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Junta has reneged on regional bloc’s ‘5-Point Consensus’ thus warranting disengagement at all security levels, civil society group says

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL

Calling on Southeast Asia’s regional bloc to end “security cooperation” with the military junta ruling Myanmar, a civil society group on Thursday urged the member states to halt any supplies of lethal assistance to that country’s military.

Pointing to the Myanmar military leadership’s “apparent disregard” for repeated calls by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to de-escalate violence and find peaceful resolutions through inclusive dialogue, the Canada-based group called on the regional countries to “suspend security cooperation” with Myanmar “at all levels.”

To commemorate the 61st anniversary of Myanmar’s first military coup in 1962, a 46-page report was released by the Associates to Develop Democratic Burma, a group founded in 1990 and works to promote the development of democracy in the Southeast Asian country.

“Evidently, the Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar military forces Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has not only reneged on his consent regarding the ASEAN 5PCs (Five-Point Consensus), but he has instead escalated the use of extreme violence by ramping up air strikes against civilians in armed conflict regions as part of the military’s strategy to terrorize communities of democratic resistance into submission,” said the group.

It called on the ASEAN to “ensure that none of the ASEAN member state is involved in supplying Myanmar military forces with lethal assistance and related support, such as the sale of aviation fuel” and “consider adopting stringent measures to prevent ASEAN-based commercial and financial institutions from financing Myanmar security ministries and their commercial affiliates.”

ASEAN is a political and economic union of 10 member states, including Myanmar, in Southeast Asia. It promotes intergovernmental cooperation and facilitates economic, political and sociocultural integration between its members in Asia-Pacific.

Soon after the February 2021 coup launched by the Myanmar’s military, locally known as the Tatmadaw, ASEAN issued the Five-Point Consensus plan, also called the 5PCs, when Brunei was at the helm of the regional grouping.

The military takeover triggered mass protests in Myanmar, with the junta’s forces killing more than 1,500 people in a crackdown on dissent, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a local monitoring group.

Lately, the protests have died down.

ASEAN’s 5PCs called on all parties in the Buddhist-majority Myanmar to cease violence in the country and “exercise utmost restraint.”

Urging “constructive dialogue among all parties,” the regional bloc said that doing so would involve seeking “a peaceful solution in the interests of the people.”

It also appointed a special envoy of the ASEAN chair to facilitate mediation of the dialogue process. The envoy would be assisted by ASEAN secretary general.

Under the 5PCs, ASEAN also provides humanitarian assistance, through its Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre), to Myanmar, while the special envoy was assigned to undertake visits to Myanmar to “meet with all parties concerned.”

ASEAN has held several summits and meetings since the latest military coup in Myanmar but has stopped short of inviting junta representatives.

According to UNICEF, the number of displaced people has risen to more than 1.5 million in the last two years since the junta took power, while at least 2,890 people lost their lives at the hands of the military and those working with them.

2 March 2023

Source: www.aa.com.tr

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Rarely does the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations make an official remark expressing happiness over any UN proceeding concerning the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Indeed, the Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour is “very happy that there was a very strong united message from the Security Council against the illegal, unilateral measure” undertaken by the Israeli government.

The ‘measure’ is a specific reference to a decision, on February 12, by the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to construct 10,000 new housing units in nine illegal Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank.

Expectedly, Netanyahu was angered by the supposedly ‘very strong united message’ emanating from an institution that is hardly known for its meaningful action regarding international conflicts, especially in the Palestinian-Israeli case.

Mansour’s happiness may be justified from some people’s perspective, especially as we seldom witness a strongly worded position by the UNSC that is both critical of Israel and wholly embraced by the United States. The latter has used the veto power 53 times since 1972 – per UN count – to block UNSC draft resolutions that are critical of Israel.

However, on examination of the context of the latest UN statement on Israel and Palestine, there is little reason for Mansour’s excitement. The UN statement in question is just that: a statement, with no tangible value and no legal repercussions.

This statement could have been meaningful if the language had remained unchanged from its original draft. Not a draft of the statement itself, but of a binding UN resolution that was introduced on February 15 by the UAE Ambassador.

Reuters revealed that the draft resolution would have demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” That resolution – and its strong language – was scrapped under pressure from the US and was replaced by a mere statement that “reiterates” the Security Council’s position that “continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-state solution based on the 1967 lines.”

The statement also expressed “deep concern”, actually, “dismay” with Israel’s February 12 announcement.

Netanyanu’s angry response was mostly intended for public consumption in Israel, and to keep his far-right government allies in check; after all, the conversion of the resolution into a statement, and the watering down of the language were all carried out following a prior agreement among the US, Israel and the PA. In fact, the Aqaba conference held on February 26 is a confirmation that that agreement has indeed taken place. Therefore, the statement should not have come as a surprise to the Israeli prime minister.

Moreover, US media spoke openly about a deal, which was mediated by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The reason behind the deal, initially, was to avert a “potential crisis”, which would have resulted from the US vetoing the resolution. According to the Associated Press, such a veto “would have angered Palestinian supporters at a time that the US and its western allies are trying to gain international support against Russia.”

But there is another reason behind the Washingtron’s sense of urgency. In December 2016, then US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, refrained from vetoing a similar UNSC resolution that strongly condemned Israel’s illegal settlement activities. This occurred less than a month before the end of Barack Obama’s second term in the White House. For Palestinians, the resolution was too little, too late. For Israel, it was an unforgivable betrayal. To appease Tel Aviv, the Trump Administration gave the UN post to Nikki Haley, one of the most ardent supporters of Israel.

Though another US veto would have raised a few eyebrows, it would have presented a major opportunity for the strong pro-Palestine camp at the UN to challenge US hegemony over the matter of the Israeli occupation of Palestine; it would have also deferred the issue to the UN General Assembly and other UN-related organizations.

Even more interesting, according to the Blinken-mediated agreement – reported by AP, Reuters, Axios and others – Palestinians and Israelis would have to refrain from unilateral actions. Israel would freeze all settlement activities until August, and Palestinians would not “pursue action against Israel at the UN and other international bodies such as the World Court, the International Criminal Court and the UN Human Rights Council.” This was the gist of the agreement at the US-sponsored Aqaba meeting as well.

While Palestinians are likely to abide by this understanding – since they continue to seek US financial handouts and political validation – Israel will most likely refuse; in fact, practically, they already have.

Though the agreement had reportedly stipulated that Israel would not stage major attacks on Palestinian cities, only two days later, on February 22, Israel raided the West Bank city of Nablus. It killed 11 Palestinians and wounded 102 others, including two elderly men and a child.

