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Thursday, September 3, 2020
The Israel-U.A.E. Deal Puts the “Forever” in “Forever War”
At the New Republic, the always interesting Trita Parsi on the UAE-Israeli "peace deal" and how it's actually geared to keeping the U.S. military deeply embedded in the Middle East. Tom
"It is by now almost a formality: In the Middle East, nothing either good or bad can transpire without Washington pointing to Tehran’s alleged hegemonic designs as the force behind it. So it was with the so-called peace deal announced last week between Israel and the United Arab Emirates; two countries who were never at war declared peace, and the Trump administration—along with much of Washington—quickly deemed it historic. Though the two states have intimately (but quietly) collaborated on security matters for years, the announcement of their security alliance was, according to the conventional wisdom, a groundbreaking move that was only made possible due to their shared sense of threat from Iran.
"Much of Washington agrees with this. “The Iranian regime’s regional aggression has brought the Arab nations and Israel closer together,” Trump’s Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt quipped last year, echoing one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s favorite talking points. The 2015 nuclear deal had empowered Iran, Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly in 2018, and “brought Israel and many Arab states closer together than ever before, in an intimacy and friendship that I have not seen in my lifetime and would have been unimaginable a few years ago.”
"These “enemy of my enemy” truisms may make for a compelling narrative, but they do not hold up to scrutiny. Certainly, tensions between Iran and some Arab states—primarily Saudi Arabia—have risen since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But if Iran is such a monumental threat that it would force the U.A.E. to do the “unimaginable,” then one would expect Abu Dhabi’s foreign policy to be laser-focused on Tehran while avoiding getting distracted by lesser rivalries. That’s not the case. Abu Dhabi has gotten itself entangled in several unwise and unnecessary military interventions far from the 65 miles of water that separate it from Iran. Almost all of those adversarial entanglements are with Turkey and Qatar—not Iran.
"In Libya, U.A.E.-aligned forces are in direct combat with Turkish-backed troops as Abu Dhabi fights for control in what remains of that country. Iran has no meaningful involvement in Libya. In Syria, the Emirati rulers have moved closer to the Assad regime (which is supported by Iran) as Syrian troops fight Turkish-backed fighters in the north. Ideologically, the U.A.E. views the Muslim Brotherhood as its main rival, and the Brotherhood’s principal backers are—again—Turkey and Qatar, not Iran.
"When Riyadh and Abu Dhabi imposed a blockade on Qatar in the summer of 2017, it was reportedly just a prelude to a Saudi-U.A.E. plan to invade the small kingdom and replace its government. The plan was averted in part because Turkey sent several thousand troops to Qatar as a deterrent. Two years earlier, Abu Dhabi had played an important role in a failed attempt to overthrow Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. Needless to say, that episode further deepened the animosity between Ankara and the Emiratis.
"And in Yemen, the U.A.E. directly fought the Iranian-backed Houthis until calling it quits last year and abandoning the Saudis to fight that war on their own—a move that reduced Abu Dhabi’s entanglement with Iran.
"Though U.A.E.-Iranian relations undoubtedly remain problematic, tensions have been easing in the past year. Tehran and Abu Dhabi have restarted their dialogue and collaborated in the struggle against Covid-19; the U.A.E. even released $700 million of Iran’s frozen funds last fall in a measure that directly challenged the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy. As Samuel Ramani writes this week in Responsible Statecraft, the U.A.E. has even “actively sought to redirect domestic attention away from Iran and towards Turkey and has also convinced Saudi Arabia of the gravity of the Turkish threat.”
"Anwar Gargash, the U.A.E. foreign minister, says as much publicly, contradicting the talking points used by Israeli and American officials. “This is not about Iran,” he told reporters after the announcement of the deal with Israel. “This is in no way meant to create some sort of grouping against Iran.… While we have our concerns, we feel also that resolving these issues should be through diplomacy and de-escalation.”
"What binds Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E. together is not so much the threat from Iran but the threat of the United States military leaving the Middle East. These three states have been the foremost benefactors of America’s military domination in the region, gifting them a beneficial power balance that they could not have achieved on their own. The fallout from the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a major blow to this balance, overextending the U.S. and fueling calls for America to end its endless wars and to bring the troops home. America’s deteriorating Iraqi fiasco was a terrifying development for Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.A.E.
"Ever since, these states have made the recommitment of the United States to the region the overarching goal of their foreign policy. They consistently and vehemently oppose any measure that would allow the U.S. to reduce its military commitments, and its presence, in the region. Those commitments are reinforced by reports that the U.S. conditioned sales of F-35 jets and drones to the U.A.E. on Abu Dhabi normalizing relations with Israel. Arab states in the Gulf Cooperation Council tend to view such massive purchases of American weaponry as informal defense pacts that oblige the U.S. to protect them militarily.
"Keeping the U.S. stuck in the Middle East for the benefit of these states is not a popular or effective talking point in Washington. Exaggerating the threat of Iran is.
"Tying the Israeli-U.A.E. deal to Iran serves several purposes. It not only reinforces the notion that America must prevent the region from falling under Persian dominion; it also helps the Netanyahu government claim that Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territories is not an obstacle to peace with its Arab neighbors. It further endears the U.A.E. to the pro-Israel hawks in Washington, whose support Abu Dhabi often has relied upon to fight Qatar and Turkey. It provides Trump with a much needed foreign policy win ahead of the November elections—one that he hopes will shore up his support among Christian evangelicals, whose backing of Israel is intricately tied to a biblical belief in the End Times being preceded by a major war with Iran.
