Ukraine fatigue: Kiev and the West are tiring of war and each other
The idea of some form of compromise solution to Kiev-Moscow conflict is creeping up on foreign hawks and on more and more locals
Tarik Cyril Amar, https://www.sott.net/article/490581-Ukraine-fatigue-Kiev-and-the-West-are-tiring-of-war-and-each-other 12 Apr 24
What a small band of objective-though-long-disparaged observers in the West have long warned about is now happening: Ukraine and the West are losing their war against Russia. The strategy of using Ukraine to either isolate and slowly suffocate Russia or to defeat and degrade it in a proxy war is coming to its predictable catastrophic end.
This reality is now being acknowledged even by key media and high officials that used to be uncompromising about pursuing the extremely ill-advised aim of military victory over Russia. A Washington Post article has explained that with ”no way out of a worsening war,”
Ukrainian President Zelensky’s options ”look bad or worse.” NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg has discovered the option of ending wars by concessions – Ukraine’s concessions, that is. The sturdy old hardliner Edward Luttwak warns of a ”catastrophic defeat” – for the West and Ukraine. True, Luttwak is still spreading desperate illusions about a direct NATO deployment to avert the worst. In reality, it would, of course, only make things much, much worse again, as in World War III worse. But his fear, not to say panic, is palpable.
The fast-approaching outcome will be a disaster for Ukraine, even if Moscow should be generous regarding the terms of a postwar settlement (not a given, after the costs that Russia has incurred). Ukraine has already been ruined in terms of its demography, territory, economy, and, last but not least, political future. The damage incurred cannot simply be undone and will have long-lasting consequences.
For the West, this war will also mark a dismal turning point, in four main ways that can only be sketched here:
First, the US will have to absorb its worst defeat since Vietnam. Arguably, this latest fiasco is even worse because, even during the Vietnam War, America did not try to attack Russia (then, of course, leading the Soviet Union) as head-on as it does now. Washington’s most over-confident attempt ever to take Moscow off the “grand chessboard” once and for all has backfired perfectly. In general, that will diminish America’s capacity to impress and cajole globally. In particular, the goal of preventing the rise of regional hegemons in Eurasia, the holy grail of US geopolitics, is even farther out of reach than before. The “unipolar” moment and its illusions were passing anyhow, but the US leadership has added a textbook illustration of the West’s limits.
Second, the EU and its individual members – especially myopic warmongers such as Germany, Poland, and France – are far worse off again: Their foolish abandoning of geopolitically imperative caution and balancing (remember: location, location, location) will cost them dearly.
Third, in their own, different ways, cases such as Britain (not even an EU member anymore) and the Baltics (very exposed and very bellicose, a shortsighted combination) are in a class of their own: damage there will be galore. Damage control? The options are paltry.
And, finally, there is, of course, NATO: Over-extended, self-depleted, and having gratuitously exposed itself as much weaker than it would like to seem. Its defeat by Russia in Ukraine will trigger centrifugal tendencies and blame games. Not to speak of the special potential for tension between the US and its clients/vassals in Europe, especially if Donald Trump wins the presidency again, as is likely. And, by the way, he can only thank NATO for proving his point about what a dubious proposition it has become. If you believe that having added more territory on the map (Sweden and Finland) was a “win,” just remember what has happened to the mistaken celebrations of Ukraine’s territorial advances in 2022. Territory may be a price; it is not a reliable indicator of strength.
Yet what about Ukrainians? They have been used as pawns by their Western friends from hell. They are still living under a regime that has just decided to mobilize even more of them for a hopeless meatgrinder, while Zelensky is admitting that Ukraine is on the verge of defeat.
Some Western media are still telling a simplistic and false story about Ukrainians’ unflagging and united will to hold out for victory, as if every single one owed the West to play a Marvel hero to the bitter end. But in reality Ukraine is a normal, if badly misled country. Many of its citizens have long shown what they really think about dying for a toxic combination of Western geopolitics and the narcissism of a megalomanic comedian: by evading the draft, either by hiding in Ukraine or fleeing abroad. In addition, a recent poll shows that almost 54 percent of Ukrainians find the motives of the draft dodgers at least understandable. Kiev’s push for increased mobilization will not go smoothly.
But there is more evidence of the fact that Ukraine’s society is not united behind a Kamikaze strategy of “no compromise.” Indeed, under the title “The Line of Compromise,” Strana.ua, one of Ukraine’s most important and popular news sites, has just published a long, detailed article about three recent and methodologically sound polls.
They all bear on Ukrainians’ evolving attitudes to the war and in particular the question of seeking a compromise peace. In addition, Strana offers a rich sample of comments by Ukrainian sociologists and political scientists. It is no exaggeration to say that the mere appearance of this article is a sign that the times are changing: Under the subtitle “How and why attitudes to the war differ in the East and the West of Ukraine,” it even highlights “substantial” regional differences and, really, suppressed divisions. If you know anything about the extreme political – even historical – sensitivity of such divergences in Ukraine, then you will agree that this framing alone is a small sensation.
But that is not all. The article, in effect, dwells on ending the war by concessions – because that is what any compromise necessarily will take. Readers learn, for instance, that, according to the ‘Reiting’ agency polling on commission of Ukraine’s Veterans’ Affairs Ministry, in Ukraine’s West, farthest removed from the current front lines, 50% of poll respondents are against any compromise, while no less than 42% are in favor of compromise solutions as long as other countries (other than Ukraine and Russia, that is) are involved in finding them. For a region that, traditionally, has been the center of Ukrainian nationalism, that is, actually, a remarkably high share of those siding with compromise.
If you move east and south over the map, the compromise faction gets stronger. In the East, the proportions are almost exactly reversed: 41% against compromise and 51% in favor. In the South, it’s a perfect tie: 47% for both sides.
On the whole, Ukrainian sociologists are finding a “gradual increase” of those supporting a “compromise peace” in “one form or the other.” Even if, as one researcher plausibly cautions, this increase displays different rates in different regions, it still adds up to the national trend. One of its causes is “disappointment,” the loss of faith in victory, as the political scientist Ruslan Bortnik observes. In other words, the Zelensky regime is losing the information war on the home front. Notwithstanding its mix of censorship and showmanship.
The compromises imagined by Ukrainians include all conceivable solutions that do not foresee a return to the 1991 borders. In other words, there are ever more Ukrainians who are ready to trade territory for peace. How much territory, that is, of course, a different question. But it is clear that the maximalist and counter-productive aim of “getting everything back,” the all-or-nothing delusion, imposed for so long on Ukrainian society, is losing its grip.
The agency Socis, for instance, counts a total of almost 45% of respondents ready for compromise, while only 33% want to continue the war until the 1991 borders are re-established. But there are also 11% who still favor fighting on until all territories lost after February 2022 are recovered. That, as well, is now an unrealistic aim. It may have been closer to reality when Kiev dismissed an almost finished peace deal in the spring of 2022, on awful Western advice. That ship has sailed.
Polling results, it is important to note, do not all point in the same direction. The KMIS agency has produced results that show 58% of respondents who want to continue the war “under any circumstances” and only 32% who would prefer a “freeze,” if Western security guarantees are given. Such a freeze, while a favorite pipedream of some Western commentators, is unlikely to be an option now, if it ever was. Why should Moscow agree? But that is less relevant here than the fact that KMIS, for one, seems to have found a massive bedrock of pro-war sentiment.
And yet, even here, the picture is more complicated once we look closer. For one thing, the KMIS poll is comparatively old, conducted in November and December of last year. Given how quickly things have been developing on the battlefield since then – the key town and fortress of Avdeevka, for instance, finally fell only in February 2024 – that makes its data very dated.
KMIS also had interesting comments to offer: The agency notes that respondents’ proximity to the front lines plays an “important role” in shaping their opinions about the war. In other words, when the fighting gets close enough to hear the artillery boom, it concentrates the mind on finding a way to end it, even by concessions. As one Ukrainian sociologist has put it, “in the East and South … one of people’s main concerns is that the war must not reach their own home, their own home town.”
In addition, the executive director of KMIS has observed that the number of compromise advocates also grows when Western aid declines.
It remains difficult to draw robust conclusions from these trends, for several reasons: First, as some Ukrainian observers point out, the number of compromise supporters may be even higher – personally, I am sure it is – because the Zelensky regime has stigmatized any appeal to diplomacy and negotiations as “treason” for so long. Many Ukrainians are virtually certain to be afraid to speak their mind on this issue.
Second, what exactly the compromise camp understands by compromise is bound to be diverse. This camp may still include quite a few citizens who harbor illusions about what kind of compromise is available at this point.
Third, the current regime – which is de-facto authoritarian – is not answerable to society, at least not in a way that would make it easy to predict how shifts in the national mood translate into regime policies, or not.
And yet: There is no doubt that there is a groundswell in favor of ending the war even at the cost of concessions. Add the clear evidence of Western Ukraine fatigue – even a growing readiness to cut Ukraine loose – and the facts that the Russian military is creating on the ground, and it becomes hard to see how this basal shift in the Ukrainian mood could not become an important factor of Ukrainian – and international – politics
Biden claims binding UN Security Council Gaza ceasefire resolution is ‘non-binding.’
Walt Zlotow, 31 Mar 24 https://heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com/
After 4 tries the UN Security Council Monday passed a binding resolution demanding “an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire.” While the US didn’t veto it, their abstention allowed the other 14 Security Council member to pass the resolution with yea votes.
But the US abstention now required the US to follow the binding resolution and cease its 6 month long enabling of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
What to do? Since the Biden administration has no intention of ending its genocidal support, it unilaterally declared the binding resolution was non-binding.
America’s UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who cast the abstention, said “We fully support some of the critical objectives in this nonbinding resolution.”
White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby followed Thomas-Greenfield by calling the resolution “nonbinding” four times. “Number one, it’s a nonbinding resolution. So, there’s no impact at all on Israel and Israel’s ability to continue to go after Hamas.”
A short time later State Department spokesperson Matt Miller also called the resolution “nonbinding” three times.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres denounced Biden’s disreputable, illegal and disheartening abrogation of international law. “This resolution must be implemented. Failure would be unforgivable.” UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq added, “All the resolutions of the Security Council are international law. They are as binding as international laws.”
