The way the world is going, she and her children might be the precursor of the dwelling habits of the future generations, those who manage to survive the coming nuclear war between the rising bloc of rising nations and decaying bloc of decaying nations, the war between the BRICS and the Pricks.

The BRICS ─ Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and five new members — have no “biggest BRIC,” each Bric nation relishes its independence and the group is cemented by their distaste for the offensive Pricks. Fortunately, for the BRICS, their entourage contains China, the new superpower that encourages cooperation rather than domination and has initiated a “Belt and Road” that facilitates free trade throughout the world.

The Pricks — United States, Great Britain, and the European Union — have the United States as their power Prick, which is led by their president, the biggest Prick. In slavish obedience to genocide Israel, the U.S. identifies itself as the Super Prick. This bloc has recently featured severe discord, lack of cooperation, and inauguration of high tariffs that impede global trade. Domination is its focus. with cooperation a temporary means to enable domination.

For one simple reason, the Pricks are finding it difficult to control and use the BRICS for their personal gain ─ the BRICS have economic dominance.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
GDP PPP, Int$: 2025

Coming into 2025, the BRICS have a greater share of the economic pie, six times the population digesting the pie, and are growing in principal categories — GDP/PPP, population, and adherents at a faster rate.

The Pricks devalue the Brics by claiming they are a loose and uncoordinated confederation, unable to agree on vital issues. Brazil is accused of harassing former President Jair Messias Bolsonaro and may be subjected to sanctions; Russia is led by an irresponsible tyrant and is heavily sanctioned; India gets a pass despite the heavy-handed tactics toward its Muslim community; China is led by a despotic dictator, and South Africa is guilty of genocide toward its white population.

The Pricks pose themselves as a model of decency and decorum. They have ballot boxes and freedom of speech, which enables their citizens to elect the biggest pricks and then freely criticize their selections by vocal erections. In the U.S. the next presidential election process — fund raising, organization, public relations, the “eye on the prize”— starts shortly after a new president takes office. Winning candidates in elections expend more time and energy in gaining victory and preparing for their next victory than performing their duties during their term in office.

The economic, social, and political advancements of their principal superpowers, China for the BRICS and the United States for the Pricks, determine the success of the BRICS and the Pricks. A brief examination of each nation’s potential to rise in the firmament or descend into chaos tells the story.

The Trump administration shows the hidden failures of the United States pluralistic democracy. The past has no continuity; just the opposite, many of the legislations from previous administrations are discarded. and the country, rather than advancing to a progressed new, returns to a rejected old. One example from Understanding AI:

…. Sen. Hawley asked Donald Trump to cancel a federal loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express, an $11 billion transmission line that is supposed to carry electricity from Kansas wind farms to homes in Illinois and Indiana. The proposed line would pass through Hawley’s state of Missouri, annoying farmers whose land would be taken by eminent domain.

According to the New York Times, Hawley “explained his concerns to the president, who has repeatedly expressed his distaste for wind power, saying he would not permit any new wind projects during his administration.” Trump then called Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who agreed to cancel a federal loan guarantee for the project, throwing its viability into question.

Impulse overrides soul searching, allegiance to leader is more important than professional education and experience; rash and subjective action replaces careful thought. The America of 2025, with its decaying infrastructure, troubled inner cities, dependence on fossil fuels, continuous problems of crime, drug addiction, health care, and immigration, closely resembles the America of 2010. One big difference ─ adversity and polarization of the population has increased, Americans are at the breaking point with one another. The country, which is rich in resources, has extensive farmland, enjoys suitable and varied climates, and contains an educated and diligent population, is not well managed; it is mismanaged.

The Xi JInping administration shows the hidden success of China’s people’s democracy. The past has continuity; legislations and plans from previous administrations are massaged and enhanced, and the country, rather than remaining stagnant, advances to a new level. Soul searching from millions of cadres provides suggestions for millions of improvements. All leaders have professional education and experience; careful thought displaces rash and subjective action.

The China of 2025, with its continually increasing infrastructure of roads, bridges, tunnels, dams, superhighways, high speed trains, and airline routes that link every remote place in China with central cores, with modern building complexes that replace the shanty towns and provide agreeable living space for an aging population and marginalized rural farmers, with its expanded megacities that are considered technology and planning marvels, and with a unified and obedient population ─ no adversity or polarization here ─ has only a fleeting resemblance to the China of 2010.

Dubbed an engineering marvel, the highly anticipated Raffles City Chongqing project is nearly complete. CapitaLand Group

Sheltering their deficiencies, the Western democracies shift the critical analysis to public relations stunts that highlight the supposed and exaggerated deficiencies of the Chinese system. The Westerners make no effort to learn and understand the workings of China’s political, social, and economic systems. Fabrications are added to the limited “don’t care to know” and conveyed to the public as authorized knowledge. One example is the “debt trap” verbiage, applied to Chinese lending, which began during Sri Lanka’s first debt crisis and has stuck around as an effective means to vilify the PRC.

We have the falsehood. Washington Post (WAPO), “This China has a hand in Sri Lanka’s economic calamity,” analysis by Ishaan Tharoor, July 20, 2022:

One of the major players in Sri Lanka’s calamity is China. Beijing is Sri Lanka’s lone biggest creditor, accounting for some 10 percent of the country’s foreign debt. Between 2000 and 2020, it extended close to $12 billion in loans to the Sri Lankan government, largely for a slate of major infrastructure projects that turned into white elephants — including a costly port facility in the Rajapaksas’ hometown of Hambantota, which was effectively ceded to Chinese control half a decade ago after Sri Lankan authorities recognized they could no longer pay off the loans.

Examination of the Sri Lanka debt crisis exposes the mendacity and viciousness of the WAPO report. Almost every sentence is spurious; China does not engage in “debt trap diplomacy” and has been one lender who makes financial sacrifices that rescues nations from debilitating borrowing.