“When Iran gets into the news, especially with anything to do with war, it’s sort of a prophetic dog whistle to evangelicals,” religious historian Diana Butler Bass, who grew up in the evangelical church, told Mother Jones magazine earlier this year. “They will support anything that seems to edge the world towards this conflagration [because] they think that this war with Iran and Israel has to happen for their larger hope to pass.”
"Most importantly, positioning the Emirati-Israeli accord as an anti-Iran move reinforces America’s status-quo military commitment to the Middle East, despite the increasingly loud calls from the American public to bring the troops home.
"Of course, using an exaggerated Iranian threat to overcome obstacles to a modus vivendi between Israel and its Arab neighbors is nothing new. To sell the Oslo accords to the Israeli public in the early 1990s, the government of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres deliberately exaggerated the threat from Iran: They calculated that the Israeli public would be loath to make peace with Yassir Arafat unless there was a more ominous threat looming on the horizon. “We need to reach a peace agreement before the Iranians have a nuclear missile capability that could reshape the balance of power in the region,” Yitzhak Rabin told Israeli voters. The heightening of fears regarding Iran “served a political purpose,” then Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk told me. “It sent the signal that the threat is no longer the Palestinians or the Arabs, therefore we need to make peace with the inner circle.”
"But today, the Palestinians are mere non-speaking extras in a Washington production of “Middle East Peace.” And the land-for-peace formula is long dead, as Israel has systematically encroached Palestinian territory with impunity. Now, the Iran threat is wielded against an entirely different audience—the American public."
In the early 1970s, the far right wing backlash and counterrevolution to the reforms of the New Deal, the post-WWII era, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Great Society began. It started with the infamous Powell Memorandum to the US Chamber of Commerce of 1971 that served as a blueprint of how the American oligarchy could undermine the power that the American middle class had gained for itself and restore the primacy the oligarchy had prior to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The American oligarchy has followed the instructions of the Powell Memorandum closely for nearly 50 years now, regained the power and influence it had lost, and shifted the political discourse and struggle in America dramatically to the right.
In 1973, began the Great Uncoupling of increases in American wages and salaries from increases in corporate productivity and profitability. Except for measly, grudging pay increases to cover inflation, the average working people of America ceased to share in the tremendous wealth that their labor created for the bosses and the shareholders. Forty-seven years is a LONG time to go without a REAL pay increase, and it explains why so many people in America are flat broke, struggling, living precariously from paycheck to paycheck, and in debt up to their eyeballs. It also explains much of the social discontent in America in the years since.
Much of this reactionary counterrevolution occurred quietly and secretly, through profound, but stealthy economic moves that occurred in corporate executive suites and boardrooms, and in right wing scholarly studies and propaganda coming out of the work of a small, but dedicated cadre of right wing academics, and most effectively and tellingly, in the huge sums of money that the American oligarchy used to first undermine moderate center-right conservative politicians in the Republican Party, then to buy off business oriented politicians in the Democratic Party and push the “party of the people” hard to the right. There is today no real, effective leftist political party in America, other than the small, vocal, but outnumbered and largely neutralized “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party.
Sad to say, but most average working people in America have been kept in the dark about what was happening, like frogs in a pot of water that was being heated slowly, but surely, until it was too late to respond effectively. Also, caught up in the day-to-day struggle to make a living, which became increasingly more difficult as the years went by, the average working people of America were simply too distracted and exhausted to pay much attention to politics and its effects on their socioeconomic standing.
Today, the American oligarchy has pretty much succeeded in defanging and neutralizing the American political process as any sort of realistic threat to their power and wealth. Just look at the recent moves by Trump and the Republicans (and, no doubt, with some cooperation from neoliberal, corporatist Democrats) to remove Social Security’s dedicated source of funding, the FICA payroll tax. The Social Security Administration’s chief actuary has said that if this defunding of Social Security continues, then disability payments will cease in 2021, and old age pensions will cease in 2023. Quite frankly, there should be politicians hanging from every lamppost along Pennsylvania Avenue for this, but at the moment anyway, there has been little real recognition of the great danger Social Security is in — and so far, no peep out of the average working people of America.
Any REAL reform here in America will only occur when millions of Americans take to the streets participating in mass demonstrations and general strikes.
POLITICO Massachusetts Playbook: Why KENNEDY’s campaign FLOPPED — Counting BALLOTS in 4th District — CHARLIE on the MBTA
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RSN: Jeff Flake | Here's Who I'll Be Supporting for President, and Why.
