The United States is facing two grim prospects in 2022: one, that continued abuse of the ecosphere could render much of the Earth unlivable for humans and myriad other species, and two, that the United States’ current political drift toward autocratic rule could accelerate, dashing any hope of attaining a multiracial, pluralistic democracy. These two emergencies are intertwined. Either we find meaningful responses to both, or we fail dramatically on both.
Our climate predicament has been apparent for decades, but last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its starkest assessment yet. The IPCC concluded that to sufficiently limit warming of the atmosphere, global greenhouse-gas emissions must be cut in half by 2030 and by 80 percent by 2040. If efforts fail and current climate policies are kept in place, humanity will experience a calamitous heating of 5 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.
On our political peril, sober-minded elected officials, scholars, analysts, and others have for months been raising ever louder alarms. An attempted hijacking of the U.S. electoral process, they say, is under way. The Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance moved the U.S. out of its “democracy” category late last year, classifying us instead as a “backsliding democracy.”
We are entering what could well turn out to be, for the United States, the most consequential span of time since the 1860s. Movements both to defend the ecosphere and to remake our society, for the first time, as a multiracial, small-d democracy have gained strength in recent years. But we are now seeing a backlash that aims to take us down a very different road, toward far-right minority rule and accelerated degradation of the Earth.
The Far-Right Power Grab
Our nation has arrived not at a crossroads but at a T-junction. There’s no path leading straight ahead, no more business as usual. Historians of democracy and its decline tell us that we’ll soon be turning one way or the other—either toward a deeper, more diverse, inclusive democracy centered on justice and a livable future for all, or toward life under a corporate-dominated, far-right regime in an ecologically impoverished world.
We have known for decades that urgent action is required to prevent climate catastrophe, but the United States has frittered those years away. Time after time, legislation aimed at suppressing greenhouse-gas emissions, curbing the die-off of biodiversity, or halting the disruption of other critical Earth systems has been pronounced dead on arrival in Washington, out of fear that it would interfere with economic growth.
Recent events have brought this failure into sharper focus. Russia’s war on Ukraine disrupted global oil and gas markets and presented another clear opportunity to finally start addressing climate by reducing the world’s dependence on all oil and gas, not just Russian supplies. A bipartisan array of key figures in the White House and Congress called in unison for climate-busting increases in oil and gas production at the same time that the Republican half of Congress was busy endorsing, or at best ignoring, electoral hijinks in state legislatures that would hasten the nation’s descent toward one-party autocratic rule—further thickening the atmosphere of ecological/political dread.
Our institutions have failed us in ways large and small, but we now face the possibility of a much broader systemic breakdown. If we fail to block the far-right power grab, opportunities for positive governmental action, not only on climate but on a host of other issues we have long fallen short of addressing—general ecological degradation, Indigenous rights, economic and racial justice, health, food and agriculture, women’s rights, workers’ rights, and, crucially, universal voting rights—will slip even further out of reach.
Scholars who study the decline of democracies are warning that the Capitol attack of January 6, 2021, was just the beginning. Both the far right and the establishment right are seeking to exploit constitutional vulnerabilities and suppress the political agency of Americans of color. Working largely through state legislatures, they aim to gain control over all three branches of the federal government. From there, they could enact voting legislation to keep their regime in power indefinitely, reinforce the racial caste system, increase corporate power, further militarize policing, and keep extracting maximum fossil fuels for maximum profit.
In late 2020, with the peaceful transfer of presidential power under threat, the Center for Systemic Peace (CSP) downgraded the United States’ status from “democracy” to “anocracy,” the latter term signifying a nation in limbo between democracy and autocracy (i.e., tyranny). CSP edged us back, just barely, into the “democracy” portion of their scale in early 2022. Nevertheless, warned Barbara F. Walter, a historian and the author of How Civil Wars Start, “we could easily slip back into anocracy,” and from there, she wrote, things could go either way: “Anocracy is usually transitional—a repressive government allows reforms, or a democracy begins to unravel—and it is volatile.”
The current volatility grows out of right-wing desperation. The historian Thomas Zimmer wrote recently that for the white far-right, “allegiance has never been to democratic ideals—their acceptance of democracy was always conditional and depending entirely on whether or not it would be set up in a way that allowed for the forces of multiracial pluralism to be kept in check.” In recent years, Zimmer argues, “the lack of legitimacy for the restricted white elite version of democracy”—the system we have lived under all our lives—has become too stark to ignore. A solid majority of voters now find that hoary old version of democracy to be wholly unacceptable, so candidates who oppose pluralism find it harder and harder to prevail in properly conducted elections. Therefore, Zimmer concludes, “America will either slide into authoritarianism or make the leap to multiracial, pluralistic democracy.”