A settlement freeze is almost impossible. Netanyahu’s extremist government is mostly unified by their common understanding that settlements must be kept in constant expansion. Any change to this understanding would certainly mean a collapse of one of Israel’s most stable governments in years.

Therefore, why, then, is Mansour “very happy”?

The answer stems from the fact that the PA’s credibility among Palestinians is at an all-time low. Mistrust, if not outright disdain, of Mahmoud Abbas and his Authority, is one of the main reasons behind the brewing armed rebellion against the Israeli occupation. Decades of promises that justice will eventually arrive through US-mediated talks have culminated in nothing, thus Palestinians are developing their own alternative resistance strategies.

The UN statement was marketed by PA-controlled media in Palestine as a victory for Palestinian diplomacy. Thus, Mansour’s happiness. But this euphoria was short-lived.

The Israeli massacre in Nablus left no doubt that Netanyahu will not even respect a promise he made to his own benefactors in Washington. This takes us back to square one: where Israel refuses to respect international law, the US refuses to allow the international community to hold Israel accountable, and where the PA claims another false victory in its supposed quest for the liberation of Palestine.

Practically, this means that Palestinians are left with no other option but to carry on with their resistance, indifferent – and justifiably so – to the UN and its ‘watered-down’ statements.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

2 March 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Tony Robinson

In Europe, North America and a few other countries that feed themselves with information from the western media, it can have escaped no one’s attention that we are actually on the march towards World War III.

The similarities with the 1930s are terrifying:

• Multiple fronts of military activity are opening up; one in Ukraine and two more on the way in Iran and Taiwan.
• Extreme nationalism is on the rise, together with violent scapegoating of migrants of all kinds and, in fact, of anyone who is not a white, cis-gendered, heterosexual, male.
• A deteriorating economic situation is leaving vast swathes of people impoverished even in the world’s “richest” countries,
• Propaganda is spewing from the media of all factions, dehumanising those who live in countries on the other side of the conflict, and,
• Any attempt at raising voices for peace and negotiated settlements to conflicts is silenced or vilified and those who attempt to do so are labelled as “appeasers”.

Yes, all the ingredients are here for the outbreak of an all-out world war from which human civilisation will not survive.

At this critical juncture in human history we find the “peace” movement in the west to be totally fragmented and unable to give a clear and unified response. In the run-up to the war in Iraq in 2003, millions of people around the world marched against a war that they understood would never affect them personally because it was too far away geographically. Now when we are on the brink of a war that will affect the entire planet, the world is silent!

We can identify two tendencies in this fragmented panorama; those who blame everything on the West, NATO and their military pretensions to global hegemony on the one hand and justify the invasion as an unfortunate but necessary evil; and those who blame everything on Vladimir Putin and his pretensions to re-establish the old Soviet Union. Both sides justify the bloodshed and even go as far as to call for more weapons to be sent to the region. Both factions put the value of “the State” above human life and in both cases, the last thing to be considered is the welfare of the people of the conflict region who never asked for this war, and who are being slaughtered in their thousands. Both sides see this conflict as a zero-sum game; someone must win and someone must lose. Both sides ignore the fact that the end to every conflict is eventually negotiated around a conference table. Both sides would prefer to see mass slaughter rather than negotiate a solution in which further deaths are prevented.

In this context, maybe now is the time to launch a call for a new peace movement that is centred on the welfare of human beings and the planet, first and foremost.

The foundations of a new peace movement

Before asking what would the foundations of a new peace movement be, we must ask, what does the world that we aspire to look like? It is not an abstract question because a world where conflict is not resolved through the armed act of war is not the world we live in today. If we want a world where people behave differently, we need an image of something different, a new utopia, a Universal Human Nation.

Today, more than ever before, ordinary citizens across the planet must come together and stand on a common platform of rights and responsibilities that have nothing to do with gender, economic status, religion, colour of skin, sexual orientation or nationality.

But what would this platform look like? What are the principles, what are the conditions, what are the rights and responsibilities that underpin a world in which everyone can live in harmony?

The need to start from the absolute sacredness of life and the planet

Firstly, it must be clear that the world that we aspire to must be sustainable. We only have one planet. It is illogical and detrimental to the survival of the human species to continue to allow activity that exhausts the planet’s resources. Planet Earth has to be cared for so that all forms of life can be sustained, not just for five years until the next election, but for hundreds of millions of years.

Secondly, however we are organised, there can be no other value above human life and the sustainability of the planet. The Nation State, lines on maps, religions, monarchs, money, the free market and other abstract concepts have all been used as the basis on which to organise society. All of them have resulted in incredible violence and cruelty against both human beings and the planet. A future system of global governance must be based on the principle that human life is the central value.

Thirdly, the right to a dignified life for all human beings must be enshrined in the constitution of a new world. A world which allows individuals or groups of human beings to subjugate other human beings to a life of pain and suffering is what have now and it doesn’t work.

Fourthly, the constitution of the new world must be based on the agreement that war and weapons of war are illegal. We can never again allow a small group of human beings to impose their will on the vast majority under the threat of war and violence. It is unlikely in the near future that human beings will develop the capacity to prevent conflict from happening at source, but we can develop the capacity through a legal framework to abolish violence and the use of weapons as a means to resolve conflict.

Finally, we must recognise that violence is not only the physical act of harming another person. Violence is also economic, psychological, sexual, cultural, religious, moral, etc. Violence in all its forms must be abolished and we must educate the future generations with the tools for resolving conflict through nonviolent personal and social transformation.

The time is now; the situation is urgent

A massive awakening of public consciousness to the danger that we are threatened with is urgent!

The time has come for all the good people all around the world to reject the violence imposed by the global system in which we live.

The time has come to create the new world that we aspire to and to move in that direction through social organisation.

Perhaps this call to action from Europe for Peace can be a step in the right direction?

Will we be able to do it? The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

#EuropeForPeace

Bio: Tony Robinson tony.robinson@pressenza.com
Humanist Movement Activist, ex-Director of the Middle East Treaty Organization and coordinating committee member of Abolition 2000 – Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, author of the book “Coffee with Silo and the quest for meaning in life” and producer of the film “The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons”.

2 March 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Johannes Stern

In a disgraceful act of political and artistic censorship, the Frankfurt municipal administration, known as the Magistrat, decided on Friday to ban Roger Waters’ concert scheduled for May 28. The Magistrat, led by a coalition of the Social Democrats, Greens, and Free Democrats, who are in a coalition at the federal level, and the pro-EU Volt party, instructed the Frankfurt Messe venue to terminate Waters’ concert “immediately and for good cause.”

