DoD IG: American Weapons in Ukraine Funneled to Arms Traffickers, Criminals

by Kyle Anzalone | Jul 23, 2023

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/dod-ig-american-weapons-in-ukraine-funneled-to-arms-traffickers-criminals/

The Pentagon inspector general found the arms Washington sent to Kiev did not undergo the required inspections. A report from the inspector general found weapons the US sent to Ukraine in the hands of criminals and on the black market. 

The Arms Control Act requires the White House to establish an inspection system for weapons the US sells or gifts to third countries. The law mandates the monitoring continues to the end-use of the weapon. In Ukraine, the embassy in Kiev has been assigned responsibility for monitoring the weapons transfers. 

The Department of Defense inspector general report on American weapons transfers to Ukraine from February to September of last year found that legally required monitoring was not taking place. “The DoD is unable to conduct [End Use Monitoring] in Ukraine because completing [End Use Monitoring] in accordance with DoD policy requires in-person access to the defense equipment provided,” it said. “Intelligence methods provide some accountability for observable platforms, such as missiles and helicopters, but smaller items, such as night vision devices, have limited accountability.”

“The DoD OIG found deficiencies in the DoD’s transfer of military equipment to the Government of Ukraine requiring [End Use Monitoring], including Javelin missiles, Javelin Command Launch Units, and night vision devices; and in Ukraine’s security and accountability of US.-provided military equipment requiring [End Use Monitoring],” the report added. 

In a section of the report that is heavily redacted, the inspector general listed some cases of American weapons not making it to their intended recipient. The cases that remained unredacted in the report include: a Moscow-influenced criminal organization that procured grande launchers and machine guns, a pro-Kev militia that tried to sell dozens of rifles on the black market, and a group of arms traffickers who were selling weapons and ammunition stolen from the front lines.

In response to questions about the report, a State Department spokesperson admitted that American weapons were being used for illicit purposes in Ukraine. Despite these issues, the spokesperson emphasized that Washington felt the weapons transfers were too important. 

“The US government remains keenly aware of the risk of possible illicit diversion and is proactively taking steps to mitigate this risk in close cooperation with the government of Ukraine.” The spokesperson continued, “We are realistic that we are sending weapons to help Ukraine defend itself in an active conflict, and there is a risk these weapons could be captured if territory changes hands – which happens in any war.”

Earlier this month, the White House came out against a provision in the Pentagon funding bill that would create a special inspector general for the Ukraine aid. The inspector general for the Afghan War, John Sopko, has warned that without sufficient oversight of the weapons and money sent to Kiev, Ukraine will face many of the same problems as the Afghan government. 

The demand to create an office to oversee the more than $100 billion in aid Congress has authorized sending to Ukraine has been attacked as Russian propaganda. Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the head of the House Armed Services Committee, said in December that calls for more oversight of the billions of dollars the US is spending on Ukraine are “part of Russian propaganda.”

Neocons Want War with China

PEPE ESCOBAR • JULY 21, 2023

https://www.unz.com/pescobar/neocons-want-war-with-china/

It was a photo op for the ages: a visibly well-disposed President Xi Jinping receiving centenarian “old friend of China” Henry Kissinger in Beijing.

Mirroring meticulous Chinese attention to protocol, they met at Villa 5 of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse – exactly where Kissinger first met in person with Zhou Enlai in 1971, preparing Nixon’s 1972 visit to China.

The Mr. Kissinger Goes to Beijing saga was an “unofficial”, individual attempt to try to mend increasingly fractious Sino-American relations. He was not representing the current American administration.

There’s the rub. Everyone involved in geopolitics is aware of the legendary Kissinger formulation: To be the US’s enemy is dangerous, to be the US’s friend is fatal. History abounds in examples, from Japan and South Korea to Germany, France and Ukraine.

As quite a few Chinese scholars privately argued, if reason is to be upheld, and “respecting the wisdom of this 100-years-old diplomat”, Xi and the Politburo should maintain the China-US relation as it is: “icy”.

After all, they reason, being the US’s enemy is dangerous but manageable for a Sovereign Civilizational State like China. So Beijing should keep “the honorable and less perilous status” of being a US enemy.

The World Through Washington’s Eyes

What’s really going on in the back rooms of the current American administration was not reflected by Kissinger’s high-profile peace initiative, but by an extremely combative Edward Luttwak.

Luttwak, 80, may not be as visibly influential as Kissinger, but as a behind the scenes strategist he’s been advising the Pentagon across the spectrum for over five decades. His book on Byzantine Empire strategy, for instance, heavily drawing on top Italian and British sources, is a classic.

Luttwak, a master of deception, reveals precious nuggets in terms of contextualizing current Washington moves. That starts with his assertion that the US – represented by the Biden combo – is itching to do a deal with Russia.

