a). Australia is second only to Trump America as a supporter of nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel. This should attract international calumny because Zionism is genocidal racism, and Nazism without gas chambers. Apartheid Israel is a nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run, genocidally racist, serial war criminal, grossly human rights abusing, democracy by genocide, Nazi-style rogue state. However nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel is fervently supported by 100% of Coalition MPs (out of conviction) and perhaps 70% of Labor MPs (mostly out of cowardice rather than conviction, one hopes). Nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel is the lowest of the low hanging nuclear terrorist fruit. The US (population 331.6 million) is a law unto itself but Apartheid Israel (Jewish Israeli population 6.7 million) is vastly more vulnerable to humane global action because of its extreme exceptionalism. If every country in the world was like Apartheid Israel and had 90/6.7million = 13.4 nuclear weapons per million of population, then there would be 102,000 nuclear weapons in the world. In the TPNW-empowered World a pro-Apartheid Australia will discover the cost of supporting a nuclear terrorist Apartheid rogue state. Thus Australia makes donations to Apartheid Israel tax deductible whereas donations to Palestinian orphanages or other charities in the Gaza Concentration Camp could possibly be punished by life imprisonment (pro-Apartheid Israel, state terrorist Australia conveniently classes popular, indigenous national liberation organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah as “terrorists”). Australia is closely connected to nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel through university-based military research [23, 24], and purchase of Israel weapons and control systems that the Israelis boast they have pre-tested on horribly abused Palestinians and on Arabs in general.
(b). Australia is a lavish US ally and has a key role in US nuclear terrorism. Australia plays a key role in US nuclear terrorism via its joint US-Australian electronic monitoring stations at Pine Gap (Northern Territory) and North West Cape (Western Australia).
(c). The US makes Australia a prime nuclear target in any carefully escalating nuclear war. In any tit-for-tat initial nuclear exchange between the US and another country, one supposes that a tit-for-tat nuclear attack on a US city would lead to all-out nuclear war and the end of human civilization. However the victim of a limited US first strike (accidental or on purpose) might choose to respond by destroying an Australian target rather than an American target, and the US might then decide to leave matters there.
(d ). Australia played a key role in UK nuclear terrorism with continuing radioactive pollution concerns. Australia helped the UK test nuclear weapons and develop missile delivery systems in Australia. The UK also deliberately polluted Maralinga in South Australia with deadly plutonium as revealed by Australian journalists Brian Toohey and Ian Anderson [19, 25, 26]. Despite public outcry, the McClelland Royal Commission, and consequent attempted clean-up, radioactive contamination remains as a continuing testament to continuing Australian complicity in UK nuclear terrorism in violation of the TPNW.
(e). Australia is a key member of the US Alliance that includes the nuclear terrorist states of the US, UK, France and Apartheid Israel. Continuing Australian participation in support of military and other strategic activities of any nuclear weapons states will violate International Law as set out in the TPNW. Australia continues to host nuclear-armed warships in its ports, hosts up to 3,000 US Marines in a base in Darwin, and Australia only learned via a US Congress report that the US is planning a huge military port facility in Darwin (the existing port having been long-term leased to China) [27]. Australia sold uranium to the US, UK and France that was later supplied (after refinement) to Apartheid Israel by the US.
(f). Likely border closure sanctions against Australia. The Covid-19 pandemic was largely successfully controlled in Australia, East Asia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific by closure of borders [28]. The precedent has been established and after 22 January 2021 – with the Covid-19 pandemic very likely still out of control in North America, Latin America, Africa, and South Asia – border closure with Australia for violation of the TPNW is a possible avenue of action by decent, pro-humanity countries.
(g). Australian strategists are adumbrating Australia hosting nuclear missiles and acquiring nuclear weapons. The serial war criminal US has surrounded China with a ring of steel, and is ramping up threats to China, including threats from nuclear missiles [29]. Professor Hugh White, a leading expert on strategic matters, and others have raised the matters of Australia hosting US nuclear-armed missiles targeting China, and indeed of Australia acquiring its own nuclear weapons [29-32]. For an expert and humane critique see [33].The TPNW will make such obscene regressions illegal under International Law.
