Does The Left Stand With Uighurs?

Nick Pemberton

As the American left forces itself to reckon with its neglect of the minority underclass in its central planning of democratic socialism, a similar reckoning should be happening in relation to China and its treatment of the Muslim minority population and its increasing reach in Africa. Under the guise of economic empowerment for the upper and middle-class China has in many ways followed the United States route to economic and military power that relied upon labor exploitation, incarceration, surveillance, control of women’s reproductive rights and environmental destruction.

The racial reckoning in the United States is hard for many leftists to swallow because the left with a few exceptions wants to blame racial and gender violence on the invisible hand of stagnant hegemonic America. With an Empire in crisis and an austerity politics crippling the domestic sphere we see a crude authoritarianism under Donald Trump who attempts to retain legitimate power through corruption, misinformation and force. Along with this comes the typical hysterical anti-communist rhetoric with a reckless Cold War narrative and sanctions policy that will only further hurt the Chinese poor.

However in a letter signed by among others, Noam Chomsky, the reason for the concentration camps sounds a lot more like capitalism than communism: “China’s present signature foreign policy initiative is the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) that seeks to connect the PRC economically to the rest of the Eurasian continent through large infrastructure projects that will stimulate international trade. The western and south-western components of the BRI require the XUAR to serve as a transportation and commercial hub to trade routes and pipelines that will join China with Central and South Asia, the Middle East, and the entirety of Europe. As a result, the XUAR has become a very important strategic region for China, and the state views its indigenous populations as an obstacle to developing its vision for this future critical center of international commercial networks.”

While accepting that centralized organization and solidarity amidst a vague ruling class communist ideology and concrete history of communist people uniting against racist Western capitalism, imperialism and the like certainly did help to create an effective and organized response to the coronavirus we still have to ask as leftists interested in not just ruling class ideology, but material underclass conditions, who was left out, and what were the labor conditions necessary to create this nation of unity and efficiency?

Re-education camps, sterilization of women, mass surveillance reliant on big tech, rapid industrialization and pollution, forced labor, market expansion and police brutality may sound familiar to some in the USA. Capitalism. Exploiting and controlling a minority population to increase wealth at the harm of the environment and further international commerce is a problem.

Now we have to recognize the ways in which China is admirable in its own solidarity with left-leaning governments

and victims of imperialism. Such allegiances have created power that counters Empire and emboldens collective leftist governments fighting back against capitalist coups and resource extraction. Indeed without building power how would China be able to lift so many in the world out of poverty? We need to end the ridiculous China-bashing that is typical of all Empires in decline. We should also recognize that in many ways China like the rest of the world does still have to abide by the rules of Western imperialism, capitalism and white supremacism dictated by the United States. This is certainly not an extensive discussion of China overall but merely a specific but significant example of a concentration camp setting that mirrors many of the human rights violations exposed by immigrant activists and Black Lives Matter here in the United States.

Communism. No one on the left wants to say they are a communist. Paradoxically no one wants to examine China because their ruling class is supposedly on our team. That’s a shame because we can be proud communists and critizise China’s ruling class precisely because we believe in the power of the people to rule their own lives. Joe Biden and Donald Trump have their own reasons for bashing China: reign of the dollar, corruption, American exceptionalism based in white supremacy, a thirst for militarism and American hegemony across the world, anti-communism based in ahistorical ideology and election talking points. Policies resulting from these including the recent sanctions must be opposed.

However, through all the noise we can trace our own reasons for opposing concentration camps of minorities, cruel policies towards migrants, physical and sexual abuse by the police state and forced labor to further the interest of the global ruling class. Black Lives Matter has exposed the police state in the United States and created solidarity across the world, including from the Chinese government. Their words ring just as hallow as ours condemning China’s human rights as both acts of partisan posturing are political games that ignore the enslavement and abuse of working people on the ground.

We would be foolish to dismiss solidarity with China’s underclass. If the left really believes in the power of communism, in the power of poor and working people owning the means of production, then we can say that the current state of affairs in global capitalism is needing a communist revolution that frees the poor minority populations across the globe from brutal market forces. The underdog isn’t the ideology of communism, it is the actualization of it.

Trump doesn’t support Muslims. He sanctions China because they are independent enough to defy American Empire. Good for them. Behind the macho posturing of Biden and Trump is crude economic bullying designed to keep the United States and our ruling class in power. While having no allegiance to this ruling class, the internationalism modeled by Chomsky includes an honest evaluation of the reasons for China’s rise and the limits in supporting an opposition to Empire that itself has hierarchal exploitation.

Chomsky is one to know that denying concentration camps is embracing simplistic prescriptions. What we need is solidarity between poor people across the globe. While admiring China’s communist affiliations in many ways we can also be honest about glaring oppressions without supporting Cold War imperialism against their people via sanctions. For we all know that the trade war and sanctions is meant to hurt first and foremost the Chinese worker not the American multinational corporation benefiting from Muslim labor. From this honest evaluation, we can trace the material conditions that created systems of oppression and both country’s people can continue protesting, often at danger to our own lives, regardless of ruling class distinctions of “national interests”.

The Bologna Massacre, the ‘Strategy of Tension’ and Operation Gladio

Brett Wilkins

On the sweltering morning of August 2, 1980, a powerful explosion blew apart the central train station in Bologna, Italy, killing 85 people and wounding 200 more. To this day, it is uncertain exactly who is behind the deadliest terrorist attack in modern Italian history. It is clear that right-wing extremists including neo-fascists, Italian secret service agents and rogue outlaw Freemasons carried out the attack. What is less clear is whether, or to what extent, the bombing was part of a clandestine, Europe-wide right-wing state terror operation.

Years of Lead

The period from the late 1960s through the 1980s was one of social and political turmoil in Italy known as the anni di piombo, or years of lead. Terrorism from both the far right and far left was commonplace during these deadly decades, in which some 12,000 attacks claimed hundreds of lives. Until Bologna, the most infamous of these was the kidnapping and murder of former prime minister Aldo Moro by the communist Red Brigades in 1978.