That explains why CIA head William Burns, actually a capable diplomat, called his counterpart, SVR head Sergey Naryshkin (Russian Foreign Intelligence) to sort of straighten things up “because you have something else to worry about which is more unlimited”.

What’s “unlimited”, depicted by Luttwak in a Spenglerian sweep, is Xi Jinping’s drive to “get ready for war”. And if there’s a war, Luttwak claims that “of course” China would lose. That dovetails with the supreme delusion of Straussian neocon psychos across the Beltway.

Luttwak seems not to have understood China’s drive for food self-sufficiency: he qualifies it as a threat. Same for Xi using a “very dangerous” concept, the “rejuvenation of the Chinese people”: that’s “Mussolini stuff”, says Luttwak. “There has to be a war to rejuvenate China”.

The “rejuvenation” concept – actually better translated as “revival” – has been resonating in China circles at least since the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911. It was not coined by Xi. Chinese scholars point out that if you see US troops arriving in Taiwan as “advisors”, you would probably make preparations to fight too.

But Luttwak is on a mission: “This is not America, Europe, Ukraine, Russia. This is about ‘the sole dictator’. There is no China. There is only Xi Jinping,” he insisted.

And Luttwak confirms the EU’s Josep “Garden vs. Jungle” Borrell and European Commission dominatrix Ursula von der Leyen fully support his vision.

Luttwak, in just a few words, actually gives away the whole game: “The Russian Federation, as it is, is not strong enough to contain China as much as we would wish”.

Hence the turn around by the Biden combo to “freeze” the conflict in the Donbass and change the subject. After all, “if that [China] is the threat, you don’t want Russia to fall apart,” Luttwak reasons.

So much for Kissingerian “diplomacy.”

Let’s Declare a “Moral Victory” and Run Away

On Russia, the Kissinger vs. Luttwak confrontation reveals crucial cracks as the Empire faces an existential conflict it never did in the recent past.

The gradual, massive U-turn is already in progress – or at least the semblance of a U turn. US mainstream media will be entirely behind the U turn. And the naïve masses will follow. Luttwak is already voicing their deepest agenda: the real war is on China, and China “will lose”.

At least some non-neocon players around the Biden combo – like Burns – seem to have understood the Empire’s massive strategic blunder of publicly committing to a Forever War, hybrid and otherwise, against Russia on behalf of Kiev.

This would mean, in principle, that Washington can’t just walk away like it did in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Yet Hegemons do enjoy the privilege to walk away: after all they exercise sovereignty, not their vassals. European vassals will be left to rot. Imagine those Baltic chihuahuas declaring war on Russia-China all by themselves.

The off-ramp confirmed by Luttwak implies Washington declaring some sort of “moral victory” in Ukraine – which is already controlled by BlackRock anyway – and then moving the guns towards China.

Yet even that won’t be a cakewalk, because China and the about-to-expand BRICS+ are already attacking the Empire at its foundation: dollar hegemony. Without it, the US itself will have to fund the war on China.

Chinese scholars, off the record, and exercising their millennia-old analytical sweep, observe this may be the last blunder the Empire ever made in its short history.

As one of them summarized it, “the empire has blundered itself to an existential war and, therefore, the last war of the empire. When the end comes, the empire will lie as usual and declare victory, but everyone else will know the truth, especially the vassals.”

And that brings us to former national security adviser Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s 180-degree turn shortly before he died, aligning him today with Kissinger, not Luttwak.

“The Grand Chessboard”, published in 1997, before the 9/11 era, argued that the US should rule over any peer competitor rising in Eurasia. Brzezinski did not live to see the living incarnation of his ultimate nightmare: a Russia-China strategic partnership. But already seven years ago – two years after Maidan in Kiev – at least he understood it was imperative to “realign the global power architecture”.

Destroying the “Rules-Based International Order”

The crucial difference today, compared to seven years ago, is that the US is incapable, per Brzezinski, to “take the lead in realigning the global power architecture in such a way that the violence (…) can be contained without destroying the global order.”

It’s the Russia-China strategic partnership that is taking the lead – followed by the Global Majority – to contain and ultimately destroy the hegemonic “rules-based international order”.

As the indispensable Michael Hudson has summarized it, the ultimate question at this incandescent juncture is “whether economic gains and efficiency will determine world trade, patterns and investment, or whether the post-industrial US/NATO economies will choose to end up looking like the rapidly depopulating and de-industrializing post-Soviet Ukraine and Baltic states or England.”

So is the wet dream of a war on China going to change these geopolitical and geoeconomics imperatives? Give us a -Thucydides – break.

The real war is already on – but certainly not one identified by Kissinger, Brzezinski and much less Luttwak and assorted US neocons. Michael Hudson, once again, summarized it: when it comes to the economy, the US and EU “strategic error of self-isolation from the rest of the world is so massive, so total, that its effects are the equivalent of a world war.”

