At 3:52 AM on March 23, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society received word of casualties from an Israeli attack in the Al-Hashashin area outside of Rafah and dispatched an ambulance to the scene.  Five minutes later, the dispatch office lost contact with the crew. At 4:39, another ambulance was sent to search for the […]

More

The post Massacre at Al-Hashashin appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Since taking office in January, Donald Trump has been hard at work rounding up innocent people for deportation, citing bogus, pretextual reasons related to alleged ties to drug cartels and terrorist organizations. Naturally, Trump does not want these claims tested in the courts—his Department of Justice has brushed off federal judges’ orders and fired lawyers […]

More

The post The Crowning of Executive Power appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Life as inventive sequence has a particular character, a certain quality of brilliance that beggars comparison with our busy busy world of responsibility and performance.  –Roy Wagner It’s strange how things sometimes come together. Looking for something else, I found an article I wrote with the South Sudanese poet Taban lo Liyong, in Catalan 21 […]

More

The post What We Lost appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Image by Scottsdale Mint. Image by Scottsdale Mint. Image by Scottsdale Mint. Image by Scottsdale Mint. Image by Scottsdale Mint. Image by Scottsdale Mint. Image by Scottsdale Mint. Image by Scottsdale Mint. Image by Scottsdale Mint. Image by Scottsdale Mint. Image by Scottsdale Mint. Image by Scottsdale Mint. Image by Scottsdale Mint. Image by Scottsdale […]

More

The post Throwing Chaos at the Wall: The American Dictator’s Playbook appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Image by Lo Lo.

Recently released GDP numbers for 2024 show that Wall Street’s excesses cost Americans $1.51 Trillion last year. Instead of looking for inefficiency and bloat in government the Trump Musk duo should look at ‘the market,’ because that is where we are getting ripped off.

The market, the Finance and Insurance portion of GDP, accounted for 7.4% of GDP ($2.164.2 Bil) in 2024; up .2% from 2023. Meaning It cost more for the market to operate because it grew faster than the overall economy. In 1972 the last year before our free markets regime began when we abandoned the last vestiges of fixed exchange rates and let the market sort out, Finance and Insurance accounted for 4.2% of GDP. In other words, the market portion of GDP has increased 3.2% (7.4% – 4.2%) relative to the overall economy since 1972. The value of 3.2% of GDP in 2024 was $934 Bil. So bloat in the market cost us close to a trillion dollars last year.

Look at it this way. A dollar, $1, spent by Finance and Insurance in 1972 generated $24.04 of GDP. By 2024 a dollar, $1, spent by Finance and Insurance in 2024 generated $13.48 of GDP. With such a dramatic decline in productivity and rise in inefficiency is it any wonder why market participants are eager to deregulate and limit government oversight?

No doubt market participants will cry foul and point to actions such as financialization whereby the market has taken over a larger role in the economy. To what ends? Is securitization, the process of converting financial assets such as loans into tradeable securities creating anything new? No. Do derivatives that allow for leveraged speculation, increase trading activity and supposedly make the market more efficient create anything new? No. Derivatives, whose value is derived from another security were almost nonexistent in 1972. By June of 2023 non-exchange traded derivatives had an estimated notional value (the face value of the underlying instrument it is derived from) globally of $715 Trillion (6/23 BIS). The fact is that derivatives have been behind just about every recent financial crisis ; 1987 stock market crash (portfolio insurance), 1998 LTCM (excess leverage), 2008 (mortgage-backed securities)… Financialization, securitization, privatization, derivatives and excessive trading are nothing but the churning of our country’s savings.

Finance and Insurance has a privileged role in the economy. It acts as a medium between savers and borrowers to facilitate the economy; savers are paid for their savings and borrowers get capital to help their businesses grow. It also acts as a medium for the Federal Reserve (Fed) to operate in financial markets. The Fed is able to conduct monetary policy by buying and selling government bonds through the market. In a way giving the market the first look at its policy and arguably giving the market a say in its distribution. While the Fed acts through banks and not the market overall, the walls separating banking, brokerage and insurance had been eroding for some time and were set in stone with Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999.

The growing inefficiency of the market runs counter to the 47% improvement in productivity overall since 1972; odd since it has greatly benefitted from telecommunications and computing advances. Had Finance and Insurance similarly been 47% more efficient its GDP contribution would have fallen to 2.2% of GDP. So our beginning base of 4.2% of GDP should have fallen by 2% (4.2% – 2.2%). The value of 2% of GDP in 2024 was $584 Bil.

Adding the excess costs together, the surge in the size of Finance and Insurance relative to GDP since 1972 (3.2%) $934 Bil., with the lost productivity (2%) of $584 Bil., we get $1,518 Bil. for 2024. Then there is 2023, 2022…. 1973.

The market is wildly inefficient and flawed. The unfortunate thing is that we have built a world around it; in doing so we have built a world on a lie.

Over the last fifty years our free market regime has robbed us of tens of trillions of dollars. Trump’s demonizing of government, is part of a longer trend began with Reagan’s claim that government was the problem and wailing away about welfare queens. It is just another ploy to divert our attention from the heist that is happening right in front of us.

NOTES

GDP numbers are from the BEA’s ‘Gross Domestic Product (Third Estimate), Corporate Profits, and GDP by Industry, 4th Quarter and Year 2024’, Table 14, Page 21.

Historical GDP numbers are from FI’ GDP contribution/Total GDP, $51.5B/$1238.3B=4.158%. Per Table 1. Value Added by Industry Group for Selected Yea, Gross Domestic Product by Industry for 1947–86 https://apps.bea.gov/scb/pdf/2005/12December/1205_GDP-NAICS.pdf

In 1972 total factor productivity was 72.701 in 2024 it was 106.847. 106.847/72.701 =’s 1.46967 or 47%. You find actual numbers at Historical Total Factor Productivity. (Note clicking on this link will download the file). Here is the link: Top line is total factor productivity.

Regarding the cost per dollar spent versus GDP gained. Total GDP/Finance and Insurance. For 1972, $1238.3B/$$51.5B =‘s $24.04. For 2024 $29184.9B/$2164.2B =’s $13.48.

Wall Street has benefitted more than most industries from technological change since the 1970’s. One of the top three According to AI, “Since the 1970s, telecommunications and computing have revolutionized industries like finance, media, entertainment, and e-commerce, enabling global connectivity, digital content distribution, and new business models. “

The post Wall Street Bilked Us Again For Another $1.5 Trillion In 2024 appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Cargo ship on the Columbia River bound for Portland. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The Trump tariff story keeps getting crazier. It may seem like ancient history now, but it was just over three weeks ago that Donald Trump gave us “Liberation Day,” a set of massive tariffs on imports from almost every country in the world, including the uninhabited Heard and McDonald islands off the coast of Antarctica.

The tariffs were billed as “reciprocal” even though they bore no relationship to any tariffs or other trade barriers these countries impose on US exports. Incredibly, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick actually defended the Heard and McDonald Islands’ tariff, insisting that it was not a mistake at all but rather to prevent transshipment from other countries attempting to evade tariffs.

Lutnick’s explanation was obviously absurd. First, they left many other uninhabited islands without tariffs, apparently leaving the door open for transshipment through them. More importantly, if our customs staff really can’t catch items coming in from uninhabited islands, then they will be completely useless dealing with a complex system of tariffs charging vastly different rates between countries and on different products from the same country. The bottom line is that we yet again see how the Trump administration finds itself unable to admit a mistake.

But back to the timeline: As the markets were crashing Trump backed away on April 9, eliminating his so-called reciprocal tariffs and saying that he would lower his tariff on most countries to 10 percent. Note that this is still a very large tariff. When we negotiated trade deals with Mexico, Canada, and other countries their average tariffs were already well below 10 percent. In the context of “reciprocal” tariffs that were as high as 40 or 50 percent, Trump’s fallback tariff seemed low, but not by pre-Trump real world standards.

Trump boasted that a reason for the rollback was that 75 countries around the world had called to negotiate with him, although he refused to give the list of countries. Trump also went ahead and imposed 25 percent taxes on imports of steel and aluminum, which went into effect in March. He imposed 25 percent taxes on imports of cars and car parts which went into effect at the start of this month.

The big tariff that Trump did not delay on April 9 was the 104 percent tax on imports from China. He actually raised this to 124 percent in response to China’s retaliation. He raised his tax further to 154 percent a few days later and some items are even subject to higher taxes. In addition to its retaliatory tariffs, China also announced that it was suspending exports of rare earth minerals which are essential for many manufacturing processes in the United States. It also is boycotting US soybeans, which means US soybean farmers are losing their largest customer.

But then Trump decided to exempt smartphones and a number of other electronic devices from his massive taxes on China’s imports. Whether this was due to a special relationship with Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, or concern about outraged consumers looking at $2,000 iPhones, is anyone’s guess.

The tariff game is still far from over. On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the tariff levels between the US and China were not sustainable and Trump hinted they would likely come down soon, even though there was no evidence of high level negotiations. These comments got a great reaction from financial markets, leading to big stock rallies, but left open the question as to the purpose of the tariffs.

Just to remind everyone, if we go back to “Liberation Day,” Trump’s tariffs were supposed to be about bringing manufacturing back to the United States and ending our trade deficits. Many of us pointed out that this was unlikely to work even in the best case scenario. But if the tariffs were just a negotiating ploy, or a way for Trump to extort favors, they are certainly not going to have much impact on manufacturing. They may make Trump even richer, but no one will invest in the United States based on a tariff that can disappear in a year or even a week.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

The post Trump’s Now You See Them, Now You Don’t Tariffs appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says that HHS and the US Food and Drug Administration will phase out the use of petroleum-based food dyes over the next two years to “Make America Healthy Again.”

The post A Hill to Dye On? RFK, Jr’s Food Coloring Policies appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia – Public Domain

Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act is under attack. It’s not the first time. The rationale for these attacks has remained the same for the last 50 years: Section 106 compliance is slow, expensive, and unpredictable; it hinders economic growth and kills jobs. All of this comes easy to its detractors; none of it is true.

Section 106 requires federal agencies to assess the effects of their actions that involve lands they administer, permits they provide, and licenses they grant on historic, archaeological, and cultural properties listed in or eligible to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and, to the extent possible, minimize harmful effects to these significant places. The rules governing Section 106 have been in place since 1974. The path toward compliance is well-worn and easy to follow. So why the attacks?

Who Cares?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of the fight over Section 106, let’s start with three broader questions: Do Americans care about preserving their history? Do Americans want historic places protected and preserved? Do Americans want taxpayer money spent on historic preservation? The best answers to these questions come from polls taken over the last 25 years (Ipsos 2018, 2023; Ramos and Duganne 2000; Shannon 2014). Consistently, between 80 percent and 90 percent of respondents state that archaeological sites and historic buildings are important to them. In the latest poll (Ipsos 2023), 64 percent responded that archaeological site preservation should be a priority of the federal government, with 77 percent replying that there should be laws to protect archaeological sites and only 5 percent desiring no laws. Most respondents want federal funding for the protection of sites to increase and 80 percent want more land associated with archaeological sites to be set aside and preserved.

It’s one thing to answer a poll, it’s another to act on those beliefs. “So, what do Americans do on their vacations and how do they spend their money?” For many, the answer is visiting archaeological and historic sites. For example, since it opened in 1908, Mesa Verde National Park has hosted about 37 million visitors, with an average of more than 500,000 annually for the last 60 years. Gettysburg National Military Park was established in 1934 and has been visited by more than 136 million visitors, with an average attendance for the last 65 years cresting more than 1 million annually.

Perhaps surprising to some, one of the most visited National Historic Parks (NHP) is the San Antonio Missions, which since 1983 has preserved four of the five Spanish Missions near San Antonio (the fifth, the Alamo, is the best known and most visited but is not part of the park and not included in the visitation numbers). The San Antonio Missions NHP has been visited by more than 42 million people, easily exceeding an average of 1 million visitors a year since its inception.

But it’s not just the most famous parks that receive visitors. In my home state of Arizona, there are 19 national parks (NP), monuments, historic sites, and memorials administered by the National Park Service (NPS) (Table 1). Of these, 11 are national monuments, historic sites, or memorials (collectively, termed “NM” below) focused around archaeological or historic sites. In 2024, more than 1.6 million people visited these 11 NMs (NPS 2025), spending about $167 million and accounting for about 1,650 jobs (Flyr and Koontz 2024). In all, the archaeological and historical NMs account for about 20 percent of all NPS visitation in Arizona and more than 10 percent of the money spent and jobs created at NPS units in the state.

One of the parks in Arizona is the Grand Canyon, which by itself accounts for more than half of all visits, money, and jobs to Arizona NPS units. If we exclude the Grand Canyon National Park, then archaeological and historical NMs are responsible for about 45 percent of all visitations, money, and jobs at NPs and NMs in Arizona. Some may scoff at the size of the numbers, but it’s important to remember that many archaeological and historic NMs are in rural parts of the state, where the dollars generated and the jobs created at these units are extremely important to local businesses and communities. Also, some of the archaeological and historical NMs are hard to get to (for example, you need to hike a 3-mile loop to get in and out of Fort Bowie).

No matter how difficult, Americans keep coming. With their money and their time, Americans overwhelmingly declare that they enjoy visiting and learning about the past at archaeological and historical sites. They come alone, with their families, their friends, their schools, and their churches. They are awed by what Americans have done and are inspired to dream about things they might do.

Back to Section 106

Section 106 seeks to balance the interests of project proponents and land developers with protecting the historic fabric of this country. Those who contend that Section 106 is an impediment to development tend to be those with an economic interest. They provide anecdotal evidence of particular projects in which Section 106 compliance was maddeningly slow and outrageously expensive. They never, however, analyze Section 106 actions in a systematic and comprehensive manner, since such an evaluation shows a very different story.

Table 2 is derived from a report on the cumulative impact of the Historic Preservation Fund for the period 2001-2021, commissioned by the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers (PlaceEconomics 2023:22). It shows that for the first two decades of the 21st century, the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) in 59 jurisdictions made about 4.3 million decisions related to Section 106 undertakings. Nearly 80 percent of these decisions were findings that either no historic properties were found in the project area or that those that did exist were not sufficiently significant to warrant any action. In short, about 3.4 million projects brought before SHPOs were dealt with quickly and cheaply, with the project proponent or developer free to proceed in less than 30 days (often in less than a week). In addition, many federal agencies, in partnership with SHPOs and other consulting parties, have made agreements that exclude a vast number of small-scale projects from Section 106 reviews, which have minimal potential to adversely affect the National Register listed or eligible properties. These Section 106 agreements are effective tools that streamline and expedite a wide range of development projects.

About 900,000 projects were found to include a significant property and/or have an adverse effect on such a property. Most of these were altered, redesigned, or withdrawn so that the historic property or properties were not harmed and the proponent was free to proceed or move on to another project without having spent lots of money or wasted considerable time. Of the millions of Section 106 undertakings, less than 0.5% resulted in an agreement document among the SHPO, federal agency, affected Native American tribes, project proponent, local jurisdictions and communities, and other interested public groups on how to resolve the project’s harmful effects on significant historic properties. In 21 years, less than 20,000 agreement documents were signed in the 59 SHPO jurisdictions, or less than 20 per year in the entire country. What do these 20 projects have in common? They contained properties of historical and cultural value to our nation, local communities, Native American tribes, and descendants. The Section 106 agreement documents protected the values embedded in those places while allowing development to proceed.

Safeguard or Obstruction

There are two views of Section 106. Many in the development community view it as a regulation that inhibits economic progress. They argue that the Section 106 process is used by opponents to stymie or kill projects, particularly large and controversial ones. In contrast, local and descendant communities maintain that Section 106 provides them with one of the few means by which they have any say in development decisions. Even with Section 106, however, these groups maintain that the playing field is unequal, with development holding the stronger hand.

Each view has some truth to it, and each overstates the harm that regulations cause them. I have been involved with more than 1,000 Section 106 projects in the last 50 years. The vast majority were uncontested and noncontroversial. The results documented the past, protected significant places, and expedited economic development. There were also a handful of controversial projects, in which passions became inflamed, the proponents and opponents talked past each other, and the agreement reached was in name only, with both sides feeling that they had been shorted.

Critics of Section 106 point to these controversial projects as evidence that the regulation doesn’t work, that it neither protects significant places nor allows the country to build needed infrastructure or improve property. Yet this view is wrong on the facts and mistaken in where it places the blame. Section 106 is a procedural law that does not establish a required outcome. The federal agency with jurisdiction over a project has the final decision, which in almost every case is to allow the project to proceed.

As a country, we want economic development that betters our lives and strengthens our communities. Development that offers a brighter future must be grounded in our shared past. Killing Section 106 would do nothing to further our aspiration to balance economic development with historic preservation. It would not even speed up development. Instead, it would ensure that historic preservationists, who otherwise welcome the opportunity to work with developers, would become entrenched opponents. Heritage strikes at the heart of a community’s ethos, so few land battles stir more passion. Section 106 negotiations can be intense, irate, and irreconcilable, but they take place within a structure designed to make sure everyone is heard and all viewpoints considered. With it, even the most controversial projects move forward. Without it, battle lines form at development sites with no one emerging unscathed.

Let me be clear, development projects proceed not in spite of but because of Section 106. Without the Section 106 regulations, local and descendant communities would have no voice to ensure that development is in keeping with their values and their past. Their only recourse would be to sue. Litigation would be everything critics say about Section 106 and then some—excruciatingly slow, extremely expensive, and unpredictable.

We Can Still Do Big Things

In 1999, Statistical Research, Inc. (SRI), the cultural resource management consulting firm my wife and I founded, was awarded a five-year contract to provide historic preservation services on the U.S. Air Force portion of the Barry M. Goldwater Range (BMGR). Located in the region of Southwest Arizona known as the Papaguería, the main military mission of the BMGR is to train fighter pilots. At the time when we were awarded the contract, the commanding officer took me aside and quietly, but firmly, said, “You’re free to do all the research and studies you want as long as the fighters continue to fly. The day that archaeology stops one flight will be your last day on the BMGR.”

Today, SRI continues to provide CRM services on the BMGR. In more than 25 years, not a plane has been grounded; not a flight has been aborted; not a mission has been altered because of archaeology. Hundreds of thousands of acres have been inventoried, thousands of archaeological sites have been recorded, hundreds of test excavations have been conducted, and several large-scale excavations have been completed. Native Americans from multiple tribes have joined archaeologists and the U.S. Air Force personnel on scores of site tours. Tribes have inventoried the BMGR for traditional properties and sacred sites, and with almost no exception, these areas have been avoided by military training. More than a bookshelf of technical reports have been written and thousands of artifacts cleaned, analyzed, and stored. Articles, books, and lectures for professional and non-professional audiences have been written or presented.

There are those on the right and the left who argue that we can’t do big things in this country. That Section 106 is choking off growth. But thousands of fighter pilots, many of whom went off to war to defend this country, were trained without interruption, while below, archaeologists and Native Americans worked together to document thousands of years of human occupation of the Papaguería.

There are those who will grant that the process works but still argue that the archaeology and history of places like the Papaguería are not critical to the history of the United States. The BMGR lies in one of the hottest, driest deserts in the United States. Who in their right mind would live here? And, really, who cares?

One hot summer day, in exasperation, I asked these very same questions. Accompanying me in the field that day was Joe Joaquin, an elder of the Tohono O’odham Nation as well as a Marine veteran of Korea and Vietnam. Joe looked around and then, with a wry grin, looked at me, “Who wouldn’t want to live here?” And then more seriously he went on, “These mountains hold our stories, the valleys [are] our ancestral sites, as O’odham people, we are put on this earth to take care of them, and without them we lose who we are. You have the skills and knowledge to find these places, which we don’t have. What you do is important.”

Joe has long since passed away, though his words still reverberate in me. Training fighter pilots is paramount to the defense of this country. But we can do that and still honor an obligation to the first people of the land. The path to doing so is clear. It’s called Section 106.

References

– Flyr, M., and Koontz, L. (2024). “2023 National Park Visitor Spending Effects: Economic Contributions to Local Communities, States, and the Nation.” Science Report NPS/SR-2024/174. National Park Service, Fort Collins, Colorado.

– Ipsos (2018). “American Perceptions of Archaeology.” Report commissioned by the Society for American Archaeology.

– Ipsos (2023). “American Perception of Archaeology.” Report commissioned by the Society for American Archaeology.

– National Park Service (NPS) (2025). NPS Stats (National Park Service Visitor Use Statistics).

– PlaceEconomics (2023). “The Cumulative Impact of the Historic Preservation Fund.” Report commissioned by the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers.

– Ramos, Maria, and Duganne, David (2000). “Exploring Public Perceptions and Attitudes about Archaeology.” Report prepared by Harris Interactive for a coalition of professional societies and federal agencies.

– Shannon, Sandra (2014). “A Survey of the Public: Preferences for Old and New Buildings, Attitudes about Historic Preservation, and Preservation-Related Engagement.” MA thesis, School of Architecture, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

This article was produced by Human Bridges.

The post In Defense of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Photograph Source: שי קנדלר – CC BY-SA 4.0

Universities are in a bind.  As institutions of learning and teaching, knowledge learnt and taught should, or at the very least could, be put into practice.  How unfortunate for rich ideas to linger in cold storage or exist as the mummified status of esoterica.  But universities in the United States have taken fright at pro-Palestinian protests since October 7, 2023, becoming battlegrounds for the propaganda emissaries of Israeli public relations and the pro-evangelical, Armageddon lobby that sees the end times taking place in the Holy Land.  Higher learning institutions are spooked by notions of Israeli brutality, and they are taking measures.

These measures have tended to be heavy handed, taking issue with students and academic staff.  The policy has reached another level in efforts by amphibian university managers to ban various protest groups who are seen as creating an environment of intimidation for other members of the university tribe.  That these protesters merely wish to draw attention to the massacre of Palestinian civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, and the fact that the death toll, notably in the Gaza Strip, now towers at over 50,000, is a matter of inconvenient paperwork.

Even worse, the same institutions are willing to tolerate individuals who have celebrated their own unalloyed bigotry, lauded their own racial and religious ideology, and deemed various races worthy of extinguishment or expulsion.  Such a man is Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who found himself permitted to visit Yale University at the behest of the Jewish society Shabtai, a body founded by Democratic senator and Yale alumnus Cory Booker, along with Rabbi Shmully Hecht.

Shabtai is acknowledged as having no official affiliation with Yale, though it is stacked with Yale students and faculty members who participate at its weekly dinners. Its beating heart was Hecht, who arrived in New Haven after finishing rabbinical school in Australia in 1996.

The members of Shabtai were hardly unanimous in approving Ben-Gvir’s invitation.  David Vincent Kimel, former coach of the Yale debate team, was one of two to send an email to a Shabtai listserv to express brooding disgruntlement.  “Shabtai was founded as a space for fearless, pluralistic Jewish discourse,” the email remarks.  “But this event jeopardizes Shabtai’s reputation and every future.”  In views expressed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Kimel elaborated: “I’m deeply concerned that we’re increasingly treating extreme rhetoric as just another viewpoint, rather than recognizing it as a distortion of constructive discourse.”  The headstone for constructive discourse was chiselled sometime ago, though Kimel’s hopes are charming.

As a convinced, pro-settler fanatic, Ben-Gvir is a fabled-Torah basher who sees Palestinians as needless encumbrances on Israel’s righteous quest to acquire Gaza and the West Bank.  Far from being alone, Ben-Gvir is also the member of a government that has endorsed starvation and the deprivation of necessities as laudable tools of conflict, to add to an adventurous interpretation of the laws of war that tolerates the destruction of health and civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

After a dinner at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort (the bad will be fed), Ben-Gvir was flushed with confidence.  He wrote on social media of how various lawmakers had “expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely.”  By any other standard, this was an admission to encouraging the commission of a war crime.

In July last year, Israel’s State Prosecutor Amit Aisman reportedly sought permission from Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to open a criminal investigation into Ben-Gvir for alleged incitement of violence against residents of Gaza.  The move was said to be a gesture to placate the International Court of Justice as it considers the genocide case filed by South Africa against Israel over the war in Gaza.  In a string of increasingly agitated interim orders, the ICJ has asked that Israel comply, as signatory member, with the obligations imposed by the United Nations Genocide Convention.  These include prohibitions against incitement to genocide.

Incitement has become something of a nervous tic for the minister.  In November 2023, for instance, Ben-Gvir remarked that “When we say Hamas should be destroyed, it also means those who celebrate, those who support, and those who hand out candy – they’re all terrorists, and they should also be destroyed.”  Seeing himself as essentially immune to any form of prosecution, Ben-Gvir gave the State Prosecutor a sound verbal thrashing, claiming that it was “trying to make an Israeli minister stand trial for ‘incitement’ against citizens of an enemy state that danced on the blood our soldiers on the streets of Gaza on October 7.”

