These days, it doesn’t take much to antagonize MAGA, and James Gunn, the director of the new Superman film, scheduled to be released on July 11,  has set off another outrage cycle.

“I mean, Superman is the story of America,” Gunn said in an interview with the Times of London, “An immigrant that came from other places […] but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”

Amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, mass deportation plans, and creation of concentration camps like Alligator Alcatraz, Gunn also noted that his film leans into the character’s well-known backstory as an otherworldly refugee, a plot point that has been explored in Superman comics over the years.

MAGA influencers jumped on Gunn speedier than longtime Superman antagonist Lex Luther, General Zod, and Mister Mxyzptlk.  Fox News host Laura Ingraham dismissed the film entirely, declaring it as “another film we won’t be seeing.”

“He’s creating a moat of woke, enlightened opinion around him. He’s got a woke shield,” Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said as an on-screen graphic blared that the “Superwoke” movie embraced “pro-immigrant themes.”

“I’m going to skip seeing Superman now. Director is an absolute moron to say this publicly the week before release,” conservative radio host and OutKick founder Clay Travis complained.

“I can’t believe that we’ve come down to that,” she complained. “We don’t go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology onto us. I wonder if it will be successful.” MAGA-boosting Fox News host Jesse Watters, meanwhile, followed up by joking that Superman’s cape is now emblazoned with “MS-13.”

The Daily Dot’s Anna Good reported that “Gunn’s version of Superman focuses on empathy, morality, and alienation. These themes have been embedded in the character since his 1938 debut in the first issue of Action Comics. In his interview, Gunn acknowledged that the movie might be received differently in liberal vs. conservative parts of the country.”

Gunn’s take on aligns with the character’s Jewish roots. Created in the 1930s by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, sons of Jewish immigrants who fled the European pogroms, Superman was born of a need for hope during a time of rising anti-Semitism.

“Yes, it’s about politics,” Gunn told The Times of London. “But on another level it’s about morality. Do you never kill no matter what — which is what Superman believes — or do you have some balance, as Lois believes? It’s really about their relationship and the way different opinions on basic moral beliefs can tear two people apart.”

Gunn pointed out that “I’m telling a story about a guy who is uniquely good, and that feels needed now because there is a meanness that has emerged due to cultural figures being mean online.”

“My reaction to [the backlash] is that it is exactly what the movie is about,” he declared. “We support our people, you know? We love our immigrants. Yes, Superman is an immigrant, and yes, the people that we support in this country are immigrants and if you don’t like that, you’re not American. People who say no to immigrants are against the American way.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Berkowitz.

Image by Rod Long.

President Trump, in his March 4 State of the Union address, stated:

“And I also have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland. We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. We need Greenland for national security and even international security. And we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it. But we need it really for international world security. And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it. We will keep you safe. We will make you rich. And together we will take Greenland to heights like you have never thought possible before. It’s a very small population, but very, very large piece of land and very, very important for military security.”[1]

“One way or the other, we’re going to get it” sounds like a threat to me. In fact, Trump’s entire statement could have come out of a mob boss’ mouth.

It was delivered coupled with his offer to buy Greenland from Denmark and make it the 51^st state (or 52^nd if Trump has his way with Canada). Hence, it is in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism, as Trump is determined to take control of the island, thus expanding the U.S. empire.

On Tuesday March 11, one week after Trump’s threat, Greenlanders went to the polls to elect their 31-seat Parliament, one factor in how Greenland is governed. Greenland is currently a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, which controls the island’s foreign policy, defense, and other important aspects of its economy. Denmark provides around 50 percent of the budget for Greenland, providing for schools, social services, and cheap gas. And while polls show that over 85 percent of Greenlanders favor independence from Denmark, Greenlanders are divided on the pace of independence.[2]

Local issues dominated the election in Greenland, but Trump’s rhetoric did have an impact. The pro-business Demokraatit party, which favors a slow path to independence that does not disrupt social services or economic growth, won a surprise victory with 29.9 percent of the votes and will now form a coalition government. The second-place finisher was the ardent pro-independence party Naleraq, with 24.5 percent of the vote. In third place was the former governing party, Inuit Ataqatigiit, with 21.4 percent. [3]

Putting teeth into Trump’s rhetoric, just weeks after the Greenland election: Vice-President Vance, along with his wife, Second Lady Usha Chilukuri Vance; National Security Advisor Chris Waltz; and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright paid a visit to the island. The visit was confined to Pituffik Space base, a U.S. military base in Greenland, in order to avoid protests in Nuuk, the capital and largest city. During his visit, Vance accused Denmark of both underinvesting in the island and failing to provide for its defense.[4]

One consequence of the Vice President’s visit was the firing of the base commander, Col. Susannah Meyers, for allegedly undermining the chain of command and subverting President Trump’s agenda. Her sin—sending an email stating that she disagreed with Vance’s criticisms of Denmark.[5]

Why Greenland and Why Now?

Greenland has a population of approximately 56,500 people. This tiny population inhabits the largest island in the world, with an area of 836,330 square miles, more than a fourth of the area of the lower-48 states. And the Greenlanders are sitting on a treasure trove of oil, mineral wealth, and fisheries. What’s more, Greenland straddles increasingly important Arctic Sea lanes that shorten the distance of shipping routes, and therefore the cost of transporting goods from Europe to Asia. Further, the island is militarily significant because it acts as a barrier between Russia and the U.S.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Greenland has approximately 31.4 billion barrels of oil and natural gas. Extraction of these resources is blocked by the Greenland government, which instituted a moratorium on all oil and gas exploration in 2021, citing the environmental costs to the island. Greenland also has deposits of coal and uranium. In addition, Greenland has vast deposits of rare earth elements (REEs) essential for modern technology, renewable energy, and the military industrial complex.[6] Access to this mineral wealth is not only blocked by the government moratorium: Greenland lacks the infrastructure of ports, roads, and pipelines needed to extract this wealth. Nevertheless, Greenland is an important part the Trump administration’s seeking to secure access to mineral wealth across the globe – a strategy necessary for economic domination.[7]

In early April, China, which the U.S. considers its chief competitor, placed restrictions on the export of rare earth elements (REE) and on REE magnets. The REE are essential to many modern technologies such as lasers, computers, and missiles. Powerful REE magnets are used in auto factories and are essential to jet fighters. Ninety percent of the world’s REE magnets are produced in China.[8] Together, these restrictions, directed at U.S. technology and war industries, could cripple the U.S. military.[9] Should China ban exports of REE and REE magnets completely, the U.S. would be even more desperate to find alternative sources – hence the interest in Greenland.

A History of U.S. Intervention

The Inuit people make up over 87 percent of Greenland’s current population. Archeological evidence suggests they arrived on the island at least 3,500 years ago, but as with the evidence for other native peoples we know that this most likely underestimates the date of their arrival. The Norse-Icelandic explorer Erik the Red later established two settlements on the island around 980 CE, giving the island its European name in the hopes of attracting settlers. These European settlements died out or were abandoned in the early 1500s. This did not stop Denmark from claiming the island and asserting control over the native people in 1720.

The U.S. considered buying Greenland from Denmark in 1868, when Secretary of State William Seward (yes—the same Seward who engineered the purchase of Alaska) proposed the purchase of Greenland from Denmark. In 1910 the U.S. again tried to acquire Greenland from Denmark by offering to exchange Greenland for islands in the Philippines, which were then a U.S. colony. This deal also fell through.[10]

U.S. intervention began in earnest with the 1940 German invasion of Denmark. The U.S. took military control of the island to prevent it from falling under German control. Over the course of World War II, tens of thousands of U.S. planes used the island as a stopover on the way to Europe. The weather forecasts from Greenland proved crucial to the success of the D-Day invasion.

After World War II, the island became an important part of the U.S. Cold War against the USSR. The U.S. offered to buy the island again from Denmark for $100 million U.S. dollars. The Danish government rejected the offer. They did, however, sign, in 1951, a treaty giving the U.S. significant rights to station military troops in Greenland. The U.S. constructed the Thule Air Base in northwestern Greenland, which at its peak housed 10,000 U.S. troops. The base still exists, renamed Pituffik Space Base; it’s under the control of U.S. Space Force. The U.S. had also built a second base, which was secret. Located under the Greenland ice cap, about 150 miles from Thule Air Base, it no longer exists but was called Camp Century and powered by a nuclear reactor.[11]

On January 21, 1968, a B-52 from Thule Air Base crashed on the Greenland ice cap carrying four hydrogen bombs. The U.S. tried to clean up as much of the contaminated ice as possible, but one of the bombs is still missing.[12] This missing nuclear weapon could be a major environmental catastrophe should it leak in the melting ice cap. The crash also revealed that during the Cold War with the USSR, the U.S. stationed B-52s and nuclear weapons at Thule Air Base to strike at the USSR. Construction of new U.S. bases in Greenland would be considered crucial to any U.S. plans for nuclear war and would threaten Russia and China.