Zimmer is talking about that T-junction we’ve arrived at, but he uses more active imagery: if we don’t take a bold “leap” toward the multiracial democracy that America has so far failed to achieve, we will “slide” inexorably into an autocratic future. Our current, truncated version of democracy—of, by, and for only some of the people—cannot hold together much longer.
We Have Two Years to Get Ten
The IPCC’s report points to a stark conclusion: actions we take in the next ten years will largely determine whether a future catastrophic heating of the Earth can be prevented. One could now argue that in the United States, the climate movement faces an even shorter deadline. Given the anti-democracy camp’s fealty to the fossil-fuel industry and hostility toward climate mitigation, the question of whether we will have an opportunity even to work for, let alone achieve necessary federal legislation within the next decade could be decided in just the next two years or so. We’d better use the coming months wisely.
With vigorous mobilization, hard work, and solidarity, we could manage a leap toward a more pluralistic and just democracy. Nevertheless, I’d like to discuss how we could keep striving toward a livable future even if we were to find ourselves living under a far-right regime. Such a discussion will be productive whether or not the worst comes to pass. We need to be aiming for a radical social-ecological transformation now, whichever direction the U.S. polity turns in the period ahead.
I’m among those who have argued that although reducing emissions and respecting ecological limits at the individual, household, and community scales is good and necessary, national action is also essential. With so few years left for the U.S. to eliminate fossil-fuel use, only a declining national cap on fossil fuels use can ensure that we are all playing by the same fair rules, and that oil, gas, and coal use is driven down to zero quickly enough. In a society where it’s the people who decide, we still would have a fighting chance to get such policies passed, at long last, into law. But if the anti-democracy camp manages to take the driver’s seat and shift federal climate policy into reverse, we will need to redouble our efforts to confront the climate emergency and preserve economic and civil rights in other ways, wherever and whenever we can.
A Tsunami for Democracy?
In marginalized communities, many might well respond to all these warnings of climate chaos and the death of democracy by asking, “What democracy?” Structural racism has meant a history of slavery and state-enforced racial terrorism that much of the country simply won’t acknowledge. Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities have been fighting injustice for centuries and have intergenerational traditions of resistance that continue to this day. Indigenous peoples continue to be at the forefront of the climate movement, standing up to the fossil-fuel industry and undermining its ability to operate. These communities are also at the forefront of educating the public on non-Western traditions for living in harmony with the Earth and its natural limits.
If the right takes full power in Washington and a majority of state capitals, and we lose much of our ability to effect change through the ballot box, grassroots climate action will become more important than ever. For that, movements like the Indigenous-led pipeline struggles, Extinction Rebellion, youth climate strikes, the Sunrise Movement, and the like provide sterling models. They have helped lift climate and its broader ecological-social context to near the top of the list of public concerns, polls show—even in the face of corporate and political hostility that is explicit, unapologetic, and often violent. Meanwhile, existing and emerging efforts to bring human activity into harmony with the rest of the ecosphere must carry on, whatever the sociopolitical context. For instance, efforts here at the Land Institute, where I am, and among our allies, to transform food production and reverse soil degradation, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse-gas emissions, will play a central role.
The possibilities looming ahead may look grim, but we are not powerless bystanders capable only of gawking at events as they unfold over the next two years and beyond. Pro-democracy voters could, through our sheer numbers, overwhelm the anti-democracy camp’s attempts to subvert the Constitution. The movements for climate mitigation and justice, Indigenous sovereignty, Black lives, economic democracy, and the Earth could merge into one collective wave. Other events, unforeseeable today, also might change the landscape of possibilities in our favor.
But we don’t have time to stand back, to wait and see. The clock is ticking. In the upcoming months, we’ll need to strive for a leap even as we brace ourselves for a slide.
The original version of this article was published by City Lights Books as part of its monthly “In Real Time” series. Listen to audio editions of all “In Real Time” dispatches, as well as the monthly podcast. Also don’t miss the evolving “In Real Time” art project.
Stan Cox is the author of The Path to a Livable Future (City Lights, 2021) and The Green New Deal and Beyond (City Lights, 2020).
In the media, we see one-sided media campaign against Ethiopia, where armed war has broken out between the central government and rebels in the northern province of Tigray. In the absence of knowledge of the content of the conflict, Western governments and the media choose to support the rebels’ narrative. Rebels who have strong friends in Washington. One is tempted to say – as usual. If you take a closer look at who advises Joe Biden in Washington, you better understand the confusion. These are people who were closely linked to the old regime in Addis Ababa, a regime dominated by the Tigray people of the TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front).