Pedro Comissario UN envoy of Mozambique, a non-permanent Security Council said “All United Nations Security Council resolutions are binding and mandatory. It is the hope of the 10 (non-permanent members) that the resolution adopted today will be implemented in good faith by all parties.”
Even America’s foreign policy poodle Great Britain abandoned America’s trashing of international law. Their envoy stated “We expect all Council resolutions to be implemented. This one is not any different. The demands in the resolution are absolutely clear.”
President Biden is so obsessed with supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, he’s descended into Orwellian rhetoric to erase international law from the US diplomatic toolbox.
Missing Links in Textbook History: War
According to the Institute for National Strategic Studies: “The most highly prized attribute of private contractors is that they reduce troop requirements by replacing military personnel. This reduces the military and political resources that must be dedicated to the war.”
By Jim Mamer , ScheerPost, 28 Mar 24
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military- industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
— President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961)
n the late 1980s I had a student in an American history class who said that the United States won the war in Vietnam. I felt dizzy. Maybe I had misunderstood. So, I asked him to explain. “My father,” he told the class, “said that we had won the war because we won most of the battles and we killed more of them than they killed of us.”
My instinct was to attempt to impose logic on the discussion. American aircraft, I said, dropped millions of tons of bombs on Vietnam – more than twice what the U.S. dropped in all of World War II. That, of course, killed a lot of people, but it did not win the war.
That student was not convinced and I quickly realized that I would not change his mind. Not long after, I discovered that he and his father were not alone.
Ignorance or Amnesia?
The late Gore Vidal famously referred to this country as the “United States of Amnesia.” He had a point. As a society, we don’t seem to learn much from past experiences and even what we think we remember is often blurry.
In a 2003 episode of “Democracy Now!” Vidal reported that George W. Bush had managed to have a number of presidential papers put beyond the reach of historians for a great length of time. Making historical records unavailable, he predicted, will worsen America’s amnesia: “There will be no functioning historical memory … we are creating a lobotomized nation wherein the connections between essential parts of our history are severed from what is taught.”…………………………………………………………..
Glenn Greenwald blames some of the misunderstanding on journalists. He began a recent edition of System Update by talking about how journalists report on war. “One of the most important parts of journalism, when it comes to war, is to scrutinize, and investigate and debunk propaganda that comes from every side in every war.” Unfortunately, he concludes, journalists often fail to scrutinize, investigate and debunk.
I have argued some of the blame should be put on state approved textbooks which often fail, in Vidal’s words, to make the vital connections, due to what I call “missing links.
The Often-Invisible Agenda of Corporate Media
In 2005, Norman Solomon wrote an article titled “The Military-Industrial-Media Complex,” where he describes the connections of the military-industrial complex to corporate media.
“Firms with military ties routinely advertise in news outlets. Often, media magnates and people on the boards of large media-related corporations enjoy close links—financial and social—with the military industry and Washington’s foreign-policy establishment. Sometimes a media-owning corporation is itself a significant weapons merchant.”
Because so much of the media is now tied to corporate sponsors or serves the agenda of one political party most Americans are never exposed to real debate. Highly paid broadcasters may be fearful of offending their corporate paymasters when they report on a war involving the United States, especially when their reports have been given a veneer of credibility from “experts” drawn from the ranks of retired military officers, retired CIA personnel and former FBI officials.
As a result, there is virtually no media coverage of weapons manufacturers and the profits they make. Just imagine the impact it would make if reports from war zones that we are deeply involved with, like Gaza or Ukraine, were followed by listings of the profits made by various weapon-making conglomerates like Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Boeing, General Dynamics or Raytheon?
How much do we know about American Wars?
To understand the gravity of the situation it helps to have a sense of how many American wars have been fought and how many conflicts we are currently involved with. The numbers differ according to the source largely because wars are sometimes grouped under umbrella terms like the Caribbean wars, the Cold War or the War on Terror.
According to Wikipedia, the United States has been involved in 107 wars since its founding and 41 of these were fought against the Indigenous peoples of North America. Most of these wars are ignored by schools, textbooks and the media, but the pressure to become involved in additional conflict is ever-present and comes from a variety of sources.
When Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense for President George Bush Sr., he contracted engineering company Kellogg, Brown & Root (then part of Halliburton) to identify traditional military jobs that could be taken over by private sector contractors. It turned out there were a lot of jobs for the private sector and ever since the use of contractors has grown in positions like conducting intelligence, training local military, handling security and assisting in drone warfare.
At times the number of private contractors has been larger than that of enlisted troops……………………………
According to the Institute for National Strategic Studies: “The most highly prized attribute of private contractors is that they reduce troop requirements by replacing military personnel. This reduces the military and political resources that must be dedicated to the war.”
Public Citizen reports that “Every year, the defense industry donates millions of dollars to the campaigns of members of Congress, creating pressure on the legislative branch to fund specific weapons systems, maintain an extremely high Pentagon budget, and add ever more military spending.”
They also report that the pressure to spend more is constant, even though “nearly 50% of the Pentagon budget” already goes to private contractors. According to the report, in 2022 the weapons/defense industry donated $10.2 million to the 84 members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
Even the language employed to report on war is structured to confuse. Invented phrases resemble Orwell’s Newspeak, from the novel 1984, meant to prevent too much thought. How else to explain the birth of misleading terms like “protective reaction strike” (an attack) “enhanced interrogation techniques” (torture), “extraordinary rendition” (kidnapping), “collateral damage” (extra dead), or “targeted killings” (usually with a lot of collateral damage).
The Art of Promoting Misunderstanding
What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is,
What can you make people believe that you have done?
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. High school textbooks all discuss early American wars, but usually without analysis. What follows are examples of how three early wars are discussed in textbooks………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Are we headed toward Forever Wars?
Republicans and Democrats disagree today on many issues, but they are united in their resolve that the United States must remain the world’s greatest military power. This bipartisan commitment to maintaining American supremacy has become a political signature of our times.
— Andrew J. Bacevich, American Imperium 2016
……………………………..describing our history as one damn war after another.
How else to respond to the Wikipedia list of 107 wars involving the United States since 1787. And the wars continue. In his book “The United States of War,” David Vine reports that, “In the nearly two decades since U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has fought in at least 22 countries.”
In his analysis of American wars Andrew Bacevich writes that “the constructed image of the past to which most Americans habitually subscribe prevents them from seeing other possibilities.” This “constructed image” is basically one of the United States as largely innocent of aggression, but forced by circumstance to defend itself.
In order to identify the missing links in the textbook treatments of American wars, it is important to look beyond the minutiae of single events and the unique characteristics of each conflict and look for common threads in the motivations towards engaging in war.
We have a government financed and influenced by Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex idea, and a population which seems either uninformed or uninterested.
The combination invites a future of permanent war.
Common threads include the ever-present assertion that the United States is defending itself whenever it goes to war and that includes wars engaged in while assembling a nation that would span the continent, as the song goes, “from sea to shining sea.”
How accurate were American claims of self-defense regarding American participation in the three early wars I reviewed?
…………………………………………………… If Andrew Bacevich is correct in saying we in the U.S. have a bipartisan congressional commitment to maintaining American supremacy, then more wars are inevitable. If we are to escape a future of forever wars, all justifications for war should be questioned and debated before the killing starts. https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/28/missing-links-in-textbook-history-war/
Spending Unlimited – The Pentagon’s Budget Follies Come at a High Price.
More waste, fraud, and financial abuse are inevitable as the Pentagon prepares to shovel money out the door as quickly as possible. This is no way to craft a budget or defend a country.
One way to begin reining in runaway Pentagon spending is to eliminate the ability of Congress and the president to arbitrarily increase that department’s budget. The best way to do so would be by doing away with the very concept of “emergency spending.
BY JULIA GLEDHILL AND WILLIAM D. HARTUNG, MARCH 26, 2024, https://tomdispatch.com/spending-unlimited-2/
The White House released its budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2025 on March 11th, and the news was depressingly familiar: $895 billion for the Pentagon and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy. After adjusting for inflation, that’s only slightly less than last year’s proposal, but far higher than the levels reached during either the Korean or Vietnam wars or at the height of the Cold War. And that figure doesn’t even include related spending on veterans, the Department of Homeland Security, or the additional tens of billions of dollars in “emergency” military spending likely to come later this year. One thing is all too obvious: a trillion-dollar budget for the Pentagon alone is right around the corner, at the expense of urgently needed action to address climate change, epidemics of disease, economic inequality, and other issues that threaten our lives and safety at least as much as, if not more than, traditional military challenges.
Americans would be hard-pressed to find members of Congress carefully scrutinizing such vast sums of national security spending, asking tough questions, or reining in Pentagon excess — despite the fact that this country is no longer fighting any major ground wars. Just a handful of senators and members of the House do that work while many more search for ways to increase the department’s already bloated budget and steer further contracts into their own states and districts.
Congress isn’t just shirking its oversight duties: these days, it can’t even seem to pass a budget on time. Our elected representatives settled on a final national budget just last week, leaving Pentagon spending at the already generous 2023 level for nearly half of the 2024 fiscal year. Now, the department will be inundated with a flood of new money that it has to spend in about six months instead of a year. More waste, fraud, and financial abuse are inevitable as the Pentagon prepares to shovel money out the door as quickly as possible. This is no way to craft a budget or defend a country.
And while congressional dysfunction is par for the course, in this instance it offers an opportunity to reevaluate what we’re spending all this money for. The biggest driver of overspending is an unrealistic, self-indulgent, and — yes — militaristic national defense strategy. It’s designed to maintain a capacity to go almost everywhere and do almost anything, from winning wars with rival superpowers to intervening in key regions across the planet to continuing the disastrous Global War on Terror, which was launched in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and never truly ended. As long as such a “cover the globe” strategy persists, the pressure to continue spending ever more on the Pentagon will prove irresistible, no matter how delusional the rationale for doing so may be.
Defending “the Free World”?
President Biden began his recent State of the Union address by comparing the present moment to the time when the United States was preparing to enter World War II. Like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1941, Joe Biden told the American people that the country now faces an “unprecedented moment in the history of the Union,” one in which freedom and democracy are “under attack” both at home and abroad. He disparaged Congress’s failure to approve his emergency supplemental bill, claiming that, without additional aid for Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin will threaten not just that country but all of Europe and even the “free world.” Comparing (as he did) the challenge posed by Russia now to the threat that Hitler’s regime posed in World War II is a major exaggeration that’s of no value in developing an effective response to Moscow’s activities in Ukraine and beyond.