(h). Australia is a major uranium exporter but “military” and “peaceful” uses cannot be disentangled. Australia is a major uranium exporter but in a warehouse containing Australian yellow cake there is no difference between that for “military” and that for “peaceful” uses except for any destination label on the drum. Australian uranium exports inevitably contributed to US, UK, French and Apartheid Israeli nuclear terrorism. Thus Australian scholar Evan Jones:“ Over 75% of [French] domestic electricity consumption comes from nuclear power. This dominance is the product of a strategic move in the 1970s; the oil shock had compounded France’s long term (and continuing) dependence on oil imports. But nuclear energy is also the child of France’s force de frappe – in the context of the Cold War, how could one be a great nation without nuclear weaponry?” [34]. Indeed I recall a report of a visiting French leader inadvertently (in French) praising Australian collaboration in the development of the French force de frappe (the French nuclear weapons arsenal). The US and France were both involved in the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Apartheid Israel, and Australia is second only to America as a supporter of nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel.
(i). Australian Government-compliant subversion of Australia by nuclear terrorist rogue states. Australian complicity in US, UK, and Apartheid Israeli nuclear terrorism is underscored by subversion of Australia by these nuclear terrorist states. This massive and dangerous subversion is aided by the extraordinary cowardice, immorality, treason and mendacity of Mainstream journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes in US lackey and Zionist-subverted Australia. Numerous examples can be given. Thus the US and UK were involved in the 1975 Coup that removed the Whitlam Labor Government, with Australian involvement in US nuclear terrorism via Pine Gap being a major covert issue [16, 19]. 35 years later the popularly elected Australian Labor PM, Kevin Rudd, was removed in a US-approved, mining corporation-backed and pro-Zionist-led Coup as attested by several anti-racist Jewish Australia writers but resolutely white-washed by the Mainstream [35-37]. Australian Mainstream media are heavily dominated by the pro-nuclear terrorism Murdoch media empire that has captured 70% of the daily newspaper readership. Post-9/11, Australians have been subject to massive government surveillance and the US shares a huge volume of raw intelligence on Australians with Apartheid Israel [38]. Apartheid Israel and its traitorous Zionist agents have comprehensively perverted and subverted Australians and Australian institutions. Apartheid Israel has been involved in kidnapping, falsely imprisoning, robbing, torturing, wounding, shooting, bombing, killing, perverting, subverting, compromising, intimidating, censoring, defaming and deceiving Australians, but successive traitorous and cowardly Australian Governments (whether Labor or Coalition) mostly look the other way [39-42]. Indeed there is presently massive US-inspired Sinophobic hysteria over an asserted “threat” from China but Ali Kazak (former Palestinian Ambassador to Australia) has commented: “Forget China, no country has interfered, spied and endangered Australia’s security, sovereignty and the integrity of its national institutions more than Israel and its powerful lobbyists” [41].