The old guard
The ethnically based TPLF regime lost power in 2018 after ruling Ethiopia for 27 years. Popular protests and demonstrations resulted in losing power. Oppression of ethnic minorities and a brutal policy meant that people had enough of decades of oppression. In a desperate attempt to retain power and influence, the TPLF has attempted a coup-like attempt aimed at the newly elected government with President Abiy Ahmed. When the TPLF lost power, they withdrew to Tigray and went over to open struggle against the government. In this fight, they received support from Washington, and the United States has increasingly been hated through its support for the TPLF – which has switched to the use of open terror. The result is that the future prospects of the United States in Ethiopia have deteriorated, as the United States, through its actions, has strengthened the anti-colonialist and pan-African forces working for a more independent Africa. The EU has also chosen the same course and commented on the conflict in a way that lacks evidence and basis in what actually happened in the conflict.
The TPLF was formed in 1975 as a Marxist organization, and from the beginning there was a faction with plans to establish the province of Tigray as an independent state, as a “Great Tigray”. The TPLF actively participated in the fight against the military dictatorship of Mengistu, which was supported by the Soviet Union. The strongest factor, however, was the Eritrean liberation movement, the EPLF, which trained the TPLF militarily and which, through the use of guerrilla leadership and strategic advantages of Eritrea’s geography, crushed the Ethiopian army. Ethiopia had air support, but could not match the freedom fighters who had massive support in the population. With the support of the EPLF, the TPLF then conquered power over Ethiopia, a multi-ethnic country historically marked by a strong central power that has tried to oppress the minorities. For example through repression of unrest and denial of Eritrea’s independence. Changing regimes have thus waged war against Eritrea, whether under Emperor Haile Selassie, the Mengistu regime or the TPLF regime. After many years of war, the Mengistu regime collapsed. The EPLF liberated Eritrea, and the TPLF seized power in Ethiopia in 1991.
It was a government based on an ethnic minority of 6% of the population, and this minority from Tigray occupied key positions in the country. The TPLF changed Ethiopia’s regional division to follow ethnic and linguistic criteria. Ethiopia is otherwise a patchwork of ethnic groups with their own languages and with several religions that live close together. This division was fateful and laid the groundwork for growing conflicts between ethnic groups.
The regime became increasingly hated and developed into a kleptocratic regime that filled its own pockets and was good at gaining support from the West. Large sums could be transfered to the accounts of senior TPLF persons abroad. At the same time, Ethiopia continued to wage war against Eritrea – instead of focusing on development and cooperation in one of the world’s poorest regions.
The TPLF continued to have significant control over the military, and large sections of the country’s military were located in Tigray. Was it to plan to regain power – or was it to ensure a consolidation of their plans for a Big Tigray? Probably both.
TPLF starts the war
At night 4 Nov. In 2020, the TPLF attacked the military bases of the Northern Military Command, located in Tigray. It is reported that it was a brutal, unprovoked assault in which about 400 officers and soldiers were slaughtered while sleeping in their barracks. The TPLF seized munitions, including long-range missiles, in which 22 were fired at Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. TPLF also went on the offensive in neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar, with great devastation as a result and mass exodus of people. Many were murdered as TPLF supporters went from house to house with machetes and knives. The city of Mai Kadra in particular was hit hard by massacres, and these brutal murders are well documented. There was extensive destruction of infrastructure as well as buildings as well as hospitals, clinics, colleges, bridges and roads. Tragic devastation where only the civilian population are losers. The TPLF has desperately thrown itself into a war to regain the power they have lost. As always in wars, truth is the first victim of war, and the TPLF has skillfully used its vast financial resources to portray itself as the victims through effective cyber-propaganda. The use of social media has led to a cascade of misinformation about what has actually happened.
US strategic mistake
Ethiopia has long been an “anchor” in the region in US foreign policy. Through control of Ethiopia, the United States was able to control the Red Sea, one of the world’s most important trade routes. During the feudal empire under Haile Selassie, Ethiopia was a secure partner, however interrupted by a military coup under Colonel Mengistu who allied with the Soviet Union. Colonel Mengistu imposed a brutal dictatorship and continued the struggle against Eritrea’s independence, which was a serious mistake. Although Ethiopia received massive military support from the Eastern Bloc, it was defeated by the Eritrean liberation movement, which had the advantage of a population that supported the rebels, and mountainous terrain ideal for guerrilla warfare.