Engaging in such fearmongering to get the public on board with an increasingly militarized foreign policy ignores reality in service of the status quo. In truth, Russia poses no direct security threat to the United States. And while Putin may have ambitions beyond Ukraine, Russia simply doesn’t have the capability to threaten the “free world” with a military campaign. Neither does China, for that matter. But facing the facts about these powers would require a critical reassessment of the maximalist U.S. defense strategy that rules the roost. Currently, it reflects the profoundly misguided belief that, on matters of national security, U.S. military dominance takes precedence over the collective economic strength and prosperity of Americans.
As a result, the administration places more emphasis on deterring potential (if unlikely) aggression from competitors than on improving relations with them. Of course, this approach depends almost entirely on increasing the production, distribution, and stockpiling of arms. The war in Ukraine and Israel’s continuing assault on Gaza have unfortunately only solidified the administration’s dedication to the concept of military-centric deterrence.
Contractor Dysfunction: Earning More, Doing Less
Ironically, such a defense strategy depends on an industry that continually exploits the government for its own benefit and wastes staggering amounts of taxpayer dollars. The major corporations that act as military contractors pocket about half of all Pentagon outlays while ripping off the government in a multitude of ways. But what’s even more striking is how little they accomplish with the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars they receive year in, year out. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), from 2020 to 2022, the total number of major defense acquisition programs actually declined even as total costs and average delivery time for new weapons systems increase
Americans would be hard-pressed to find members of Congress carefully scrutinizing such vast sums of national security spending, asking tough questions, or reining in Pentagon excess — despite the fact that this country is no longer fighting any major ground wars. Just a handful of senators and members of the House do that work while many more search for ways to increase the department’s already bloated budget and steer further contracts into their own states and districts.
Congress isn’t just shirking its oversight duties: these days, it can’t even seem to pass a budget on time. Our elected representatives settled on a final national budget just last week, leaving Pentagon spending at the already generous 2023 level for nearly half of the 2024 fiscal year. Now, the department will be inundated with a flood of new money that it has to spend in about six months instead of a year. More waste, fraud, and financial abuse are inevitable as the Pentagon prepares to shovel money out the door as quickly as possible. This is no way to craft a budget or defend a country.
And while congressional dysfunction is par for the course, in this instance it offers an opportunity to reevaluate what we’re spending all this money for. The biggest driver of overspending is an unrealistic, self-indulgent, and — yes — militaristic national defense strategy. It’s designed to maintain a capacity to go almost everywhere and do almost anything, from winning wars with rival superpowers to intervening in key regions across the planet to continuing the disastrous Global War on Terror, which was launched in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and never truly ended. As long as such a “cover the globe” strategy persists, the pressure to continue spending ever more on the Pentagon will prove irresistible, no matter how delusional the rationale for doing so may be.
Defending “the Free World”?
President Biden began his recent State of the Union address by comparing the present moment to the time when the United States was preparing to enter World War II. Like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1941, Joe Biden told the American people that the country now faces an “unprecedented moment in the history of the Union,” one in which freedom and democracy are “under attack” both at home and abroad. He disparaged Congress’s failure to approve his emergency supplemental bill, claiming that, without additional aid for Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin will threaten not just that country but all of Europe and even the “free world.” Comparing (as he did) the challenge posed by Russia now to the threat that Hitler’s regime posed in World War II is a major exaggeration that’s of no value in developing an effective response to Moscow’s activities in Ukraine and beyond.
Engaging in such fearmongering to get the public on board with an increasingly militarized foreign policy ignores reality in service of the status quo. In truth, Russia poses no direct security threat to the United States. And while Putin may have ambitions beyond Ukraine, Russia simply doesn’t have the capability to threaten the “free world” with a military campaign. Neither does China, for that matter. But facing the facts about these powers would require a critical reassessment of the maximalist U.S. defense strategy that rules the roost. Currently, it reflects the profoundly misguided belief that, on matters of national security, U.S. military dominance takes precedence over the collective economic strength and prosperity of Americans.
As a result, the administration places more emphasis on deterring potential (if unlikely) aggression from competitors than on improving relations with them. Of course, this approach depends almost entirely on increasing the production, distribution, and stockpiling of arms. The war in Ukraine and Israel’s continuing assault on Gaza have unfortunately only solidified the administration’s dedication to the concept of military-centric deterrence.
Contractor Dysfunction: Earning More, Doing Less
Ironically, such a defense strategy depends on an industry that continually exploits the government for its own benefit and wastes staggering amounts of taxpayer dollars. The major corporations that act as military contractors pocket about half of all Pentagon outlays while ripping off the government in a multitude of ways. But what’s even more striking is how little they accomplish with the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars they receive year in, year out. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), from 2020 to 2022, the total number of major defense acquisition programs actually declined even as total costs and average delivery time for new weapons systems increased.
Take the Navy’s top acquisition program, for example. Earlier this month, the news broke that the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine is already at least a year behind schedule. That sub is the sea-based part of the next-generation nuclear (air-sea-and-land) triad that the administration considers the “ultimate backstop” for global deterrence. As a key part of this country’s never-ending arms buildup, the Columbia is supposedly the Navy’s most important program, so you might wonder why the Pentagon hasn’t implemented a single one of the GAO’s six recommendations to help keep it on track.
As the GAO report made clear, the Navy proposed delivering the first Columbia-class vessel in record time — a wildly unrealistic goal — despite it being the “largest and most complex submarine” in its history.
Yet the war economy persists, even as the giant weapons corporations deliver less weaponry for more money in an ever more predictable fashion (and often way behind schedule as well). This happens in part because the Pentagon regularly advances weapons programs before design and testing are even completed, a phenomenon known as “concurrent development.” Building systems before they’re fully tested means, of course, rushing them into production at the taxpayer’s expense before the bugs are out. Not surprisingly, operations and maintenance costs account for about 70% of the money spent on any U.S. weapons program.
Lockheed Martin’s F-35 is the classic example of this enormously expensive tendency. The Pentagon just greenlit the fighter jet for full-scale production this month, 23 years (yes, that’s not a misprint!) after the program was launched. The fighter has suffered from persistent engine problems and deficient software. But the official go-ahead from the Pentagon means little, since Congress has long funded the F-35 as if it were already approved for full-scale production. At a projected cost of at least $1.7 trillion over its lifetime, America’s most expensive weapons program ever should offer a lesson in the necessity of trying before buying.
Unfortunately, this lesson is lost on those who need to learn it the most. Acquisition failures of the past never seem to financially impact the executives or shareholders of America’s biggest military contractors. On the contrary, those corporate leaders depend on Pentagon bloat and overpriced, often unnecessary weaponry. In 2023, America’s biggest military contractor, Lockheed Martin, paid its CEO John Taiclit $22.8 million. Annual compensation for the CEOs of RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and Boeing ranged from $14.5 and $22.5 million in the past two years. And shareholders of those weapons makers are similarly cashing in. The arms industry increased cash paid to its shareholders by 73% in the 2010s compared to the prior decade. And they did so at the expense of investing in their own businesses. Now they expect taxpayers to bail them out to ramp up weapons production for Ukraine and Israel.
Reining in the Military-Industrial Complex
One way to begin reining in runaway Pentagon spending is to eliminate the ability of Congress and the president to arbitrarily increase that department’s budget. The best way to do so would be by doing away with the very concept of “emergency spending.” Otherwise, thanks to such spending, that $895 billion Pentagon budget will undoubtedly prove to be anything but a ceiling on military spending next year. As an example, the $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan that passed the Senate in February is still hung up in the House, but some portion of it will eventually get through and add substantially to the Pentagon’s already enormous budget.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has fallen back on the same kind of budgetary maneuvers it perfected at the peak of its disastrous Afghan and Iraq wars earlier in this century, adding billions to the war budget to fund items on the department’s wish list that have little to do with “defense” in our present world. That includes emergency outlays destined to expand this country’s “defense industrial base” and further supersize the military-industrial complex — an expensive loophole that Congress should simply shut down. That, however, will undoubtedly prove a tough political fight, given how many stakeholders — from Pentagon officials to those corporate executives to compromised members of Congress — benefit from such spending sprees.
Ultimately, of course, the debate about Pentagon spending should be focused on far more than the staggering sums being spent. It should be about the impact of such spending on this planet. That includes the Biden administration’s stubborn continuation of support for Israel’s campaign of mass slaughter in Gaza, which has already killed more than 31,000 people while putting many more at risk of starvation. A recent Washington Post investigation found that the U.S. has made 100 arms sales to Israel since the start of the war last October, most of them set at value thresholds just low enough to bypass any requirement to report them to Congress.
The relentless supply of military equipment to a government that the International Court of Justice has said is plausibly engaged in a genocidal campaign is a deep moral stain on the foreign-policy record of the Biden administration, as well as a blow to American credibility and influence globally. No amount of airdrops or humanitarian supplies through a makeshift port can remotely make up for the damage still being done by U.S.-supplied weapons in Gaza.
The case of Gaza may be extreme in its brutality and the sheer speed of the slaughter, but it underscores the need to thoroughly rethink both the purpose of and funding for America’s foreign and military policies. It’s hard to imagine a more devastating example than Gaza of why the use of force so often makes matters far, far worse — particularly in conflicts rooted in longstanding political and social despair. A similar point could have been made with respect to the calamitous U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost untold numbers of lives, while pouring yet more money into the coffers of America’s major weapons makers. Both of those military campaigns, of course, failed disastrously in their stated objectives of promoting democracy, or at least stability, in troubled regions, even as they exacted huge costs in blood and treasure.
Before our government moves full speed ahead expanding the weapons industry and further militarizing geopolitical challenges posed by China and Russia, we should reflect on America’s disastrous performance in the costly, prolonged wars already waged in this century. After all, they did enormous damage, made the world a far more dangerous place, and only increased the significance of those weapons makers. Throwing another trillion dollars-plus at the Pentagon won’t change that.
UK court orders delay to extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to US on espionage charges
By Associated Press, By OLIVER PRICE , 27 March 2024 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13239885/Julian-Assange-appeal-against-extradition-court-rules.html?fbclid=IwAR05bAhgRzHKwygiC0ljNnPEU_bL1uwPz2mIRy7vU9RzSU0J_Qbi4aOpK_M_aem_AahKjiDK6G3wRltDvIaC_MtPOcRzYRMwUFpdRPeR7yiJcdMyJyjQi03SWVMX6MWQenTiiAm9LmgWVamqopIy9ZT_
The United States must give assurances that Julian Assange will not face the death penalty before judges will consider dismissing the WikiLeaks founder’s bid to bring an extradition appeal, the High Court has ruled.