It's Live on the HomePage Now: Jeff Flake | Here's Who I'll Be Supporting for President, and Why.  ’m pleased to be here today to discuss who I’ll be supporting for president, and why.It was the honor of my life to represent my state, Arizona — my family’s home — in the United States House and Senate for eighteen years. I am a conservative. I’ve always felt that my conservative beliefs and values were best expressed in the Republican Party. I was a Republican long before the president ever called himself one, and I will be a Republican long after identifying as such is no longer useful to him. Principle does not go in and out of fashion, does not chase ratings, or play to the base, or care too much about polls. And principle is the provenance of no one party. That is one of the things I am here to talk about today. The other thing I am here to talk about is the future — both of my party, but more importantly, the future of our country. I was raised on a cattle ranch in Northern Arizona. Goldwater country. When I was a kid, the Republican Party under President Reagan was brimming with ideas, full of purpose and principle. It was coherent, and inspiring, and idealistic. So much so that it awakened the imagination of a kid from the town of Snowflake, and a whole generation of other kids just like him. Made us think big thoughts, and of our place in the world, and of what it meant to be an American in America, the shining city on a hill. With Reagan, a conservative’s vision of America as the indispensable nation was benevolent and big-hearted, a beacon to the striver and to the subjugated and those locked behind an ideological wall that divided the world into free and oppressed. It was morning in Reagan’s America. It wasn’t perfect, but it was always getting better. We were the sum of our goodness, not our gripes — of our resolve, not our resentments. I got into public service believing that for our politics to be healthy, the American government needed people who believed as I do, but also people who believed differently from me. This has become somewhat of a novel idea. But it is the genius of our founders that the Constitution forces compromise. Governing is hard. Democracy is hard. Decency shouldn’t be that hard, but apparently it is. You know what’s easy? Name calling. Demagoguery. The politics of vengeance is easy. Dehumanization requires very little talent. By raging at each other, our minds vacant of reason and reeling with ill-will and tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, we have given in to the horrible tribal impulse to first mistake our opponents for our enemies… then become seized with the conviction that we must destroy that enemy… seemingly oblivious to the fact that not only are we not enemies, we are each vital organs in the same body. It’s as if in order to save itself, your brain decided to destroy your heart. That’s about the level of care we are currently bringing to the proceedings. There is a sickness in our system, and we have infected the whole country with it. We’re all old enough to remember when we elected presidents who spoke to our highest ideals and aspirations as a nation, not to our darkest dystopian fears. I can remember when, once an election was settled, a new president would reach out a hand to those who had opposed him, and pledge to do right by all Americans, not just those who were loyal to him. That’s the way presidents once sought to lead and govern. In fact, it is the way every other president in the modern era, Republican or Democrat, tried to conduct himself in office. Each possessed a keen awareness that a president’s principal role is to serve not himself or his interests or the interests of his clan, but the people of the United States. That was once the American way. Those of us of a certain age in this country have also had the rare good fortune of growing up and into adulthood not having to think too much about the consequences of our votes — or even whether we vote at all in a given election. For our entire lives, through some very fractious political periods, we have taken steady self-governance for granted, and that is a luxury that so many of our fellow human beings living in other countries have never had for a single day of their lives. But the story of the past 3 ½ years is the story of the power that we vest in the presidency, and the consequences when a president does not use that power well. And these times prove the folly of taking anything for granted. In 2016, one candidate running for the Republican nomination described our current President as a “chaos candidate” and if elected he would be a “chaos president.” Can anyone now seriously argue against this proposition? Of course, in 2016 the President was a private citizen, and thus was unaccountable for the chaos he caused. And these traits of the man who would become the standard bearer of my party were bad enough when exhibited by a mere candidate for president. In 2016, it was bad enough when for months in advance of the election, the Republican nominee for president claimed falsely that the coming election would be rigged. Now, as president of the United States, he has said, and I quote: “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.” What kind of president talks like that? What kind of American leader undermines confidence in elections in his own country, as part of his strategy to hold power? This is extraordinarily dangerous to a free society and it stands to inflict lasting damage to our democracy. It was bad enough when as a candidate he attacked a federal judge because of his heritage, saying that Judge Gonzalo Curiel couldn’t preside fairly over a certain case because Curiel’s parents were from Mexico. As President, he has only intensified his attack on judges. He has interfered in cases involving his friends and threatened jail for his opponents, demonstrating how little he knows or appreciates about the independent administration of justice in America. In 2016, it was bad enough for a mere candidate for president to sweet talk the Russian dictator, calling Vladimir Putin a “strong leader for his people,” as if “his people” had a say in the matter. Watching that man as president stand with Putin at Helsinki and take the dictator’s side, defying his own intelligence community and denying the ongoing Russian attacks on our elections — was shocking and appalling. In that moment, and in so many other inexplicable moments of deference to dictators, a president of the United States degraded his office and diminished America’s role as leader of the free world. It was bad enough in 2016 when as a candidate he resorted to calling his opponents childish names. That behavior in a president — which has only gotten worse, is an embarrassment to the office. Do any of us want our children to emulate this behavior? I could go on, but the litany is all too familiar. It is apparent by now that the president’s behavior has not and will not change, whatever hopes we Republicans might have entertained about the office changing the man. Some of my conservative friends will say, yes, we don’t like his behavior, but he governs as a conservative. Here, today, I will say to my fellow conservatives: Whatever else you might call the behavior I have just described, it is most assuredly not conservative. Indifference to the truth or to the careful stewardship of the institutions of American liberty is not conservative. Disregard for the separation of powers — the centerpiece of our constitutional system — is not conservative. Governing by tweet is not conservative. It’s not even governing. And to the refrain — Well, it’s all about the Supreme Court, I say: To fall back on Supreme Court appointments as the last remnant by which we define a once vibrant conservative movement should offer little solace to conservatives. Three conservative principles have defined and animated the Republican Party over the past several decades. A belief in limited government, a commitment to free trade, and a recognition that strong American leadership around the globe makes America a more secure nation and the world a better place. So, how are we doing with these principles? Well, we were running trillion-dollar deficits even before the coronavirus hit us. We have destroyed foreign markets for our goods and services. We have threatened security agreements that have kept the peace for nearly three quarters of a century. We have offended allies who we will desperately need to face China and