In 1991, Eritrea became an independent nation, which broke with American foreign policy, which since decolonization in Africa and the Cold War had supported Ethiopia’s control of Eritrea. Eritrea had fought against both the great superpowers and took over a war-torn country after 30 years of armed freedom struggle. With Ethiopia’s defeat in Eritrea, it opened up for a takeover of Ethiopia by the Tigray group. It orientated itself towards the United States and, as before, had ambitions to control Eritrea. The TPLF proved to be a willing tool for the United States and during the Bush
administration’s “war on terror” the United States was able to send prisoners to torture prisons in Ethiopia. As a reward for this loyalty, Ethiopia was given free rein to continue its sabotage of the peace agreement with Eritrea. Ethiopia also attacked Somalia with the support of the West and committed serious war crimes in Ogaden, which is populated by a Somali-speaking population. Ogaden came under a total blockade, in which the abuses that took place were largely ignored by the West.
In the 1998-2000 war against Eritrea, in which the Ethiopian military massively attacked Eritrea and penetrated far into Eritrea, the United States played a passive role. It was a very bloody war, and hundreds of thousands of Eritreans had to flee north into Eritrea in order not to be captured inside the territories occupied by Ethiopia. A peace agreement is signed in Algiers in 2000, confirmed by the USA and the EU, with a detailed plan for marking the border, and a UN force (UNMEE) is deployed, to which Denmark also contributed. After the border was demarcated by an independent commission, Ethiopia refused to recognize it and was not sanctioned for this breach. Ethiopia did not withdraw its troops from territories allotted to Eritrea.
Where changing US governments and presidents had unconditionally supported the TPLF regime, and seen through fingers with the regime’s brutal repression, a change is happening with Trump, who shifted focus away from the region. New people came in office in Washington with responsibility for African policy, and the sanctions that had been imposed from 2009 – 2018 against Eritrea are lifted. With the Biden government, however, the old people return to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had nurtured very close ties with the TPLF government and seen through fingers with the TPLF’s brutal rule. These are senior Democrats like Samantha Power and Susan Rice, who have also been very active in sanctioning Eritrea. There are also people who become very active in the media war, where one is passive in the face of the heinous crimes committed by the TPLF, and resulting in the Ethiopian government designates the TPLF as a terrorist organization.
Ahmed Abiy comes to power
The TPLF loses power in Addis Ababa in a reasonably peaceful transition in April 2018, with the opposition taking over. New prime minister is Abiy Ahmed, and the TPLF elite, who suddenly lose all their power, begins to fight the new government. A serious breach occurs when the TPLF decides to hold regional elections in Tigray, contrary to the government’s postponement of elections due to COVID-19. Abbink (2021) writes that the TPLF fought against being pushed aside, losing both military power and control of their business empire. As well as the risk of being held accountable for their crimes. Their history as an “avant-garde party” had shown that they had spared no means to crush their opponents. Their years of support from the US and the EU over 27 years had given them the belief of being self-described to power. Their strategy now became to control Tigray and present themselves as victims. A narrative they managed to sell to Western media and governments. There were no real social reasons for the uprising in Tigray, and it is described by Abbink (2021) as an elite “top-down” uprising after losing power. The people of Tigray and the neighboring provinces of Amhara and Afar were to pay a great price.
Abiy then surprises everyone by making peace with Eritrea and traveling to Asmara and meeting with great cheers. The President of Eritrea comes to Addis Ababa, and this thaw in the longtime frozen relations between the two countries surprises everyone, not least the West, which suddenly sees African leaders step into character with their own agenda. Abiy utters the famous words: “Isayas is leading us! ”. Shocking statement for
Washington and Brussels, which have been accustomed to seeing Ethiopia as a state that has not challenged imperialism.
The TPLF is declared a terrorist organization
In May 2021, the Ethiopian government declares the TPLF a terrorist organization. This is due to the massive atrocities that have taken place in Tigray and in the neighboring provinces of Amhara and Afar. Child soldiers are being used, ethnic killings, sexual abuse and rape take place, looting, destruction of hospitals, churches and infrastructure and not least massacres of civilians, which can in no way be military targets. TPLF opens prisons and thousands of criminals are released. TPLF emerges as an elite fighting for its own interests and taking an entire population hostage in their nationalist and ethnicized project. The future of an entire generation is being destroyed.