The governing parties in Frankfurt were effectively ordering themselves to carry out the ban. The hall is jointly owned in a 60-40 split between the city and the state of Hesse, whose Christian Democrat/Green government also approved the decision. The order will be implemented, emphasized the press spokesman for the Frankfurt Messe, Markus Quint, to the Frankfurter Rundschau.

This aggressive act is justified by brazen and baseless accusations of anti-Semitism against Waters. “The background to the cancellation is the persistently anti-Israeli appearances by the former Pink Floyd front man, who is considered one of the anti-Semites with the largest reach in the world,” stated a report on the official website of the Frankfurt municipality on Friday.

The denunciation of Waters as an anti-Semite is a brazen lie that he has repeatedly firmly rejected. “I am not, never have been and never will be,” he wrote on Facebook last autumn, when the campaign against his concerts in Germany—including in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich and Berlin—took off. “I am known as a passionate supporter of peace movements in general and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in particular, and I stand up for equal human rights for all my brothers and sisters around the world, regardless of their ethnicity, religion or nationality.”

In a recent interview with the Berliner Zeitung, Waters once again rejected the attempt to defame him as an anti-Semite by Frankfurt city authorities, who accused him of using anti-Semitic symbolism on a previous tour. The fact that during the song “Goodbye Blue Sky” during “The Wall” show, an inflatable pig with a Star of David flew over the stage, had “nothing anti-Semitic either intended or expressed” about it.

The real message was absolutely clear in the context of the show. Waters explained, “And to explain the context, you see B-52 bombers, on a circular screen behind the band, but they don’t drop bombs, they drop symbols: Dollar signs, Crucifixes, Hammer and Sickles, Star and Crescents, the McDonalds sign—and Star of Davids. This is theatrical satire, an expression of my belief that unleashing these ideologies, or products onto the people on the ground, is an act of aggression, the opposite of humane, the opposite of creating love and peace among us brothers and sisters. I’m saying in the wrong hands all the ideologies these symbols represent can be evil.”

Waters also supported the BDS campaign (boycott, divestment and Sanctions) against Israel, which has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. The musician explained that he is concerned with the struggle for the rights of the oppressed Palestinians and for democracy in Israel itself. “Yes, Israel could change its laws. They could say: We have changed our mind, people are allowed to have rights even if they are not Jewish. That would be it, then we wouldn’t need BDS anymore,” he told the newspaper.

The method employed against Waters by the Frankfurt magistrate with the support of the state and federal governments is as filthy as it is well-known. Under the false accusation of anti-Semitism, any opposition to the brutal and essentially fascist policies of the Israeli government, in which openly right-wing extremist forces set the tone, is to be silenced.

The World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly made it clear that criticism of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian population has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. On the contrary, the claim that the Zionist regime’s violent action against a largely defenseless population is carried out in the name of Judaism has a decidedly anti-Semitic character.

In addition, the accusation of anti-Semitism is used above all in Germany by the same extreme right-wing and militarist forces from which the real fascist and anti-Semitic danger emanates. Significantly, the so-called “anti-Semitism resolutions” adopted by the German Bundestag (federal parliament) in recent years have all been supported by the fascist AfD (Alternative for Germany), a party whose leaders trivialize the Holocaust and glorify the Nazi Wehrmacht.

It is the height of cynicism for the city of Frankfurt, in its communication against Waters, to recall that “after Kristallnacht 1938, 3,000 Jewish men from Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main area were brought to the Messe, mistreated and later deported to concentration camps.” It is not Waters’ art that draws on the fascist traditions and crimes of the Nazi era, but the ruling class in Germany.

90 years after Hitler took power, the ruling class is pursuing the declared goal of making Germany the leading military power again and sending German battle tanks to fight Russia. Not only does it openly court and strengthen fascist forces in Ukraine, but also in Germany itself. Waters is a thorn in the side of the ruling parties above all because he is one of the few artists to bravely confront this dangerous development and the politics of war.

Waters’ current tour, “This Is Not a Drill,” which is now coming to Europe and Germany after a successful first leg in North America, is not only a musical but also a strong political statement. As the WSWS commented in its review, almost every song “is directed toward pressing issues of our time: imperialist war, fascism, the poison of nationalism, the plight of refugees, the victims of state oppression, global poverty, social inequality, the attack on democratic rights, and the danger of nuclear annihilation.”

In particular, Waters places the fight against the escalating NATO war against Russia in Ukraine at the center of his current work. Speaking to the Berliner Zeitung, he said:

“All I am trying to achieve with my new recordings, my statements and performances is that our brothers and sisters in power stop the war—and that people understand that our brothers and sisters in Russia do not live under a repressive dictatorship, any more than you do in Germany or I do in the US. I mean would we choose to continue to slaughter young Ukrainians and Russians if we had the power to stop it?”

The cancellation of Waters’ concert in Frankfurt is a serious warning. The turn of the ruling class towards war and militarism is accompanied, as in the past, by massive attacks on democratic and social rights and the suppression of any opposition at home. The WSWS, the Socialist Equality Party and the IYSSE strongly condemn the action against Waters and will lead a campaign in his defense. The fight against censorship is an elementary part of building a new powerful international anti-war movement of the working class and youth.

28 February 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Pratap Antony

Wherever we live in this world, whatever business we are in, our first priority is to take care of our life-giving ecosystem and the biodiversity that sustains us.

Nothing else on earth matters as much as taking care of our planet.

We have been and are still causing, through our actions, acid rain, smog in our cities, environmental pollution and climate change.

We destroy forests, lakes and rivers; we pollute the air we breathe. We use fertilizers and destroy soil; we pollute water and we emit carbon.

We degrade our forests – we cut down vast expanses of forests and convert and alter habitats from their natural state for so-called development and agriculture.

We are a species threat – killing and reducing our genetic biodiversity, species biodiversity and ecological biodiversity.

We clear wetlands and mangroves to build residential buildings, for salt harvesting, aquaculture, agricultural land, and for harbours docks and industrial zones.

We still are land grabbing, destroying rainforests and abusing human rights.

We are doing this throughout our living planet, unrelentingly, ever since the industrial revolution which we say was the beginning of the Anthropocene age’, the age of man.

We are in the Anthropocene epoch: human-influenced, or anthropogenic, the most recent geologic period in Earth’s history during which human activity causes a substantial impact on our planet.