In a statement responding to protests against Ben-Gvir’s visit, Yale stated that the student encampments set up on April 22 on Beinecke Plaza were in violation of the university’s policies on the use of outdoor spaces.  Students already on notice for previous protests along similar lines would face “immediate disciplinary action”.  With dulling predictability, the university revealed that it was looking into “concerns … about disturbing anti-Semitic conduct at the gathering”.

University officialdom had also focused on the activities of Yalies4Palestine, a student organisation whose club status was revoked for “sending calls over social media for others to join the event”.  The statement makes the claim that the group “flagrantly violated the rules to which the Yale College Dean’s Office holds all registered student organizations”. Consequently, the body cannot receive funding from Yale sources, use the university name, participate in relevant student activities, or book spaces on the campus.

This profaning of protest in a university setting is a convenient trick, using the popular weasel words of “offensive” and “unsafe” while deploying, more generically, the pitiful policy inventory that makes freedom of expression an impossibility.  Mobilised accordingly, they can eliminate any debate, any discussion and any idea from the campus for merely being stingingly contrarian or causing twinges of intellectual discomfort.  The moment the brain aches in debate, the offended howl and the administrators suppress.  Play nice, dear university staff and students, or don’t play at all.  Besides, Ben-Gvir, by Yale standards, is a half-decent fellow.

The post Yale, Ben-Gvir and Banning Palestinian Groups appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

When President Trump ran for office in 2024 he promised to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine within 100 days of taking office.  The unofficial centerpiece of his plan was the proposals raised publicly by US General Kellogg earlier in 2024. While Trump in 2024 did not officially adopt the Kellogg proposals as his plan to end the war, it is clear in retrospect he unofficially embraced the Kellogg plan. One of his first unofficially appointments before even taking office in January was to task Kellogg to explore responses to his—Kellogg’s— proposals among the interested parties.

It is important to note that the Trump plan to negotiate an end to the war during his first 100 days in office has been the Kellogg Plan, revised somewhat to represent a US political compromise within the Trump administration between the Trump neocons—Rubio, Walz, etc.—and those in the administration who advocate a faster US extrication from the costly and unwinnable war—i.e. Vance, Witkoff, et. al. Thus a ‘Kellogg Plus’ US plan.

At this past week’s EU/UK meeting in London, however, ‘Kellogg Plus’ died and was buried. Put on the table for discussion by the USA as a possible unified west/NATO solution to end the Ukraine war by a  compromise with Russian positions, the Kellogg plan was never even discussed by the Europeans or the Ukrainian delegation sent to London. It was rejected and ‘killed off’ by a unified Europe & Ukraine opposition.

As others have reported, the Europeans and Ukraine had developed their own set of proposals over the past few weeks in the flurry of their meetings in Europe, the most recent occurring in Paris. London was the meeting in which the Europeans expected the US delegation to discuss the Euro-Ukraine plan which differed substantially from the US ‘Kellogg Plus’ proposals. The US reportedly caught the Europeans by surprise, presented their plan for discussion in lieu of the Europeans’.  The latter then refused to discuss the Kellogg plan and, in return, the US delegation left the meeting..

Having had a copy of the US plan just before the London meeting, Zelensky publicly, and in somewhat insulting language, rejected the US plan outright. He followed up after the meeting with another public statement to the media declaring “There is nothing to talk about”.  His European supporters, notably Macron of France and Starmer of UK, quickly joined him and publicly declared the same. It is now clear the US proposals are rejected in their entirety, both by Ukraine and the Europeans

The US had announced its plan was its ‘best and final offer’ to all the parties as the basis for starting negotiations, including Russia, and threatened to exit the negotiations process altogether if not accepted by all.  Whether it does has yet to be determined.

Today, April 25, 2025, Trump special envoy meets with Putin in Moscow to discuss the same Kellogg proposals. It is highly likely Putin will not accept the offer in its entirety either, but may accept some elements and declare it a basis to continue discussions—unlike Zelensky or the Europeans who have rejected it outright and completely.

Given that total rejection—and regardless of the outcome of the Witkoff-Putin meeting in Moscow, it is clear the first phase of the Trump administration’s attempt to negotiate an end to the Ukraine conflict has come to an abrupt end.

So what was the Kellogg Plan proposed by the USA that was so abruptly shot down by Zelensky and the Europeans? And what was their alternative proposal that they thought the US would accept as the starting point of negotiations with the Russians—a move by the Europeans to put them back in the negotiations game alongside the Americans as equals, a role so far denied them to their great consternation?

Here are the main elements of the Kellogg Plus American plan:

+ No NATO membership offered to Ukraine nor Ukraine to seek membership, although Ukraine could join the European Union

+ Recognition de jure of Crimea as part of Russia and Lughansk province now fully occupied by Russia

+ Ceasefire implementation details to be worked out by Russia & Ukraine, without Europe or US participation

+ Recognition de facto the other three east Ukraine regions (Donetsk, Zaporozhie, Kherson) now occupied by Russian forces along the current combat line

+ Lifting of US sanctions since 2014 on Russia, leaving Europe sanctions to Europe to decide

+ Europe could offer Ukraine security guarantees if it wanted but the USA would not

+ US and Russia would continue to explore joint deals on energy and industry

+ The US would operate the Zaporozhie nuclear power plant and distribute its resources to both Ukraine and Russia

+ Russia also gives up its control of the dam on the Dnipr, its territory in Kherson where the nuclear power plant is located, its occupation of far western ‘spit’ of Kherson on the river, and the area in the Kharkov province Russia also now occupies

+ US & Ukraine conclude a minerals deal, with participation by Europe as well

+ The Plan said nothing about the size of Ukraine’s army after the war’s end

In negotiations of agreements, sometimes what’s left out intentionally is as important as what’s included. Here’s some key omissions in the US plan:

+ No reference to the size of the Ukrainian military as part of a peace deal, or whether Ukraine could build up its forces while ceasefire and negotiations continued

+ No reference to whether NATO troops were to participate in any peacekeeping operations in Ukraine after the war

+ No mention of whether or how Ukraine might be compensated and rebuilt, by whom, or whether Russia’s $260 billion assets in European banks would be used

The Europeans were shocked, reportedly, by the provisions of the Kellogg Plus plan. They had expected the US to attend London to discuss the plan they had alternatively hammered out in the preceding weeks with the assumed approval of Ukraine.  That alternative plan was fundamentally different from the USA’s. In fact, it is better described not as a plan to reach some kind of a compromise settlement to the conflict, but a plan that amounted to a capitulation of Russia in the conflict.

The Europeans proposed something historically similar to the France-Britain 1918 armistice agreement on Germany that ended world war I.  That armistice was a ceasefire after which the victors—France and Britain—imposed impossible terms on Germany, which were eventually forced on Germany and which, in the end historically, led to the continuation of the world war in 1939. The 1918 negotiations was an agreement forced by victors on the defeated. The problem in Ukraine today, is that the Russians are clearing winning militarily and it is the Ukrainians and Europeans who are likely the defeated before this year’s end on the battlefield.

Here’s the elements of the Europeans-Ukraine 2025 ‘Armistice Plan’, which they had hoped, were the USA to accept as basis for negotiations, would put them—the Europeans—back on an equal footing in negotiations with the USA that the latter has thus far denied them since discussions between the US and Russia were opened in Riyadh and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in March.

The Main Elements of the European Armistice Plan:

+ Russia & Ukraine accept an unconditional ceasefire. Details of the implementation of the ceasefire subsequently negotiate by all four parties together: Russia, Ukraine, Europe and USA

+ Russia required to return all prisoners, troops and children allegedly kidnapped but no mention of Ukraine similar release of prisoners, etc.

+ Security Guarantees to Ukraine provided by US and Europe, along lines of NATO article 5 language; Ukraine may join NATO at a later date

+ No limits or restrictions on Ukraine’s size of military. Ukraine allowed to rebuild army and weapons during ceasefire negotiations

+ Europe and other States may send troops to Ukraine as part of peacekeeping force

+ No reference made to Russia right to Crimea or other occupied territories

+ Ukraine to control the Zaporozhie nuclear power plant, with US only assisting. Also Ukraine control Dnipr river and Kharkov dam

+ Russian assets in European banks remain frozen until Ukraine compensation for damages is determined by negotiations

+ Sanctions on Russia remain in place. Any relief of sanctions reinstated if Russia breaches agreement in any way

It should be noted this European proposal is not the plan Ukraine has been proposing the last two and a half years. Ukraine/Zelensky’s position to end the war hasn’t changed since late 2022.

Ukraine’s Terms for Ending the War:

Almost three years to the day this April, following Russia’s initial invasion in February 2022 and territorial gains across Ukraine, Russia and Ukraine representatives met in Istanbul, Turkey and worked out details of terms tentatively to end the conflict. The terms of Istanbul I, as it is called, included Ukraine agreeing not to join NATO, Crimea remaining in Russia but the other four provinces of east Ukraine remaining in Ukraine providing assurances were given its almost total Russian population be allowed to practice its Russian Orthodox religion, speak Russian, and continue other cultural practices—all of which were being denied by the Kiev regime at the time in the hands of ultra-nationalist, proto fascist forces intent on denying the same to its eastern Russian population. The shelling of cities in the east by Ukraine forces also had to stop.

Ukraine tentatively agreed to Istanbul I, took the terms back to Zelensky in Kiev, who reportedly was considering signing them—until then UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, flew into Kiev and convinced Zelensky that unlimited NATO funds and weaponry would be forthcoming, that Russia would collapse politically and economically if Ukraine resisted militarily and the war with Russia should therefore continue.  Zelensky ultimately agreed. Istanbul was abandoned and, after the initial Ukrainian tactical victories in the summer of 2022, Zelensky and Ukraine adopted the following hard line positions for negotiations that Ukraine formally retains to this day:

+ Russia should immediately exit all Ukraine territories, including Crimea

+ After exit, Ukraine will commence negotiations with Russia

+ Negotiation topics to focus on reparations paid to Ukraine by Russia

+ War crime tribunals of Russia leaders in Europe to follow

+ Ukraine never to cede control of the Zaporozhie nuclear plant to anyone

+ It will never agree to any limits or reductions of its military forces

+ Europe must agree to let Ukraine into NATO or else provide it Article 5 NATO equivalent security guarantees

Russia’s Terms for Ending the War

As Ukraine’s position evolved in the course of the first year of the war, so too did Russia’s.  After its initial offer in Istanbul in April 2022, and its retreat from areas around Kiev and in the south in Kherson Russian demands stiffened as well. That fall 2022, as Ukraine demands total capitulation by Russian forces, Putin established a new Russian position:

At the center of that was that now after referenda were conducted in the four regions of East Ukraine showing over-whelming voting to join Russia, the four provinces were now legally part of Russia and were non-negotiable.

Other Russian demands were Ukraine must not join NATO, must become neutral between Europe and Russia, and its government must be purged of fascist elements to ensure the same.

In early 2024 Putin gave an interview with US journalist, Tucker Carlson. In it he made an interesting remark which has largely been ignored by western media and which may yet be raised as part of any ultimate negotiations.  In it he described the far west Ukraine as not really part of the Slavic homeland of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.  He noted that territory was formerly Poland and Romania and was given by Stalin to Ukraine at the end of World War II. It was an historic hotbed of fascism and the region had strongly supported the Nazis in the world war, often doing their dirty work on the local resistance and the jews.  Putin then suggested if the west wanted this region, he didn’t have any great opposition to it, if they were that foolish to accept its inherent pro fascist elements.

Later in June 2024 Putin established Russia’s most recent position for a negotiated end of the conflict which has remained to this day. These terms include:

+ No NATO membership for Ukraine

+ Political neutrality by Ukraine

+ Ukraine government remove neo-nazi politicians from its government

+ Recognize that Crimea and the four provinces are now legally part of Russia

+ To ensure Ukraine is no threat to Russia, it must reduce its military force to around 80,000

Why European Obstinacy Toward Continuing the War?

Many observers in America and elsewhere in the world have been perplexed about why the European leadership—especially those of the larger countries Britain, France and now Germany—have been so consistently in favor of continuing the war?  They ask questions like: don’t they (European leaders) see that the war cannot be won? That Ukraine is losing? That it may mean an irrevocable split between the USA and Europe and break up of NATO itself? Can Europe actually go it alone, providing the massive funding to Ukraine and weapons it clearly does not have the economic base to produce by itself?

Here’s some possible explanations for the European obstinate support for Zelensky, Ukraine and for continuing the war:

1) European leaders are politically committed in terms of their personal careers to the war, both at national and Euro-wide institutional (EU Commission, EU Council, etc.) levels. Should the war end on Russian terms, it will be perceived as a personal defeat for them with repercussions for their personal careers

2) War is often a convenient diversion by politicians from problems at home in their own constituencies. It’s not the first time in history politicians start and continue wars to stay in office

3) Some European/NATO have a visceral bias against and hate for anything Russian. This is especially true of the Baltics states’ leaders and also to some extent for Poland, Finland, and even for Britain

4) The War continuance serves to keep NATO from falling apart (while it also has the opposite effect). So long as the war continues, perhaps US and Trump can not leave NATO so quickly or completely

5) The War is clearly pushing Europe toward building its own defense industry and independent military force. For decades it’s been overly dependent on the US for weapons provision and massive funding of NATO operations in Europe which has meant significant US dollars inflow to Europe. Europe leaders now talk of spending trillions of Euros on defense, important for boosting an otherwise slowing stagnating real economy for almost two decades now. Without the war—and media manufactured threat of an eventual Russia invasion of Europe should it win in Ukraine—it is impossible for Europe to spend trillions Euros planned for a new defense industry.

6) One must assume some European leaders—especially those less competent in the umbrella EU Commission, EU Council, etc—actually believe Russia will invade Europe after Ukraine with a Russian army barely a million when it took 15 million Russians to take east Europe and Germany during world war II at the cost of 20 million killed.

7) Some European generals and no doubt politicians have stated and believe that Russia will lose the war if NATO just stays committed and fights for another year. This is the original argument that dominated NATO thinking back in 2022: that Russia’s economy can sustain a war for long and opposition to Putin will quickly result in his overthrow. How that view succeeds today after three years of evidence to the contrary is difficult to understand.

Ukraine’s and Zelensky’s obstinacy and existential commitment to continue the war is more understandable and rational, notwithstanding its inevitable failure.

Zelensky must continue to war in order to continue martial law and, in turn, remain in office given that his authority as president expired in May 2024 and he’s no longer actually the president.  Should the war end elections in Ukraine will be held and he will almost certainly be forced out of his current role.

Without the protection of his office he then becomes personally vulnerable from several directions. He’ll be blamed by the radical nationalists for losing Ukraine territory and the death of hundreds of thousands Ukrainians will have been in vain. They’ll come after him. The Russian secret services may do the same indirectly. Or perhaps some everyday Russian, or Ukrainian, citizen who’ll blame him for their family losses. He won’t have the level of personal protection he enjoyed from the Americans, and now the British, while in office.

The War keeps the radical nationalists on his side so long as the fighting continues and he remains obstinate about any negotiations with the prospect of even the slightest compromise.

There’s also the question of wide spectrum of Ukraine society and political-social forces that have grown dependent on the flow of money from the west. Many politicians and political interests have been sharing in that western funds injection. Per Zelensky himself, Ukraine must spend $8 billion a month just as government workers wages and pensions. Ukraine’s broken economy cannot generate that. Then there are the hordes of shadowy arms traders making money off the flow of funds and weapons. And Ukraine companies and their western investors as well.

Trump’s Next Moves?

There’s been much conjecture in the US media, and talk by Trump administration team assigned to the war, that should the parties not accept the Trump Kellogg Plus plan then the US will simply walk away from the negotiations.  That’s not likely. There’s many ways to continue negotiations. In the case of Russia and US that’s simple as part of the future meetings planned to discuss restoring diplomatic relations and defining economic deals and cooperation.

Some clarity where Trump’s going next may emerge from the WItkoff-Putin meeting now underway.  Trump needs Putin to agree to something to keep the ball rolling and keep at bay US critics who’ll say it’s futile to negotiate with Putin and Russia. On the other hand, Putin cannot embrace too much a plan that clearly is designed to get Russia to de facto freeze the war in place or even slow Russian offensives.

The war cannot be concluded by negotiations designed to end the fighting; it can only be concluded on the battlefield that leads to negotiations that then conclude the conflict.

The most likely outcome of the war is a military one.  Russia will have to take more territory in order to convince Ukraine and Europe allies that if it doesn’t agree to Russia’s fundamental demands Ukraine may lose even more territory. Russia will need to succeed in major new offensives in the north and south to create that realization and scenario.

The question is whether Russia’s Special Military Operation, SMO, is sufficiently large enough to do so. 800,000 men and voluntary recruits may not prove sufficient. It should not be forgotten that Ukraine was ‘conquered’ in 1944-45 by a force of more than three million in arms. Modern technology perhaps does not require that many but nonetheless requires more than 800,000 given the scope of the front lines and the fact Russia, while it has an advantage of 2 to 1 in combat manpower, that ratio is probably not enough for a complete military victory.

However, one more proviso is relevant. It’s not impossible that Ukraine’s army collapses later this summer, especially if the USA and Trump pull out of weapons deliveries and discontinue surveillance and targeting support for Ukraine forces. But that depends on Trump’s next after next move.

Returning with a token concession from the Witkoff-Putin meeting is not sufficient. To end the war, as Trump says he wants to do, will require a hard break of US involvement militarily, logistically and financially—and soon.  He will have to ‘bite the bullet’ no later than June and cut Ukraine loose. And perhaps ‘stick a stake’ in the political heart of those Europeans who have been playing the USA to provide them their military toys and games for almost eighty years now.

The post Why Trump’s Ukraine War ‘Kellogg Plan’ Collapsed appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Image by Kelly Sikkema.

America desperately needs a united front to restrain the wrecking ball of the Trump regime. While outraged opposition has been visible and vocal, it remains a far cry from developing a capacity to protect what’s left of democracy in the United States.

With the administration in its fourth month, the magnitude of the damage underway is virtually impossible for any individual to fully grasp. But none of us need a complete picture to understand that the federal government is now in the clutches of massively cruel and antidemocratic forces that have no intention of letting go.

Donald Trump’s second presidential term has already given vast power to the most virulent aspects of the nation’s far-right political culture. Its flagrant goals include serving oligarchy, dismantling civil liberties, and wielding government as a weapon against academic freedom, civil rights, economic security, environmental protection, public health, workers’ rights, and so much more.

The nonstop Trumpist assaults mean that ongoing noncooperation and active resistance will be essential. This is no time for what Martin Luther King, Jr., called “the paralysis of analysis.” Yet the past hugely matters. Repetition compulsions within the Democratic Party, including among self-described liberals and progressives, unwittingly smoothed the path for Trump’s return to power. Many of the same patterns, with undue deference to party leaders and their narrow perspectives, are now hampering the potential to create real leverage against MAGA madness.

“Fiscal Conservatism and Social Liberalism”

Today, more than three decades after the “New Democrats” triumphed when Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, an observation by Washington Post economics reporter Hobart Rowen days after that victory is still worth pondering: “Fiscal conservatism and social liberalism proved to be an effective campaign formula.” While campaigning with a call for moderate public investment, Clinton offered enough assurances to business elites to gain much of their support. Once elected, he quickly filled his economic team with corporate lawyers, business-friendly politicians, lobbyists, and fixers on loan from Wall Street boardrooms.

That Democratic formula proved to be a winning one — for Republicans. Two years after Clinton became president, the GOP gained control of both the House and Senate. Republicans maintained a House majority for the next 12 years and a Senate majority for 10 of them.

A similar pattern set in after the next Democrat moved into the White House. Taking office in January 2009 amid the Great Recession, Barack Obama continued with predecessor George W. Bush’s “practice of bailing out the bankers while ignoring the anguish their toxic mortgage packages caused the rest of us,” as journalist Robert Scheer pointed out. By the time Obama was most of the way through his presidency, journalist David Dayen wrote, he had enabled “the dispossession of at least 5.2 million U.S. homeowner families, the explosion of inequality, and the largest ruination of middle-class wealth in nearly a century.”

Two years into Obama’s presidency, his party lost the House and didn’t regain it for eight years. When he won reelection in 2012, Republicans captured the Senate and kept control of it throughout his second term.

During Obama’s eight years as president, the Democrats also lost upward of 900 seats in state legislatures. Along the way, they lost control of 30 legislative chambers, while the Republican share of seats went from 44% to 56%. So GOP state legislators were well-positioned to gerrymander electoral districts to their liking after the 2020 census, making it possible for Republicans to just barely (but powerfully) gain and then retain their stranglehold on the House of Representatives after the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024 ran for president while sticking to updated versions of “fiscal conservatism, social liberalism,” festooning their campaigns with the usual trappings of ultra-mild populist rhetoric. Much of the media establishment approved, as they checked the standard Democratic boxes. But opting to avoid genuine progressive populism on the campaign trail meant enabling Trump to pose as a better choice for the economic interests of the working class.

Mutual Abandonment

The party’s orientation prevents its presidential nominees from making a credible pitch to be champions of working people. “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted immediately after the 2024 election. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.”

But there’s little evidence that the party leadership wants significant change, beyond putting themselves back in power. Midway through April, the homepage of the Democratic Party seemed like a snapshot of an institution still disconnected from the angst and anger of the electorate. A pop-up that instantly obscured all else on the screen featured a drawing of a snarling Donald Trump next to the headline: “We’re SUING Trump over two illegal executive orders.” Underneath, the featured message proclaimed: “We’re rolling up our sleeves and organizing for a brighter, more equal future. Together, we will elect Democrats up and down the ballot.” A schedule of town halls in dozens of regions was nice enough, but a true sense of urgency, let alone emergency, was notably lacking.

Overall, the party seems stuck in the mud of the past, still largely mired in the Joe Biden era and wary of opening the door too wide for the more progressive grassroots base that provides millions of small donations and volunteers to get out the vote (as long as they’re genuinely inspired to do so). President Biden’s unspeakably tragic refusal to forego running for reelection until far too late was enabled by top-to-bottom party dynamics and a follow-the-leader conformity that are still all too real.

On no issue has the party leadership been more tone-deaf — with more disastrous electoral and policy results — than the war in Gaza. The refusal of all but a few members of Congress to push President Biden to stop massively arming the Israeli military for its slaughter there caused a steep erosion of support from the usual Democratic voters, as polling at the time and afterward indicated. The party’s moral collapse on Gaza helped to crater Kamala Harris’s vote totals among alienated voters reluctant to cast their ballots for what they saw as a war party, a perception especially acute among young people and notable among African Americans.

The Fact of Oligarchy

Pandering to potential big donors is apt to seem like just another day in elected office. A story about California Governor Gavin Newsom, often touted as a major Democratic contender for president in 2028, is in the category of “you can’t make this stuff up.” As reported by Politico this spring, he “is making sure California’s business elite can call him, maybe. Roughly 100 leaders of state-headquartered companies have received a curious package in recent months: a prepaid, inexpensive cell phone… programmed with Newsom’s digits and accompanied by notes from the governor himself. ‘If you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away,’ read one note to a prominent tech firm CEO, printed on an official letterhead, along with a hand-scrawled addendum urging the executive to reach out… It was Newsom’s idea, a representative said, and has already yielded some ‘valuable interactions.’”

If, however, you’re waiting for Newsom to send prepaid cell phones to activists working for social justice, telling them, “If you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away,” count on waiting forever.

The dominance of super-wealthy party patrons that Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been railing against at “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies has been coalescing for a long time. “In the American republic,” wrote Walter Karp for Harper’s magazine shortly before his death in 1989, “the fact of oligarchy is the most dreaded knowledge of all, and our news keeps that knowledge from us.” Now, in the age of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, the iron heel of mega-capital is at work swiftly crushing democratic structures, while top Democrats race to stay within shouting distance of the oligarchs.

A paradoxical challenge for the left is that it must take part in building a united front that includes anti-Trump corporatists and militarists, even while fighting against corporatism and militarism. What’s needed is not capitulation or ultra-leftism, but instead a dialectical approach that recognizes the twin imperatives of defeating an increasingly fascistic Republican Party while working to gain enough power to implement truly progressive agendas.

For those agendas, electoral campaigns and their candidates should be subsets of social movements, not the other way around. Still, here’s one crystal-clear lesson of history: it’s crucial who sits in the Oval Office and controls Congress. Now more than ever.