At the same time, the TPLF portrays it as being besieged and using hunger as a political weapon in their propaganda. Emergency transports and trucks are confiscated and do not return, but are used by the TPLF in their warfare. War in an agricultural country where people flee and are expelled causes great suffering, not least because it means that the peasants cannot cultivate their land. But the lack of condemnation from the West is causing great bitterness in Addis Ababa. Although overwhelming evidence is presented of the TPLF’s aggression, the United States and the West are passive, thus giving the TPLF hope that their uprising has support. It succeeds especially through a targeted campaign on social media with the support of TPLF-positive groups abroad.
All parties to the war have made abuses, but the TPLF surpasses all with their ethnic killings of innocent civilians in both Tigray and the neighboring provinces of Amhara and Afar. It caused a shock in the Ethiopian public, but was not the subject of publicity in the global media. On the contrary, Joe Biden imposed sanctions, and the European Parliament expressed support for the rebels in a resolution. It was widely seen in Ethiopia as a neocolonial policy.
Cyber war
TPLF have orchestrated a targeted propaganda in global media in a regular cyber war, that has affected world public opinion in a way that made it as important as their warfare on earth. This meant that media outlets such as CNN, the New York Times and the Daily Telegraph broadcast news based on TPLF propaganda. For example, New York Times referred to child soldiers as “highly motivated young recruits” (Abbink, 2021).
Through a narrative that the TPLF were the victims and were subjected to genocide and starvation, it managed for a period to influence the Western media and politicians. The government of Addis Ababa declared a unilateral ceasefire in June 2021, but the TPLF continued their mass killings and ravages. However, the large amount of information about their atrocities and war crimes, not least the brutal ethnic violence in the neighboring provinces, has meant that their image is crumbling.
Ethiopia is not bowing
The Ethiopian government has entered into character and has expelled UN staff who, contrary to their mandate, have supported the TPLF. It triggered automatic condemnations from the EU and the US, which otherwise do not refrain from expelling diplomats. Ethiopia has been subjected to a massive international campaign in which leading political forces in the United States and the European Union have not addressed “facts on the ground”. This has led to an unnecessary prolongation of the crisis in northern Ethiopia. There is a need for a more evidence-based policy that works with the Ethiopian federal government to stop ethnic-based violence and support peaceful development in the region. The current policy has the character of a neo-imperialist policy towards an independent country, Ethiopia, which has never been colonized. The protests in Africa against this policy are strong – they say #NoMore.
John Graversgaard is a political activist from Denmark
Translated from the internet magazine Kritisk Revy:
https://solidaritet.dk/etiopien-og-usas-forfejlede-politik/
Notes
A fact bases source with great knowledge of Etriopia is professor Jon Abbink, Leiden University, Holland. And some of his articles are brought here:
Jon Abbink: The politics of conflict in Northern Ethiopia, 2020-2021: A study of war-making, media bias and policy struggle. African Studies Centre Leiden, The Netherlands. Working Paper 152/ 2021
‘The Ethiopia Conflict in International Relations and Global Media Discourse’, In E-International Relations 5 (2021), 6 p. (ISSN: 2053-8626, open access, https://www.e-ir.info/2021/11/21/the-ethiopia-conflict-in-international-relations-and-global-media-discourse/).
‘Getting things right on the Ethiopia conflict’ (29 August 2021). Reply on the website of African Arguments to: https://africanarguments.org/2021/08/an-open-call-by-african-intellectuals-for-urgent-action-on-ethiopia/
Also on:https://medium.com/@JonAbbink?p=e128eaaf82d8
Also on: https://ethioreference.com/archives/29171.
‘Tendency to demonise Ethiopia and give free pass to TPLF is false narrative’. In: Business Day newspaper (Johannesburg, ZA), 12 Nov. 2021.
‘Refocusing the Ethiopia conflict: grave doubts about the narratives of ‘humanitarian blockade’ and ‘Tigray genocide’.’ On https://medium.com/@JonAbbink/refocusing-the-ethiopia-conflict-grave-doubts-about-the-narratives-of-humanitarian-blockade-and-b1f0fb9dd4e5 (21-11-2021)
Aother sources:
Blankspot( Homesite in Sweden with information on the conclict in Ethiopia)
Debatt: Ensidig journalistik om Etiopien när det gamla gardet försöker ta tillbaka makten – BlankspotText: Ahmed Ali. Ansvarig utgivare på Etiopiska Radion i Sverige.
Överlevare vittnar om en fruktansvärd massaker.https://blankspot.se/overlevare-vittnar-om-en-fruktansvard-massaker%ef%bf%bc/
Aregawi Berhe: Origins of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front. African Affairs, 103/413, 569-592, 2004.
