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Listen to Barack Obama's Chilling Description of US Involvement in the Gigantic 1965 Indonesia Massacre
Jon Schwarz, The Intercept
Schwarz writes: "This week, Indonesian President Joko Widodo acknowledged the 'staggering mass slaughter' that took place 57 years ago."
This week, Indonesian President Joko Widodo acknowledged the “staggering mass slaughter” that took place 57 years ago.
Joko Widodo, the president of Indonesia, expressed regret on Wednesday about 12 instances of “gross human rights violations” over the past decades of the nation’s history — including an extraordinary U.S.-backed bloodbath carried out by the Indonesian military following a coup in 1965.
The carnage targeted the Indonesian Communist Party — known as Partai Komunis Indonesia, or PKI — as well as their family members, purported sympathizers, or people who stood next to a member of the PKI at a bus stop once. (It was not an exact science.) At least 500,000 Indonesians were killed, often up close with machetes or knives. Soon afterward the Central Intelligence Agency, which played a key role in supporting the massacre, called it “one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century.”
Remarkably, Barack Obama used similar language in a passage in his 1995 autobiography “Dreams From My Father,” referring to the killings as “one of the more brutal and swift campaigns of suppression in modern times.” Yet this section of the book has received almost no notice. A Google search finds references to that sentence from Boston public radio station WBUR; the student newspaper at Northwestern; the New York Review of Books; my dormant blog; and little else.
As Obama describes it, he moved with his mother from the U.S. to Indonesia in 1967 after she divorced his father and married Lolo, an Indonesian engineer. Obama recorded the audiobook version of “Dreams From My Father” himself, so we can hear the president-to-be describing the terrifying facts his mother learned about both their adopted country and the country they’d come from:
Barack Obama Describes the 1965 Indonesia Coup and Mass SlaughterOr if you prefer to read rather than listen, here are Obama’s words:
She found herself a job right away teaching English to Indonesian businessmen at the American embassy. … The Americans were mostly older men, careerists in the State Department, the occasional economists or journalists who would mysteriously disappear for months at a time, their affiliation or function in the embassy never quite clear. …
These men knew the country, though, or parts of it anyway, the closets where the skeletons were buried. Over lunch or casual conversation they would share with her things she couldn’t learn in the published news reports. They explained how Sukarno had frayed badly the nerves of a U.S. government already obsessed with the march of communism through Indochina, what with his nationalist rhetoric and his politics of nonalignment — he was as bad as Lumumba or Nasser! — only worse, given Indonesia’s strategic importance. Word was that the CIA had played a part in the coup, although nobody knew for sure. More certain was the fact that after the coup the military had swept the countryside for supposed Communist sympathizers. The death toll was anybody’s guess: a few hundred thousand, maybe; half a million. Even the smart guys at the Agency had lost count.
Innuendo, half-whispered asides; that’s how she found out that we had arrived in Djakarta less than a year after one of the more brutal and swift campaigns of suppression in modern times. The idea frightened her, the notion that history could be swallowed up so completely, the same way the rich and loamy earth could soak up the rivers of blood that had once coursed through the streets; the way people could continue about their business beneath giant posters of the new president as if nothing had happened. …
Power. The word fixed in my mother’s mind like a curse. In America, it had generally remained hidden from view until you dug beneath the surface of things; until you visited an Indian reservation or spoke to a black person whose trust you had earned. But here power was undisguised, indiscriminate, naked, always fresh in the memory. Power had taken Lolo and yanked him back into line just when he thought he’d escaped, making him feel its weight, letting him know that his life wasn’t his own. That’s how things were; you couldn’t change it, you could just live by the rules, so simple once you learned them. And so Lolo had made his peace with power, learning the wisdom of forgetting.
The 1965 coup and its hideous aftermath is covered in detail in the recent book “The Jakarta Method” by former Washington Post reporter Vincent Bevins.
Indonesia was governed from World War II until 1965 by President Sukarno (some Indonesians have a single name) who had previously led the resistance to Dutch colonization. This made the U.S. increasingly unhappy. Indonesia was enormous, with the world’s sixth-largest population, and the PKI was the third-biggest Communist Party on Earth, after China’s and the Soviet Union’s. It mattered little to the American government that Sukarno was not himself a Communist, or that the PKI had no plans or capacity for violence. It was bad enough that Sukarno did not leap to put the Indonesian economy at the service of U.S. multinationals, and that he helped create the Non-Aligned Movement of countries that wished to stay out of both the Soviet and American blocs.
The U.S. goal, then, was to extract Sukarno from power in favor of someone reliable (from the American perspective), while creating a pretext for the Indonesian military to destroy the PKI. But how to make this happen?
Howard P. Jones, the American ambassador to Indonesia until April 1965, told a meeting of State Department officials just before leaving his post, “From our viewpoint, of course, an unsuccessful coup attempt by the PKI might be the most effective development to start a reversal of political trends in Indonesia.” This, he believed, would give the army a “clear-cut kind of challenge that would galvanize effective reaction.” A British Foreign Office official made the case that “there might therefore be much to be said for encouraging a premature PKI coup during Sukarno’s lifetime.”
Coincidentally enough, this is exactly what appeared to happen. On September 30, 1965, a group of young military officers kidnapped six Indonesian generals, claiming that they planned to overthrow Sukarno. All six generals somehow soon ended up dead.
Suharto, an Army general who was, fortuitously, not targeted, announced with his allies that the dead generals had been castrated and tortured by female members of the PKI in a “depraved, demonic ritual,” according to Bevins. Years later it was discovered that none of this was true; all but one of the six generals had simply been shot.