(j). Australia subverts the Pacific for US, UK, French and Apartheid Israeli nuclear terrorism. The UK, US and France have used the Pacific to conduct hundreds of high-yield nuclear tests that have left an appalling legacy of nuclear contamination, morbidity and mortality. This led to massive Indigenous Pacific opposition to such tests led by New Zealand, and demands for a nuclear weapons-free Pacific. However the nuclear terrorist states variously hit back. New Zealand was punished by being expelled from the ANZUS Treaty for objecting to nuclear-armed warships in its ports, and French state terrorists sank the Greenpeace “Rainbow Warrior” ship in the port of Auckland, killing a photographer. Fiji was punished by the overthrow of the multiracial Fiji Labor Government led by Dr Timoci Bavadra in a variously US-, UK- , Australia- and Apartheid Israel-complicit Coup in 1987 [43, 44]. Indeed that Coup was followed by a further Coup in 1987, the 2000 Coup led by an Australian George Speight, and a 2006 Coup by the Fiji Army against corruption and racism of the former Coup plotters. William Blum in “Rogue State” attributes the 1987 Fiji Coup to the US [44]. US lackey Australia as US Deputy Sheriff in the South Pacific had to be involved (it crucially and coincidentally invited the exemplary Fiji Army Commander in Chief to Australia for the time during which his insubordinate and criminal subordinates took advantage of his absence and staged the Coup). Anecdotally, Apartheid Israel may have supplied weapons for the 1987 Coup smuggled into Fiji disguised as agricultural piping. In the 2000 Coup Apartheid Israel supplied weapons to the Coup plotters as revealed in a subsequent trial of a Coup plotter as reported by Radio New Zealand [45, 46]. Famed physicist Professor Stephen Hawking: “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change” [8]. Pacific Island states are existentially threated by both nuclear weapons and climate change. Pro-nuclear terrorism Australia has massively contributed to the nuclear threat, and as a leading climate criminal country threatens the Pacific Islands with Climate Genocide [47-49].
Final comments.
Writing on 11 August, 2014 in Countercurrents I stated: “Our world is acutely threatened by nuclear weapons, poverty and man climate change. A comprehensive Nuclear Weapons Ban is needed to avoid an accidental full-scale nuclear catastrophe and a consequent Nuclear Winter that will wipe out most of Humanity and the Biosphere. Every person must stand up for Humanity and the Biosphere in the One Percenter War on Terra. This week saw the 69th anniversary of the war criminal American nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 August and 9 August, respectively, in 1945. The previous week saw the death at 93 of the last crew member of the US bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. In America ‘s war criminal nuclear bombing of Japan up to 166,000 were killed in Hiroshima and up to 80,000 perished in Nagasaki . These utterly unjustified, war criminal attacks were militarily unnecessary, evidently simply “proof of principle”, and strategically a US warning to other nations (notably the USSR) of America’s ability, preparedness and resolve to repeatedly commit mass murder… ” [50].
Six years later that sort of moral indignation is now backed up by the authority of International Law with the 50th ratification of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). From 22 January 2021 all nuclear terrorist states and all non-nuclear states supporting their nuclear terrorism will be in gross violation of International Law. Affected non-nuclear states from nuclear waste contaminated Pacific Island nations such as Kiribati to nuclear holocaust-threatened Iran will be empowered to take action under International Law against nuclear terrorist states by Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), border closures, tariffs against nuclear terrorist states, International Criminal Court prosecutions and International Court of Justice litigations.
The atomic bombing of Japan 75 years ago involved the intentional selective mass murder of Japanese civilians (genocide [52, 53]), of women (femicide, gendercide), children (paedocide) and the elderly (gerocide) [28]. However a nuclear exchange and consequent “nuclear winter” will involve mass loss of species (speciescide), and of ecosystems (ecocide) leading to death of most life (omnicide) and death of most of the living planet (terracide). If you and your children and grandchildren magically survive the nuclear holocaust and the subsequent nuclear winter, your descendants may well ask you “What did you do in the War on Terra?” Decent people are obliged to (a) inform everyone they can , and (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all nuclear terrorist countries and the non-nuclear countries supporting nuclear terrorism. Indeed such Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions should be applied to all people, politicians, parties, countries, collectives and corporations supporting nuclear terrorism.
References.
[1]. Jennifer Knox, “A historic nuclear weapons ban treaty is set to become international law: here’s what that means”, Union of Concerned Scientists, 24 October 2020: https://allthingsnuclear.org/jknox/an-historic-nuclear-ban-treaty-is-set-to-become-international-law-heres-what-that-means?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=427b6f8c3c-briefing-dy-20201027&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-427b6f8c3c-44714333 .
[2]. “International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Campaign_to_Abolish_Nuclear_Weapons .
[3]. ICAN: https://www.icanw.org/ .
[4]. United Nations Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, 7 July 2020: http://undocs.org/A/CONF.229/2017/8 .