Assange, 52, faces prosecution in the US over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information following the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
In a 66-page ruling, Dame Victoria Sharp said: ‘Before making a final decision on the application for leave to appeal, we will give the respondent an opportunity to give assurances.
‘If assurances are not given then we will grant leave to appeal without a further hearing.
‘If assurances are given then we will give the parties an opportunity to make further submissions before we make a final decision on the application for leave to appeal.’
These assurances are that Assange would be protected by and allowed to rely on the First Amendment – which protects freedom of speech in the US, that he is not ‘prejudiced at trial’ due to his nationality, and that the death penalty is not imposed.
The judges said the US authorities had three weeks to give those assurances, with a final hearing potentially taking place in late May.
In her ruling, Dame Sharp said any assurances from the United States would need to include ‘that the applicant (Julian Assange) is permitted to rely on the First Amendment, that the applicant is not prejudiced at trial, including sentence, by reason of his nationality, that he is afforded the same First Amendment protections as a United States citizen, and that the death penalty is not imposed’.
Speaking after the judgment, the Australian’s wife Stella Assange described the ruling as ‘astounding’.
She said: ‘What the courts have done has been to invite a political intervention from the United States… send a letter saying ‘its all ok’. I find this astounding.
‘This case is a retribution. It is a signal to all of you that if you expose the interests that are driving war they will come after you, they will put you in prison and will try to kill you.
‘The Biden administration should not issue assurances. They should drop this shameful case that should never have been brought.’
Addressing Julian Assange’s legal ground about freedom of speech guarantees in the US, Dame Victoria Sharp said: ‘The applicant wishes to argue, at any trial in the United States, that his actions were protected by the First Amendment.
‘He contends that if he is given First Amendment rights, the prosecution will be stopped. The First Amendment is therefore of central importance to his defence to the extradition charge.’
She continued: ‘If he is not permitted to rely on the First Amendment because of his status as a foreign national, he will thereby be prejudiced, potentially very greatly prejudiced, by reason of his nationality.’
Dame Victoria concluded: ‘It follows that it is arguable that the applicant might be treated differently at trial on the grounds of his nationality.
‘Subject to the question of whether this could be addressed by means of an assurance from the respondent, we would grant leave to appeal.’
WikiLeaks initially reacted positively to the news, saying Assange had been granted ‘leave to appeal’ his extradition, but he will only be allowed to do so if ‘assurances’ are not met.
Reacting to the ruling on X, formerly Twitter, this morning, WikiLeaks posted: ‘Julian Assange has been granted leave to appeal extradition to the US.
‘Having spent almost five years detained at the UK’s most secure prison the publisher will continue his long detention separated from his young family for revealing war crimes. #FreeAssangeNOW.’
WikiLeaks has now deleted this tweet.
WikiLeaks later added: ‘The court has given US Gov 3 weeks to give satisfactory assurances: That Mr. Assange is permitted to rely on the First Amendment to the US constitution; not prejudiced at trial by reason of his nationality; and that the death penalty is not imposed. #FreeAssange.’
The hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice today was attended by Assange’s wife Stella, dozens of journalists and members of the public, with hundreds observing remotely.
Dozens of people stood outside the central London courthouse to await the judgment, holding placards bearing the message ‘Free Julian Assange’ and chanting ‘There is only one decision, no extradition’.
Speaking at a press conference after Julian Assange’s bid to appeal against extradition to the US was delayed, Jennifer Robinson, WikiLeaks legal counsel, said the decision raised ‘fundamental concerns about free speech’.
She added: ‘It is absurd that we are five years into this case and the US has not offered assurance to protect him from (the death penalty).’
Ms Robinson added: ‘The judgment today demonstrates that if Julian was extradited to the United States there is a real risk and concern that he would not be afforded free speech protections.
‘We say the US should not be offering assurance in response to this judgment, they should be dropping the case and it is a case that should never have been brought in the first place.’
Speaking after the latest Julian Assange ruling, Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said: ‘A temporary reprieve is clearly preferable to an extradition that would have taken place in the coming days.
‘However, the conditionality around the grounds of appeal, which are contingent on the examination of US government assurances that he will not face the death penalty and has the right to free speech, mean the risks to Assange and press freedom remain stark.
‘Assange’s prosecution by the US is for activities that are daily work for investigative journalists – finding sources with evidence of criminality and helping them to get their stories out into the world.
‘If Assange is prosecuted, free expression the world over will be damaged.’
She added: ‘The nuanced nature of this appeal judgment makes an alternative ending to this situation even more pressing.
‘In recent months there has been increasing speculation about some kind of plea deal, to bring this saga to a swift and straightforward conclusion. I urge the US to return to these options.
‘Media freedom is under threat all over the world, compassion and common sense from the US Department of Justice would do much to restore Washington’s reputation as a bastion of free expression.’
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has called for the US to drop the charges against Julian Assange.
Speaking outside the Royal Courts of Justice, Mr Corbyn said Tuesday’s decision was ‘big step forward’ for Assange’s case but that it is ‘not the victory’ his supporters are looking for.
Mr Corbyn said: ‘Above all, the pressure has to be on the US administration to drop the charges against Julian Assange.
‘He’s a brave journalist who tells the truth.’
When asked why Assange’s case was important to him, the Corbyn said: ‘Because he’s told some very uncomfortable truths about the military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places around the world, but also the effects of corporate greed on the natural world and environment.
‘If Julian goes down for that, then every serious journalist around the world is going to be feel a bit constrained, and that’s dangerous.’
n a January 2021 ruling, then-district judge Vanessa Baraitser said that Assange should not be sent to the US, citing a real and ‘oppressive’ risk of suicide, while ruling against him on all other issues.
But later that year, US authorities won their High Court bid to overturn this block, paving the way towards Assange’s extradition.
During a two-day hearing in February, lawyers for the 52-year-old asked for the go-ahead to challenge the original judge’s dismissal of other parts of his case to prevent his extradition.
And in a judgment today, Dame Victoria Sharp and Mr Justice Johnson dismissed most of Assange’s legal arguments but said that unless assurances were given by the United States, he would be able to bring an appeal on three grounds.
The judges said the US authorities had three weeks to give those assurances, with a final decision to be made in late May.
At the start of Assange’s bid last month, Mark Summers KC argued the US’s prosecution would be retribution for his political opinions, meaning it would be unlawful to extradite him under UK law.
However the two judges rejected this argument.
Dame Victoria said: ‘The applicant’s case before us amounts simply to a reassertion of his case on this issue, and a disagreement with the (district) judge’s conclusion.
‘It does not engage with the judge’s reasoning. Far less does it identify any flaw in her factual conclusions.’
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Authorized Atrocities
the true rupture lies with those in the West who are sucked into Israel’s utter immorality
Israel’s lawlessness has a history that those in the West share with the apartheid state.
By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News , 20 Mar 24
It is remarked often enough, including in this space, that Israel’s savagery in its determination to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza — and we had better brace for what is next on the West Bank of the Jordan — marks a turn for all of humanity.
In its descent into depravity the Zionist state drags the West altogether down with it.
This is true, certainly, but we must put Israel’s criminal conduct, which warrants another Nuremberg trial at this point, in its proper context.
When we do, we find that Israel’s lawlessness has a history, an etymology, and if there is a road to Western salvation it must start with a recognition of a past that those in the West share with the apartheid state.
We can say Israel’s crimes against Gaza’s 2.3 million children, women, and men are unspeakable, in other words, but this would not be right. They are altogether speakable, and it behooves us now to speak of them if we are to grasp where responsibility for this stain upon the human story truly lies.
Pankaj Mishra has just published a thorough and thoroughly remarkable piece on these matters in the London Review of Books.
The Indian author, essayist, and columnist takes up many things in “The Shoah After Gaza,” chiefly the extent to which Zionists have exhausted “the culture of conspicuous Holocaust consumption” — excellent phrase — in defense of a nation that, to quote Primo Levi, “was a mistake in historical terms.”
Here is a passage in Mishra’s piece that is to our present point:
“Israel today is dynamiting the edifice of global norms built after 1945, which has been tottering since the catastrophic and still unpunished war on terror and Vladimir Putin’s revanchist war in Ukraine. The profound rupture we feel today between the past and the present is a rupture in the moral history of the world since the ground zero of 1945 — the history in which the Shoah has been for many years the central event and universal reference.”……………………………………………………………………………….
I confine myself to the postwar decades to allow us to take a good, clear look at that “edifice of global norms” of which Mishra writes.
When we do, we find the West has licensed the Israelis. They bear a pre-authorization by way of many precedents. There is one for more or less every shameful act the Israelis perpetrate against the Palestinian population — this in the West Bank as well as Gaza.
And so we discover — or remind ourselves, depending on how attentive we have been to events — that the post–1945 edifice has looked from the start roughly as it looks now. Israel is at bottom an outcome, not the prime cause of anything.
Insidious Mythology
Certainly the grotesque spectacle of mass murder and wholesale destruction we witness daily has marked a rupture, to stay with Mishra’s term. But to assert that this rupture lies in Israel’s conduct is to sustain an insidious mythology of innocence for the West.
No, the true rupture lies with those in the West who are sucked into Israel’s utter immorality and now come face-to-face with their amoral indifference or, for the best of them, discover the extent of their powerlessness despite their authentic efforts.
As to Israel, I am with Primo Levi as Mishra quotes him. “The Jewish state” had already proven a mistake when he made his much-disputed remark in 1985.
The truth of it has since been demonstrated a hundred times over. Israel has proven a failed experiment, incapable of conducting itself as a legitimate nation-state.
But whose mistake is Israel? It was the West, Britain in the lead, that created Israel by caving to the Zionists at the expense of indigenous Palestinians. This is the reality of power that should weigh most heavily on our shoulders. Israel ‘R’ us.
Britain’s abandonment of the 1920 Mandate brings us to one of the deeper characteristics of our time, our postwar edifice. This is the ever more complete disregard of those in power for the principles, standards and broadly accepted ethics that give form and coherence to a stable civilization and keep its public space clean and well lit.
