Is a New War Against Russia in Ukraine Unfolding Before Our Eyes?

John McMurtry

We are now entering yet another US-UK led war build-up against the cornerstone of Western ideology, the designated Enemy Russia.

As usual there is amnesia of the ever-recurring big-lie pretext, the need for another crisis to keep the two-billion-dollar a day NATO war machine going, the baleful puppet moves of Canada in the process, the crisis of legitimacy of the lead attacker’s government, and the silent diversion from the whole nightmare scenario unfolding by all NATO-member governments, mass media and even ‘peace activist’ organisations.

This time the big-lie pretext is about the alleged poisoning by the Kremlin/Putin of a double-agent, usually a stock move in the espionage entertainments, but here with no evidence of the claimed origin of the lethal nerve-agent, but rather expert denial within British defence and weapons research itself, with devious political word games to get around the absence of any corroborated evidence in familiar denuciations of Russia full of aggression and hate. Not even a death is recorded while US-led nd UK-armed ally forces are still mass-murdering poor civilian Yeminis, drone-murdering endless targets and civilians abroad, continuing on unblamed for the ongoing NATO-executed eco-genocides of Iraq and Libya societies, and on the 19-years anniversary of the mass bombing of, once again a society, Yugoslavia, with the most evolved social infrastructures of health, education, housing and life security in the region.

What this latest war pretext for US and NATO-backed aggression is really about is justifying more war in the Ukraine now that the massive war preparations along all of Russia’s Western borders following the self-declared Nazi-led and proven US- orchestrated and commanded mass-murder coup d’etat in February 2014 . As usual there is amnesia of the ever-recurring big-lie pretext, the need for another crisis to keep the two-billion-dollar a day NATO war machine going, the baleful puppet moves of Canada in the process, the crisis of legitimacy of the lead attacker’s government, and the silent diversion from the whole nightmare scenario unfolding by all NATO-member governments, mass media and even ‘peace activist’ organisations.

This time the big-lie pretext is about the alleged poisoning by the Kremlin/Putin of a double-agent traitor, usually a stock move in the espionage entertainments. Yet here there is no confirmed evidence whatever of the claimed origin of the lethal nerve-agent, but rather expert denial within British defence and weapons research itself that is silence in the press, with devious political word games crafted to get around the absence of any corroborated facts in the familiar denuciations of Russia full of team aggression and hate. Not even a death is recorded while US-led nd UK-armed ally forces are still mass-murdering poor civilian Yeminis, drone-murdering endless targets and civilians abroad, continuing on unblamed for the ongoing NATO-executed eco-genocides of Iraq and Libya societies, and on the 19-years anniversary of the mass bombing of Yugoslavia – once again a socialist society with the most evolved social infrastructures of health, education, housing and life security in the region.

What this latest war pretext for US and NATO-backed aggression is really about is justifying more war in Ukraine now that the massive war preparations along all of Russia’s Western borders following the self-declared Nazi-led and proven US- orchestrated and commanded mass-murder coup d’etat in February 2014 . As always, this US-directed mass murder was reverse-blamed on the ever shifting Enemy face – Russia’s allied but duly elected government of the Ukraine. It was only after this violent-coup Nazi-led and US directed overthrow of the elected government of the very resource-rich Ukraine – “the breadbasket of Europe” and sitting on newly discovered rich fossil fuel deposits – that Russia annexed its traditional territory of the Crimea next to Eastern Ukraine, the latter after the violent coup put under the rule of a US-Nazi-led government until its people fought back with Russia assistance for the now NATO-targeted zones of the new Donetsk and Lugansk republics.

What is new now is that we are about to enter yet another NATO-member war build-up against the cornerstone of Western  ideology, the designated Enemy Russia. As usual there is amnesia of the ever-recurring big-lie pretext, the need for another crisis to keep the two-billion-dollar a day US-led NATO war machine going, the baleful puppet moves of Canada in the process, the crisis of legitimacy of the lead attacker’s UK government, and silent diversion from the whole nightmare scenario unfolding in NATO-member states, mass media and even ‘peace activist’ organisations.

Cui Bono?  

The UK and the US followed by Canada and some of the EU have by expulsion of Russia diplomats prepared the diplomatic way for war in the Ukraine to seize back these lost coup-territories, and it will be in the name of “freedom”, “human rights” and “the rules of civilised nations”. But there is much officially suppressed colour to the warring parties political conflict which reveals who the truly heinous suppressor of human rights is.  Under mass media and corporate-state cover, the US-UK-NATO axis about to make war in Ukraine is doing so under the factually absurd but non-stop pretext of “Russia aggression” constructed out of the double-agent poisoning affair, with the guilty agents and poison having no proof but the ever louder UK-led and NATO-state assertion of it in unison. Yet there is a clear answer to the cui bono question – which party does all this benefit? Clearly once the question is posed, as opposed to completely gagged in the corporate press, Theresa May’s slow-motion collapsing Tory government – now even challenged for its fraudulent Brexit referendum protecting the big London banks from EU regulation – has to have such a war-drum distraction to survive. The old war of aggression pattern reverse-blamed on the official enemy unwinds yet again.

It is revealing in this context how Canada’s government has no such ruler need of war – unless it be its Ukraine-descendent Foreign Minister up front and the very powerful and widely Nazi-sympathizing Ukraine Liberal vote bank and leadership brought to Canada after 1945  to overwhelm the preceding active socialist Ukrainian community in Canada. Canada’s government – not its people – is in any case used to being a puppet regime in foreign affairs as a twice-colonized rule by big business (why the NDP is not allowed to govern unless so subjugated).

The Human Rights Question

In light of all of this suppressed factual background and motive for more war in Ukraine which is unspeakable in the official news, interaction with the United Nations is of revealing interest. While it has been the cover for US-led NATO executed genocidal wars of aggression in the past as in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Korea, the pretexts of ‘human rights’, ‘responsibility to protect’ and ‘stopping communist aggression’, which are in fact always been the spectacular opposite on the ground in terms of diseased, mass-murdered and destituted bodies, these pretexts may not sell well when the background facts are no longer suppressed from public view.

It is worthwhile recalling how Science for Peace leadership used to be against but has since Afghanistan collaborated with these false-pretext wars in sustaining their illusions and thus the war crimes and crimes against proceeding underneath them.