Fascism Would Stop Us All

A horrible reality of this moment: a fascist takeover of the government is within reach — and, if completed, any possibility of fulfilling a progressive agenda would go out the Overton window. The words of the young Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton, murdered in 1969 by the Chicago police (colluding with the FBI), ring profoundly true today: “Nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.”

But much of the 2025 Democratic Party leadership seems willing to once again pursue the tried-and-failed strategy of banking on Trump to undo himself. Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, the party leaders in the House and Senate, have distinctly tilted in that direction, as if heeding strategist James Carville’s declaration that Democrats should not try to impede Trump’s rampage against the structures of democracy.

“With no clear leader to voice our opposition and no control in any branch of government, it’s time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead,” Carville wrote in late February. “Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us.” (Evidently impressed with his political acumen, the editors of the New York Times published the op-ed piece with that advice only four months after printing an op-ed he wrote in late October under this headline: “Three Reasons I’m Certain Kamala Harris Will Win.”)

As for the Democratic National Committee, it probably had nowhere to go but up in the wake of the chairmanship of Jaime Harrison, who for four years dutifully did President Biden’s bidding. Now, with no Democratic president, the new DNC chair, Ken Martin, has significant power to guide the direction of the party.

In early April, I informed Martin that my colleagues and I at RootsAction were planning a petition drive for the full DNC to hold an emergency meeting. “The value of such a meeting seems clear for many reasons,” I wrote, “including the polled low regard for the Democratic Party and the need to substantively dispel the wide perception that the party is failing to adequately respond to the current extraordinary perils.” Martin replied with a cordial text affirming that the schedule for the 448-member DNC to convene remains the same as usual — twice a year — with the next meeting set for August.

The petition, launched in mid-April (co-sponsored by RootsAction and Progressive Democrats of America), urged the DNC to “convene an emergency meeting of all its members — fully open to the public — as soon as possible… Business as usual must give way to truly bold action that mobilizes against the autocracy that Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their cronies are further entrenching every day. The predatory, extreme, and dictatorial actions of the Trump administration call for an all-out commensurate response, which so far has been terribly lacking from the Democratic Party.”

No matter what, at this truly pivotal time, we must never give up.

As Stanley Kunitz wrote during the height of the Vietnam War:

In a murderous time
   the heart breaks and breaks
      and lives by breaking.

It is necessary to go
   through dark and deeper dark
      and not to turn.

While reasons for pessimism escalate, I often think of how on target my RootsAction colleague India Walton was in a meeting when she said, “The only hope is in the struggle.”

This piece first appeared on TomDispatch.

The post Top Democrats Have Been Enabling Trump appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Joseph Marshall III.

Since my previous post referenced the renowned Lakota author Joseph Marshall III, it is with great sadness that I inform you of his passing into the spirit world on April 18. It is somewhat coincidental that he departed the day following my discussion of Crazy Horse. His literary works and historical insights have profoundly influenced my perspective. I frequently revisit his writings, particularly those concerning Crazy Horse, as I seek to make sense of the world, especially in times of great suffering. While our political ideologies may differ, his depictions of the last generation of free Lakotas is authentic. And I am very critical of the term “authentic” when applied to American Indian history.

As a historian, one encounters the necessity of engaging with library shelves containing volumes of U.S. apologia of various orientations concerning the theft of a continent and the associated genocide of its Indigenous peoples. A sense of frustration and predictability can often mark this experience. For example, the predominant narrative trajectory concerning Lakota historiography, as articulated by non-Lakotas, generally follows this pattern: initially, the portrayal depicts us as violent savages; subsequently, we are reframed as noble savages. Eventually, the representation culminates in depicting an archetypal image of American Indians: dwelling in tipis, donning headdresses, engaging in war cries, and riding bare-chested across expansive plains. The arrival of Kevin Costner’s Private Dunbar further popularized this image, leading to a widespread belief that others, if they tried hard enough, could become us.

Additionally, some assert that we were latecomers to our own site of creation—territory which we purportedly appropriated—aggressively displacing others until we finally got what was coming to us. (Imagine them telling Christians that Adam and Eve were invaders within the Garden of Eden.) Recently, a Finnish historian has endeavored to restore our rightful position in the historical narrative, concluding that we were imperialists in our own right, akin to the Comanches, competing against our expansionist counterpart, the United States of America. It is noteworthy that most of these authors have neither resided in Lakota Makoce, nor have they mastered the Lakota language, spoken to Lakota experts, or investigated the extensive archives of Lakota knowledge and textual materials. My academic qualifications in history required fluency in at least one foreign language, ideally corresponding with a regional specialization. Mastery of a foreign language is a prerequisite for conducting thorough archival research in a foreign nation. What credibility would we attribute to a Russian historian who lacked proficiency in the Russian language and did not undertake travel or study within Russia? (The answer may suggest otherwise, given the prevailing anti-Russian sentiments in the United States; however, the central argument remains intact.) So why give so much credibility to historians and writers who lack these credentials?

On the other hand, Joseph Marshall, or Joe as I called him, possessed these qualifications. He was a first-language Lakota speaker, and much of his referenced knowledge comes directly from the Lakota oral tradition. Having lived among and been closely related to many of the finest practitioners of Lakota oral history, he provides unique insights. For instance, The Journey of Crazy Horse includes no footnotes or non-Lakota references. Instead, Marshall lists numerous Oglala and Sicangu elders in the book’s sources section, his primary references. Several elders were just a generation away from when Crazy Horse walked the earth. I am unaware of any contemporary histories of the nineteenth century that rely so heavily on oral traditions as primary sources. Marshall exemplified the strength of Lakota knowledge. He was more than a historian; like the elders who served as his archives, he became a living memory for the Lakota people.

I first met him at an American Indian education conference in Oacoma, South Dakota, in 2010. Since that time, his books have occupied a prominent place on my shelves and have been included in many of my high school syllabi. A former student of mine, now an adult, once showed me that they still possess their well-worn copy of “ The Lakota Way, “ which I assigned in my Oceti Sakowin studies course years ago. I have gifted his writings to friends, family, and acquaintances more than any other author, owing to their unwavering commitment to portraying an unapologetic Lakota perspective.

Since the U.S.-backed Zionist genocide in Palestine, it has been hard to ignore the parallels between American Indians and Palestinians. But it’s one thing to pity the victims of genocidal war and quite another to try to understand why they continue to resist, despite facing enemies equipped with more technologically advanced weapons and a propensity for extreme violence. Marshall inspired me to write about Palestinian and Lakota resistance. In the analysis section of The Journey of Crazy Horse, trying to understand Crazy Horse’s spirit of total resistance, Marshall asks the reader to:

[T]hink of the emotional impact if suspicious and pushy people suddenly drove an armored troop carrier into your quiet suburban or rural neighborhood, deployed men with guns, made unreasonable demands that couldn’t be satisfied, and opened fire, killing and wounding your friends, neighbors, and relatives. Any[one] who witnessed such a horrific incident would be suspicious and distrustful of such intruders forever.

Palestinians don’t have to imagine this scenario. They are living it. Lakotas lived it, too. And that’s what Marshall’s books did to me. They humanized the Lakota warriors of the last free generation who did not live on reservations. They were deeply scarred and defined by the horrors they witnessed. Their terror and pain were their motivations for resistance; they were acts of self-defense and survival. And it became more than that. Their courage and skill to defeat their enemies turned them into legends, inspiring future generations. They broke the spell of inviolability that surrounds the colonizer. They tore him from his horse, just as Palestinians in sandals pulled him from his tank, forcing him to confront his mortality, reminding him that we may not be equals in this world, but we are all equals in death. They did this in the face of terrible danger, remaining steadfast and humble protectors while confronting their own shortcomings as human beings, as sometimes imperfect relatives and lovers.

I have observed this same spirit reflected in the eyes of Water Protectors and veterans of the Red Power Movement, aware that they may not live long enough to witness the results of their sacrifices. They embodied the spirit of Crazy Horse. Marshall conveyed it as a living memory for all future generations of the Lakota people and our allies, rather than as an idealistic fantasy of violence and adventurism. This unique essence of recognizing a higher power, or living for a greater purpose, has the potential to inspire ordinary individuals to achieve extraordinary feats. That’s what makes it powerful. It moves people, and, using their only possession—their life, people make history with it.

For that, we know Joe Marshall joins the ancestors. His gift to us was not stories about the best days of the Lakota Nation in the nineteenth century. His gift was that, if we embody the spirit of Crazy Horse, our best days are in front of us.

This piece first appeared on Red Scare.

The post Crazy Horse and Joseph Marshall III appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Image by Mostafa Meraji.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

Voltaire, Enlightenment author and philosopher (1694-1778)

Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the United States and Israel have been zealous in their efforts to disempower it. Israel has used its powerful hasbara (propaganda) machine to peddle absurdities about Tehran as a nuclear threat to the region and the world.

For refusing to bend to U.S.-Israeli demands to abandon the Palestinian cause and for standing against their hegemonic plans for the region, Iran has been the target of the most restrictive economic sanctions in history and under perpetual threat of military intervention.

Like any sovereign nation, Iran has a right to defend itself. Nuclear weapons are a security guarantee that Iran has not sought. Unlike Israel and the United States, it has not threatened nor bombed, invaded or occupied its neighbors. However, after Israeli air strikes in April and October 2024 and continued U.S. threats, Iran has had no choice but to debate and reevaluate its long-held nuclear doctrine which regards weapons of mass destruction against Islam.

In a civilized conflict-free world, there would be no need for weapons, nuclear or otherwise. Unfortunately for some countries, like Iran, possessing nuclear weapons may become a necessary tool for survival. For others, like the United States and Israel, the ghastly weapons are used as cudgels to bully countries into submission.

It is important to establish that the U.S. intelligence community—the collective work of America’s 18 spy organizations—has determined that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. It stated as much in its “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community” 2024 report: “Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.” Previous reports have also stated that Iran’s military doctrine is defensive and its nuclear program is meant to build negotiating leverage and to respond to perceived international pressure.

The question then becomes why is it that the nuclear issue is front and center when the United States does engage with Iran and why has its program, in existence for more than four decades and intended for civilian energy/scientific purposes, been so falsely represented.

Demonizing Iran has served the imperial interests of the United States and its military outpost Israel in the Middle East. Through the well financed aggressive propaganda efforts of Israeli lobby groups like the tactically benign sounding American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Tel Aviv has been successful in selling Washington, the corporate media and the American public on the provocative idea that Iran is a threat to it, the region and the United States.

The narrative about Iran and its nuclear objectives is replete with myths and distortions. U.S. foreign policy decisions have been largely framed to protect and secure Israeli interests, often to the detriment of America’s own.

A fettered Iran allows Israel unchallenged regional supremacy. Like former U.S. administrations, the Trump White House, in collaboration with Israel and their Arab allies, are determined to strip Iran of its revolutionary identity and undermine its regional clout.

Iran has legitimate security interests and concerns, fully aware that it is the primary target of Israel’s military and nuclear arsenal. A 2025 Arms Control Association report reveals that Israel—the only nuclear weapons power in the Middle East—has an estimated 90 nuclear warheads with sophisticated delivery systems in its inventory, as well as the fissile material stockpiles for at least 200 nuclear weapons.

Iran, on the other hand, is a threshold state. To achieve the weaponization stage, it would need to enrich uranium to 90 percent purity, weaponize the fissile material and develop the delivery systems. None have been done.

Unlike Israel, Iran is a signatory to the 1968 U.N. Non-Proliferation Treaty. As such, it is prohibited from developing, acquiring or using nuclear weapons, although it does have the right to manufacture and enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. In addition, Iran’s leaders have vigorously pursued the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone for the region.

There are a number of rational reasons for the Islamic Republic to go down the road toward acquiring nuclear weapons; principally, self-defense.

Former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak (2007-2013), in his memoirs, for example, reveals that the regime of then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came close to attacking Iran at least three times between 2010 and 2012. Barak stated that he and Netanyahu had pushed for military operations against Iranian facilities, but they backed down after opposition from their top security officials.

Barak also discloses that he disagreed with Netanyahu that Iran’s nuclear program posed an existential threat to Israel. He was instead more concerned about the regional balance of power.

Some in Iran’s political class, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,

suspect that the United States, Israel and their Arab allies are intent on

overthrowing the Islamic Republic. Recent history confirms their suspicions.

They point to crippling economic sanctions, covert operations, cyber attacks, assassination of nuclear scientists and military personnel, missile attacks and sabotage of gas pipelines and military sites.

In July 2022, for example, during a visit to Israel, President Joe Biden signed a pledge to never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon and to “…use all elements of its national power to ensure that outcome.”

It is with that pledge and President Trump’s ultimatums that the United States has entered a new round of nuclear talks with Iran, currently underway. Strangely enough, it was Trump, encouraged by Netanyahu, who pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement in 2018 and imposed heavier “maximum pressure” sanctions; believing that economic hardships would drive Iranians to topple the government.

Before the recent nuclear meetings began in early April, Trump threatened: “If they [Iran] don’t make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.” In a show of force, in addition to two aircraft carriers in the Red Sea, the White House has deployed a squadron of fighter jets, stealth bombers, air defenses and large quantities of weapons to the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

Also, Netanyahu, incapable of remaining silent, sounded off saying that the only nuclear deal Israel would accept would have Iran agreeing to eliminate its entire program. He further elaborated: “We go in, blow up the facilities and dismantle all the equipment, under American supervision and execution.”

The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reported (17 April 2025) that Netanyahu recently sought the U.S. administration’s support to conduct joint commando and air strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. Trump, however, vetoed the plan while discussions with Tehran are ongoing. Netanyahu is clearly intent on derailing the negotiations to insure that there will never be rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran.

Except for a short interval during the Obama administration, when Iran and the P5+1 countries (China, France, Russia, U.K., U.S.) plus Germany finalized the JCPOA in 2015, the United States has leaned on a muscular military policy and has never been serious about engaging cooperatively with Iran. It has, however, been serious about insuring Israel’s hegemony in the region.

President Obama’s “new dawn for the Middle East” included moving away from years of failed policies, particularly “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” a 1996 initiative pushed by pro-Israel stalwarts and advanced during the George W. Bush administration.

Following the attacks of 11 September 2001, Bush and Netanyahu set in motion the aggressive goals documented in “Clean Break” to contain, destabilize and overthrow governments that challenged U.S.-Israeli hegemony. Plans were drafted for military action against seven countries, starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. All but Iran have been destabilized and/or balkanized.

Even though the relationship between Obama and Netanyahu was often strained, Obama’s actual record in office makes him one of the most pro-Israel presidents since Harry S. Truman.

The scale of Israel’s barbarity in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories and its insatiable addiction to expansion and power forewarns Iran and other actors in the Middle East that they must be vigilant in their defense to survive.

Netanyahu’s jingoistic vision of Zionist Israeli supremacy has never changed. Ten years ago, he bluntly told an Israeli parliamentary committee that there could never be peace with the Palestinians: “I’m asked if we will forever live by the sword,” and I say “yes.”

Israel may not be visibly present at the nuclear negotiating table, its influence over the outcome is, however, palpable and discernible.

What Washington and Tel Aviv fail to understand is that they are dealing with a politically astute country, that deserves the respect it demands as a nation that has

resisted colonizers and colonization throughout its 5,000-year history in West Asia.

No amount of absurdities—American or Israeli—can change that reality.

The post Iran and the United States: Nuclear Argy Bargy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

German officers of the Ordnungspolizei examining a man’s papers in Nazi-occupied Poland, 1941. Public domain.

American citizens are being routinely caught in Trump’s deportation dragnet, detained, jailed, and threatened with deportation, even a four-year-old with cancer and a pregnant mother who would have given birth to an American citizen. When ICE’s “mistakes” are revealed, usually through the presentation of a birth certificate days after the false arrest, the typical response has been to blame the victims. That’s if they haven’t already been deported. 

Take the case of 19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, who was detained by Border Patrol outside Tucson on April 8 and held for 10 days in the privately run Florence Correctional Center before being released. Hermosilla, who has a learning disability, told his jailers he was an American citizen. They told him to tell his lawyer. At that point, Jose Hermosillo didn’t have a lawyer. Two days later, Jose told an immigration judge the same thing. Federal prosecutors requested a week-long delay in the case. And Jose, who is the father of a six-month-old American citizen, was held for another seven days until his family could finally present the court with his birth certificate.

After his release, DHS smeared Hermosillo, blaming him for his own arrest and detention. In a post on Twitter (of all places), DHS said: “Hermosillo’s arrest and detention were a direct result of his own actions and statements.” In trying to cover their own cruel blunders, DHS officials alleged “that Jose Hermosillo approached Border Patrol in Tucson, Arizona, stating he had ILLEGALLY entered the U.S. and identified himself as a Mexican citizen.”

This was a convenient concoction, a fiction. Hermosilllo hadn’t been in Mexico and he’s not a Mexican citizen. To support their self-serving claim, DHS said Hermossilo signed a transcript of an alleged interview attesting to this version of events. But Hermosilla can’t read or write. He can only scratch out his name, according to his girlfriend. 

What really happened is quite different, tragic even. Hermosillo lives in Albuquerque and had traveled to Tucson with his girlfriend to visit her family. While in Tucson, he suffered a seizure and was taken by ambulance to the hospital. He was treated and released, unsure exactly where he was or how to return to his girlfriend. 

Hermosilla flagged down what he thought was a police car to ask for directions. It turned out to be Border Patrol. He told the officer he was staying in Tucson but was lost.

The BP officer responded harshly, “You’re not from here. Where are you from?

“New Mexico,” Hermosilla said.

“I don’t believe you,” the BP cop said. “Show me your papers?”

Hermosilla told him he’d left his New Mexico ID at his girlfriend’s family’s place.

“I’m not stupid,” the cop told him. “I know you’re from Mexico.”

Then the cop arrested Hermosilla, told him to sign some papers, and then deposited him in a cell with 15 other men, where he was served cold food and denied his medications for the next 10 days.

“I told them I was a US citizen,” Hermosillo told Arizona PM. “But they don’t listen to me.”

+++

+ On Friday, Federal Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, issued an order saying that DHS had apparently deported a 2-year-old American citizen to Honduras with “no meaningful” process, even though the girl’s father, also a US citizen, fought to keep her in the country.

+ The ACLU reported that on Friday, the New Orleans field office of ICE deported two families with minor children. Three of the children (age 2, 4 and 7) are US citizens. One of the children suffers from a rare form of metastatic cancer. The citizen child was deported without medications or being able to consult with their doctors, even though ICE was fully briefed about the child’s dire medical condition. One of the mothers is pregnant. Both families have lived in the US for many years. 

According to the ACLU, “ICE held the families incommunicado, refusing or failing to respond to multiple attempts by attorneys and family members to contact them. In one instance, a mother was granted less than one minute on the phone before the call was abruptly terminated when her spouse tried to provide legal counsel’s phone number.”

+ Aldo Martinez-Gomez, a US citizen living in California, received a DHS notice on April 11, threatening “criminal prosecution” and fines if he does not depart within seven days, even after he showed them his birth certificate. “Do not attempt to remain in the United States,” the letter warned. “The government will find you.’ Martinez-Gomez: “I’m just trying not to be one of the government’s mistakes.”

+ But wait, the Democrats have a solution for American citizens being “mistakenly” rounded up for deportation.

+ “Show Us Your Papers”…

+ Yglesias is, of course, the Biden whisperer and they followed his right-center advice right off the electoral cliff. That hasn’t stopped Matty from veering even farther right.

+ Since Friedman believes the world is flat, maybe that Waymo will drive him right off the edge…

+ What, pray tell, does a Waymo Democrat do? “Waymo Democrats would do everything Trump is doing maliciously today — but do it productively.” Sorry, I asked.

+++

+  At 8:30 in the morning on Friday, U.S. Marshals entered a county courthouse in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and arrested trial judge Hannah Dugan on charges that she had obstructed the arrest of a noncitizen. Trump officials, including FBI director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, publicly gloated over her arrest, as did Trump, who posted a photo of the judge wearing a medical mask on his Truth Social feed.

Shockingly (right?), the facts are a little different from what the Trumpites have presented. Flores was in Dugan’s courtroom on another matter, when ICE agents entered and attempted to arrest him without a warrant. Dugan ordered the agents out of her court and told them to contact the supervising judge. Then she escorted Flores and his attorney out the back of the courtroom to a public hallway.

Flores Ruiz was not, as Patel crudely asserts, a “perp.” He hadn’t been accused of “perpetrating” any crime, except that of being in the US without papers. There was no “increased danger” to the public because there was never any “danger” to begin with, except to Flores Ruiz. He was later detained by ICE and jailed without incident. Surely, judges have sovereignty over their own courtrooms and have the authority to demand to see a warrant before an arrest is made inside their chambers.

Of course, this is yet another provocation, pushing the limits of executive power to see how far it reaches. It seems as if Trump is heeding Bukele’s advice at the White House that you need to “get rid of the judges.” In 2021, the Salvadoran despot removed all five judges from the nation’s supreme court and fired its attorney general.

+ In a federal court filing last Thursday,  the Trump administration admitted ICE agents did not have a warrant when they detained Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil in March, conceded that it was a warrantless arrest: “We were permitted to arrest him without a warrant, because he gave us reason to think he would escape, namely that he said he was going to walk away if we didn’t have a warrant.”

+ This admission by the Feds contradicts what officers told Khalil and his lawyers at the time of his arrest and in a later arrest report.

+ How Columbia grad student Mohsen Mahdawi was entrapped and kidnapped at his own citizenship hearing: “At his citizenship interview, he signed a pledge to “defend the Constitution.” The official left to go “check” something. Then masked & armed agents came in, shackled Mahdawi, and tried to fly him to Louisiana.”

+ How is it possible to feel any allegiance to the government of a country that does things like this to children who are citizens of the US as a matter of policy? “For months, NPR has been receiving tips about the Detroit-Canada border, immigrants and U.S. citizen children being held without access to legal counsel, because they took a wrong turn on the highway.”

+ After terminating legal support for noncitizen children, the Trump administration is making 4-year-olds represent themselves in immigration court.

+ ICE moved a Venezuelan man who had worked in construction in Philadelphia to Texas for possible deportation after a federal judge had issued an order blocking his removal from Pennsylvania or the United States.

+ Three ICE agents raided a courthouse in Charlottesville in plain clothes without badges, ID or warrants and carted off two men without explanation and dragged them into an unmarked van.

+ Sulayman Nyang, a soccer coach in Aurora, Colorado, was detained by ICE at the airport—24 hours later, his family still doesn’t know where he is. Nyang has a green card, is married to a U.S. citizen, and is the father of a 3-month-old son. He has no criminal record — a marijuana possession allegation was dismissed in 2009. “Seeing that he’s been in the country for 25 years, we didn’t think there was a problem,” his wife said. “What do you mean, 2009? He hasn’t done anything. Everything has been dismissed… They won’t explain why. They give two different answers.”

+ So ICE isn’t rounding up rapists, murderers and maniacs, but mostly day laborers, who would be paying taxes and contributing to Social Security: “Laborers who arrived at a Home Depot in Pomona on Tuesday morning in hopes of earning a day’s wage were met with uniformed ICE agents who reportedly began rounding up workers in the parking lot. ”

+ Radley Balko, one of the best criminal justice journalists around, is charting the pattern of ICE officers attempting to intimidate immigration lawyers, including one outrageous case where ICE agents showed up at a lawyer’s home to harass him about representing immigrants and cut his wifi to disable his Ring cam from recording the interaction…

+ The Trump administration gratuitously released Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wife’s address, resulting in the predictable flood of abuse, threats, and harassment from MAGA goons that’s gotten so extreme she’s had to move to a safer place with her three kids, two of whom are autistic…

+ In its 8-2 ruling last week, the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. They ordered the Trump administration to give people a fair day in court and the chance to file a lawsuit. How did Trump respond? By giving detainees facing deportation only 12 hours to file suit.

+ David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute: “We have a situation where the executive branch intentionally violates the law, evades judicial review for as long as it can, then gets ordered to stop but pretends not to understand that, and keeps violating the law the whole time. It doesn’t matter if they eventually stop…”

+ The Trump administration has been texting college professors to ask if they are Jewish. Barnard College admitted to its staff that it had provided Trump’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with personal contact information for faculty members.  The federal government reaching out to our personal cellphones to identify who is Jewish is incredibly sinister,” said Barnard associate professor Debbie Becher, who is Jewish and received the text. Some might recall that IBM helped the Nazis ID Jews in Europe and facilitate their transport out of Warsaw to Auschwitz.