In our crumbling edifice, everything is done according to its value as an expedient to a desired outcome. This, too, is a kind of depravity. And it is this depravity that produces the depravity we watch as we watch Israel’s effort to destroy an entire people. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/03/20/patrick-lawrence-authorized-atrocities/
UN report finds Israel deliberately targeted journalists – Reuters
https://www.rt.com/news/594254-israel-attack-journalists-lebanon/ 14 Mar 24
The news agency has obtained a copy of an investigation into the killing of one of its staff in Lebanon last October
An Israeli tank fired two shells at a group of international journalists clearly marked as such, in violation of international law, a UN investigation has reportedly found. The deadly incident happened in Lebanon in mid-October.
The conclusions, published by Reuters on Wednesday, are part of a seven-page report dated February 27, obtained by the news agency. They coincided with what it had found on its own while looking into the death of its employee Issam Abdallah and the injuries of six other journalists, including those working for Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Al Jazeera.
The report was produced by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the peacekeeper mission deployed on the border between Israel and Lebanon in 2006 as part of a deal that ended the Israeli occupation of the southern part of its neighbor. Tracking and investigating presumed violations of the truce is part of its job.
The attack happened on October 13, in the early days of Israel’s siege of Gaza in retaliation for a large-scale incursion by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Tensions ramped up at the Lebanese border as well, with sporadic attacks launched by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah militants.
Abdallah, a Reuters photographer, was part of a group of journalists covering the situation from a hill in Lebanon. An IDF Merkava tank fired two shots at them, the UNIFIL report confirmed. It called the attack a violation of the truce it is mandated to uphold and of international law.
”It is assessed that there was no exchange of fire across the Blue Line at the time of the incident,” the report noted, referring to the de facto border. “The reason for the strikes on the journalists is not known.”
An IDF spokesperson told Reuters that Israeli forces do not target civilians on purpose, including journalists, when asked about the UN investigation. He added that the incident is being examined by the General Staff’s Fact Finding and Assessment Mechanism – a body responsible for reviewing exceptional events.
Reuters released its findings in early December, based on eyewitness accounts, forensic analysis of evidence found at the scene and interviews with officials.
The UNIFIL report was sent to the UN on February 28 and shared with the Israeli and Lebanese governments, Reuters said citing a source. The mission’s investigations are normally not made public.
Israel Didn’t Even Try to Defend the Legality of Its Occupation to World Court
Israel’s system is “an even more extreme form of the apartheid” than South Africa’s was, South African ambassador said.
By Marjorie Cohn , TRUTHOUT, March 6, 2024
or six days, more than 50 countries, the League of Arab States, the African Union and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation presented testimony to the International Court of Justice (ICJ, or World Court) about the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. The overwhelming majority of them, largely from the Global South, told the court that the occupation was illegal.
The historic hearing, which took place February 19-26, was held in response to the United Nations General Assembly’s December 30, 2022, request for an advisory opinion on the following questions:
(a) What are the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures?
(b) How do the policies and practices of Israel … affect the legal status of the occupation, and what are the legal consequences that arise for all States and the United Nations from this status?
The General Assembly asked the ICJ to discuss these issues with reference to international law, including the UN Charter; international humanitarian law; international human rights law; resolutions of the Security Council, General Assembly and Human Rights Council; and the 2004 advisory opinion of the ICJ finding that Israel’s wall on Palestinian land violated international law.
Israel regularly thumbs its nose at the World Court. It ignored the court’s ruling that the wall was illegal and refuses to implement the ICJ’s provisional order to refrain from committing genocidal acts and ensure humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Before the hearing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the court: “Israel does not recognize the legitimacy of the proceedings of the international court in The Hague regarding ‘the legality of the occupation’ — which are an effort designed to infringe on Israel’s right to defend itself against existential threats,” he said. “The proceedings in The Hague are part of the Palestinian attempt to dictate the results of the diplomatic settlement without negotiations.”
Although Israel didn’t appear at the hearing, it submitted a five-page statement which called the General Assembly’s questions “a clear distortion of the history and present reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Israel didn’t even attempt to defend the legality of the occupation, focusing instead on why the ICJ should not issue an advisory opinion.
Israel complained that the ICJ “is asked simply to presume Israeli violations of international law — to accept, as given, plainly biased and flawed assertions directed against Israel alone.” Although consent of the parties is not required for the ICJ to render advisory opinions, Israel protested that it had “not given its consent to judicial settlement of its dispute with the Palestinian side.”
A handful of countries — including the U.S., Canada, U.K., Fiji, Hungary, Italy and Zambia — sided with Israel. Only Fiji argued that the occupation was lawful. The U.S. contended that an occupation can be neither lawful nor unlawful; it is rather governed exclusively by international humanitarian law, which only deals with acts by the occupying power, and doesn’t examine the legality of the occupation itself.
“The court should not find that Israel is legally obligated to immediately and unconditionally withdraw from occupied territory,” said Richard Visek from the U.S. State Department, urging the court to consider Israel’s “legitimate security needs.” Visek defended Israel in the ICJ the day after the U.S. vetoed a Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza for the fourth time.
Israeli Genocide Is “Result of Decades of Impunity”
“The genocide underway in Gaza is the result of decades of impunity and inaction. Ending Israel’s impunity is a moral, political and legal imperative,” Palestine’s Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told the court……………………………………………………………………………………………
Israel’s Occupation of Palestinian Territory Is Illegal
It is a peremptory norm of international law that territory cannot be acquired by force. In 1967, Israel launched a “preemptive” war against Egypt, Jordan and Syria, and seized the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. Israel has occupied those Palestinian territories ever since.
Visek from the U.S. State Department told the ICJ that Israel was defending itself in the 1967 war. But it was Israel that initiated the war. Rossa Fanning, Ireland’s attorney general, called it “the war [Israel] launched,” thus, an act of aggression. Wilde noted that Israel “claimed to be acting in self-defence, anticipating a non-immediately imminent attack,” but “even assuming, arguendo, its claim of a feared attack, States cannot lawfully use force in non-immediately imminent anticipatory self-defence.” Article 51 of the UN Charter forbids a state from using military force except in self-defense after an armed attack by another state.
…………………………………………………………….Israel asserts that it has not occupied the Gaza Strip since 2005, when it withdrew its military forces and settlements. But it continues to exercise military control over Gaza by continuous military operations in and against Gaza.
……………………….Gaza and its population remain under effective Israeli control and are, therefore, occupied. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Apartheid “Goes Hand-in-Hand” With Violation of Right to Self-Determination
Israel maintains a system of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territory, as confirmed by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Vusimuzi Madonsela, South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, called Israel’s apartheid system “an even more extreme form of the apartheid that was institutionalized against Black people in my country.”
In the West Bank, Israel preserves its separation wall, segregated roads, checkpoints and restrictive permit requirements. While Israelis are subject to a civil legal system, Palestinians are controlled by a military system. They can be held indefinitely with no charges or due process in administrative detention and can be convicted based on secret evidence………………………………………………….
Israeli Settlements Constitute Illegal Annexation
More than 700,000 Israeli settlers — 10 percent of the nearly 7 million people in Israel — have been transferred into the occupied Palestinian territories, “continuously terrorizing and forcibly displacing Palestinians from even more of their territory and engaging in pogroms against them,” Shoman from Belize stated.
This constitutes a “disguised form of annexation,” Ireland’s Fanning said. “The prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force is firmly established in customary international law. Using force to occupy and maintain such occupation for the purposes of territorial acquisition or annexing an occupied territory by force in whole or in part, is each illegal.”
Israel’s policy of settling its civilians in occupied Palestinian territory and displacing the local population violates international humanitarian law, as the ICJ has ruled. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention says: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
Legal Consequences for All States and the UN
“Israel must dismantle the physical, legal and policy regime of discrimination and oppression … evacuate Israeli settlers from Palestinian territories, permit Palestinians to return to their country and property, and lift the siege and blockade of Gaza,” Webb from Belize told the ICJ. “These consequences, taken collectively, mean that Israel must immediately, unconditionally, and totally withdraw from the entire Palestinian territory.”
…………………………………………………………………………………… The ICJ will likely issue its advisory opinion in about six months. https://truthout.org/articles/israel-didnt-even-try-to-defend-the-legality-of-its-occupation-to-world-court/
Fatal Flaws Undermine America’s Defense Industrial Base
Many elements of the traditional DIB have yet to adopt advanced manufacturing technologies, as they struggle to develop business cases for needed capital investment.
In other words, while adopting advanced manufacturing technologies would fulfill the purpose of the US Department of Defense, it is not profitable for private industry to do so.
Despite virtually all the problems the report identifies stemming from private industry’s disproportionate influence over the US DIB, the report never identifies private industry itself as a problem.
If private industry and its prioritization of profits is the central problem inhibiting the DIB from fulfilling its purpose, the obvious solution is nationalizing the DIB by replacing private industry with state-owned enterprises. This allows the government to prioritize purpose over profits. Yet in the United States and across Europe, the so-called “military industrial complex” has grown to such proportions that it is no longer subordinated to the government and national interests, but rather the government and national interests are subordinated to it.
US defense industrial strategy built on a flawed premise
Beyond private industry’s hold on the US DIB, the very premise the NDIS is built on is fundamentally flawed, deeply rooted in private industry’s profit-driven prioritization.
The report claims:
The purpose of this National Defense Industrial Strategy is to drive development of an industrial ecosystem that provides a sustained competitive advantage to the United States over its adversaries.
The notion of the United States perpetually expanding its wealth and power across the globe, unrivaled by its so-called “adversaries” is unrealistic.
China alone has a population 4-5 times greater than the US. China’s population is, in fact, larger than that of the G7 combined. China has a larger industrial base, economy, and education system than the US. China’s education system not only produces millions more graduates each year in essential fields like science, technology, and engineering than the US, the proportion of such graduates is higher in China than in the US.
China alone possesses the means to maintain a competitive advantage over the United States now and well into the foreseeable future. The US, attempting to draw up a strategy to maintain an advantage over China (not to mention over the rest of the world) regardless of these realities, borders on delusion.
Yet for 60 pages, US policymakers attempt to lay out a strategy to do just that.
Not just China, but also Russia
While China is repeatedly mentioned as America’s “pacing challenge,” the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is perhaps the most acute example of a shifting balance of global power.