How might future U.S. intervention play out?

There are several possible scenarios for future U.S. intervention, based on historical precedence.

In the first, the U.S. could invade directly with military, as Trump has threatened. But Greenland is part of Denmark. Both the U.S. and Denmark are members of NATO, whose sole purpose is as a military alliance. NATO countries are obligated to defend any member that is invaded. If the U.S. were to invade Greenland, this would mean one NATO member, Denmark, being invaded by another, the U.S. This would trigger a crisis in NATO.

In a March 13, 2025 meeting at the White House between Trump and Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary-General Rutte told Trump that NATO would not stop a U.S. military intervention in Greenland, essentially giving the U.S. a green light for a possible invasion. [13]

I think of this as the Spanish-American War scenario. In 1898 the U.S. went to war with Spain, at the time a weak and declining colonial power, to seize the Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.[14]

In case this seems farfetched, note that the U.S. now has an Arctic division – a division consists of 10,000 and 15,000 troops – specialized in fighting in polar regions. In mid-February the Arctic division, the 11^th Airborne, deployed to the Arctic regions of Finland in a training exercise.[15] While part of a NATO exercise aimed at Russia, the training served as a practice run for any potential invasion of Greenland.

The U.S. has a history of invading island nations. The most recent case was the island nation of Grenada in 1983 when a force of fewer than 8,000 U.S. troops seized the tiny island nation of fewer than 100,000 on the pretext of protecting American students during a coup within the government. That invasion was hastily planned and powerfully executed. Still, it took the U.S. less than a week to totally control the island. A U.S. invasion of Greenland will be better planned and will most likely start with the seizure of the international airport in Nuuk, the capital and largest city.

In the second scenario, the U.S. would employ non-military means or soft power. It would encourage independence and then meddle in local politics, cultivating pro-U.S. politicians and parties, and extracting considerable economic and political concessions. These concessions would likely include mining rights and additional military bases. Trump has already started this process and may have found a willing partner in Kuno Fencker. A prominent leader of the second-place Naleraq party, Fencker attended Trump’s inauguration and then toured the White House at Trump’s invitation. Fencker has publicly defended Trump in his podcasts and speeches, saying that Trump is misunderstood. Fencker has been called a traitor by leaders of the other parties. Naleraq wants immediate independence from Denmark and closer ties with the U.S.[16]

This second scenario appears to be the current U.S. strategy. In a bombshell front-page article in The New York Times on April 11, it was reported that the White House, under the leadership of the National Security Council (NSC), is moving “forward on a plan to acquire the island from Denmark.” The NSC has sent directives to multiple arms of the U.S. government, is developing a propaganda plan to persuade Greenlanders to join the U.S., and is considering a direct payment to each Greenlander of $10,000 per year, approximately the same amount of money that Denmark gives to the island for education, healthcare, and other social services.[17] At the same time that President Trump is trying to persuade Greenlanders, he is making his case to the American people.

I think of this as the Panama Scenario because it is similar to what the U.S. did in Panama when it encouraged local elites to break away from Colombia and then extracted significant concessions from the new government, including the right to build and control the Panama Canal Zone and maintain a massive U.S. military presence.[18]

In the third, and least likely, scenario, the U.S, would encourage independence, meddle in the political affairs of Greenland, and encourage U.S. investment in and immigration to the island. The immigrants and pro-U.S. Greenlanders could then demand annexation by the U.S. I think of this as the Hawaii Scenario, because it is similar to what the U.S. did when it annexed the Kingdom of Hawai’i in 1893.[19]

If one of these scenarios plays out, there will be two big losers and one big winner. The losers will be the people of Greenland and the environment of their island nation. The big winner will be U.S. imperialism, more specifically the corporate elite that will pillage the resources of the island for their own profit and power. While standing in solidarity with the rights of the Greenlanders to make their own decisions for their nation and independence, we must also oppose all U.S. intervention and exploitation. We must especially raise our voices against Trump and his efforts to convince the American people that “we” need to acquire the island. Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland, not the U.S. capitalist elite!

The post Greenland in the Crosshairs of U.S. Imperialism appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Michael Livingston .

The post Campus Life in the Crosshairs appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Kate Horgan.

In view of the Israeli Prime Minister, amid his own corruption trial, the truth about the Israeli-occupied territories seems to be equivalent to treason. Hence, his determination to destroy B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

The effort to decimate the last defenders of human rights in Israel cries for effective external intervention.

Why are Netanyahu’s autocrats after B’Tselem?

B’Tselem evolved in early 1989, when it was established by a group of Israeli lawyers, academics and doctors with the support of 10 members of Knesset, the Israeli parliament. The name comes from Genesis 1:27, which deems that all mankind was created “b’tselem elohim” (in the image of God); in line with the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As Jewish far-right extremism was spreading in Israel, B’Tselem reflected an effort to replace nascent Jewish supremacism doctrines with the original, universalistic spirit of social justice that had marked Judaism for centuries.

It was founded after two years of the First Intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories and in Israel. After two decades of futile struggle for decolonization and increasing Israeli repression, Palestinians resorted to protests, then civil disobedience and eventually violence.

Instead of taking a hard look at the causes of the uprising, the hard-right Likud government – led by Yitzhak Shamir, Netanyahu’s one-time mentor and ex-leader of the violent pre-state Stern group – deployed 80,000 soldiers in response, which started with live rounds against peaceful demonstrators.

The brutal repression resulted in over 330 Palestinian deaths (and 12 Israelis killed) in just the first 13 months. The objective of the newly-established B’Tselem became to document human rights violations in both Gaza and the West Bank. Amid a vicious cycle of violence, it sought to serve as the nation’s voice of conscience.

Today, it is led by human rights activist Yuli Novak who had to leave Israel in 2022 due to mounting death threats, and chaired by Orly Noy, left-wing Mizrahi activist and editor of +972 magazine. Despite mounting threats from the government, the Messianic far-right and the settler extremists, B’Tselem has insistently recorded human rights violations in the occupied territories earning the regard of rights organizations and awards worldwide.

In early 2021, the NGO released a report describing Israel as an “apartheid” regime, which the Netanyahu cabinets have fervently rejected. Yet, the NGO simply codified, with abundant evidence, Israel’s apartheid rule that had worsened over time. Several Israeli military, intelligence and political leaders had used the same characterization since the 2000s.

B’Tselem warned that Israeli governance was no longer about democracy plus occupation. It had morphed into “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea” – that is, apartheid. And the kind of military excess that led to the genocidal atrocities in Gaza.

How is the Netanyahu cabinet undermining B’Tselem?   

Recently, the Knesset passed a preliminary reading of two bills. They are an integral part of a broader shift from democracy to autocracy. The ultimate objective is to eliminate human rights (and other rights) groups from Israel, including B’Tselem, and to marginalize the autocratic harsh-right’s critics.

In its efforts, the Netanyahu cabinet is relying on two proposed laws involving NGO taxation and the ICC. In the former case, the proposal slaps an 80% tax on donations from foreign countries, the UN and many international foundations supporting human rights. This will effectively cut off the NGOs’ funding. The proposal was approved in a preliminary reading.

The second bill, which has now also passed a preliminary reading, seeks to criminalize any cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC). It could be seen as the Israeli version of the US Trump administration’s sanctions to undermine the ICC, its activities and members.

With its diffuse language, the Israeli ICC bill can be exploited to criminalize not only active assistance to the court but the release of any information indicating the government or senior Israeli officials are committing war crimes or crimes against humanity. According to Israeli scholars of international law, “the definitions in this dangerous bill are so broad that even someone sharing on social media a photo or video of a soldier documenting themselves committing what appears to be a war crime could face imprisonment.” More precisely, half a decade in jail.

If the “ICC law” criminalizes the work of B’Tselem and other human rights NGOs by making human rights defense a punishable offense, the “NGO taxation law” is intended to drain the meager financial resources of these NGOs.

Whose “foreign subversion”?            

B’Tselem is an independent, non-partisan organization. It is funded by donations: grants from European and North American foundations that support human rights activity worldwide, and contributions by private individuals in Israel and abroad. These donors do not represent the kind of “subversion” that the Likud governments attribute to human rights NGOs. Nor do they possess major financial resources. Even right-wing NGO critics estimate B’Tselem’s annual funding at most about $3 million per year.