To this day, it’s impossible to say what truly happened. Bevins lists three theories. First, the leader of the PKI may have helped plan the events of September 30 with contacts in the military. It may have been the young members of the military acting alone with no PKI involvement. Or Suharto may have collaborated with the September 30 officers, pretending that he would support them and then betraying them as part of a plan to seize power for himself.
In any case, Suharto certainly seemed to have a plan ready to execute. Soon afterward, Sukarno was out and Suharto was in charge. Then the killing began, in what the Indonesian army internally called Operasi Penumpasan, or Operation Annihilation.
The butchery lasted for months, into early 1966, with the New York Times referring to it as a “staggering mass slaughter of Communists and pro-Communists.” The U.S. was not only aware of what was happening, but was also an eager participant, providing lists of PKI members to the Indonesian military. One American official later said, “They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad. There’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.” According to Time magazine, there were so many corpses that it created “a serious sanitation problem in East Java and Northern Sumatra where the humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh. Travelers from those areas tell of small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies.”
New York Times columnist James Reston soon wrote about these events under the headline “A Gleam of Light in Asia.” Americans needed to understand these “hopeful political developments,” including the fact that the “Indonesian massacre” could not have occurred “without the clandestine aid [Indonesia] has received indirectly from here.” Recently declassified records illustrate just how right Reston was.
Suharto ruled Indonesia brutally for the next three decades, remaining a key U.S. ally until he fell from power in 1998. Only now, over 57 years since the coup, is the Indonesian government barely beginning to face its own past.
“Acknowledging some of the crimes of the Suharto regime is a start,” says Bradley Simpson, a historian and expert on this period. “But President Widodo must do more to initiate a long overdue process of accountability and restitution for victims and survivors of the 1965–1966 killings. So do governments like the United States and Great Britain, which were willing accomplices in the Indonesian army’s campaign of mass murder.”
There is no sign of that happening in U.S., however. Obama, with his direct personal knowledge of Indonesia and this history, might seem to be a natural leader for this process. But you shouldn’t get your hopes up. He also explains in “Dreams From My Father” that he learned in Indonesia that “the world was violent … unpredictable and often cruel.” His stepfather, he records, taught him that “Men take advantage of weakness in other men. They’re just like countries in that way. … Better to be strong. If you can’t be strong, be clever and make peace with someone who’s strong. But always better to be strong yourself. Always.”
https://soundcloud.com/the-intercept/barack-obama-describes-the-1965-indonesia-coup-and-mass-slaughter?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
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Martin Luther King, Jr. (photo: obrag.org)
The Last Speech of Martin Luther King: 'I've Been to the Mountaintop' – The Full Text
OB Rag
Excerpt: "The day before Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, he gave his final speech, known as the ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’ speech. Here’s the full text."
The day before Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, he gave his final speech, known as ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’ speech. Here’s the full text.
By The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., MEMPHIS, Tenn./ April 3, 1968
Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. It’s always good to have your closest friend and associate to say something good about you. And Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world. I’m delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow.
Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, “Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?” I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God’s children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn’t stop there.
I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating President by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but “fear itself.” But I wouldn’t stop there. Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy.”
Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same: “We want to be free.”
And another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn’t done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I’m just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding. And I’m happy that He’s allowed me to be in Memphis.
I can remember — I can remember when Negroes were just going around as Ralph has said, so often, scratching where they didn’t itch, and laughing when they were not tickled. But that day is all over. We mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God’s world.
And that’s all this whole thing is about. We aren’t engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying — We are saying that we are God’s children. And that we are God’s children, we don’t have to live like we are forced to live.
Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh’s court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.
Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. Now, we’ve got to keep attention on that. That’s always the problem with a little violence. You know what happened the other day, and the press dealt only with the window-breaking. I read the articles. They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers are on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire need of a doctor. They didn’t get around to that.
Now we’re going to march again, and we’ve got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be — and force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God’s children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out. That’s the issue. And we’ve got to say to the nation: We know how it’s coming out. For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory. We aren’t going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don’t know what to do. I’ve seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there, we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth, and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around.”
Bull Connor next would say, “Turn the fire hoses on.” And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn’t know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn’t relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denominations, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water. That couldn’t stop us.
And we just went on before the dogs and we would look at them; and we’d go on before the water hoses and we would look at it, and we’d just go on singing “Over my head I see freedom in the air.” And then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. And they would throw us in, and old Bull would say, “Take ’em off,” and they did; and we would just go in the paddy wagon singing, “We Shall Overcome.”
And every now and then we’d get in jail, and we’d see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers, and being moved by our words and our songs. And there was a power there which Bull Connor couldn’t adjust to; and so we ended up transforming Bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in Birmingham. Now we’ve got to go on in Memphis just like that. I call upon you to be with us when we go out Monday.
Now about injunctions: We have an injunction and we’re going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, “Be true to what you said on paper.” If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn’t committed themselves to that over there.
But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.
Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren’t going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.
We need all of you. And you know what’s beautiful to me is to see all of these ministers of the Gospel. It’s a marvelous picture. Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of the people more than the preacher? Somehow the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones. And whenever injustice is around he tell it. Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, and saith, “When God speaks who can but prophesy?” Again with Amos, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Somehow the preacher must say with Jesus, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me,” and he’s anointed me to deal with the problems of the poor.”
And I want to commend the preachers, under the leadership of these noble men: James Lawson, one who has been in this struggle for many years; he’s been to jail for struggling; he’s been kicked out of Vanderbilt University for this struggle, but he’s still going on, fighting for the rights of his people. Reverend Ralph Jackson, Billy Kiles; I could just go right on down the list, but time will not permit.