+ The same college (Barnard) that gave Trump the contact info for its faculty tried to use a bomb threat to smear the students the threat targeted!

+ What kind of so-called university disciplines students for writing an op-ed in the school’s newspaper? That would be Columbia, which sanctioned two students, Maryam Alwan and Layla Saliba, for their “alleged participation” in writing a pro-Palestinian editorial (“Recentering Palestine, Reclaiming the Movement“) for the Columbia Spectator in October 2024.

+ Trump’s immigration/deportation policies cut overseas travel by 11.6% in March, putting up to 7900 American jobs at risk. Every 40 international visitors generate one U.S. job.

+ On Wednesday, a federal judge barred the Trump administration from pulling federal funds from places it deems “sanctuary cities,” saying the policy is unconstitutional.

+ Cost of Trump’s original border wall: $11 billion

Number of times it was breached by smugglers in 3 years: 3,200.

+++

+ The lower he sinks, the more whacked out he’s going to get.

+ Trump’s numbers in the latest Reuters poll are even worse: 37% approval, 57% disapproval.

+ Gen Z women emphatically don’t want to be baby mills in the Tradwife Sweatshops envisioned by Trump and Musk…

+ Trump’s net approval rating on immigration (his strongest issue for months) is now -5 and he’s squandered whatever marginal allure he once had with Hispanics: Trump approval/disapproval with Hispanics in new Pew poll: 27% / 72%–a collapse of the 42% support he enjoyed (courtesy of Biden and Harris’ incompetence) in the 2024 election.

+ Trump approval among independents (April)

Fox News: 26-73 (-47)
NYT/Siena: 29-66 (-37)
CNN: 31-67 (-36)
YouGov: 30-59 (-29)
CBS: 36-64 (-28)
ABC/WP: 33-58 (-25)
Gallup: 37-57 (-20)
AtlasIntel: 39-57 (-18)
Quantus: 41-53 (-12)

Of course, the Democrats are polling even worse than Trump (38% approval rating, five points worse than the Republicans). There’s a reason. Consider Chuck Schumer’s answer to CNN’s Dana Bash on the Democrats’ response to Trump’s threats against Harvard: “We sent him a very strong letter just the other day.”

Bash: “You’ll let us know if you get a response to that letter?”

Trump: Get me a ticket on an aeroplane
Ain’t got time to take the fast train
I can’t stay here, I’m running away in fear
Cause Chuckie, he sent me a letter…

+ Or consider this feckless cavilling from another top Democrat…The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner allows Deborah Lipstadt, Biden’s former “antisemitism” envoy, to expose her shameful moral hypocrisy. Chotiner’s interviews with imperious powerbrokers are master classes in how to lead elites into condemning themselves…

+ DOGE staffers allegedly marked four million people as dead in the Social Security database, without having any evidence that these people had died.

+ In yet another blow to Trump and Bessent’s “great encirclement” plan to isolate China, Japan categorically refuses to do any trade deal with the US, detrimental to their relationship with China.

+ Trump on April 23, claiming negotiations with China were ongoing: “Everything is active. Everybody wants to be a part of what we’re doing.”

He Yadong, spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce: “There are currently no economic and trade negotiations between China and the United States. Any claims about progress… are baseless rumors without factual evidence. If the us truly wants to solve the problem, it should…completely cancel all unilateral tariff measures against China.”

+ Wall Street Journal editorial board: “[the] harsh reality is that China called Mr. Trump’s bluff and seems to have won this round.”

+ One big reason for Trump’s humiliating surrender: In the 3 weeks since the tariffs took effect, ocean container bookings from China to the United States are down over 60% industry-wide.

+ Within two weeks, the Port of Los Angeles, the largest in the US, will experience a 40% drop in cargo ship traffic.

+ Percent of Americans worried about the economy falling into a recession: 53%.

By party

Democrats: 75%
Independents: 59%
GOP: 25%

–AP/NORC

+ S&P Global reports that more US companies declared bankruptcy in the first quarter of 2025 than at any time in the last 15 years.

+ At $4.1 trillion a year, California now boasts the fourth-largest economy in the world, trailing only the USA as a whole, China, and Germany.

+ Millennials, who were born between 1981 and 1996, earn 20% less than baby boomers did at their age, per FORTUNE

+ March existing home sales in the US were the weakest since the Great Financial Crisis. At the same time, 42% of mortgage refinance applications are being denied — the highest rejection rate in more than 12 years.

+ The 19 richest households in the US amassed more than $1 trillion in new wealth last year alone. Inequality isn’t the word for the kind of grotesque disparities our economic system generates…

+ According to Gallup,53% of Americans (a record high) now say their financial situation is getting worse. It’s the first time since 2001 that a majority has expressed an economic outlook this gloomy.

+ The National Institute of Health is now prohibiting the awarding of new grants to any institutions that boycott Israeli companies. Boycotts of companies from other countries are perfectly okay.

+  Journal of the American Medical Association on declining vaccination rates in the US for measles: “If current vaccination rates stay the same, the model estimated that the US could see more than 850,000 cases, 170,000 hospitalizations, and 2,500 deaths over the next 25 years. The results appear in the

+ It’s not just rare earth materials. Big pharmaceutical companies now buy one-third of their experimental molecules from Chinese laboratories. Three years ago, this number was 10 percent. Nearly 25% of all early drug development is done in China.

+ Countries that hold the most sovereign US debt:

Japan: $1,591 billion (22%)
China: $761 billion (10.5%)
UK: $740 billion (10.2%)
Luxembourg: $410 billion (5.7%)
Cayman Islands: $405 billion (5.6%)
Belgium: $378 billion (5.2%)
Canada: $351 billion (4.9%)
France: $335 billion (4.6%)
Ireland: $330 billion (4.6%)

+ Who will DOGE the DOGErs?

+++

+ “History shows again and again,
How Nature proves the folly of men…”

+ The first quarter of 2025 was the second warmest on record, just a fraction behind last year’s mark. An ominous portent, given that  2024 was super-charged by a strong El Nino event, while 2025 started off with weak La Nina conditions.

+ According to a new study by researchers at Dartmouth College published last week in “Nature”, emissions from 111 fossil fuel companies have caused $28 trillion in climate damage, the study finds. These five generated the most harm.

+ Only three years ago, China imported three times as many cars as it exported. This year, it’s exporting more than it’s importing.

The top culprits….

Saudi Aramco: $2.05 trillion
Gazprom: $2 trillion
Chevron: $1.98 trillion
ExxonMobil: $1.91 trillion
BP: $1.45 trillion

+ Volkswagen’s EVs are now outselling Teslas across Europe.

Since January 2025…

VW: 65,679
Teslas: 53,237

+ UNICEF has warned that the water crisis in Gaza has reached “critical levels,” with only one in 10 people able to access clean drinking water.

+++

+ Lemkin Institute on Genocide Prevention’s warning about RKF, Jr’s Autism Registry:

The Lemkin Institute urges the American people, especially the scientific community, to take an unwavering stand against any sort of registry of autistic people (or any other group). We also urge Americans to push back hard against violations of privacy and limits on disabled people’s rights to life, inclusion, and respect. Americans must reject the idea that the state should be able to trample these fundamental rights whenever it feels a certain group is a threat to “national strength” or is becoming too costly, as RFK Jr. has made clear he views autistic people to be.

+ Meanwhile, RFK, Jr. has fired the HHS staffers who ran “a program that helps millions of poor families keep the electricity on so babies don’t die from extreme heat or cold, have all been fired. The office overseeing the enforcement of child support payments nationally has been hollowed out.”

+ Public Citizen: “Donations to Trump’s inauguration from corporations facing federal investigations/lawsuits: $50 million (one third of corporate inauguration donations).

+ “President Trump will have an ‘intimate private dinner’ with top 220 buyers of his crypto memecoin at his DC-area golf club, the issuers of the token said on their website. The coin skyrocketed on the news, at one point up 49%…” This is like the Clinton/Gore Koffee Klatches, except those were to sell off face time with the president and vice president for political donations. This money is going right into Trump’s own pockets. Like the genocide in Gaza, the political corruption here is taking place right out in the open. They even advertise the opportunity to take part…

+ If the purchaser/influence-seeker were domestic, they would have used Binance.USA.

+ The value of Trumpcoin increased by over 80% after Trump’s announcement.

+ The Fox Business Network reported that Trump’s team privately alerted Wall Street executives to the state of its trade deal negotiations, giving them inside knowledge to help them profit off the swings in the market. Martha Stewart went to prison for less, MUCH less.

+ The Trump regime is now using U.S. attorneys to intimidate academic journals by sending them letters demanding they explain how they ensure “viewpoint diversity.”

+ According to the FBI, Americans aged 60 and older reported losing almost $3 billion to crypto scams last year. In total, Americans reported being bilked out of around $9.3 billion via crypto, out of a total of $16.6 billion in reported losses to financial scams that year.

+ Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at the Kennedy School on Trump’s threats against Harvard, including terminating federal grants and banning visas for foreign students:

“What’s at stake is the presence of independent centers of thought in a free society. Ultimately, this is an attempt by the administration to bring Harvard, as the world’s most prominent private university, under its control. If you read the [Trump] letter carefully, they were basically wanting to have control over who got hired, control over what got taught, control over the content of the curriculum, control over admissions, in a variety of different ways. At which point the university is no longer independent. It has to get up every morning, say to itself: ‘Gee, what does the president think of what we’re doing here?’ And that means you don’t have independent thought.”

+ NYPD officers attended a training session informing them that Palestinian symbols like the watermelon and the keffiyeh, as well as phrases such as “settler colonialism” and “all eyes on Rafah,” were antisemitic. Apparently, being born Palestinian is an antisemitic act. “All eyes on Rafah,” of course, stemmed from Biden’s warning to Israel that a full-scale invasion of the city was a “red line” that would trigger a ban on offensive weapons sales to Israel. Israel destroyed the 2,000-year-old city, anyway. Now, to even mention it is evidence of anti-semitism.

+ Why does the Defense Department need a $1 trillion budget next year? Pete Hegseth has ordered the construction of a make-up studio inside the Pentagon.

+ All these tough MAGA guys need their own beauticians: Trump gets his face with orange paint, Vance has his eyes done up in kohl and Hegseth needs to get prettified in his own make-up room. The Trump cabinet is being to look like an over-the-hill glam rock band.

+ Speaking of Trump cabinet members demanding their own make-up rooms, it sure looks like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told his stylist to give him “the Full Rumsfeld.”

+ Bessent: “I intend to make an all-out push to make Americans financially literate.”

= Be careful what you ask for, Secretary Bessent. When the French became “financially literate” (236 years and counting before the Americans), it didn’t turn out so well for the Ancien Régime…

+ France’s Jean-Luc Melenchon: “The only reason Trump won is that there is no left in the United States.”

+ Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt: “The government can and will collect defaulted federal student loan debt by withholding tax refunds, federal pensions, and even their wages.” Imagine Trump’s bankers doing the same to him!

+ Michigan State Rep. Matt Maddock claims that anyone who opposes his bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico hates America. “I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the people opposed to this are the same people that hate America.”

Netanyahu to the Pope: “We have a natural bond. We know Jesus. He was here in our land. He spoke Hebrew.”

The Hippie Pope: “He spoke Aramaic.”

+ After attending a Mar-a-Lago soiree with top Republicans, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the fanatical Kahanist and ethnic cleanser who, as a young man, cheered the assassination of Rabin, said: “They expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed.”

+++

+ There are “rules” to Columbus Day? Rule 1: Make the Genoan mercenary for Spain an Italian! Rule 2: Pretend the Genoan mercenary “discovered” “America”, which had been discovered 30,000 years earlier by the ancestors of the people living there, over a much more treacherous route! Rule 3: Ignore the fact that the Genoan mercenary had no idea where in the world he was. Rule 4: Elide from the “celebration” any troublesome mention of the Genoan mercenary’s rape, slaughter, infection and plunder of the people living on the Islands the wind and ocean currents thrust his ships upon…

+ A vicious new bill in the Texas legislature would criminalize transporting youth younger than 18, or funding their transportation, out of state to access abortion without written parental consent, with up to 20 years in prison.

+ America needs babies, consent be damned!

Indiana State Sen. Gary Byrne (R) amended a sex education bill to remove requirements to teach consent.

STATE REP. ANDREA HUNLEY (D): “What groups were consulted in the removal of the section about consent?”

BYRNE: “Nobody came to me. This is a decision that I made not to have it in there.”

Speaking of the legislature of my home state, Benjamin Balthatzar tells me that it has exerted DeSantis-like power over the state’s leading university: “Indiana state legislature just staged a hostile takeover of IU, functionally eliminating tenure, promising to close smaller (hum) majors, taking over the IU board, and cutting the IU budget. This is so bleak.”

+ Sen. Patty Murray: “I was denied permission to host a roundtable at the Puget Sound VA to hear from women veterans about their health care. I have NEVER been outright denied from having open & honest conversations with VA—until this administration.”

+ As Freud (or, was it, Groucho Marx?) said, sometimes a flagpole is only a flagpole. But probably not this time…

+ Travis Akers: “Since hiring Kristina Wong from Breitbart News as the Secretary of the Navy Communications Director this week, the Secretary of the Navy’s Twitter account has twice posted the incorrect date of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, ‘a date which will live in infamy.’”

+++

I’m a H.O.O.D, low-life scum, that’s what they say about me…

Booked Up
What I’m reading this week…

America, América: A New History of the New World
Greg Grandin
(Penguin Press)

24/7: Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep
Jonathan Crary
(Verso)

Truth Demands: A Memoir of Murder, Oil Wars and the Rise of Climate Justice
Abby Reyes
(North Atlantic Books)

Sound Grammar
What I’m listening to this week…

Dance Music 4 Bad People
Hieroglyphic Being
(Smalltown Supersound)

Mingus in Argentina: the Buenos Aires Concerts
Charles Mingus
(Resonance)

Thunderball
Melvins
(Ipecac)

Peace is Their War, Peace is Their Poverty

“Who are the oppressors but the nobility and gentry, and who are oppressed, if not the yeoman, the farmer, the tradesman and the like?  .. Have you not chosen oppressors to redeem you from oppression? . . . It is naturally inbred in the major part of the nobility and gentry .  .  . to judge the poor but fools, and themselves wise, and therefore when you the commonalty calleth a Parliament they are confident such must be chosen that are the noblest and richest . . . Your slavery is their liberty, your poverty is their prosperity . . . Peace is their ruin . . . by war they are enriched . . . Peace is their war, peace is their poverty.”

– Lawrence Clarkson, A General Charge of Impeachment of High Treason, 1647

The post Roaming Charges: Show Us Your Papers! appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Image by Hany Osman.

“Rights are granted to those who align with power,” Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student, eloquently wrote from his cell. This poignant statement came soon after a judge ruled that the government had met the legal threshold to deport the young activist on the nebulous ground of “foreign policy”.

“For the poor, for people of color, for those who resist injustice, rights are but words written on water,” Khalil further lamented. The plight of this young man, whose sole transgression appears to be his participation in the nationwide mobilization to halt the Israeli genocide in Gaza, should terrify all Americans. This concern should extend even to those who are not inclined to join any political movement and possess no particular sympathy for – or detailed knowledge of – the extent of the Israeli atrocities in Gaza, or the United States’ role in bankrolling this devastating conflict.

The perplexing nature of the case against Khalil, like those against other student activists, including Turkish visa holder Rümeysa Öztürk, starkly indicates that the issue is purely political. Its singular aim appears to be the silencing of dissenting political voices.

Judge Jamee E. Comans, who concurred with the Trump Administration’s decision to deport Khalil, cited “foreign policy” in an uncritical acceptance of the language employed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio had previously written to the court, citing “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” stemming from Khalil’s actions, which he characterized as participation in “disruptive activities” and “anti-Semitic protests”.

The latter accusation has become the reflexive rejoinder to any form of criticism leveled against Israel, a tactic prevalent even long before the current catastrophic genocide in Gaza.

Those who might argue that US citizens remain unaffected by the widespread US government crackdowns on freedom of expression must reconsider. On April 14, the government decided to freeze $2.2 billion in federal funding to the University of Harvard.

Beyond the potential weakening of educational institutions and their impact on numerous Americans, these financial measures also coincide with a rapidly accelerating and alarming trend of targeting dissenting voices within the US, reaching unprecedented extents. On April 14, Massachusetts immigration lawyer Nicole Micheroni, a US citizen, publicly disclosed receiving a message from the Department of Homeland Security requesting her self-deportation.

Furthermore, new oppressive bills are under consideration in Congress, granting the Department of Treasury expansive measures to shut down community organizations, charities, and similar entities under various pretenses and without adhering to standard constitutional legal procedures.

Many readily conclude that these measures reflect Israel’s profound influence on US domestic politics and the significant ability of the Israel lobby in Washington DC to interfere with the very democratic fabric of the US, whose Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and assembly.

While there is much truth in that conclusion, the narrative extends beyond the complexities of the Israel-Palestine issue.

For many years, individuals, predominantly academics, who championed Palestinian rights were subjected to trials or even deported, based on “secret evidence”. This essentially involved a legal practice that amalgamated various acts, such as the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) and the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), among others, to silence those critical of US foreign policy.

Although some civil rights groups in the US challenged the selective application of law to stifle dissent, the matter hardly ignited a nationwide conversation regarding the authorities’ violations of fundamental democratic norms, such as due process (Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments).

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, however, much of that legal apparatus was applied to all Americans in the form of the PATRIOT Act. This legislation broadened the government’s authority to employ surveillance, including electronic communications, and other intrusive measures.

Subsequently, it became widely known that even social media platforms were integrated into government surveillance efforts. Recent reports have even suggested that the government mandated social media screening for all U.S. visa applicants who have traveled to the Gaza Strip since January 1, 2007.

In pursuing these actions, the US government is effectively replicating some of the draconian measures imposed by Israel on the Palestinians. The crucial distinction, based on historical experience, is that these measures tend to undergo continuous evolution, establishing legal precedents that swiftly apply to all Americans and further compromise their already deteriorating democracy.

Americans are already grappling with their perception of their democratic institutions, with a disturbingly high number of 72 percent, according to a Pew Research Center survey in April 2024, believing that US democracy is no longer a good example for other countries to follow.

The situation has only worsened in the past year. While US activists advocating for justice in Palestine deserve unwavering support and defense for their profound courage and humanity, Americans must also recognize that they, and the remnants of their democracy, are equally at risk.

“Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere,” is the timeless quote associated with Abraham Lincoln. Yet, every day that Mahmoud Khalil and others spend in their cells, awaiting deportation, stands as the starkest violation of that very sentiment. Americans must not permit this injustice to persist.

The post Deporting Dissent: The Dangerous Precedent Set by the Persecution of Pro-Palestine Activists appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

The scene has become tragically familiar in occupied Palestine: the pounding fists on the door in the dead of night, the splintering wood, the shouts in broken Arabic. Soldiers storm in, rifles raised, children jolt awake, and someone is taken for nothing more than attending a protest or being related to someone who did, or throwing a stone, or posting something on social media in protest to the atrocities committed against their own people.

This past Thursday, April 17, 2025, marked Palestinian Prisoners’ Day amid the height of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the West Bank. Commemorated since 1974, this day honors the central role of Palestinian political captives in the struggle for national liberation. It is also a date etched in sorrow as well as resistance. Nearly one million Palestinians have been imprisoned since 1948—teachers, farmers, health workers, children, artists, and leaders. Today, nearly 10,000 remain behind bars, including 3,500 held in administrative detention without charge or trial, 400 children, and 29 women. Many more abducted from Gaza are held in secret military facilities like Sde Teiman, where they endure severe torture, starvation, and denial of medical care. Nearly 40% of Palestinian men in the occupied territories have been imprisoned at least once. These are not statistics. They are fathers, daughters, poets, farmers- lives interrupted, families torn apart, futures deferred.

Palestinian prisoners are not only victims but leaders of the resistance. From inside the prisons, they organize, write, educate, and inspire movements beyond the prison walls. Their leadership is visible not only in political statements and hunger strikes, but also in the forging of cultural and educational collectives that have spread through refugee camps and solidarity tents. During annual commemorations, family members-especially women-gather in massive numbers, surrounding tents and camp walls covered with portraits of imprisoned, martyred, and disappeared loved ones. These gatherings reflect a deep communal identification with the imprisoned, who are seen as both symbols and agents of resistance. In some cases, imprisoned men have smuggled out sperm to enable their wives to conceive, a powerful act of defiance against a system intent on severing family continuity and reproductive futures.

Administrative Detention in Israel

Israel’s policy of administrative detention allows for the imprisonment of individuals without charge or trial, often based on “undisclosed evidence”. This practice has been widely criticized by human rights organizations. As of early 2025, reports indicate that over 10,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, with many detained under administrative orders. Detainees endure harsh conditions, including inadequate food, medical care, and reports of physical abuse.(AP, 2025)

The trauma experienced by detainees frequently extends beyond their captivity, a captivity never justified (Guardian, 2025). Former prisoners have reported severe psychological effects, such as insomnia, anxiety, and difficulty reintegrating into family life. For instance, Amer Abu Hlel, after over a year in administrative detention without charges, suffered from physical injuries and profound psychological distress, leading to social withdrawal and fear of re-arrest. Palestinian captives speak of beatings, deprivation, torture, rape: Palestinians speak of the ‘hell’ of Israeli prisons. (Le Monde, 2024)

Gendered Violence in Israeli Colonial Prisons

In the landscape of Israeli colonial repression, the prison emerges not merely as a site of incarceration, but as a gendered apparatus of control. Palestinian feminist scholars and human rights researchers have long argued that sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is not incidental, but structural to the Israeli occupation regime. From degrading strip searches to sexual torture, these acts serve as tools of humiliation, discipline, and subjugation, part of a calculated strategy to dominate and destabilize both individuals and the broader Palestinian social fabric.

Such acts are not random- they are calculated forms of domination. Sexualized violence against male prisoners is used to demasculinize the colonized subject, to strip away dignity and humiliate in ways that destabilize identity and community. This strategy echoes other colonial regimes where emasculation and rape were used not only to extract confessions but to degrade the captive into an object of scorn-even in their own eyes. On the other side of this gendered war is the violation and control of women’s bodies, used to rupture kinship lines and reproductive futures. As Palestinian feminist scholars have long argued, this is not merely about torture-it is about reconfiguring power through gendered, sexualized trauma.

Palestinian criminologist Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2009) has been at the forefront of theorizing sexual violence as a pillar of settler-colonial governance. In her foundational study, Militarization and Violence against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: A Palestinian Case-Study, she documents how the Israeli state weaponizes threats of rape, sexual humiliation, and coercive tactics such as isqāt siyāsī (political subjugation) to recruit collaborators and terrorize communities. Through a decolonial feminist lens, Shalhoub-Kevorkian contends that sexual violence is not an aberration but a “normal” extension of colonial power, aimed at dismantling kinship structures, eroding resistance, and reinforcing both Israeli domination and internal patriarchal controls (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2009).

Sociologist Nahla Abdo (2014) expands this analysis through her historical account of Palestinian women political prisoners in Captive Revolution: Palestinian Women’s Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System. Drawing on oral histories and testimonies, Abdo reveals how Palestinian women have endured sexual torture, harassment, and invasive bodily violence as tools of repression. The story of Rasmea Odeh-who was raped, tortured, and later exiled-stands as a harrowing example of how the Israeli prison system targets women’s bodies to punish political dissent and stigmatize resistance. For Abdo, gendered violence is not just about physical harm-it is an assault on Palestinian womanhood itself, aimed at “criminalizing” female fighters and instilling collective fear (Abdo, 2014).

Khalida Jarrar, a Palestinian feminist, former political prisoner, and human rights advocate, contributed further to this field with a 2023 report for the Independent Commission for Human Rights. Based on firsthand accounts from detainees during Israel’s war on Gaza, the report catalogues gendered violations against women, men, and children alike-including threats of rape, verbal sexual degradation, forcible removal of veils, and collective strip searches. Jarrar situates these acts within the framework of colonial gendered violence, emphasizing that such humiliations are not isolated misconduct but “systematic strategies of domination” meant to erode identity and social integrity (Jarrar, 2023).

International findings echo these feminist insights. The 2024 United Nations Commission of Inquiry report on the Occupied Palestinian Territory explicitly recognized the use of sexual and gender-based violence by Israeli forces. It concluded that such acts are “intrinsically linked” to the broader framework of occupation and racial domination. The report confirmed the use of rape, sexual torture, and humiliation against both men and women in detention-including forced nudity in front of family members and rape threats used to extract confessions or silence dissent. These findings offer international validation of long-standing feminist critiques, emphasizing that the body-especially the colonized body-becomes a battleground where control is exercised and trauma inscribed (UN COI, 2025).