other long-term threats to our security and prosperity. For no good reason. Can any of us stand here today and claim that our party has remained faithful to conservative principles during the President’s time in office? No, we cannot. If we are honest, there is less of a conservative case to be made for reelecting the President than there is a blatant appeal for more rank tribalism. And further division. And more willful amnesia in the face of more outlandish presidential behavior. I cannot and will not be a part of that. There simply is no future in it. To my fellow Republicans who, like me, believe in the power of conservative ideas — ask yourself: Will we be in a better position to make a conservative case for governing after four more years of this administration? I think we all know the answer. So here we are today. During the 2016 election, given what I had already seen during the campaign, I knew I could not vote for the President. Like many of my colleagues, I chose to vote for a third-party candidate. Today, given what we have experienced over the past four years, it is not enough to just to register our disapproval of the President. We need to elect someone else in his place, someone who will stop the chaos and reverse the damage. Putting country over party has a noble history here in Arizona. In 1992, Mr. Republican, Barry Goldwater, endorsed a Democrat running for Congress over the Republican he felt would not represent the party well. Goldwater hadn’t traded in his conservative credentials. Far from it. He simply believed, in that case, that the conservative cause would be better served over the long term if the Democrat prevailed. And that is what I believe today, in this election. And that is what a growing number of Republicans believe and are declaring today as well. I have never before voted for a Democrat for president. But I’ve been asked many times over the past four years if I, as a conservative, could vote for a Democrat for President. “Sure,” has been my ready answer, “if he or she were a Joe Biden-kinda-Democrat. Well, the Democratic Party just nominated a Joe Biden-kinda-Democrat, whom I am confident will approach his constitutional role with the reverence and dignity it deserves. I know that he will reach across the aisle, because that’s what he’s done his entire career. After the turmoil of the past four years, we need a president who unifies rather than divides. We need a president who prefers teamwork to tribalism. We need a president who summons our better angels, not a president who appeals to our baser instincts. That’s why we need Joe Biden. If we have learned anything over the past four years, it is that character matters. Decency matters. Civility never goes out of style. And we should expect our president to exhibit these virtues. I have known Vice President Biden for two decades now. I served with him in Congress for much of that time. He is a good and decent man. I haven’t always agreed with him, and there will be many policies on which we will disagree in the future, and that’s okay. The steadiness of leadership, and the health and survival of our democracy — those things far supersede any policy issues on which we might disagree. And this much I know: With Joe Biden as president, we will be able to preserve the civic space wherein Republicans and Democrats can go back to merely disagreeing about issues of policy, without fear of revenge or reprisal. That day cannot come soon enough. And so, it is because of my conservatism, and because of my belief in the Constitution, and in the separation of power, and because I am gravely concerned about the conduct and behavior of our current president that I stand here today — proudly and wholeheartedly — to endorse Joe Biden to be our next president of the United States of America. America’s best days are ahead. Go Joe. Thank you very much.
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Ady Barkan | I Speak With a Computerized Voice. Republicans Used It to Put Words in My Mouth. Last week, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise tried to use my computer-assisted voice to rob me of my agency, too. In a video aimed at Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana, shared his team’s manipulated footage of an interview I conducted with Biden to make it appear I had said words that I never uttered, in an effort to distort Biden’s views and harm his electoral prospects. Scalise eventually scrubbed the video from his Twitter feed after being criticized for the manipulation, but the ominous lessons of the episode remain: the ability to use technology not only for good but to mislead and manipulate; the willingness of those with political agendas to resort to such disinformation and propaganda; and the way in which America has cleaved into two separate information universes, with a conservative media ecosystem amplifying falsehoods that then take root. The entirety of the Scalise video painted a bleak picture of the country, with cleverly spliced scenes designed to make major cities look like places of anarchy and violent chaos. That’s already disingenuous; protesters demanding an end to centuries of racial violence have largely been peaceful. But what made it so remarkable wasn’t just that Scalise twisted the truth about Black Lives Matter. His video went a step further, altering a question I had asked Biden about law enforcement to make it sound as though Biden had agreed to defund the police. I’m in favor of defunding the police, so I wish that were the case. But Biden has been clear that isn’t his position. Now, I am of course grateful I can still speak, even if very slowly, using eye-gaze technology: A camera tracks the movements of my eyes on a screen-based keyboard, and then the resulting text is converted into speech by a synthetic voice generator. But because of my Hawking-esque voice, it’s particularly easy for others to manipulate what I say. Scalise’s team just went the extra mile in seeming to find the exact voice generator I use when they whipped up the extra words meant to damn Biden. Scalise has since conceded the video “shouldn’t have been edited” in an interview on Fox News — even as he attempted to claim there was an underlying truthfulness to the message. That isn’t the same as an apology to me, or, more important, the more than 2 million people in this country who communicate using assistive technology like I do. It’s specifically insulting to witness actors with the worst intentions hijack the technology that has allowed me to speak to try to speak for me, but this duplicity also exposes the broader information crisis in our society. When President Trump claimed, as he did in the run-up to the 2018 election, that a “migrant caravan” threatened the safety of the United States, he was bolstered by a vast conservative media that runs coverage amplifying his claims from morning to midnight. The inauguration crowd size, the repeated lies about voter fraud, claims about wiretapping, all of it is part of an attempt to shear one half of America away from the other by creating an alternate reality for Trump’s supporters. That reality isn’t based on facts, but on polarized partisanship. Trump, like many other leaders around the world with authoritarian aspirations, understands that shaping reality is the most powerful tool at an autocrat’s disposal. His goal is a society in which it doesn’t matter whether what you say is true as long as your side loves it. In that context, “deepfakes” such as the one Scalise posted aren’t missteps. They’re disinformation test balloons that should put every single one of us on alert. If they can without consequence make it seem as though I said something I didn’t, what else can they do? What else will they do? What fearmongering words can they put in Biden’s mouth in a video doctored to tip the election? I’m not sure I know how to solve this problem. The collective outrage that got the video stricken from Twitter is a good place to start; that must not let up. Another might be looking at the polarizing effects of Facebook, where the video remains, gathering views. That’s just the beginning, though. We need far more aggressive action across the board to identify and stop the spread of false information, because more is coming. But I can’t do that on my own. Every letter I’m typing here is difficult, each sentence its own hurdle, and my words aren’t enough. What we desperately need is others ready to speak their own — not speak false ones for me.