But I want to thank all of them. And I want you to thank them, because so often, preachers aren’t concerned about anything but themselves. And I’m always happy to see a relevant ministry.
It’s all right to talk about “long white robes over yonder,” in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here! It’s all right to talk about “streets flowing with milk and honey,” but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can’t eat three square meals a day. It’s all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God’s preacher must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do.
Now the other thing we’ll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people. Individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively — that means all of us together — collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that?
After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the American Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That’s power right there, if we know how to pool it.
We don’t have to argue with anybody. We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles. We don’t need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, “God sent us by here, to say to you that you’re not treating his children right. And we’ve come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God’s children are concerned.
Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.”
And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy — what is the other bread? — Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart’s bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain.
We are choosing these companies because they haven’t been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on town — downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right.
But not only that, we’ve got to strengthen black institutions. I call upon you to take your money out of the banks downtown and deposit your money in Tri-State Bank. We want a “bank-in” movement in Memphis. Go by the savings and loan association. I’m not asking you something that we don’t do ourselves at SCLC. Judge Hooks and others will tell you that we have an account here in the savings and loan association from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
We are telling you to follow what we are doing. Put your money there. You have six or seven black insurance companies here in the city of Memphis. Take out your insurance there. We want to have an “insurance-in.”
Now these are some practical things that we can do. We begin the process of building a greater economic base. And at the same time, we are putting pressure where it really hurts. I ask you to follow through here.
Now, let me say as I move to my conclusion that we’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end.
Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school — be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus, and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. At points he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew and throw him off base…. Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side.
They didn’t stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But he got down with him, administered first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the “I” into the “thou,” and to be concerned about his brother.
Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn’t stop. At times we say they were busy going to a church meeting, an ecclesiastical gathering, and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn’t be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that “One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony.” And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem — or down to Jericho, rather to organize a “Jericho Road Improvement Association.”
That’s a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect.
But I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, “I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable.” It’s a winding, meandering road. It’s really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles — or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you’re about 2200 feet below sea level. That’s a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the “Bloody Pass.”
And you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked — the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
That’s the question before you tonight. Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job. Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation workers what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?” The question is not, “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?” The question is, “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” That’s the question.
Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you. You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up.
The only question I heard from her was, “Are you Martin Luther King?” And I was looking down writing, and I said, “Yes.” And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that’s punctured, your drowned in your own blood — that’s the end of you.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital.
They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I’ve forgotten what those telegrams said. I’d received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I’ve forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I’ll never forget it. It said simply,
“Dear Dr. King, I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School.”
And she said,
“While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I’m a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”
And I want to say tonight — I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn’t sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.
If I had sneezed — If I had sneezed I wouldn’t have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great Movement there.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.
I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.
And they were telling me –. Now, it doesn’t matter, now. It really doesn’t matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us.
The pilot said over the public address system, “We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all night.”
And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
And so I’m happy, tonight.
I’m not worried about anything.
I’m not fearing any man.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
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Dnipro. (photo: Nicole Tung/NYT)
Dead, Alive or Devastated After Russian Strike on Apartments
Megan Specia and Nicole Tung, The New York Times
Excerpt: "Rescue workers were still digging through the ruins of a residential building in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Sunday, a day after a Russian missile attack."
ALSO SEE: The Death Toll From a Russian Strike
on an Apartment Complex in Ukraine Is Now 29
Rescue workers were still digging through the ruins of a residential building in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Sunday, a day after a Russian missile attack.
More than 24 hours after a heavy-duty missile built to sink ships exploded in a dense Ukrainian cityscape of homes and shops, the lights of emergency workers played across the rubble on Sunday, in search of life.
Death was easy to find.
As smoke and dust rose into the Dnipro sky, a light dusting of snow began to accumulate on five victims who had been pulled from the rubble and laid out in body bags in a small grassy area next to the destroyed building. They were five of 30 confirmed killed in a Russian strike on a civilian neighborhood — 79 were injured — and at least 30 people remained unaccounted for.
Even some of those pulled from the debris that was once their homes seemed to have only an uncertain grasp on life.
“I have no words, I have no emotions, I feel nothing except a great emptiness inside,” one 23-year-old woman, Anastasiia Shvets, wrote on social media.
An image of Ms. Shvets from the scene of the attack struck a chord with Ukrainians across the country. It shows a young woman clutching a stuffed animal and a golden Christmas garland as she stands in the ruins and waits to be rescued.
Ms. Shvets somehow emerged with only a small head wound and bruises on her legs. But her parents, she wrote on a verified account on Instagram, were still missing. And her partner, who was serving in the Ukrainian military, was killed in action four months ago.
The strike on Saturday at an ordinary, nine-story residential building led to one of the largest losses of civilian lives far from the front line since the beginning of the war, and it prompted renewed calls for Moscow to be charged with war crimes. In an address to Ukrainians on Sunday night, President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was also critical to punish “those who grease the Russian propaganda machine.”
He offered a warning to Russian citizens in their own language: “Your cowardly silence, your attempt to ‘wait out’ what is happening will only end with those same terrorists coming after you one day.”
It is considered a war crime to deliberately or recklessly attack civilian populations or places where civilians would be likely to congregate, but Moscow has paid little heed to the international rules of war.
The assault on Dnipro was hardly the first time a Ukrainian population center far from the front lines — including the city itself — had been targeted since Russia invaded in February. Russian strikes on train stations, theaters, shopping malls and residential neighborhoods have led to significant loss of civilian life, as has the shelling of cities and towns near the front line.