America Requires a Real Foreign Policy Debate

A foreign policy that puts Americans first does not require isolationism.

Doug Bandow

Jul 20, 2023

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/america-requires-a-real-foreign-policy-debate/

The collapse of the Soviet Union freed the world of a horrid tyranny and global menace. However, it also unleashed an orgy of hubris in Washington. Convinced that America won—with little consideration of the contribution of the USSR’s Mikhail Gorbachev, who kept the Red Army in its barracks—members of America’s foreign policy elite viewed Moscow’s collapse as only the first step. They considered themselves custodians of the globe’s unipower, with the mandate of heaven to remake the entire world, regardless of the cost to Americans and other peoples.

The first Gulf War reinforced Washington’s illusion of omnipotence. “What we say goes,” intoned President George H.W. Bush, acting as the proverbial master of the universe. Alas, Uncle Sam’s arrogance only grew. The Clinton administration’s secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, declared: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America: We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.”

At the time her comment looked like comedic bluster, what you would expect from a wannabe generalissima who had been denied the presumed pleasure of sending masses of people into battle to their deaths. But in three short years, the endless wars initiated by President George W. Bush in response to 9/11 turned the outburst into deadly policy. Two decades later who on earth, other than an Albright-wannabe, could believe that American policymakers see further into the future?

Unfortunately, this unbridled hubris, which suffuses those who command the world’s most powerful military, has had catastrophic results. In the world imagined by members of the blob, Ben Rhodes’s inelegant label for the foreign policy establishment, U.S. policymakers are entitled, indeed, required to kill and destroy to create a better world.

Again, Albright led the way. As she infamously asked Colin Powell: “What’s the use of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” It evidently didn’t occur to her that the lives of military personnel, few of whom joined to be gambit pawns in her global chess game, deserved consideration. Perhaps even worse was her answer to the question of whether the deaths of half a million Iraqi children from U.N. sanctions were worth the price. Of course, she insisted: “We think the price is worth it.” Yes, American policymakers, anointed by God, or whatever is the modern, secular equivalent, are entitled to decide who lives and dies halfway around the globe. Indeed, these otherwise unimportant foreigners presumably should feel honored to die in Washington’s service.

What else to make of the invasion of Iraq, based on a lie, that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis? What about two decades of war in Afghanistan, which turned the countryside into a rural abattoir? How else to defend aiding the overthrow of Libya’s dictator, while ignoring the decade of intermittent warfare that followed? Even more grotesque was helping Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed “Slice ‘n Dice” bin Salman impoverish, starve, and kill hundreds of thousands of Yemenis. Current U.S. policy is to punish the suffering masses in Syria and Venezuela, since nothing else has succeeded in overthrowing the dictators who, unlike the Saudi crown prince, Washington dislikes. As Madeleine Albright explained, we think the price is “worth it”—at least when others bear the cost.

Despite its endless failures of late, Washington never changes. True, President Donald Trump made some effort to challenge the status quo, but he allowed the generals to beat him into submission when it came to questioning the NATO alliance and South Korean “mutual” defense treaty. He was equally weak in overcoming resistance to withdrawing from Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq.

Now the Biden administration is moving in the opposite direction. After criticizing the murderous Saudi tyranny, President Joe Biden submissively begged Riyadh to increase oil production—only to be dramatically snubbed. Yet he apparently is pressing the Kingdom to allow American military personnel to act as bodyguards for the licentious, dissolute royals. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put unusual pressure on the Europeans to do more in defense, but the administration has rushed more troops to the continent, even calling up reserves, and spent far more money than the Europeans to aid Kiev. Today the United Kingdom, one of the most hawkish European governments, is reducing the size of its army because, well, it can with America on station. Biden is begging the South Korean government to let Americans risk nuclear strikes on their homeland in order to defend Seoul.

All these policies put the interests of foreign governments before those of the American people.

Recognizing that Washington’s duty is first and foremost to this nation does not mean a policy of “isolationism,” as crudely caricatured by critics. Trade, investment, immigration, and travel all offer enormous benefits to Americans. The U.S. should be a commercial and cultural giant.

Today’s members of the blob, however, evince little concern for those to whom they are supposedly responsible, instead designing policies that serve foreign interests and the latter’s domestic allies. Businesses back foreign aid, think tanks crave foreign attention, bankers want foreign deals, arms makers need foreign wars, lobbyists serve foreign clients. While gorging themselves through their Washington influence, they gird themselves in sanctimony. Yes, Uncle Sam may be enriching them while sacrificing the interests of the American people, but it really is for the good of humanity, just trust them!