Bologna, capital of the prosperous Emilia-Romagna region in northeastern Italy, was — and remains — a hotbed of political activity. Home to the world’s oldest university, the city is known by locals as Bologna la dotta, or Bologna the Learned. It is also called Bologna la rossa, or Bologna the Red, as the city has long been a stronghold of the Communist Party. Home to some of the world’s finest food and wine and brimming with cultural treasures, the city has been described as the perfect combination of hedonism and communism.

Still, there was bloodshed in Bologna during those Years of Lead. After police shot and killed Francesco Lorusso, a 24-year-old far-left militant, on March 11, 1977, the city erupted in street clashes that lasted for days. The Italian government sent armored combat vehicles into the university quarter and other hot spots to quash what Francesco Cossiga, the interior minister, called “guerrilla warfare.”

On June 27, 1980, Itavia Flight 870, a DC-9 passenger jet en route from Bologna to Palermo in Sicily, crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea near the island of Ustica, killing all 81 passengers and crew on board. Like the Bologna station bombing, the cause and the culprit behind the disaster remain shrouded in much mystery. At the time, Prime Minister Francesco Cossiga said the plane was accidentally shot down by French fighter jets engaged in a dogfight with Libyan warplanes over the Mediterranean Sea. However, a 1994 report concluded that a terrorist bomb had brought down the plane. This solved nothing, for in 2013 Italy’s top criminal court affirmed the stray missile theory. Regardless of who is responsible for the Ustica massacre, the tragedy weighed heavily on Bologna’s public consciousness during the summer of 1980, the nadir of the Years of Lead.

Ticking Time Bomb

It was sun, sand and sea, not death and destruction, that were on the minds of many of the thousands of travelers who packed into Bologna’s main train station, the Stazione di Bologna Centrale, on that hot morning of August 2, 1980. Summer holidays were just beginning and many of the travelers that day were students on their way to the Adriatic seashore. As the temperature soared, the air-conditioned second-class waiting room quickly filled to capacity. No one noticed the suitcase someone slipped into the crowded room, right up against a load-bearing wall to maximize death and destruction. No one knew that packed inside were 23 kilograms (50 pounds) of military-grade explosives timed to go off at 10:25 am.

Tonino Braccia was a 19-year-old policeman waiting for a train to Rome, where he was to attend his cousin’s wedding. “It was a really beautiful day, he recalled. “Scorching hot.” Braccia said he was “feeling really good” that morning, as his commander had granted him three days’ special leave to travel to the capital. “I was smoking a cigarette and I went into the waiting room but there wasn’t anywhere to sit, it was completely full,” he told the BBC. “So I leaned against the door and looked outside.”

Bloodbath

Malcolm Quantrill, a 44-year-old university professor from London, had just reached the ticket window in the booking hall when he suddenly saw a flash of yellow light. “I did not hear any explosion, just the crash of masonry falling and the sound of breaking glass as the ticket window disintegrated,” he said.

Braccia doesn’t remember the explosion either. “I have tried and tried to remember the moment of the explosion but I really can’t remember anything, even the noise,” he said. “Probably because I was too near it — just two meters away.” The next thing he remembers is waking up under a train as water from a firefighters’ hose dripped down on his face. Most of his clothes had been blown off.

“I heard people screaming and shouting,” recalled Braccia. “There were people running. An acrid smell. My mouth tasted bitter and horrible. There was smelly dust everywhere. Everything was yellow. Blood was pouring out of my mouth, my eyes, my ears, my nose.” He would lose one of his eyes, as well as the use of one of his arms. He is also partially deaf. The young policeman would spend two weeks in an induced coma and undergo 24 operations over the coming years.

Giuseppe Rosa, a bus driver parked outside the station, will never forget the blast. Rosa said he “heard an enormous bang” and then “part of the roof lifted into the air and fell down on itself.” A massive, gaping hole had been blown in the center of the station, the twisted steel girders a testament to the sheer power of the bomb. Rubble was strewn about. From the chaos Quantrill, the British professor, emerged, shocked and disoriented. “There was blood all over me. Everyone was running, shouting and screaming.”

Amid the smoldering debris, weeping rescue workers collected blasted bodies and bits of bodies. Bologna residents joined travelers in offering first aid to injured victims and in digging dead and wounded people from the rubble. Buses, taxis and private cars rushed victims to hospital.

The bombing of Bologna Centrale — the strage di Bologna to Italians — remains the most devastating terrorist attack in Italian history. In the history of modern terror attacks up to that time, only the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem by Zionist militants led by future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin killed more people. The final death toll in Bologna was 85, with 200 others injured. The youngest to die that day was a 3-year-old girl. The oldest victim was 86 years old.

Strategy of Tension

At first, Italian government and police officials attributed to blast to an accidental explosion, perhaps of an old boiler. Authorities soon received calls from people on both the far right and far left claiming responsibility for the attack. However, it was soon apparent that this was no communist plot. Rather, it was the result of not-so-secret collusion between state officials, fascist terrorists and agents provocateurs, the notorious strategia della tensione, or Strategy of Tension. This unholy alliance of shadowy right-wing forces including corrupt politicians, secret service officers, fascist militants, clergymen and rogue Freemasons would stop at nothing to keep communists from power.

The Strategy of Tension, under which violence and chaos were encouraged rather than suppressed, was ultimately meant to terrorize Italians into voting for the oligarchic Christian Democrats instead of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). The policy was backed by the United States, which had a decades-long history of meddling in Italian politics. The Central Intelligence Agency funneled tens of millions of dollars to anti-communist parties to influence the outcome of numerous Italian elections beginning in the late 1940s. The CIA also engaged in forgery and other disinformation in a bid to discredit the popular PCI.