The NATO-executed Ukraine war now being orchestrated is especially revealing in its actual record of ‘protecting human rights’ through ‘international law’ and ‘norms of civilised nations’.  Completely buried in official records is a United Nations resolution n on Ukraine that the US and Canada repudiated on November 20 2015 after the US-led bloody coup d’etat in Ukraine was in full motion of claiming all the vast tracts of land and resources that were Russia-speaking territory in the past.

The resolution was straightforwardly against “Nazi symbols and regalia” as well as  “holocaust denial”. The Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs Committee of the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voted for a resolution to enable measures against “the glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that facilitate the escalation of modern forms of racism, xenophobia and intolerance”. A total of 126 member-states of the UN voted for it for the second time. Over 100 countries voted for a similar resolution in 2014 including “denial of the holocaust and glorification of the Nazi movement, former members of the Waffen SS organization, including the installation of memorials to them, and post-coup attempts to desecrate or destroy the monuments to those who fought against Nazism in Ukraine during World War II”.

How could any civilised state vote against these United Nations Resolutions for human rights as Canada and the US have done and stood by ever since? Well instituted group hatred of the officially designated enemy can justify anything whatsoever, and does so right into next NATO-executed orgy of war crime and crimes against humanity, again inside Europe itself flaunting reverse-blame lies and slogans as red meat for psychotically trained masses. It is not by accident that Canada’s Foreign Minister is in this near century-old Nazi loyalist vs Russia-speaking conflict was before her appointment the “proud “granddaughter of a leading Nazi war propagandist during its occupation of Poland and Ukraine described as a “fighter for freedom”.

Yet on the other hand, we must not lose ourselves in ad hominemresponsibility. Crystina Freeland, her Canada name, is interestingly propagandist in itself from her birth – Christian Free Land – but not observed in the corporate press. Minister Freeland is only a symptom of something far deeper and more systemically murderous and evil in state-executed unlimited greed and immiserization of innocent millions of people masked as ‘human rights’ , ‘freedom’ and ‘rule of law’ .  Her more sinister double in the US is also a renamed person of the region, Victoria Nuland (read New Land) who orchestrated the whole 2014 mass-murder coup in Ukraine and now tub-thumps on public television for the ‘need to teach Putin and Russia a hard lesson’, aka another war attack by US-led NATO on Russia’s borders.

The difference now is that the absurd pretext and geostrategic mechanisms now in motion beforehand can be seen in front of our eyes – that is, if we can still see through the engineered prism of the US-UK led NATO war machine.  This alone will stop it.

Getting Ready for Nuclear War

Brian Cloughley

John Bolton is to assume the appointment as President Trump’s National Security Adviser on April 9.  On February 28 he wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “it is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current ‘necessity’ posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons by striking first,” which would undoubtedly lead to explosion of at least one nuclear device by whoever might remain alive in the Pyongyang regime after the US attack. In a macabre echo of the alleged link between Iraq and Al Qaeda before the US invasion, Bolton said on March 23 that “Little is known, at least publicly, about longstanding Iranian-North Korean cooperation on nuclear and ballistic-missile technology. It is foolish to play down Tehran’s threat because of Pyongyang’s provocations.”

Link and bomb, and get ready for yet more war.

On August 9, 2017 President Trump tweeted “My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before.”

This declaration of US achievement and nuclear policy was apparently intended to intimidate the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, who tested a nuclear-capable ballistic missile three months later, following which the US president issued an insulting tweet that referred to him as “Little Rocket Man.”  The level of international dialogue and diplomacy sank to yet a new low which was enthusiastically reciprocated by Kim, but Trump gave a rare exhibition of common sense on  November 11, 2017 by asking “When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There [meaning they’re] always playing politics — bad for our country . . .”

How very true, and how much better for the world had such a positive attitude been allowed to flourish along with dialogue.  But then everything went screaming downhill. Along came Washington’s aggressive Nuclear Posture Review which emphasized enlargement of nuclear weapons’ capabilities and followed from the US National Defence Strategy which strongly advocates massive military expansion, naming Russia specifically no less than 127 times, compared with 62 references to North Korea, 47 to China and 39 to Iran.

The bulging muscles of the US military-industrial complex have been nourished by the circus of the “Russiagate” investigations in Washington which attempted to prove that Moscow had organized the 2016 election results by persuading countless millions of people on social media sites that red was blue and Democratic donkeys were really Republican elephants.  Or the other way round.  It was all rubbish, but the US-European anti-Russia campaign was then given enormous impetus by the collapse in England from apparent poisoning of a retired, BMW-driving British spy, a former Russian citizen.

The poisoning was effected by a chemical agent, and blame for the event was immediately laid at Russia’s door. The British foreign minister Boris Johnson is a sad joke, but he’s politically powerful and a threat to the prime minister, Theresa May, so he continues in his post and makes statements such as “Russia is the only country known to have developed this type of agent. I’m afraid the evidence is overwhelming that it is Russia.” The fact that there is no evidence whatever that Russia was involved is ignored, because the western world has been convinced that Russia is guilty of this poisoning — and of countless other things.

The heightened anti-Russia feeling is most welcome to the US-NATO military alliance, which has been energetic in developing its ‘Enhanced Forward Presence’ along Russia’s borders.  Its belligerent posture has been hardening since NATO began to expand in 1997, which was entirely contrary to what had been agreed seven years previously.  As recorded by the Los Angeles Times, “In early February 1990, US leaders made the Soviets an offer. According to transcripts of meetings in Moscow on February 9, then-Secretary of State James Baker suggested that in exchange for cooperation on Germany, the US could make “iron-clad guarantees” that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” Less than a week later, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to begin reunification talks. No formal deal was struck, but from all the evidence, the quid pro quo was clear: Gorbachev acceded to Germany’s western alignment and the US would limit NATO’s expansion.  Nevertheless, great powers rarely tie their own hands. In internal memorandums and notes, US policymakers soon realized that ruling out NATO’s expansion might not be in the best interests of the United States. By late February, Bush and his advisers had decided to leave the door open.”

The door towards Russia’s borders opened on to a welcoming galaxy of nations anxious to enjoy all the financial benefits that would descend upon them from the deep and generous pockets of the Washington-Brussels military machine.  The US and other NATO members rolled forward with missile-armed ships in the Baltic and the Black Sea, with electronic surveillance and command aircraft flying as close as they could to Russian airspace, along with deployment of nuclear-capable combat aircraft and more ground troops in expansion of the Enhanced Forward Presence.

The recent surge in anti-Russia news and comment in almost all US and UK media is a boon and a blessing for the rickety and incompetent NATO alliance, but in responsible circles there is concern about its nuclear posture — and especially that of the United States.