The Democratic Party, which once worried about the ferocity of the Cold War, battled President Richard Nixon over Vietnam, and fueled protests against Dubya’s disastrous misadventure in Iraq, has taken the lead in waging a proxy war against Russia and matching GOP hostility toward China. Although Republicans have become more skeptical of global social engineering, the GOP leadership in Washington is even more militaristic and belligerent than the Democratic Party. The bipartisan War Party has been busy campaigning for conflict with Russia, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea, Venezuela, and China. Now Mexico also is on their list. For such dubious crusades they have sacrificed American lives and wealth—and are prepared to do so again and again.

The American people can no longer afford to leave decisions over war and peace to the president. They should insist that Congress fulfill its constitutional role in voting whether to declare war, which allows them to make their voices known on Capitol Hill. Indeed, they are the last, best bulwark for peace. For instance, when President Barack Obama tossed to Congress the question of bombing Syria over its alleged use of chemical weapons, the American people resoundingly told legislators no.

More fundamentally, Americans should insist that all policymakers treat war as a last resort, rather than just another policy tool. Today, Albright acolytes think nothing about loosing death and destruction on a massive scale for essentially frivolous reasons. To answer her question, what’s the use of having the nation’s superb military? To meet existential threats and protect vital interests, not remake the globe in the image desired by the arrogant elite filling America’s imperial city. The nation’s founders recognized the seriousness of war, not only to combatants but to civilians and domestic institutions. That is why the constitutional scheme was designed to discourage war.

Resisting the military temptation is even more important when facing significant military powers. Analysts who didn’t expect Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine insist that he would never use nuclear weapons, no matter how hot our involvement in the ongoing proxy war might become. The same people claim that China can be deterred from attacking Taiwan by simply warning the former off, with nary a thought as to how hard it would be to prevent a serious conventional clash from escalating. And the same people propose doing more of the same with North Korea, even as it expands its nuclear arsenal and builds ICBMs capable of targeting America.

What could possibly go wrong in any of these cases? Nothing, insists the War Party.

Americans tend not to vote on foreign policy. The issues seem so far away. No longer. Thousands of Americans died and tens of thousands were wounded, many grievously, as a result of Washington’s bloody hubris. With the U.S. moving to confront China and Russia simultaneously, the future could prove far more dangerous, even disastrous.

Donald Trump offered a glimpse of how a tough-minded but better-prepared president could reorient U.S. policy back to a focus on the American people. The blob’s shock at his election was enormous and salutary. Today those benefiting from Washington’s imperial policies, both domestic and foreign, tremble at the thought that Trump might return.

Although repeating the past is no solution, a more serious leader with a policy that truly placed America first could break today’s coalition of warmongers, social engineers, and political profiteers. It is time to design a foreign policy as if the American people mattered.  

LÓPEZ OBRADOR TRIES TO ELIMINATE THE MAIN OPPOSITION CANDIDATE

The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), with an acceptance in the polls of 57%, the political dominance of his ruling coalition (23 governorships out of 32, comfortable majorities in the Chamber of Deputies and Senators) and an economic growth for this year of 3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), was certain that the parties that support him, the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), a party he created; and his allies the Labor Party (PT) and the Green Ecologist of Mexico (PVEM), would achieve a landslide victory in the 2024 presidential election, where new members of Congress and nine governorships will also be elected.
In the polls, the parties of the ruling coalition have an advantage of between 10 and 15 per cent over the opposition coalition composed of the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD); while the Civic Movement party, which is not part of either of the two coalitions, only accounts for 6 per cent of the electoral preference for the 2024 process.

López Obrador illegally initiated (since presidential campaigns officially begin until the third week of November) an anticipated pre-campaign within his Morena party, to define his presidential candidate.
Everything indicates that the president's favorite is the former head of government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum (AMLO forced the pre-candidates to resign their positions in order to compete for the candidacy); and the other competitors, former Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard; former Interior Secretary Adán Augusto López and licensed Senator Ricardo Monreal (as well as the federal deputy with license from the PT, Gerardo Fernández; and the licensed senator from the PVEM, Manuel Velasco), are only competing to give some legitimacy. to the process.
The president even mocked the opposition for not having viable candidates and for its disappointing results in local elections.
But in the last three weeks PAN senator Xóchitl Gálvez, driven by businessmen opposed to the president (Claudio X. González) and civil society organizations, decided to participate as a pre-candidate in the process to elect the presidential candidate of the opposition coalition, which has been called the Broad Front for Mexico.

The uniqueness of the senator is that she belongs to an indigenous ethnic group of the state of Hidalgo, the Otomí (she speaks it fluently); as a child she sold jellies, and as a young girl she sold tamales to help her with her studies.