Twisting Facts for “Humanitarian Intervention” – Eritrea Ministry Of Information (shabait.com)
http://almariam.com/2021/11/14/u-s-starting-another-forever-war-imposing-pax-americana-on-ethiopia/
We were in a Lebanese village where all of us who came from the Burj shimali camp gathered in one room. The Zionist army treated the Lebanese in that period well, intending to win the sympathy of the Lebanese people. But this changed after some time when the Lebanese realized that Israel’s goals were far beyond eliminating the PLO. Indeed after few months the Lebanese resistance began to hit the Zionist invaders.
Abu Rami, who died years later, knew a Lebanese man.
This Lebanese man loves singing and humor, which made us forget for a short time the catastrophe we live in. We used to visit him in the evening, but once we go back (home) to sleep with dozens of people in the narrow room we remember our bitter reality.
We lived in anxiety every day and did not know our fate. We used to hear all the rumors about the arrival of the Israeli army to this or that area and the arrest of people.
We know from the old Palestinians that when the Zionists occupy a country, they start killing whoever they see on their way to spread terror. This is what repeatedly happened in Palestine in 1948, intending to terrorize the population to leave.
One of the stories I heard took place in the village of Salha in the Galilee in 1948; they lined the young people on the wall and shot them.
I had a dreadful feeling of being lost. Perhaps it was the first time in my life that I felt that the world was so small despite the large geography.
One day Abu Rami suggested we go to a nearby village because he knows the Mukhtar of the town, and the Mukhtar in a village is the symbolic representative of the state. Abu Rami worked with his father in asphalting the roads, so he knew the area well and had acquaintances there. Abu Rami knocked on the Mukhtar’s house, and his wife opened the door; she looked at us and said that the Mukhtar was not there.
Abu Rami said that he is confident that the Mukhtar is at home, but he does not want to receive us because receiving a Palestinian has become a scary matter for the Lebanese. This is undoubtedly due to the Israeli propaganda to frighten the Lebanese.
We walked between the olive groves, and there I was thirsty. I saw a woman with black clothes, and I went to ask her about water. I tried to imitate the Lebanese dialect, but the woman knew that we were Palestinians and not Lebanese. She gave us water and asked us to leave at once because Israelis were earlier in the village.
We passed near a cemetery, and one commented that the dead people are lucky that they are not in this hell?
We went back again to the village we were in. We were five people. Abu Rami , and Abu Issam the UNRWA health official in the camp. He is a gentleman with a bourgeois appearance and still maintains his elegance despite everything that happened. And Naief a blacksmith who enjoys good humor and was making jokes most of the time. And Nazmi worked as a teacher in the United Arab Emirates and arrived in Lebanon to spend his summer vacation three days before the invasion.
Despite the tragic situation, we laughed as we watched Nazmi in this situation. He was still in state of shock, and he said, “People, last week I was sitting in a beautiful café in a hotel in Dubai, and now I find myself running from place to place.”
We lived in fear and worry all the time. We hear rumors about the impending arrival of the Israelis, and we also heard that the Israelis entered the camp and arrested many people.
The next day, after spending about ten days in the Lebanese village, we thought to cross the mountains, heading towards an area close to the Syrian border, which the occupation did not reach. We walked upwards on the hill, and it was easy to fall at any time, so we had to walk slowly.
We walk with the feeling that we live in a world where there is no morality or conscience. It a very terrible feeling.
The Israeli planes were passing over us, and we hear the sounds of bombing planes, and we thought sometimes that they might shoot us. After about 7 hours of exhausting walking, we arrived on the outskirts of a Lebanese village, and there we saw an Israeli military column of tanks advancing towards the village.
It was a frustrating view. We decided to go back to the village because we had no other choice.
Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian Norwegian researcher, lecturer playwright and poet, wrote more than 17 books such as Perspectives on thought, culture and political sociology, in thought, culture and ideology, the road to Baghdad. Palestine in heart
Visits to Honiara, part plea, part threat. Delegations equipped with a note of harassment. That was the initial Australian effort to convince the Solomon Islands that the decision to make a security pact with Beijing was simply not appropriate in the lotus land of Washington’s Pacific empire.
Despite an election campaign warming up, Senator Zed Seselja found time to tell Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare that Australia remained dedicated to supporting the security needs of the Solomon Islands, and would do so “swiftly, transparently and with full respect for its sovereignty”. The Pacific country remained a friend, part of the “Pacific family”. He went on to “respectfully” urge the Solomon Islands to reject the security pact with China and “consult the Pacific family in the spirit of regional openness and transparency, consistent with our region’s security frameworks.”