[5]. “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Prohibition_of_Nuclear_Weapons .
[6]. “Nuclear weapons ban, end poverty and reverse climate change”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/nuclear-weapons-ban .
[7]. List of states with nuclear weapons”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons .
[8]. Stephen Hawking, “Brief Answers to the Big Questions”, John Murray, 2018, Chapter 7.
[9]. Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT):, “Australia and nuclear weapons”: https://www.dfat.gov.au/international-relations/security/non-proliferation-disarmament-arms-control/nuclear-issues/Pages/australia-and-nuclear-weapons .
[10]. “50th ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons”, Inbox News, 25 October 2020: https://inbox.news/newsroom/press-releases/8668/50th-ratification-of-the-treaty-on-the-prohibition-of-nuclear-weapons .
[11]. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN, Australian Labor Party commits to joining Nuclear Ban Treaty”, December 2018: https://www.icanw.org/australian_labor_party_commits_to_joining_nuclear_ban_treaty .
[12]. Marianne Hanson, “Where will Australia stand on banning weapons of mass destruction?” The Interpreter, 27 October 2020: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/where-will-australia-stand-banning-weapons-mass-destruction .
[13]. Jordon Steele-John, “75th anniversary of Hiroshima: Australia must sign UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons”, Greens, 6 August 2020: https://greensmps.org.au/articles/75th-anniversary-hiroshima-australia-must-sign-un-treaty-prohibition-nuclear-weapons .
[14]. ICAN , “Parliamentary Friends of the TPNW formed”, 30 June 2020: https://icanw.org.au/parliamentary-friends-of-the-tpnw-is-launched/ .
[15]. AMA, “Australia must sign UN Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons”, 29 October 2020: https://ama.com.au/media/australia-must-sign-un-treaty-prohibition-nuclear-weapons .
[16]. John Pilger, “The British-American Coup that ended Australian independence”, Guardian, 23 October 2014: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-whitlam-1975-coup-ended-australian-independence .
[17]. Philip Agee, “Inside the Company. CIA Diary”, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1975.
[18]. “PM transcripts”, 1982: https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/original/00005829.pdf .
[19]. Brian Toohey, “Secrets. The making of Australia’s security state”, Melbourne University Press, 2019.
[20]. “Pine Gap”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Gap .
[21]. “Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt’, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Communication_Station_Harold_E._Holt .
[22]. David Vine, “Where in the world is the U.S. military?”, Politico, July/August 2015: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/us-military-bases-around-the-world-119321 .
[23]. Gideon Polya, “Australian Universities Complicit With Pro-Zionist Censorship And Genocidal Israeli Militarism”, Countercurrents, 24 May 2012: https://countercurrents.org/polya240512.htm .
[24]. Vacy Vlazna, “Israeli Hawkademia in Australian Universities”, Palestinian Chronicle, 2 May 2012: https://www.palestinechronicle.com/israeli-hawkademia-in-australian-universities/ .
[25]. “Maralinga”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maralinga .
[26]. Ian Anderson, “Britain’s dirty deeds at Maralinga: Fresh evidence suggests that Britain knew in the 1960s that radioactivity at its former nuclear test site in Australia was worse than first thought. But it did not tell the Australians”, New Scientist, 12 June 1993: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13818772-700/ .
[27]. Andrew Greene, “America’s $300 million push to expand naval facilities in northern Australia”, ABC News, 29 July 2019: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-29/americas-push-to-expand-naval-facilities-in-northern-australia/11354926 .
[28]. Gideon Polya, “US Alliance Covid-19 Gerocide – intentional mass killing of elderly by US Alliance countries”, Countercurrents, 21 October 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/10/us-alliance-covid-19-gerocide-intentional-mass-killing-of-elderly-by-us-alliance-countries/ .
[29]. John Pilger, “The coming war on China”, John Pilger, 2019: http://johnpilger.com/videos/the-coming-war-on-china .