On February 19 Bolton wrote that “Putin’s global aspirations are not friendly to America, and the sooner he knows we know it, the better. It is not enough, however, to file criminal charges against Russian citizens, nor are economic sanctions anywhere near sufficient to prove our displeasure. We need to create structures of deterrence in cyberspace, as we did with nuclear weapons, to prevent future Russian attacks or attacks by others who threaten our interests.”

One of the most disturbing developments is the attitude to the Nuclear Posture Review of many nuclear experts in the West.  As reported by Defence News, “Rebeccah Heinrichs, a nuclear analyst with the Hudson Institute, thinks the Pentagon is on the right path, noting that “if the Russians have a weapon delivery option, they’re putting a nuke on it” at the moment. “Clearly the Russians believe that they could possibly pop off a low yield nuke and we would not have an appropriate response, and our only option would essentially be to end the war rather than go all-in with strategic nuclear weapons. . . “

It may be because I have had some association with nuclear delivery systems and their hideous effects that I take offence at clever little analysts referring to dispatch and detonation of nuclear weapons as “popping off.”  The weapon that would be “popped off” — whatever it might be — would kill hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, and would contaminate vast areas of land.  A “low yield nuke” as it is so lightly dismissed, is not an inconsequential weapon.

A long time ago in Germany I commanded a troop of rocket launchers that were tasked to fire “low yield” Honest John missiles in the event of war in Europe.  We knew these things would cause immense damage because the W7 warhead had a yield of up to 20 kilotonnes — just about that of the Nagasaki bomb that killed about 75,000 human beings.  Sure, our warheads might only have been a fraction of that (we’ll never know), but even then I object to intellectuals saying they might have been “popped off” like modern-day “low-yield nukes,” because we would have died within a few minutes of firing these things, not long after we had killed our thousands of victims, most likely from retaliation but also because the maximum range of our rockets was about 25 kilometers and the fall-out effects would have been pretty swift.

Then you read the pronouncements of such important people as Air Force General John Hyten, the senior US nuclear deliveryman, commanding US Strategic Command, who said on February 28 that “Russia is the most significant threat just because they pose the only existential threat to the country right now. So we have to look at that from that perspective.” Further, ““By the way, our submarines, they do not know where they are, and they have the ability to decimate their country . . .”   Fleshing out that part of the Nuclear Triad came Rear Admiral John Tammen, Director, Undersea Warfare Division, who told Congress on March 26 that his conventional submarines were henceforth going to be carrying nuclear weapons. Fox News reported Admiral Tammen as stating that “The Virginia [Class] submarines can currently fire Tomahawk missiles and torpedoes but by adding nuclear weapons, it would give combatant commanders new options and expand its mission.”

He should get together with Rebeccah Heinrichs, General Hyten and John Bolton.  They could discuss where and how to pop off a weapon that would lead to world destruction.  They are all getting ready for nuclear war, and the threat to the world looms large.

Precarious Communications: Julian Assange, Internet Access and Ecuador

Binoy Kampmark

Being a netizen, to use that popular term of sociological derivation, can be a difficult business. It presumes digital engagement, often of the sharper sort.  To become a fully-fledged member of such citizenry, however, presumes access, a degree of Internet speed and appropriate platforms. Absent those, then different forms of activism must be sought.

Governments and authorities the world over have come to appreciate that either the activity itself is controlled (limiting internet access, for one), or the content made available on the Internet (the Great Firewall of China).  The resonant cliché there is that the one who controls the narrative controls history, or can, at the very least, blind it.

Out of such tensions and tussles comes Julian Assange, a member of that unique breed of cyber insurrectionists, ducking and weaving through the information channels with varying degrees of success. To function as a publishing figure, he requires access to the Internet, a phenomenon that presumes an acephalous society.

For years, his enemy has been the concentration of information in the hands of the few, the greedy sort who horde information from the commonweal as they encourage ignorance.  Publishing classified material has become a form of enlightenment, and it remains a furious debate waged across the political spectrum.

Little wonder, then, that Assange has become a political activist par excellence. If only he were merely, as Britain’s junior minister Sir Alan Duncan would have it, a holed up “miserable little worm.”  Better a worm, retorted Assange to the minister’s remarks in the House of Commons, “a healthy creature that invigorates the soil, than a snake.”

He encourages others to revolt, and promises assistance to the restless.  In March last year, he delighted in queries about the problems posed by the leaked CIA cyberespionage toolkit.  The interest of Silicon Valley firms had been piqued.

“We have decided to work with them,” explained Assange at his online press conference, “to give them some exclusive access to some of the technical details we have, so that fixes can be pushed out.”  Such advice would assist the companies to patch their products and render the task of accessing data by intelligence services more onerous.

Such announcements, not to mention frenzied activity on such social media platforms as Twitter, can only take place by the good grace of his hosts of five years, those staff at the Ecuadorean embassy in London whose patience has, at times, been tested.

The pact between the Ecuadorean state and tenant Assange is hardly one of steel. It more resembles rubber, stretching or narrowing accordingly.  When it has suited Ecuadorean interests to protect a troublesome political celebrity whilst permitting him to niggle the likes of the United States, Assange has been permitted vast, anarchic leeway.

Nick Miroff in the The Washington Post went so far as to deem Ecuador’s initial treatment of Assange as that of one who had won a trophy.  Even as the Ecuador’s Rafael Correa took measures against the press in his country, he would still “poke Washington in the eye and look like a champion for press freedom”.

When still president, Correa dressed it all as a matter of obligation. “Ecuador fulfilled its duty, we gave him sovereign asylum, and finally the Swedish judicial system has closed the file and will not press charges against Assange.”

On Wednesday, the rubbery aspect of the relationship took another shape.  Assange’s access to the internet would be halted.  His digital mischief, it seemed, had gotten out of hand:

“The government of Ecuador warns that Assange’s behaviour, through his messages on social networks, put at risk the country’s good relations with the United Kingdom, the other states of the European Union, and other nations.”

Such interventions tend to be inconsistent and arbitrary. In 2016, when WikiLeaks had emerged as an information guerrilla force of prominence in the US presidential election, the embassy took similar measures to cool the ardour.  Assange had gotten overly zealous, when in fact, he was simply fulfilling his brief. “The government of Ecuador,” came the reasons in 2016 from the Ecuadorean Foreign Ministry, “respects the principles of non-intervention in the affairs of other nations, does not meddle in electoral campaigns nor support any candidate in particular.” Gradual, tentative realignments were taking place in Latin America, and the trophy tenant had lost some lustre.