But images of the devastation in the central city of Dnipro provoked anger and despair among Ukrainians, and the attack appeared to be part of a return to old tactics.
In recent months, Moscow has turned the focus of its assault on infrastructure targets that provide power, heat and water, apparently hoping to demoralize the country. But for reasons that remain unclear, over the weekend, Russia launched dozens of missiles at cities across Ukraine in two waves of strikes that coincided with the Orthodox New Year and shattered the relative calm of recent days.
The missile that struck the building in Dnipro appeared to have been a Kh-22 cruise missile, also known as an X-22 missile, according to Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy minister of defense. She said it was one of five of them fired at Ukrainian territory that day.
The Soviet-era missiles weigh about 2,000 pounds, can be fired from long distances and are intended for anti-ship operations. They are also capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office said the Kh-22 missile that appears to have hit Dnipro could have been launched by only one Russian unit, the 52nd Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment.
“This type of missile leads to the greatest human casualties, because the missile is extremely inaccurate,” the office said. “Therefore, the use of such weapons for targets in densely populated areas is clearly a war crime.”
More than 210 missiles of that type have been used in attacks on Ukrainian territory since Russia invaded, including a strike on a shopping center in Kremenchuk in June that killed 18 people.
Immediately after the Dnipro attack, pro-Russian news outlets and influential military bloggers claimed that the apartment building was not the target, but had been struck by fragments of the missile after Ukrainian air defenses tried to intercept it. But Ukrainian forces were quick to deny that, and the evidence from the scene pointed to a direct strike on the building.
“The Armed Forces of Ukraine have no weapons capable of shooting down this type of missile,” Ms. Maliar said.
In fact, she said, the attack showed the need for antiaircraft missile systems like the Patriot system that Ukraine has long been lobbying its allies for. The United States and Germany have agreed to supply Ukraine with the Patriot system, and Ukrainian forces are to begin training on it in Oklahoma in the coming week.
Dnipro, a city nestled against the river of the same name, had a population of just under one million before the war began. After Moscow invaded, it was targeted by Russian shelling but never occupied by its forces, and never the scene of frontline fighting. The city has been home to displaced people who have flocked to its relative safety.
Even so, Dnipro has been intermittently targeted by missile strikes, and since October, when the Russian assault on infrastructure stepped up, a number have struck the city.
On Sunday, neighbors gathered at the site of the latest attack, looking on in disbelief. Less than 24 hours earlier, the area had been untouched.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, said 72 apartments had been destroyed. The explosion also shattered the windows of surrounding buildings, leaving many more people displaced. Plastic sheeting had been taped over some windows blown out by the explosion, and workers were measuring others so that glass could be reinstalled.
By late afternoon, as firefighters searched the rubble for survivors, the air was filled with the sounds of cranes and crunching glass. Dump trucks rolled in and out of the area, collecting debris and clearing the streets surrounding the partly collapsed building.
A humanitarian tent city had sprung up, with volunteers making sandwiches and distributing tea and coffee to the hundreds of rescuers and residents on the scene. One tent had mattresses, blankets and tarps. Some people huddled around open bonfires for warmth in the frozen air.
Some residents of damaged buildings were waiting to get the go-ahead so they could collect their belongings. Others were already picking through what was left and taking what they could. With no windows in the bitter cold, it was impossible to stay.
More than 550 people were involved in the rescue operation, according to local officials.
As the 24-hour mark approached, at least one person, a 27-year-old woman, was pulled alive from the debris. She was taken to a hospital and was being treated for severe hypothermia, local officials said.
Mr. Zelensky said reports had been coming in from Dnipro all day.
“We are fighting for every person,” he said. “The rescue operation will last as long as there is even the slightest chance to save lives.”
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The revelations came after The Telegraph revealed that the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst was urged to tackle a ‘toxic culture’ of sexual assault. (photo: Heathcliff O’Malley/The Telegraph)
Danielle Sheridan | Female Soldiers Raped by Colleagues Were 'Misdiagnosed' With Personality Disorder
Danielle Sheridan, The Telegraph
Sheridan writes: "Hundreds of female members of the Armed Forces who accused their colleagues of rape were 'misdiagnosed' with having a personality disorder, The Telegraph can reveal."
Hundreds traumatised by sexual assault claim that military doctors gave them wrong diagnosis before being discharged
Hundreds of female members of the Armed Forces who accused their colleagues of rape were “misdiagnosed” with having a personality disorder, The Telegraph can reveal.
The victims claimed that after they sought help for sexual assault from the military’s departments of community mental health (DCMH), they were “written off” with emotionally unstable personality disorder and subsequently medically discharged.
Paula Edwards, the chief executive of Salute Her UK, a charity for female military personnel who have experienced sexual assault and rape, said that victims were being “overdiagnosed and misdiagnosed” so that the military can “get rid of the problem”.
The revelations came a month after The Telegraph revealed that the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst was urged to tackle a “toxic culture” of sexual assault after hundreds of servicewomen claimed to have reported abuse at the centre during their training.
Since then, a further 16 women have come forward to say that they were sexually abused while serving at Sandhurst.
Ms Edwards told The Telegraph that it became a “common theme” for young women to have the diagnosis on their medical records when accessing support from her charity.
“It is a worrying pattern,” she said. “A woman is raped so she goes to DCMH. She’s understandably all over the place. She might be suicidal. But instead of the medical practitioner seeing it as post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD], they diagnose her with a personality disorder.
“You can’t serve in the military with this diagnosis, which enables the military to get rid of the problem.”