Things are very different behind the donors of the Kohelet Policy Forum, led by neoconservatives with US-Israeli dual citizenship, and its many spinoffs. These have served as the Netanyahu cabinets’ thinktanks and authored many of their policies, including the “judicial reforms.” Totaling several million dollars, Kohelet in particular benefited from multi-million-dollar donations made anonymously and sent through the U.S. nonprofit, American Friends of Kohelet Policy Forum (AF-KPF).

For years, these money flows originated mainly from two Jewish-American private equity billionaires and philanthropists, Arthur Dantchik and Jeffrey Yass, the co-founders of Susquehanna International Group (The Fall of Israel, Chapter 6).

With a net worth of $7.5 billion, Dantchik is an active supporter of neoconservative Israeli causes. And so is Yass, with net worth estimated at $29 billion. Between 2010 and 2020, his Claws Foundation gave more than $25 million to the Jerusalem-based Shalom Hartman Institute, the Kohelet and other right-wing causes. As the publicity-shy Dantchik and Yass began to suffer from Kohelet’s negative PR, they took distance, while other money flows offset the difference.

By 2021, more than 90% of Kohelet’s $7.2 million income came from the Central Fund of Israel, a family-run nonprofit that gave $55 million to more than 500 Israel-related causes. It was run by Marcus Brothers Textiles on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, which sponsors highly controversial settlement projects in the West Bank, while supporting the far-right activists’ ImTirtzu and Honenu, which is notorious for defending Jewish far-right extremists charged with violence against and killings of Palestinians.

Toward a unitary, autocratic Jewish state     

Given the present course, the ultimate demise of human rights in Israel is now a matter of time. The Netanyahu cabinet will decide when to bring the legislative proposals to hearings in the relevant parliamentary committees, to prepare them for final approval.

There is no doubt about the final objective: the creation of a state “from the river to the water,” but not the two-state model enacted almost eight decades ago. Nor the secular-democratic Jewish state with a vibrant Arab minority. The goal is a Jewish unitary state in which both the rule of law and democracy will be under erosion.

B’Tselem is the harsh-right’s scapegoat for its own international isolation, but only the first one. There is more to come. Under the watch of and military aid and financing by the Biden and Trump administrations, the protection of human rights in occupied territories will soon be treated as a punishable crime, while the economic resources of the remaining human rights defenders will be decimated.

In Gaza, the international community failed to halt the genocidal atrocities. If it fails to protect the last defenders of human rights in Israel, it is likely to become complicit in new atrocities in the West Bank.

• Originally published by Informed Comment.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Steinbock.

Neo recycles a few dozen tons of high-purity gallium a year, mostly from semiconductor chip manufacturing scrap, at a factory in Ontario, Canada. In North America, it’s the only industrial-scale producer of the metal, which is used in not only chips, but also clean energy technologies and military equipment. 

China, the world’s leading producer by far, had just announced new export controls on gallium, apparently in response to reports that the United States government was considering restrictions on the sale of advanced semiconductor chips to China. 

All of a sudden, people wanted to talk to Neo. “We’ve spoken to almost everyone” interested in producing gallium outside of China, Tsianos told Grist.

Since Tsianos started receiving those calls, tensions over the 31st element on the periodic table — as well as the 32nd, germanium, also used in a bevy of advanced technologies — have escalated. In December, China outright banned exports of both metals to the United States following the Biden administration’s decision to further restrict U.S. chip exports. 

Now, several companies operating in the U.S. and Canada are considering expanding production of the rare metals to help meet U.S. demand. While Canadian critical minerals producers may get swept up in a new geopolitical tit-for-tat should Trump go through with his threat to impose tariffs, U.S. metal producers could see support from the new administration, which called for prioritizing federal funding for critical minerals projects in a Day 1 executive order. Beyond the U.S. and Canada, industry observers say China’s export ban is fueling global interest in making critical mineral supply chains more diverse so that no single country has a chokehold over materials vital for a high-tech, clean energy future.

“This latest round of export bans are putting a lot of wind in the sails of critical minerals supply chain efforts, not just in the U.S. but globally,” Seaver Wang of the Breakthrough Institute, a research center focused on technological solutions to environmental problems, told Grist.

Gallium and germanium aren’t exactly household names. But they are found in products that are indispensable to modern life — and a fossil fuel-free society. With its impressive electrical properties, gallium is used in semiconductor chips that make their way into everything from cell phones to power converters in electric vehicles to LED lighting displays. The metal is also used in the manufacturing of rare earth magnets for electric vehicles and wind turbines, in thin film solar cells, and sometimes, in commercially popular silicon solar photovoltaic cells, where it can help increase performance and extend lifespan. 

Germanium, meanwhile, is used to refract light inside fiber optic cables. In addition to helping form the backbone of the internet, the metal’s exceptional light-scattering properties make it useful for infrared lenses, semiconductor chips, and high-efficiency solar cells used by satellites.

There aren’t many substitutes for these two elements.  Some silicon-based semiconductors lack gallium, and specialized glasses can be substituted for germanium in certain infrared technologies. Solar cells are often doped with boron instead of gallium. But these two metals have specific properties that often make them the ideal material. When it comes to clean energy, Tsianos told Grist, there are no substitutes “within the material performance and cost trade-off spectrum” offered by gallium.

Because a little bit goes a long way, the market for both metals is small — and it’s dominated by China. In 2022, the world produced about 640 tons of low-purity gallium and a little over 200 tons of germanium, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In recent years, China has accounted for virtually all of the world’s low-purity gallium output and more than half of refined germanium. 

That’s partly due to the fact that both metals are byproducts of other industries. Gallium is typically extracted from bauxite ores as they are being processed to make aluminum oxide, while zinc miners sometimes squeeze germanium out of waste produced during refining. China is a leading producer of these common metals, too — and its government has made co-extracting gallium and germanium a priority, according to Wang. “It is very strategic,” he said.

China’s dominance of the two metals’ supply chains gives it a considerable cudgel in its ongoing trade war with the U.S. America produces no virgin gallium and only a small amount of germanium, while consuming approximately fifty tons a year of the two metals combined. A U.S. Geological Survey study published in November found that if China implemented a total moratorium on exports of both metals, it could cost the U.S. economy billions. Weeks after that study was published, China announced its ban.

The ban is so new that it’s not yet clear how U.S. companies, or the federal government, are responding. But America’s high-tech manufacturing sector isn’t without fallback options. North of the border, Neo’s facility in Ontario stands ready to double its production of gallium, according to Tsianos. “We have the capacity,” he told Grist. “We’re waiting for more feedstock.” 

Currently, Neo’s only source of gallium is the semiconductor industry. Chip makers in Europe, North America, and Asia send the company their scrap, which it processes to recover high-purity gallium that feeds back into semiconductor manufacturing. But Tsianos says Neo is piloting its technology with bauxite miners around the world to create new sources of virgin gallium. The idea, he says, is that bauxite miners would do some initial processing on-site, then send low-purity gallium to Neo for further refining in Canada. Tsianos declined to name specific bauxite firms Neo is partnering with, but said the company is “making progress” toward making new resources available.

Meanwhile, in British Columbia, mining giant Teck Resources is already a leading producer of germanium outside of China. The firm’s Trail Operations refinery complex receives zinc ore from the Red Dog mine in northwest Alaska and turns it into various products, including around 20 tons of refined germanium a year, according to a U.S. Geological Survey estimate. (Teck doesn’t disclose production volumes.) 

That germanium is sold primarily to customers in the U.S., Teck spokesperson Dale Steeves told Grist. In wake of the export ban, Steeves said that the firm is now “examining options and market support for increasing production capacity of germanium.”

Kwasi Ampofo, the head of metals and mining at the clean energy research firm BloombergNEF, told Grist that in the near term, he would expect the U.S. to “try to establish new supply chain relationships” with countries that already have significant production, like Canada, to secure the gallium and germanium it needs. That may be true whether or not Trump’s proposed tariffs on Canadian imports become reality. Tsianos was bullish in spite of the tariff threat, noting in an email that Neo “remains the only industrial-scale and commercially-operating Gallium facility in North America.”

“[W]e are committed to continue serving our European, American, and Japanese customers in the semiconductor and renewable energy industries,’ Tsianos added.

Steeves told Grist that a trade war between the U.S. and Canada would be “a negative for the economy of both nations, disrupting the flow of essential critical minerals and increasing costs and inefficiencies on both sides of the border.” Teck, he said,  “will continue to actively manage our sales arrangements to minimize the impact to Trail Operations.”