On that occasion, WikiLeaks had released hacked Democratic National Committee emails and those of Hillary Clinton’s campaign advisor, John Podesta. The US intelligence viewpoint on this was simple and simplistic: Assange had become a proxy of Russian interests. Undue electoral interference had been featured.  Forget, they insisted, on the light darkly shining upon the Clinton stranglehold of the Democrats, and the sordid plotting against Bernie Sanders.

What prompted the latest clipping of Assange’s wings?  Tweets, perhaps, shot through on Monday challenging the British-led account that Russia was directly responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury.

He had hardly been scurrilously contrarian with his remarks, though the current atmosphere turns tentative questions into howls of dissent.  Odd, he claimed, that the expulsion of Russian diplomats had taken place “over an unresolved event in the UK and that the US expelled nearly three times as many diplomats as the UK”.  While Russia might well have been involved, current evidence in the absence of independent confirmation was unverified and skimpy.

As with any testy relationship marked by a degree of self-interest, partners will squabble.  Compromise will be sought, though this is hardly likely to quell Assange’s insatiable pursuit of activism.  As the latest move suggests, arbitrariness is hard to avoid, and Assange remains a guest.  What matters is whether the reins will continue to be pulled in. Courtesy and good graces tend to shrink in the face of brute politics.

Palestinians Will Not Cease to Demand their Rights

Basem Naim

The West has long been enamored with the specter of passive resistance with tens of thousands of unarmed demonstrators facing off against a heavily armed and ruthless force in pursuit of justice.

Today hundreds of thousands of peaceful unarmed demonstrators marched towards the rim of the sealed off Gaza Strip. They got no closer than several hundred yards from Israeli snipers before shots rang out leaving hundreds of Palestinians injured and at least ten dead.

This is not a movie. It is Gaza. It is Palestine.

For more than seventy years Palestinians have tried by all means possible to obtain their rights as guaranteed under international and humanitarian law.

Over these decades dozens of resolutions have come from a wide range of international bodies, associations and NGO’s in support of our fundamental rights to freedom and self-determination and a return to our homes, from which we were forcibly expelled in 1948.

Despite a romantic rewrite, dozens of respected historians and journalists including Israelis such as IlanPappe and Gideon Levy have documented the coordinated Zionist attack on hundreds of age-old Palestinian villages in 1948 as the onset of a calculated project of ethnic cleansing that continues unabated today.

To suggest that almost a million Palestinians voluntarily left their homes, schools, mosques and churches in 1948 is little more than to proclaim the earth is flat. The hurried desperate mass flight of Palestinians from the paramilitary assault upon our age-old communities is beyond honest debate or dispute.

Despite near unanimity among international jurists about our cause the world community has been unable or unwilling to provide justice for Palestinian people who live in walled-off Bantustans in our own homeland or in a forced diaspora as so-much stateless refugees throughout the world.

Meanwhile Western States have openly embraced policies that not only favor and protect Israel but empower it to continue a now decades old illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories.

No state has been more supportive of this historical injustice than has the United States. Not satisfied with more than 250 billion dollars in direct government aid to Israel, the USA has used its veto more than 70 times in the Security Council to prevent passage of resolutions condemning Israeli policies.

Among its unprecedented financial support for Israel, the US has provided many tens of billions of dollars in military aid and equipment that has subsidized Israeli control over the legitimate rights and aspirations of millions of Palestinians and inflicted widespread death and destruction among our communities. Tens of thousands have lost their lives, many more been injured  or crippled and even more detained for years on end in a military “justice” system which denies Palestinians any modicum of justice.

Recently, in an effort to further punish Palestinian civilians for the temerity of their political will, the US Administration cut more than $ 360 million in aid out of what was its $ 1.2 billion annual share to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).  This international aid effort provides health, education and food benefits to some 5 million Palestinian refugees’ worldwide that represent some forty per cent of the total population of 11.5 million Palestinians inside and out of Palestine.

For the last 25 years, Palestinians have tried in good faith, and in vain, to achieve their legitimate aspirations through participation in a long, complex and counter-productive negotiation process.

Because of the fundamental imbalance of power on the ground and an ever-present international pro Israeli bias, Israel has exploited this “negotiation” as little more than dilatory cover while it has continued its agenda of illegal annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank.

Not satisfied with flooding the West Bank with hundreds of thousands of illegal “settlers” Israel has continued its systematic attack upon fundamental rights of Palestinians throughout all the Occupied Territories including Gaza.

What then has been the result of this 25 year old unilateral Israeli stall? Have we not seen the destruction of any meaningful opportunity for stability and de-escalation of violence that, predictably, has spilled over throughout the region?

Has not the delay, by design, challenged the remaining hope for our people for freedom, an independent state and a return to the homes they have been displaced from over these many years? And what of the daily life of Palestinians under occupation, whether in the West Bank that is divided into controlled cantons or the besieged Gaza Strip. Both have been turned into an unbearable hell, for all to see but for us to taste.  Murder, imprisonment, siege, land seizure, house demolitions, poverty, unemployment, and denial of medical treatment and travel have become the daily way of life for millions of Palestinians.

Like the rest of the world Palestinians are a people who love life, community and family and seek only a better future for our children. However, it seems as if our collective and lawful aspiration is unacceptable to some of the world which stands by with idle interest and even less action as the occupation and injustice unfolds in plain view.

It seems few at the table of nations have felt the need to confront the Israeli aggression and its occupation which, by any definition, offends all standards of decency and international law.

Having considered our various options as well as our lawful right to resist Palestinians in Gaza have decided to launch peaceful marches near the segregation barricades that deny us any meaningful scrap of self-determination. This campaign will demand an end to the occupation, an end to the siege of Gaza and recognition of the right of Palestinians to return to their homes in accordance with UN resolution 194, issued in December 1948.

These events which begin today coincide with the anniversary of “Land Day”, in which six Palestinians were killed in 1976 while defending their land as it was seized by Israeli authorities in the Galilee area.

In the tradition of passive resistance our activities will be peaceful and continue on the borders until May 15th, the 70th anniversary of the “Nakba”, when upwards of a million Palestinians were expelled from their homes.