 We’ve got to change and turn things around. Urgently. We must develop in ourselves an awareness, understanding and consciousness of the fragility of the environment and of the interdependence between the environment and mankind, and our connectedness, co-dependence and co-relatedness with it.

We’ve got to save water. Water is drying up due to competition from various quarters – agriculture, industry, domestic use, drinking and energy generation. This precious natural resource, is drying up. On top of that, we are polluting rivers, streams and the air with industrial wastes. We are eroding wetlands. Water bodies – oceans, rivers, lakes and streams are being polluted with toxic effluents. And we are damming rivers.

Dams that we build to supposedly create better distribution of water and for power and energy supply, in reality, damns rivers and the entire ecosystem.

When rivers are dammed, water-flow is disturbed and so are the deposits of nutrients. Reduced water-flow affects the riverbed and downstream floodplains, leading to increased flood risk, lower groundwater tables and the accumulation of toxic materials. Entire ecosystems are affected including coastal deltas, which over time, increase salinity and make the water unusable for drinking and irrigation.

Damming also affects the transportation of sediment along the river. Sedimentation build-up in reservoirs reduces a dam’s capacity and operational lifetime.

We must save our oceans too from the release of Industrial effluents and toxic wastes which effect sea creatures near the coast lines and the corals.

Corals are very important to our planet, because they control the carbon dioxide in ocean water. Corals also act as barriers between the ocean and the shore, slowing down strong ocean currents and protecting coastlines.

We must save our wetlands & mangroves – Wetlands are areas such as swamps, marshes and bogs that are filled or soaked with water at least part of the year and are a habitat for a variety of plants, trees, grasses, shrubs or moss and are amongst the most productive ecosystems in the world. Wetlands act like kidneys for other ecosystems. They absorb wind and tidal forces, collect and hold flood waters, and filter, clean and store water.

Mangroves are salt-tolerant plants of tropical and subtropical intertidal regions of the world at the intersection of land and sea, nature has provided a shoreline ecosystem. Mangrove forests play a vital role in trapping sediments, thereby stabilizing coastlines, protecting coral reefs and act as a catalyst in reclaiming land from seas, preventing soil erosion, saving lives and property during natural hazards such as cyclones, storm surges and erosion.

Forests are sources of water. Forests soak up water like a sponge and conserve, retain and distribute it in the form of rivers and lakes, ponds and aquifers which are our source of fresh, potable water, and, with which nature renews itself and keeps the ecology in balance. Yet we cut down forests systematically destroying Earth’s natural ecosystems bit by bit.

The web of life – Everything is connected. We are all part of what is called the web of life. All of us humans, animals and everything in nature are closely connected and co-dependent on each other, we are co-dependent and interdependent on the lives of various creatures on earth.

The solution – We must realize that we are not separate, individual people who exist in isolation from our world, from animals, and from the abundant biodiversity that sustains us.

 We must realise that Earth is not a resource for humans, and resources, whatever they may be, are not inexhaustible. They are finite.       

We must be mindful of the impact of human interactions and its effect on biodiversity that surrounds us and learn to be aware of our impact on our soils, forests, fresh water, atmosphere and oceans.

 We must eschew the belief that human beings have a higher moral status, superior intelligence or a ‘value’ higher than that of other creatures on the planet.

We must stop our consumption-induced environmental degradation, as conspicuous consumption/consumerism has major environmental impacts and is not ecologically sustainable

It is never too early to learn to live in peace. As indigenous activist for rights, climate action, and human rights. Mita Xipaya, from Altamira, Brazil says, “We are all from the same Earth, from the same world. And all of us have the responsibility to take care of our planet. We cannot dream of a future if we cannot guarantee a present”

Pratap Antony is a Passive activist. Active pacifist freelance thinker and writer.

28 February 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Richard Falk

I found it sad that when David Ray Griffin died on November 2022 so little public notice was taken to report on the death of one of the most important thinkers of our time who illuminated our understanding of many crucial scholarly and academic concerns. He did so in a consistently independent and progressive manner, fully using the work of others, whether ally or adversary.

Late in life Griffin achieved fame; for some, shameful notoriety, for others as the leading exponent of an alternative narrative of what really happened on 9/11 when the key symbolic sites of US wealth and power, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, were attacked by terrorists in 2001, resulting in the death of over 3,000 persons. To those who knew him, whether or not persuaded by his dissenting views of 9/11, there was never a loss of respect for Griffin, the probing thinker and scholar who fearlessly followed the evidence wherever it led, and whose scholarly effort was directly linked to his sense of an US intoxicated by its power imperiling itself and the world.

Griffin’s friendship and exemplary role as a public intellectual was influential and inspirational for me and many others in several realms of thought long before he became obsessed with his strong sense of duty to expose the realities of the 9/11 controversy.  His earlier work had focused on a philosophical and social rethinking of the nature of religion, with a full awareness of its economic, political, civilizational, and ecological implications under conditions of modernity. It is impossible to summarize his wide-ranging interests and scholarly achievements.

Yet one feature of almost all of his voluminous writing is unusual and stands out: Griffin’s willingness to go beyond the boundaries of what was deemed by conventional opinion to be ‘responsible thought’ or ‘acceptable dissent’ as interpreted by the self-censoring filters relied upon by the most influential media platforms that made Griffin’s death a public happening that never happened. I have come to believe that it was not mainly because his views aligned with the main currents of progressive thought in the United States and abroad. Something more and different was at stake that is worth reflecting upon as a result of his public persona being linked so closely to views on 9/11 that governing elites not only wanted to be discredited but forgotten.

Like Noam Chomsky, or Jean-Paul Sartre before him, Griffin had distinguished himself by way of breakthrough scholarship long prior to venturing onto the precarious terrain of controversial politics. Yet Chomsky, eminent as a linguist before he ventured into public space with devastating critiques of the U.S. role in the world, will be recognized and even celebrated whether dead or alive as a progressive public intellectual almost everywhere in the world, raising the elusive question as to what are the elusive differences among notable public intellectuals.

In my view there are certain ‘no-go’ zones that Chomsky and Sartre more or less respected, not from prudence, but due to their beliefs and interests. In contrast, Griffin continuously breached such limits during his long productive scholarly life, even in his early philosophical and theological works that took seriously the truth claims of parapsychology and reports confirming life after death, anathemas to those who believed that modern science with its mechanistic views of causation were decisive criteria of the real.