Ms Edwards added that it was “becoming a common theme for young women accessing support” from Salute Her UK, the sister charity of Forward Assist, which supports military veterans struggling to adjust to civilian life.
According to the charity’s own figures, of the 393 referrals it received in the past year, 133 of the women were diagnosed with a personality disorder. All of the victims were under the age of 27.
‘Once it’s on your record, you can’t get it off’
One female soldier was raped by a colleague early on in her career. In the coming months, she sought help from DCMH and was offered cognitive behavioural therapy, although she did not find this helpful. She said there was no “Plan B” in place after the sessions ended.
Unbeknown to her, she was diagnosed with a personality disorder. She learnt about this diagnosis only after being told she was up for medical discharge.
She told The Telegraph: “Once you get this on your record, you can’t get it off and it has impacted my life.
“At first, I didn’t even know what the diagnosis was. I had to Google it. I was surprised because I did not show these symptoms or repetitive behaviours and I was doing very well in my career before I was informed that I would be discharged.”
Despite being sexually assaulted while serving, she was never diagnosed with PTSD, a condition she felt would have been more appropriate.
“Recording that I have a personality disorder just feels like a lazy diagnosis,” she said.
According to the Mental Health Foundation, about one in 20 people in the UK have a personality disorder.
“A disproportionate amount of women registered with the charity have this diagnosis which is incredibly concerning,” Ms Edwards said.
Her concerns were echoed by Ahmed Al-Nahhas, the head of military claims at the law firm Bolt Burdon Kemp, who said he had noticed the “worrying” trend in the past three years.
He said in his experience, it was a growing theme that “women in the military who have suffered sexual assault get steered towards a diagnosis of personality disorder”.
Mr Al-Nahhas said: “If you’ve got a patient with no history of mental health or personality disorder, they then suffer a recent trauma and become unwell. The first thing a clinician should be thinking about is trauma-related disorder, not their personality.
“I am very suspicious of this trend and the way it waters down what is happening to women in the Armed Forces. It undermines their legal rights and potentially slows their recovery.”
Mr Al-Nahhas provided evidence to the Atherton Inquiry, led by Tory MP Sarah Atherton, about the levels of sexual assault and harassment in the military.
He said that while his team dealt with thousands of complaints over the past decade, it was since 2020 where he had “at least 50 enquiries from veterans where I have been concerned about the diagnosis”.
“There is definitely a trend and, in some cases, it could indicate clinical negligence,” he said.
“I’ve spoken to so many women who tell me they were raped, sexually assaulted or harassed by colleagues or their chain of command.
“They then start to suffer symptoms of PTSD. But instead of being treated for that condition, they are diagnosed with a personality disorder and sped towards a medical discharge. Many are left feeling guilty and blame themselves.”
Mr Al-Nahhas said that such misdiagnosis can “devastate” the victims’ “recovery, confidence and self-worth”, and cautioned that it then “invalidates the trauma they have suffered”.
“It also becomes tricky for them to claim for their lost military career, because the MoD [Ministry of Defence] will say their personality disorder would have cut it short in any event,” he added.
‘Veterans deserve better’
Mr Al-Nahhas said that over the years, he had reviewed the personnel records of his clients who had received the diagnosis, and the majority had successful careers without any significant history of poor mental health or any recorded personality issues.
He said “this is very convenient for the MoD, which faces many hundreds of civil claims from Service personnel every year, and which has spent many years sweeping these issues under the carpet”.
“Veterans deserve better,” he added.
An MoD spokesman said: “Our service personnel are our most valued asset and we take the condition of their health and well-being extremely seriously.
“In order to provide the maximum support and tackle unacceptable behaviours head-on, we have launched the ‘Unacceptable Behaviours Hub’ which helps our personnel obtain the advice and care they need.
“We have also introduced zero-tolerance policies, created the Defence Serious Crime Unit – ensuring all serious sexual complaints are fully investigated outside the chain of command – and have continued to improve reporting mechanisms.”
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Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), currently under federal investigation, leaves Capitol Hill on Jan. 12. (photo: Will Oliver/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
New Details Link George Santos to Cousin of Sanctioned Russian Oligarch
Isaac Stanley-Becker and Rosalind S. Helderman, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "The New York congressman once claimed Andrew Intrater’s company was his 'client,' while another Intrater company allegedly made a deposit with a firm where Santos worked."
The New York congressman once claimed Andrew Intrater’s company was his “client,” while another Intrater company allegedly made a deposit with a firm where Santos worked
George Santos, the freshman Republican congressman from New York who lied about his biography, has deeper ties than previously known to a businessman who cultivated close links with a onetime Trump confidant and who is the cousin of a sanctioned Russian oligarch, according to video footage and court documents.
Andrew Intrater and his wife each gave the maximum $5,800 to Santos’ main campaign committee and tens of thousands more since 2020 to committees linked to him, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Intrater’s cousin is Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in the Russian energy industry.
The relationship between Santos and Intrater goes beyond campaign contributions, according to a statement made privately by Santos in 2020 and a court filing the following year in a lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against a Florida-based investment firm, Harbor City Capital, where Santos worked for more than a year.
Taken together, the evidence suggests Santos may have had a business relationship with Intrater as Santos was first entering politics in 2020. It also shows, according to the SEC filing, that Intrater put hundreds of thousands of dollars into Santos’ onetime employer, Harbor City, which was accused by regulators of running a Ponzi scheme. Neither Santos nor Intrater responded to requests for comment. Attorneys who have represented Intrater also did not respond.