[30]. Hugh White, “US could ask Australia to host nuclear missiles”, The Strategist, 17 January 2019: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/us-could-ask-australia-to-host-nuclear-missiles/ .
[31]. Rod Lyon, “Should Australia build its own nuclear arsenal?”, The Strategist, 24 October 2019: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/should-australia-build-its-own-nuclear-arsenal/ .
[32]. “Nukes in an uncertain world”, ABC TV, Q&A, 7 August 2019: https://www.abc.net.au/qanda/2019-08-07/11262430 .
[33]. Mark Diesendorf and Richard Broinowski, “A covert push for nuclear weapons?”, Australian Institute of International Affairs, 26 August 2019: https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/a-covert-push-for-nuclear-weapons/
[34]. Evan Jones, “Hollande may not like it, but French nuclear is full steam ahead”, The Conversation, 18 May 2012: https://theconversation.com/hollande-may-not-like-it-but-french-nuclear-is-full-steam-ahead-7073 .
[35]. Antony Loewenstein, “Does the Zionist lobby have blood on its hands in Australia ?”: http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/07/02/does-the-zionist-lobby-have-blood-on-its-hands-in-australia/ .
[36]. Gideon Polya, “Pro-Zionist-led Coup ousts Australian PM Rudd”, MWC News, 29 June 2010.
[37]. Gideon Polya , “Media-Ignored US, Corporate And Zionist Subversion Of Australian Democracy In Ex-PM Rudd-PM Gillard Battle”, Countercurrents, 27 February, 2012: https://countercurrents.org/polya270212.htm
[38]. Philip Dorling, “US shares raw intelligence on Australian with Israel”, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September 2013: http://www.smh.com.au/national/us-shares-raw-intelligence-on-australians-with-israel-20130911-2tllm.htm
[39]. Gideon Polya, “Racist Zionism and Israeli State Terrorism threats to Australia and Humanity”, Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/racist-zionism-and-israeli ).
[40]. “Subversion of Australia”: https://sites.google.com/site/subversionofaustralia/home .
[41]. Ali Kazak, “Why should Israel’s lobby have different standards?”, Independent Australia, 9 November 2017: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/does-the-nation-have-a-new-white-australia-foreign-affairs-policy,10913 .
[42]. Gideon Polya, “Pro-Apartheid Israel Australian Labor Party Scraps Outstanding Anti-Israel Apartheid Candidate, Melissa Parke”, Global Research, 18 April 2019: https://www.globalresearch.ca/pro-apartheid-israel-australian-labor-party-anti-apartheid-candidate-melissa-parke/5674801 .
[43]. Gideon Polya, “Anti-Indian subversion of Fiji by Apartheid Israel, Pro-Apartheid Australia & pro-Apartheid America”, Countercurrents, 20 October 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/10/20/anti-indian-subversion-of-fiji-by-apartheid-israel-pro-apartheid-australia-pro-apartheid-america/ .
[44]. William Blum, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” (pages 199-200).
[45]. Radio New Zealand, “Fiji treason trial hears of rebels’ weapons supplied by Israel”, 3 December 2002: http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/141971/fiji-treason-trial-hears-of-rebels%27-weapons-supplied-by-israel .
[46]. “Fiji Coup plotters armed by Israel”, Ummah News and Rense, 3 December 2002: http://rense.com/general32/isir.htm .
[47]. Gideon Polya, “Climate criminal Australia sabotages Pacific Islands Forum & threatens all Island Nations”, Countercurrents, 24 August 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/08/climate-criminal-australia-sabotages-pacific-islands-forum-threatens-all-island-nations .
[48]. “Climate genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .
[49]. Gideon Polya, “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions”, Korsgaard Publishing, 2020, in preparation for publication.
[50]. Gideon Polya, “Nuclear Weapons Ban & Boycotts, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) To Save World From Nuclear, Poverty & Climate Threats”, Countercurrents, 11 August, 2014: https://countercurrents.org/polya110814.htm .