Griffin’s early creativity centered on stripping religion of supranaturalism, while enlarging our understanding of more expansive views of scientifically verified reality. He proceeded by affirming the continuous relevance in the modern world of the stress on the experientially validated philosophical assessments associated with the philosophical work of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. If Griffin had stopped here, his contributions would be appreciated by devoted followers in a few relatively esoteric academic circles, and there would be little reason to be puzzled as to why his unconventional work and life did not receive wider public recognition. Actually, a respected obit writer might have been impressed by Griffin’s work and depicted his life as centering on a maverick’s challenge to the dogmas of truth, currently strictly adhered to by the scientific community.

Chomsky and Sartre were certainly controversial and denounced by right-wing critics, but their stature as world class intellectuals fully entitled to comment on global issues was never called into serious question. Some critics insisted that their views were expressions of radical thought and neither Chomsky nor Sartre had the benefit of specialized training in international affairs, but attacks on their opinions were seen as part of the normal give and take encountered in any liberal democratic society, and especially in Chomsky’s case were largely confined to the tightly knit professional class of foreign policy experts and their bureaucratic counterpart.

True, Chomsky’s sharp criticisms of Israel and Zionism are second only to 9/11 in the pushback they receive, but Chomsky has moved on to emphasize broader issues of policy, that indict the judgment of elites, but do not question their behavior and integrity in the Griffin manner. These considerations foreground the question as to why Griffin’s later work on 9/11 set off a different set of alarms that produced this ‘conspiracy of silence’ with respect to his scholarly achievements, which were easily sufficient to have earned Griffin sufficient eminence to make his passing a public event worthy of notice and commentary.

After much puzzlement, I have come to explain this neglect of such an outstanding scholar as an indirect consequence of Griffin daring to challenge the official version of the 9/11 attacks of 2001 on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Not only did he mount this challenge by publishing a book provocatively entitled The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (2004), but he followed this carefully crafted critique with an incredible additional eleven books that debunked every facet of the official version of these events, and gained a worldwide following for what had become a crusade to bring the truths he discovered about what happened on 9/11 to the public arena in ways that would produce a reliably objective inquiry rather than a thinly rationalized whitewashing of official culpability.

What may have been even more inflammatory than the accusation that the government and the media had orchestrated a massive coverup were Griffin’s views of the motivations and consequences involved. What was undoubtedly most incriminating from the perspective of Washington and the threats posed by Griffin to its matrix of ideological control was his well-evidenced belief that this denial of 9/11 truth was tied to an underlying foreign policy agenda that had fueled past war-making and imperial interventions, and were integral to implementing the post-Cold War neoconservative resolve to fill permanently the geopolitical vacuum created by the Soviet implosion. By doing so, the U.S. could exert control over the whole world on behalf of financially-oriented world capitalism operating under the security blanket of US militarism masked as ‘democracy promotion.’

9/11 truth tellers are generally portrayed as crazy enemies of the people animated by mental disorder, which in Griffin’s case is totally false, whose personal life possessed all the attributes of middle class normalcy, including a lively involvement with a loving family. By using their pervasive influence, the overlords of public belief succeed in painting Griffin, and others who subscribed to his deconstruction of the main rationale for the War on Terror as wing nuts the established order survived the Griffin storm.

I think it was the successful branding of the 9/11 skeptics as ‘wacky’ that proved more useful in squelching their influence than by labeling them as ‘dangerous,’ ‘subversive,’ and ‘radical’ or ‘socialist.’ It might be understood as the advent of a more advanced, more sophisticated version of McCarthyism, a discrediting ploy that George Orwell would have immediately understood. I experience a touch of this treatment when the US ambassador to the UN at the time, John Bolton, called me ‘a fruitcake’ in the course of a rant opposing my appointment in 2008 as Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine. He called my appointment as illustrative of all that was wrong with the UN.

Griffin found his audiences around the world through well attended lectures, foreign media outlets, and most of all through his defiant books on why it was vital to get the true story of 9/11 as widely disseminated as possible. He fully earned his international celebrity by linking the exposure of the 9/11 events to the before and after stories of US foreign policy in a series of outstanding books: Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined the United States and the World (2015); The American Trajectory: Divine or Demonic (2018). Both of these books connect the grandiosity of the past US claims of Manifest Destiny and ‘exceptionalism’ to the neoconservative determination to make the entire world subject to U.S. hegemony.

Griffin’s passion and talent were saved for his dying days in a hospice when he was nearly paralyzed by pain but determined to make one last attempt to alert the North American people about the disastrous future that is being scripted in the manner of responding to the Ukraine War.

His book soon to be available to the public bears the graphic title America on the Brink: How U.S. Foreign Policy Led to the War in Ukraine (2023). This book is indispensable reading for all who want to understand why the current behavior of the United States is dooming the prospects of the human species for a peaceful and ecologically stable future.

Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London,  Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute.

27 February 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

23 Feb 2023 – Malcolm X was assassinated 58 years ago, on 21 Feb 1965, standing at the podium before a crowd in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom. His wife Betty Shabazz, pregnant with twins, and his four daughters, aged 6, 4, 2 and five months, were in the ballroom, looking on. As Malcolm began speaking, a man shouted, accusing another of picking his pocket, creating a disturbance. A smoke bomb was thrown. Amidst the confusion, three gunmen at the front of the hall opened fire. Malcolm was hit 17 times in the ensuing hail of bullets. He died on the stage as chaos erupted.

Talmadge Hayer (a.k.a. Mujahid Abdul Halim) was shot in the leg by one of Malcolm X’s bodyguards as he fled the ballroom. He was caught on the scene with ammunition that matched one of the murder weapons. In the days that followed, two other men, Khalil Islam and Muhammad Aziz, were arrested and accused of being the two additional shooters, even though they were nowhere near the ballroom that day and could prove it. Hayer testified under oath that his two codefendants were innocent but was ignored.

Aziz would go on to spend 20 years in prison, and Islam, 22 years. Then, in 2021, more than 56 years after Malcolm X’s assassination, these two wrongfully convicted men were exonerated. Muhammad Aziz was 83 years old. Khalil Islam died in 2009. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. opened a reinvestigation of the assassination and prosecution, complementing years of dogged research by journalists, historians and independent researchers that pointed not only to the innocence of Aziz and Islam, but to the guilt of others.

The reinvestigation spanned almost two years, and uncovered previously undisclosed FBI and New York Police Department (NYPD) documents. It was revealed, more than half a century later, that the FBI had up to ten informants inside the Audubon Ballroom. The NYPD had at least three undercover officers there as well, one of whom was actually on Malcolm X’s security team. Evidence gathered by both the FBI and the NYPD that was exculpatory was “deliberately withheld” from Aziz and Islam. This information and more, the Manhattan DA argued, “would have resulted in verdicts more favorable to the defendants.” The court agreed, and vacated the convictions in late 2021.