The congressman, whose election from Long Island last year helped the GOP secure its narrow House majority, has apologized for what he called “résumé embellishment” while rebuffing calls for his resignation. He is under scrutiny by prosecutors in New York and Rio de Janeiro.
Ties between Santos, 34, and Intrater, 60, reflect the ways Santos found personal and political support on his path to public office.
While Intrater is a U.S. citizen, his company, the investment firm Columbus Nova, has historically had extensive ties to the business interests of his Russian cousin. As recently as 2018, when Vekselberg was sanctioned by the Treasury Department, his conglomerate was Columbus Nova’s largest client, the company confirmed to The Post that year.
Intrater’s interactions in 2016 and 2017 with Michael Cohen, who at the time was working as a lawyer for Donald Trump, were probed during special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links between Trump and the Kremlin.
Intrater’s company paid the lawyer and self-described Trump fixer to identify deals for his business, and court records show they exchanged hundreds of texts and phone calls. Neither Intrater nor Vekselberg was accused of wrongdoing in Mueller’s investigation.
In 2020, when Santos was tasked by Harbor City with locating investors in New York, he claimed in a Harbor City meeting held over Zoom that Intrater’s investment firm, Columbus Nova, was a “client” of his, according to footage obtained by The Washington Post.
He made the comment during a discussion of the difficulties of residential real estate investing, in particular for investors who put money into the 1,400-foot tall tower at 432 Park Avenue in Manhattan, which for a time was the tallest residential building in the world. Intrater did not respond to a question about whether he or Columbus Nova was involved in the project.
“You might know who they are,” Santos added in the company meeting, referring to Columbus Nova. “They’ve made the news on several occasions. They were heavily involved with the Russia probe. Unjustified.”
“But they’re a real estate company,” Santos added. “They’re legitimate.”
Santos did not respond to a text message seeking comment. Intrater did not respond to an emailed question about whether his firm was Santos’s client as claimed or about the deposit with Harbor City.
The congressman has falsified substantial aspects of his work experience. And, in the Harbor City Zoom meetings reviewed by The Post, he recounted dealings with other prominent investors or moneyed organizations that those entities denied took place.
But Harbor City was able to land a $625,000 deposit from a company registered in Mississippi that identifies Intrater as its lone officer, according to an exhibit included in the SEC’s complaint against Harbor City. The alleged deposit, which is undated, is included in a chart that lists several entities that the SEC says made payments to Harbor City.
The Mississippi company, FEA Innovations, is registered to Intrater, according to secretary of state records. Registration documents include no other officers or directors and identify Intrater’s address as the same one used by Columbus Nova on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Columbus Nova is now known as Sparrow Capital.
In the SEC action, initiated in April 2021, regulators accused Harbor City and its founder of running a “classic Ponzi scheme” — promising investors reliable profit and instead bilking them out of millions.
The SEC complaint did not name Santos, who has denied knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing, although he had been told by a prospective investor that the firm was using a fraudulent bank document, as The Post previously reported.
Harbor City’s founder, J.P. Maroney, has denied the SEC allegations, which were brought in federal court in Florida. The company itself has not responded in court. Maroney did not respond to a text message about the alleged deposit from Intrater’s firm. The exhibit that identifies the alleged deposit from Intrater’s company does not elaborate on its purpose or suggest that Intrater had knowledge of purported wrongdoing at Harbor City.
After Harbor City’s assets were frozen, and with assistance from a fellow former Harbor City employee, Santos in 2021 formed a company, the Devolder Organization, that paid him at least $3.5 million over the next two years, according to Florida business records and financial disclosure forms he filed as a candidate. Santos loaned his campaign more than $700,000 but did not report any income from Harbor City despite having been paid by the company as recently as April 2021.
Details of Santos’s tenure at Harbor City were confirmed by a court-appointed lawyer overseeing liquidation of the company’s assets.
Columbus Nova became a subject of interest for the Mueller investigation as prosecutors probed the ties forged by Intrater and his company with Cohen, a confidant of Trump’s at the time.
Intrater donated $250,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee, according to campaign finance records, and attended the 2017 inaugural, along with Vekselberg. The Washington Post has reported that the two men encountered Cohen at the inauguration. Not long after, Columbus Nova began paying Cohen as part of a contract to recruit new investors for the company, The Post reported. Court records show the payments totaled $583,000.
Court records also show that Cohen and Intrater exchanged more than 1,000 calls and text messages between November 2016 and November 2017. Intrater donated $35,000 to attend a 2017 fundraiser for Trump’s reelection, attending at Cohen’s invitation, The Post has reported.
Federal officials questioned both Intrater and Vekselberg during the probe, interviewing the latter after his private airplane made a stop in the United States in 2018, people familiar with the investigation said.
Cohen ultimately pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, tax and bank fraud and lying to Congress — matters unrelated to his interactions with Columbus Nova. Intrater told the New York Times in 2019 that his omission from Mueller’s final report “confirms what I knew all along — that I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Cohen later turned on Trump, criticizing him in a 2019 congressional hearing and cooperating with investigations into his former boss’ business practices.
Vekselberg and his company, Renova, were sanctioned by the Treasury Department in April 2018, cited for benefiting from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “malign activity around the globe.” In April 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Vekselberg’s $90 million yacht was seized by Spanish authorities at the request of the United States.
Columbus Nova has long been described as closely associated with the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate run by Vekselberg. As recently as 2017, a website for Renova Group listed Columbus Nova as one of its companies, and Columbus Nova confirmed to The Post in 2018 that Vekselberg’s conglomerate was at that time its largest client. However, the firm said at the time that it was owned by Americans and had never been controlled by Renova Group or Vekselberg.