Together, these scholarly and investigative efforts reveal a disturbing consistency: Israeli prisons and detention centers function as laboratories of colonial violence where gender and sexuality are weaponized with precision. Whether by emasculating men through sexual torture or stripping veiled women to break cultural codes, these acts aim to humiliate and destroy the social and psychological fabric of Palestinian life. Feminist theorists like Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Abdo remind us that this is not merely about individual suffering; it is about domination through intimate, bodily terror. (Abdo, 2014)

Ultimately, the violence meted out in these carceral spaces must be understood as political and gendered. It is not accidental that Palestinian children, women, and men emerge from Israeli detention systems with scars-visible and invisible-that reshape families and futures. Nor is it incidental that these abuses often go unpunished and unacknowledged. As this feminist and decolonial analysis shows, sexual violence is not a side effect of war-it is a core tactic of colonial rule, designed to break resistance from the inside out.

The Machinery of Dehumanization: The Children

​A 2013 UNICEF report concluded that the ill-treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention is “widespread, systematic and institutionalized.” The report documented practices such as night arrests, physical violence, blindfolding, and coercive interrogations without legal counsel or parental presence. It also noted that children were often forced to sign confessions in Hebrew, a language they did not understand.

Israel’s prison system is not merely punitive-it is a pillar of its colonial regime. It functions to exhaust and disempower a people fighting for freedom. Military courts convict 99% of Palestinians. (Aljazeera, 2018) Children as young as 12 are tried as adults. “Since 2000, an estimated 12,000 Palestinian children have been arbitrarily detained in Israel’s military detention system. They are mostly charged for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, an act punishable by up to maximum 20 years in prison.” (Justice for All, Canada, 2024) Torture, including beatings and stress positions, is routinely used in interrogations-93% of Palestinian children report experiencing it. (Jabr, 2024)

Incarceration becomes a method not only of silencing dissent but of waging psychological warfare.

Solitary Confinement as Torture: Over 500 Palestinian captives are held in solitary confinement, sometimes for months or even years. According to the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Mandela Rules), solitary confinement exceeding 15 days constitutes torture. (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime). More than 1400 Palestinians are held in solitary confinement (B’tselm, 2014). Prolonged isolation has severe psychological consequences-ranging from depression and hallucinations to long-term cognitive damage. (Reiter, et al, 2020) In many documented cases, Palestinians with developmental or psychiatric disorders have been subjected to repeated humiliation and neglect rather than care. Ahmad Manasra, arrested at 13 and later suffered serious psychological consequences, in part as a result of prolonged solitary confinement. He is one of many who have suffered under such conditions. (Amnesty, 2023, Abu Sharar, 2021)

Medical Neglect: Writer Walid Daqqa spent 38 years in prison and died in 2024 after Israeli authorities denied him treatment for leukemia. “They are killing me slowly,” he wrote in his final letter, “but my ideas will outlive them.” In March 2025, 17-year-old Walid Ahmad from the West Bank died in Megiddo Prison after six months of detention without charge. An autopsy observed by an Israeli doctor indicated that severe malnutrition and untreated colitis likely contributed to his death. Ahmad had shown signs of starvation, scabies, inflammation of the colon, and overall physical frailty, exacerbated by inadequate food, poor sanitary conditions, and possibly contaminated meals during Ramadan.

Deliberate Disease: In 2024, a scabies outbreak spread to 800 captives in Naqab. Guards withheld medicine and hygiene supplies, leaving detainees to scratch their skin raw. An investigation by Haaretz revealed that a quarter of Palestinian captives in Israeli prisons have been infected with scabies in recent months. Prison authorities have been accused of allowing scabies to spread by restricting inmates’ water supply and depriving them of clean clothes and medical care. Without treatment, these wounds become infected. Left untreated in overcrowded, unsanitary cells, even a condition as treatable as scabies becomes a source of ongoing pain and torture, as a result of systemic neglect. These infections are not incidental-they reflect a broader strategy of dehumanization through deliberate medical denial.

Stolen Childhoods: Palestinian children are the only children in the world systematically prosecuted in military courts. Every year, between 500 and 700 are arrested-most during night raids. They are often blindfolded, shackled, and transported to interrogation centers where they are beaten, threatened, denied access to a lawyer, and coerced into signing confessions in Hebrew, a language many do not understand (DCIP-Military Detention).

In 99% of cases, these children are convicted for minor acts such as throwing stones or posting comments on social media. In 2016, the Israeli Knesset passed legislation allowing children as young as 12 to be sentenced to prison, including life imprisonment. This law has been used to target Palestinian children specifically, violating multiple international legal standards (Time, 2025).

In July 2019, a four-year-old boy named Muhammad Rabi’ Elayyan from Issawiya in occupied East Jerusalem was summoned for interrogation by Israeli authorities after allegedly throwing a stone. A dozen armed officers arrived at his home (Middle East Monitor, 2019). The child cried in terror. His father accompanied him to the police station where he was questioned. While he was ultimately not charged, the event reflects the extreme and surreal nature of repression faced even by toddlers.

Ahmad Manasra, arrested at age 13, became a global symbol of this brutality. Severely injured and interrogated while bleeding in custody, his forced confession was broadcast publicly. After nearly a decade of unjust incarceration, solitary confinement, and deteriorating mental and physical health, Ahmad was released on April 10, 2025. Despite evidence that he did not participate in the 2015 stabbing incident in Jerusalem, he was sentenced to 12 years (later reduced to 9.5), following a trial that violated his rights as a child. During his imprisonment, Ahmad was subjected to prolonged solitary confinement, denied adequate medical and psychological care, and endured treatment condemned by international human rights organizations. His release came without proper coordination; he was left alone, disoriented, and deeply distressed in the desert near the prison. He was later reunited with his family and continues to receive psychological support. Ahmad’s case remains a haunting emblem of the systemic “unchilding” of Palestinian youth and a call to end the imprisonment of children under military occupation.(Palestine-Global Mental Health Network, 2025)

Ahed Tamimi, detained at 16 after slapping an Israeli soldier in the wake of her cousin being shot in the face with a rubber bullet, spent eight months in prison. Her case drew international attention, not just for the injustice she endured, but for her defiance. “They think they broke me,” she said upon release. “But this generation was born from the womb of the Intifada” (The Guardian, 2018).

The Psychological Toll of Imprisonment on Palestinian Children

Physical and Emotional Abuse: A 2023 report by Save the Children revealed that 86% of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention experienced physical violence, and 69% were strip-searched. Nearly half (42%) sustained injuries during arrest, including gunshot wounds and broken bones. Such traumatic experiences contribute to long-term psychological distress (Save the Children, 2023).

Psychological Distress and Alienation: The same report highlighted that detained children often suffer from anxiety, depression, and a sense of alienation upon release. Many struggle to reintegrate into their communities, with feelings of fear and mistrust persisting long after their detention (Save the Children, 2023).

Impact on Future Aspirations: A 2023 study titled “Injustice: Palestinian children’s experience of the Israeli military detention system” found that imprisonment disrupts children’s education and future plans. One child expressed, “After you are released from prison you start racing against time trying to catch up… Whatever you had in your mind before your arrest just passed you by” (Save the Children, 2023).

BDS: Breaking the Chains of Complicity

If prison is Israel’s tool of domination, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) is our collective tool of resistance.  BDS calls for economic and cultural pressure on Israel until it complies with international law.

At this moment in history-when the genocide in Gaza continues unabated, when the bodies of the dead and maimed outnumber the living, when fascism parades through global capitals and tyrants rule with impunity-it is easy to lose hope. When every weapon is being waged against our Palestine and her people, when those who speak are censored or arrested, when friends hide their articles and delete their words, and when we all feel we are waiting our turn to be plucked from the path of resistance—it is tempting to believe that our struggle is lost.

But it is not. It is not lost when we remain on the path of steadfastness (sumud), of clarity, of collective care.

History is our witness:

+ Apartheid South Africa was brought to its knees by coordinated global boycott, cultural isolation, and a refusal to normalize oppression.

+ British colonial rule in India fell after decades of economic noncooperation and moral resistance.

+ The U.S. Civil Rights Movement broke segregation’s legal backbone with sustained boycotts and protests.

+ Chile’s Pinochet regime, Argentina’s military dictatorship, and East Germany’s Stasi rule all crumbled in the face of international solidarity and internal resistance.

These movements teach us that boycott, divestment, and sanctions are not abstract theories-they are tools that have toppled empires. Yet we must also recognize that such victories are not permanent. The recent far-right resurgence in Argentina under Milei and the dismantling of civil rights protections in the U.S. under Trump remind us that gains can be reversed when fascism reasserts itself. That is why the fight for Palestinian freedom must be connected to broader global anti-fascist and anti-colonial movements-because the forces we confront do not remain in one place. They metastasize.

And so it is with BDS. Launched in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, BDS is our weapon and our lifeline. If Israel’s tools are walls, prisons, and erasure, ours are presence, refusal, and solidarity.

BDS has already shown its power:

+ AXA Insurance divested from Israeli arms company Elbit Systems.

+ Ben & Jerry’s halted sales in illegal settlements, stating, “It’s inconsistent with our values.”

+ Veolia lost over $20 billion in contracts and withdrew completely from Israel.

+ G4S, under pressure, sold its Israeli prison operations.

+ Dozens of universities, churches, and pension funds have divested from companies profiting from apartheid.

This is not symbolic. This is material. Every contract canceled, every artist who says no, every pension fund that walks away-weakens the machinery of domination.

Freedom Is the Only Antidote

Palestinian captives are not just victims. They are witnesses. They are leaders. They are the barometers of our shared humanity.

When a blindfold is tightened on a child in the dark, it is our moral vision that is obscured. When a prisoner is denied medicine, our silence sharpens the knife.

BDS is not a slogan. It is a form of care. It is a nonviolent weapon in a world that knows only violence.

As Assata Shakur, a Black activist, author, and former member of the Black Liberation Army, wrote:

The chains will break. The cell door will rust.
And we will still be here,
roots deeper than their prisons.

And so we return to the knock on the door—a summons in the dead of night that, for too many Palestinian families, has become the echo of generational pain. These prisons, with their barred cells and perpetually shadowed halls, are meant to vanish people and break their spirits. But from these very sites of despair come the songs, letters, smuggled stories, and steadfast courage that galvanize a global movement.

This article aims to name the systematic brutality against Palestinian prisoners for what it is—an intentional, gendered, colonial assault designed to cripple an entire people’s struggle for self-determination—and, at the same time, to honor the indomitable spirit that refuses to submit. By shining a light on the prison system and the suffering within it, we also illuminate a path of resistance and solidarity. When we choose Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, we choose a peaceful but potent form of collective action—one that can weaken the pillars of apartheid just as similar movements have toppled oppressive regimes worldwide.

What is at stake here is not just the fate of the imprisoned, but the moral fabric that binds us all. Each time a child is blindfolded or a woman is threatened with sexualized violence, our collective conscience is tested. Each time we stay silent or look away, we risk allowing injustice to calcify into permanence. But every refusal to be silent—every poem written on contraband paper, every protest sign raised in the streets, every institution that cuts ties with profiteers of apartheid—becomes proof that solidarity can transcend walls and barbed wire.

If these prisons exist to bury hope, then hope must outgrow the walls. If this system thrives on complicity, then let our voices, our actions, and our global alliances sever the chains. In the unbreakable words of Palestinian prisoners and in the unwavering commitment of those who stand with them, we find the enduring truth: that freedom is both a right and a responsibility. We owe it to one another—and to all who have been caged—to turn each knock at the door into a rallying cry for liberation.

The post A Knock at the Door appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

they are arresting the judges
kidnapping the rubicon
slashing the songs of spring warblers

there is no time left
to look for saviors
or rain from clouds
or ghosts of gods

the tree of life
survivor of the unsurvivable
clings to cliffsides
suspended over the bardo
roots exposed
naked battered
by king tides
and mighty winds
they say this year will be her last

beware the raven’s caw
and the stench of those who pose
as preachers on the doorsteps of civility
here is where the jet stream crashes
where chaos alights
and laughter disappears

hearts sag to the pounding surf
while democracy is cast like dice
into the lukewarm waters
of who cares
anyway

The post Kidnapping the Rubicon appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Image by Filip Andrejevic.

Although the statement that “power grows out of the barrel of a gun” was made by Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, it’s an idea that, in one form or another, has motivated a great many people, from the members of teenage street gangs to the statesmen of major nations.

The rising spiral of world military spending provides a striking example of how highly national governments value armed forces. In 2024, the nations of the world spent a record $2.72 trillion on expanding their vast military strength, an increase of 9.4 percent from the previous year. It was the tenth year of consecutive spending increases and the steepest annual rise in military expenditures since the end of the Cold War.

This enormous investment in military might is hardly a new phenomenon. Over the broad sweep of human history, nations have armed themselves―often at great cost―in preparation for war. And an endless stream of wars has followed, resulting in the deaths of perhaps a billion people, most of them civilians. During the 20^th century alone, war’s human death toll numbered 231 million.

Even larger numbers of people have been injured in these wars, including many who have been crippled, blinded, hideously burned, or driven mad. In fact, the number of people who have been wounded in war is at least twice the number killed and has sometimes soared to 13 times that number.

War has produced other calamities, as well. The Russian military invasion of Ukraine, for example, has led to the displacement of a third of that nation’s population. In addition, war has caused immense material damage. Entire cities and, sometimes, nations have been reduced to rubble, while even victorious countries sometimes found themselves bankrupted by war’s immense financial costs. Often, wars have brought long-lasting environmental damage, leading to birth defects and other severe health consequences, as the people of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, and the Middle East can attest.

Even when national military forces were not engaged in waging foreign wars, they often produced very undesirable results. The annals of history are filled with incidents of military officers who have used their armies to stage coups and establish brutal dictatorships in their own countries. Furthermore, the possession of military might has often emboldened national leaders to intimidate weaker nations or to embark upon imperial conquest. It’s no accident that nations with the most powerful military forces (“the great powers”) are particularly prone to war-making.

Moreover, prioritizing the military has deprived other sectors of society of substantial resources. Money that could have gone into programs for education, healthcare, food stamps, and other social programs has been channeled instead into unprecedented levels of spending to enhance military might.

It’s a sorry record for what passes as world civilization―one that will surely grow far worse, or perhaps terminate human existence, with the onset of a nuclear war.

Of course, advocates of military power argue that, in a dangerous world, there is a necessity for deterring a military attack upon their nations. And that is surely a valid concern.

But does military might really meet the need for national security? In addition to the problems spawned by massive military forces, it’s not clear that these forces are doing a good job of deterring foreign attack. After all, every year government officials say that their countries are facing greater danger than ever before. And they are right about this. The world is becoming a more dangerous place. A major reason is that the military might sought by one nation for its national security is regarded by other nations as endangering their national security. The result is an arms race and, frequently, war.

Fortunately, though, there are alternatives to the endless process of military buildups and wars.

The most promising among them is the establishment of international security. This could be accomplished through the development of international treaties and the strengthening of international institutions.

Treaties, of course, can establish rules for international behavior by nations while, at the same time, resolving key problems among them (for example, the location of national boundaries) and setting policies that are of benefit to all (for example, reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere). Through arms control and disarmament agreements they can also address military dangers. For example, in place of the arms race, they could sponsor a peace race, in which each nation would reduce its military spending by 10 percent per year. Or nations could sign and ratify (as many have already done) the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which would end the menace of nuclear annihilation.

International institutions can also play a significant role in reducing international conflict and, thus, the resort to military action. The United Nations, established in 1945, is tasked with maintaining international peace and security, while the International Court of Justice was established to settle legal disputes among nations and the International Criminal Court to investigate and, where justified, try individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.

Unfortunately, these international organizations are not fully able to accomplish their important tasks―largely because many nations prefer to rely upon their own military might and because some nations (particularly the United States, Russia, and Israel) are enraged that these organizations have criticized their conduct in world affairs. Even so, international organizations have enormous potential and, if strengthened, could play a vital role in creating a less violent world.

Rather than continuing to pour the wealth of nations into the failing system of national military power, how about bolstering these global instruments for attaining international security and peace?

The post The Limitations of Military Might appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Image by Rod Long.

President Trump, in his March 4 State of the Union address, stated:

“And I also have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland. We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. We need Greenland for national security and even international security. And we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it. But we need it really for international world security. And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it. We will keep you safe. We will make you rich. And together we will take Greenland to heights like you have never thought possible before. It’s a very small population, but very, very large piece of land and very, very important for military security.”[1]

“One way or the other, we’re going to get it” sounds like a threat to me. In fact, Trump’s entire statement could have come out of a mob boss’ mouth.

It was delivered coupled with his offer to buy Greenland from Denmark and make it the 51^st state (or 52^nd if Trump has his way with Canada). Hence, it is in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism, as Trump is determined to take control of the island, thus expanding the U.S. empire.

On Tuesday March 11, one week after Trump’s threat, Greenlanders went to the polls to elect their 31-seat Parliament, one factor in how Greenland is governed. Greenland is currently a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, which controls the island’s foreign policy, defense, and other important aspects of its economy. Denmark provides around 50 percent of the budget for Greenland, providing for schools, social services, and cheap gas. And while polls show that over 85 percent of Greenlanders favor independence from Denmark, Greenlanders are divided on the pace of independence.[2]

Local issues dominated the election in Greenland, but Trump’s rhetoric did have an impact. The pro-business Demokraatit party, which favors a slow path to independence that does not disrupt social services or economic growth, won a surprise victory with 29.9 percent of the votes and will now form a coalition government. The second-place finisher was the ardent pro-independence party Naleraq, with 24.5 percent of the vote. In third place was the former governing party, Inuit Ataqatigiit, with 21.4 percent. [3]

Putting teeth into Trump’s rhetoric, just weeks after the Greenland election: Vice-President Vance, along with his wife, Second Lady Usha Chilukuri Vance; National Security Advisor Chris Waltz; and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright paid a visit to the island. The visit was confined to Pituffik Space base, a U.S. military base in Greenland, in order to avoid protests in Nuuk, the capital and largest city. During his visit, Vance accused Denmark of both underinvesting in the island and failing to provide for its defense.[4]

One consequence of the Vice President’s visit was the firing of the base commander, Col. Susannah Meyers, for allegedly undermining the chain of command and subverting President Trump’s agenda. Her sin—sending an email stating that she disagreed with Vance’s criticisms of Denmark.[5]

Why Greenland and Why Now?

Greenland has a population of approximately 56,500 people. This tiny population inhabits the largest island in the world, with an area of 836,330 square miles, more than a fourth of the area of the lower-48 states. And the Greenlanders are sitting on a treasure trove of oil, mineral wealth, and fisheries. What’s more, Greenland straddles increasingly important Arctic Sea lanes that shorten the distance of shipping routes, and therefore the cost of transporting goods from Europe to Asia. Further, the island is militarily significant because it acts as a barrier between Russia and the U.S.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Greenland has approximately 31.4 billion barrels of oil and natural gas. Extraction of these resources is blocked by the Greenland government, which instituted a moratorium on all oil and gas exploration in 2021, citing the environmental costs to the island. Greenland also has deposits of coal and uranium. In addition, Greenland has vast deposits of rare earth elements (REEs) essential for modern technology, renewable energy, and the military industrial complex.[6] Access to this mineral wealth is not only blocked by the government moratorium: Greenland lacks the infrastructure of ports, roads, and pipelines needed to extract this wealth. Nevertheless, Greenland is an important part the Trump administration’s seeking to secure access to mineral wealth across the globe – a strategy necessary for economic domination.[7]

In early April, China, which the U.S. considers its chief competitor, placed restrictions on the export of rare earth elements (REE) and on REE magnets. The REE are essential to many modern technologies such as lasers, computers, and missiles. Powerful REE magnets are used in auto factories and are essential to jet fighters. Ninety percent of the world’s REE magnets are produced in China.[8] Together, these restrictions, directed at U.S. technology and war industries, could cripple the U.S. military.[9] Should China ban exports of REE and REE magnets completely, the U.S. would be even more desperate to find alternative sources – hence the interest in Greenland.

A History of U.S. Intervention

The Inuit people make up over 87 percent of Greenland’s current population. Archeological evidence suggests they arrived on the island at least 3,500 years ago, but as with the evidence for other native peoples we know that this most likely underestimates the date of their arrival. The Norse-Icelandic explorer Erik the Red later established two settlements on the island around 980 CE, giving the island its European name in the hopes of attracting settlers. These European settlements died out or were abandoned in the early 1500s. This did not stop Denmark from claiming the island and asserting control over the native people in 1720.

The U.S. considered buying Greenland from Denmark in 1868, when Secretary of State William Seward (yes—the same Seward who engineered the purchase of Alaska) proposed the purchase of Greenland from Denmark. In 1910 the U.S. again tried to acquire Greenland from Denmark by offering to exchange Greenland for islands in the Philippines, which were then a U.S. colony. This deal also fell through.[10]

U.S. intervention began in earnest with the 1940 German invasion of Denmark. The U.S. took military control of the island to prevent it from falling under German control. Over the course of World War II, tens of thousands of U.S. planes used the island as a stopover on the way to Europe. The weather forecasts from Greenland proved crucial to the success of the D-Day invasion.

After World War II, the island became an important part of the U.S. Cold War against the USSR. The U.S. offered to buy the island again from Denmark for $100 million U.S. dollars. The Danish government rejected the offer. They did, however, sign, in 1951, a treaty giving the U.S. significant rights to station military troops in Greenland. The U.S. constructed the Thule Air Base in northwestern Greenland, which at its peak housed 10,000 U.S. troops. The base still exists, renamed Pituffik Space Base; it’s under the control of U.S. Space Force. The U.S. had also built a second base, which was secret. Located under the Greenland ice cap, about 150 miles from Thule Air Base, it no longer exists but was called Camp Century and powered by a nuclear reactor.[11]

On January 21, 1968, a B-52 from Thule Air Base crashed on the Greenland ice cap carrying four hydrogen bombs. The U.S. tried to clean up as much of the contaminated ice as possible, but one of the bombs is still missing.[12] This missing nuclear weapon could be a major environmental catastrophe should it leak in the melting ice cap. The crash also revealed that during the Cold War with the USSR, the U.S. stationed B-52s and nuclear weapons at Thule Air Base to strike at the USSR. Construction of new U.S. bases in Greenland would be considered crucial to any U.S. plans for nuclear war and would threaten Russia and China.

How might future U.S. intervention play out?

There are several possible scenarios for future U.S. intervention, based on historical precedence.

In the first, the U.S. could invade directly with military, as Trump has threatened. But Greenland is part of Denmark. Both the U.S. and Denmark are members of NATO, whose sole purpose is as a military alliance. NATO countries are obligated to defend any member that is invaded. If the U.S. were to invade Greenland, this would mean one NATO member, Denmark, being invaded by another, the U.S. This would trigger a crisis in NATO.

In a March 13, 2025 meeting at the White House between Trump and Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary-General Rutte told Trump that NATO would not stop a U.S. military intervention in Greenland, essentially giving the U.S. a green light for a possible invasion. [13]

I think of this as the Spanish-American War scenario. In 1898 the U.S. went to war with Spain, at the time a weak and declining colonial power, to seize the Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.[14]

In case this seems farfetched, note that the U.S. now has an Arctic division – a division consists of 10,000 and 15,000 troops – specialized in fighting in polar regions. In mid-February the Arctic division, the 11^th Airborne, deployed to the Arctic regions of Finland in a training exercise.[15] While part of a NATO exercise aimed at Russia, the training served as a practice run for any potential invasion of Greenland.

The U.S. has a history of invading island nations. The most recent case was the island nation of Grenada in 1983 when a force of fewer than 8,000 U.S. troops seized the tiny island nation of fewer than 100,000 on the pretext of protecting American students during a coup within the government. That invasion was hastily planned and powerfully executed. Still, it took the U.S. less than a week to totally control the island. A U.S. invasion of Greenland will be better planned and will most likely start with the seizure of the international airport in Nuuk, the capital and largest city.