Muhammad Aziz and the estate of Khalil Islam sued both the City and State of New York for wrongful conviction and imprisonment, and, in late 2022, they reached a combined settlement of $36 million.

Which brings us to 2023. Today, the Audubon Ballroom has been restored, and is the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial & Education Center. On February 21st, the 58th anniversary of Malcolm’s assassination, the family, along with their lawyers, held a press conference there to announce a forthcoming $100 million wrongful death lawsuit. The suit will name the City of New York, the District Attorney, the NYPD, the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department, and, interestingly, the Central Intelligence Agency.

“We intend to have vigorous litigation of this matter,” civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump said. “To have discovery, to be able to take depositions of the individuals who are still alive 58 years later, to make sure that some measure of justice can be given to Malcolm X’s daughters, who in this very room were present with their mother when he was shot at 21 times, 17 bullets hitting him. If anybody deserves justice after these decades, it is these women.”

Malcolm X’s third daughter of six, Dr. Ilyasah Shabazz, an educator and author, spoke next, her voice shaking:

“On February 21st, 1965, my mother came here excited to see her husband, because a week prior her home had been firebombed. She walked in here happy, and she left shattered.”

Ilyasah was also there that day, just two years old.

She continued,

“For years our family has fought for the truth to come to light concerning his murder, and we’d like our father to receive the justice that he deserves. The truth about the circumstances leading to the death of our father is important not only to his family but to many followers, many admirers, many who looked to him for guidance, for love. And it is our hope that litigation of this case will finally provide some unanswered questions. We want justice served for our father.”

Malcolm X was just 39 years old when he was assassinated, as was Martin Luther King, Jr. three years later when felled by a sniper’s bullet in Memphis. Both men were leading revolutionary movements for Black liberation, and both were heavily surveilled and targeted by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.

The time for knowing the full truth behind Malcolm X’s assassination is long past due. May this lawsuit provide the answers, and the overdue justice, that his daughters, and this country, deserve.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America.

Denis Moynihan is the co-founder of Democracy Now! Since 2002, he has participated in the organization’s worldwide distribution, infrastructure development, and the coordination of complex live broadcasts from many continents.

27 February 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Ralph Nader

23 Feb 2023 – I wrote the following column ten years ago. Note the absence of any accountability or regret by Bush, Cheney and their co-war criminals.Ten years ago [now 20 years ago, on March 19, 2003] George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, as war criminals, launched the sociocide of the people of Iraq – replete with embedded television and newspaper reporters chronicling the invasion through the Bush lens. That illegal war of aggression was, of course, based on recognized lies, propaganda and cover-ups that duped or co-opted leading news institutions such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Wars of aggression – this one blowing apart a country of 25 million people ruled by a weakened despot surrounded by far more powerful adversaries – Israel, Turkey and Iran – are major crimes under international law and the UN Charter. The Bush/Cheney war was also unconstitutional, never declared by Congress, as Senator Robert Byrd eloquently pointed out at the time. Moreover, many of the acts of torture and brutality perpetrated against the Iraqi people are illegal under various federal statutes.

Over one million Iraqis died due to the invasion, the occupation and the denial of health and safety necessities for infants, children and adults. Far more Iraqis were injured and sickened. Birth defects and cancers continue to set lethal records. Five million Iraqis became refugees, many fleeing into Jordan, Syria and other countries.

Nearly five thousand U.S. soldiers died. Many other soldiers committed suicide. Well over 150,000 Americans were injured or sickened, far more than the official Pentagon under-estimate which restricts nonfatal casualty counts only to those incurred directly in the line of fire.

So far, the Iraq War has monetarily cost taxpayers about $2 trillion. Tens of billions more will be spent for veteran’s disabilities in addition to continuing expenses in Iraq. Taxpayers are paying over $600 million a year to guard the giant U.S. Embassy and its personnel in Baghdad, more than what our government spends for OSHA, whose task is to reduce the number of American workers who die annually from workplace disease and trauma – currently about 58,000.

All for what results? Before the invasion, there was no al-Qaeda in Saddam Hussein’s secular dictatorship. Now a growing al-Qaeda in Iraq is terrorizing the country with ever bolder car bombings, and suicide attacks taking dozens of lives at a time and spilling forcefully over into Syria.

Iraq is a police state with sectarian struggles between the dominant Shiites and the insurgent Sunnis who lived together peacefully and intermarried for centuries. There were no sectarian slaughters of this kind before the invasion, except for Saddam Hussein’s bloodbath against rebellious Shiites. The Shiites were egged on by President George H.W. Bush, who promptly abandoned them to the deadly strafing by Saddam’s helicopter gunships at the end of the preventable first Gulf War in 1991.

Iraq is a country in ruins with a political and wealthy upper class raking off profits from the oil industry. The U.S. is now widely hated in that part of Asia. Bush/Cheney ordered the use of cluster bombs, comprised of white phosphorous and depleted uranium, against the people of Fallujah where infant birth deformities have skyrocketed.

As Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi-American analyst observed, “Complete destruction of the Iraqi national identity.” Moreover, the sectarian system introduced by the U.S. invaders in 2003, resulting in Iraqis being favored or excluded based on their sectarian and ethnic affiliations, laid the basis for the current cruel chaos and violence – a nasty, brutish form of divide and rule.

The results back home in our country are soldiers and their extended families suffering in many ways from broken lives. Phil Donahue’s gripping documentary Body of War follows the pain-wracked life of one soldier returning in 2004 from Iraq as a paraplegic. That soldier, Tomas Young, nearing the end of his devastated life, has just written a penetrating letter to George W. Bush, which every American should read. [https://nader.org/2014/11/14/tomas-youngs-last-letter-to-bush-cheney/].

The lessons from this unnecessary quagmire should be: first, how to stop any more wars of aggression by the Washington warmongers – the same neocon draft dodgers are at it again regarding Iran and Syria. And second, the necessity to hold accountable the leading perpetrators of this brutal carnage and financial wreckage who are presently at large – fugitives from justice earning fat lecture and consulting fees.

In the nine months running up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, at least three hundred prominent, retired military officers, diplomats and national security officials publicly spoke out against the Bush/Cheney drumbeats to war. Their warnings were prophetically accurate. They included retired Generals Anthony Zinni and William Odom, and Admiral Shanahan. Even Brent Scowcroft and James Baker, two of President George H.W. Bush’s closest advisors, strongly opposed the invasion.