Xóxhitl studied Computer Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the country's main public university (and one of the top 100 universities in the world); and before the age of 30 she created a company for the maintenance of elevators and air conditioners, which over the years won numerous contracts with national and foreign corporations, as well as government institutions.
In 2000, Vicente Fox of the PAN defeated the PRI that had been in power for 71 years, and within his cabinet he created a Commission of Support for Indigenous Peoples, of which he appointed Xóchitl Gálvez.
At the end of Fox's government, Gálvez returned to his businesses and in 2010, supported by the PAN, Xóchitl Gálvez ran for governor of her home state, Hidalgo, but lost to the PRI.
It was until 2015 that the PAN invited her to compete for a local post in Mexico City, the Miguel Hidalgo Delegation (the city is divided into 16 political-administrative zones, which were formerly called delegations, but since 2018 they are now mayoral offices), triumphing and playing a dignified role.

In 2018, the PAN offered her to run for senator for Mexico City and she won. During her tenure, she has been very critical of the government of President López Obrador, which has generated great animosity from AMLO itself and its governing coalition.

But given the enormous support and admiration that Senator Gálvez’s pre-candidacy has generated in different segments of the population, López Obrador has mounted a smear campaign from his government against Senator Gálvez, accusing her of corruption, without providing any proof, since he says that the contracts (up to 1400 million pesos) that her companies have obtained with private initiative and the government (including with the administration headed by AMLO) have been obtained by “trafficking in influence” and therefore it is not credible that “from selling jellies, now she has become a millionaire. ”

Also, in her daily morning lectures, AMLO has criticized the senator for riding her bike to the Senate, saying she appears to be selling “tamales”; and has questioned her membership of an indigenous ethnic group.
All this shows that AMLO has panicked, because the opposition he described as representing the rich and oligarchs, while he represents the “people,” found a real representative of the people, who is generating enthusiasm, not only among the middle classes (mostly opposed to the AMLO government, which has continually attacked them during his administration), but also grassroots sectors are beginning to express support for the senator.

Likewise, AMLO used his public office to disclose confidential information about the contracts of Senator Gálvez's companies with private individuals, which is a flagrant violation of fiscal secrecy.

And now, a federal deputy from the president's party has sued Gálvez before the Attorney General's Office to investigate her for alleged anomalies in her companies' contracts.

Gálvez has replied that she is ready for any investigation because she knows that she has not committed any crime and that it is all a political persecution of AMLO, because of the fear that the Morena party may lose the presidential elections in 2024.

At the time, AMLO criticized then-President Vicente Fox in 2006 for intervening in the presidential campaign on behalf of PAN candidate Felipe Calderón, considering that this was unfair.
Calderón won those presidential elections, but the electoral authorities considered that Fox’s actions were improper, prompting an electoral reform, promoted by the opposition at the time by López Obrador, to prevent the presidents from intervening in any way in the electoral contest, in order to avoid an unequal competition.

Now AMLO is doing the same thing he complained about in 2006 that led to a series of bans on presidents, and although the electoral authority (the National Electoral Institute) has ordered him not to use his position to attack potential presidential candidates, AMLO is looking for a way to continue doing so, without complying with the law.
All indications are that AMLO’s desperation to keep its ruling coalition in power will continue to generate an unfair electoral process in favor of government candidates, and therefore anti-democratic and prone to violence.

How Israel Practices Apartheid | IMEU Policy Backgrounder

February 08, 2022

https://imeu.org/article/how-israel-practices-apartheid-imeu-policy-backgrounder?

Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, Israel has built and reinforced a single regime of rule to ensure Jewish Israeli supremacy and domination over the indigenous Palestinian people, who are politically and geographically fragmented into different categories in which they have lesser, little, or no rights in comparison to Israeli Jews depending on their status (second-class citizen, subject to military rule, or refugee). This is textbook apartheid. 