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Siamak Namazi, shown in this photo before his 2015 imprisonment, has begun a one-week hunger strike in Iran to mark seven years since he was left out of a prisoner swap that occurred when the Iran nuclear deal went into effect. (photo: Namazi Famil/NPR)
Siamak Namazi, Imprisoned Since 2015 by Iran, Has Begun a Hunger Strike
Michele Kelemen, NPR
Kelemen writes: "On the seventh anniversary of his being left behind in a U.S.-Iran prison swap, an American jailed in Iran is beginning a week-long hunger strike on Monday. Siamak Namazi, an Iranian American businessman, is pushing Iran and the U.S. to make a deal to free him."
On the seventh anniversary of his being left behind in a U.S.-Iran prison swap, an American jailed in Iran is beginning a week-long hunger strike on Monday. Siamak Namazi, an Iranian American businessman, is pushing Iran and the U.S. to make a deal to free him.
In a letter to President Biden released by his lawyer, Namazi, 51, says he has the "unenviable title of the longest held Iranian American hostage in history." He says his captors enjoy taunting him about that. He plans to be on a hunger strike for the next seven days.
"Siamak remains behind bars in Iran's notorious Evin Prison, where he has endured prolonged solitary confinement, denial of access to medical care, and physical and psychological torture," according to a press release issued by Namazi's lawyer, Jared Genser.
Namazi was arrested in October 2015 on a business trip to Iran. He and his father Baquer Namazi, a retired UNICEF official who was detained when trying to visit his son in 2016, were both convicted in Iran on charges of cooperating with a hostile government, meaning the United States.
Last year, the increasingly frail elder Namazi was able to leave Iran to get medical treatment.
Siamak Namazi was left out of a prisoner swap that took place when the Iran nuclear deal went into effect in 2016. He was also excluded from subsequent deals.
The U.S. has repeatedly said it is working to free Namazi and other Americans it says are unjustly held by Iran. They include Emad Shargi, who was arrested in Iran in 2018, and Morad Tahbaz, detained there the same year.
In the letter to President Biden conveyed by his lawyer, Namazi says, "All I want sir, is one minute of your days' time for the next seven days devoted to thinking about the tribulations of the U.S. hostages in Iran" — an apparent reference to himself and the other two American prisoners. "Just a single minute of your time for each year of my life that I lost in Evin prison. Therefore, I will deny myself food for the same seven days, in the hope that by doing so you won't deny me this small request."
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in December that he works on the issue every day. "It's a No. 1 priority to bring Americans anywhere who are being unjustly detained, to bring them home, to get them back with their families," he told CBS News.
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Cows in a meadow at a dairy farm in Zundert, the Netherlands. (photo: Robin Utrecht/REX/Shutterstock)
Have We Reached 'Peak Meat'? Why One Country Is Trying to Limit Its Number of Livestock
Senay Boztas, Guardian UK
Boztas writes: "Dutch farms are feeling the squeeze from EU rules and need to make sweeping changes to the farm system – could a huge producer like the US follow suit?"
Dutch farms are feeling the squeeze from EU rules and need to make sweeping changes to the farm system – could a huge producer like the US follow suit?
Ingrid de Sain is one of thousands of dairy farmers in the Netherlands who says she sometimes lies awake at night. Since a court ruling in 2019 which found the Dutch were breaking European environmental law, her farm of 100 cows in north Holland has been illegal.
Like the other 2,500-plus farmers whose environmental permission was suddenly invalid, she wants a future where she can earn a living and farm legally again.
The Netherlands is first to face questions scientists believe will soon come to all intensively farmed areas: how can we balance the needs of the environment with the way we farm and grow? Have we reached “peak meat”, like peak oil: so much livestock, so much local pollution, that the only sustainable future is in reduction? They’re questions the US, the world’s largest producer of beef, will also soon have to answer.
In November, the Dutch government announced the first part of a €24.3bn ($26.3bn) plan to buy out up to 3,000 farms and major industrial polluters near protected nature reserves – if necessary, through compulsory purchase, “with pain in our hearts”. It is hugely controversial and only initial outlines have been announced after a year of protests, tense negotiations and a report in October recommending buying out the top 500 or 600 polluters within a year.
The reason is that the emissions of ammonia, nitrogen oxides and nitrous oxide are damaging areas of unique, natural landscape known as Natura 2000 habitats, which the country is bound by EU law to protect. The government says this means reducing local nitrogen compound emissions from between 12% and 70%, including slashing the Netherlands’ 118 million farmed animals by 30% by 2030, according to Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency projections.
Tjerd de Groot, a member of the house of representatives in the Netherlands and agriculture spokesman for coalition party D66, advocates halving the numbers of pigs and poultry, raising fewer cows and grazing them on pasture, rather than importing grain and soy for feed. “Everywhere you look, there’s a problem with agriculture,” he said, citing the toll the resulting pollution has taken on biodiversity and water quality. “Yes, we have been a big exporter but now we are paying a big price in the environment.”
Environmentalists believe the Netherlands needs to change all elements of its food system chain to provide a good income for different methods of farming. “All the signs are red,” said Natasja Oerlemans, head of the food team at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Netherlands. “The production system of meat and dairy in the Netherlands can no longer be held at this level. That’s been clear for years.”
All eyes are on the Netherlands, according to scientists who believe the world needs action to reduce livestock – rather than relying on voluntary pollution reduction or technological measures that may be unproven at scale.