[51]. Gideon Polya, “US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” , 400 pages, Korsgaard Publishing, Germany, 4 June 2020: https://www.amazon.com/US-Imposed-Post-9-Muslim-Holocaust-Genocide/dp/8793987056 .
[52]. Gideon Polya, “Racist Mainstream ignores “US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide””, Countercurrents, 17 July 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/07/racist-mainstream-ignores-us-imposed-post-9-11-muslim-holocaust-muslim-genocide/ .
Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: https://countercurrents.org/polya170612.htm ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ; Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home ; Gideon Polya Writing: https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/ ; Gideon Polya, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Polya ). He has recently published Gideon Polya, “US-imposed Post-9-11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide”, Korsgaard Publishing, Germany, 2020 (for details see: https://korsgaardpublishing.com/portfolio/23945/ ).When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .
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Donald Trump’s Failed State: America’s Daunting New World and the Coming Election
by Karen J Greenberg
Maybe we need to accept the challenge of proving in this election that one of the world’s longest-standing democracies can rise to
the occasion and vote to uphold the foundation of its system, elections themselves. Maybe, using this very election, we can harness the civic pride that could lead to a successful restoration of our basic beliefs in constitutional principles and the rule of law. The chance to vote, no matter how long the lines and the wait, might be just the opportunity we need.
These past few months, it’s grown ever harder to recognize life in America. Thanks to Covid-19, basic day-to-day existence has changed in complicated, often confusing ways. Just putting food on the table has become a challenge for many. Getting doctors’ appointments and medical care can take months. Many schools are offering on-line only instruction and good luck trying to get a driver’s license or a passport renewed in person or setting up an interview for Social Security benefits. The backlog of appointments is daunting.
Meanwhile, where actual in-person government services are on tap, websites warn you of long lines and advise those with appointments to bring an umbrella, a chair, and something to eat and drink, as the Department of Motor Vehicles in Hudson, New York, instructed me to do over the summer. According to a September 2020 Yelp report, approximately 164,000 businesses have closed nationwide due to the pandemic, an estimated 60% of them for good. CNBC reports that 7.5 million businesses may still be at risk of closing. Meanwhile, more than 225,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus and, as a winter spike begins, it’s estimated that up to 410,000 could be dead by year’s end.
Then there are the signs of increasing poverty. Food banks have seen vast rises in demand, according to Feeding America, a network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs. According to a study done by Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy, between February and September, the monthly poverty rate increased from 15% to 16.7%, despite cash infusions from Congress’s CARES Act. That report also concluded that the CARES program, while putting a lid on the rise in the monthly poverty rate for a time, “was not successful at preventing a rise in deep poverty.” And now, of course, Congress seems likely to offer nothing else.
The rate of unemployment is down from a high of 14% in April, but still twice what it was in January 2020 and seemingly stabilizing at a disturbing 8%. Meanwhile, schools and universities are struggling to stay viable. Thirty-four percent of universities are now online and only 4% are conducting fully in-person classes. The policy of stores limiting purchases in the spring and summer is still a fresh memory.
And what about freedom of movement? Dozens of countries, including most of the European Union, Latin America, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, have barred entry to American tourists and travelers, given this country’s devastatingly high rate of infection. Canada and Mexico just re-upped their bans on U.S. travelers, too. In a sense, the pandemic has indeed helped build a “great, great wall” around America, one that won’t let any of us out.
In fact, Americans are not being welcomed, even by one another. Inside our borders, states are requiring those arriving from other states with high percentages of Covid-19 cases to quarantine themselves for 14 days on arrival (though enforcing such mandates is difficult indeed). New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s list of places subject to such a travel advisory now includes 43 of the 49 other states.
And as we are reminded on a daily basis in the run-up to Election Day, early voters, especially in heavily minority districts, are being forced to wait long hours in endless lines in states where the pandemic is beginning to spike. In some places, local officials clearly set up the conditions for this as a deterrent to those they would prefer not to see at the polls. In Georgia, where a governor was intent on reducing the numbers of polling places to reduce turnout in African-American neighborhoods, the waiting time recently was up to 11 hours. Early voting lines in New York City “stretched for blocks” in multiple venues.