• In February 2022, Amnesty International joined a growing global consensus among human rights organizations, including Palestinian, Israeli, and international NGO’s, that Israel is perpetrating the crime of apartheid in its regime of domination over the Palestinian people. Amnesty International concluded that “Israel imposes a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians across all areas under its control: in Israel and the [Occupied Palestinian Territories] (OPT), and against Palestinian refugees, in order to benefit Jewish Israelis. This amounts to apartheid as prohibited in international law. Laws, policies and practices which are intended to maintain a cruel system of control over Palestinians, have left them fragmented geographically and politically, frequently impoverished, and in a constant state of fear and insecurity.”
• For decades, Palestinian human rights organizations, analysts, and advocates have labeled Israel’s policies as apartheid. Some examples include Al Haq’s report Water For One People Only: Discriminatory Access and ‘Water-Apartheid’ in the OPT, Al Mezan’s Center for Human Rights report The Gaza Bantustan—Israeli Apartheid in the Gaza Strip, Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel’s report Israel's Jewish Nation-State Law, and Addameer: Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association’s report Palestinian Prisoners and Detainees in the Face of Apartheid.
• In recent years, these findings–that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people–have been reinforced by Israeli and other international human rights organizations. Some of the most consequential of these reports include the report of B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid, and Human Rights Watch’s report A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.
• Nobel Peace Prize laureates, iconic South African leaders in the anti-apartheid movement, a former US president, and even former Israeli prime ministers have all drawn parallels between apartheid in South Africa and Israel or warned against Israel being or becoming an apartheid state. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in an article entitled “Apartheid in the Holy Land”, wrote “I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.” Nelson Mandela understood that “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” Jimmy Carter wrote in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid that Israel is engaged in “A system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights.” Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak warned that Israel was on a “slippery slope” toward apartheid, while former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert cautioned that in the absence of Palestinian statehood, Israel would “face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, and as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished." 
• Apartheid is a legal term which derives its meaning from international law, specifically from the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, a treaty which went into force in 1976. This convention makes apartheid a crime against humanity and defines it as “establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.” Many Israeli policies and actions toward the Palestinian people qualify as examples of apartheid cited in the convention, including:
• Denial of right to life and liberty, and murder;
• Serious bodily or mental harm by the infringement of freedom or dignity;
• Subjection to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;   
• Arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment;
• Imposition of living conditions calculated to cause physical destruction;
• Denial of the right to work and the right to education;
• Denial of the right to leave and to return to one’s country;
• Denial of the right to a nationality; 
• Denial of the right to freedom of movement and residence; 
• Denial of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and freedom of peaceful assembly and association; 
• Creating separate reserves and ghettos for members of a racial group;
• Expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group.  

The convention also creates third-party obligations to hold criminally responsible those individuals responsible for creating and maintaining apartheid policies and rule.

• Israel dominates and systematically oppresses the Palestinian people through a separate-and-unequal apartheid regime of rule between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Whether Palestinians live as second-class citizens of Israel, as refugees who are denied their right of return to their homes, or as protected persons living under a brutal and prolonged military occupation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, Israel enacts laws and military orders to privilege Israeli Jews and discriminate against indigenous Palestinians. The reports cited above provide much greater legal and factual details about the apartheid nature of Israeli laws and policies; here are three presented briefly as being emblematic of Israeli apartheid rule:
• After its establishment in 1948, Israel expropriated large tracts of Palestinian land, turned it into state land, and, through the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Law, allowed the JNF to administer the long-term leasing of much of this land. The JNF is a private organization which openly discriminates in its charter, stating that lands under its administration can only be leased for the benefit of Jewish people, thereby permanently alienating land from Palestinian use.
• Before, during, and after the establishment of Israel, Zionist militias and later the Israeli military expelled Palestinians from their homes and razed hundreds of Palestinian villages; other Palestinians fled their homes under war conditions. Regardless of how these Palestinians became refugees, international law and UN resolutions guarantee them their right of return. Instead of enabling the repatriation of Palestinian refugees, Israel has vehemently denied them this right while simultaneously allowing Jewish people to immigrate to Israel and gain automatic citizenship through the so-called Law of Return.
• Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is designed to advance its illegal colonization of Palestinian land. Under military orders, not only does Israel expropriate Palestinian land, demolish Palestinian homes, and dispossess Palestinians regularly; it also does so to create Israeli-only settlements and infrastructure that Palestinians cannot access. In the process, Palestinians are ghettoized into separate-and-unequal, ever-shrinking reservations, akin to South Africa’s Bantustans.
• Just as apartheid South Africa had the trappings of a liberal democracy–a parliament in which only some of the people over whom the country ruled could vote and be elected to office, a nominally independent judiciary, and a supposed commitment to the rule of law–so too does Israel maintain a veneer of democratic rule. However, Israel, just as was apartheid South Africa, is an ethnocracy–a polity designed to privilege one group and disadvantage another.

Most Palestinians–those living under perpetual Israeli military occupation or refugees who have the right to be repatriated to what is today Israel–are not enfranchised and have no say over the enactment of laws and military orders that affect them. And while Palestinian citizens of Israel serve in Israel’s parliament and Palestinians citizens have become judges, this does not change that fact that even Palestinian citizens are systematically discriminated against through more than 65 Israeli laws. 