All Palestinians in our homeland and diaspora including men, women and children will participate in these marches and related demonstrations that share a common theme of justice, opportunity and freedom. Our activity will be overseen by a national committee, which represents all Palestinian forces and factions as well as civil society and independent Palestinian figures and supporters.

The Committee has circulated numerous publications and directives for participants in the marches, which emphasize the peacefulness of this particular movement and the need to avoid violence or any provocative escalation by Israel. The Committee has also designated various on-site representatives to oversee our collective efforts and to ensure that our message is heard through powerful and peaceful means.

Notwithstanding our best efforts we full well expect provocation by Israel during our protests and will do all that we can to ensure its inflammatory efforts will pass without any response.

Despite our best efforts, once again, this fear proved to be reality today as Israel unleashed hundreds of rounds of live ammunition and canisters of tear gas at first sight of peaceful demonstrators armed with nothing more than their voice and self-determination.

Ultimately, Israel has long feared and challenged any and all efforts by Palestinians to expose the reality of the occupation and the siege of Gaza which certainly puts the lie to its claim as the only democratic state in the region; one that respects and protects human rights and honors the fundamental right to freedom of expression.

Against this chant stands the daily practice of occupation forces that show a completely different face . . . one built of racism, violence and systematic violation of human rights.

Recently, the arrest and detention of now 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi in the West Bank because she slapped a heavily armed Israeli soldier who broke into her home is but one of hundreds of like stories which depict life and death in Palestine. Not long ago, wheelchair-bound Ibraheem Abu Thuraya was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper for little more than waving a Palestinian flag on the Gaza border in plain view of Israeli soldiers who control who and what may go in and out of the beleaguered home to some two million people.

Given a long and well documented history of violence in furtherance of the occupation, Palestinians have a well-founded fear that despite the peaceful nature of these marches, Israel will use them as a pretext to kill and injure more of our people.  In the past occupation forces have been quick to provoke non-violent expressions of protest into violent confrontations in which our communities and children have paid a dear price for their voice.

Once again, today’s Israeli attack upon our peaceful people proved that history is often the most certain indicator of what is yet to come.

Nevertheless, we will not be deterred by Israeli aggression as we exercise our fundamental rights to resist and to demonstrate so as to ensure that the path for our children will lead to a better, just and equal future.

Endgame in Syria: Trump Signals Withdrawal of US Troops

Nauman Sadiq

In a momentous announcement at an event in Ohio on Thursday, Donald Trump said, “We’re knocking the hell out of ISIS. We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.”

What lends credence to the statement that the Trump administration will soon be pulling 2,000 US troops out of Syria – mostly Special Forces assisting the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces – is that President Trump had recently announced to sack the National Security Advisor Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster.

McMaster represented the institutional logic of the deep state in the Trump administration and was instrumental in advising Donald Trump to escalate the conflicts in Afghanistan and Syria. He had advised President Trump to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan from 8,400 to 15,000. And in Syria, he was in favor of the Pentagon’s policy of training and arming 30,000 Kurdish border guards to patrol Syria’s northern border with Turkey.

Both the decisions have spectacularly backfired on the Trump administration. The decision to train and arm 30,000 Kurdish border guards had annoyed the Erdogan administration to an extent that Turkey mounted Operation Olive Branch in the Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin in Syria’s northwest on January 20.

After capturing Afrin on March 18, the Turkish armed forces and their Free Syria Army proxies have now cast their eyes further east on Manbij where the US Special Forces are closely cooperating with the Kurdish YPG militia, in line with the long-held Turkish military doctrine of denying the Kurds any Syrian territory west of River Euphrates.

More significantly, however, the US bombers and Apache helicopters struck a contingent of Syrian government troops and allied forces in Deir al-Zor on February 7 that reportedly killed and wounded dozens of Russian military contractors working for the private security firm, the Wagner group.

In order to understand the reason why the US brazenly attacked the Russian contractors, we need to keep the backdrop of seven-year-long Syrian conflict in mind. Washington has failed to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. After the Russian intervention in September 2015, the momentum of the battle has shifted in favor of the Syrian government and Washington’s proxies are on the receiving end in the conflict.

Washington’s policy of nurturing militants against the Syrian government has given birth to the Islamic State and myriads of jihadist groups that have carried out audacious terror attacks in Europe during the last three years. Out of necessity, Washington had to make the Kurds the centerpiece of its policy in Syria. But on January 20, its NATO-ally Turkey mounted Operation Olive Branch against the Kurds in the northwestern Syrian canton of Afrin.

In order to save its reputation as a global power, Washington could have confronted Turkey and pressured it to desist from invading Afrin. But it chose the easier path and vented its frustration on the Syrian government forces in Deir al-Zor which led to the casualties of scores of Russian military contractors hired by the Syrian government.

Another reason why Washington struck Russian contractors working in Syria was that the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – which are mainly comprised of Kurdish YPG militias – had reportedly handed over the control of some areas east of Euphrates River to Deir al-Zor Military Council (DMC), which is the Arab-led component of SDF, and had relocated several battalions of Kurdish YPG militias to Afrin and along Syria’s northern border with Turkey in order to defend the Kurdish-held areas against the onslaught of Turkish armed forces and allied Free Syria Army (FSA) militias.

Syrian forces with the backing of Russian contractors took advantage of the opportunity and crossed the Euphrates River to capture an oil refinery located east of Euphrates River in the Kurdish-held area of Deir al-Zor. The US Air Force responded with full force, knowing well the ragtag Arab component of SDF – mainly comprised of local Arab tribesmen and mercenaries to make the Kurdish-led SDF appear more representative and inclusive – was simply not a match for the superior training and arms of Syrian troops and Russian military contractors, consequently causing a massacre in which scores of Russian citizens lost their lives.

It would be pertinent to note here that regarding the Syria policy, there is a schism between the White House and the American deep state led by the Pentagon. After Donald Trump’s inauguration as the US president, he has delegated operational-level decisions in conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to the Pentagon.

The way the US officials are evading responsibility for the incident, it appears the decision to strike pro-government forces in Deir al-Zor that included Russian contractors was taken by the operational commander of the US forces in Syria and the White House was not informed until after the strike.

Notwithstanding, it bears mentioning that unlike dyed-in-the-wool globalists and “liberal interventionists,” like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who cannot look past beyond the tunnel vision of political establishments, it appears that the protectionist Donald Trump not only follows news from conservative mainstream outlets, like the Fox News, but he has also been familiar with alternative news perspectives, such as Breitbart’s, no matter how racist and xenophobic.