While Canada may be the U.S.’s best short-term option for these rare metals, farther down the line Ampofo expects to see the U.S. take a  “renewed interest” in recycling — particularly of military equipment. In 2022, the Department of Defense announced it had initiated a program for recovering “optical-grade germanium” from old military equipment. At the time, the initiative was expected to recycle up to 3 tons of the metal each year, or roughly 10 percent of the nation’s annual demand. The Defense sub-agency responsible for the program didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment on the program’s status.

There’s another small source of production capacity in the U.S. The global metals company Umicore recycles germanium from manufacturing scrap, fiber optic cables, solar cells, and infrared optical devices at an optical materials facility in Quapaw, Oklahoma, as well as in Belgium. The company has been recycling germanium since the 1950s, a spokesperson told Grist, calling it a “core and historical activity at Umicore.” Umicore declined to disclose how much of the metal it recycles and wouldn’t say whether China’s export ban will impact this part of its business.

While recycling is able to fill some of the nation’s gallium and germanium needs, there may be a larger source of both metals lurking in sludge ponds in central Tennessee. 

There, in the city of Clarksville, the Netherlands-headquartered Nyrstar operates a zinc processing facility that produces wastes containing gallium and germanium. A U.S. Department of Energy spokesperson told Grist that the company has previously partnered with Ames National Laboratory’s Critical Materials Innovation Hub to develop processes for extracting gallium, which isn’t typically produced from zinc waste. 

In 2023, Nyrstar announced plans to build a new, $150-million facility, co-located with its existing zinc smelter in Clarksville, capable of producing 30 tons of germanium and 40 tons of gallium a year. However, the current status of the project is uncertain, with no timetable to begin construction. A spokesperson for Nyrstar told Grist the company is “continu[ing] to work on and evaluate the business case” for the facility, while declining to offer additional details.

Making a business case to produce gallium or germanium is the central challenge for firms outside of China, experts told Grist. As Tsianos of Neo put it, these metals are a “side hustle” that requires major up-front investment for a relatively small amount of extra revenue. Moreover, a bauxite or zinc miner’s ability to produce gallium or germanium typically hinges on the market conditions for the metal it is primarily focused on. That means “if aluminum prices are low or the zinc prices are low, the mine or the smelter might just not operate, even if the world is sort of screaming out for more gallium or germanium,” Wang said.

Still, there’s more economic incentive to produce these metals now than there was a few years ago. The recent geopolitical drama, Tsianos says, has caused a “bifurcation” in the price of gallium. Outside of China, the price of the metal is now “almost double” what it is within the nation’s borders. 

“There’s a structural change in the market that has created a business case for outside of China production,” Tsianos said. “And it started because of the export control.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline 2 obscure clean energy metals are caught in the crosshairs of the US-China trade war on Feb 7, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Maddie Stone.

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will hear a challenge to a nearly 40-year administrative law precedent under which judges defer to federal agencies' interpretation of ambiguous statutes—a case that legal experts warn could result in judicial power grabs and the gutting of environmental and other regulations.

The Supreme Court said it will take up Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo—a case in which fishing companies are seeking to strike down the Chevron doctrine, named after the landmark 1984 Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council ruling that conservatives have long sought to overturn. The case is one of the most cited precedents in administrative law.

The Chevron doctrine involves a two-step process in which a court first determines whether Congress expressed its intent in legislation, and if so, whether or not that intent is ambiguous.

"In a sense, the outcome of this case is foreordained. It's part of a continuing agenda."

James Goodwin, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform, toldPolitico that Loper v. Raimondo has "the potential of being one of the most destabilizing decisions that this court has issued."

President Joe Biden's "environmental and energy agencies were already facing a heavily tilted playing field in the federal judiciary," Goodwin added. "I think eliminating Chevron... would make the prospects of surviving judicial review all the more daunting."

At issue in Loper v. Raimondo is whether the federal government can force herring fishers to fund a National Marine Fisheries Service program used to monitor their work. Two fishing companies argue that while the Magnuson-Stevens Act requires owners of fishing vessels to accommodate federal monitors onboard, the proprietors are not required "to pay the salaries of government-mandated monitors who take up valuable space on their vessels and oversee their operations."

The Biden administration's argument in favor of the Chevron doctrine leans heavily upon precedent.

"Federal courts have invoked Chevron in thousands of reported decisions, and Congress has repeatedly legislated against its backdrop," a brief filed by U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar and other officials in support of the doctrine notes. The brief adds that the Chevron doctrine "promotes political accountability, national uniformity, and predictability, and it respects the expertise agencies can bring to bear in administering complex statutory schemes."

In 2020, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in Howard v. United States that "Chevronis in serious tension with the Constitution," while Justice Neil Gorsuch opined last year in Buffington v. McDonough that the doctrine "deserves a tombstone no one can miss."

"Overruling the Chevron doctrine, and undermining agencies and regulatory authority more broadly, has long been a hobbyhorse of Neil Gorsuch and other conservatives," legal journalist Christian Farias tweeted. "In a sense, the outcome of this case is foreordained. It's part of a continuing agenda."

Liberal Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson has recused herself from Loper v. Raimondo, explaining that she sat on the circuit court that initially heard the case.

"I still want to know how Ketanji Brown Jackson feels about all of this," Farias wrote. "Her insights are valuable: She was the vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an agency that is given Chevron-like deference in some contexts. Making her sit this one out won't help."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

But for the country’s Karen, Chin, Shan and other ethnic minorities – about a third of the population – obtaining an ID card is a complicated ordeal, and having one can often do more harm than help.

Identification cards reveal the holder’s ethnicity and the geographic area he or she is from, so that information could link them to resistance groups like the People’s Defense Force that are fighting the military after the 2021 coup, thereby putting a target on their backs.

“There's no real use (for ID cards), except for the fact that you're exposing yourself to more scrutiny by going through that kind of complicated official process,” said Za Uk Ling, the deputy director of the Chin Human Rights Organization. “These days, people try to stay as low profile as they can, avoiding any contact with local officials.

There are other complicating factors, too. Some minorities don’t want to apply for ID cards under the junta, and thereby recognize its legitimacy.

And some administrative offices that issue ID cards have been destroyed or shut down due to the fighting. 

Many simply don’t have any form of identification, and so are officially stateless. 

‘Lost our chance’

But that can cut them off from opportunities and basic services. 

For example, five students at Laung Lin’s school in Mawlamyine, in southern Myanmar, were thrilled to gain acceptance into Thai universities. But they were unable to obtain an ID card needed to get a passport required to travel because the local junta-run office has been closed amid turmoil in the country. 

“I feel like we lost our right, our chance. We should be able to accept these opportunities – but we can’t,” Laung Lin said, asking to go by a nickname. “What if that village is not safe? If there’s war, you cannot do it at all. That’s been difficult for us.”

Ying Kawn Tai, a teacher who works for Shan education accessibility in Thailand, says that access to national identification has always been a struggle in Shan State, in eastern Myanmar, but has become almost impossible since the coup. She estimates that up to half of Shan people – roughly 2 million people – don’t have a citizen ID card.

Most government-run schools require an ID card to attend, but many Shan people who have fled to the Thai border don’t have any documentation. And there are very few Shan language schools which they can attend, she said.

Job hassles

Another problem is that traveling between states without proper identification can be risky. With high unemployment in Kayah State, those seeking work in nearby states could be arrested at checkpoints manned by junta soldiers. 

Without an ID card, a whole slew of activities is difficult or impossible. “Even bank accounts, even to register mobile [phone], SIM cards – we can’t do it if we have no ID,” Zue Zue, who works on education within the Karenni State Consultative Council said.

Further south, in Kayin State, where 350,000 people displaced by fighting are mostly living in camps, the problem emerges first with birth certificates.

The health department of the Karen National Union, which has been fighting the military for greater autonomy for decades, keeps records of children born in the camps. But it doesn’t issue any sort of birth certificate to the parents because the health department doesn't have the funding, centralized office or international recognition to do that.

And without that documentation, applying for further types of identification as the child grows up becomes difficult. 

"If we start issuing the birth certificates, then the identifications or the passport or the ID cards, everything will follow after that,” a Karen Department of Health and Welfare spokesperson said, asking for anonymity for security reasons.

Educational hurdles

Schools in some areas go up to grade 10, and local educators would like to offer education to grade 12. But even if they did, taking the nationwide 12th grade examination requires an ID card.

“If you do not have an ID card, you can’t do that type of examination,” said Zue Zue. 

While she says they’re in the beginning stages of discussing an alternative ID system, they still face challenges in obtaining resources to complete such a task while focusing on humanitarian aid.  “We have a solution, but we don’t have the support to source that solution,” she said.

Other states have begun adopting similar measures. In Kachin State, National Unity Government Deputy Education Minister Ja Htoi Pan says students can use reference letters to enroll in school, rather than identification cards. 