The Bologna massacre happened just three hours before a court in the city started the trial of a group of right-wing terrorists, including the notorious fascist Mario Tuti, for the August 4, 1974 bombing of the Italicus Express train from Rome to Brenner, an attack that killed 12 innocent people. Investigators quickly zeroed in on militant fascists, attributing the Bologna bombing to the Armed Revolutionary Nuclei (NAR), a neo-fascist terrorist group led by 21-year-old Francesca Mambro and her future husband Valerio Fioravanti, who was 22 at the time. The Bologna prosecutor issued 28 arrest warrants for members of NAR and Terza Posizione, another far-right group.

Terror on Trial

Trials began in March 1987. Prosecutors asserted the terrorists were hoping to spark a revolt that would end with Italy returning to fascist dictatorship, under which it had been ruled as recently as 35 years earlier. Among the defendants were fascist financier Licio Gelli, who once served as a liaison between Rome and Nazi Germany and who was grand master of the banned P2 Masonic Lodge, Pietro Musumeci, a former army general and deputy director of military secret service who was a leading member of P2 and two former professional footballers. It was a veritable Who’s Who of the Italian far right.

In July 1988, four people — Mambro, Fioravanti, Massimiliano Fachini and Sergio Picciafuoco — were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Two others were acquitted. However, the four murder convictions were overturned on appeal in 1992. A new trial began the following year; all of the defendants were again sentenced to life behind bars, except for Fachini, who was acquitted. Lesser sentences for crimes including forming an armed gang, subversive association, obstruction and defamation were also handed down to many of the defendants.

Mambro, who was paroled in 2013, maintains her innocence to this day, although she and Fioravanti have accepted moral responsibility for NAR terror attacks. Speaking about the Bologna bombing in a 1997 interview, she said she “remembers the day perfectly.”

“I heard about it on the news and I thought, ‘what kind of people could do a thing like that?’” Mambro said. “So wanton. So indiscriminate. I wanted to cry.”

Operation Gladio?

In 1984, convicted fascist Vincenzo Vinciguerra testified to Italian investigators that he had been recruited for a 1972 car bombing in Peteano as part of Operation Gladio — Latin for “sword” —  which was launched by the Italian secret service in the 1950s as a stay-behind guerrilla resistance operation in the event of a Soviet invasion or communist takeover of NATO countries. “There exists in Italy a secret force parallel to the armed forces, composed of civilians and military men, in an anti-Soviet capacity, to organize a resistance on Italian soil against a Russian army,” Vinciguerra testified. “Lacking a Soviet military invasion, which might not happen, [they] took up the task, on NATO’s behalf, of preventing a slip to the left in the political balance of the country. This they did, with the assistance of the official secret services and the political and military forces.”

Vinciguerra’s testimony is corroborated by other prominent Italian officials. Gen. Vito Miceli, former head of military intelligence, testified that “the incriminated organization… was formed under a secret agreement with the United States and within the framework of NATO.” Former defense minister Paulo Taviani told a magistrate that during his time in office, “the Italian secret services were bossed and financed by CIA agents,” while Giandelio Maletti, a former secret service general, said “the CIA gave its tacit approval to a series of bombings in Italy in the 1970s to sow instability and keep communists from taking power.” Former secret service chief Gen. Gerardo Serravalle said that as Gladio evolved into a terrorist operation, “representatives of the CIA were always present” at meetings, although the Americans did not have voting rights. Serravalle also said that Gladio agents trained a British military base. A parliamentary terrorism committee also revealed that the US funded a training base for “stay behind” operators in Germany.

Although the CIA denied involvement in Gladio, one of the agency’s former directors, William Colby, detailed in his memoir how the CIA was involved in stay-behind operations in Scandinavian countries. Declassified CIA documents also prove that the US helped set up German stay-behind networks, which involved former Nazis including two SS colonels, Hans Rues and Walter Kopp, who the agency described as an “unreconstructed Nazi.”

Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti publicly acknowledged the existence of Gladio in 1990. The Christian Democrat said that 127 weapons caches had been dismantled and claimed that Gladio was not involved in any of the bombings during the Years of Lead. Andreotti also said that in 1964 Italy’s military had joined the Allied Clandestine Committee, which was created seven years earlier by the US, France, Belgium and Greece, and was in charge of directing Gladio operations. That same year the European Parliament condemned NATO and the US for their role in Gladio terrorism and for “jeopardizing the democratic structures” of European nations.

Agonizing Uncertainty

While it cannot be said with any great certainty that the Bologna bombing was a Gladio operation, the attacks certainly bears the hallmarks of Operation Gladio. Explosives experts determined that the blast was caused by “retrieved military explosives” of the same sort used in the 1972 Peteano car bombing. On the 20th anniversary of the bombing, Andreotti gave an interview in which he said that there were forces in what would today be called the “deep state” who would stop at nothing to defeat communism. “In the Italian secret services, and in parallel apparatus, there was a conviction that they were involved in a Holy War, that they had been given a sacred mission,” the former prime minister said. “And that anything that passed as anti-communist was legitimate and praiseworthy.”

Forty years later, the terror trail of August 2, 1980 refuses to go cold. In January 2020, Gilberto Cavallini, a 67-year-old former NAR member, was convicted of providing logistical support for the bombing and sentenced to life in prison. Many of those accused or convicted in connection with the massacre maintain their innocence, and Bologna and the world are no closer to knowing for sure who is behind the attack.

For some victims, the uncertainty is agonizing. “I can’t accept that they took my life away from me,” said Braccia, the former policeman. “I had such a zest for life and they destroyed it. We don’t know the truth, and that is the difficulty. We want the truth. Who really did this?”

There is a clock on the wall outside the main entrance to Bologna Centrale. It is permanently stopped at 10:25. Like the unrepaired blast crater and memorial wall in the station hall, it is an eternal reminder of the horrors of that infernal August morning 40 years ago, and of questions that may never be fully answered.