Thus, Donald Trump is fully aware that the conflict in Syria is a proxy war initiated by the Western political establishments and their regional Middle Eastern allies against the Syrian government. He is also mindful of the fact that militants have been funded, trained and armed in the training camps located in Turkey’s border regions to the north of Syria and in Jordan’s border regions to the south of Syria.

According to the last year’s March 31 article for the New York Times by Michael Gordon, the US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and the recently sacked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had stated on the record that defeating the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq was the top priority of the Trump administration and the fate of Bashar al-Assad was of least concern to the new administration.

Under the previous Obama administration, the evident policy in Syria was regime change. The Trump administration, however, looks at the crisis in Syria from an entirely different perspective because Donald Trump regards Islamic jihadists as a much bigger threat to the security of the US.

In order to allay the concerns of Washington’s traditional allies in the Middle East, the Trump administration conducted a cruise missiles strike on al-Shayrat airfield in Homs governorate on April 6 last year after the chemical weapons strike in Khan Sheikhoun. But that isolated incident was nothing more than a show of force to bring home the point that the newly elected Donald Trump is an assertive and powerful president.

Finally, Karen De Young and Liz Sly made another startling revelation in the last year’s March 4 article for the Washington Post: “Trump has said repeatedly that the US and Russia should cooperate against the Islamic State, and he has indicated that the future of Russia-backed Assad is of less concern to him.”

Thus, the interests of all the major players in Syria have evidently converged on defeating Islamic jihadists, and the Obama-era policy of regime change has been put on the back burner. And after the recent announcement of complete withdrawal of US troops from Syria by President Trump, it appears that we are approaching the endgame in Syria, an event as momentous as the Fall of Saigon in 1975, which will mark a stellar military victory for Vladimir Putin.

On Founding Fathers and Hero-Worship in Bangladesh

Taj Hashmi

As there are multiple narratives about the Partition of 1947, so are there multiple theories about the emergence of Bangladesh. One school of thought tells us there was nothing inevitable about the emergence of Bangladesh; its birth could be averted had the main actors, Bhutto, Yahya, Mujib and some others behaved differently. The other narrative highlights the fundamental differences between the two wings of Pakistan – geographical, historical, ethno-linguistic, cultural, social, and economic – which are said to have made the separation of the two wings inevitable.

Then again, what politicians and their followers in socially and politically fractured Bangladesh assert in public about who and what turned the movement for provincial autonomy for East Pakistan into the Liberation War is mostly one-sided, biased accounts that glorify their own heroes and idols of the Liberation War. The ardent followers of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the Awami League give all credits for achieving Bangladesh to Mujib and glorify him as the founding father of Bangladesh by undermining others, including freedom fighters like Maulana Bhashani, Tajuddin Ahmed, General Osmani, General Ziaur Rahman, Serajul Alam Khan and some other top leaders of Bangladesh.

Awami League leaders invariably undermine Zia as a freedom fighter, let alone as one who formally declared the Independence of Bangladesh on 27 March 1971, and later became the President of the Republic and founder of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Some top Awami League leaders, including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, denigrate Zia at best as an insignificant actor in the Liberation War, and at worst as a Pakistani agent, collaborator, and enemy of Bangladesh. What we hear from BNP leaders and activists is equally partisan, glorifying Zia as the real founding father, and even as the “first president” of the Republic, as his son and political heir Tareq Zia has asserted many times, publicly. By demonizing Mujib as anti-Liberation, Indian agent, or even as a Pakistani collaborator, BNP top brasses assert Mujib only wanted to become the Prime Minister of united Pakistan by using the sentiment of the freedom-loving Bengali radical forces in East Pakistan. So, at the end of the day, it seems both the parties’ leaders and workers leave no stone unturned to see if the main patriarch of the rival party – Mujib or Zia – is denigrated and demonized enough to their own (perceived) political advantage!

Today some ultra-radical “leftist” leaders of the National Socialist Party (JSD), which emerged out of the Awami League, glorify their own leaders, especially the enigmatic Sirajul Alam Khan and A.S.M. Abdur Rab, as the real founders of Bangladesh. In late 1972, they established the (JSD) as an alternative to the ruling Awami League. Their version of the history of the Liberation War is very different from the Awami League and BNP versions. The Awami League version of the history of the emergence of Bangladesh is very different from those who lived through the turbulent period of 1960s and 1971 (both within and beyond Bangladesh) as well.

The historiography of the Liberation War of Bangladesh is full of diametrically opposite versions of “history”, and many of them are “eye-witness” accounts as well! These accounts are reflective of the over-polarised and emotionally-charged well-informed, less-informed, and uninformed people’s ideologies, sentiments, and emotionally- and politically-charged blatant lies. They represent the viewpoints of politically over-polarised sections of the people, as well as those who are plain and simple hero-worshippers. Both are equally capable of lying in support of their political ideologies, and the ideologues or heroes they love, adore, and glorify which is understandable from Carlyle’s important work on heroes and hero worship.

What Carlyle said about the hero-worshippers with regard to “The Hero as King”, namely Cromwell and Napoleon, are applicable to the blind admirers of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Ziaur Rahman, who are the main idols or cult figures in Bangladesh. What he said about the worshippers of Cromwell and Napoleon in his sixth lecture in 1840 is applicable to what Mujib’s and Zia’s blind followers are doing, decades after their tragic deaths. The hero-worshippers find no wrong with their idols.

Carlyle said:

“The Ablest Man: he means also the truest-hearted, justest, the Noblest Man: what he tells us to do must be the wisest, fittest, that we could anywhere or anyhow learn:—the things which it will in all ways behoove US, with right loyal thankfulness and nothing doubting, to do! Our doing and life were then, so far as government could regulate it, well regulated; that were the ideal of constitutions.”

Ardent followers of the two main heroes in Bangladesh  are sharply polarized into two hostile groups of people, who are least interested in respecting each other, let alone, coming to a working political understanding or relationship. Many of their crafty leaders tactfully play the divide-and-rule game for the sake of absolute power. Most of them do not nurture and respect democracy. The absence of intra-party democracy in all the major political parties in the country substantiates this. The cult of hero-worship is a stumbling block in the way toward any meaningful understanding of history and society in Bangladesh. It shrouds the truth and reality from the objective investigators.