To top it all off, political and racial violence in the country is climbing, often thanks to uniformed law enforcement officers. From George Floyd’s death to federal officials in unmarked vehicles dragging protesters off the streets of Portland, Oregon, to federal law enforcement officers using rubber bullets and tear gas on a gathering crowd of protestors to clear a path to a local church for President Trump, such cases have made the headlines. Meanwhile, officials across the country are ominously preparing to counter violence on Election Day.
In the face of such challenges and deprivations, Americans, for the most part, are learning to adapt to the consequences of the pandemic, while just hoping that someday it will pass, that someday things will return to normal. As early as March 2020, a Pew poll had already detected a significant uptick in symptoms of anxiety nationwide. The percentage of such individuals had doubled, with young people and those experiencing financial difficulties driving the rise.
The American Psychological Association (APA) considers the pandemic not just an epidemiological but a “psychological crisis.” The website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a paper written by two APA authors suggesting that Covid-19 is already taking “a tremendous psychological toll” on the country.
Failing, American-Style
All in all, we find ourselves in a daunting new world, but don’t just blame it on the pandemic. This country was living in a state of denial before Covid-19 hit. The truth is that Americans have been in trouble for a surprisingly long time. The pandemic might have swept away that sense of denial and left us facing a new American reality, as that virus exposed previously ignored vulnerabilities for all to see.
So, expect one thing: that the indicators of America’s decline will far surpass the problems that can be solved by addressing the pandemic’s spread. When Covid-19 is brought under some control, the larger social system may unfortunately remain in tatters, in need of life support, posing new challenges for the country as a whole.
Several observers, witnessing such potentially long-lasting changes to the fabric of American life, have described the United States as resembling a failed state in its reaction to the pandemic. They point not just to the effects of staggering levels of inequality (on the rise for decades) or to a long-term unwillingness to invest in the kind of infrastructure that could keep what’s still the wealthiest country on our planet strong, but to entrenched poverty and the fracturing of work life. Long before the pandemic hit, the Trump administration reflected this downhill slope.
As George Packer recently wrote in the Atlantic, the reaction to the coronavirus crisis here has been more “like Pakistan or Belarus — like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering… Every morning in the endless month of March,” he added, “Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state,” unable to get the equipment, supplies, tests, or medical help they needed to fight the pandemic.
Looking beyond Covid-19 to the Trump administration’s irresponsible handling of climate change and nuclear weapons, TomDispatch’s Tom Engelhardt has also labeled the country a “failed state,” one that now occupies a singular category (which he called “Fourth World”) among the planet’s countries.
There is no codified definition of a failed state, but there is general agreement that such a country has become unable or unwilling to care for its citizens. Safety and sustenance are at risk and stability in multiple sectors of life has become unpredictable. In 2003, future U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice attempted to craft a workable definition of the term in a report for the Brookings Institution, calling on President George W. Bush to address the underlying causes of failed states. “Failed states,” she wrote, “are countries in which the central government does not exert effective control over, nor is it able to deliver vital services to significant parts of its own territory due to conflict, ineffective governance, or state collapse.”
From the Proud Boys to the Wolverine Watchmen, it has become strikingly clear that, in this pandemic year, the U.S. is indeed becoming an increasingly riven, disturbed land and that nothing, including the election of Joe Biden, will simply make that reality disappear without immense effort.
In the twenty-first century, in fact, the United States has visibly been inching ever closer to failed-state status. In 2006, the Fund for Peace, an organization whose mission is global conflict reduction, human security, and economic development, launched a yearly Failed States Index (FSI), changing its name in 2014 to the Fragile State Index. For the last decade, for instance, Yemen has been among the top 10 most fragile states and, for the last two years, number one. Since 2013, Finland has been at the other end of the scale, number 178, the least failed state on the planet.