Having not convinced Honiara to change course, a range of reactions are being registered. David Llewellyn-Smith, former owner of the Asia Pacific foreign affairs journal The Diplomat, took leave of his senses by suggesting that a Chinese naval base in the Solomons would see “the effective end of our sovereignty and democracy”. In a spray of hysteria, he suggested that this was “Australia’s Cuban missile crisis”.
The Labor opposition, desperate to win office on May 21, are calling this one of the greatest intelligence failures since the Second World War, which perhaps shows their somewhat tenuous command of history. Their leader, Anthony Albanese, seeking some safe mooring in a campaign that has lacked lustre, was particularly strident. It was a chance to show that Labor was not shaky or wobbly on national security. “The security agreement between China and the Solomons is a massive failure of our foreign policy,” stated the opposition leader as he campaigned in Bomaderry in southern New South Wales. “We are closer here today to the Solomon Islands than we are to Perth. That shows how strategic they are to Australia.”
This belligerent, simple note might have been stronger were it not for the fact that his deputy, Richard Marles, had previously made the unpopular suggestion that the Pacific islands were somehow sovereign entities who needed to be treated as such while China, in providing development assistance to them, should be “welcome” in offering it. The goons of the Rupert Murdoch roundtable capitalised, hoping to find a Chinese Red under Marles’s bed.
Scratching for electoral gains, Labor thought that it was inappropriate to have sent the junior minister, as if that would have made much of a difference. Foreign Minister Marise Payne, it was said, should have been flown in to bully those misguided savages into submission.
In Australia, the message being fanned is that the deputy – in this case, Canberra – failed in the task, leaving it to the United States to come in and hold up what seemed like a sinking ship of strategy. “The United States very much relies upon Australia and sees Australia as playing that key role in the Indo-Pacific,” lamented Albanese. “Australia and Scott Morrison have gone missing.”
The Morrison government poured water on such criticism by suggesting a fair share of oriental deviousness at play. Not only had the likes of Defence Minister Peter Dutton been advised by the intelligence fraternity to keep matters tame in terms of attacking the security pact; the agreement was the product of bribery. On radio, Dutton responded to a question from 3AW host Neil Mitchell about the suggestion. “You asked the question about bribery and corruption – we don’t pay off, we don’t bribe people, and the Chinese certainly do.”
This clean linen view of Australian conduct is fabulously ignorant, ignoring such inglorious chapters as the oil-for-food scandal which saw the Australian Wheat Board pay $300 million in kickbacks between 1999 and 2004 to the Iraq regime via Alia, a Jordanian trucking company. These bribing arrangements, which breached UN Security Council sanctions imposed after Baghdad’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991, were unmasked in 2005.
With Australia failing to change minds, the paladins of the US imperium prepared to badger and bore Honiara. On the list: President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan; Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink; and National Security Affairs Indo-Pacific chief Kurt Campbell. It seemed like an absurd gathering of heft for a small Pacific Island state.
The theme was unmistakable. A bullying tone was struck in a message from National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson, who seemed to forget the Solomons was not some ramshackle protectorate of the Five Eyes. Officials from the US, Japan, New Zealand and Australia had “shared concerns about [the] proposed security framework between the Solomon Islands and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its serious risks to a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
At the Washington Post, Henry Olsen was trying to speak home truths about an empire facing rust and decline. The unipolar world that came into being after the demise of the Soviet Union had ended. “Our adversaries can fight back, and they are increasingly using every means at their disposal to push back against American influence.”
He went on to put focus upon the thin stretch of territory in the Pacific that has exercised so many in Washington and Canberra. “Lose too many places such as the Solomon Islands, and the threat will start to get uncomfortably close to home.” It was more prudent “to spend big and push outward now rather than to be boxed into a corner later.” In other words, more bribery, the very thing tut-tutted by Dutton, was needed.
As for the Solomon Islands itself, divided, fragmented and vulnerable to internal dissent and disagreement, Sogavare is unrepentant. “When a helpless mouse is cornered by vicious cats it will do anything to survive.” He has already told his country’s parliament that there is no intention “to ask China to build a military base in Solomon Islands.” He felt “insulted” by such suggestions and felt that there was only one side to pick: “our national security interest.”
His confidant and former prime minister Danny Philip also reminded critics barking about the lack of transparency over the Sino-Solomon Islands deal that they should know better. “People in Australia know very little about Pine Gap in the middle of the desert, the military base of the United States.” There were “agreements that open up all major ports in Australia that are not being seen by all the citizens of that country.”