The Consequences of Inequality Can Be Fatal

Richard Wolff

Capitalism, as Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century shows, relentlessly worsens wealth and income inequalities. That inherent tendency is only occasionally stopped or reversed when masses of people rise up against it. That happened, for example, in western Europe and the U.S. during the 1930s Great Depression. It prompted social democracy in Europe and the New Deal in the United States. So far in capitalism’s history, however, stoppages or reversals around the world proved temporary. The last half-century witnessed a neoliberal reaction that rolled back both European social democracy and the New Deal. Capitalism has always managed to resume its tendential movement toward greater inequality.

Among the consequences of a system with such a tendency, many are awful. We are living through one now as the COVID-19 pandemic, inadequately contained by the U.S. system, savages Americans of middle and lower incomes and wealth markedly more than the rich. The rich buy better health care and diets, second homes away from crowded cities, better connections to get government bailouts, and so on. Many of the poor are homeless. Tasteless advice to “shelter at home” is, for them, absurd. Low-income people are often crowded into the kinds of dense housing and dense working conditions that facilitate infection. Poor residents of low-cost nursing homes die disproportionally, as do prison inmates (mostly poor). Pandemic capitalism distributes death in inverse proportion to wealth and income.

Social distancing has destroyed especially low-wage service sector jobs. Rarely did top executives lose their positions, and when they did, they found others. The result is a widened gap between high salaries for some and low or no wages for many. Unemployment invites employers to lower wages for the still employed because they can. Pandemic capitalism has provoked a massive increase in money-creation by central banks. That money fuels rising stock markets and thereby enriches the rich who own most shares. The coincidence of rising stock markets and mass unemployment plus falling wages only adds momentum to worsening inequality.

Unequal economic distributions (of income and wealth) finance unequal political outcomes. Whenever a small minority enjoys concentrated wealth within a society committed to universal suffrage, the rich quickly understand their vulnerability. The non-wealthy majority can use universal suffrage to prevail politically. The majority’s political power could then undo the results of the economy including its unequal distribution of income and wealth. The rich corrupt politics with their money to prevent exactly that outcome. Capitalists spend part of their wealth to preserve (and enlarge) all of their wealth.

The rich and those eager to join them in the U.S. dominate within both Republican and Democratic parties. The rich provide most of the donations that sustain candidates and parties, the funding for armies of lobbyists “advising” legislators, the bribes, and many issue-oriented public campaigns. The laws and regulations that flow from Washington, states, and cities reflect the needs and desires of the rich far more than those of the rest of us. The peculiar structure of U.S. property taxes offers an example. In the U.S., property is divided into two kinds: tangible and intangible. Tangible property includes land, buildings, business inventories, automobiles, etc. Intangible property is mostly stocks and bonds. Rich people hold most of their wealth in the form of intangible property. It is thus remarkable that in the U.S., only tangible property is subject to property tax. Intangible property is not subject to any property tax.

The kinds of property (tangible) that many people own get taxed, but the kinds of property (intangible) mostly owned by the richest minority do not get taxed. If you own a house rented to tenants, you pay a property tax to the municipality where the house is located. You also pay an income tax on the received rents to the federal government and likely also the state government where you live. You are thus taxed twice: once on the value of the property you own and once on the income you derive from that property. If you sell a $100,000 house and then buy $100,000 worth of shares, you will owe no property taxes to any level of government in the United States. You will only owe income tax on dividends paid to you on the shares you own. The form of property you own determines whether you pay property tax or not.

This property tax system is excellent for those rich enough to buy significant amounts of shares. The rich used their wealth to get tax laws written that way for them. The rest of us pay more in taxes because the rich pay less. Because the rich save money—since their intangible property is not taxed—they have that much more to buy the politicians who secure such a tax system for them. And that tax system worsens inequality of wealth and income.

Unequal economic distributions finance unequal cultural outcomes. For example, the goal of a unifying, democratizing public school system has always been subverted by economic inequality. In general (with few exceptions), the better schools cost more to attend. The tutors needed to help struggling students are affordable for the rich but less so for everyone else. The children of the wealthy get the private schools, books, quiet rooms, computers, educational trips, extra art and music lessons, and virtually everything else needed for higher educational achievement.

Unequal economic distributions finance unequal “natural” outcomes. The U.S. now displays two differently priced foods. Rich people can afford “organic” while the rest of us worry but still buy “conventional” food for budget reasons. Countless studies indicate the dangers of herbicides, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, food processing methods, and additives. Nonetheless, the two-price food system delivers the better, safer food more to the rich than to everyone else. Likewise, the rich buy the safer automobiles, more safely equip their homes, and clean and filter the water they drink and the air they breathe. No wonder the rich live years longer on average than other people. Inequality is often fatal, not just during pandemics.

In ancient Greece, Plato and Aristotle worried about and discussed the threat to community, to social cohesion, posed by inequalities of wealth and income. They criticized markets as institutions because, in their view, markets facilitated and aggravated income and wealth inequalities. But modern capitalism sanctifies markets and has thus conveniently forgotten Plato’s and Aristotle’s cautions and warnings about markets and inequality.

The thousands of years since Plato and Aristotle have seen countless critiques, reforms, and revolutions directed against wealth and income inequalities. They have rarely succeeded and have even more rarely persisted. Pessimists have responded, as the Bible does, with the notion that “the poor shall always be with us.” We rather ask the question: Why did so many heroic efforts at equality fail?

The answer concerns the economic system, and how it organizes the people who work to produce and distribute the goods and services societies depend on. If its economic organization splits participants into a small rich minority and a large non-rich majority, the former will likely be determined to reproduce that organization over time. Slavery (master versus slave) did; feudalism (lord versus serf) did; and capitalism (employer versus employee) does. Inequality in the economy is a root cause contributing to society-wide inequalities.

We might then infer that an alternative economic system based on a democratically organized community producing goods and services—not split into a dominant minority and a subordinate majority—might finally end social inequality.