In the second scenario, the U.S. would employ non-military means or soft power. It would encourage independence and then meddle in local politics, cultivating pro-U.S. politicians and parties, and extracting considerable economic and political concessions. These concessions would likely include mining rights and additional military bases. Trump has already started this process and may have found a willing partner in Kuno Fencker. A prominent leader of the second-place Naleraq party, Fencker attended Trump’s inauguration and then toured the White House at Trump’s invitation. Fencker has publicly defended Trump in his podcasts and speeches, saying that Trump is misunderstood. Fencker has been called a traitor by leaders of the other parties. Naleraq wants immediate independence from Denmark and closer ties with the U.S.[16]

This second scenario appears to be the current U.S. strategy. In a bombshell front-page article in The New York Times on April 11, it was reported that the White House, under the leadership of the National Security Council (NSC), is moving “forward on a plan to acquire the island from Denmark.” The NSC has sent directives to multiple arms of the U.S. government, is developing a propaganda plan to persuade Greenlanders to join the U.S., and is considering a direct payment to each Greenlander of $10,000 per year, approximately the same amount of money that Denmark gives to the island for education, healthcare, and other social services.[17] At the same time that President Trump is trying to persuade Greenlanders, he is making his case to the American people.

I think of this as the Panama Scenario because it is similar to what the U.S. did in Panama when it encouraged local elites to break away from Colombia and then extracted significant concessions from the new government, including the right to build and control the Panama Canal Zone and maintain a massive U.S. military presence.[18]

In the third, and least likely, scenario, the U.S, would encourage independence, meddle in the political affairs of Greenland, and encourage U.S. investment in and immigration to the island. The immigrants and pro-U.S. Greenlanders could then demand annexation by the U.S. I think of this as the Hawaii Scenario, because it is similar to what the U.S. did when it annexed the Kingdom of Hawai’i in 1893.[19]

If one of these scenarios plays out, there will be two big losers and one big winner. The losers will be the people of Greenland and the environment of their island nation. The big winner will be U.S. imperialism, more specifically the corporate elite that will pillage the resources of the island for their own profit and power. While standing in solidarity with the rights of the Greenlanders to make their own decisions for their nation and independence, we must also oppose all U.S. intervention and exploitation. We must especially raise our voices against Trump and his efforts to convince the American people that “we” need to acquire the island. Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland, not the U.S. capitalist elite!

The post Greenland in the Crosshairs of U.S. Imperialism appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Image by Planet Volumes.

“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 2

Where are all those righteous-sounding people in the Western nations that for years have denounced in the media, to politicians, to the world that the human rights of the people of Venezuela needed to be defended from a supposed “authoritarian” government, first of Chávez then of Maduro? Where are they now when the powerful government of the United States, led by a bone fide authoritarian, trashes the human rights of Venezuelans?

Recent USA governments encouraged Venezuelans to leave their country and enabled them to enter the USA. The Trump administration, however, has rounded them up like criminals, accused them of being members of a defunct local Venezuelan criminal gang, denied them a legal hearing or access to defense lawyers, and sent them, for a handsome fee, handcuffed to a most brutal prison in another country, El Salvador. Others are helpless in domestic detention centres. They were taken out of their homes, out of schools, out of their places of work, given no notice, nor any option, nor allowed to give any explanation. Tattoos on their person were enough to convict them as terrorists and criminals. In El Salvador they were imprisoned and beate.

“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article

Let there be no mistake: in September 2023 combined forces of the Venezuelan police and military, arrested, disbanded, and eliminated the local thugs called Tren de Aragua. At the same time, the authorities cleaned out Tocorón Prison, in the state of Aragua and re-took control from the gangs. The leaders were captured and those few that escaped had INTERPOL warrants issued against them.

What created this horrific and unjust imprisonment of Venezuelans in El Salvador? The extreme fascist Venezuelan opposition leaders, who live outside the country by choice, committed what is perhaps the worst unpatriotic and immoral crime against their own people. In 2024 Maria Corina Machado, Luis Borges, Leopoldo Lopez, persuaded Ted Cruz that the Venezuelan government had sent members of the (defunct) Tren de Aragua gang to the USA; and furthermore, that the Venezuelan migrants were instruments of that gang. Hence, Trump announced that same false and dangerous lie to the public.

There has been, to this day, no evidence whatsoever of this supposed conspiracy by the Venezuelan government to send criminals to the USA, nor has the criminality of the migrants who were rounded up been proven in a court of law.

Moreover, “a new U.S. intelligence assessment found no coordination between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government, contradicting statements by Trump administration officials to justify their invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and deporting Venezuelan migrants” (https://apnews.com/article/trump-deportation-courts-aclu-venezuelan-gang-timeline-43e1deafd66fc1ed4e934ad108ead529)

“Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 11

This is how they rounded up the Jewish people in the Third Reich before gassing them. Even Nazi butchers were given the right of a trial and access to lawyers at Nurenburg – but not Venezuelans.

“Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 10

The USA has created a concentration camp in El Salvador: it has paid the dictator Bukele $6 million to incarcerate Venezuelans. They are there simply because of their NATIONALITY. If any other country other than the USA had made this deal, it would have been denounced as human trafficking.

Fortunately, Trump has not been able to quite dismantle the US judicial system, despite having “stacked” courts with his followers. Thus, on April 19^th the US Supreme Court, in a surprising act of defiance, temporarily blocked the deportation of Venezuelans detained in Texas under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a controversial 18th-century military law. The Court has ordered the Trump administration not to expel these migrants held at a detention center “until further order of this court.” The ruling comes just hours after a federal appeals court similarly blocked the US government from moving forward with eliminating temporary legal protection, better known as TPS, for some 350,000 Venezuelan migrants, who are at risk of imminent deportation.

According to the Migration Policy Institute of the USA, Venezuelan migrants are merely 2% of the 47.8 million registered migrants. Clearly, Venezuelans have been targeted for strictly political reasons: it is another canard aimed at trying to depose the legitimate, democratic, Venezuelan government. “…a criminal gang is clearly being used, with its capacity and reach clearly exaggerated, in order to generate the necessary excuses for renewed attacks against Venezuela: sanctions, tariffs and, naturally, the inhuman treatment of migrants. The worst example so far was the deportation of 238 of them to El Salvador.”

Internationally, there has been very little outcry from western nations in defense of the kidnapped Venezuelans. This is disgraceful.

Another example of the lawlessness of the Trump regime is its refusal to comply with the April 10^th order of the Supreme Court to obtain the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorean, sent to El Salvador with the Venezuelans, and who the US has admitted was deported in error. “This defiance of a lower court and the Supreme Court is indeed historic and constitute what is correctly referred to as dictatorial action. But if we look around the world at the nations of the collective west, those that claim to be paragons of democratic virtues and condemning other nations for what they call human rights abuses, we see similarly repressive activities.”

Some in the press have falsely claimed that the situation of the migrants somehow favours Nicolas Maduro. Those that think this have no idea firstly, of the public outcry and anguish the people of Venezuela are showing because of their abused compatriots. Secondly, they have no idea of the many initiatives of the government to obtain the return of their citizens. Since 2018 Venezuela has had a program called Return to the Homeland which – free of charge – has flown Venezuelans home from other countries where they migrated to but ended up suffering poverty and abuse. Thousands have returned to Venezuela in these flights and have been received with open arms. Venezuela would send its planes to the US and El Salvador to obtain the return of its citizens were they allowed to do so. President Maduro has said,” if they don’t want them, we do.”

“Do not ask for whom the bells toll, they toll for thee”:

The abuse of human rights of any group or nationality means they are all at risk.

The post Where Are the Defenders of the Human Rights of Venezuelans? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Image by Elimende Inagella.

Not a day goes by without a new shock to Americans and our neighbors around the world from the Trump administration. On April 22nd, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) downgraded its forecasts for global growth in 2025, from 3.3% to 2.8%, and warned that no country will feel the pain more than the United States. Trump’s policies are expected to drag U.S. growth down from 2.7% to 1.8%.

It’s now clear to the whole world that China is the main target of Trump’s trade wars. The U.S. has slapped massive tariffs—up to 245%—on Chinese goods. China hit back with 125% tariffs of its own and refuses even to negotiate until U.S. tariffs are lifted.

Ever since President Obama announced a U.S. “pivot to Asia” in 2011, both U.S. political parties have seen China as the main global competitor, or even as a target for U.S. military force. China is now encircled by a staggering 100,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan, South Korea and Guam (plus 73,000 in Hawaii and 415,000 on the U.S. West coast) and enough nuclear and conventional weapons to completely destroy China, and the rest of us along with it.

To put the trade war between the U.S. and China in context, we need to take a step back and look at their relative economic strength and international trading relations with other countries. There are two ways to measure a country’s economy: nominal GDP (based only on currency exchange rates) and “purchasing power parity” (PPP), which adjusts for the real cost of goods and services. PPP is now the preferred method for economists at the IMF and OECD.

Measured by PPP, China overtook the U.S. as the largest economy in the world in 2016. Today, its economy is 33% larger than America’s—$40.7 trillion compared to $30.5 trillion.

And China isn’t alone. The U.S. is just 14.7% of the world economy, while China is 19.7%. The EU makes up another 14.1%, while India, Russia, Brazil, Japan, and the rest of the world account for the other 51.5%. The world is now multipolar, whether Washington likes it or not.

So when Malaysia’s trade minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz was asked whether he’d side with China or the U.S., his answer was clear: “We can’t choose—and we won’t.” Trump would like to adopt President Bush’s “You’re either with us or with the terrorists” posture, but that makes no sense when China and the U.S. together account for only 34% of the global economy.

China saw this coming. As a result of Trump’s trade war with China during his first term in office, it turned to new markets across Asia, Africa, and Latin America through its Belt and Road Initiative. Southeast Asia is now China’s biggest export market. It no longer depends on American soybeans—it grows more of its own and buys most of the rest from Brazil, cutting the U.S. share of that market by half.

Meanwhile, many Americans cling to the idea that military power makes up for shrinking economic clout. Yes, the U.S. outspends the next ten militaries combined—but it hasn’t won a major war since 1945. From Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, the U.S. has spent trillions, killed millions, and suffered humiliating defeats.

Today in Ukraine, Russia is grinding down U.S.-backed forces in a brutal war of attrition, producing more shells than the U.S. and its allies can at a fraction of our cost. The U.S.’s bloated, for-profit arms industry can’t keep up, and our trillion dollar military budget is crowding out new investments in education, healthcare and civilian infrastructure on which our economic future depends.

None of this should be a surprise. Historian Paul Kennedy saw it coming in his 1987 classic The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Every dominant empire, from Spain to Britain to Russia, eventually confronted relative decline as the tides of economic history moved on and it had to find a new place in a world it no longer dominated. Military overextension and overspending always accelerated the fall.

“It has been a common dilemma facing previous ‘number one’ countries that even as their relative economic strength is ebbing, the growing foreign challenges to their position have compelled them to allocate more and more of their resources into the military sector, which in turn squeezes out productive investment…,” Kennedy wrote.

He found that no society remains permanently ahead of all others, but that the loss of empire is not the end of the road for former great powers, who can often find new, prosperous positions in a world they no longer dominate. Even the total destruction suffered by Germany and Japan in the Second World War, which ended their imperial ambitions, was also a new beginning, as they turned their considerable skills and resources from weapons development to peaceful civilian production, and soon produced the best cars and consumer electronics in the world.

Paul Kennedy reminded Americans that the decline in U.S. leadership “is relative not absolute, and is therefore perfectly natural; and that the only serious threat to the real interests of the United States can come from a failure to adjust sensibly to the newer world order…”

And that is exactly how our leaders have failed us. Instead of judiciously adapting to America’s relative decline and carving out a new place for the United States in the emerging multipolar world, they doubled down—on wars, on threats, on the fantasy of endless dominance. Under the influence of the neocons, Democrats and Republicans alike have marched America into one disaster after another, in a vain effort to defy the economic tides by which all great powers rise and fall.

Since 1987, against all the historical evidence, seven U.S. presidents, Democrats and Republicans, have blindly subscribed to the simplistic notion peddled by the neocons that the United States can halt or reverse the tides of economic history by the threat and use of military force.

Trump and his team are no exception. They know the old policies have failed. They know radically different policies are needed. Yet they keep playing from the same broken record—economic coercion, threats, wars, proxy wars, and now genocide—violating international law and exhausting the goodwill of our friends and neighbors around the world.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. It took the two most deadly and destructive wars in human history to put an end to the British Empire and the age of European colonialism.

In a nuclear-armed world, another great-power war wouldn’t just be catastrophic—it would very likely be final. If the U.S. keeps trying to bully its way back to the top, we could all lose everything.

The future instead demands a peaceful transition to international cooperation in a multipolar world. This is not a question of politics, right or left, or of being pro- or anti-American. It’s about whether humanity has any future at all.

The post How to Avoid Trade Wars – and World War Three appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Photograph Source: Seattle City Council – CC BY 2.0

Top Amazon executives have received huge tax windfalls from the 2017 tax reform and stand to reap even bigger windfalls from the new tax legislation Congress is currently crafting.

A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, the Athena Coalition, and PowerSwitch Action provides detailed analysis on how our rigged tax system has expanded the massive fortunes of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and CEO Andrew Jassy while leaving ordinary workers and small businesses behind.

Jeff Bezos has reaped billions from the capital gains tax double standard

When the Republican-controlled Congress passed the last major tax bill in 2017, they failed to fix one of the most perverse aspects of our tax code: the deeply discounted rate on income from wealth versus income from work. Because the rich get most of their money from investments, millions of teachers and firefighters wind up paying a higher tax rate than many billionaires.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has sold $36.7 billion worth of his company’s stock since the 2017 reform. If that law had equalized the 20 percent capital gains rate with the 37 percent top marginal rate on ordinary income, he would’ve owed Uncle Sam $6.2 billion more in taxes on those sales. To put that sum in perspective, it would be enough to cover the cost of nearly 650,000 public housing units for a year.

Current Congressional leaders appear eager to perpetuate this perversity.

Corporate and top marginal tax rate cuts are boons to executives

In the last tax reform go-round, Congress cut the top marginal income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. This didn’t affect Bezos much because he receives a modest annual salary as Amazon’s executive chair.

Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy, on the other hand, enjoyed a significant windfall. Based solely on the $263 million in salary and vested stock he pocketed between 2018 and 2024, we estimate that Jassy saved roughly $6.6 million from this rate reduction. That amount could’ve covered annual child care costs for more than 600 families.

The post The Tax Debate: What’s In it for Jeff Bezos and Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Photograph Source: Richard Giles – CC BY-SA 2.0

After Ringling Bros. ended its 145-year-long tradition of forcing elephants to perform in 2016, many assumed that the protracted era of American elephant abuse was finally over. Unfortunately, that isn’t true yet.

To be sure, there has been tremendous progress. Localities across the country, followed by some states, have banned bullhooks—the fireplace-poker-like devices with a sharp point on the end that are deployed on the most sensitive parts of elephants’ bodies to force them into compliance. Without these weapons, circuses insist they can’t use elephants, massive animals who can easily kill a person, on purpose or by accident, with a single trunk swipe or foot stomp.

After being trained to perform under the constant threat of punishment with a bullhook—and taught that if they don’t perform as directed, they will face a violent “tune-up” with a bullhook while chained down—the mere sight of a bullhook can instill enough fear to keep these majestic animals compliant. At least, most of the time.

Ringling Bros. Shifts From Elephant Acts

Unable to use elephants in jurisdictions that adopted bullhook bans, Ringling Bros. began leaving elephants chained in boxcars at specific stops along its routes. Indeed, the circus cited the increasing patchwork of local laws when it announced in 2015 that it would finally bow to long-standing public pressure and stop using elephants.

Today, Ringling Bros. features only willing human performers. Other circuses followed suit. But not all of them. Numerous circuses continue to chain elephants up and haul them around the country for a few brief moments of demeaning entertainment. Often, these animals are supplied by Carson & Barnes.

Elephants have repeatedly escaped from this notorious outfit, including twice in 2024. Loose elephants pose serious public safety threats, and the animals themselves are often injured, sometimes even killed. Carson & Barnes’ head trainer was caught on video attacking, electroshocking, yelling, and swearing at elephants while the animals cried out. Yet, numerous circuses continue to lease animal acts from Carson & Barnes.

Challenges Elephants Face in Zoos and Captivity

And it’s not just circuses. Even the best-intentioned zoos can’t provide the vast acreage these wide-ranging animals need. Elephants evolved to traverse many miles every day. Unable to move in any meaningful way and often kept on hard surfaces, captive elephants frequently suffer from painful arthritis and foot disease. Indeed, these are the leading reasons captive elephants are euthanized. Some zoos, such as the Bronx Zoo, even continue to hold these highly social animals in solitary confinement.

In 2024, the Oakland Zoo, whose six-acre elephant enclosure was one of the largest in the U.S. yet still comprised less than one percent of an elephant’s home range, made the compassionate decision to send its last surviving elephant to the Elephant Sanctuary. This marked the end of three-quarters of a century of keeping elephants, but not the end of the zoo’s work to help elephants in the wild.

CEO Nik Dehejia explained, “Oakland Zoo’s ‘elephant program of the future’ requires much more than our habitat and facilities can provide today for this species to thrive in human care.” Two decades prior, the Detroit Zoo made a similar decision, sending elephants Winkie and Wanda to The Elephant Sanctuary in recognition of their complex physical and psychological needs.

But Oakland and Detroit are the exceptions. Many more zoos continue to hold and breed elephants. In 2017, a cohort of American zoos even imported 18 wild-captured elephants.

Given the extensive knowledge of how complex these animals’ needs are, how extraordinarily social and remarkably intelligent they are, how is it that hundreds of elephants are still confined across the U.S.? Why haven’t we banned these outdated exhibits? What legal protections do these animals have?

Insufficient Standards for Elephants on a Federal Level

The primary law governing the treatment of captive elephants in the U.S. is the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA). Congress intended this law to ensure the humane care and treatment of animals like elephants who are used for exhibition. However, the AWA’s standards are truly minimal. They lack elephant-specific requirements.

Instead, elephants are governed by the same generic standards that regulate most animals, from bats to bears to tigers to zebras. For example, these standards don’t set forth specific space requirements. Instead, they vaguelyrequire “sufficient space to allow each animal to make normal postural and social adjustments with adequate freedom of movement,”—which inspectors and regulated entities alike have struggled to understand, let alone enforce. Nor do the standards require enrichment or social companionship for elephants.

What’s worse, even these minimal standards of the AWA are not meaningfully enforced. Congress tasked the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) with implementing this law. Still, time and time again, the agency’s own Office of Inspector General (OIG) has found the AWA enforcement to be appallingly paltry. When violations of the minimal standards are documented, the most likely outcome for an exhibitor is a meaningless warning. If they disregard said warning, odds are good the USDA will not take any follow-up action—or that, if it does, it will be in the form of another warning (sometimes even a third warning!) or a fine that is so heavily reduced that, in the words of the OIG, it is treated as a “cost of doing business.”

Minimal Fines and Consequences for Elephant Exploitation

The horrific abuse by Carson & Barnes’ head trainer that was documented on video resulted in a $400 fine. When two elephants were injured after a Carson & Barnes truck crashed and flipped on its side, the USDA fined the company $550. In 2016, the company paid a higher fine after three elephants were injured after escaping and damaging property, but it was still a tiny fraction of the potential penalty under the law. In 2012, the company paid just $3,714 for 10 Animal Welfare Act violations, including yet another escape, as well as public endangerment. Such trivial penalties do nothing to deter violations—hence, yet another elephant escape in 2024.

The USDA is fully empowered to revoke Carson & Barnes’ license to exhibit animals after such an extensive record of violations. But it has refused to exercise this authority. Instead, the agency continues to renew that license.

Nor have efforts to advocate for elephants in the courtroom fared well. Lawsuits seeking recognition of a right to bodily liberty for elephants have failed in the U.S., essentially on the grounds that, while elephants are remarkably intelligent and complex and fare exceptionally poorly in captivity as a result, they aren’t humans. Though courts have the authority, under the common law, to recognize such rights, they’ve declined to do so, instead instructing advocates to go to the legislature. And so they have.

State and Local Advocacy Succeeds in Protecting Elephants

In the face of court refusals and federal government and industry failure, animal advocates have stepped up their legislative efforts—and they’ve met considerable success. In 2024, Massachusetts became the 11th state to restrict the use of elephants and other wild animals in circuses. More than 200 local jurisdictions across the country have done the same. In 2023, Ojai, California, became the first city to “codify elephants’ fundamental right to bodily liberty, thereby prohibiting the keeping of elephants in captive settings that deprive them of their autonomy and ability to engage in their innate behaviors.”

But with hundreds of elephants still held captive without meaningful legal protections—some of them still subjected to grueling travel and performance regimens—the work is not done.

The Role of Every Individual in Supporting Elephant Protection

The good news is that every one of us can play a role in getting us closer to a world in which widespread public awe and respect for elephants is codified into our laws. We can start by not patronizing institutions that profit from elephant suffering and educating our family and friends about these animals and what they endure. We can also reach out to our city council members and county commissioners to ask them to follow in the footsteps of the many jurisdictions that have banned traveling elephant (and other animal) acts.

The Humane Society of the United States (now Humane World for Animals) created an extensive, step-by-step guide to help advocates pass such ordinances in their communities. If your local government has already banned traveling animal acts, or if none come to your town, you could go even further and work to enact an ordinance modeled on Ojai’s that prohibits elephant captivity. Similar measures can be pursued at the state level as well, especially if local jurisdictions within the state have already made strides.

And let’s not forget the possibility of federal protection. Animal protection is one of the few remaining bipartisan issues, and more than 50 other countries have already banned or restricted traveling animal acts at the national level. In 2022, despite extensive legislative gridlock, animal advocates successfully persuaded Congress to enact the Big Cat Public Safety Act, which prohibits private ownership and public interactions with big cats. Bills to ban traveling wild animal acts have been introduced at the federal level in the past and, with persistence, could meet similar success.

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

The post How the United States Is Failing Elephants—and What You Can Do appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Main St., Belfast, Maine. Photograph Source: Centpacrr – CC BY-SA 3.0

It’s not every day a small town beats back a $500 million industrial project, but that’s exactly what just happened in Belfast, Maine, population 6,700.

The project was a land-based industrial fish farm as big as Gillette Stadium, Fenway Park and two Boston Gardens – combined. In dollar terms, it might have been the biggest industrial project in Maine history. It would have destroyed dozens of acres of mature forest, vital wetlands, part of a popular hiking trail, and the habitat of the extraordinary, and threatened, bobolink bird, which, at all of 1-2 ounces, migrates 12,000 or more miles a year, and 1,100 miles or more in a single day.

And in the best-case scenario, Nordic Aquafarms of Fredrikstad, Norway would have destroyed dozens of acres of mature forest, wetlands, and wildlife habitat, and then would have simply walked away when the mammoth project had run its course and become inoperable in 20-30 years – leaving behind its vast buildings.

And then there was the cumulative effect of the 7.7 million gallons of effluent per day that Nordic would have dumped into Belfast Bay.

For fully seven years the Nordic project stalked Belfast, propped up by a craven town government and DINO Maine Governor Janet Mills, who never saw an industrial project she didn’t want to ram down the throat of a reluctant citizenry.

But local citizens, environmental activists and a gaggle of enviro-lawyers can’t claim all the credit for the demise of Nordic’s Belfast project. Nordic’s own incompetence deserves a good chunk of the credit.

There were many nails in Nordic’s Belfast coffin, but the biggest was Nordic not owning the intertidal land it needed to lay its saltwater intake and effluent discharge pipes. Nordic knew early on it didn’t own the land, but it said nothing, apparently hoping no one would notice.

But someone did notice. Firebrand Nordic opponent and deed-and-title research whiz Paul Bernacki discovered it, and Nordic, caught with its pants down, said in a Facebook post that it wasn’t their place to say who owned what. Hours later, perhaps realizing the post constituted a land-grab confession, Nordic took down the post.

Nordic could have bought the intertidal land, and the upland seaside home connected to it, which were both for sale, but it didn’t, in an apparent effort to save a few bucks. Nordic rolled the dice and lost, and spent the next several years paying big-boy Maine lawyers to defend its hallucinated right to use land it didn’t own.

To build its project, Nordic needed a barnful of state and local permits, and all of them required clear title to all needed land – something Nordic didn’t have. Not even close. But state and local licensing agencies found a way around the ubiquitous clear-title requirements: ignore them.

Nordic opponents also faced a Belfast City Council that rammed through a crucial zoning change in the face of written comments that ran 130-0 against the rushed vote. With that, the city council was off to the Nordic races, and for six years it never looked back.

The City of Belfast spent more than $160,000 on legal bills defending the ill-fated project, and when the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2023 that Nordic didn’t own the intertidal land it needed, the Belfast City Council went to the mattresses and attempted to seize the needed intertidal land through eminent domain. But Maine law bars eminent domain for private purposes, so the city council announced that it was creating a public park on the needed property.