Despite a combined population, GDP, and military budget many times greater than Russia’s, the collective West is incapable of matching Russian production of even relatively simple munitions like artillery shells, let alone more complex systems like tanks, aircraft, and precision-guided missiles.
While the US and its allies appear to have every conceivable advantage over Russia on paper, the collective West has organized itself as a profit-driven rather than purpose-driven society.
In Russia, the defense industry exists to serve national security. While one might believe this goes without saying, across the collective West, the defense industry, like all other industries in the West, exists solely to maximize profits.
To best serve national security, the defense industry is required to maintain substantial surge capacity – meaning additional, unused factory space, machines, and labor on standby if and when large surges in production are required in relatively short periods of time. Across the West, in order to maximize profits, surge capacity has been ruthlessly slashed, deemed economically inefficient. Only rare exceptions exist, such as US 155 mm artillery shell production.
While the West’s defense industry remains the most profitable on Earth, its ability to actually churn out arms and ammunition in the quantities and quality required for large-scale conflict is clearly compromised by its maximization of profits.
The result is evident today as the West struggles to expand production of arms and ammunition for its Ukrainian proxies.
The NDIS report would note:
Prior to the invasion, weapon procurements for some of the in-demand systems were driven by annual training requirements and ongoing combat operations. This modest demand, along with recent market dynamics, drove companies to divest excess capacity due to cost. This meant that any increased production requirements would require an increase in workforce hours in existing facilities—commonly referred to as “surge” capacity. These, in turn, were limited further by similar down-stream considerations of workforce, facility, and supply chain limitations.
Costs are most certainly a consideration across any defense industry, but costs cannot be the primary consideration.
A central element of Russia’s defense industry is Rostec, a massive state-owned enterprise under which hundreds of companies related to national industrial needs including defense are organized. Rostec is profitable. However, the industrial concerns organized under Rostec serve purposes related to Russia’s national interests first and foremost, be it national health, infrastructure or security.
Because Russia’s defense industry is purpose-driven, it produced military equipment because it was necessary, not because it was profitable. As a result, Russia possessed huge stockpiles of ammunition and equipment ahead of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022. In addition to this, Russia maintained large amounts of surge capacity enabling production rates of everything from artillery shells to armored vehicles to expand quickly over the past 2 years.
Only relatively recently have Western analysts acknowledged this.
Continue reading
“military industrial complex” has grown to such proportions that it is no longer subordinated to the government and national interests, but rather the government and national interests are subordinated to it.
the collective West has organized itself as a profit-driven rather than purpose-driven society………………………………across the collective West, the defense industry, like all other industries in the West, exists solely to maximize profits.
By Brian Berletic, Orinoco Tribune. February 24, 2024 https://popularresistance.org/fatal-flaws-undermine-americas-defense-industrial-base/
The first-ever US Department of Defense National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS) confirms what many analysts have concluded in regard to the unsustainable nature of Washington’s global-spanning foreign policy objectives and its defense industrial base’s (DIB) inability to achieve them.
The report lays out a multitude of problems plaguing the US DIB including a lack of surge capacity, inadequate workforce, off-shore downstream suppliers, as well as insufficient “demand signals” to motivate private industry partners to produce what’s needed, in the quantities needed, when it is needed.
In fact, the majority of the problems identified by the report involved private industry and its unwillingness to meet national security requirements because they were not profitable.
For example, the report attempts to explain why many companies across the US DIB lack advanced manufacturing capabilities, claiming:
Many elements of the traditional DIB have yet to adopt advanced manufacturing technologies, as they struggle to develop business cases for needed capital investment.
In other words, while adopting advanced manufacturing technologies would fulfill the purpose of the US Department of Defense, it is not profitable for private industry to do so.
Despite virtually all the problems the report identifies stemming from private industry’s disproportionate influence over the US DIB, the report never identifies private industry itself as a problem.
If private industry and its prioritization of profits is the central problem inhibiting the DIB from fulfilling its purpose, the obvious solution is nationalizing the DIB by replacing private industry with state-owned enterprises. This allows the government to prioritize purpose over profits. Yet in the United States and across Europe, the so-called “military industrial complex” has grown to such proportions that it is no longer subordinated to the government and national interests, but rather the government and national interests are subordinated to it.
US defense industrial strategy built on a flawed premise
Beyond private industry’s hold on the US DIB, the very premise the NDIS is built on is fundamentally flawed, deeply rooted in private industry’s profit-driven prioritization.
The report claims:
The purpose of this National Defense Industrial Strategy is to drive development of an industrial ecosystem that provides a sustained competitive advantage to the United States over its adversaries.
The notion of the United States perpetually expanding its wealth and power across the globe, unrivaled by its so-called “adversaries” is unrealistic.
China alone has a population 4-5 times greater than the US. China’s population is, in fact, larger than that of the G7 combined. China has a larger industrial base, economy, and education system than the US. China’s education system not only produces millions more graduates each year in essential fields like science, technology, and engineering than the US, the proportion of such graduates is higher in China than in the US.
China alone possesses the means to maintain a competitive advantage over the United States now and well into the foreseeable future. The US, attempting to draw up a strategy to maintain an advantage over China (not to mention over the rest of the world) regardless of these realities, borders on delusion.
Yet for 60 pages, US policymakers attempt to lay out a strategy to do just that.
Not just China, but also Russia
While China is repeatedly mentioned as America’s “pacing challenge,” the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is perhaps the most acute example of a shifting balance of global power.
Despite a combined population, GDP, and military budget many times greater than Russia’s, the collective West is incapable of matching Russian production of even relatively simple munitions like artillery shells, let alone more complex systems like tanks, aircraft, and precision-guided missiles.
While the US and its allies appear to have every conceivable advantage over Russia on paper, the collective West has organized itself as a profit-driven rather than purpose-driven society.
In Russia, the defense industry exists to serve national security. While one might believe this goes without saying, across the collective West, the defense industry, like all other industries in the West, exists solely to maximize profits.
To best serve national security, the defense industry is required to maintain substantial surge capacity – meaning additional, unused factory space, machines, and labor on standby if and when large surges in production are required in relatively short periods of time. Across the West, in order to maximize profits, surge capacity has been ruthlessly slashed, deemed economically inefficient. Only rare exceptions exist, such as US 155 mm artillery shell production.
While the West’s defense industry remains the most profitable on Earth, its ability to actually churn out arms and ammunition in the quantities and quality required for large-scale conflict is clearly compromised by its maximization of profits.
The result is evident today as the West struggles to expand production of arms and ammunition for its Ukrainian proxies.
The NDIS report would note:
Prior to the invasion, weapon procurements for some of the in-demand systems were driven by annual training requirements and ongoing combat operations. This modest demand, along with recent market dynamics, drove companies to divest excess capacity due to cost. This meant that any increased production requirements would require an increase in workforce hours in existing facilities—commonly referred to as “surge” capacity. These, in turn, were limited further by similar down-stream considerations of workforce, facility, and supply chain limitations.
Costs are most certainly a consideration across any defense industry, but costs cannot be the primary consideration.
A central element of Russia’s defense industry is Rostec, a massive state-owned enterprise under which hundreds of companies related to national industrial needs including defense are organized. Rostec is profitable. However, the industrial concerns organized under Rostec serve purposes related to Russia’s national interests first and foremost, be it national health, infrastructure or security.
Because Russia’s defense industry is purpose-driven, it produced military equipment because it was necessary, not because it was profitable. As a result, Russia possessed huge stockpiles of ammunition and equipment ahead of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022. In addition to this, Russia maintained large amounts of surge capacity enabling production rates of everything from artillery shells to armored vehicles to expand quickly over the past 2 years.
Only relatively recently have Western analysts acknowledged this.
Continue reading
TODAY. Alexei Navalny – the paradox of his legacy
Whatever you think of Alexei Navalny, he didn’t deserve what was done to him. I’ve written before on how the USA government prefers to kill people slowly, with finesse – as in the case of Julian Assange, (.and way way back, Wilfred Burchett.)
The czarist way is more blunt and definite, as in the case of Alexander Litvinenko – a cruel poisoning.
Now Alexei Navalny, a determined opponent of Vladimir Putin, has died suddenly at 47. We’re supposed to believe “of natural causes” – yeah, right, when you’ve been persecuted and ill-treated for years, you might die of a heart problem, anyway. But who believes the Kremlin?
Navalny fought courageously against corruption, and the rule of Putin. He has the guts to come back to Russia, and keep up the fight, even after a previous near-fatal poisoning.
There is another side to the Navalny story. He was an ultra-right racist and Russian nationalist, who railed against immigration and compared Muslims to “flies and cockroaches”. He joined in the fascist “Russian March” along with Monarchist, fascist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant organizations.
In earlier years he worked on the stock market, aligning himself with the liberal pro-market party “Yabloko” (The Apple), known for its long-standing relations with Washington’s State Department and the CIA. He had close links with influential bankers, and the support of a wealthy right-wing movement against Putin, which would be aimed at installing a pro-US puppet regime.
So, the traditional Czarist cruel and clumsy removal of Alexei Navalny has played right into the hands of the USA government. A very timely occasion for much propaganda for Ukraine’s irrational and doomed military fight against Russia, – and for buckets of crocodile tears.
Well, the pro Russisan propagandists will keep bleating about Navalny as a puppet of the USA.
And the “respectable” corporate English-language press will regurgitate the glorious pro – Zelensky and Ukraine stuff coming from Biden etc, (the Navalny death a boon to their story)
But the truth must be somewhere in between, and Navalny has to be remembered as a brave man, who fought for what he believed in, – but by no means as a model of a true democrat.
February 2024: 10th anniversary of the conflict in Ukraine
Russia preferred to maintain the Ukrainian state and did not recognize the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. It strove to find a solution that would protect the rights of Russian speakers (language, administrative autonomy) without removing them from Ukraine. The Minsk I (September 2014) and Minsk II (February 2015) agreements were neutralized by the Western signatories who later admitted having signed them only to give themselves time to arm and train the Ukrainian forces.
Russia’s categorical refusal to the inclusion of Ukraine into NATO since this would be followed by the installation of American missiles on its southern flank.
February 24, 2022, was not the beginning of a war with Ukraine but the last stage of the war that had begun in 2014.
Used as a disposable tool by the United States and NATO against Russia, Ukraine is in ruins and its future is in jeopardy.