Kenosha Business Owner Accuses Trump of Using Destroyed Store for Political Gain Tom Gram said he bought Rode’s Camera Shop from the Rode family eight years ago, though John Rode still owns the property. Gram’s four decades of work at the store came to an end Aug. 24, when the building was destroyed by fire during protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Gram said he got a call Monday from the White House asking if he would join the president on a tour that would showcase the destruction to the business, but Gram rejected the offer. And he said Trump’s references to Rode as the owner of the business were deceptive. “I think everything he (Trump) does turns into a circus and I just didn’t want to be involved in it,” Gram told Milwaukee station WTMJ-TV. The White House, however, noted Wednesday that Rode and his family founded and built Rode’s Camera Shop before World War II and still own the building that houses the shop. Trump didn’t visit the site of the shop during Tuesday’s trip to Kenosha, but Rode met with him a few blocks away and participated in a roundtable with the president. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, planned to be in Kenosha on Thursday. Biden plans to hold a community meeting and make another stop at an undisclosed location, the campaign said. This will mark Biden’s first campaign stop in Wisconsin as the presidential nominee and his first in the state since October 2018. Trump’s visit came over the objections of some state and local leaders. Kenosha has seen protests since Aug. 23, when police shot Blake, a Black man, seven times in the back. On Monday, Trump defended a 17-year-old supporter, Kyle Rittenhouse, who is accused of fatally shooting two demonstrators in Kenosha on Aug. 25 and wounding a third. BuzzFeed News, citing since deleted social media, reported that Rittenhouse sat in the front row at a Trump rally in Des Moines in January and a TikTok bio page of his included the slogan “Trump 2020.” Rittenhouse’s attorney John Pierce tweeted a video of him Tuesday speaking by phone with Rittenhouse from jail in Illinois, where he was arrested. “I just want to thank every single one of you from the bottom of my heart for the underlining support, it’s just amazing,” Rittenhouse said from the phone held up by Pierce. “I want to thank all of you for the mail I’ve been receiving. It’s been really helpful. I just want to let you all know that I’m going to be out of here soon and stay strong. And I hope to see you guys soon.” Pierce reiterated his position that Rittenhouse was acting in self defense. Trump emphasized his “law and order” campaign message during his stop in Kenosha, where he thanked police but did not meet with anyone from Blake’s family. Also Tuesday, four people arrested during demonstrations in Kenosha filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that local law enforcement arrested only those protesting against police brutality, not “pro-police protesters and militia” who were armed with rifles. The lawsuit claims that enforcement of a curfew from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. violates constitutional free speech and equal protection rights. “In Kenosha, there are two sets of laws — one that applies to those who protest police brutality and racism, and another for those who support the police,” the lawsuit said. Sam Hall, attorney for Kenosha County, called the lawsuit “entirely without merit” and said the county will seek immediate dismissal. “The Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department has worked tirelessly to bring order back to the community and has been careful to protect the rights of all citizens throughout that process,” Hall said in a statement. An attorney for the city did not immediately return a message seeking comment Wednesday. The lawsuit includes widely circulated cellphone video from Aug. 25 showing law enforcement officers in armored vehicles handing bottles of water to civilians with rifles and thanking them. One of the people in that video is Rittenhouse. In the video, police appear to be clearing out protesters while allowing the gun-carrying civilians who said they were there to protect the property to remain. Those bringing the lawsuit are represented by North Carolina civil rights lawyer Kimberly Motely, who also represents Gaige Grosskreutz, the man prosecutors say was shot in the arm by Rittenhouse.