“People use different methods to verify their ID, it depends on the situation, it depends on the school,” she said. “Some schools require their recommendation from a respectable person, a reference. Those are the temporary, interim arrangements.”

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Special for RFA.

Armed conflict, climate change, economic stressors, and humanitarian aid shortfalls are among the leading drivers of increased gender-based violence, the head of the United Nations' refugee agency said on Friday, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls.

"There is a shocking, pernicious cycle of hunger and insecurity, each exacerbating the other and fueling risks to women and girls."

"A toxic mix of crises—conflicts, climate, skyrocketing costs, and the ripple effects of the Ukraine war—are inflicting a devastating toll on the forcibly displaced. This is being felt across the world, but women and girls are particularly suffering," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi said in a statement.

The U.N. agency said that many refugees and internally displaced people can't meet their basic needs due to price inflation and diminished humanitarian aid caused by inadequate funding and supply chain disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and other disruptors like the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

"With savings depleted, many are skipping meals, children are being sent to work instead of school and some may have no options but to beg or engage in the sale or exchange of sex to survive," said Grandi. "Too many are facing heightened risks of exploitation, trafficking, child marriage, and intimate partner violence."

As UNHCR details:

Among refugee populations in Algeria, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Niger, Tanzania, Uganda, Republic of the Congo, and Zambia, UNHCR has recorded serious nutrition concerns. These include acute malnutrition, stunting, and anemia. Across eastern and southern Africa, more than three-quarters of refugees have seen food rations cut and are unable to meet their basic needs. Inside Syria, 1.8 million people in displacement camps are severely food insecure, while nine in 10 Syrian refugees in Lebanon are unable to afford essential food and services. 

Across the Americas, half of those forcibly displaced eat only two meals a day, with three-quarters reducing the quantity or quality of their food, according to UNHCR data. Major deteriorations in food security are projected in Yemen and the Sahel, and millions of internally displaced people in countries like Somalia and Afghanistan live in situations where 90% of the population are not consuming enough food. 

"There is a shocking, pernicious cycle of hunger and insecurity, each exacerbating the other and fueling risks to women and girls, as harmful coping strategies are adopted across communities," the agency said.

UNHCR highlighted the case of one South Sudanese refugee who in 2018 fled to Ethiopia's Gambella region, where she is forced to make dangerous forays for food because of a 50% reduction in monthly aid.

"In the camp, the food is not enough, so the only option for some women is to go to the forest to collect firewood to sell," the woman—who did not give her real name but called herself "Roda"—explained. "As women, we face a lot of risks by going to the forest. You need to walk for at least four hours to arrive at a very distant place where you can gather some sticks to bring home."

One day while going to get wood, Roda was attacked by a man. She was able to escape, but he followed her as she hurried back toward the refugee camp and she remains truamatized by the incident.

"This is not an isolated occurrence," Roda stressed. "Many women have found themselves in these sorts of situations many times. If food was available at home, women would not need all these risks."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

The post Cape Cod Bay in the Crosshairs — Holtec’s Reactor Waste Water Threat appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John Laforge.

Although US intelligence (throughout the 1950s) provided the Eisenhower administration with a thorough history delineating the dangers of instability looming throughout the island, commanded by then military despot and “strong-man” Fulgencio Batista (who seized his return to power in an army-coup in 1952), the US foolishly continued to provide economic, logistical and materiel support to the unpopular and graft-driven dictatorship.^vii US intelligence understood the potential danger posed by “[this] young reformist leader”^viii Fidel Castro and his band of revolutionaries. Castro and the 26th of July movement were a defiant response to what they considered a foreign controlled reactionary government.^ix This response stood as a direct threat to the natural order of things, i.e., the US’s historic prohibition (beyond legalistic euphemisms and platitudes)^x of any genuine vestige of national sovereignty and self-determination by the Cuban people – which undergirded a belief that, like most Latin American states, the Cuban people were innately “child-like,” incapable of true self-governance.^xi Beyond that, after the ousting of Batista, and “flush with victory,” a young Fidel Castro, on January 2, 1959 (in Santiago de Cuba), assertively threw down the gauntlet, “this time, fortunately for Cuba, the revolution will not be thwarted. It won’t be as in 1895, when the Americans came in at the last hour ‘and made themselves masters of the country.’”^xii Hence, as Jeffery J. Safford makes evident, this existential risk, in the minds of US policymakers, would have to be dealt with, embraced, evaluated, and analyzed (at least initially)^xiii in order to maintain the desired outcome – i.e., evading Communist influence and maintaining economic “stability” through the protection of US interests on the island of Cuba no matter the cost.

In March of 1960, while naively underestimating Castro’s success and support on the island, “the Eisenhower administration secretly made a formal decision to re-conquer Cuba … with a proviso: it had to be done in such a way that the US hand would not be evident.”^xiv Ultimately, US policymakers wanted to avoid a broader “backlash of instability” throughout the hemisphere by overtly invading the small island nation. That said, Castro and his revolutionaries understood the stark realities and nefarious possibilities cast over them, given the US’s history of flagrant regime change throughout the region. Castro’s accusations as presented at the United Nations, on 26 September 1960, which declared that US leaders were (intending if not) preparing to invade Cuba, were dismissed by the New York Times as “shrill with … anti-American propaganda.”^xv Furthermore, Castro was ridiculed, by US representative James J. Wadsworth, as having “Alice in Wonderland fantasies”^xvi of an invasion. But Castro’s committed revolutionary coterie knew better, “In Guatemala in 1954 [Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara witnessed] the first U.S. Cold War intervention [in the region] as U.S.-trained and backed counter-revolutionary forces overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz…”^xvii In fact, similarly, the imminent Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) orchestrated assault, known as the Bay of Pigs (BOPs) invasion, under the Kennedy administration in April 1961, was heavily reliant upon anti-revolutionary factions, the Cuban people, and the military, rising up to join the invaders^xviii – which as history proves, and journalist/author David Talbot underscores, did not come to pass:

To avoid Arbenz’s fate, Castro and Guevara would do everything he had not: put the hard-cored thugs of the old regime up against a wall, run the CIA’s agents out of the country, purge the armed forces, and mobilize the Cuban people … Fidel and Che became an audacious threat to the American empire. They represented the most dangerous revolutionary idea of all – the one that refused to be crushed.^xix

This became an epic ideological battle in the myopic mind of US officials: the possible proliferation of an assortment of “despotic” Communist controlled fiefdoms vs. the-free-world! Indeed, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., special aide and historian to President John F. Kennedy in 1961-63, ominously warned the Executive, that “the spread of the Castro idea of taking matters into one’s own hands,”^xx had great appeal in Cuba (and throughout Latin America), i.e., everywhere that, “distribution of land and other forms of national wealth greatly favor[ed] the propertied classes … [thus] the poor and underprivileged, stimulated by the example of the Cuban revolution, [were] now demanding opportunities for a decent living.”^xxi This was the urgent and fundamental threat (or challenge) Fidel Castro and his movement posed to US hemispheric rule.

US media focused heavily on the plight of the “majority middleclass” Cuban exiles, that chose to leave the island as a result of the revolution’s redistributive polices.^xxii Cubans, particularly the initial waves, were dispossessed of substantial wealth and position and often arrived Stateside in chiefly worse conditions.^xxiii But the essential question as to, “why the [majority of] Cuban people [stood] by the Castro ‘dictatorship’?,”^xxiv as Michael Parenti contends, was ignored by public officials and the press alike:

Not a word appeared in the U.S. press about the advances made by ordinary Cubans under the Revolution, the millions who for the first time had access to education, literacy, medical care, decent housing [and] jobs … offering a better life than the free-market misery endured under the U.S.-Batista ancient régime.^xxv

Castro’s revolutionary ideals based on José Martí’s patriotic theme of national sovereignty and self-determination, effectively armed the Cuban people through a stratagem of socialist ideology and wealth redistribution meshed in a formula of land reform and social services (i.e., education, healthcare, jobs and housing) which included the nationalization of foreign owned businesses; as such, US policymakers believed, “His continued presence within the hemispheric community as a dangerously effective exponent of ‘Communism’ and Anti-Americanism constitutes a real menace capable of eventually overthrowing the elected governments in any one or more ‘weak’ Latin American republics.”^xxvi Fidel Castro was thus wantonly placed within the crosshairs of US covert-action.