22.02.24 – Europe – Samir Saul – Michel Seymour https://www.pressenza.com/2024/02/february-2024-10th-anniversary-of-the-conflict-in-ukraine/
In the coming days, we will surely hear about the so-called second anniversary of the war in Ukraine. Western governments, corporate media broadcasting the official pro-US line all day long, and “experts”-propagandists of this line will deliver their pseudo-analyses. All will be based on the double premise that the conflict in Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, and that it consists of a Russo-Ukrainian war unilaterally provoked by Russia to satisfy the expansionist ambitions of “dictator” Putin.
According to the US/NATO/Kiev “narrative”, everything was peaceful and normal before February 24. On that day, without the slightest justification and warning, like lightning in a blue sky, a Russian invasion descended on innocent Ukraine. As good Samaritans, the USA and its camp rushed to the aid of the victim by becoming its source of dollars and weapons, not to mention mercenaries and NATO “advisers” to operate these weapons systems. The conflict was supposed to last at most a few weeks, which was all the time that was needed to bleed Russia, while economic “sanctions” would bludgeon it and open the way to a “popular uprising” on the model of the “colored revolutions” (i.e. a putsch sponsored by the Western camp to carry out regime change and install a new leadership which would place Russia under the control of US imperialism).
That is the official “story”, rehashed ad nauseam, by “major” media, with all analysis of what is happening shut out. Only pro-US/NATO/Kiev propaganda is permitted because it would not survive if serious analyses were also allowed. It turns out that censorship, presented as the practice solely of “authoritarian regimes” against which Western “democracies” are leading a worldwide struggle in the name of “values”, is very much at home in the West. It is endorsed, sometimes hypocritically, sometimes proudly.
In propaganda and the now culture, there is no history. Events occur as sudden appearances or random occurrences based on spontaneous impulses. The “good guys” (the US and those who are aligned with them) and the “bad guys” (those who stand up to them) are known in advance, nothing else. With this simplistic and distorting grid, a conflict only begins when the “bad guys” retaliate, and never before, when the “good guys” have taken the initiative to threaten or attack them, leading to the retaliation. These initial actions are simply erased from memory.
Choosing February 24, 2022 as the starting date of the conflict in Ukraine shows bias, myopia and ignorance. It is equivalent to becoming a sounding board for the official “narrative”, the primary aim of which is to conceal the central role of Western governments as initiators of the conflict in Ukraine. Their aim is less Ukraine itself than the utilization of Ukraine, first against the Soviet Union, then against Russia.
A conflict that dates back to 1945
The Ukrainian question went through four phases: from 1945 to 1956, it was a war of sabotage and terrorism; from 1956 to 1990, there was a lull; from 1990 to 2014, a new conflict was brewing; in 2014, the war began.
As early as 1945, well before February 24, 2022, the ancestor of the CIA recruited German Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators. Surrendering to the Americans, Reinhard Gehlen put his network of agents in Eastern Europe at the service of the US. Ukrainian ultranationalist collaborator Stepan Bandera joined Gehlen in Germany and, with his organization, waged a bloody war against the USSR in Ukraine, a Soviet territory. The USSR won and the KGB assassinated Bandera in 1959. It was in 1954 that Khrushchev transferred the Crimean peninsula to the Republic of Ukraine, then part of the USSR.
Latent tension since 1991
Continue readingAssange’s final appeal – Your man in the public gallery, part 2
Craig Murray, Sott.net, Wed, 21 Feb 2024
Comment: This is the continuation of Craig Murray’s coverage of Julian Assange’s final extradition hearing in the UK Royal Court on February 21, 2024. Read the first part here.
Julian Assange is a person in political conflict with the view of the United States, who seeks to affect the policies and operations of the US government.
Section 87 of the Extradition Act 2003 provides that a court must interpret it in the light of the defendant’s human rights as enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights. This definitely brings in the jurisdiction of the court. It means all the issues raised must be viewed through the prism of the ECHR and from not other angle.
To depend on the treaty yet ignore its terms is abuse of process and contrary to the ECHR. The obligation in UK law to respect the terms of the extradition treaty with the USA while administering an extradition under it, was comparable to the obligation courts had found to follow the Modern Slavery Convention and Refugee Convention
(quotes given here)
Mark Summers KC then arose to continue the case for Assange. A dark and pugnacious character, he could be well cast as Heathcliff. Summers is as blunt and direct as Fitzgerald is courteous. His points are not so much hammered home, as pile-driven.
This persecution, Summers began, was “intended to prohibit and punish the exposure of state level crime”. The extradition hearing had heard unchallenged evidence of this from many witnesses. The speech in question was thus protected speech. This extradition was not only contrary to the US/UK Extradition Treaty of 2007, it was also plainly contrary to Section 81 of the Extradition Act of 2003.
(quotes given here)
This prosecution was motivated by a desire to punish and suppress political opinion, contrary to the Act. It could be shown plainly to be a political prosecution. It had not been brought until years after the proposed offence; the initiation of the charges had been motivated by the International Criminal Court stating that they were asking the Wikileaks publications as evidence of war crimes. That had been immediately followed by US government denunciation of Wikileaks and Assange, by the designation as a non-state hostile intelligence agency, and even by the official plot to kidnap, poison, rendition or assassinate Assange. That had all been sanctioned by President Trump.
This prosecution therefore plainly bore all of the hallmarks of political persecution.
The magistrates’ court had head unchallenged evidence that the Wikileaks material from Chelsea Manning contained evidence of assassination, rendition, torture, dark prisons and drone killings by the United States. The leaked material had in fact been relied on with success in legal actions in many foreign courts and in Strasbourg itself.
The disclosures were political because the avowed intention was to affect political change. Indeed they had caused political change, for example in the Rules of Engagement for forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and in ending drone killings in Pakistan. Assange had been highly politically acclaimed at the time of the publications. He had been invited to address both the EU and the UN.
The US government had made no response to any of the extensive evidence of United States state level criminality given in the hearing. Yet Judge Baraitser had totally ignored all of it in her ruling. She had not referred to United States criminality at all.
At this point Judge Sharp interrupted to ask where they would find references to these acts of criminality in the evidence, and Summers gave some very terse pointers, through clenched teeth.
Summers continued that in law it is axiomatic that the exposure of state level criminality is a political act. This was protected speech. There were an enormous number of cases across many jurisdictions which indicate this. The criminality presented in this appeal was tolerated and even approved by the very highest levels of the United States government. Publication of this evidence by Mr Assange, absent any financial motive for him to do so, was the very definition of a political act. He was involved, beyond dispute, in opposition to the machinery of government of the United States.
This extradition had to be barred under Section 81 of the Extradition Act because its entire purpose was to silence those political opinions. Again, there were numerous cases on record of how courts should deal, under the European Convention, with states reacting to people who had revealed official criminality.
In the judgment being appealed Judge Baraitser did not address the protected nature of speech exposing state criminality at all. That was plainly an error in law.
Baraitser had also been in error of fact in stating that it was “Purely conjecture and speculation” that the revelation of US war crimes had led to this prosecution. This ignored almost all of the evidence before the court.
The court had been given evidence of United States interference with judicial procedure over US war crimes in Spain, Poland, Germany and Italy. The United States had insulated its own officials from ICC jurisdiction. It had actively threatened both the institutions and employees, of the ICC and of official bodies of other states. All of this had been explained in detail in expert evidence and had been unchallenged. All of it had been ignored by Baraitser.…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Political persecution was also apparent in the highly selective prosecution of the appellant. Numerous newspapers had also published the exact same information, as had other websites. Yet only Assange was being prosecuted. Baraitser had simply ignored numerous facts which were key to the case, and therefore her judgment was plainly wrong.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Separately, the Secretary of State had failed in her specific duty to obtain assurances that the death penalty would not be implemented, before agreeing an extradition. The United States could add further charges at any time were Assange in the US, including aiding and abetting treason or other Espionage Act charges which attract the death penalty. It was routine in these circumstances to obtain assurances against the death penalty, and it was sinister they had not been obtained.
The law on this point was very clear; in the absence of assurances against the death penalty, the extradition must be stopped by the Home Secretary and the defendant discharged.
On this rather sombre point, Judge Sharp called the end of the day, and we staggered out into a wet London evening. It was a huge amount to pack into our heads in a day for those of us with brains smaller than Mr Fitzgerald, and the large crowd that roared its approval as we emerged hardly registered with me at all.
It had gone better than I expected……………………………………………. https://www.sott.net/article/489199-Assanges-final-appeal-Your-man-in-the-public-gallery-part-2
Chris Hedges: Julian Assange’s Day in Court
The defense must convince the two judges that the District Judge made serious legal errors to see an appeal granted.
They argued that espionage is, as a matter of law, a political offense and that the extradition treaty with the U.S. prohibits extradition for political offenses. They focused on the extensive UK law, common law and international law that defines espionage as a “pure political offense” because e it is directed against a state apparatus. For this reason, those charged with espionage should be protected from extradition.
The hearing was, after those in 2020 that focused on Julian’s mental and psychological health, refreshing in that it discussed the crimes committed by the U.S. and the importance of making them public.
Julian Assange’s lawyers — in a final bid on Tuesday to stop his extradition — fought valiantly to poke holes in the case of the prosecution to obtain an appeal.
By Chris Hedges https://scheerpost.com/2024/02/21/chris-hedges-julian-assanges-day-in-court/
LONDON — By the afternoon the video link, which would have allowed Julian Assange to follow his final U.K. appeal to prevent his extradition, had been turned off. Julian, his attorneys said, was too ill to attend, too ill even to follow the court proceedings on a link, although it was possible he was no longer interested in sitting through another judicial lynching. The rectangular screen, tucked under the black wrought iron bars that enclosed the upper left hand corner balcony of the courtroom where Julian would have been caged as a defendant, was perhaps a metaphor for the emptiness of this long and convoluted judicial pantomime.
he arcane procedural rules — the lawyers in their curled blonde wigs and robes, the spectral figure of the two judges looking down on the court from their raised dais in their gray wigs and forked white collars, the burnished walnut paneled walls, the rows of lancet windows, the shelves on either side filled with law books in brown, green, red, crimson, blue and beige leather bindings, the defense lawyers, Edward Fitzgerald KC and Mark Summers KC, addressing the two judges, Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Johnson, as “your lady” and “my lord” — were all dusty Victorian props employed in a modern Anglo-American show trial. It was a harbinger of a decrepit justice system that, subservient to state and corporate power, is designed to strip us of our rights by judicial fiat.