Vietnam's Long Walk to Freedom
Instead of acceding to the desire for national freedom, the French government tried to restore its colonial regime. That refusal to grant self-determination to the people of Indochina set the scene for thirty years of immensely destructive conflict, during which the United States picked up the baton from France in the name of anti-communism. The scars of that long struggle, both physical and psychological, are still very much in evidence today. It could all have been avoided if the authorities in Paris had responded to Vietnam’s Declaration of Independence in the spirit of democracy and not colonial domination. Colonial Indochina France had colonized Indochina — Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia — from the 1880s. France’s prime minister at the time was Jules Ferry, a racist who argued that “superior races” had a duty to civilize “inferior” races. Today, Ferry is best remembered for having established secular education, independent of the church, in France. A state-controlled education system, inculcating the values of patriotism and militarism, was part of the colonialist package. France’s colonial possessions grew rapidly. By 1919, it was the second-biggest empire on Earth, with nearly one-tenth of the world’s land area and 5 percent of its population. It was second in size (and brutality) only to the British. In 1931, the French authorities put on a colonial exhibition in Paris, which was visited by 8 million people. Colonial minister Paul Reynaud described colonization as “the greatest fact of History” and boasted that “our grip on the world is tightening every day.” (By the time Reynaud died in 1966, the French empire had disintegrated to nothing.) The French justification for colonialism rested upon the so-called civilizing mission — the claim that it was bringing civilization to allegedly “backward” countries. French leaders often gave this argument a left-wing twist, suggesting that the values of the French Revolution of 1789 were being exported to the world. For the inhabitants of a colony like Indochina, however, there was very little liberty or equality — and even less fraternity. A Barbarizing Mission In 1931, a French journalist, Andrée Viollis, joined an official ministerial visit to Indochina. This gave her access to official circles, but she also used the opportunity to meet political prisoners. The result was a book, SOS Indochina (1935), which gave a devastating account of the reality of life in France’s colony. Instead of the much-vaunted “civilizing mission,” Viollis found exploitation and acute poverty. In one district, there was just one doctor for 160,000 indigenous inhabitants. The colonial regime met resistance with savage repression and the frequent use of torture. Viollis had previously visited British-ruled India. She had believed that France “used more humane and intelligent methods of colonization than England.” As she noted, however, “a few days in Indochina would be enough to brutally destroy this illusion.” She told the horrific story of one prisoner who “bit off his tongue so as not to talk.” Viollis also met French settlers who recognized that French rule was doomed. As one civil servant told her: “In fifteen years perhaps, we French of Indochina won’t be here anymore, and it will be our fault!” Liberation or Restoration? The German occupation of France in 1940 made things even worse for Indochina. Supporters of the pro-German marshal Philippe Pétain took over the country. In the last year of the war, there was a catastrophic famine: estimates of deaths range from 500,000 to 2 million. In 1941, the leaders of Britain and the United States adopted the Atlantic Charter, which recognized that all peoples had a right to self-determination (although the British leader Winston Churchill tried to assert that it did not apply to the British Empire). The Allied powers claimed to be fighting the Nazis in the name of basic freedoms and rights. However, the populations of the colonial world had never enjoyed those rights in the first place. This was the background to the Declaration of Independence in 1945. Ho Chi Minh, a long-standing fighter against imperialism and founder of the Indochinese Communist Party, had formed the Viet Minh, a national independence coalition, in 1941. His declaration echoed the United States Declaration of Independence of 1776: All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. The message was simple, and its logic would spread through Asia and Africa in the coming years — if it’s good enough for the Americans, it’s good enough for us Vietnamese. But it was a message that European colonialism was not ready to hear. France was still reconstructing its armed forces after the Occupation, so British troops — sent by the newly elected Labour government — took over the country and ensured that independence would be stillborn. When the Labour MP Tom Driberg, who was visiting Indochina, tried to mediate, his letter was delayed by General Douglas Gracey, commander in chief of Allied Land Forces. Ho Chi Minh and “La Lutte” The Declaration of Independence responded to deep aspirations in the people of Indochina, who had no desire to return to the oppression and misery of the 1930s. In one area, miners elected workers’ councils to control the whole district. In Saigon, the demand arose for a more radical reconstruction of society, encouraged by the Trotskyist La Lutte (“The Struggle”) organization, which had enjoyed significant support in the 1930s. The revolutionary Ngo Van described how “numerous people’s committees . . . arose spontaneously, as organizations of local management.” This did not fit with the perspectives of Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh. As World War II came to an end, Stalin had agreed to carve up the globe between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. He was determined that his followers should not upset the new balance of power. For his part, Ho Chi Minh did not want to see a movement for the self-emancipation of workers and peasants escalating beyond his control. He depended on the Soviet leadership for political guidance and believed in the possibility of cooperation with his old comrades from the French Communist Party, who were now part of the government in Paris. In contrast, the Vietnamese Trotskyists believed that if anything were to be achieved in this situation, the Indochinese workers would have to rely on their own strength. La Lutte and its supporters were brutally suppressed by both colonial forces and the Viet Minh. Viet Minh forces killed Tạ Thu Thâu, a long-standing leader who had been imprisoned by the French and elected as a city councillor in the 1930s. When Ho Chi Minh came to Paris for talks in 1946, he invited Daniel Guérin, an established anti-colonial activist, to lunch at a hotel. Challenged about the fate of Tạ Thu Thâu, Ho replied: “All those who do not follow the line which I have laid down will be broken.” Clinging on to Empire The brief bid for Indochinese independence failed. Had it succeeded, it would have made not one but two wars unnecessary. The long fight for freedom, which left at least 3 million