American officials assumed that the elimination of Castro was central to the suppression of his socialist principles, as Alan McPherson demonstrates, “In fall 1961, after the [BOPs] disaster, [JFK] gave the order to resume covert plans to get rid of Castro, if not explicitly to assassinate him.”^xxvii Earlier in 1960, then CIA director, Allen Dulles’ hardline that Castro was a devoted Communist and threat to US security “mirrored [those] of the business world such as, William Pawley, the globetrotting millionaire entrepreneur whose major investments in Cuban sugar plantations and Havana’s municipal transportation system were wiped out by Castro’s revolution.”^xxviii Thus, US officials, the Security State and US business-interests were unified, “After Fidel rode into Havana on a tank in January 1959, Pawley [a capitalist scion] who was gripped by what Eisenhower called a ‘pathological hatred for Castro,’ even volunteered to pay for his assassination.”^xxix Countless attempts followed, thus, killing Castro became vital to the idea of US hemispheric “stability,” i.e., capitalist economic and ideological control; and as such, Intelligence Services believed, “[The] political vulnerability of the regime lies in the person of Castro himself…”^xxx Hence, the purging of Fidel Castro and the cessation of his ideas, through the punishment of the Cuban people, became not only the strategy of choice for the US, but its incessant authoritative doctrine. Accordingly, as longtime US diplomat to Cuba, Wayne Smith verifies, the US’s two overarching obsessive qualms which it believed required the eradication of Fidel Castro were: the long-term influence of his revolutionary socialist ideals in Latin America and beyond; and, the possible establishment of a successful Communist state on the island which would diminish US security, stature, image, influence and prestige in the hemisphere; and, in the eyes of the world.^xxxi

Through 1960-64, Castro had good reason to be on guard, “…the fact that the Kennedy administration was acutely embarrassed by the unmitigated defeat [at the BOPs] -indeed because of it- a campaign of smaller-scale attacks upon Cuba was initiated almost immediately.”^xxxii Then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy stated unequivocally, as Schlesinger reveals, that his goal, “was to bring the terrors of the Earth to Cuba.”^xxxiii RFK went on to emphasize the point that the eradication of the Castro “regime” was the US’s central policy concern, “He informed the CIA that the Cuban problem carries, ‘…top priority in the United States Government -all else is secondary- no time, no effort, or manpower is to be spared.’”^xxxiv Beyond the multifaceted covert actions directed at Cuba under Operation Mongoose, RFK and the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, aided by the CIA et al., implemented a long-term multi-pronged plan of punishment, focused on Cuba through Latin America, which included disinformation campaigns, subversion and sabotage (they called hemispheric-defense-policies) that comprised a Military Assistance Program (MAP), which included economic support, subversive tactical training and materiel, devised to terminate “the threat” (i.e., Castro and his ideas) by establishing an Inter-American-Security-Force (of obedient states) under US control.^xxxv

With Cuba now in the crosshairs, in the early 1960s, “the CIA … played savior to the [anti-Castro] émigrés, building a massive training station in Miami, known as JMWave, that became the agency’s second largest after Langley, Virginia. In fact, it coordinated the training of what became known as the disastrous landing … in 1961.”^xxxvi Conversely, historian Daniel A. Sjursen focuses more on JFK (than the CIA) as the culprit behind the heightened tensions amongst the three principal players. By 1962, with Cuba in the middle, both superpowers (the US and the USSR) stood at a standstill amid the very real possibility of a global conflagration which, Sjursen states, was primarily due to US bravado on behalf of a “military obsessed” young President, “In preparing for a May 1961 summit meeting with Khrushchev [Kennedy stated] ‘I’ll have to show him that we can be as though as he is….’”^xxxvii Sjursen argues, “This flawed and simplistic thinking grounded just about every Kennedy decision in world affairs from 1961 to 1963 … and would eventually bring the world to the brink of destruction with the Cuban Missile Crisis; and, suck the US military into a disastrous unwinnable war in Vietnam.”^xxxviii And yet, as Smith contends, Kennedy was certainly not without bravado, but ultimately, did make attempts to “defuse” the situation. Kennedy, Smith discloses, ruffled-feathers within the Security State by, 1) his desire to end the Cold War, 2) his starting of a rapprochement with Castro (who was desirous of such — even if indirectly) and, 3) his goal to pull-out of Vietnam.^xxxix In fact, with the Kennedy-Khrushchev negotiations finalized by JFK’s promise not to invade Cuba if Soviet warheads were removed from the island – Khrushchev acquiesced, to Castro’s dismay, but tensions did diminish.^xl

Be that as it may, Philip Brenner maintains, the crisis did not go-away on 28 October 1962 for either the US or the USSR. The Kennedy-Khrushchev arrangements had to be implemented. On 20 November, the US Strategic Air Command was still on high alert: full readiness for war – with the naval quarantine (i.e., blockade) firmly in place.^xli As a result, Castro stayed open to negotiations with the US, but at the same time purposefully cautious. “At this point Castro, like Kennedy and Khrushchev, was circumventing his own more bellicose government in order to dialog with the enemy. Castro, too, was struggling, [but willing,] to transcend his Cold War ideology for the sake of peace. Like Kennedy and Khrushchev both, [he knew,] he had to walk softly.”^xlii Nevertheless, Castro stressed the fact that the Soviet Union had no right to negotiate with the US per inspections or the return of the bombers, “Instead, he announced, Cuba would be willing to comply based on [specific] demands: that the United States end the economic embargo; stop subversive activities … cease violations of Cuban airspace; and, return Guantanamo Naval Base.”^xliii Of course, the United States security apparatus was arrogantly steadfast in its refusal to agree or even negotiate the matter.^xliv

In spite of that, a reproachment (devised by Kennedy diplomat, William Attwood, and, Castro representative to the UN Carlos Lechuga) was surreptitiously endeavored through a liaison, journalist Jean Daniel of the New Republic, who stated that, Kennedy, retrospectively, criticized the pro-Batista policies of the fifties for “economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation” of the island and added that, “we shall have to pay for those sins….”^xlv Which may be considered one of the most brazenly honest statements, regarding the island, on behalf of an American President, in the long and complex history of US/Cuban relations. Daniel then wrote, “I could see plainly that John Kennedy had doubts [about the government’s policies toward Cuba] and was seeking a way out.”^xlvi In spite of JFK’s pugnacious rhetoric directed at Cuba, during his 1960 Presidential campaign, Castro remained open and accommodating, he understood the forces arrayed upon the President, in fact, he saw Kennedy’s position as an unenviable one:

I don’t think a President of the United States is ever really free … and I also believe he now understands the extent to which he has been misled.^xlvii …I know that for Khrushchev, Kennedy is a man you can talk with….^xlviii

While in the middle of (an Attwood arranged and Kennedy sanctioned) clandestine meeting with Castro, Daniel reported, that (at 2pm Cuban-time) the news arrived that JFK was dead (shot in Dallas, Texas, on that very same day, 22 November 1963, at 12:30pm), “Castro stood-up , looked at me [dismayed], and said ‘Everything is going to change,…’”^xlix and he was spot-on. Consequently, with (newly sworn-in) President Lyndon Baines Johnson mindful of the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was “proclaimed” a Castro devotee, accommodations with the Cuban government would be much more difficult. As such, the Attwood-Lechuga connection was terminated.^l Julian Borger, journalist for the Guardian, maintains that “Castro saw Kennedy’s killing as a setback, [he] tried to restart a dialogue with the next administration, but LBJ was … too concerned [with] appearing soft on communism,”^li meaning opinion polls, and their consequences, trumped keeping channels of communication open with the Cuban government. Which obliquely implies the notion that relations with Cuba might have been different if JFK had not been murdered.

With the Johnson administration bogged down in an “unwinnable war” in Southeast Asia and Civil Rights battles occurring on the streets of the US, Cuba and its revolution began to fall off the radar. By 1964, the Johnson administration, concerned with public opinion, as mentioned, took swift and immediate action to stop the deliberate terror perpetrated on the Cuban people. LBJ, in April of that year, called for a cessation of sabotage attacks. Johnson openly admitted, “we had been operating a damned Murder, Inc., in the Caribbean.’”^lii Nonetheless, the national security apparatus (i.e., the CIA, the Joint-Chiefs and military intelligence) along with US policymakers (and US based exile groups), remained obstinate, steadfast and consistent in their goal – to punish (if not kill) Fidel Castro and his revolution, by maintaining a punitive program of economic strangulation with the hopes that Castro would be, not only isolated on the world stage, but condemned by his own people who would rise up and eradicate the man and his socialist regime – which did not occur. Of course, the termination of hostilities directive ordered by Johnson did not include economic enmity – which persisted throughout the 1960s and beyond. In fact, a CIA field-agent appointed to anti-Castro operations detailed the agency’s sadistic objectives as expressed through author John Marks, by explaining:

Agency officials reasoned, … that it would be easier to overthrow Castro if Cubans could be made unhappy with their standard of living. ‘We wanted to keep bread out of the stores so people were hungry … We wanted to keep rationing in effect….’”^liii

The purpose of the economic blockade remained fixed from the early 60s onward: to contain, defame, discredit and destroy Castro and his experimentation with, what the US considered, subversive Communist ideals.