• There are both many similarities and differences between apartheid South Africa’s laws and policies toward the country’s indigenous Black population and Israel’s apartheid laws and policies toward the indigenous Palestinian population. Whether Israel’s laws and policies are or are not exactly analogous to particular South African laws and policies is immaterial. As mentioned above, apartheid is a legal definition with specific examples of apartheid policies embodied in an international convention. While apartheid is a word that originated from the South African experience, its applicability today is universal. Countries engage in the crime of apartheid if their laws and actions accord with that definition and those examples.
• For many decades, apartheid South Africa was viewed by the United States as a key ally in Africa, much the way Israel is viewed today by some in the United States as a key ally in the Middle East. However, thanks to the leadership of Black South Africans, key human rights and advocacy organizations in the United States, and champions in Congress, eventually Congress enacted the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, a sanctions bill which had a large impact in the process of dismantling apartheid in South Africa. This bill’s purpose was to help establish a “nonracial, democratic form of government” through the imposition of sanctions, including a ban on the import of South African currency, weapons, agricultural and other commodities; a prohibition on loans to the government of South Africa and new investment therein; and an an embargo on the export of weapons to or training with the South African military.

The Palestinian civil society call for campaigns of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) for Palestinian freedom, justice, and equality are modeled on similar campaigns that played such a large role in bringing apartheid to an end in South Africa. Just as civil society boycotts and divestment efforts made great headway before the US government finally imposed sanctions on apartheid South Africa, so too in the case of Israeli apartheid, civil society has successfully boycotted and divested for Palestinian rights already. It’s now time for Congress to introduce and pass legislation to sanction Israeli apartheid, because, as is stated eloquently in the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, “the policy of apartheid is abhorrent and morally repugnant”.                            

“Weaponizing Antisemitism: How the Israeli Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn”

July 15, 2023

Book review by Michael Steven Smith

WEAPONIZING ANTISEMITISM
How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn
by Asa Winstanley

https://socialistaction.org/2023/07/15/weaponizing-antisemitism-how-the-israeli-lobby-brought-down-jeremy-corbyn/

310 pp. OR Books, NY/London $18 Asa Winstanley is a British investigative journalist and author who lives in London. He writes primarily about Palestine and the Israel lobby for The Electronic Intifada.  Winstanley has written a political thriller and real page-turner titled Weaponizing Antisemitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn. It is an important book.   It has a lesson for those of us in the Palestinian solidarity movement working for social justice in the U.S. The Israel lobby lied, cynically manufacturing a fake crisis of antisemitism in the Labour Party where it didn’t exist, using fear to succeed. The lobby cannot be placated. They need to be called out and confronted. That is the main lesson of the book. Corbyn got his start in the trade union movement. He spoke out against racism and fascism and for immigrant rights. He opposed privatization cuts and austerity. Asa Winstanley writes that “probably more than anything else, Corbyn was known among activists for his work in the Palestine Solidarity movement.” Over the years, socialist Corbyn became popular, especially among hundreds of thousands of young people who had recently joined the Labour Party. The possibility of Corbyn being elected terrified the British right and the British elite, who deeply distrust democracy. There is a parallel here with the fate of Bernie Sanders, who was opposed by the entire Democratic party establishment. The lobby’s campaign against Corbyn got help from the Israeli government, British intelligence, and the entire British media, including the liberal Guardian newspaper, the BBC, the right wing of the Labour Party, and even the CIA. Corbyn and the socialists in the Labour Party in England were crushed by the massive campaign. Labeling Corbyn as an antisemite was a preposterous charge, but it has stuck. The Labour Party now has reverted to the way it was when Tony Blair, a supporter of austerity and America’s war in Iraq, was the head of what was called “New Labour.”  Instead of denouncing the campaign for what it was, Winstanley criticizes Corbyn, whom he likes, for making the mistake of placating the lobby. As his colleague, Ali Abunimah, at the Electronic Intifada remarked: “they won’t take yes for an answer.” The history of Zionism, since it began over 100 years ago, has been to seek out and ally with a powerful imperial power in order to get help in colonizing Palestine. In 1932, with Hitler’s Nazi party on the rise in Germany, (they would get elected the next year) the Zionists worked with Hitler’s Nazis to facilitate the removal of Jews from Germany to Palestine. When Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, pointed this out, stating this historical fact to a reporter, he was ridiculed, and no one in the media made any effort to check on the accuracy of his claim. The lobby picked off prominent figures in the Labour Party, including Livingstone, and Ken Loach, the great British filmmaker. Finally, they got Corbyn, kicking him out of Labour’s parliamentary party. He is still a member of parliament. When Richard Nixon was interviewed late in life, a reporter asked him what was his secret for political success. He replied immediately: “it was fear. Fear. And they don’t teach you that in the Boy Scouts.” Fear played a major role in bringing down Corbyn and his left supporters, who were building a genuine socialist Labour Party. The entire corporate media in England lined up against Corbyn and what he represented in the Labour Party. It was only the independent media that played an important role in exposing the campaign. Winstanley could not find a publisher in England for his book. He has said that it speaks volumes about the success of the weaponization of antisemitism that he couldn’t find a British publisher even after two years of looking. OR Books, based mostly in the United States and run by Colin Robinson, a transplanted British socialist, published it and gave it its appropriate title. The book can be ordered from them at orbooks.com. Finally, in Weaponizing Antisemitism, Winstanley also writes about McCarthyism here in the United States. He discusses Arthur Miller’s great play, The Crucible, about the witchhunt in colonial America that was really about Joe McCarthy, who went after socialists and communists in America in the 50s. We see this anti-communism is still alive and well and already is a central focus of Trump’s campaign, with Trump last week proposing that socialists and communists in America be deported. The most powerful, well-heeled part of the American pro-Israel lobby is AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. They helped Donald Trump, got support from 106 insurrection Republicans, and spent millions to defeat progressives, targeting and trying to intimidate Black and brown women candidates across the country, threatening to spend against them if they even slightly criticized Israel’s far-right apartheid policies. Their MO? Conflating criticism of the Israeli apartheid state with antisemitism. As commentator Felix Biederman pointed out when endorsing Winstantely’s invaluable book, “Everyone should read ‘Weaponizing Antisemitism’.  The same cynical methods Winstanley lays out here will be used against any groundswell that questions the politics of empire.” And thus, the same blueprint that Winstanley maps out in Weaponizing Antisemitism is now being used here in the United States. [Michael Steven Smith is the co-host of “Law and Disorder Radio”