Russiagate, Nazis, and the CIA

Rob Urie

The political success of Russiagate lies in the vanishing of American history in favor of a façade of liberal virtue. Posed as a response to the election of Donald Trump, a straight line can be drawn from efforts to undermine the decommissioning of the American war economy in 1946 to the CIA’s alliance with Ukrainian fascists in 2014. In 1945 the NSC (National Security Council) issued a series of directives that gave logic and direction to the CIA’s actions during the Cold War. That these persist despite the ‘fall of communism’ suggests that it was always just a placeholder in the pursuit of other objectives.

The first Cold War was an imperial business enterprise to keep the Generals, bureaucrats, and war materiel suppliers in power and their bank accounts flush after WWII. Likewise, the American side of the nuclear arms race left former Gestapo and SS officers employed by the CIA to put their paranoid fantasies forward as assessments of Russian military capabilities. Why, of all people, would former Nazi officers be put in charge military intelligence if accurate assessments were the goal? The Nazis hated the Soviets more than the Americans did.

The ideological binaries of Russiagate— for or against Donald Trump, for or against neoliberal, petrostate Russia, define the boundaries of acceptable discourse to the benefit of deeply nefarious interests. The U.S. has spent a century or more trying to install a U.S.-friendly government in Moscow. Following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the U.S. sent neoliberal economists to loot the country as the Clinton administration, and later the Obama administration, placed NATO troops and armaments on the Russian border after a negotiated agreement not to do so. Subsequent claims of realpolitik are cover for a reckless disregard for geopolitical consequences.

The paradox of American liberalism, articulated when feminist icon and CIA asset Gloria Steinem described the CIA as ‘liberal, nonviolent and honorable,’ is that educated, well-dressed, bourgeois functionaries have used the (largely manufactured) threat of foreign subversion to install right-wing nationalists subservient to American business interests at every opportunity. Furthermore, Steinem’s aggressive ignorance of the actual history of the CIA illustrates the liberal propensity to conflate bourgeois dress and attitude with an imagined gentility. To the point made by Christopher Simpson, the CIA could have achieved better results had it not employed former Nazi officers, begging the question of why it chose to do so?

On the American left, Russiagate is treated as a case of bad reporting, of official outlets for government propaganda serially reporting facts and events that were subsequently disproved. However, some fair portion of the American bourgeois, the PMC that acts in supporting roles for capital, believes every word of it. Russiagate is the nationalist party line in the American fight against communism, without the communism. Charges of treason have been lodged every time that military budgets have come under attack since 1945. In 1958 the senior leadership of the Air Force was charging the other branches of the military with treason for doubting its utterly fantastical (and later disproven) estimate of Soviet ICBMs. Treason is good for business.

Shortly after WWII ended, the CIA employed hundreds of former Nazi military officers, including former Gestapo and SS officers responsible for murdering tens and hundreds of thousands of human beings, to run a spy operation known as the Gehlen Organization from Berlin, Germany. Given its central role in assessing the military intentions and capabilities of the Soviet Union, the Gehlen Organization was more likely than not responsible for the CIA’s overstatement of Soviet nuclear capabilities in the 1950s used to support the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Former Nazis were also integrated into CIA efforts to install right wing governments around the world.

By the time that (Senator) John F. Kennedy claimed a U.S. ‘missile gap’ with the Soviets in 1958, the CIA was providing estimates of Soviet ICBMs (Inter-continental Ballistic Missiles), that were wildly inflated— most likely provided to it by the Gehlen Organization. Once satellite and U2 reconnaissance estimates became available, the CIA lowered its own to 120 Soviet ICBMs when the actual number was four. On the one hand, the Soviets really did have a nuclear weapons program. On the other, it was a tiny fraction of what was being claimed. Bad reporting, unerringly on the side of larger military budgets, appears to be the constant.

Under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act passed by Congress in 1998, the CIA was made to partially disclose its affiliation with, and employment of, former Nazis. In contrast to the ‘Operation Paperclip’ thesis that it was Nazi scientists who were brought to the U.S. to labor as scientists, the Gehlen Organization and CIC employed known war criminals in political roles. Klaus Barbie, the ‘Butcher of Lyon,’ was employed by the CIC, and claims to have played a role in the murder of Che Guevara. Wernher von Braun, one of the Operation Paperclip ‘scientists,’ worked in a Nazi concentration camp as tens of thousands of human beings were murdered.

The historical sequence in the U.S. was WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, to an economy that was heavily dependent on war production. The threatened decommissioning of the war economy in 1946 was first met with an honest assessment of Soviet intentions— the Soviets were moving infrastructure back into Soviet territory as quickly as was practicable, then to the military budget-friendly claim that they were putting resources in place to invade Europe. The result of the shift was that the American Generals kept their power and the war industry kept producing materiel and weapons. By 1948 these weapons had come to include atomic bombs.

To understand the political space that military production came to occupy, from 1948 onward the U.S. military became a well-funded bureaucracy where charges of treason were regularly traded between the branches. Internecine battles for funding and strategic dominance were (and are) regularly fought. The tactic that this bureaucracy— the ‘military industrial complex,’ adopted was to exaggerate foreign threats in a contest for bureaucratic dominance. The nuclear arms race was made a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the U.S. produced world-ending weapons non-stop for decades on end, the Soviets responded in kind.

What ties the Gehlen Organization to CIA estimates of Soviet nuclear weapons from 1948 – 1958 is 1) the Gehlen Organization was central to the CIA’s intelligence operations vis-à-vis the Soviets, 2) the CIA had limited alternatives to gather information on the Soviets outside of the Gehlen Organization and 3) the senior leadership of the U.S. military had long demonstrated that it approved of exaggerating foreign threats when doing so enhanced their power and added to their budgets. Long story short, the CIA employed hundreds of former Nazi officers who had the ideological predisposition and economic incentive to mis-perceive Soviet intentions and misstate Soviet capabilities to fuel the Cold War.