dead, could have been avoided. But those who ruled France were determined to retain their empire. The head of the provisional government that emerged from the Liberation was Charles de Gaulle, a right-wing military man who had encouraged resistance to the Nazi occupation from London. But most of the right-wing forces inside France had been discredited by their support for the Nazis, so the parties in De Gaulle’s government were predominantly of the Left: Communists (PCF), Socialists (SFIO), and Christian Democrats. For De Gaulle, there was no doubt that France would continue in its imperial role. In a broadcast, he declared that France was taking back its “place in the world.” Already in the summer of 1945, France had clashed with Britain about control of Syria. From De Gaulle, that was to be expected. More disappointing was the response of the Left, which was very slow to address the question of colonialism. Le Monde, a newly founded daily paper, generally expressed a progressive, left-of-center point of view. But in September 1945, it noted with pleasure the prospect that “the French flag will again be flying in the Indochinese sky.” The Communist Party, formed in 1920 under the influence of the Russian Revolution, had originally been committed to supporting liberation movements in the colonies. But as the party came more and more to reflect the interests of Soviet foreign policy, its commitment to anti-colonialism declined. The Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance of 1935 had meant that French — and Indochinese — Communists abandoned their opposition to French national defense policy, to the dismay of many Vietnamese socialists. The PCF dropped its demand for colonial independence: party leader Maurice Thorez used the specious argument that “the right to divorce did not mean the obligation to divorce.” The implication was apparently that France’s relationship to its colonies constituted a happy marriage. The people of Indochina might not have agreed. Oradour in Algeria Under PCF leadership, the Resistance had presented itself as a movement for national independence, often using crudely anti-German slogans rather than anti-Nazi ones. It did not raise the question of France’s role as a colonial power, and a new generation introduced into activism had not been confronted with the colonial question. The SFIO, apart from its far-left fringe, had always been weaker on colonial questions. Things changed from the very first day of the postwar period. On May 8, 1945, a victory celebration was held in Sétif in northern Algeria. Police opened fire on a peaceful demonstration of Algerian nationalists. This provoked a spontaneous revolt in which around one hundred European settlers were killed, victims of the accumulated anger of the indigenous population. The French government ordered massive retaliation, with bombing, shelling, and death squads. At least fifteen thousand Muslims died, probably many more. Yet the PCF and SFIO remained part of the cabinet in Paris and condoned the repression. The only opposition in France came from the far-left fringe. An independent left-wing paper called Ohé Partisans denounced the massacre as “Oradour-sur-Glane in Algeria,” comparing it to the Nazi slaughter of more than six hundred people in the French town of that name. Parallels drawn between the Nazi occupation of France and French rule in its colonies were to become increasingly frequent in the coming years. So long as the PCF and SFIO remained in government, they made no attempt to challenge France’s colonial rule. As a result, the first expressions of support for Indochinese independence came from unaligned individuals. In November 1945, the Catholic philosopher Joseph Rovan, who had been imprisoned in Dachau for Resistance activity, denounced “the inhumane positions of colonialism.” Commenting on the claim by French general Philippe Leclerc that the Viet Minh were “bandits and extremists,” Rovan recalled “the time when French Resisters too were described as terrorists and common‑law criminals recruited in the underworld.” Jean-Paul Sartre’s new journal, Les Temps modernes, called for the withdrawal of French troops and published several pieces opposing the war, although without explicitly supporting independence. “Dying for the Rubber Planters” Henri Martin, a young Communist who had been active in the Resistance, stayed in the armed forces after Liberation to go to Indochina, believing that he was continuing the struggle against the remnants of fascism. By May 1946, he was writing to his parents with the following message: In Indochina, the French army is behaving as the Germans did in France. I am completely disgusted to see that. Why do our planes machine-gun (every day) defenceless fishermen? Why do our soldiers pillage, burn and kill? In order to bring civilization? The French determination to cling on to empire and the Indochinese demand for freedom could not coexist. In November 1946, a French ship bombarded Haiphong, killing six thousand people and starting a full-scale war. But the PCF and the SFIO remained in government; in March 1947, PCF ministers voted for war credits, while other Communist deputies merely abstained. The only opposition came from the youth section of the SFIO (soon to be dissolved), which organized a campaign of leaflets, flyposting, and meetings, leading to a militant demonstration. One leaflet read: People think they’re dying for their homeland, but they’re dying for the rubber planters . . . not a halfpenny, not a man for Indochina. In 1947, following a strike at the Renault car plant, the PCF found itself turfed out of the government. As the Cold War intensified, the French Communists now mounted vigorous opposition to the war. There were strikes by dockers and violent demonstrations in which PCF supporters attacked and damaged munitions destined for Indochina. After Henri Martin was jailed for distributing anti-war material in the armed forces, a huge campaign began in his support, backed by intellectuals like Sartre and Pablo Picasso. For seven years, France fought to hang on to Indochina. Although the French government did not use conscripts, some of the regular troops came to recognize the nature of the war they were fighting. At the Liberation, Albert Clavier, hoping to see something of the world, had enrolled in the Colonial Artillery — even though, as he later recalled, he “didn’t know much about what the colonies were.” He found out when he befriended an Indochinese family and observed French atrocities. Eventually he crossed over to the Viet Minh. The independence movement employed Clavier on propaganda work, addressing French troops with a loudspeaker, urging them to lay down their arms, and drawing parallels between the Vietnamese struggle and the French Resistance. He shared the living standards of his Vietnamese hosts, subsisting on two bowls of rice a day. A Savage War, Then Peace The results of France’s stubborn determination to hang on to its empire could also be seen in Madagascar. In 1947, a nationalist uprising spread rapidly, engaging up to a million peasants, who were soon joined by railway workers. French forces resorted to mass