(lawanddisorder.org) and the author of the recent book “Lawyers for the Left”].

De 'narcosociedades' e impudores

Agustín Basave

Ciudad de México / 17.07.2023

https://www.milenio.com/opinion/agustin-basave/el-cajon-del-filoneismo/de-narcosociedades-e-impudores

Dicen que lo peor que puede pasarle a un país en términos de seguridad es que la delincuencia capture al gobierno. Hay, por desgracia, algo más grave: que la delincuencia capture a la sociedad. En México aprendimos hace años que el crimen organizado suscita complicidades entre la población, pero lo que vemos ahora es otra cosa. El respaldo al narco en localidades rurales más o menos pequeñas se ha convertido en apoyo de comunidades enteras que se extienden a zonas urbanas. Los cárteles cuentan con la simpatía de mucha gente —cada vez más— que se beneficia de su enorme y diversificado negocio, generador de empleos directos e indirectos y hasta de gobernanza. La cosa pública cede su lugar a la cosa nostra.

 

El asalto a la sede del gobierno en Chilpancingo por parte de miles de habitantes de poblaciones controladas por un grupo delincuencial es un síntoma aterrador. La base social del crimen tomó la capital de Guerrero para exigir la liberación de algunos de sus jefes, quienes no llamaron a un comando de sicarios para ser rescatados: se lo encargaron a un contingente de pobladores, a guisa de rebelión ciudadana. Cuidado. Colombia nos enseñó que la mezcla de narcotráfico y guerrilla es terriblemente corrosiva: cuando los criminales entran en regiones marginadas, cooptan liderazgos comunitarios, entreveran reclamos justicieros con acciones delictivas, no emulan las andanzas de Chucho el Roto sino que corrompen a la sociedad políticamente organizada, y al hacerlo logran que la criminalidad vaya más allá de la actividad económica para absorber la representación política y la legitimidad social. Se trata de algo más amenazante que el surgimiento de un narcoestado: es la construcción de una narcosociedad.

 

México debe conjurar ese peligro. Lo que habíamos visto —protección de vecinos a capos, veneración a criminales como figuras religiosas, repartición de despensas e incluso secuestro de candidatos por parte de los cárteles— palidece frente a una insurrección del “pueblo malo” contra autoridades electas por el “pueblo bueno”. He aquí el meollo del asunto: no vale el binarismo ni la adjetivación. La corrupción empieza siempre arriba pero al volverse sistémica permea hacia abajo. Y ante la ausencia de un Estado que imponga el monopolio de la violencia legítima, la delincuencia se vuelve un vehículo más eficaz que la ley para regir a la sociedad.

 

PD: Ni rastros quedan del López Obrador que conocí en 2005. El AMLO de hoy perdió la última brizna de pudor que le quedaba: dirige una guerra sucia contra Xóchitl como la que Fox lanzó contra él. En su obsesión por impedir que llegue a la boleta actúa con deshonestidad y vileza, metiendo groseramente las manos en la contienda presidencial —el “cállate chachalaca” le queda corto— y usando ilícitamente información reservada para difamarla y calumniarla. El “delito” que le achaca podría tipificarse como aspiracionismo imprudencial y amerita arraigo domiciliario: quiere que se quede ahí, en su casa, lejos de la candidatura. Me temo que esta vez AMLO se topó con la horma de su zapato. Pero más me temo que veremos una elección de Estado para detener la cuarta alternancia, para evitar que la 4A derrote a la 4T, porque para eso sí le gusta el Estado. Ni hablar. Habrá que luchar contra el leviatán.