Last but not least, the United States recognizes at least six other people — John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison — besides George Washington as its founding fathers. Glorifying single individuals as founding fathers is very common in relatively backward and premodern countries, mainly in the Afro-Asian continents. One may mention Mustafa Kamal, Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung, Sukarno, Gandhi, Jinnah, Mujib, and among others, Mugabe in this regard. And the countries they represent as their sole founding fathers are nominal / dysfunctional democracies or totalitarian dictatorships.

Had Bangladesh adopted the concept of multiple founding fathers, it would have possibly been a democracy without any dynastic rule and cult figures around. At least one of them, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman aka Bangabandhu (Friend of Bangladesh), would not have remained a demigod beyond any reproach or criticism. It is a criminal offence in Bangladesh to question his persona or denying him as the Father of the Nation. People even cannot raise the question if he ever declared the independence of Bangladesh! The country is possibly only comparable to North Korea with regard to the jealously guarded cult of personality. In India and Pakistan people can get away with saying not-so-nice things about their founding fathers, Gandhi and Jinnah respectively, not so in Bangladesh and North Korea!

Russian Exodus From The West

Peter Koenig

By now the West – the US, Canada, Australia and the super-puppets of Europe, overall more than 25 countries – has expelled more than 130 Russian diplomats. All as punishment for Russia’s alleged nerve gas poisoning of a former Russian / MI6 double-agent, Sergei Skripal (66) and his daughter Yulia (33), who was visiting her father from Moscow. Sergei Skripal lived in the UK for the last seven years, ever since President Putin lifted his prison sentence in 2010 in a spy swap with the UK. The pair, father and daughter, was allegedly discovered on 4 March slumped on a park bench in Salisbury, England, not far from Sergei’s home. Apparently traces of the same nerve agent were found at the Skripal home’s door.

Russia in the meantime has started in a tit-for-tat move expelling western diplomats – in a first round 60, plus closing the US Consulate in St. Petersburg. According to Mr. Lavrov, more will most likely follow. – There will be an exodus and a counter-exodus of diplomats, west-east and east-west. It looks like a Kindergarten at play – but is of course a blatant provocation by the west on Russia and a continuation of the vilification of President Putin – especially after he has just been reelected with an overwhelming majority of over 76%. It’s a provocation with zero substance, to further justify an escalating NATO aggression against Russia. The war-bells are ringing – for a lie, an abject farce, visible to a child. Only the blind, those puppets, because out of fear or out of stupidity, who do not want to see – are supporting this new US instigated, UK executed drive against Russia.

The nerve gas, called Novichok, had been produced by the Soviet Union in the 1970s, but was subsequently banned and destroyed under international supervision. The ‘inventor’ of Novichok lives apparently in the US. Mr. Putin said, if the military-grade Novichok would have been used, the only form the USSR ever produced, there would have been no survivors.

What hardly anybody talks about is that the secretive UK Defense (War) Ministry’s laboratory of Porton Down, is but 13 km away from where father and daughter were allegedly found unconscious on a park bench. Porton Down is a highly sophisticated chemical and biological weapons lab that entertains contracts with the Pentagon of more than US$ 70 million for carrying out “experiments”, including on humans and animals. Porton Down has the capacity to produce Novichok. See the full story on Porton Down, by Bulgarian investigative journalist, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva – https://southfront.org/salisbury-nerve-agent-attack-reveals-70-million-pentagon-program-porton/ .

At this point there is no prove – other than what the police reported – that Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found on that dubious park bench. There are no civil witnesses. The UK government does not disclose where the two are treated, what their current health status is. Only on the repeated insistence of Mr. Lavrov that according to an agreement between the UK and Russia (the USSR) in the 1960s, both countries have the right to inquire and investigate about the wellbeing of their respective citizens, an official statement on 29 March from the UK said that Yulia is doing better and is on her way to recovery, while her father is still in critical but stable conditions (The Guardian, 29 March 2018). Is it true? – What if one or both recover and have enough memory of the events to go public?

What if the two have indeed been poisoned at Sergei’s home, or abducted and brought to the Porton Down laboratory to be infected with the nerve gas and then later dumped to the park bench? Why does the UK not disclose any ‘evidence’ they apparently have against Russia? – No details of where the two are being treated? – No visits allowed. Russia’s offer to collaborate in the investigation is laughed off and refused. Is this a well-orchestrated MI6 / CIA false flag, followed by outrageous lambasting by the UK’s highest leadership against Russia and her newly re-elected President Putin?

This criminal propaganda event is so full of lies, false accusations and deceit, pulling along more than 25 (so far) western nations to condemn and sanction Russia in unison for something Russia has with absolute certainty not committed. Just apply logic – a tough challenge, I know, these days for the dumb-folded west – but logic would tell a child that there is no sense, absolutely no sense, for Russia to carry out such an evil act. So, the usual question is: cui bono – who benefits? – And the answer is also crystal clear: Profiting from this sham are the war-mongering US / NATO and their miserable vassal-allies – spineless for years – following lies, their governments are fully aware of the lies, of the untruth Russia is accused of.

Adding injury to insult is Ecuador’s new President, Lenin Moreno, who a few days ago has shut up Julian Assange, Wikileaks editor, who is in political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since July 2012. Under Moreno’s gag-order, Assange is no longer allowed to communicate with anybody in any form and shape and cannot receive visitors. The official reason for Moreno – who has clearly become a traitor on his people – is that Assange tweeted a protest against the arrest in Germany of Catalonian ex-leader, Carles Puigdemont. Moreno has condemned Assange to a sort of isolation prison in the Ecuadorian Embassy. Who gave Moreno orders to do so? – Well, I leave the guessing up to you. In any case Moreno has become a prostitute as are most of the western world “leaders”.

The real reason is most likely Assange’s strong critique of the UK government, especially PM Teresa May and her Foreign and Defense Ministers, for their vitriolic and unjustified accusations and slandering of Russia and particularly of President Putin in the Skripal poison case. Assange cannot leave the embassy for fear of being arrested and extradited to the US, where he may face torture and worse, possibly the death penalty.

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Let’s take this a step further. Diplomatic relations between the west and Russia have totally fallen apart. The doors are closed. Russia doesn’t need the west. But the west, especially Europe, badly needs and will every day more need Russia, a close ally and trading partner for hundreds of years. The west, eventually abandoned and every day more enslaved by Washington with weaponized refugees, with false flag terror attacks, leading to increased militarization, to oppression and censorship, privatization of public goods and infrastructure – Greece is but an example – and strangulation by Wall Street private banking and troika (IMF, European Central Bank, European Commission) imposed debt, the west will beg Russia to open her doors and show them her kindness – the kindness and openness Russia has been demonstrating to the west over the past almost 20 years, despite flagrant western abuse and demonization no end.