We have the truth. The Atlantic, “The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth,” by Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire, February 6, 2021, had already contradicted WAPO statements.

Steep payments on international sovereign bonds, which comprised nearly 40 percent of the country’s external debt, put Sirisena’s government in dire fiscal straits almost immediately. When Sirisena took office, Sri Lanka owed more to Japan, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank than to China. Of the $4.5 billion in debt service Sri Lanka would pay in 2017, only 5 percent was because of Hambantota. The Central Bank governors under both Rajapaksa and Sirisena do not agree on much, but they both told us that Hambantota, and Chinese finance in general, was not the source of the country’s financial distress.

There was also never a default. Colombo arranged a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and decided to raise much-needed dollars by leasing out the underperforming Hambantota Port to an experienced company—just as the Canadians had recommended. There was not an open tender, and the only two bids came from China Merchants and China Harbor. Sri Lanka chose China Merchants, making it the majority shareholder with a 99-year lease, and used the $1.12 billion cash infusion to bolster its foreign reserves, not to pay off China Eximbank. The China impressed on our minds is not the China that exists.

The United States moves on fumes, on the energies of its past without renewable energies for an improved future. China moves on constantly reinforced energy, all engines operating at top speed, each day becoming a new future. The Pricks know they will not be able to compete economically with the BRICS. They have a choice of consolidating and working together and maintaining reduced economies, cooperating with the Brics in mutual agreements, or, by the usual United States method, resolving the situation by military action.

The threat of military force alarms and subdues the BRICS. They may be compelled to yield much in order to save all. China, guided by its Mandate of Heaven, “a political and religious doctrine that justifies the rule of an emperor based on virtue and ability to govern,” and which it has extended to relations between all nations, might do what it did in the fifteenth century. At that time, China was, by far, the leading commercial power in the world, and huge Chinese fleets sailed the world for markets for its surplus products. After meeting the imperial powers of France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands and observing their nefarious methods in subduing the Africa and Indian peoples, stripping them of resources, and forcing upon them the products manufactured from the resources, China scuttled its fleet and went into solitary confinement.

The reason for Xi Jinping’s self-sufficiency drive is clear. Save the world from nuclear conflagration and let the rest of the world rot. Pricks always lose and always think they have won.

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

If there’s one thing the ‘impartial’, ‘independent’ ‘free press’ can’t stand, it’s someone – citizens, journalists, politicians, celebrities, anyone – protesting the West’s wars.

The one-size-fits-all smear deployed to define and dismiss the concerns of these troublemakers – people who often pay a high price for their dissent – is ‘narcissist’.

Consider the case of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which last week attempted to break the Israeli naval blockade to deliver baby formula and food to Gaza’s starving population. And that, by the way, is not hyperbole. In May, the World Health Organisation reported that ‘half a million people’ in Gaza were ‘in a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness and death’. The flotilla was led by the UK-flagged vessel Madleen, with renowned Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg onboard.

Perhaps shaken by his recent, uncharacteristic display of principled moral outrage, the eponymous host of Piers Morgan Uncensored, last week wrote on X:

‘Oh shut up, @GretaThunberg – you attention-seeking narcissist. What an insult to the actual hostages in Gaza who really WERE kidnapped. This stupid stunt is all about your ego, and will make zero difference to the plight of innocent Palestinians caught up in this dreadful war.’

In the Telegraph, Brendan O’Neill felt Morgan’s pain in a piece titled, ‘Greta Thunberg’s narcissism has escalated to terrifying levels.’

The ‘terrifying’ Thunberg, no less! O’Neill opined:

‘Of all the smug stunts of the faux-virtuous activist class, this is surely the most preposterous. The idea that 12 woke fainthearts from Europe might “liberate” Gaza would be funny if it were not so dangerous.’

That was not the intention at all, of course. The intention was to raise awareness of Israel’s genocide in Gaza – in that aim, the flotilla was a great success.

The Mirror noted that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs had branded the Madleen a ‘selfie yacht’. By eerie coincidence, much of the ‘mainstream’ media followed suit.

In the Daily Mail, Sam Greenhill’s headline read: ‘Israeli forces storm Greta’s “selfie yacht” and make her watch Hamas terror footage.’ (Greenhill, Daily Mail, 10 June 2025). Greenhill commented:

‘Critics suggested it had been a “gap-year protest”, and the Israeli government said Ms Thunberg had been “feeding her ego” rather than the people of Gaza.’

What could be more natural, more ‘mainstream’, than passing on, with approval, a slur supplied by a government committing genocide?

If ‘kidnapping’ won’t do for Piers Morgan, let’s try ‘hijacking’. Journalist Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo News commented:

‘Let’s be clear: Israel, an occupier, has no authority under international law to board or divert the Madleen.

‘This is a hijacking, plain and simple. A hijacking of a UK-registered ship, with multiple *European* citizens on board.’

Hasan invited readers to imagine the Western response if Iran had rammed and hijacked a boat full of European citizens in international waters in the same way.

Morgan’s fiercely expressed idea that Thunberg was merely engaged in an attention-seeking ‘stunt’ reverses the truth. Narcissists do not seek attention by taking on a genocidal army that has devastated both Gaza and previous vessels attempting the same journey. On X, Alonso Gurmendi of the London School of Economics noted that there had been five similar flotillas prior to the Madleen’s voyage. Israel used force against four of them:

‘2010: 10 killed

‘2011: no incidents

‘2015: crew detained for 6 days

‘2018: crew tasered

‘2025: drones shot at the ship’

In the 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara, 10 activists were killed by Israeli forces with dozens wounded. Last month, the Conscience, a vessel carrying human rights activists and humanitarian aid for Gaza, organised by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, was attacked by Israeli drones in international waters off the coast of Malta:

‘The Freedom Flotilla Coalition reported that the ship was struck twice by drones at around 00:23 (CEST), with both attacks targeting the vessel’s generators at the front of the ship. The strikes caused a fire and a breach in the hull, placing the vessel at imminent risk of sinking.’