Where this gets interesting is that American whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was working for the Rand Corporation in the late 1950s and early 1960s when estimates of Soviet ICBMs were being put forward. JFK had run (in 1960) on a platform that included closing the Soviet – U.S. ‘missile gap.’ The USAF (U.S. Air Force), charged with delivering nuclear missiles to their targets, was estimating that the Soviets had 1,000 ICBMs. Mr. Ellsberg, who had limited security clearance through his employment at Rand, was leaked the known number of Soviet ICBMs. The Air Force was saying 1,000 Soviet ICBMs when the number confirmed by reconnaissance satellites was four.

By 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the CIA had shifted nominal control of the Gehlen Organization to the BND, for whom Gehlen continued to work. Based on ongoing satellite reconnaissance data, the CIA was busy lowering its estimates of Soviet nuclear capabilities. Benjamin Schwarz, writing for The Atlantic in 2013, provided an account, apparently informed by the CIA’s lowered estimates, where he placed the whole of the Soviet nuclear weapons program (in 1962) at roughly one-ninth the size of the U.S. effort. However, given Ellsberg’s known count of four Soviet ICBMs at the time of the missile crisis, even Schwarz’s ratio of 1:9 seems to overstate Soviet capabilities.

Further per Schwarz’s reporting, the Jupiter nuclear missiles that the U.S. had placed in Italy prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis only made sense as first-strike weapons. This interpretation is corroborated by Daniel Ellsberg, who argues that the American plan was always to initiate the use of nuclear weapons (first strike). This made JFK’s posture of equally matched contestants in a geopolitical game of nuclear chicken utterly unhinged. Should this be less than clear, because the U.S. had indicated its intention to use nuclear weapons in a first strike— and had demonstrated the intention by placing Jupiter missiles in Italy, nothing that the U.S. offered during the Missile Crisis could be taken in good faith.

The dissolution of the USSR in 1991 was met with a promised reduction in U.S. military spending and an end to the Cold War, neither of which ultimately materialized. Following the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, the Cold War entered a new phase. Cold War logic was repurposed to support the oxymoronic ‘humanitarian wars’— liberating people by bombing them. In 1995 ‘Russian meddling’ meant the Clinton administration rigging the election of Boris Yeltsin in the Russian presidential election. Mr. Clinton then unilaterally reneged on the American agreement to keep NATO from Russia’s border when former Baltic states were brought under NATO’s control.

The Obama administration’s 2014 incitement in Ukraine, by way of fostering and supporting the Maidan uprising and the ousting of Ukraine’s democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, ties to the U.S. strategy of containing and overthrowing the Soviet (Russian) government that was first codified by the National Security Council (NSC) in 1945. The NSC’s directives can be found here and here. The economic and military annexation of Ukraine by the U.S. (NATO didn’t exist in 1945) comes under NSC10/2. The alliance between the CIA and Ukrainian fascists ties to directive NSC20, the plan to sponsor Ukrainian-affiliated former Nazis in order to install them in the Kremlin to replace the Soviet government. This was part of the CIA’s rationale for putting Ukrainian-affiliated former Nazis on its payroll in 1948.

That Russiagate is the continuation of a scheme launched in 1945 by the National Security Council, to be engineered by the CIA with help from former Nazi officers in its employ, speaks volumes about the Cold War frame from which it emerges. Its near instantaneous adoption by bourgeois liberals demonstrates the class basis of the right-wing nationalism it supports. That liberals appear to perceive themselves as defenders ‘democracy’ within a trajectory laid out by unelected military leaders more than seven decades earlier is testament to the power of historical ignorance tied to nationalist fervor. Were the former Gestapo and SS officers employed by the CIA ‘our Nazis?’

The Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act came about in part because Nazi hunters kept coming across Nazi war criminals living in the U.S. who told them they had been brought here and given employment by the CIA, CIC, or some other division of the Federal government. If the people in these agencies thought that doing so was justified, why the secrecy? And if it wasn’t justified, why was it done? Furthermore, are liberals really comfortable bringing fascists with direct historical ties to the Third Reich to power in Ukraine? And while there are no good choices in the upcoming U.S. election, the guy who liberals want to bring to power is lead architect of this move. Cue the Sex Pistols.

Iran And Israel Spar Over Cyber Warfare

Haider Abbas

There is a whole lot of churning going on in Iran, which has been at loggerheads with US, for around more than five-decades, as it traces its modern tussle with US to the way Muhammed Musaddiq government was over thrown by US in 1953, which later was followed by setting of a new nationalist government after US sponsored Shah of Iran was removed in what is known as Iranian revolution in 1979, paving way for a guided-democracy in Iran, and in its wake, inviting the severest backlash from the monarchies of the Gulf region.  The oil kingdoms, ruled by their respective oligarchs feared that democracy would upset their applecart and hence pummeled their resources to anyhow nib the Iranian revolution and the entire turmoil in the last forty years in the whole of Middle-East is what the story is all about. ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’ has been the raison d’être of the Iranian revolution and which continues to be the life-line of the State of Iran.

The last two-decades and the events unfolding in Middle-East has been much to chaos as millions of people have been misplaced, millions turned to refugees, and millions have died in the wake of US invasion of Iraq, after Afghanistan was invaded, and later on when its fires reached Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Lebanon, with the exception, that as the Muslim nations went down on their kneels Israel strode to insurmountable  power, aided, abetted, supported and sponsored by US, so much so that Israel today strikes inside  Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine and also at Iranian assets as a sports-macho, so much so that it challenges even Russia for its support to Syria  which is also supported by Iran. Russia, which had entered into the embroiled waters of Middle-East, by its support to Syria has helped Assad regime to sustain, much to the disliking of US and Israel, and in a way has also halted the US grandiose plans to invade Iran too or for that matter engineer a regime-change in Iran by sponsored public protests.  Remember US president George Bush had once called, on Jan 29, 2002, around 18 years back, ‘Iran, Iraq and North Korea as Axis of Evil’. Iraq has been reduced to a rubble and Iran and North Korea as still a constant pain in the neck.