executions, the burning of entire villages, and torture, and they had put down the uprising by December 1948. But just twelve years later, Madagascar won its independence. France’s defense of its empire had been savage yet futile. There was little criticism of its colonial wars from the non-Communist left, apart from individuals like the novelist Albert Camus. The futile and murderous war in Indochina lasted until 1954. Following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, Indochina was partitioned; Laos and Cambodia had already become independent in 1953. A Communist state was established in North Vietnam, with a pro-American regime in South Vietnam. Promised elections never took place. Misguided by their own Cold War ideology, the United States failed to recognize the popular support for national independence and sent increasing numbers of troops to back up a puppet regime in South Vietnam. Only in 1975 did Vietnam get the independence it could, and should, have had thirty years earlier. It did not develop into the socialist society some had hoped for. However, it seems to have handled the COVID-19 pandemic in recent months rather better than its former imperial mentors in France, the United States, or Britain. Imperial Legacies The French had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Shortly after the liquidation of the Indochinese war, a rebellion broke out in Algeria. A government headed by SFIO leader Guy Mollet escalated military repression. François Mitterrand (later a Socialist president) was responsible for the execution of rebel prisoners. The PCF ran a lukewarm campaign for “peace” instead of calling for Algerian independence, and they failed to back revolts by conscripts refusing to go to Algeria. Only in 1962 did De Gaulle, who had returned to power after a political crisis, look reality in the face and negotiate Algerian independence. By then, most of the French empire had been liquidated. President Emmanuel Macron has recognized that France’s colonial history in Algeria involved “crimes against humanity.” But the statue of Jules Ferry still stands in the Tuileries Garden in Paris, near the Louvre Museum. Perhaps it is time for it to fall.
Alexei Navalny Poisoned With Novichok, Says German Government
Tear Gas Used During Portland Protests Raises Concern About Pollution The Portland Bureau of Environmental Services cleaned and took samples from six storm drains last week around the federal courthouse and a building with a police station and jail that have been targeted in nightly demonstrations. Environmental officials aimed to prevent pollutants from reaching the Willamette River, which runs through downtown and is popular with kayakers, canoeists and boaters, and determine the possible impact if contaminants did flow into the waterway. “There is no American city, that I am aware of, that has endured the level of tear gas,” agency spokeswoman Diane Dulken said. “We are researching and looking through environmental literature. What are these materials and their toxicity?” Officials said they’re testing for pollutants that are found in crowd control agents such as the heavy metals zinc, lead, copper and chromium. Dulken said there is no evidence yet of tear gas residue reaching the river, “but it’s also hard to say because there is so much unknown about the materials and so much unknown about the quantities.” U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and state Rep. Karin Power sent a letter last month to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality requesting an investigation into “the public health and environmental risks of tear gas and other chemicals to people, wildlife, aquatic life and local air and water quality.” Blumenauer and Power asked the EPA for information on what kind of chemicals federal agents used and how the residue will be cleaned up. “We don’t know yet what has been deployed, but we aim to find out,” Power said. The protests over racist policing often ended with a fog of tear gas as federal agents tried to disperse the crowd. Before they arrived, local police frequently deployed it. The protests started after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, dwindled to smaller groups that spread chaos and grew again when President Donald Trump sent federal agents to the liberal city in early July. Violence has persisted, but the gatherings over the last week have been much smaller and targeted local police facilities. Demonstrators and city officials said agents’ use of tear gas was excessive, but U.S. authorities said it was necessary to protect federal property and officers as protesters hurled objects like cans of beans, bottles and fireworks. Robert Griffin, who is the dean of the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at the University at Albany in New York, said he was “a little bit appalled” by the use of tear gas. “If you put a cloud of gas into a crowd, it’s going to affect the old, it’s going to affect the young, it’s going to affect the youth. It doesn’t pick,” Griffin said. “The problem is, if the wind shifts, it will go into areas that it was never intended to go.” While local officials have called for a study on the impact of the chemical irritants, Griffin said that should have been done much earlier. “We should be putting money into understanding the long-term health and impacts of these technologies because they are being used on our own citizens,” Griffin said. Sven-Eric Jordt, an associate professor and researcher at Duke University’s School of Medicine who has extensively studied tear gas, said the majority of data used to justify its use is outdated, having been generated in the 1950s, ‘60s and ’70s. “It’s really very distressful that the science is really so old,” Jordt said. Documents listing the ingredients in the gas, as well as the amount used on Portland protesters, haven’t been released. “I really think that the federal government and also local health departments have really neglected their duty to reinvestigate the safety of tear gas,” Jordt said. At the end of July, federal authorities were pulled back from downtown Portland and the cleanup began. The city Bureau of Environmental Services received reports of power-washing that possibly flushed contaminants from the streets into storm drains. While some lead to a sewer system, the drains surrounding the federal courthouse lead directly to the Willamette River. Officials told city workers to put buffers around storm drains while cleaning. The river has a history of pollution, which was stained with sewage as often as 50 times a year and for decades carried industrial pollution from several Oregon cities. Today, people swim in the river that’s now considered safe. Dulken said Portland has worked to be proactive about stopping pollutants from reaching the river, including any tear gas residue. Authorities took samples from the entry and exit points of the storm drains and expect results later this month, which could lead to further cleanup. “What is the effect? We don’t know,” Dulken said. |
n September 2, 1945, the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was 
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