Given the genocidal actions of the Israeli army over the last 20 months – including ‘at least 220 journalists killed’ since 7 October 2023, as Channel 4’s Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson noted last week on X – no-one on the Madleen had any compelling reason to feel safe. Far from being an attention-seeking ‘stunt’, Thunberg and her companions showed real courage.

In the Telegraph, former Guardian journalist Suzanne Moore pumped bile:

‘What matters above all are the images of the selfie-yacht and the attention they can garner. Being boarded and detained (or, as she puts it, “kidnapped”) by Israeli forces gave her exactly what she had hoped for to kick against…’

Thunberg’s ‘stunt’, it seems, had been ‘self-aggrandising and vacuous’. In a comment that typifies the tendency of hard-right merchants of smear to overreach, Moore added:

‘Watching footage of this climate activist and her mates all chucking their expensive phones into the sea as they were about to be taken by the Israelis showed that, of course, when the chips were down, environmental concerns went out of the window.’

And, as ever, the young and compassionate – people who aren’t just banking a salary, people who care – are just naïve fools blundering in the dark:

‘The omnicause burns itself out in the end because it has no actual strategy. It simply signifies tribal loyalty. It gobbles everything up and spits out its participants, who simply move on to the next “wrong” thing.’

But it is right to protest Israel’s genocide, which is wrong, just as the insane indifference to the destabilisation of the climate is wrong. In 42 seconds, in this video on X, Thunberg explains why it is absolutely coherent to protest both of these crimes.

When working for the Guardian, Moore distinguished herself by tweeting of Julian Assange in 2012:

‘He really is the most massive turd.’

Moore then commented to a colleague:

‘I never met him. Did you?’

Moore later wrote in the New Statesman:

‘O frabjous day! We are all bored out of our minds with Brexit when a demented looking gnome is pulled out of the Ecuadorian embassy by the secret police of the deep state. Or “the met” as normal people call them.’

Jake Wallis Simons, who writes regularly for the Jewish Chronicle (JC), which he edited from December 2021 until January 2025, has been busy smearing Thunberg in the Daily Mail and Telegraph with damning articles titled:

‘Greta Thunberg is deeply immature, lacks all shame … and there is a dark truth about her crusade to Gaza’ (Daily Mail, 7 June 2025)

‘It’s staggeringly offensive of Thunberg to claim she’s been “kidnapped” when we know what real kidnap looks like’ (Daily Mail, 10 June 2025)

‘Greta’s blind eye to murder’ (The Telegraph, 10 June 2025)

In September 2024, when Wallis Simons was editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, no dissident, wrote an open letter to him on social media, under the comment:

‘I have today told the editor of the Jewish Chronicle that I can no longer continue my relationship with the paper.’

Freedland’s reasoning:

‘Too often, the JC reads like a partisan, ideological instrument, its judgements political rather than journalistic.’

Jonathan Cook commented:

‘One such example was a tweet (since deleted) from Wallis Simons last December, when Israel had already killed thousands of Palestinian men, women and children. Over a video of a huge explosion killing untold numbers of Palestinians in Gaza City, the JC’s editor wrote: “Onwards to victory.”’

It seems Wallis Simons has Thunberg all worked out:

‘Let’s stop beating around the selfie yacht. It was never truly about the climate, any more than it was truly about the conflict in the Middle East. Closing her eyes to the October 7 footage crystallised the sustaining principle of Greta Thunberg: she is absorbed in a world of her own. It is a world that began with hating her teachers; went on to hating the establishment; and has ended with hating the Jews and the West, powered by endless selfies.’

Without a trace of evidence, then, Thunberg is reflexively smeared as an anti-semite. Cook noted the sudden obsession with selfies:

‘Strangely, journalists who had barely acknowledged the tsunami of selfies taken by Israeli soldiers glorifying their war crimes on social media were keenly attuned to a supposed narcissistic, selfie culture rampant among human-rights activists.’

Ricky Hale said it best on X:

‘Amazing that we live in a time when starving people are being lured into the open to be gunned down by Israel and the media thinks the villain of the story is a tiny autistic woman who tried to feed them.’

Of Tans and Byronic Haircuts

Thus, if it was not already the case, Thunberg has joined the long list of dissidents dismissed as self-aggrandising ‘narcissists’.

In 2013, Bloomberg Businessweek featured an article entitled, ‘The Unbearable Narcissism of Edward Snowden.’

In 2016, Labour MP Chris Evans noted Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘self-indulgence, egotism, arrogance and narcissism’.

Janice Turner commented on Corbyn in The Times:

‘He’s beloved of narcissists and conspiracists, such as Julian Assange, George Galloway, John Pilger and Ken Livingstone …’

Narcissists all! In the Observer, Charles Jennings described how Pilger’s narcissism was obvious from ‘his tan, his Byronic haircut, his trudging priestly delivery and his evident self-love’. (Jennings, The Observer, 24 January 1999) We knew Pilger well; he was one of the most generous, compassionate people we have met. What was so striking, even startling, about him was his willingness to risk his access to ‘mainstream’ media by exposing their lethal propaganda – he savaged the hands that fed him. That is forbidden, of course, and it cost him his columns in the Guardian and the New Statesman. None of his critics would be willing to pay a fraction of that price.

In 2020, Andrew Rawnsley wrote in the Observer of the conspicuously humble and selfless Jeremy Corbyn:

‘Many things have been said about his character over the years, but one thing has not been said enough: he is a narcissist.’

Julian Assange, of course, has been endlessly labelled the same way. A typical headline from the Daily Mail in 2011 read:

‘The WikiFreak: In a new book one author reveals how she got to know Julian Assange and found him a predatory, narcissistic fantasist’

In the Sunday Times, Katie Glass described Russell Brand as ‘an exhibitionistic narcissist obsessed with celebrity’. (Katie Glass, ‘The ultimate Marmite Brand,’ Sunday Times, 22 September 2013)

And according to the Guardian, the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was a peddler of ‘strutting and narcissistic populism’.