These outspoken truthsayers, notwithstanding their prestige and experience, were overwhelmed by a runaway White House, a disgraceful patsy mainstream media and an abdicatory Congress. Multi-billionaire George Soros was also courageously outspoken. Unfortunately, prior to the invasion, he did not provide a budget and secretariat for these men and women to provide continuity and to multiply their numbers around the country, through the mass media and on Capitol Hill. By the time he came around to organizing and publicizing such an organized effort, it was after the invasion, in July 2003.

Nine months earlier, I believe George Soros could have provided the necessary resources to stop Bush/Cheney and their lies from stampeding our government and our country into war.

Mr. Soros can still build the grassroots pressure for the exercise of the rule of law under our Constitution and move Congress toward public hearings in the Senate designed to establish an investigative arm of the Justice Department to pursue the proper enforcement against Bush/Cheney and their accomplices.

After all, the Justice Department had such a special prosecutors’ office during the Watergate scandal and was moving to indict a resigned Richard Nixon before President Ford pardoned him.

Compare the Watergate break-in and obstruction of justice by Nixon, with the horrendous crimes coming out of the Bush and Cheney war against Iraq – a nation that never threatened the U.S. but whose destruction takes a continuing toll on our country.

[Additional note: As Senators, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden voted for the Iraq war in 2003. Will President Biden, Congress and other Americans recognize the massive war crimes committed against the Iraqi people with appropriate declarations and actions on March 19, 2023?].

 Ralph Nader is a US political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes.

27 February 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Ben Norton

19 Feb 2023 – A Chinese balloon that the US military shot down had likely been pushed off course by unexpected weather conditions, according to multiple officials in Washington.

This is according to numerous reports in major US media outlets, including the Washington Post and CNN.

In response to hysteria surrounding the Chinese rubber object, the US Air Force subsequently spent roughly $2 million to destroy what appears to have been a hobby group’s $12 balloon.

Weather pushed Chinese balloon off course, US shot down $12 hobbyist balloon in $2M missile attack

On February 1, a large Chinese balloon was first seen over the US state Montana.

On February 4, US military fighter jets shot down the rubber object, off the coast of South Carolina.

Washington accused Beijing of using the balloon to spy on US territory.

China adamantly denied that the rubber object was a surveillance device, instead maintaining that it was used for weather research.

There are legitimate reasons to take Beijing at its word. The Washington Post had acknowledged on February 3, “Experts in national security and aerospace said the craft appears to share characteristics with high-altitude balloons used by developed countries around the world for weather forecasting, telecommunications and scientific research”.

The Pentagon itself said that “the payload wouldn’t offer much in the way of surveillance that China couldn’t collect through spy satellites” and that “the balloon posed no serious physical or intelligence threat”.

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) February 4, 2023

The newspaper quoted an anonymous US “senior defense official” who “said the payload wouldn’t offer much in the way of surveillance that China couldn’t collect through spy satellites”, stating, “I wouldn’t characterize it as revolutionary”.

Even the bellicose right-wing think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) – which is funded by the US government and weapons industry and is notorious for its anti-China bias – called for caution early on, conceding in a February 3 article: “China has not used balloons for spying before, and using a balloon would be a step back. The most likely explanation is that this is an errant weather balloon that went astray—lost weather balloons are the basis of many ‘UFO sightings’”.

It was clear from the beginning that the Chinese balloon was part of a manufactured crisis, and its significance, like the rubber object itself, was being blown out of control.

But the media’s hot air had the effect of ratcheting up tensions with China, creating fear among the US public, and leading Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a diplomatic trip to Beijing.

Hawkish US politicians from both the Republican and Democratic Parties, along with neoconservative think tanks, capitalized on the bubble to portray China as a dangerous threat.

Slate reported that Republican Congressman James Comer, who chairs the US House Oversight Committee, warned that the balloon could have “bio-weapons” made in Wuhan, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich insisted it “could be trial runs for low-visibility deliver[y] of devastating EMP weapons”.

CNBC declared that the balloon “threatens NATO members”, citing the Western military alliance’s bellicose Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who denounced the rubber object as a sign of a dangerous “pattern of Chinese behavior”, insisting, “We need to be aware of the constant risk of Chinese intelligence and step up what we do to protect ourselves”.

US Air Force spent $2 million to shoot down hobbyists’ $12 balloon

From February 10 to 12, Air Force fighter jets shot down three objects. At first, US government officials and Western media outlets implied that Washington had targeted more Chinese surveillance devices, but they actually appeared to have been civilian balloons.

The website Aviation Week reported that an amateur balloon belonging to a hobbyist group called the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade went missing in the same place at the same time as one of these Air Force bombings.

Aviation Week noted: “The descriptions of all three unidentified objects shot down Feb. 10-12 match the shapes, altitudes and payloads of the small pico balloons, which can usually be purchased for $12-180 each, depending on the type”.

The founder of a company that makes pico balloons for hobbyists told Aviation Week, “I tried contacting our military and the FBI—and just got the runaround—to try to enlighten them on what a lot of these things probably are. And they’re going to look not too intelligent to be shooting them down”.

British newspaper The Guardian followed up on this report, in its own article amusingly titled “Object downed by US missile may have been amateur hobbyists’ $12 balloon“.

Researcher Stephen Semler estimated that the Pentagon spent around $2 million in this operation to shoot down the hobbyists’ balloon over Lake Huron.

The Air Force used two AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles in the attack, which cost more than $440,000 each and are manufactured by the arms corporation Raytheon.

Immediately after the attacks, the Democratic majority leader of the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, had insisted without evidence that the three objects were spy balloons, declaring, “The Chinese were humiliated – I think the Chinese were caught lying… It’s a real setback for them”.

But the US National Security Council spokesman, John Kirby, revealed on February 14 that the three objects destroyed by the US military were likely balloons “tied to some commercial or benign purpose”.

“We haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of [China’s] spying program, or that they were definitively involved in external intelligence collection efforts”, Kirby added.

President Joe Biden himself admitted on February 16 that the three objects the military blew up were “most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research”.

US intelligence officials acknowledge the Chinese balloon may have been blown off course by weather

Ten days after the Air Force shot down the Chinese balloon, US officials conceded that the rubber object had probably been blown off course by weather.

The Washington Post acknowledged in a February 14 report that the Chinese balloon “may have been diverted on an errant path caused by atypical weather conditions”.