Finally, the US’s belligerent, if not insidious, hardline-stance toward this small island nation reignited at the end of the 1960s, which included not only an economic strangle-hold, but full-blown underground sabotage operations. The 37th president of the United States, Richard M. “Nixon’s first acts in office in 1969 was to direct the CIA to intensify its covert [Hybrid War] operations against Cuba.”^liv Nixon and his then National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, still believed, callously, that military aggression, violence, brutality and intimidation (coalesced by vicious economic sanctions) were the answers to America’s woes abroad. US policy toward Cuba for more than sixty-years is reminiscent of a famous quote often attributed to Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result.” Hence, Castro’s Cuba (not only America’s nemesis, but also the model of an uncompromising US global order) was the consequence of an even longer and persistent imperial US foreign policy: If the United States had not impeded Cuba’s push for national sovereignty and self-determination in the initial part of the 20th century; if it had not sustained a sequence of tyrannical despots on the island; and, if it had not been complicit in the termination and manipulation of the 1952 election, an ineradicable character such as the young reformist, and socialist, Fidel Castro may never have materialized.^lv Ultimately, the headstrong US stratagem of assassination and suffocation of Castro and his socialist revolution failed, not only by bolstering his image on the island, but abroad as well. Ironically, the US helped to create its own oppositional exemplar of resistance, in the image of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the Cuban people, i.e., the revolution – two men and a small island nation that stood up defiantly to the US led global-capitalist-order and would not relent. The US feared the Revolution of 1959’s challenge to class-power, colonialization; and, its popularity with the multitudes – thus, it had to be forcefully restricted through malicious policies of trade-embargoes, threats of violence and ideological-isolation. In fact, the Cuban rebellion courageously and tenaciously stood up to, and resisted, specific contrivances (or designs) by which the US had customarily, boastfully and self-admiringly delineated its dominant status through the forceful protection of its exploitative-business-practices (aka, the “Yankee boot”) on the backs of the Cuban people, for which, Fidel Castro and his bottom-up-populist-crusade were held ominously, insidiously and interminably responsible….

Image credit: Left Voice

ENDNOTES

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stephen Joseph Scott.

NewsGuard, a site linked to the CIA, NATO and the White House.

Let’s start by analyzing who is behind NewsGuard, a site that claims to analyse and rate news sites according to nine criteria to determine whether or not they are reliable.

As with the French Decodex, there is a good old system of green or red dots, plus an orange one for satirical sites and a grey one for simple platforms that let anyone publish on them. One might think that such ratings are harmless, but this is not the case. For as we discover on their website, the aim of NewsGuard is to “give platforms and moderation teams the data and information to protect their users from online risks, and to control the spread of misinformation”.

Clearly, NewsGuard provides companies like Google, Facebook or Twitter with data to justify their censorship of bad media that misinform (or in fact that do not follow the Washington narrative, as we will see right away).

Indeed, when we look at the profile of the NewsGuard team, and especially of its advisory board, we immediately understand that there is a problem, a big problem even, in terms of impartiality and neutrality. Indeed, the NewsGuard advisory board includes :

– Don Baer, former White House communications director during the Clinton administration;

– Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education under the Obama administration;

– Retired General Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA, and former director of the National Security Agency (NSA);

– Elise Jordan, former pen of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice;

– Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Secretary General of NATO;

– Tom Ridge, former first Secretary of State for Homeland Security in the George W. Bush administration;

– Gianni Riotta, editorial writer for La Stampa (you know the Italian newspaper that used a photo of the massacre of civilians in Donetsk by the Ukrainian army to illustrate an article on the situation in Kiev);

– Richard Stengel, former Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs in the Obama administration;

– Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, whose presence on this strongly biased committee (to put it mildly) indicates that the famous encyclopaedia is not neutral.

Add to this the fact that the “analyst” writing to me, Edward O’Reilly, is a former member of the US Marine Corps, and that Newsguard regularly cites Bellingcat (whose links to the British Foreign Office’s secret programmes have been proven) as a reliable source, and it soon becomes clear that this site is just another showcase for the US intelligence services, led by the CIA, the White House and NATO, to impose the US narrative.

Why does this site decide to attack Donbass Insider only now (we have been in existence since 2018 I remind you)? Well, simply because with the brutal heating up of the conflict in Donbass, then the launch of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, and following the violent censorship of international Russian media such as Sputnik or RT, our little website has seen its audience multiplied extremely significantly. Enough to attract the attention of NewsGuard. Clearly, Donbass Insider has reached a large enough audience to begin to panic Washington, and the site must be quickly discredited or even censored, to prevent its information from totally destroying the narrative about the situation in Ukraine.

When NewsGuard contradicts itself from one question to the next

So let’s move on to the questions Edward O’Reilly sent me, and the answers I have to give. I am publishing them here in the order in which they were sent to me, as you can see from the full screenshot of his e-mail, available here.

1. Your site does not indicate who owns it, which does not meet our criterion of providing information about the owner of the site. Can you explain this choice? Also, are you the owner of Donbass-Insider.com? If so, why not say so on the site?

Because if your criteria are justifiable for a news site working in a democratic country where there is peace, when you are working in a civil war zone (because that’s what the Donbass war is which has been going on since 2014), where one of the parties (Ukraine) spends its time imposing sanctions against any person or media giving information other than the official narrative, and where children and journalists can have their personal data published on a site of Ukrainian neo-Nazis (you know the ones that are not that dangerous according to NewsGuard) like Mirotvorets, so that they become a target, your criteria becomes a source of risk.

We are not going to put our team members in danger just to please you and tick the right box in your list of bogus criteria. I remind you that in Ukraine journalists like Oles Bouzina and Anatoli Chary have received death threats, and that Bouzina was murdered outside his home shortly after his personal data was published on Mirotvorets. People have been murdered or abducted in the DPR and LPR (Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics) by Ukrainian secret services (the same services you cite as a source later on). Do you really believe that the lives of our team members are worth less than your rating criteria? If you come to tell me that you don’t know about the existence of Mirotvorets, then how can you judge the veracity of information about Ukraine and the ongoing conflict if you don’t even know this simple fact?

I know very well what is behind your question about domain name ownership. You’re looking for someone to put on the sanctions list so you can do what you did with other news sites that had their .com domain names taken away. Save yourself the trouble, we’ve already anticipated this, censoring Donbass Insider won’t get you anything. Even when hackers working for the West (and therefore for your bosses) attacked our site, taking it down, our content continued to be available.

2. Your site also does not indicate who is responsible for the content (such as an editor-in-chief or a director of publication, for example), which does not meet our criterion in this respect. Do you have a comment on this? Are you responsible for the content of Donbass-Insider.com?

Because there is no editor-in-chief on our site, nor a director of publication. Each contributor is free to write his or her own articles without review or censorship.

3. We could not find any corrections published on your site. Have you corrected any articles, and if so, could you send me a recent example of a correction on the site? If not, can you explain why no corrections have been published recently?

Why are there no corrections on our site? Well, because unlike other media, we check the information as much as possible before publishing it, instead of quickly coming up with racy headlines or unsubstantiated rumors to create a buzz. Our articles are factual, sourced, and substantiated, which avoids the humiliating exercise of retraction or correction.

4. After analysis, we believe that your site does not meet our criterion of clearly distinguishing between news and opinion. Indeed, we have noticed that many news articles contain opinions. This is the case for the articles below.

a. The noose is tightening around the Ukrainian neo-Nazis entrenched in Mariupol, and the Western media is wallowing in abjection

b. Despite Russophobia in Ukraine, Russia continues to welcome Ukrainians with open arms

c. Ukraine goes into hysterics after Russia signs a gas supply contract with Hungary

After analysis you think… Well, we’re well on our way with that.. No details as to why these articles are opinions. Because in fact, if you look at the articles concerned, everything is sourced and based on facts. There is only one where I give my opinion at the very end, and that is my right. A journalist has the right to give his opinion, to comment on a piece of information, or to analyse a situation. A journalist is not just a copyist barely able to adapt Reuters or AFP dispatches.

Moreover, your demand to make a clear distinction between information and opinion is something that you brandish only when it suits you, and you sit on it at other times (we’ll come back to that later). Our readers know the difference between information and opinion. It’s nice that you care about them, but they are not mentally retarded or five-year-olds. They are adults and capable of reading and understanding what they read. They don’t need you to explain it to them. This mania for infantilising people by putting coloured stickers on sites like the school teacher in class is frankly revolting.