Readers might wonder where that leaves us at Media Lens. Alas, in his Guardian column, then Associate Editor Michael White observed that Media Lens ‘betrays the narcissism of small difference that is so destructive on the left’.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

If there’s one thing the ‘impartial’, ‘independent’ ‘free press’ can’t stand, it’s someone – citizens, journalists, politicians, celebrities, anyone – protesting the West’s wars.

The one-size-fits-all smear deployed to define and dismiss the concerns of these troublemakers – people who often pay a high price for their dissent – is ‘narcissist’.

Consider the case of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which last week attempted to break the Israeli naval blockade to deliver baby formula and food to Gaza’s starving population. And that, by the way, is not hyperbole. In May, the World Health Organisation reported that ‘half a million people’ in Gaza were ‘in a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness and death’. The flotilla was led by the UK-flagged vessel Madleen, with renowned Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg onboard.

Perhaps shaken by his recent, uncharacteristic display of principled moral outrage, the eponymous host of Piers Morgan Uncensored, last week wrote on X:

‘Oh shut up, @GretaThunberg – you attention-seeking narcissist. What an insult to the actual hostages in Gaza who really WERE kidnapped. This stupid stunt is all about your ego, and will make zero difference to the plight of innocent Palestinians caught up in this dreadful war.’

In the Telegraph, Brendan O’Neill felt Morgan’s pain in a piece titled, ‘Greta Thunberg’s narcissism has escalated to terrifying levels.’

The ‘terrifying’ Thunberg, no less! O’Neill opined:

‘Of all the smug stunts of the faux-virtuous activist class, this is surely the most preposterous. The idea that 12 woke fainthearts from Europe might “liberate” Gaza would be funny if it were not so dangerous.’

That was not the intention at all, of course. The intention was to raise awareness of Israel’s genocide in Gaza – in that aim, the flotilla was a great success.

The Mirror noted that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs had branded the Madleen a ‘selfie yacht’. By eerie coincidence, much of the ‘mainstream’ media followed suit.

In the Daily Mail, Sam Greenhill’s headline read: ‘Israeli forces storm Greta’s “selfie yacht” and make her watch Hamas terror footage.’ (Greenhill, Daily Mail, 10 June 2025). Greenhill commented:

‘Critics suggested it had been a “gap-year protest”, and the Israeli government said Ms Thunberg had been “feeding her ego” rather than the people of Gaza.’

What could be more natural, more ‘mainstream’, than passing on, with approval, a slur supplied by a government committing genocide?

If ‘kidnapping’ won’t do for Piers Morgan, let’s try ‘hijacking’. Journalist Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo News commented:

‘Let’s be clear: Israel, an occupier, has no authority under international law to board or divert the Madleen.

‘This is a hijacking, plain and simple. A hijacking of a UK-registered ship, with multiple *European* citizens on board.’

Hasan invited readers to imagine the Western response if Iran had rammed and hijacked a boat full of European citizens in international waters in the same way.

Morgan’s fiercely expressed idea that Thunberg was merely engaged in an attention-seeking ‘stunt’ reverses the truth. Narcissists do not seek attention by taking on a genocidal army that has devastated both Gaza and previous vessels attempting the same journey. On X, Alonso Gurmendi of the London School of Economics noted that there had been five similar flotillas prior to the Madleen’s voyage. Israel used force against four of them:

‘2010: 10 killed

‘2011: no incidents

‘2015: crew detained for 6 days

‘2018: crew tasered

‘2025: drones shot at the ship’

In the 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara, 10 activists were killed by Israeli forces with dozens wounded. Last month, the Conscience, a vessel carrying human rights activists and humanitarian aid for Gaza, organised by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, was attacked by Israeli drones in international waters off the coast of Malta:

‘The Freedom Flotilla Coalition reported that the ship was struck twice by drones at around 00:23 (CEST), with both attacks targeting the vessel’s generators at the front of the ship. The strikes caused a fire and a breach in the hull, placing the vessel at imminent risk of sinking.’

Given the genocidal actions of the Israeli army over the last 20 months – including ‘at least 220 journalists killed’ since 7 October 2023, as Channel 4’s Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson noted last week on X – no-one on the Madleen had any compelling reason to feel safe. Far from being an attention-seeking ‘stunt’, Thunberg and her companions showed real courage.

In the Telegraph, former Guardian journalist Suzanne Moore pumped bile:

‘What matters above all are the images of the selfie-yacht and the attention they can garner. Being boarded and detained (or, as she puts it, “kidnapped”) by Israeli forces gave her exactly what she had hoped for to kick against…’

Thunberg’s ‘stunt’, it seems, had been ‘self-aggrandising and vacuous’. In a comment that typifies the tendency of hard-right merchants of smear to overreach, Moore added:

‘Watching footage of this climate activist and her mates all chucking their expensive phones into the sea as they were about to be taken by the Israelis showed that, of course, when the chips were down, environmental concerns went out of the window.’

And, as ever, the young and compassionate – people who aren’t just banking a salary, people who care – are just naïve fools blundering in the dark:

‘The omnicause burns itself out in the end because it has no actual strategy. It simply signifies tribal loyalty. It gobbles everything up and spits out its participants, who simply move on to the next “wrong” thing.’

But it is right to protest Israel’s genocide, which is wrong, just as the insane indifference to the destabilisation of the climate is wrong. In 42 seconds, in this video on X, Thunberg explains why it is absolutely coherent to protest both of these crimes.

When working for the Guardian, Moore distinguished herself by tweeting of Julian Assange in 2012:

‘He really is the most massive turd.’

Moore then commented to a colleague:

‘I never met him. Did you?’

Moore later wrote in the New Statesman:

‘O frabjous day! We are all bored out of our minds with Brexit when a demented looking gnome is pulled out of the Ecuadorian embassy by the secret police of the deep state. Or “the met” as normal people call them.’