What’s interesting, however, is the path the United States has travelled over that same decade, dropping a noteworthy 10 places. Until the Trump years, it consistently stood at number 158 or 159 among the 178 nations on the chart. In the 2018 report, however, it took a turn for the worse. In the 2020 report (based on pre-pandemic numbers), it had dropped to 149, reflecting in particular losses in what FSI calls “cohesion,” based on rising nationalist rhetoric among increasingly riven elites and unequal access to resources in a country where economic inequality was already at staggering levels.
Just imagine, then, what the 2021 Index will likely report next April. At present, when it comes to FSI’s rankings, the United States is in the third of five groupings of countries, behind the Scandinavian countries, most of the other nations of Europe, and Singapore. Given today’s realities, it is poised to fall even further.
The Election Moment
Elections are a crucial factor in separating successful from failing states; fair elections, that is, ones that people in a country trust. As Pauline Baker, the director of the Fund for Peace, points out, “Elections are an essential part of democratization, but they can also be conflict-inducing if they are held too soon, are blatantly manipulated, lack transparency, or are marred by violence.”
All you have to do is think about Donald Trump’s endless claims — that this year’s election will be “rigged,” that mail-in ballots will be a fraud, that he won’t necessarily leave office even if the tallies are against him, and so on — to know that a particularly heavy burden has been placed on the results of November 3rd. Add to that burden threats to the election’s viability via disinformation from foreign agents and hackers, Republican Party attempts at voter suppression, and threats of violence by so-called poll watchers.
Meanwhile, an embattled Supreme Court has been issuing decisions on matters like “faithless electors,” extended voting, and absentee ballots. The record so far has been mixed at best. On the one hand, the justices have voted to keep intact the Electoral College rule that requires electors to honor their pledges to vote according to whatever the voters have decided. They also nixed an attempt by the Republican National Committee to enforce a Rhode Island rule that mail-in voters, under pandemic conditions, must have their ballots signed by either two witnesses or a notary public. And most recently, the Court voted 4-4 to uphold Pennsylvania’s decision to extend the absentee ballot deadline.
For the most part, however, its decisions have gone the other way, upholding more restrictive voting policies in 8 out of 11 cases. In July, for example, the court ruled against a decision in Alabama that had eased restrictions on absentee ballot submissions. That same week, it refused to reinstate an order in Texas allowing all voters to cast mail-in ballots due to the pandemic. Meanwhile, it seems that Pennsylvania Republicans are again trying to narrow the time frame on absentee ballots, announcing that they have returned to the Court for a further decision on the matter in light of Justice Amy Barrett’s certain confirmation.
The point is, this election should matter, both the form it takes and its outcome. If trust in the process of voting goes by the wayside, then the image of the United States as a failing, even a failed state will be hard to dispute. And if there is violence at the polls, or after the vote takes place, then we’ll sense an even deeper failure.
While some may view the coming election as a precipitous cliff, with dangers lurking everywhere, I also see it as an opportunity, which is why the tsunami of early voting, often involving hours of waiting, is an encouraging sign. Despite the abyss that we face after four years of chaos and cruelty, this country still has a chance to prove that we are not a failing state and to reclaim our trust in our government, our protections, and one another. Only then will we be able to begin to repair the economic damage, the rank divisiveness, and the unequal allocation of resources that has fueled our disastrous pandemic response and, with it, a further erosion of trust in government.
Maybe we need to accept the challenge of proving in this election that one of the world’s longest-standing democracies can rise to the occasion and vote to uphold the foundation of its system, elections themselves. Maybe, using this very election, we can harness the civic pride that could lead to a successful restoration of our basic beliefs in constitutional principles and the rule of law. The chance to vote, no matter how long the lines and the wait, might be just the opportunity we need.
Karen J. Greenberg, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law, the host of the Vital Interests Podcast, the editor-in-chief of the CNS Soufan Group Morning Brief, and the author of Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State and editor of Reimagining the National Security State: Liberalism on the Brink. Julia Tedesco helped with research for this article.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Originally published in TomDispatch
Copyright 2020 Karen J. Greenberg
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