The so-called park was laughable from the get-go. To access the park, visitors would have to park across Maine’s arterial Route 1, and then dodge vehicles in a 50-mph zone with limited visibility, all to enjoy the company of an industrial pump house in the middle of the alleged park. And with a 14-day dispersal rate for Nordic’s daily effluent discharge of 7.7 million gallons, park visitors could enjoy more than 100 million gallons of effluent discharge right offshore.
Nice.

But the Belfast City Council’s inept land seizure spilled over into the neighboring town of Northport, and under well-established Maine law, one cannot take what one does not own. So the Maine Supreme Judicial Court tossed out the city council’s farcical eminent domain action.

Undeterred, the city council then voted to spend thousands of dollars on bizarre schemes to hire pliant surveyors to redraw the Belfast-Northport town line. One need not travel 650 miles to Washington to find clueless public officials.

And when the Belfast City Council finally gave up that ghost, Nordic, which for six years had professed its undying love for Belfast, sued the City of Belfast for not following through on the sham public park.

After the 2023 Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruling, and after Belfast residents Jeffrey Mabee and Judith Grace sued Nordic for $2.5 million for wrongly claiming part of their property, Nordic’s home office in Fredrikstad, Norway cut loose its U.S. operations in an apparent attempt to insulate itself from the potential liabilities of operations whose prospects looked decidedly grim.

Then in January 2025, almost two years after the Maine Supreme Judicial Court sealed Nordic’s fate, the company finally abandoned its Belfast project.

And so ended the seven-year saga of a $500 million industrial project beaten back by the citizens of a small town in midcoast Maine. Such victories don’t come along every day, but it happened here, and the world is a better place for it.

The post The Little Town that Could appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Photograph Source: Jason “Textfiles” Scott – CC BY 2.0

Despite Donald Trump’s disavowal of Project 2025, his administration began enforcing that initiative’s agenda immediately after his second inauguration. This includes efforts to erase history through education cuts, classroom and book censorship, website scrubbing, and the silencing of media outlets and institutions like PBS, NPR, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

One week after Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, in a post on the online platform Free Government Information, data services librarian emeritus from the University of California, San Diego, James A. Jacobs wrote, “There is a difference between the government changing a policy and the government erasing information, but the line between those two has blurred in the digital age… In the digital age, government publishing has shifted from the distribution of unalterable printed books to digital posts on government websites. Such digital publications can be moved, altered, and withdrawn at the flick of a switch. Publishing agencies are not required to preserve their own information, nor to provide free access to it.”

While noting that “digital government information was being lost before President Trump,” Jacobs stressed that “[t]he scale of loss and alteration of information under Trump may prove to be unprecedented” and that “librarians, archivists, and citizens” must create a “new distributed digital preservation infrastructure.”

Organizations like the Freedom Archives in Berkeley, California, have been working for decades to preserve online information on history, social issues, and activism. Established in 1999, this nonprofit educational facility houses audio, video, and print materials that “chronicle the progressive history of the Bay Area, the United States, and international movements for liberation and social justice,” according to the organization’s website. Its digital collection of content on progressive movements, culture, and activism includes materials on subjects like Black liberation, gender and sexuality, and Indigenous struggles.

The Freedom Archives’ co-director and co-founder, Claude Marks, notes that conservative extremists “are purposefully rewriting history to eliminate references to slavery of Blacks from Africa and genocide against Indigenous people, and the purpose of that is to reify and reinforce white supremacy. Oftentimes, the truth lies more with the resisters who may have been defeated in various struggles with their colonizers. If that’s your shared point of view, you want to protect access to material that gives voice to those people who were engaged in liberatory struggles and were fighting for justice and human rights.”

For instance, nearly 37 states in the U.S. have measures in place “that limit how America’s undeniable history of racism—from chattel slavery to Jim Crow—can be discussed in public school classrooms,” according to a 2023 articlein the Conversation.

Many fear this attempt to rewrite history, especially under the Trump administration, might have far-reaching consequences. “The danger isn’t just that they’ll purge accurate data from the past but that if and when that data is ever reposted that some of it will be modified with false information,” saidCharles Gaba, a health care policy data analyst and web developer, according to a February 2025 Salon article.

As an independent organization, the Freedom Archives is largely funded through grassroots efforts. “We’re not vulnerable to: ‘Oh, we didn’t get that big grant through the Department of Education,’ which will no longer exist [soon],” Marks says.

The Freedom Archives’ staff has collaborated with archives and organizations like the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, and the Los Angeles-based Southern California Library, which “documents and makes accessible histories of struggles that challenge racism and other systems of oppression so we can all imagine and sustain possibilities for freedom.”

It has also worked with Interference Archive, a Brooklyn, New York-based organization that curates in-person and online exhibits of “cultural ephemera” such as posters, books, zines, and flyers created by activists and participants in social movements. Interference Archive uses these materials “to animate histories of people mobilizing for social transformation” and to preserve and honor “histories and material culture that is often marginalized in mainstream institutions,” its website states.

Highlighting the importance of these efforts to archive information, the New England Archivists state, “Archives are the foundation of a democratic society. They exist to safeguard the rights of individuals, ensure transparency, and hold public servants accountable.”

Another notable online library is the Internet Archive, whose Wayback Machine contains “more than 928 billion web pages saved over time,” the site explains. In March 2025, the Wayback Machine’s director, Mark Graham, toldNPR that the Internet Archive was the only place to find an “interactive timeline” of the January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol and that “it’s in the public’s interest to save such records.” More people have been referring to the information on the Internet Archive website since Trump took office.

In April 2025, the San Francisco Standard reported that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had cut funding for the Internet Archive while the organization “was halfway through an NEH [National Endowment for the Humanities] grant of $345,960.” Jefferson Bailey, the Internet Archive’s director of archiving and data services, said that funding from other sources would help the organization stay afloat, but he worried about the impact of the cuts on smaller nonprofits.

One such nonprofit is the HathiTrust Digital Library, which contains digital copies of more than 18 million items from research libraries. The universities of the Big Ten Academic Alliance (formerly known as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation) and the 11 libraries of the University of California launched the archive in 2008 “to ensure that those digitized collections—and the libraries that steward them—remain strong and serve scholarship into the future,” the website explains. “Our reach now includes members outside of the United States. Over 18 million digitized library items are currently available, and our mission to expand the collective record of human knowledge is always evolving.”

Meanwhile, the Zinn Education Project (ZEP) provides educational materials for middle and high school teachers. “Based on the approach to history highlighted in Howard Zinn’s best-selling book A People’s History of the United States, our teaching materials emphasize the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history,” the site states. Free downloadable lessons and articles are categorized by theme, time period, and reading level.

A worldwide network of volunteers curates the Marxist Internet Archive, a storehouse of writings by nearly 1,000 authors “representing a complete spectrum of political, philosophical, and scientific thought.” The site’s content comprises more than 180,000 documents published in 83 languages. Its founders’ primary motivation for starting this archive was to dispel misinformation and misconceptions about Marxism, the site explains.

Open Culture consolidates, curates, and provides free access to culture and educational media, including history, politics, education, life, and current affairs. “Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video,” the archive’s website states. “It’s all free. It’s all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Our whole mission is to centralize this content… and give you access to this high-quality content whenever and wherever you want it.”

The Public Domain Review’s archives cover subjects like culture, history, politics, and war. “It’s our belief that the public domain is an invaluable and indispensable good, which—like our natural environment and our physical heritage—deserves to be explicitly recognized, protected, and appreciated,” the nonprofit’s website notes.

Many of these organizations’ ties to progressive movements extend far beyond archiving. For example, Marks says that “as participants in a broader struggle for liberation, justice, and global values that are liberatory instead of oppressive and colonial,” the Freedom Archives’ staff participates in local and national activism and stays conscious of “the importance of causes like international solidarity—defending the right for Cuba to exist without an embargo, the right of the Palestinians to survive the genocide, and the right to their own identity and state. As long as we’re doing that, I have faith that all these movements will survive the brutality and the willingness of the powers of the empire to try to destroy them and snuff them out.”

This article was produced by Local Peace Economy.

The post As History Erasure Intensifies, Independent Internet Archives Are Helping Fortify the ‘Digital Preservation Infrastructure’ appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” on April 2, 2025, marked the formal launch of sweeping global tariffs, capping months of escalatory announcements since returning to office. Amplifying the economic nationalism of his first term, it marks the culmination of Trump’s decades-old advocacy for raising tariffs and reviving American industry.

His latest push builds on more than two decades of previous presidential efforts to recalibrate trade, in a far more aggressive form. Influenced by Project 2025’s chapter on fair trade by longtime adviser Peter Navarro, it calls for rapid, uncompromising trade action to reduce deficits, lower debt, and reshore manufacturing. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has similarly framed tariffs as part of a larger economic realignment to restore U.S. industrial and economic dominance.

Though rarely stated outright, Trump aims to break the dominance of China’s export-led economic model, with the understanding that there will be some consequences for the U.S. economy. While his strategy builds on former efforts to reshape trade, the public’s understanding of Trump’s agenda and impression of its execution enjoys only modest domestic support. The gamble carries the risks of global economic destabilization, blowback from allies, and handing China even more power on the global stage.

Protectionism, Free Trade, and Resurgent Skepticism

From 1798 to 1913, tariffs covered 50 percent to 90 percent of income and shielded American industry from foreign competitors. After World War II, however, the U.S. aimed to rebuild allied economies and draw them away from communism by opening its consumer, industrial, and capital markets. Trade deficits emerged by the 1970s, but abandoning the gold standard in 1971 let the U.S. print dollars more easily and sustain the imbalance.

The Cold War’s end in the early 1990s left the U.S. confident it could continue steering global trade on its own terms. It pushed for global tariff cuts and free trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), while U.S. corporations helped build up foreign manufacturing, particularly in China, which benefited from preferential trade terms under its most-favored-nation trade status. American consumers absorbed global overproduction, and corporate profits soared, but many American workers were increasingly left behind.

These policies added to the anti-globalization movements of the late 1990s, most visibly at the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Seattle, prompting a rethink of trade policy. Domestic industries like steel had collapsed under cheap imports, and former President George W. Bush briefly imposed steel tariffs in 2002 before the WTO struck them down. The 2008 financial crisis brought bipartisan calls for economic restructuring, with the Obama administration pledging to reshore manufacturing jobs. Obama later distanced himself from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a free trade agreement—a move echoed by Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump’s first-term trade agenda broke from the previous caution. Favoring unilateral action, he withdrew from the TPP in 2017, clashed with the WTO, and renegotiated NAFTA. He then imposed tariffs on key trade partners, especially China. By then, the cost of offshoring had become clear. With U.S. corporate assistance, China had gained capital and technology expertise to become the “world’s factory.” Low-tariff access to the U.S. market gave Beijing a $300 billion surplus over America in 2024, and it emerged as the world’s top exporter and creditor.

President Biden struck a less confrontational tone upon assuming office in January 2021, yet he similarly raised tariffs on China. Like China, the EU and Japan had established large trade surpluses with the U.S., an issue he sought to address, but geopolitical unity with the U.S. on the global stage tempered criticism. Despite lowering tariffs on Europe, Biden nonetheless passed the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act, both criticized by the EU as protectionist.

Trump’s second-term focus has again hit allies, yet the attention remains squarely on China, with individual tariffs on other countries being paused on April 9, while tariffs on Beijing have increased. Aside from direct exports, Washington also seeks to target China’s role in global trade. Biden’s push to “nearshore” manufacturing to countries like Mexico exposed the limits of decoupling, as Chinese companies quickly established themselves in new Mexican industrial parks.

Many imports shipped to the U.S. from other countries also contain Chinese components, meaning Trump’s 10 percent “baseline” tariff hike on all imports is meant to counteract other countries serving as conduits for Chinese goods.

In Project 2025, Peter Navarro emphasized the role of non-tariff barriers, like strict safety standards, customs delays, and local content requirements, in obstructing U.S. exports. The U.S. uses these, too, and in early February 2025, Trump cited fentanyl smuggling as justification for raising tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada.

Even if a more conventional president follows, Trump’s tariff hikes and resulting supply chain rerouting may prove difficult to undo. Critics question whether this transition can be fast, affordable, or effective, but the COVID-19 pandemic proved supply chains can reorient under pressure relatively quickly, just as China showed its agility by setting up operations in Mexico during the 2020s.

Internal Risks

A tariff war will nonetheless raise prices for consumers and businesses, ending the era of cheap global goods that the U.S. economy has depended on for decades. Countries maintained friendly ties to keep consumer market access and reinvested U.S. dollars into American stocks, bonds, and real estate. Uncertainty over Trump’s policies saw a fake tweet about tariffs on April 7 trigger multi-trillion-dollar swings. Prolonged stock volatility or declines would reduce pensions, household wealth, and corporate valuations.

Some argue that if the stock markets crash, money could flow into and lower the price of U.S. treasuries, reducing their prices and allowing the government to refinance long-term bonds with cheaper debt. However, many traditional U.S. debt holders may demand concessions before continuing to finance it. Treasury yields have already risen, making new debt more expensive, and China, the second-largest holder of U.S. debt, is suspected of shedding bonds to help do so.

China has also retaliated by raising its own tariffs and recently haltingexports of rare earths and critical minerals essential for modern technologies. Its state-backed firms can flood global markets with cheap goods and advanced tech, squeezing out competitors. With a growing presence in international institutions and trade blocs, Beijing could increasingly shape global economic norms if these institutions and agreements become more fluid and the U.S. steps back.

Trump also wants to devalue the dollar to make U.S. exports more competitive, but insists on keeping the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, which eases access to cheap debt. His approach is undermining global confidence in the dollar, even if no clear alternative has emerged yet. Trump’s pressure on a resistant Federal Reserve to cut interest rates further reflects limited borrowing options and coordination in U.S. financial policy as he embarks on major economic upheaval.

Democrats have largely avoided serious condemnation of Trump’s policies, recognizing it may be a losing political strategy. Still, some top members like Chuck Schumer and Gavin Newsom have marked early opposition, along with seven GOP senators who recently voted against Trump’s Trade Review Act.

Trump’s policies have some support from the U.S. business class, which once saw China as a promising market but now sees it as a rival. No longer limited to cheap goods, Chinese companies like Temu, Shein, and BYD increasingly threaten giants like Amazon and Tesla. Any success in bringing manufacturing back will mostly come through automation instead of high-paying jobs, benefiting major U.S. corporations. Still, decades of cooperation with China means that these businesses remain exposed, with major corporate figures expressing public concern and Elon Musk publicly criticizingPeter Navarro’s role in the tariff push.

Trump has, in turn, framed tariffs not only as leverage over trading partners but also as a source of revenue to offset other taxes. His 2024 campaign called for cutting the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, down from 21 percent, already lowered from 35 percent during his first term. However, the promised economic boom was not evident before COVID-19 hit, and his suggestion of replacing personal income tax with tariff revenue is also unlikely to generate enough funds to do so, even in an optimistic scenario.

And while the U.S. needs to expand production for both domestic use and exports, current capacity falls far short. Tariffs might push companies and consumers toward new habits, but blanket protection without government initiatives in infrastructure development, skills training, and research and development risks doing more harm than good, and leaves the private sector to act with little guidance.

Compared to Trump’s unpredictable approach, China and the EU have positioned themselves as stable anchors of the global economy. U.S. calls to coordinate with major economic allies like the EU and Japan to limit dealings with China, including reducing Chinese imports and preventing its companies from establishing themselves, risk falling on deaf ears as tariffs have strained ties.

Global Risks

Reducing access to U.S. consumers also threatens a major pillar of global economic stability. The U.S. accounted for roughly 13 percent of global import consumption in 2023, acting as a safety valve for global overproduction by absorbing excess goods.

China, facing a property crisis, high youth unemployment, and mounting local government debt, has pledged to “vigorously boost domestic consumption,” according to the People’s Daily, to help replace American consumers. But its $300 billion trade surplus with the U.S. exemplifies its reliance and more limited leverage for retaliation. The EU has signaled it will not tolerate a flood of Chinese goods, as it, like the U.S., increasingly finds itself competing with China in high-end products.

The EU and Canada have similarly raised tariffs on the U.S. The Trump administration has tested EU unity by courting globalization-skeptic allies like Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, though tensions are likely to deepen before they ease. Europe’s struggle to sustain support for Ukraine against Russia has shown the perils of deindustrialization, a trend the U.S. now seeks to radically reverse ahead of others. And, by targeting allies with tariffs too, the U.S. ensures that any self-inflicted economic pain is matched abroad, making the cost of reshaping trade a shared burden.

Forcing a global trade war—an escalating Canada-China tariff clash in 2025 is one encouraging sign—is likely to further weaken China’s export-led model. As the U.S. signals a reduced role in safeguarding global maritime trade, already strained by disruptions like Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and rising piracy, geopolitical tensions could disrupt other key routes. Without U.S. intervention, free trade will face rising shipping and insurance costs.

Trump frequently changed tactics in his first term, mixing threats with negotiations. If his tariff strategy falters, voices like Kent Lassman’s in Project 2025, calling for a return to free trade, may gain traction. But Trump has been warning of trade imbalances since the 1980s, when Japan and West Germany were his main targets. He seems determined to make reversing it central to his legacy, this time focusing on China.

Scrapping the old, in his view, unreformable system, and embracing whatever follows is based on the belief that the U.S. is best positioned to shape the new system. The question now is which countries will support that shift or be forced to. Whether a complete globalization teardown occurs or not, he appears ready to push as hard as possible within constraints. As evidenced by much of MAGA’s merchandise still being made in China, dismantling Beijing’s advantages in global trade will not be easy.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

The post Trump’s Global Tariffs Are Meant for China appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Image by Ash Hayes.

To conquer a place is to fundamentally subdue its population. This must be clearly differentiated from ‘occupation’, a specific legal term that governs the relationship between a foreign “occupying power” and the occupied nation under international law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention.

When Israeli forces were ultimately compelled to redeploy from the Gaza Strip in 2005, a direct consequence of the persistent resistance of the Palestinian population there, the United Nations resolutely insisted that the Gaza Strip remained an occupied territory under international law.

This position stood in stark contradiction to that of Israel, which conveniently produced its own legal texts that designated Gaza a ‘hostile entity‘ – thus, not an occupied territory.

Let us try to understand what appears to be a confusing logic:

Israel proved incapable of sustaining its military occupation of Gaza, which began in June 1967. The paramount reason for Israel’s eventual redeployment was the enduring Palestinian Resistance, which rendered it impossible for Israel to normalize its military occupation and, crucially, to make it profitable – unlike the illegal settlements of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Between 1967 and the early 1970s, when Israel began investing in building illegal settlement blocks in the Strip, the Israeli military under the command of Ariel Sharon relentlessly strove to suppress Palestinians. He employed extreme violence, mass destruction, and ethnic cleansing tactics to subdue the Strip.

Yet, at no juncture did he achieve his ultimate and comprehensive objectives of complete subjugation.

Subsequently, he invested in his infamous, but failed ‘Five Fingers‘ plan. At the time the head of the Israeli army Southern Command – which included Gaza – Sharon stubbornly believed that the only way to defeat the Gazans was by severing the contiguity of the Strip, thus hindering organized resistance.

In pursuing this aim, he sought to divide Gaza into so-called security zones where the main Israeli Jewish settlements would be built, fortified by massive military build up. This would be joined by Israeli military control of key routes and the blocking of most coastal access.

However, this plan never fully actualized, as creating these ‘fingers’ required that Palestinians on both sides of the ‘security zones’ would have to be pacified to some extent – a condition that reality on the ground never delivered.

What did actualize was the building of isolated settlement blocks: the largest was in the southwest of the Gaza Strip, near the border with Egypt, known as the Gush Katif, followed by the northern settlements, and finally the central settlement of Netzarim.

Housing a few thousand settlers, and often requiring the presence of a far greater number of soldiers assigned to protect them, these so-called settlements were essentially fortified military towns. Due to the limited geography of Gaza (181 square miles or 365 square kilometers) and the stiff resistance, the settlements had limited space for expansion, thus remaining a costly colonial endeavor.

When the Israeli army emptied the last illegal settlement in Gaza in 2005, the soldiers snuck out of the Strip in the middle of the night. At their heels were thousands of Gazans who chased the soldiers until the last of them fled the dramatic scene.

That singular and powerful episode alone is more than sufficient to allow one to assert with unwavering certainty that Gaza was at no point truly conquered by Israel.

Though Israel withdrew its permanent military presence from the main population centers of the Strip, it continued to operate within so-called buffer zones, which were often significant incursions into Palestinian territory, far beyond the armistice line. It also imposed a hermetic siege against Gaza, which starkly explains why the majority of Gazans have never stepped a foot outside the Strip.

Israel’s control over airspace, territorial water, natural resources (mostly Mediterranean gas fields), and much more readily led the UN to its immediate conclusion: Gaza remains an occupied territory.

Unsurprisingly, Israel vehemently opposed this reality. Tel Aviv’s true desire is absolute control over Gaza, coupled with the convenient and self-serving designation of the territory as perpetually hostile. This twisted logic would grant the Israeli military an endlessly exploitable pretext to initiate devastating wars against the already besieged and impoverished Strip whenever it deemed convenient.

This brutal and cynical practice is chillingly known within Israel’s military lexicon as ‘mowing the grass‘ – a dehumanizing euphemism for the periodic and deliberate degradation of the military capabilities of the Palestinian Resistance in an attempt to ensure that Gaza can never effectively challenge its Israeli jailors or break free from its open-air prison.

October 7, 2023, ended that myth, where Al-Aqsa Flood Operation challenged Israel’s long-standing military doctrine. The so-called Gaza Envelope region, where the late Sharon’s Southern Command is based, was entirely seized by the youth of Gaza, who organized under the harshest of economic and military circumstances, to, in a shocking turn of events, defeat Israel.

While acknowledging the UN designation of Gaza as occupied territory, Palestinians understandably speak of and commemorate its ‘liberation’ in 2005. Their logic is clear: the Israeli military’s redeployment to the border region was a direct consequence of their resistance.

Israel’s current attempts to defeat the Palestinians in Gaza are failing for a fundamental reason rooted in history. When Israeli forces stealthily withdrew from the Strip two decades ago under the cover of night, Palestinian resistance fighters possessed rudimentary weaponry, closer to fireworks than effective military instruments. The landscape of resistance has fundamentally shifted since then.

This long-standing reality has been upended in recent months. All Israeli estimates suggest that tens of thousands of soldiers have been killed, wounded, or psychologically impaired since the start of the Gaza war. Since Israel failed to subdue the Gazans over the course of two relentless decades, it is not merely improbable, but an outright absurdity to expect that Israel will now succeed in subduing and conquering Gaza.

Israel itself is acutely aware of this inherent paradox, hence its immediate and brutal choice: the perpetration of a genocide, a horrific act intended to pave the way for the ethnic cleansing of the remaining survivors. The former has been executed with devastating efficiency, a stain on the conscience of a world that largely stood by in silence. The latter, however, remains an unachievable fantasy, predicated on the delusional notion that Gazans would willingly choose to abandon their ancestral homeland.

Gaza has never been conquered and never will be. Under the unyielding tenets of international law, it remains an occupied territory, regardless of any eventual withdrawal of Israeli forces to the border – a withdrawal that Netanyahu’s destructive and futile war cannot indefinitely postpone. When this inevitable redeployment occurs, the relationship between Gaza and Israel will be irrevocably transformed, a powerful testament to the enduring resilience and indomitable spirit of the Palestinian people.

The post The Myth of Conquest: Why Gaza Will Never Be Subdued by Israel appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Boycott Avelo Airlines protest, Santa Rosa Airport, CA, April 26. (Photo by Roger D. Harris)

Avelo Airlines has entered into a controversial agreement with US immigration authorities to operate deportation flights, sparking protests from coast to coast. Activists, legal organizations, and local communities are mobilizing against the carrier’s role in deportations. The controversy reflects a broader reckoning with the US’s long and bipartisan history of immigration enforcement.

Ultra-low budget airline flies gamblers, Hillary Clinton, and now deportees

Avelo Airlines started off flying gamblers in 1989 as Casino Express. Rebranded in 2005 as Xtra Airlines, it provided air transport for the Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign among other ventures. Current CEO and former United Airlines CFO Andrew Levy acquired the carrier in 2021, renamed it Avelo, and expanded from charter flights to low-cost commercial operations.