Jake Wallis Simons, who writes regularly for the Jewish Chronicle (JC), which he edited from December 2021 until January 2025, has been busy smearing Thunberg in the Daily Mail and Telegraph with damning articles titled:

‘Greta Thunberg is deeply immature, lacks all shame … and there is a dark truth about her crusade to Gaza’ (Daily Mail, 7 June 2025)

‘It’s staggeringly offensive of Thunberg to claim she’s been “kidnapped” when we know what real kidnap looks like’ (Daily Mail, 10 June 2025)

‘Greta’s blind eye to murder’ (The Telegraph, 10 June 2025)

In September 2024, when Wallis Simons was editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, no dissident, wrote an open letter to him on social media, under the comment:

‘I have today told the editor of the Jewish Chronicle that I can no longer continue my relationship with the paper.’

Freedland’s reasoning:

‘Too often, the JC reads like a partisan, ideological instrument, its judgements political rather than journalistic.’

Jonathan Cook commented:

‘One such example was a tweet (since deleted) from Wallis Simons last December, when Israel had already killed thousands of Palestinian men, women and children. Over a video of a huge explosion killing untold numbers of Palestinians in Gaza City, the JC’s editor wrote: “Onwards to victory.”’

It seems Wallis Simons has Thunberg all worked out:

‘Let’s stop beating around the selfie yacht. It was never truly about the climate, any more than it was truly about the conflict in the Middle East. Closing her eyes to the October 7 footage crystallised the sustaining principle of Greta Thunberg: she is absorbed in a world of her own. It is a world that began with hating her teachers; went on to hating the establishment; and has ended with hating the Jews and the West, powered by endless selfies.’

Without a trace of evidence, then, Thunberg is reflexively smeared as an anti-semite. Cook noted the sudden obsession with selfies:

‘Strangely, journalists who had barely acknowledged the tsunami of selfies taken by Israeli soldiers glorifying their war crimes on social media were keenly attuned to a supposed narcissistic, selfie culture rampant among human-rights activists.’

Ricky Hale said it best on X:

‘Amazing that we live in a time when starving people are being lured into the open to be gunned down by Israel and the media thinks the villain of the story is a tiny autistic woman who tried to feed them.’

Of Tans and Byronic Haircuts

Thus, if it was not already the case, Thunberg has joined the long list of dissidents dismissed as self-aggrandising ‘narcissists’.

In 2013, Bloomberg Businessweek featured an article entitled, ‘The Unbearable Narcissism of Edward Snowden.’

In 2016, Labour MP Chris Evans noted Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘self-indulgence, egotism, arrogance and narcissism’.

Janice Turner commented on Corbyn in The Times:

‘He’s beloved of narcissists and conspiracists, such as Julian Assange, George Galloway, John Pilger and Ken Livingstone …’

Narcissists all! In the Observer, Charles Jennings described how Pilger’s narcissism was obvious from ‘his tan, his Byronic haircut, his trudging priestly delivery and his evident self-love’. (Jennings, The Observer, 24 January 1999) We knew Pilger well; he was one of the most generous, compassionate people we have met. What was so striking, even startling, about him was his willingness to risk his access to ‘mainstream’ media by exposing their lethal propaganda – he savaged the hands that fed him. That is forbidden, of course, and it cost him his columns in the Guardian and the New Statesman. None of his critics would be willing to pay a fraction of that price.

In 2020, Andrew Rawnsley wrote in the Observer of the conspicuously humble and selfless Jeremy Corbyn:

‘Many things have been said about his character over the years, but one thing has not been said enough: he is a narcissist.’

Julian Assange, of course, has been endlessly labelled the same way. A typical headline from the Daily Mail in 2011 read:

‘The WikiFreak: In a new book one author reveals how she got to know Julian Assange and found him a predatory, narcissistic fantasist’

In the Sunday Times, Katie Glass described Russell Brand as ‘an exhibitionistic narcissist obsessed with celebrity’. (Katie Glass, ‘The ultimate Marmite Brand,’ Sunday Times, 22 September 2013)

And according to the Guardian, the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was a peddler of ‘strutting and narcissistic populism’.

Readers might wonder where that leaves us at Media Lens. Alas, in his Guardian column, then Associate Editor Michael White observed that Media Lens ‘betrays the narcissism of small difference that is so destructive on the left’.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

In the skies, unmanned drones hovered like black, stationary ravens of menace.  But these were not deemed sufficient by Victoria Police.  Helicopters kept them company.  Surveillance cameras also stood prominently to the north end of the bridge.

Before this assortment of marshalled force was an eclectic gathering of individuals from keffiyeh-swaddled pro-Palestinian activists to drummers kitted out in the Palestinian colours, and any number of theatrical types dressed in the shades and costumery of death.  At one point, a chilling Joker figure made an appearance, his outfit and suitcase covered in mock blood.  The share stock of chants was readily deployed: “No justice, no peace, no racist police”; “We, the people, will not be silenced.  Stop the bombing now, now, now”.  Innumerable placards condemning the arms industry and Israel’s war on Gaza also make their appearance.

The purpose of this vast, costly exercise proved elementary and brutal: to defend Land Forces 2024, one of the largest arms fairs in the southern hemisphere, from Disrupt Land Forces, a collective demonised by the Victorian state government as the great unwashed, polluted rebel rousers and anarchists.  Much had been made of the potential size of the gathering, with uncritical journalists consuming gobbets of information from police sources keen to justify an operation deemed the largest since the 2000 World Economic Forum. Police officers from regional centres in the state had been called up, and while Chief Commissioner Shane Patton proved tight-lipped on the exact number, an estimate exceeding 1,000 was not refuted.  The total cost of the effort: somewhere between A$10 to A$15 million.

It all began as a healthy gathering at the dawn of day, with protestors moving to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre to picket entry points for those attending Land Forces.