China, for the first time, in the last around half a century has entered into the tumultuous currents of the Middle-East, by making a deal of 400 billion USD with Iran on July 13, 2020, which surprisingly, has come when Iran is in a midst of fire from Israel, as ‘on June 30, 2020, 19  people were killed in an explosion at a medical clinic in the north of the capital Tehran, which an official said was caused by a gas leak. On June 26, 2020 an explosion occurred east of Tehran near the Parchin military and weapons development base that the authorities said was caused by a leak in a gas storage facility in an area outside the base’ . On July 2, 2020 Iran underground nuclear at Natanz was attacked which some Iranian officials said may have been a cyber sabotage ( of US and Israel combination) and warned that Tehran would retaliate against any country carrying out such attacks’. The attack obviously has now  turned the clock-back, of ongoing Iranian nuclear programme by months as has come the admission from Iran.  In fact this cyberattack was quite in the making as US has openly declared that the outgoing US president Obama has accelerated these cyberattacks, which could not hit the bull-eye then,  only months after he had assumed office and named is as an operation Olympic-Games, with the help of Israel made worm known as  stuxnet.  An elaborative article on it had come in The New York Times way back in 2012. On one hand Obama tried to secretly kill Iranian nuclear programme and on the other side forged a nuclear deal touted as a historical deal which would prevent Iran from acquiring the nuclear weapons. This is available on Obamawhitehouse.Archives which is now dysfunctional.

The latest attack now on Iran has been on its seven-ships at Bushehr Port on July 15, 2020 in which however no casualties were reported. There are many reports in US newspapers which are openly suggestive that Israeli intelligence chief Yossi Cohen had got planted a bomb inside Natanz nuclear site  where advanced nuclear centrifuges were being enriched. Skeptics had believed that when Trump terminated the US-Iran deal Iran would make nuclear weapons but what happened has been the opposite as Iran nuclear programme seem to be now at the mercy of cyberattacks from US and Israel, particularly since the abrogation of the US-Iran deal, although Israel has accused Iran of a cyberattack on its water and sewage system in April 2020, a news which remained unnoticed due to the spread of COVID1-19 pandemic. It may be known that Iran-China went ahead with the deal after India was made to bow out of it on July 14, 2020. Needless, to speculate that the deal has come much to the exasperation of US-Israel and India bloc, as US is locked with Iran in Middle- East apart from its fight for supremacy in the world with China, Israel wants to dominate Middle-East and faces a foe in the shape of Iran and India faces a belligerent China staking claim inside its territory.

The series of Israeli attacks have baffled Iran, as the way, Israeli maneuvered past into Iran without being detected is now an altogether new warfare. Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz satired , “Not every incident that transpires in Iran necessarily has something to do with us” which is amply clear that Israel is not only well-into but in fact well ahead in this new mastery i.e. cyber warfare.   The latest to add to its arsenal is to master an attack by way of control of sound-waves on sensitive-sites of adversary nations, where internet is used or not.  The experience of Israel, by its use of cyber-warfare, to its advantage in Syrian war, by targeting Iranian installations, is a clear enough proof that Israel is leading the arena. But, now with China entering into fray with investments in Iran is a signal that an attack on Iran would be construed an attack on China assets, which exactly happened when India started to air the weather-report of Gilgit-Baltistan on May 9, 2020, which are a  part of CPEC and which led to finally take India off-guarded in Ladakh- paving way for a conflict to unfold.

Here, however, what also merits an attention is that Iran too had grounded a premier US Lockheed Martin drone, on December 9, 2011 and lately had shot down a US global surveillance monster worth 220 million USD  on  June 20, 2020 owing to its machinations in cyber warfare.  This is what is to be the sixth-generation war and the world is much into it.

Gender stereotypes plaguing the pandemic response

Shobha Shukla

As per a recent news, a senior bureaucrat in Lucknow said, “The increase in female infection (of COVID-19) ratio is a clear indication that women are going out in the market and not following the precautions [for COVID-19 prevention]”. This statement is not only devoid of any scientific evidence but also reeks of a deep-rooted patriarchal mindset. It also assumes as if men are ‘following precautions’.

If we look at the data cited in the same news, 70.49% males and 29.51% females tested positive for coronavirus (perhaps in July) as compared to May 2020 when 74.6% males and 25.4% females had tested positive) in Uttar Pradesh state of India.

Well, the above data shows that, both in May and July, the number of men who got infected with the virus was more than two to three times the number of women. So, going by the bureaucrat’s conjecture, it indicates that it is the men who are not following the precautions.

And the markets are open for all genders. If there is any gender-segregated data on the number of people visiting market places, we would love to hear about it. At any given time, we find more men than women loitering on the city roads. And a far greater number of men (than women) without masks.

According to a news report published in The Hindu, there were only 7 states – Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Karnataka, Bihar, Odisha and Jharkhand – which have reported gender-segregated data. It is good to know that now Uttar Pradesh also has gender-segregated data on COVID-19 infections. We also need to know gender-segregated data on case fatality rate in the state.

A lot of scientific discussions are taking place globally on the age and sex specific impact of the pandemic. According to one study done in India, while males share a higher burden (66%) of COVID-19 infection than females (34%), women are at greater risk of dying from it and the case fatality rate in them is higher (3.3%) as compared to that in males (2.9%). This is contrary to the global trend as many studies have shown that in most countries more men are dying from COVID-19 than women – partly because women tend to have stronger immune systems. According to the lead author of the Indian study (as told to a newspaper): “The social determinants, like access to healthcare and general health and nutrition status, which are generally worse for women in India than their male counterparts could explain these differences that defy the global trend.”

It would do the common public a lot of good if our learned bureaucrat(s) got serious about the social and health inequities plaguing the Indian women instead of pointing fingers (and dumping entire blame to bring infection to the family) at them for ‘going out in the market’, as if that is the only thing they do.

Are we forgetting that women form a sizeable part of our frontline warriors against COVID-19 in the form of nurses, doctors, other healthcare providers, police officers, vegetable sellers, other vendors, bureaucrats, politicians, and a range of other roles they are increasingly shouldering (in addition to their routine household chores) despite such archaic obstacles. Even when COVID-19 positive asymptomatic people opt for home isolation, it is often the women who are taking additional responsibilities as carers.