Unfortunately for the government in Honiara, thoughts of invasion and pre-emptive action on the part of Australia, possibly with aid from the United States, cannot be ruled out. Instead of being parked in an asylum of inoffensive obscurity, pundits such as Llewellyn-Smith are encouraging invasion and conquest. Australia, he advocates in a refreshing burst of honest blood-filled jingoism, “should invade and capture Guadalcanal such that we engineer regime change in Honiara.”
Sovereignty for the Pacific was always a qualified concept for those exercising true naval power, and US-Australian conduct in recent weeks has made an utter nonsense of it. At least some cavalier types are willing to own up to it.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
France is now a major area of focus in today’s geopolitics. Its on-going election is the issue. The current geopolitical scene with the background of the Ukraine war has pulled much attention to France’s election.
The current election scene in the matured bourgeois democracy exemplifies a part of the bourgeois politics.
What has happened there with election? The tough competition between two contenders is known to all. The same is interference in the political process, which claims to be free, fair, and make other similar claims.
German, Portuguese and Spanish leaders have publicly announced their choice for a particular candidate; and that announcement has been made in France.
Who is their preferred candidate?
The preferred candidate is Emmanuel Macron.
The three leaders have warned voters against supporting Marine Le Pen, the National Rally leader.
It was last Thursday; and Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, Antonio Costa, the Portuguese Prime Minister, and Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, in a jointly written column published in Le Monde and El Pais expressed their opinion: The populists and the extreme right in their countries have made Putin an ideological and political model, echoing Putin’s nationalist demands.
They claimed: Putin’s aggression targets not only Ukraine, but also the values that France and its European partners defend.
The leaders explained further:
The second round of the election in France is not an election like the others, as France is a central country in the European project.
It’s the choice between a democratic candidate having belief that France is stronger in a powerful and autonomous EU, and a far-right candidate openly standing with those who attack our freedom, our democracy.
The leaders’ article said:
Unity is the only way to prosperity, to globalization in a human way, to defend international peace and order. This is the reason France is needed by their side. The need is that France that defends justice against anti-democratic leaders like Putin.
The article is an endorsement of one candidate; and the endorsement is by three leaders of three countries. The poll, second round of election, is tomorrow, April 24. The article clearly indicated support for one candidate, and opposition to another.
The questions that surface are:
Is not this interference?
How should such an incident – article by leader(s) from other country(ies) on the eve of an election in another country, virtual endorsement, etc. – be interpreted? Not interference? Had this been the case of a leader from China or Russia? How the MSM, the mainstream media, would have reacted to such an act by a leader from China or Russia? Not interference?
The terms – populists, extreme right, nationalist, aggression, values being defended, European project, democratic candidate, powerful and autonomous EU, freedom, democracy, unity, prosperity, globalization in a human way, international peace and order, justice, anti-democratic leaders like Putin – have different interpretations to different parties, which depend on position/interest. Instead of entering into that debate, a long debate that will be, the incident can be evaluated – is it interference or not?
Election interference is not a new development in the bourgeois/imperialist world. Imperialist election interference doesn’t only happen in the Third and Fourth World countries. Election interference happens in developed/matured bourgeois democracies. It’s a regular political development in these countries. This is happening regularly in many European countries, which pose as democracy. It’s a political activity, bourgeois political activity; and this can be traced in pre- and post-World War I period. Since post-WWII, the activity increased. A detailed search in election-incidents in many European countries shows the proofs. The interfered European countries not only include small economies, bigger economies are there also.
This fact is an evidence of the character of bourgeois democracy, which the MSM propagates as a political system universal in character, and having no class interest, having no connection to capital/character of capital. The interesting part of this bourgeois democracy-story is that a part of the pro-people political forces consider bourgeois democracy as universal; accept it as the sole yard-stick of democracy, and forget its class character.
The current French-story carries another indication: This is happening in the context of a certain significant geopolitical development: the Ukraine War, to put it shortly; and an almost globe-wide war with hot and non-hot weapons, to be specific. The hot weapons that include artillery, etc., need no explanation. The non-hot weapons appear economic and financial sanctions, whose blasting power and limitation are indefinite/not-fully known to the users themselves. Election interference activity in some Third/Fourth World country till pre-Ukraine War carried no such significance.
This development, the French-story, is important from this aspect – a certain condition of capital’s role in the democracy the capital has developed, its geopolitics, its interdependence, and its factional condition.
Farooque Chowdhury writes from Dhaka. With the Passing Time, NGG Books, Dhaka, www.nggbooks.wordpress.com, is his recent book.
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