No, what bothers you is that I call a spade a spade. Abjection is a perfectly deserved term for the Western media denounced in the first article. I call Ukrainian neo-Nazis neo-Nazis and not nationalists, or whatever other euphemism. And Russophobia in Ukraine is more than proven (if you don’t see it, I think you need to change jobs).

The following question is very long and I will answer each sub-question individually.

5. We also believe that your site does not meet our criteria of not publishing false content, collecting and presenting information responsibly and not publishing misleading headlines. Indeed, we found many articles containing false information in their titles and texts:

a. For example, a March 2022 article entitled “Russia gets hold of documents on US biological laboratories in Ukraine” states that “for Kirillov, the haste with which Ukraine launched the destruction of all strains of pathogens in these US biological laboratories could indicate that they were working on strengthening the pathogenic properties of microbes there, which is a violation of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. This would also explain why the US has set up these laboratories in Ukraine, instead of conducting such research on its own territory: to avoid being held accountable for what is happening there! And the ultimate proof that these US biological laboratories in Ukraine are hiding something was provided by Victoria Nuland, the US Secretary of State, herself during a Senate hearing!”

However, while the US has provided assistance to Ukrainian laboratories since 2005, and has contributed to the construction and modernisation of Ukrainian laboratories, the laboratories themselves are managed and mainly funded by the Ukrainian government. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) clarified the terms of this agreement in a May 2020 press release, in which it stated that ‘there are no foreign biological laboratories in Ukraine’.

Moreover, there is no evidence that these laboratories were working on strengthening the pathogenic properties of microbes. An April 2020 statement on the website of the US Embassy in Ukraine said that the joint projects in Ukrainian laboratories were aimed at “strengthening and securing pathogens and toxins of security concern in Ukrainian government facilities”.

Also, when Victoria Nuland referred to these laboratories, she was referring to Ukrainian “diagnostic and biodefense” laboratories, not to biological weapons facilities.

Can you explain why you chose to publish this article on your website?

Why did you publish it? Because what you claim as facts are not facts. Your sources are simple statements from the SBU and the US embassy. That is to say, the Ukrainian secret services whose use of torture in a systemic way since the Maïdan is proven, and who were caught with both hands in the pot of false information concerning MH17… And the other source is the American government, that is to say, a government that did not hesitate for a second to lie before the UN (!!!) to justify its illegal war against Iraq by brandishing stories of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Now that’s a reliable source…

For our part, we have published internal Ukrainian documents, not just statements, as evidence of US involvement in the work of the biological laboratories in Ukraine! Like these documents showing that in 2010, Viktor Yanukovych tried to regain control of these biological research laboratories, since contrary to what you claim, the management of what was happening in these laboratories was beyond the control of the Ukrainian authorities! And what was happening there was, I quote from an SBU report (since you seem to consider this source as reliable):

“… These actions of the US side are considered by national experts as the formation of their own database of pathogen strains that are stored at Ukrainian sites, their storage system, as well as the control and study by military doctors of the effectiveness of the use of particularly dangerous infection pathogens in specific regions of Ukraine to create or improve new types of selectively acting biological weapons (against a particular race, genotype, territory of birth or residence).”

More recent documents released by Russia show that these laboratories, based in Ukraine but funded and supervised by the US, were studying diseases that can be transmitted to humans by migratory birds or bats. And if these labs mentioned by Victoria Nuland were, as you claim, only “diagnostic and biodefense” labs, why worry that they might fall into Russian hands? If these labs were only doing what you say, then there is nothing dangerous there.

And just to rub salt in the wound of your arguments, the DailyMail (hardly a Kremlin-friendly media outlet) published an article stating, with sources (in this case, emails found in the famous laptop Joe Biden’s son left at the repair shop), that “Hunter Biden helped secure millions of dollars in funding for a US subcontractor in Ukraine specializing in researching deadly pathogens, according to laptop emails. Oops. I think you’re good to review the ratings of all the news sites that had reported on this, and swallow your certainties about what’s true or not.

b. In February 2022, Donbass Insider published a French translation of Vladimir Putin’s speech justifying his decision to recognize the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic. The speech was published in full, without comment or context in the news section of the site, and stated that “modern Ukraine was created entirely by Russia, or more precisely, by Bolshevik and communist Russia”. Putin also lamented that the communists had ‘given the republics the right to separate from the unified state without any conditions’ and added that ‘Ukraine has never had a stable tradition of a real state’.

Contrary to Putin’s claim that ‘the Bolsheviks invented Ukraine’ and that Ukraine ‘never had a stable tradition of a real state’, Ukraine fought for independence in 1918, a status that lasted only a few years. In 1921, the Russian Bolsheviks defeated the national government of Ukraine and established the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Ukraine spent the next 69 years as part of the Soviet Union.

As for the claim that a weakened Moscow “gave” Ukraine the right to become independent from the Soviet Union “without any conditions”, it was the Ukrainians who chose independence in a democratic referendum. In 1991, as the Soviet Union dissolved, 84% of eligible Ukrainian voters went to the polls and over 92% voted to leave the Soviet Union. Moscow even promised to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty on the condition that it gave up its nuclear weapons – a fact commemorated in 1994 in an agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum.

Can you explain why you chose to publish this speech on your website without commentary or context?

Why did you publish the translation of Vladimir Putin’s speech without commentary or context? Well, because it was to provide 100% pure information without any personal opinions, which should be fine with you since you criticized me in question 4 for mixing information and opinions. And when I provide an article that is pure information, in this case the complete translation into French of Vladimir Putin’s speech so that my readers can make up their own minds about the Russian President’s view of events by having the entire text in their own language, that doesn’t suit you either. You should know, guys, that either we are only allowed to provide pure and cold information, or we have to systematically make comments. But it can’t be both at the same time.

As for your arguments, Ukraine in its current borders is indeed a product of the USSR. The short-lived Ukrainian state that emerged after the 1917 revolution was not at all within the current borders of Ukraine, it was the USSR that gave it most of its territory. And three years of existence yes is not a “stable tradition of a real state”, don’t get me wrong.

Concerning the referendum held in Ukraine in 1991, this has nothing to do with the content of Vladimir Putin’s speech. He is talking about the Soviet constitution adopted in 1924, which allowed the republics the right to separate from the USSR unconditionally… You are mixing up everything.

Moreover, the nuclear weapons deployed in Ukraine did not belong to Ukraine, but to the USSR, as stated in the Lisbon Protocol, which predates the Budapest Memorandum (which was the result of Ukraine’s desire to monetise the application of what it had already signed in 1992). It was therefore normal for them to be sent back to Russia, which is the official successor state of the USSR. So this cannot be called a “condition”. Russia did not demand anything from independent Ukraine other than to return what belonged to it in order to comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

c. A June 2021 article entitled “Protassevich allegedly framed by his own side and handed over to Belarus to serve as a sacrificial victim” claims that the Belarusian authorities did not force the pilots of Ryanair flight 4978 to land in Minsk in order to detain Belarusian dissident journalist Roman Protasevich. The article says that “on May 23, 2021, at 12:25, while the Ryanair plane is still over the Volyn region of Ukraine, a first bomb threat e-mail arrives at Minsk airport” and that “after receiving the bomb threat e-mail, and despite its incongruities (such as the requests made) the airport authorities apply the international procedure foreseen in such cases and consider the threat to be real”.

In reality, the Ryanair plane was not diverted because of a bomb threat. Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary called the hijacking a “case of state-sponsored hijacking” and confirmed to Politico in May 2021 that the Belarusian target was Roman Protasevich.

Can you explain why you chose to publish this article on your website?

I chose to publish it because the facts stated in the article, such as proof that the Belarusian airport did receive bomb threat emails, and that the authorities did not know Protassevich was on board until his “friends” were screaming all over the internet that he was there, are worth more than the opinion of the Ryanair CEO!!! Are you serious when you say you assess whether my article is telling the truth or not, simply based on the opinion of the airline CEO? My article contains all the evidence to back up what I said, but for you O’Leary’s opinion is worth more than facts? Is that your criteria for evaluating the information published by the sites you analyse? Your evaluation “criteria” are truly appalling in their partiality.

More generally, would you comment on your editorial process?

Yes, we report facts and testimonies from the field, and our articles are sourced and substantiated. We consider facts to be more valuable than the opinion or unproven statement of some official or CEO approved by your site. We have done this since the beginning of Donbass Insider, and we will continue to do so.

Christelle Néant

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Donbass Insider.