Over time, there was movement between the various entrances to prevent these modern merchants of death from spruiking their merchandise and touting for offers.  As Green Left Online noted, “The Victorian Police barricaded the entrance of the Melbourne Convention Centre so protestors marched to the back entrance to disrupt Land Forces whilst attendees are going through security checks.”

In keeping with a variant of Anton Chekhov’s principle, if a loaded gun is placed upon the stage, it is bound to be used.  Otherwise, leave it out of the script.  A large police presence would hardly be worthwhile without a few cracked skulls, flesh wounds or arrests.  Scuffles accordingly broke out with banal predictability.  The mounted personnel were also brought out to add a snap of hostility and intimidation to the protestors as they sought to hamper access to the Convention.  For all of this, it was the police who left complaining, worried about their safety.

Then came the broader push from the officers to create a zone of exclusion around the building, resulting in the closure of Clarendon Street to the south, up to Batman Park. Efforts were made to push the protests from the convention centre across the bridge towards the park.  This was in keeping with the promise by the Chief Commissioner that the MCEC site and its surrounds would be deemed a designated area over the duration of the arms fair from September 11 to 13.

Such designated areas, enabled by the passage of a 2009 law, vests the police with powers to stop and search a person within the zone without a warrant.  Anything perceived to be a weapon can be seized, with officers having powers to request that civilians reveal their identity.

Despite such exercisable powers, the relevant legislation imposes a time limit of 12 hours for such areas, something most conspicuously breached by the Commissioner.  But as Melbourne Activist Legal Support (MALS) group remarks, the broader criteria outlined in the legislative regime are often not met and constitute a “method of protest control” that impairs “the rights to assembly, association, and political expression” protected by the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities.

The Victorian government had little time for the language of protest.  In a stunningly grotesque twist, the Victorian Premier, Jacinta Allan, defended those at the Land Forces conference as legitimate representatives of business engaging in a peaceful enterprise.  “Any industry deserves the right to have these sorts of events in a peaceful and respectful way.”  If the manufacture, sale and distribution of weapons constitutes a “peaceful and respectful” pursuit, we have disappeared down the rabbit hole with Alice at great speed.

That theme continued with efforts by both Allan and the opposition leader, John Pesutto, to tarnish the efforts by fellow politicians to attend the protest.  Both fumed indignantly at the efforts of Greens MP Gabrielle de Vietri to participate, with the premier calling the measure one designed for “divisive political purposes.”  The Green MP had a pertinent response: “The community has spoken loud and clear, they don’t want weapons and war profiting to come to our doorstep, and the Victorian Labor government is sponsoring this.”

The absurd, morally inverted spectacle was duly affirmed: a taxpayer funded arms exposition, defended by the taxpayer funded police, used to repel the tax paying protestors keen to promote peace in the face of an industry that thrives on death, mutilation and misery.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Between tomorrow and Friday, the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) will host a weapons bazaar that ought to be called “The Merchants of Death”.

The times for these merchants are positively bullish, given that total global military expenditure exceeded US$2.4 trillion last year, an increase of 6.8 percent in real terms from 2022.

The introductory note to the event is mildly innocuous:

“The Land Forces 2024 International Land Defence Exposition is the premier platform for interaction between defence, industry and government of all levels, to meet, to do business and discuss the opportunities and challenges facing the global land defence markets.”

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The website goes on to describe the Land Defence Exposition as “the premier gateway to the land defence markets of Australia and the region, and a platform for interaction with major prime contractors from the United States and Europe”.

At the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre in 2022, the event attracted 20,000 attendees, 810 “exhibitor organisations” from 25 countries, and ran 40 conferences, symposia and presentations.

From 30 nations, came 159 defence, government, industry and scientific delegations.

Land Forces 2024 is instructive as to how the military-industrial complex manifests. Featured background reading for the event involves, for instance, news about cultivating budding militarists.

Where better to start than in school?

School military ‘pathways’
From August 6, much approval is shown for the $5.1 million Federation Funding Agreement between the Australian government and the state governments of South Australia and West Australia to deliver “the Schools Pathways Programme (SPP)” as part of the Australian government’s Defence Industry Development Strategy.

The programme offers school children a chance to taste the pungent trimmings of industrial militarism — visits to military facilities, “project-based learning” and presentations.

Rather cynically, the SPP co-opts the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) aspect of government policy, carving up a direct link between school study and the defence industry.

“We need more young Australians studying STEM subjects in schools and developing skills for our future workforce,” insisted Education Minister Jason Clare. It is hard to disagree with that, but why weapons?

There is much discontent about the Land Forces exposition.

Victorian Greens MP Ellen Sandell and federal MP for Melbourne Adam Bandt wrote to Premier Jacinta Allan asking her to call off the arms event.

The party noted that such companies as Elbit Systems “and others that are currently fuelling . . . Israel’s genocide in Palestine, where 40,000 people have now been killed — will showcase and sell their products there”.

Demands on Israel dismissed
Allan icily dismissed such demands.

Disrupt Land Forces, which boasts 50 different activist collectives, has been preparing.

Defence Connect reported as early as June 4 that groups, including Wage Peace — Disrupt War and Whistleblowers, Activists and Communities Alliance, were planning to rally against the Land Force exposition.

The usual mix of carnival, activism and harrying have been planned over a week, with the goal of ultimately encircling the MCEC to halt proceedings.

Ahead of the event, the Victorian Labor government, the event’s sponsor, has mobilised 1800 more police officers from the regional areas.

Victorian Police Minister Anthony Carbines did his best to set the mood.

“If you are not going to abide by the law, if you’re not going to protest peacefully, if you’re not going to show respect and decency, then you’ll be met with the full force of the law.”

Warmongering press outlets
Let us hope the police observe those same standards.

Warmongering press outlets, the Herald Sun being a stalwart, warn of the “risks” that “Australia’s protest capital” will again be “held hostage to disruption and confrontation”, given the diversion of police.