The physical and psychological disintegration of Julian, seven years trapped in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and nearly five years held on remand in the high-security HM Prison Belmarsh, was always the point, what Nils Melzer the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture calls his “slow-motion execution.” Political leaders, and their echo chambers in the media, fall all over themselves to denounce the treatment of Alexei Navalny but say little when we do the same to Julian. The legal farce grinds forward like the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce in Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House. It will probably grind on for a few more months — one can’t expect the Biden administration to add the extradition of Julian to all its other political woes. It may take months to issue a ruling, or grant one or two appeal requests, as Julian continues to waste away in HM Prison Belmarsh.
Julian’s nearly 15-year legal battle began in 2010 when WikiLeaks published classified military files from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — including footage showing a U.S. helicopter gunning down civilians, including two Reuters journalists in Baghdad. He took refuge in London’s Ecuadorian embassy, before being arrested by the Metropolitan Police in 2019 who were permitted by the Ecuadorian embassy to enter and seize him. He has been held for nearly five years in HM Prison Belmarsh.
Julian did not commit a crime. He is not a spy. He did not purloin classified documents. He did what we all do, although he did it in a far more important way. He published voluminous material, leaked to him by Chelsea Manning, which exposed U.S. war crimes, lies, corruption, torture and assassinations. He ripped back the veil to expose the murderous machinery of the U.S. empire.
The two-day hearing is Julian’s last chance to appeal the extradition decision made in 2022 by the then British home secretary, Priti Patel. On Wednesday the prosecution will make its arguments. If he is denied an appeal he can request the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a stay of execution under Rule 39, which is given in “exceptional circumstances” and “only where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm.” But the British court may order Julian’s immediate extradition prior to a Rule 39 instruction or may decide to ignore a request from the ECtHR to allow Julian to have his case heard by the court.
District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in January 2021, at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, refused to authorize the extradition request. In her 132-page ruling, she found that there was a “substantial risk” Julian would commit suicide due to the severity of the conditions he would endure in the U.S. prison system. At the same time, she accepted all the charges leveled by the U.S. against Julian as being filed in good faith. She rejected the arguments that his case was politically motivated, that he would not get a fair trial in the U.S. and that his prosecution is an assault on the freedom of the press.
Baraitser’s decision was overturned after the U.S. government appealed to the High Court in London. Although the High Court accepted Baraitser’s conclusions about Julian’s “substantial risk” of suicide if he was subjected to certain conditions within a U.S. prison, it also accepted four assurances in U.S. Diplomatic Note no. 74, given to the court in February 2021, which promised Julian would be treated well. The “assurances” state that Julian will not be subject to Special Administrative Measure. They promise that Julian, an Australian citizen, can serve his sentence in Australia if the Australian government requests his extradition. They promise he will receive adequate clinical and psychological care. They promise that, pre-trial and post-trial, Julian will not be held in the Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado.
Continue readingJulian Assange judge previously acted for MI6
The judge set to rule on the Assange extradition case was previously paid to represent the interests of MI6 and the Ministry of Defence – whose activities WikiLeaks has exposed.
MARK CURTIS AND JOHN MCEVOY, 19 FEBRUARY 2024
One of the two High Court judges who will rule on Julian Assange’s bid to stop his extradition to the US represented the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Ministry of Defence, Declassified has found.
Justice Jeremy Johnson has also been a specially vetted barrister, cleared by the UK authorities to access top secret information.
Johnson will sit with Dame Victoria Sharp, his senior judge, to decide the fate of the WikiLeaks co-founder. If extradited, Assange faces a maximum sentence of 175 years.
His persecution by the US authorities has been at the behest of Washington’s intelligence and security services, with whom the UK has deep relations.
His persecution by the US authorities has been at the behest of Washington’s intelligence and security services, with whom the UK has deep relations.
Assange’s journalistic career has been marked by exposing the dirty secrets of the US and UK national security establishments. He now faces a judge who has acted for, and received security clearance from, some of those same state agencies.
As with previous judges who have ruled on Assange’s case, this raises concerns about institutional conflicts of interest.
Exactly how much Johnson has been paid for his work for government departments is not clear. Records show he was paid twice by the Government Legal Department for his services in 2018. The sum was over £55,000.
Briefed by MI6
Justice Johnson became a deputy High Court judge in 2016 and a full judge in 2019. His biography states he has been “often acting in cases involving the police and government departments”.
As a barrister, in 2007 he represented MI6 as an observer during the inquests into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed.
Johnson worked alongside Robin Tam QC, previously described by legal directories as a barrister who “does an enormous amount of often sensitive work” for the UK government…………………………………………………….
Defending the ministry
Johnson has also represented the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) on at least two occasions.
In 2013, he acted for the department during the high-profile Al-Sweady inquiry, which looked into allegations that “British soldiers torture and unlawfully killed Iraqi prisoners” in 2004.
The MoD’s lawyers said the Iraqi allegations were a “product of lies” and that those making the claims “were guilty of a criminal conspiracy”.
Johnson argued there was “compelling and extensive and independent forensic evidence” to refute the case. The five-year inquiry, which cost around £25m, exonerated the British troops.
Johnson also acted for the MoD in 2011, in an appeal case against Shaun Wood, a Royal Air Force (RAF) serviceman. ………………………….
‘Highest security clearance’
Johnson was appointed by the Attorney General to be a “special advocate” in around 2007, Declassified understands. These are specially vetted barristers who act for the purpose of hearing secret evidence in a closed court.
Special advocates “must undergo and obtain Developed Vetting (the highest level of HM Government security clearance) prior to their appointment”, government guidance states.
Developed Vetting is required for individuals having “frequent and uncontrolled access to TOP SECRET assets or require any access to TOP SECRET codeword material”. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.declassifieduk.org/julian-assange-judge-previously-acted-for-mi6/
After years of avoiding extradition, Julian Assange’s appeal is likely his last chance. Here’s how it might unfold (and how we got here)
On February 20 and 21, Julian Assange will ask the High Court of England and Wales to reverse a decision from June last year allowing the United Kingdom to extradite him to the United States.
There he faces multiple counts of computer misuse and espionage stemming from his work with WikiLeaks, publishing sensitive US government documents provided by Chelsea Manning. The US government has repeatedly claimed that Assange’s actions risked its national security.
This is the final avenue of appeal in the UK, although Stella Assange, Julian’s wife, has indicated he would seek an order from the European Court of Human Rights if he loses the application for appeal. The European Court, an international court that hears cases under the European Convention on Human Rights, can issue orders that are binding on convention member states. In 2022, an order from the court stopped the UK sending asylum seekers to Rwanda pending a full review of the relevant legislation.
The extradition process has been running for nearly five years. Over such a long time, it’s easy to lose track of the sequence of events that led to this. Here’s how we got here, and what might happen next.
Years-long extradition attempt
From 2012 until May 2019, Assange resided in the Ecuadorian embassy in London after breaching bail on unrelated charges. While he remained in the embassy, the police could not arrest him without the permission of the Ecuadorian government.
In 2019, Ecuador allowed Assange’s arrest. He was then convicted of breaching bail conditions, and imprisoned in Belmarsh Prison, where he’s remained during the extradition proceedings. Shortly after his arrest, the United States laid charges against Assange and requested his extradition from the United Kingdom.
Assange immediately challenged the extradition request. After delays due to COVID, in January 2021, the District Court decided the extradition could not proceed because it would be “oppressive” to Assange.
The ruling was based on the likely conditions that Assange would face in an American prison and the high risk that he would attempt suicide. The court rejected all other arguments against extradition.
The American government appealed the District Court decision. It provided assurances on prison conditions for Assange to overcome the finding that the extradition would be oppressive. Those assurances led to the High Court overturning the order stopping extradition. Then the Supreme Court (the UK’s top court) refused Assange’s request to appeal that ruling.
The extradition request then passed to the home secretary, who approved it. Assange appealed the home secretary’s decision, which a single judge of the High Court rejected in June 2023.
This appeal is against that most recent ruling and will be heard by a two-judge bench. These judges will only decide whether Assange has grounds for appeal. If they decide in his favour, the court will schedule a full hearing of the merits of the appeal. That hearing would come at the cost of further delay in the resolution of his case.
Growing political support
Parallel to the legal challenges, Assange’s supporters have led a political campaign to stop the prosecution and the extradition. One goal of the campaign has been to persuade the Australian government to argue Assange’s case with the American government.
Cross-party support from individual parliamentarians has steadily grown, led by independent MP Andrew Wilkie. Over the past two years, the government, including the foreign minister and the prime minister, have made stronger and clearer statements that the prosecution should end.
On February 14, Wilkie proposed a motion in support of Assange, seconded by Labor MP Josh Wilson. The house was asked to “underline the importance of the UK and USA bringing the matter to a close so that Mr Assange can return home to his family in Australia.” It was passed.
In addition, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus confirmed he had recently raised the Assange prosecution with his American counterpart, who has the authority to end it.
What will Assange’s team argue?
For the High Court appeal, it is expected Assange’s legal team will once again argue the extradition would be oppressive and that the American assurances are inadequate. A recent statement by Alice Edwards, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, supports their argument that extradition could lead to treatment “amounting to torture or other forms of ill-treatment or punishment”. She rejected the adequacy of American assurances, saying:
They are not legally binding, are limited in their scope, and the person the assurances aim to protect may have no recourse if they are violated.
The argument that extradition would be oppressive remains the strongest ground for appeal. However, it is likely Assange’s lawyers will also repeat some of the arguments which were unsuccessful in the District Court proceedings.
One argument is that the charges against Assange, particularly the espionage charges, are political offences. The United States–United Kingdom extradition treaty does not allow either state to extradite for political offences.
Assange is also likely to re-run the argument that his leaks of classified documents were exercises of his right to freedom of expression under the European Convention on Human Rights. To date, the European Court of Human Rights has never found that an extradition request violates freedom of expression. For the High Court to do so would be an innovative ruling.
The High Court will hear two days of legal argument and might not give its judgement immediately, but it will probably be delivered soon after the hearing. Whatever the decision, Assange’s supporters will continue their political campaign, supported by the Australian government, to stop the prosecution.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 