“The major difference to previous measures is a reduction in livestock numbers,” said Dr Helen Harwatt, a senior research fellow at Chatham House and climate policy fellow at Harvard University. In 2019 she led a group of scientists calling for action to ensure livestock declines. “We tend to only see technological approaches to reducing nitrogen at the point of production or reducing leakage to the environment, rather than reducing the amount of agricultural production. It’ll be all eyes on the Netherlands to learn from this transition.”
Livestock – farmed both for meat and for dairy – have major environmental impacts, and Harwatt argues that reductions should be part of a broader green action. “Currently, the aspiration globally is to protect more land for biodiversity, reverse biodiversity loss, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, halt deforestation and increase livestock production,” she said. “There are currently far more livestock on the planet than wild animals, and more than three times the human population. Livestock production is forecast to continue increasing, as diets transition across the world to include more animal products. Something has to give and it shouldn’t be the climate or biodiversity.”
Countries such as Denmark and the US may soon face similar predicaments, according to Pete Smith, professor of soils and global change at Aberdeen University in Scotland. “We demonstrated last year that animal agriculture is responsible for 57% of greenhouse gas emissions from the food system,” he said. “It has a disproportionate effect on the climate. We have too many livestock for the climate to support, and it’s the intensity of farming that’s the issue. I’m not surprised the Netherlands is taking the lead as it has the biggest problem.”
The US, meanwhile, is the world’s largest producer of beef, chicken meat and cow’s milk, and is the second largest producer of pork. “If we compare foods in terms of their nutrient pollution impact per kilogram produced, nothing is higher than beef,” said Harwatt. “Two-thirds of all crop calories produced in the US are used for feed crops. But livestock production contributes less than 1% to US GDP, and at least twice as much food for humans could be produced on land currently used to grow feed crops for farmed animals.”
The US is set to produce 12,820,000 metric tons of beef and veal this year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture – a slight fall of 6% due to drought conditions, but with increased production of pork and chicken.
Animal farming has been linked to 17,900 US deaths a year from air-based pollution, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency says agricultural runoff is the leading cause of “water quality impacts to rivers and streams, the third leading source of lakes and the second largest source of impairments to wetlands”. One example is the Mississippi River.
While the US has signed treaties such as the G7 2030 Nature Compact, pledging to halt biodiversity loss, and has a new special envoy on biodiversity and water resources, it is not party to the Convention on Biological Diversity – a potential stumbling block to adopting a Dutch-style plan.
Dr Matthew Hayek, assistant professor in environmental studies at New York University, advocates deciding a point of “peak livestock” and aiming for reduction, rather than trusting climate mitigation strategies such as seaweed additives or manure digesters. “They don’t address part of the problem and their technical efficiency hasn’t been shown at levels of scale – especially when you compare with just producing and consuming less,” he said.
“In the United States, in midwestern states especially, there are still way higher levels of nitrogen concentration and ‘impaired waters’ than are federally allowed. But states can carve out exemptions, and this is what has been done across Iowa and a lot of corn- and meat-heavy states. There’s just not the legal mechanisms or social pressure to address them – especially given you have so much social and regulatory capture by the agricultural industries.
“We also have a certain amount of nitrogen pollution that is ‘allowed’. The way that we deal with a lot of ‘point source’ pollution from industrial animal farming is by spreading it out over fields and miraculously turning it into non-point source pollution, which can’t be strictly regulated,” he added.
Hayek believes “soft” policies such as vegan-by-default menus in New York City hospitals could be combined with local regulation, like the 2010 “total maximum daily load” limit to improve water quality in Chesapeake Bay – as well as increasing public awareness. “Often, we are not even choosing to eat meat; we are choosing because we don’t recognise that there’s a choice not to eat meat,” he said. “We’re also not really combining the micro scale with the macro scale in our regulatory frameworks. We’re looking at one farm or one field, but we aren’t asking the question: is that nitrogen load in that watershed higher than that watershed can handle?
In the small, densely populated Netherlands, it might seem easier to address “macro” policy in a country of 17.8 million people.
But political action here is fraught with conflict, competing interests, anger and distrust.
Farmers complain of hanging in uncertainty for years; say pollution sources such as aviation, road travel and industry are scarcely addressed; and assert their sector has made more reductions than any other. “People in the countryside have been innovating for 30 years to reduce nitrogen – there’s no other sector that has done as much,” said Kees Hanse, a farmer and windfarm owner in Zierikzee who is standing in Zeeland elections for the growing BBB Farmer-Citizen Movement. “We don’t want to get ever bigger but we will continue to innovate and keep trying to create safe food resources for people. Nitrogen reductions are not about buying up farmers. It should come from industry, air traffic, shipping, car movements.”
Meanwhile the idea of suggesting the Dutch should eat less meat was so controversial that it was quietly removed from a 2019 climate awareness campaign by a former agriculture minister.
Some believe that a nitrogen pricing system, part of the new proposals, will help.
“Farmers haven’t done anything wrong: they have just done what the economy dictates,” said MP de Groot. “Because there’s no pricing of pollution, food is too cheap. The damage has been counted by an institute at €7bn a year, in the Netherlands. You should [monetise] that – and then the economy will change.”
Environmentalists like Oerlemans call for scrutiny of other parts of the food chain – including banks and feed producers – as well as help for farmers to transition to better-paid, lower-intensity farming plus services such as nature development, flood plain management and carbon sequestration.
But for dairy farmers like de Sain – one of those the government wants to legalise by making “peak polluters” stop – certainty cannot come soon enough. “Farmers always followed the rules,” she said. “If I could make ends meet with 50 cows, why would I milk 100?”
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