Its August 15 editorial demonised the protesters, swallowing the optimistic incitements on the website of Disrupt Land Forces.

The editorial noted the concerns of unnamed senior police fretting about “the potential chaos outside MCEC at South Wharf and across central Melbourne”, the context for police to mount “one of the biggest security operations since the anti-vaccine/anti-lockdown protests at the height of covid in 2021–21 or the World Economic Forum chaos in 2000”.

Were it up to these editors, protesters would do better to stay at home and let the Victorian economy, arms and all, hum along.

The merchants of death could then go about negotiating the mechanics of murder in broad daylight; Victoria’s government would get its blood fill; and Melbournians could turn a blind eye to what oils the mechanics of global conflict.

The protests will, hopefully, shock the city into recognition that the arms trade is global, nefarious and indifferent as to the casualty count.

Dr Binoy Kampmark lectures in global studies at RMIT University. This article was first published by Green Left and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

In a country closed off from the global internet and where foreign media is forbidden, people in North Korea get glimpses of the outside world from easily concealable SD cards and USB thumb drives smuggled in from China and passed around from person to person.

Often, media like South Korean movies, music, and TV shows are copied and widely distributed in this manner. 

Because Hyesan lies on the border with China, smuggling and media-related offenses that occur there often lead to large investigations intended to find other people involved in either informal or sophisticated distribution networks. 

The three merchants were arrested in the middle of June, a city resident told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

“They were caught in the act by a state security agent disguised as a civilian,” she said. “USB [flash drives] or [SD] memory cards cannot pass through customs [legitimately] because they are controlled items that cannot be sold in the marketplace. So [the ones] owned by individuals were smuggled in.”

‘Anti-socialist’ content

North Korea in recent years has declared war on what it says is an invasion of foreign culture, including by passing laws detailing harsh punishments for watching, storing, and distributing “anti-socialist” content. Violators of the law have been slapped with lengthy prison sentences and even the death penalty over it. 

As a preventative measure, computers sold in North Korea do not have USB access ports, but North Koreans are able to smuggle laptops from China specifically so they can use thumb drives and memory cards.

Smuggling became much harder during the COVID-19 pandemic because Beijing and Pyongyang closed the Sino-Korean border, with North Korea even ordering security forces to shoot and kill any unauthorized person found within one kilometer.

Since many of the people selling goods in North Korea’s marketplaces deal in smuggled items, residents are fearful that a crackdown stemming from the recent arrests could harm their livelihoods, or deny their access to foreign media and goods that North Korea itself does not produce.

“The police arrested the merchants and will try to catch the real culprit who brought in the memory cards,” the resident said. “ This incident could reveal the full picture of a major smuggling case, so the market merchants are very anxious, and the residents are as well.”

Another fear is that Hyesan could be put on lockdown during a potential investigation, she said.

“A stronger crackdown on the marketplaces will happen, and it will make the people’s lives more difficult,” she said. 

Scarcity determines price

Because smuggling has been difficult in recent years, memory cards are hard to find in marketplaces these days, another Hyesan resident, who requested anonymity to speak freely, told RFA. 

“Until 2019, when smuggling was still possible, a 16GB memory card was 80 yuan (US$11), and an 8GB memory card was 40 yuan ($5.50) in the marketplace,” he said. “The merchants recently arrested by the state security department were selling 16GB memory cards for 100 yuan ($14)”

That’s a significant markup from the price across the border in China, where 10 yuan ($1.40) can buy a 16GB card. 

The second resident explained that even people without computers want SD cards to store photos and documents.

“The smugglers like to take the risk to bring these memory cards into the country because they don’t take up a lot of space and they can make 10 times as much in profit,” he said. 

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Moon Sung Hui for RFA Korean.

The senseless slaughter of World War I began with the murder of a single man, a Crown Prince of a European empire whose name no one was particularly familiar with at the time. Archduke Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria was the presumptive heir to the Austrian-Hungarian empire in June of 1914.

His assassin was a young Bosnian Serb student and the murder of the Crown Prince set off a cataclysmic series of events resulting in the deaths of over 20 million people, half of whom were civilians. An additional 20 million people were wounded.

Entire generations of young men from England, France, Russia, Austria, and Germany were lost. National economies were ruined. In economic terms, World War I caused the greatest global depression of the 20th century. Debts by all the major countries (except the USA) haunted the post-war economic world. Unemployment soared. Inflation increased, most dramatically in Germany where hyperinflation meant that a loaf of bread costs 200 million marks.

World War I ended a period of economic success. Twenty years of fiscal insecurity and suffering followed. It is thought that veterans returning home from World War I brought with them the Spanish Flu, which killed almost one million Americans. The war also laid the groundwork for World War II.

Wherever they go, suffering and death, war crimes and atrocities, profits, and stock buybacks follow.

Was it simply the murder of the Crown Prince that caused a world war or were other factors at work? Why did the United States get involved in a European conflict, particularly when an overwhelming number of Americans were against the United States being involved?

Despite major public opposition to the war, Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of it: 373 to 50 in the House of Representatives, 82 to six in the Senate. The politicians defied the wishes of the people they were supposed to represent. What happened? Was something else driving their votes?

J.P. Morgan and Company was one of the largest investment banking firms in the world. J.P. Morgan himself was the official business agent in the United States for the British government and the main contact for Allied loans during the war. Similarly, E.I. du Pont Company was the largest chemical firm in America. These two phenomenally wealthy and powerful companies along with other US manufacturers, including US weapons manufacturers, were closely aligned with President Woodrow Wilson.

When World War I began, JP Morgan had extensive loans to Europe which would be lost if the allies were defeated. Du Pont and other US weapons manufacturers stood to make astronomical profits if the United States entered the war. Historian Alan Brugar wrote that for every soldier who died in battle, the international bankers made a profit of $10,000. As J.P. Morgan wrote to Wilson in 1914, “The war should be a tremendous opportunity for America.”