The western Anglo-Zionist-led empire will collapse. It’s a mere question of time but collapse it will. Today, not only a few, but all western “leaders” (sic) know that they are committing suicide by teaming up with destructive Washington – and this against the will of the majority of the European people. – Yet, they push a long this path of auto-destruction. Why? – Have they been personally threatened, or else lavishly rewarded if they follow the dictate of deep state-led White House and Pentagon?

The day may come when the west will knock desperately at Russia’s door – please talk to us, we need you. But this may happen only if they have not let themselves be pulled into the abyss of annihilation by Washington. Their stupidity may just do that – another few lies, accusing Russia of crimes against humanity she didn’t commit and prompting a war, an all-destructive nuclear war. The pretext could be another false flag Syrian sarin attack on “her own people”, wrongly blaming Bashar al-Assad; or a missile landing in Israel, blaming Iran with the same no-proof propaganda fervor applied by the UK in the Sergei and Yulia Skripal case; or North Korea – in the course of negotiations between Trump and Kim Jong-un next month (April), the US / west launches a false flag missile, for example, from Guam, that lands in Japan, destroying infrastructure and killing people, blaming it immediately on DPRK, without any evidence whatsoever, but with a rigorous campaign UK-style, to the point that nobody dares to contradict the obvious lie.

What if the current UK virulent and violent Russia slandering campaign is but a dry-run for much worse to come? – By now the mental state of western society is at the level of Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Goebbels’, statement – “Let me control the media, and I will turn any Nation into a herd of Pigs”. Yes, that’s what the west has become, a herd of pigs.

New Zealand: Labour government hit by sexual assault allegations

John Braddock

In what is an ongoing media campaign, the New Zealand Labour Party has been embroiled for two weeks in a sexual assault scandal that has served to undermine the position of the recently elected Labour-led coalition government.

The claims of sexual assault stem from an alleged incident at a Labour Youth camp in February. According to Newsroom, which broke the story on March 12, four Young Labour members—two boys and two girls, all aged 16—told party officials that a 20-year-old man had put his hands down the pants of at least three of them during an alcohol-fuelled social event.

The media has seized on the allegation to attack the Labour Party. With the truth far from established, a replication of the reactionary #MeToo campaign has been under way. Anonymous accusations have been leaked to media sources, without any evidence or independent corroboration, and sweeping denunciations made.

None of the young people involved has been identified by name and no witnesses have been produced. The only “admission” came second-hand from Labour Party secretary Andrew Kirton, who told media that the alleged offender was “deeply embarrassed” when confronted about the incidents the following day. “My understanding from the conversation relayed back to me was that he recognised he had drunk too much and that he was embarrassed by what happened,” Kirton said.

Kirton added that party officials ejected the young man—labelled “the culprit” in one headline—from the camp and banned him from Labour Youth events. However, Kirton then faced mounting calls for his own resignation, including from the trade union-funded Daily Blog, for failing to tell the police, the teens’ parents or Prime Minister Ardern about the alleged “assault.”

Police announced on March 14 that they will formally investigate the case after one of the teens contacted them. Yielding to the media onslaught, the Labour Party has now suspended all Young Labour events. Ardern and party president Nigel Haworth apologised abjectly, declaring that Labour had failed to provide “a safe environment for camp attendees.” Labour has also engaged a senior solicitor to conduct an “independent inquiry” into the incident and party’s procedures.

Apart from MP Megan Woods, who received a Facebook note from one of the teenagers, news of the incident was initially confined to the party hierarchy. Officials contacted the four young people and decided on a “survivor-led” response. At the young peoples’ request, their parents were not informed. Ardern, who had opened the camp, was not told, Kirton said, for fear the alleged victims would be “traumatised” by more people knowing.

While criticising Labour’s tardiness in responding, the head of Help, a sexual abuse support organisation, said the officials had followed the correct process. Spokesperson Conor Twyford told Radio NZ it was up to the victims to tell police or parents. All four were above the age of consent. Twyford emphasised that regardless of their age, police or others should only be notified by a third party, if a person was in danger of harming themselves.

The media, however, has deliberately inflated what appears to have been a minor incident into a major national issue for political purposes. The Dominion Post declared that Labour had “usurped the role of the law enforcers” over what it deemed was likely “criminal activity.” It repeatedly described the four youth as “children” and insisted that the “rights of parents” were sacrosanct. Opposition National Party leader Simon Bridges accused Labour of a “cover up.”

The Labour-led coalition government, which includes the rightwing nationalist NZ First, has enjoyed a protracted media honeymoon since its formation following last September’s election. The corporate media has glorified Ardern, fawning over her youth, gender and pregnancy. It fully backed Labour’s right-wing political trajectory, including Ardern’s support for US president Trump’s threat to “annihilate” North Korea and threats against China.

On March 14, however, a Dominion Post editorial said it was “quite extraordinary” that Labour, which “appeared to embrace… the momentum behind the #metoo movement and the rise of young, ambitious women,” should have “got it all wrong.” Referring to Ardern, broadcaster Duncan Garner declared: “The golden glow and constant smile were never going to stretch through an alleged sex scandal involving young people and booze.”

The so-called “scandal” is being used to push official politics further to the right. Internationally, the reactionary #MeToo movement is cynically exploiting unsubstantiated allegations of sexual misconduct to attack basic legal norms and democratic rights and promote the material interests of a privileged upper middle-class layer.

In New Zealand, the Labour Party has previously advocated legislation to undermine the presumption of innocence in rape cases. In 2016, The Daily Blog called for scrapping trial by jury, based on the reactionary slander that the population as a whole condones “rape culture.”

Last month Fairfax Media’s Stuff website launched a “#MeTooNZ investigation” fronted by prominent journalist Alison Mau, to solicit “stories” from alleged sexual assault and harassment victims. Editorial director Mark Stevens promised that a team of journalists would produce “confronting” stories. This sets the stage for more trials by media based on unsubstantiated, anonymous allegations and sensationalised denunciations.

One thing is certain: the media’s insistence that “the gloss came off” Labour in the past two weeks has nothing to do with whatever did or did not happen at the Labour Youth event. Behind the hypocritical moral outrage is a growing impatience among sections of the ruling elite with the new government. Pressure is building on Ardern to press ahead with the agenda for which she was installed—to deepen the attacks on the social position of the working class and step up preparations for war.