The fiction that ‘unpaid care work is not work’ is exposed. But are we finally going to recognize and respect the role of women and girls as primary caregivers? Or will we continue to turn a blind eye on the increased work load they have to deal with in addition to being put to heightened risks of sexual and other forms of gender-based violence during the lockdown? It is now a well known fact that violence against women has increased during the lockdown.

It is high time we got serious about building our response to the pandemic on science based analysis & interpretation of data and not on off-the-hand remarks entrenched in patriarchy.

Yes, we need more women in the workforce at every level of governance. Only then can we expect gender sensitive approaches and solidarity towards each other. That is why the only possible future is a feminist future where all genders live in solidarity with each other.

The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has very rightly said: “COVID-19 has exposed the lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all, the fiction that unpaid care work isn’t work, the delusion that we live in a post-racist world. We are all floating on the same sea, but some are in super yachts and others clinging to drifting debris.”

EIA 2020: Why is it so perilous?

Bishaldeep Kakati

Amidst the corona virus pandemic, the government of India (The Union ministry of environment, forest and climate change) unveiled the Environment Impact Assessment 2020 draft to the public in March 2020 seeking to replace the 2006 version of the law. The latest draft has already created a lot of hype amongst the concerned citizens, with many environmental activists and climate change experts opposing the provisions incorporated in the draft. However before we try analyzing the provisions contained in the draft, it is important for us to develop an idea about the concept of Environment Impact Assessment.

Right after the Bhopal Gas disaster of 1986, the Indian Government realized that the Water ACT (1974) and the Air ACT (1981) were simply not enough to protect the entire environment. Hence the Indian Government came out with an umbrella legislation known as the Environment Protection ACT (1986), and under this ACT, India notified its first EIA norms in 1994. The Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) is basically a legal framework that regulates activities that utilize, access and also pollute natural resources. In fact, every development must go through the EIA process for obtaining environmental clearance. Although industries and establishments before being set up must go through the EIA process to safeguard the environment, but by offering some fake legal paper work, industries enjoy a range of de facto concessions exactly opposite to the main purpose of EIA. And these industries and establishments often enjoy de facto concessions mainly because of the faulty project reports of potential impact of an establishment upon the environment, that are often prepared by consultant agencies for a particular fee. In fact most of the times, these reports cannot be relied upon or thought to be accountable.

The 1994 EIA notification was modified in 2006 and in order to incorporate the amendments and relevant court orders since 2006, the government thus redrafted the EIA again in 2020. The primary motive behind this process of redrafting was to make the EIA process more transparent and expedient, however there are certain provisions included in this new draft, that have forced people to oppose it. Hence it’s crucial for us to understand the disastrous impact that these provisions might have upon the environment, different communities of people, etc if these somehow turns out to be legally binding.

The two significant changes that the draft tries to bring in are the post- facto clearance and the restriction on public participation. Speaking of post facto clearance, the honourable Supreme Court of India in an order stated that, “Environmental Law cannot countenance the notion of an ex post facto clearance. This would be contrary to both the precautionary principle as well as the need for sustainable development.” Further the 2020 EIA draft increases the government power and provides no remedy for the political and bureaucratic stronghold on the EIA process and thereby on industries. In fact, speaking of the second significant change that the draft tries to bring in is the notion of limiting public participation in safeguarding the environment. Generally projects based on defence and security is tagged as ‘strategic’, but the government gets to decide the ‘strategic’ tag for other projects as well. The draft 2020 says that no information ‘on such projects’ shall  be placed on public domain, which basically means a project can be deemed strategic without explaining the basic reasons behind it. The draft also provides a   long list of projects such as inland waterways, expansion of national highways which are to be exempted from public consultation and also exempts construction of industries and establishment up to 1,50,000 sq m. Shockingly, the provision to exempt construction up to 1,50,000 sq m was set aside by National Green Tribunal in December 2017. Moreover, with the provisions contained in this draft, projects that violate environment would be able to apply for clearance. And the horrifying fact is that if a developer files late application for EIA clearance, he would only have to pay penalty of Rs. 2000-10,000 per day for the period of delay and the disastrous impact of this provision can be felt only if we relate it by taking into consideration the example of an illegal coal mining activity going on for days and its subsequent impact upon the environment in comparison to the small amount of penalty that is required to be paid by the developer.

However, the impact of the provisions of this draft would be more dangerous in case of North East India as compared to PAN India. This is because in the draft, border area is defined as, “area falling within 100 kilometers aerial distance from the line of Actual Control with bordering countries of India.” And this means it would cover the much of North East India, which is often regarded as the biodiversity hotspot.

If we speak of Assam, we clearly remember how the Baghjan incident already took the lives of many, destroying both human lives and flora and fauna as well and the blowout was so dangerous that the entire area is still burning till today. In fact, the State Pollution Board of Assam had already reported that the oil plant had been operating for over 15 years without obtaining prior consent from the Board. So this is the real consequence of establishing a project or construction without proper clearance. Not only this, but also we cannot ignore the issue of illegal coal mining in Assam’s Dehing Patkai that of late raised a lot of eyebrows. So if this draft becomes a law, it would simply mean destruction of the environment without people being allowed to raise their voices. Furthermore, Oil India’s plan to drill closer to Assam’s Dibru Saikhowa National Park, which would be equally dangerous for both humans and flora and fauna might also get direct clearance if this draft somehow turns out to be a law.

Therefore, this draft not only would destroy the environment, interests of different communities of people, but it also violates article 19(1) (a) and article 21 of the Indian Constitution. And if we have to prevent incidents like Baghjan blowout or the styrene gas leak of the LG Polymer Plant in Vishakhapatnam, then we have to take stern democratic actions against like draft and carry out those activities that can protect our biodiversity and the environment as a whole.