The newspaper reported that the balloon “took an unexpected northern turn, according to several U.S. officials, who said that analysts are now examining the possibility that China didn’t intend to penetrate the American heartland with their airborne surveillance device”.

US “intelligence analysts are unsure whether the apparent deviation was intentional or accidental”, the Post wrote.

“This new account suggests that the ensuing international crisis that has ratcheted up tensions between Washington and Beijing may have been at least partly the result of a mistake”, the newspaper said.

CNN also cited numerous anonymous sources and reported, “US intelligence officials are assessing the possibility that the suspected Chinese spy balloon was not deliberately maneuvered into the continental US by the Chinese government and are examining whether it was diverted off course by strong winds“.

The major US media outlet stated that the balloon took “a path that US officials are not sure was purposeful, and may have been determined more by strong winds than deliberate, external maneuvering by Beijing”.

“Weather modeling done by CNN suggests it is plausible that the wind currents at the time diverted the balloon northward toward Alaska”, the network wrote.

CNN added, “US officials have acknowledged that the balloon’s maneuverability was limited”.

In a speech at the Munich Security Conference on February 18, top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi said Washington’s response to the balloon was “absurd and hysterical“.

He added, “It does not show the US is strong; on the contrary it shows it is weak”.

Benjamin Norton is an investigative journalist, analyst, writer and filmmaker.

27 February 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Ben Norton

23 Feb 2023 – The Chinese government has published a lengthy report condemning “US hegemony” and its destructive effects on the world.

The document analyzed the ways in which the United States has “abused” its hegemony politically, militarily, economically, financially, technologically, and culturally.

China’s Foreign Ministry noted that Washington has roughly 800 foreign military bases all around the world and has launched 400 foreign military interventions.

China condemns ‘US hegemony’, war crimes, CIA coups, 400 foreign interventions

The United States committed genocide against Indigenous nations, imposed its colonialist “Monroe Doctrine” in Latin America, and annexed independent territories like Hawaii, Beijing pointed out.

China denounced the US for sponsoring coups, regime-change operations, and “color revolutions” in dozens of countries, while constantly spreading “misinformation” and propaganda to destabilize foreign adversaries.

Just since 2001, US wars have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, wounded millions, and created tens of millions of refugees, Beijing recalled.

These devastating facts were laid out in the report “US Hegemony and Its Perils“, which China’s Foreign Ministry released on February 20. It was subsequently republished by major Chinese media outlets.

Beijing said the goal of the report was to “draw greater international attention to the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples”.

The Foreign Ministry wrote:

Since becoming the world’s most powerful country after the two world wars and the Cold War, the United States has acted more boldly to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing harm to the international community.

The United States has developed a hegemonic playbook to stage “color revolutions,” instigate regional disputes, and even directly launch wars under the guise of promoting democracy, freedom and human rights.

Clinging to the Cold War mentality, the United States has ramped up bloc politics and stoked conflict and confrontation.

It has overstretched the concept of national security, abused export controls and forced unilateral sanctions upon others.

It has taken a selective approach to international law and rules, utilizing or discarding them as it sees fit, and has sought to impose rules that serve its own interests in the name of upholding a “rules-based international order.”

Political hegemony

China condemned the countless examples of “U.S. interference in other countries’ internal affairs”.

It noted that the US has treated Latin America as its colonial territory with the so-called “Monroe Doctrine”.

Beijing denounced Washington’s illegal, 61-year blockade of Cuba; the 1973 CIA coup against Chile’s democratically elected President Salvador Allende; and the Donald Trump administration’s attempt to overthrow Venezuela’s government.

China likewise blasted the “color revolutions” and “regime change” operations that the United States supported in George, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and beyond.

“The U.S. exercises double standards on international rules. Placing its self-interest first, the United States has walked away from international treaties and organizations, and put its domestic law above international law”, Beijing wrote.

“The U.S. arbitrarily passes judgment on democracy in other countries, and fabricates a false narrative of “democracy versus authoritarianism” to incite estrangement, division, rivalry and confrontation”, it added.

Military hegemony

“The history of the United States is characterized by violence and expansion”, the Chinese Foreign Ministry wrote, explaining:

Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has constantly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a war against Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War, and annexed Hawaii.

After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its military hegemony to pave the way for expansionist objectives.

In recent years, the U.S. average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined.

The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries.

“As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it, the United States is undoubtedly the most warlike nation in the history of the world”, Beijing added.

It cited a Tufts University report that found that the United States carried out almost 400 military interventions from 1776 to 2019.

Since 2001, US wars have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, injured millions, and created tens of millions of refugees, China pointed out.

Economic hegemony

“By taking advantage of the dollar’s status as the major international reserve currency, the United States is basically collecting ‘seigniorage’ from around the world; and using its control over international organizations, it coerces other countries into serving America’s political and economic strategy”, the Chinese Foreign Ministry wrote.

It identified the “hegemony of U.S. dollar” as “the main source of instability and uncertainty in the world economy”.

Through the use of sanctions and other measures, “The United States willfully suppresses its opponents with economic coercion”, and “America’s economic and financial hegemony has become a geopolitical weapon”, Beijing warned.

Technological hegemony

“The United States seeks to deter other countries’ scientific, technological and economic development by wielding monopoly power, suppression measures and technology restrictions in high-tech fields”, China said.

Beijing condemned Washington’s global use of cyber attacks and surveillance.

“The United States monopolizes intellectual property in the name of protection”, it wrote.

“The United States politicizes, weaponizes technological issues and uses them as ideological tools”, it added.

Cultural hegemony

“The United States has often used cultural tools to strengthen and maintain its hegemony in the world”, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.

Washington uses movies, TV shows, and media outlets as weapons of soft power, Beijing pointed out.

“U.S.-dominated Western media has a particularly important role in shaping global public opinion in favor of U.S. meddling in the internal affairs of other countries”, it wrote.

Citing a report from The Intercept, the Chinese Foreign Minister noted how the “U.S. Department of Defense manipulates social media”, spreading war propaganda on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms.

“The United States uses misinformation as a spear to attack other countries, and has built an industrial chain around it”, Beijing warned.

US propaganda is “targeting socialist countries” in particular, it noted, stressing that Washington “pours staggering amounts of public funds into radio and TV networks to support their ideological infiltration, and these mouthpieces bombard socialist countries in dozens of languages with inflammatory propaganda day and night”.

Benjamin Norton is an investigative journalist, analyst, writer and filmmaker.

27 February 2023

Source: www.transcend.org