Following its California launch on a Burbank-Santa Rosa route, Avelo developed a hub at Tweed New Haven Airport in Connecticut. Avelo continued to expand destinations, most notably with its recent agreement to make federal deportation flights from Arizona starting in May. The “long-term charter” arrangement for the budget airline headquartered in Houston, TX, is with the US Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration Control and Enforcement Agency (ICE).

Chilling realities of ICE deportation flights

Research by the advocacy group Witness at the Border tracks ICE flights. Costly military deportation flights have largely been discontinued, leaving the dirty work to charter carriers such as Avelo.

An exposé by ProPublica revealed appalling conditions on ICE deportation flights by a similar charter carrier, GlobalX. The report states: “Flight attendants received training in how to evacuate passengers but said they weren’t told how to usher out detainees whose hands and legs were bound by shackles.

Leaving aside the issue of human decency, the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) “90-second” rule for accomplishing a full evacuation from an aircraft is impossible to achieve with passengers in chains.

Private security guards and an ICE officer accompany these ICE Air flights and are the only ones allowed to interact with the deportees, including even talking to them. But only the professional flight attendants, who are FAA certified, are trained in how to evacuate passengers in an emergency.

So if a plane crashes on the runway, ProPublica cautions, the rules are for the flight attendants to leave the aircraft for safety and abandon the shackled prisoners. Unfortunately, this grim scenario is not hypothetical.

Snoopy’s airport

On April 26, protesters lined the entrance to what locals affectionately call Snoopy’s airport. The Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport, named after the late cartoonist who lived in Sonoma County, is an Avelo Airlines hub. The Democratic Party-aligned Indivisible called the “profiting from pain” protest at the California wine country airport against Avelo’s plan to carry out deportation flights.

One protester flew an upside-down US flag, a signal of “dire distress in instances of extreme danger,” according to the US Flag Code. A sign proclaimed: “planes to El Salvador are just like trains to Auschwitz – a prison without due process is a concentration camp.”

“Boycott Avelo,” was the message on one young woman’s sign that implored, “travel should bring families together, not tear them apart.”

An Immigrant Legal Resource Center activist passed out wallet-sized “red cards” at the demonstration. She reported that nearly a thousand northern Californians have taken their training in recent weeks to defend their friends and neighbors who, regardless of immigration status, have certain rights and protections under the US Constitution.

At the grassroots level, communities are organizing and resisting. The North Bay Rapid Response Network hotline for reporting immigration enforcement activities dispatches trained legal observers and provides legal defense and support to affected individuals and families. Other resources include VIDAS, Immigration Institute of the Bay Area, Legal Aid of Sonoma County, and Sonoma Immigrant Services.

Boycott Avelo Airlines protest, New Haven Airport, CT, April 17. (Photo by Henry Lowendorf)

New Haven no-fly zone

Blowback against the nativist anti-immigrant wind was also evident across the continent in New Haven, CT. This Avelo Airlines hub city along with the state capital, Hartford, are both designated sanctuary cities. The state of Connecticut itself has also enacted measures limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

These politics reflect the demographics of urban Connecticut, which are now largely Latino and African American. Non-Hispanic whites, using Census Bureau terminology, are an urban minority.

According to local organizer Henry Lowendorf with the US Peace Council, the vast majority in New Haven are “adamantly opposed to the airline massively violating human rights with no judicial process and dumping people in a concentration camp in El Salvador.”

Over 200 protested Avelo Airlines on April 17 for the second Tuesday in a row, responding to a call by Unidad Latina en Acción, the Semilla Collective, and others. Led by immigrant rights activists, speakers included local and state officials. Even US Senator Richard Blumenthal spoke out against Trump’s immigration outrages.

Avelo currently benefits from a Connecticut state exemption from fuel taxes, which subsidizes its hub operations in New Haven. The pressure is on for Avelo to either cancel the deportations or pay the fuel levy.

The state Attorney General William Tong demanded that Avelo confirm that they will not operate deportation flights from Connecticut. But the airline has refused the AG’s request to make public their secret contract with the Homeland Security.

The continuity of US deportation policy

Aside from the heated rhetoric, The New York Times reports “deportations haven’t surged under Trump” although he has taken “new and unusual measures.” These have included deporting people to third countries far from their origins and invoking the eighteenth century wartime Alien Enemies Act.

The NYT concludes that deportations “fall short” from being the threatened mass exodus and, in fact, “look largely similar” to what was accomplished by Joe Biden. Despite all the drama and an initial surge of arrests, the pace of deportations under Trump has been slower than under Biden.

Barack Obama still retains the title of “deporter in chief” with 3.2 million individuals expelled. And Joe Biden still holds the record for the most expulsions by a US president in a single year if migrant removals under the Title 42 Covid-era public health provision are included (technically “expulsions” but not “deportations”).

Going forward, however, we can rest assured that Trump will try to beat those records. Lost in the mainstream discourse on the migrant controversy is the reality that US policy, such as sanctions, are a major factor driving migration to the US. This takes place in the context of the largest immigration surge into the US ever, eclipsing the “great immigration boom” of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Boycott Avelo Airlines protest, Santa Rosa Airport, CA, April 26. (Photo by Roger D. Harris)

Protests expand to other Avelo cities

A petition is circulating with some 35,000 signatures to-date demanding cessation of the Avelo deportation flights. According to the petition, a leaked memo discloses that Avelo’s decision to enter the deportation business was financially motivated to offset other losses.

Boycott Avelo protests have expanded to other destinations served by the airline, including Rochester NY, Burbank CA, Daytona Beach FL, Eugene OR, and Wilmington DE. The campaign against Avelo is growing – locally, regionally, and nationally.

As the sign at the boycott Avelo protest in Santa Rosa reminds us: “immigration makes America great!”

Roger D. Harris is with the human rights group Task Force on the Americas, founded in 1986.

The author at the Boycott Avelo Airlines protest, Santa Rosa Airport, CA, April 26.

The post ICE Contracts Avelo Airlines to Fly Deportees appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Just after New Years in 1979 I moved from the East Village to Brooklyn.  Carol was pregnant, but her cramped digs on Carroll Street would not accommodate us.  We found a loft building, very rare in Park Slope, on the lower margins of the neighborhood near 4^th Avenue, a six lane artery running from downtown Brooklyn to Bay Ridge.  Across the avenue a ruined commercial zone of dilapidated red brick structures of unknown provenance, mostly abandoned, spread over both sides of the Gowanus Canal, described in the tabloids as “the most polluted body of water in the nation.”

Creating a home in the loft was a stretch, financed on a limited budget, the $12,000 I’d saved from the combat pay of a first lieutenant in Vietnam, augmented by disability payments.  We had a raw space 30 x 100 feet to enclose, electrify and plumb, roughly half the second floor off the center stairwell in the warehouse of a former wholesaler.  Two existing partitions in lacquered beadboard divided the space in three sections, front, rear and center, and absorbed whatever light the windows on the street side provided, and photos show the interior was always dark even after a large metal door over an opening used for uploading deliveries from an empty lot along the side wall was replaced with a pane of glass half the dimensions of a typical storefront.

Plumbing was a major challenge, and I gaped in awe as our guy melted lead for joints stuffed with oakum in steel drainpipes lowered into the building’s basement to enter the urban sewage.  We found sinks for the kitchen and bathroom, and a gas range and fridge in a used fixtures outlet on Delancy Street in Manhattan.  And we used my brother’s econovan to transport a cast iron tub we found dumped on a street corner in the Bronx.  Finding matching claw feet to support it seemed improbable until I picked through a brim-filled bin with demolition discards in a salvage yard on the fringes of Red Hook.  I picked up translucent glass bricks in the same yard.  These formed a rear wall in the bathroom to allow some natural light after windows along the building’s rear wall were obscured by the narrow corridor we erected leading to a fire exit. The front beadboard partition formed a T and one side became our bedroom, the other a study, dappled with daylight through four large greasy windows facing the street.  To a working chimney we attached a Ben Franklin Stove in front of our bed, acquired how I no longer recall, but fueled by firewood consigned periodically in face cords from a Long Island supplier and hoisted to our loft on a freight elevator accessed from the sidewalk.  A large gas blower suspended from the ceiling in the central space provided most of the heat.

Additional bedrooms were roughed out behind the beadboard to the rear paralleling the kitchen wall, for two kids, the child we were expecting and Carol’s daughter, Sarabinh, then six, in joint custody between her father’s nearby apartment in the upper Slope and our loft.  A hodge podge of chairs, couches and hanging house plants was arranged near the large sidewall window and a hammock of acrylic fiber stretched between two lally columns that helped support the floor above us.  A ballet bar was installed along the rear beadboard wall, which I used for stretching, and in front of that I laid my tumbling mat for acrobatics.  In New York at the time, legal occupancy in a loft building required AIR – Artist in Residence – status.  As a sometimes student of Modern Dance and other movement disciplines, my certification as a dancer was granted under the signature of Henry Geldzahler, the then reigning New York City Culture Czar.  A small sign with AIR in black lettering was affixed near the building’s front door, and applied collectively to all the residents split among six lofts, mostly painters and a sculptor.  In December that year, we hosted a party, a belated celebration of Carol’s birthday in October and Simon’s birth in August.  It would also honor ‘Lofts Labors Won.’

The following August with our one year old in tow, we departed the city on Carol’s literary mission, destination Castine, Maine.  Our first stop was at a commune near Brattleboro, Vermont, where old movement cronies of Carol’s had gone back to the land in the late sixties.  They were an ingrown, argumentative lot which, on their periphery, included two columnist for the Nation in private summer residence.  For three days we labored and convived with these old comrades, one of whom formerly in the Weather Underground and ensconced there pseudonominously, was still wanted by the FBI.  Carol phoned to Castine to confirm our arrival time, and was informed by Mary McCarthy that the visit was off.  This was to have been the first face to face with the subject of the  biography Carol had just begun, postponed now because Mary’s husband had broken his leg falling off a ladder while cleaning the gutters.

A majority of Carol’s forebearers had settled in Maine from colonial times, and a great aunt whose story she greatly revered was buried there in the family plot, along with a host of other Brightmans and Mortons.  The Maple Grove Cemetery played like Thornton Wilder country.  So, Maine trip on.  While passing from New Hampshire into Maine we stopped to orient ourselves at a Visitor’s Center, where I haphazardly grabbed a few brochures, including a pamphlet of real estate listings.  Except where work was concerned – I was also in the midst of a book project –  Carol and I weren’t planners; we were impulsive doers.  On occasion we daydreamed out loud about finding a place “in the country,” never projecting the fantasy beyond the nearer regions of upstate New York.  One real estate offering showed an old federal house on a saltwater farm near where we were now bound. And when our route took us past the office of the agent representing the property, we joked that it was fated.   We’d go check it out, “but we’re not serious,” Carol disclaimed.

The house, which had been empty for a quarter century, was structurally sound with a good roof, and came with several outbuildings, including a barn and the middle twenty acres of the old homestead, in field and woodlot.  An old bachelor farmer had lived there without indoor plumbing or electricity until the early sixties, then in the local tradition took refuge with a younger family for his final years.  Without thinking that this would become the rural equivalent of our recent urban undertaking, another residence to be mounted from scratch, we focused on the $45,000 asking price and bought it on the spot.  We had to lean on friends and relatives to assemble the ten grand downpayment, and we had a rough ride to get a mortgage approved, but while we put that home back together, it became our summer escape for the next six years.

There were always wooded areas where I grew up on Long Island, and I was drawn to them.  I’m sure looking back they were enlarged in a child’s eyes, and minuscule when compared to our twenty acres of tall pines and spruce that blended seamlessly into miles of contiguous woods where I now wandered on frequent constitutionals.  The solitude was compelling and a balm to my mental wellbeing.  That I would soon find on the mothballed Brooklyn waterfront a far from bucolic but equally suitable option for these frequent bouts of solitary wool gathering, not for only three months, but for nine, astounds me still.

Exploring the environs of the Gowanus was my first step toward Red Hook.  Plans for the rehabilitation of the canal would become a topic for a deep investigative dive by Carol and me into the history of the canal from its idyllic indigenous setting as a healthy estuary where foot long oysters grew, to the contemporary canal in decay which civil minded community leaders in Carroll Gardens, the largely Italian American neighborhood bordering the other side of the patch surrounding the Gowanus, had long in their sights for cleanup and development.  We dug into that story for a couple of years, wrote a serious proposal, but nothing ever came of it.  Why, I no longer recall?  When you live by your pen engineering projects from elevated states of endorphin fueled enthusiasm that never reach completion, certainly for me and Carol also, was a not infrequent occurrence.  A colorful sidebar here would include the presence of the Joey Gallo crime family among these mostly silent empty blocks, and while remaining agnostic as to its veracity, news reports on the doings of the New York Mob if the Gowanus warranted a mention might note the neighborhood legend that held the canal was where the wise guys dumped the bodies of their rivals.

We’d soon settled into the neighborhood where a number of familiars from the anti-Vietnam War movement had also settled to start their own families.  Carol was teaching remedial classes at Brooklyn College which had initiated open admissions, at the same time peddling articles, to a variety of outlets.  I still commuted to my non-profit, Citizen Soldier, in the Flat Iron Building on lower Fifth Avenue in the city until early 1982.  It was a movement job at movement wages, advocating for GIs and veterans around a host of issues, most recently the alleged health related illnesses from exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, and for vets who participated in Atomic Tests during the fifties, from radiation.  After twelve years of full time activism primarily related to Vietnam, the move to Brooklyn had severed that umbilical and I was ready for a change, which initially took the form of painting someone else’s living spaces and querying magazines for assignments.  Apart from family responsibilities, my time was my own.

When Simon turned three, we enrolled him in the Brooklyn Child Care Collective, one of those alternative institutions organized by lefties of our generation.  It was located a fair piece from the loft near Grand Army Plaza.  Shaded under the concrete infrastructure of the Williamsburg Bridge in Manhattan I found a shop to custom build a bike adapted to Brooklyn’s rough streets: ten speed, but thick tires, straight handlebar and a large padded seat.  With Simon strapped into a red toddler carrier mounted over the real wheel, I peddled him to day care most mornings.

The exploration of the Gowanus along our stretch of 4^th Avenue from 9^th Steet to Union Street, and taking in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood where many of our informants resided, began during Carol’s and my investigative project.  Often, however, I would walk these blocks on my own, camera at the ready.  My way of seeing the material wreckage strewn along the banks of the canal was informed by the work of Robert Smithson’s, The Monuments of Passaic.  Smithson sited installations “in specific out door locations,” and is best known for his Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake of Utah.  In his article for ArtForum illustrated with six bleak black and white photographs Smithson described “the unremarkable industrial landscape” in Passaic, New Jersey as “ruins in reverse…the memory-traces of an abandoned set of futures.”  This was the perfect conceptual framework for reflection on what I was looking at.  Embedded in Smithson’s musings, his “set of futures” perhaps made predictable the upscale development that would totally transform the blocks around the Gowanus forty years later; but that’s another story.

In an earlier time, the canal had provided the perfect conduit for the materials from which the surrounding neighborhoods had been constructed.  A small number of enterprises, the Conklin brass foundry, a depot for fuel storage, were still in operation but the vast acreage that once served some productive purpose was littered with industrial waste and the shells of abandoned buildings, some capacious like a former power plant.  Idle cranes and derricks stories high stretched their necks over the canal like metallic dinosaurs.  At three compass points along the horizon billboard sized signs on metal grids perched on spacious roof tops – Kentile Floors, Goya Foods, Eagle Clothes – were markers of manufacturing life, but if still active I never learned.

With my new bike, I began to wander farther afield, making stops along Court Street, the main drag in Carroll Gardens where you’d find an espresso stand where Italian was spoken that seemed to have been imported intact – baristas to stainless counter top – from Sicily.  If only for the historical record, I insert here the presence of two storefronts that were likely unique throughout the entire city.  Pressed tin sheets were still common for ceilings in commercial buildings in New York, and spares in a variety of designs filled upright bins at a specialty shop on Court Street.  In the same block locals who kept roof top flocks of pigeons could buy replacement birds and the feed that sustained them.

The pigeon shop in particular conjured scenes from the Elia Kazan film of Budd Schulberg’s On the Waterfront in which Brando tends his own flock on the roof of a tenement, the typical dwelling for the families of stevedores who worked the Brooklyn docks, once the most active waterfront in the nation.  After World War Two, container ships were rapidly replacing the old merchant freighters with their cargo holds, and increasingly making landfall, not in Brooklyn, but across the harbor in New Jersey.

Frozen in time, the old Brooklyn waterfront, adjacent to the neighborhood known as Red Hook, now became the cycling grounds for my long solitary ruminations.  Access to the area was usually across the swing bridge over the canal on Carroll Street which, after emerging under the Gowanus Expressway, dead ended on Van Brunt Street, a long artery that ran for nearly two miles parallel to the string of wharfs that jutted into the harbor, terminating before an enormous stone warehouse dating from the Civil War.  An old wooden wharf, long and wide, ran that building’s length on the water side, its thick rotted planking making an obstacle course I often ventured over despite the warning sign to keep off.

I could ride Van Brunt and up and down its side streets for an hour without ever seeing another person or being passed by a motor vehicle.  Many of the roadways were paved with cobble stones, safely navigated by my bike’s thick tires.  As with select locations on the Gowanus streets, a sprinkle of diminutive dwellings mysteriously still inhabited and surprisingly well maintained co-existed with the adjoining wasteland, the hold outs from more stable and more populated times.  There was a storefront selling live chickens that, when open, filled small wooden crates on the sidewalk.  And at the end of one particularly isolated block a small two story clapboard-sheathed home behind a chain link fence and next to a vacant lot, but where several late model gas guzzlers were parked at street side, I actually saw live chickens in the yard pecking at the ground.  If I rode down Wolcott Street to the water’s edge, I’d have a close up 400 yards across Buttermilk Channel of Governor’s Island, a military installation for almost two centuries, and since the new millennium the site of a public park accessible only by ferry.  Inhabited all those years, generations of soldiers had a front row view of the rise and fall of the Brooklyn waterfront.

The Loft in 2024.

Just before Christmas on an overcast day I was riding along one of these interior streets feeling hemmed in by the ghostly emptiness surrounding me between shuttered buildings to one side and the old dockside secured behind walls of security fencing on the other, when a pack of feral dogs appeared several hundred feet to my front.  There was a wooden creche at road side  – clearly the devotional installation of a local parish I could never identify – with oversized statues of the cast at the Manger that had become the territorial shelter that four gum baring yelping canines were now furiously defending.  As they began to rapidly close on me, I swung my bike one-eighty and hit the peddles with a sprinter’s gusto, soon realizing I could never outrun them.  In an instant I stopped my bike, dismounted and faced the charging pack, waving my arms high above my head growling and barking as loudly and aggressively as I could.  They stopped in their tracks, turned in formation and low tailed it from whence they’d come.  Not to push my luck, I did the same.  Barely through the door back home, still in the flush of wonder and exhilaration, I yelled to Carol, “you’ll never believe what just happened to me.”

All photographs by Michael Uhl.

The post Wild Dogs of Brooklyn appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Marco Rubio speaks to the press before departing Paris, France, April 18, 2025. Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett.

There is no more important or prestigious cabinet position than the secretary of state.  The first secretaries included such luminaries as Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Henry Clay.  All became presidents or almost reached the presidency.  In contemporary times, secretaries of state included Henry Stimson, George Marshall, Dean Acheson, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, and John Kerry.  More recent secretaries have been less competent or successful (Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo), but no one has been more pathetic than the current secretary, Marco Rubio, who has embarrassed the country, the Department of State, and particularly himself in the first 100 days of the Trump presidency.

Rubio has made the Department of State virtually irrelevant, playing no role in key negotiations involving wars between Russia and Ukraine as well as between Israel and the Palestinians.  Rubio is not participating in the sensitive talks between the United States and Iran to restore the Iran nuclear agreement.  All of these matters are being handled by a billionaire real-estate developer, Steve Witkoff, who has no experience or knowledge in dealing with any of these issues.  But Witkoff is worth $2 billion, and presumably Trump felt that clinching real estate deals is good training for crafting complicated international agreements.

Witkoff has met with Russian President Vladimir Putin four times in the past several months, but the Russian bombardment against Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, has only increased in that period.  We know very little about Witkoff’s experiences in these meetings, but we do know that Trump falsely believes that Putin has made key “concessions.”  The first concession, according to Trump, is that Putin will be “stopping the war.”  The second is even more risible: Putin has agreed “not to take the whole country.”  Even before the Putin-Witkoff talks, Trump endorsed Putin’s key demands: “Crimea will stay with Russia,” and Ukraine “will never be able to join NATO.”

Following the most recent talks between Putin and Witkoff last week, Putin’s key foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov praised the meeting for “allowing Russia and the United States to further bring their positions closer together, not only on Ukraine but also on a number of other international issues.” Trump merely said he heard that Witkoff and Putin had “a pretty good meeting,” but hadn’t been able to talk directly to his envoy.  As for other global matters, Trump falsely claimed he had concluded “200 economic deals,” and that talks had begun on trade and tariff matters between China and the United States, which Beijing officially denied.

Even before Witkoff left his $6 billion condo in Miami Beach and arrived in the White House, Rubio had already begun the destruction of the Department of State as well as the important humanitarian and infrastructure projects of the Agency of International Development (AID) that were so important the world over.  The position of undersecretary for civilian security, democracy, and human rights will be eliminated.  The office of global criminal justice that investigates war crimes and conflict operations to prevent wars will be closed.  My 42 years of bureaucratic experience tells me that folding a smaller office into a larger one—which is what Rubio is doing—essentially means fewer resources and less bandwidth, and the end of institutional memory.

Elon Musk’s elimination of AID is a good example of the damage that Rubio inherited and even expanded. There were 10,000 AID staffers before the Trump administration arrived; there are now 10 full-time employees seconded to the Department of State.  Just as President Bill Clinton’s elimination of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in 1999 weakened the U.S. capabilities to engage in essential arms control agreements, the elimination of AID means there will no longer be a stand-alone humanitarian assistance bureau.  The recent earthquake in Southeast Asia found Russia and China sending humanitarian missions to Myanmar and Thailand.  The United States send three humanitarian experts to Myanmar who learned upon their arrival that they no longer had jobs with the Department of State.  This is typical of what has become the meltdown of U.S. diplomatic efforts in Trump’s first hundred days.

Rubio has severely weakened the department itself in what the mainstream media euphemistically referred to as a “shake-up.”  The so-called “shake up” involved cutting the department’s budget in half, from $56 billion to $28 billion.  The State Department’s budget is around 5% of the Pentagon’s budget.  Rubio also ended the department’s role in human rights programs, war crimes monitoring, and bolstering democratic institutions abroad.  Rubio was a huge supporter of these programs as a senator, but as an acolyte of Donald Trump, he said that he was at the department to reverse “decades of bloat and bureaucracy” and to eradicate an ingrained “radical political ideology.”  As part of his deference to Trump, Rubio eliminated the office that focused on combating disinformation from Russia, China, and Iran.

When Rubio was selected to become secretary of state, he immediately reversed his positions on key matters in order to align himself with the views of Donald Trump.  Rubio had consistently praised Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself against a more powerful adversary, but in February he said “it’s hyperbole to believe that the Ukrainians are going to completely crush the Russian military.”  Rubio previously emphasized that we must help Ukraine “so that we’re not seen as unreliable and undermined in our credibility.”  Following confirmation, however, he added that we must “do it in a way that doesn’t drain us.”  Rubio added that U.S. involvement in Ukraine’s self-defense was a “costly distraction from efforts to contain China.”

Trump and Rubio are responsible for giving Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu an even freer hand to conduct genocidal attacks against the Palestinians.  They state that Israeli attacks are being conducted with “clairvoyance and justice” to ensure that the Hamas terrorist organization may never “threaten the people of Israel again.”  Rubio opposes all restrictions on military aid to Israel as well as opposing restrictions on the extremist actions of the Jewish settlers on the West Bank. There is no longer any discussion at the Department of State about a two-state solution in the Middle East, or any other kind of solution.

Rubio’s original plan called for closing down the entire Bureau of African Affairs, but the Central Intelligence Agency lobbied to reverse that decision by intervening at the White House.  Did Rubio not know that African capitals are leading sites for recruiting foreign assets.  Also, without embassies or consulates in Africa, it would be next to impossible for the CIA to base its agents in African capitals.

There is little direct communication between Trump and Rubio, and certainly no love lost between the two men.  They clashed as rivals in the 2016 presidential primaries.  Rubio called Trump a “dangerous con man:” Trump called Rubio a “total lightweight.”  Both men were right…and both are responsible for diminishing the influence of the United States in global diplomacy.

The post Marco Rubio and the Death of Diplomacy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.