Professor, Founder, and (volunteer) Director
Palestine Museum of Natural History
Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability
Bethlehem University
Occupied Palestine
http://qumsiyeh.org
http://palestinenature.org

Facebook pages
Personal: https://www.facebook.com/mazin.qumsiyeh.9
Museum: https://www.facebook.com/Palestine-Museum-of-Natural-History-1454309858180882/

Haiti Cries Against Corruption, Forced Austerity

Haitians Rise Up Against Corruption, Austerity

by TRNN

October 28, 2018

A corruption scandal in Haiti has ignited a massive protest and thrown the Haitian government into crisis. At issue is the misuse of nearly $2 billion from PetroCaribe, a Venezuela-sponsored program that was supposed to help rebuild Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

We speak to Jake Johnston of the Center for Economic and Policy Research