When the war concluded and the dead and wounded were counted, suspicions grew in the United States that nefarious business interests had propelled US involvement into the great slaughter. Investigative reporting and congressional hearings were initiated.

In 1934 a book written by Helmuth Engelbrecht called The Merchants of Death became a best seller. The book exposed the unethical business practices of weapons manufacturers and analyzed their enormous profits during World War I. The author concluded that “the rise and development of the arms merchants reveals them as a growing menace to World Peace.” While not the only reason for the US entering the war, it became clear the Merchants of Death lobbied both Congress and the President for war.

The American public was incensed. In 1934 almost 100,000 Americans signed a petition opposing increased armament production. Veterans paraded through Washington DC in 1935 in a march for peace. And Marine Major General Smedley Butler, two-time Medal of Honor winner, published his book War is a Racket, claiming he had been “a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism.” His book too became a bestseller.

The growing wave of public outrage led Senator Gerald Nye to initiate congressional hearings investigating whether US corporations, including weapons manufacturers, had led the United States into World War I. In two years, the Nye committee held 93 hearings and called more than 200 witnesses to testify, including JP Morgan and Pierre S. DuPont.

The committee conducted an extensive investigation searching the records of weapons manufacturers. They uncovered criminal and unethical actions including bribery of foreign officials, lobbying the United States government to obtain foreign sales, selling weapons to both sides of international disputes, and the covert undermining of disarmament conferences.

“The committee listened daily to men striving to defend acts which found them nothing more than international racketeers, bent upon gaining profit through a game of arming the world to fight itself,” Senator Nye declared in an October 1934 radio address.

The Senate Nye Committee recommended price controls, the transfer of Navy shipyards out of private hands, and increased industrial taxes. Senator Nye suggested that upon a declaration of war by Congress, taxes on annual income under $10,000 should automatically be doubled and higher incomes should be taxed at 98%. A journalist wrote at the time, “If such policies were enacted, businessmen would become our leading pacifists.”

The American public was outraged at the committee’s findings and so created some of the largest peace organizations the country had ever known. Committed to staying out of all future European wars, American college campuses in the 1930s had thousands of students taking oaths swearing they would never fight in a foreign war.

Farmers, laborers, intellectuals, ministers, people from all walks of life declared they would never again participate in a war fought to increase the profits of corporations.

And then, business fought back. They lobbied those in Congress to cut off funding for the Nye committee, which they soon did. A smear campaign was orchestrated against Senator Nye. The committees’ days were numbered.

In the end, the Nye Committee demonstrated that “these businesses were at the heart and center of a system that made going to war inevitable. They paved and greased the road to war.” With World War II, the Military Industrial Complex would explode and come to dominate American economic and political life.

Today, the Merchants of Death thrive behind a veil of duplicity and slick media campaigns. They have assimilated mainstream media and academia into their conglomerate. But their crimes are clear, and the evidence is overwhelming. Wherever they go, suffering and death, war crimes and atrocities, profits, and stock buybacks follow.

Ninety years after the original Merchants of Death hearings, the 2023 Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal will hold United States weapons manufacturers accountable for aiding and abetting the United States government in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This Tribunal will shine a light on those who profit from war and will seek to end their bloody franchise. Let this time be the last time. We may not have another chance.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brad Wolf.

Some 7,500 Chinese nationals have settled in Laos within the last 4-5 years, according to official estimates – most following the opening of a U.S.$6 billion high-speed railway connecting the two Communist neighbors in December 2021.

While the railway promises to offer land-locked Laos closer integration with the world’s second largest economy, most of the trade has been one way – with China exporting its machinery, auto parts, electronics and consumer goods. Laotian exports, on the other hand, were hindered by China’s strict COVID policies at the border.

But now, business owners say another Chinese export is driving up competition in their own country: Chinese people.

“Chinese merchants compete for customers with Lao merchants, making Lao merchants earn less income,” said one Lao entrepreneur who, like others interviewed by Radio Free Asia for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal.

The entrepreneur said there are now Chinese merchants in “most markets” in the country, adding that with their higher amounts of capital and know-how, “we won’t be able to compete with them.”

Prior to the influx, there were already 31 Chinese companies operating within Laos and 20 Chinese-led projects underway in the capital Vientiane. But sources said Chinese nationals operating independently are increasingly entering into sectors previously dominated by Laotians, such as guesthouses, restaurants, and grocery stores.

At the same time as Chinese businesses are thriving, Lao businesses are beginning to shrink in places like Vientiane, said another Lao entrepreneur.

“Stores that sell clothes and food now mostly belong to Chinese and Vietnamese merchants,” he said. “Most Lao merchants are now forced to sell their goods at markets outside the city, while Chinese and Vietnamese merchants run the markets inside the city.”

Other Lao merchants noted that their Chinese counterparts tend to operate within their own community in Laos, keeping their profits within a sort of enclave.

A leg up in local markets

When asked whether Chinese merchants have any specific advantages over their Lao counterparts in Laos, one Chinese national told RFA that the playing field is equal, as both must adhere to the same regulations.

“My store pays the same import fees and taxes as stores owned by Laotians,” he said. “We enjoy no special privileges.”

But Lao store owners said that a strong yuan and weak kip has given Chinese nationals a leg up in local markets.

“[While] the rental rate is the same for both Lao and Chinese store owners, the rent is high at markets in the city” and Chinese entrepreneurs can more easily afford it, said another Lao businessman.

A Lao intellectual who focuses on the relationship between social and economic matters in the country told RFA that the increase in Chinese entrepreneurs has affected Laos in both positive and negative ways.

“[Chinese investment] is developing the cities, but the bad part is that Lao merchants can’t compete with them,” he said. “When we talk about investment know-how and experience in trade, Lao merchants have less than them.”

And the size of China’s footprint is only growing in Laos.

Kham Jane Vong Phosy, the Lao minister of planning and investment, told a meeting of government officials in July that there have been a total of 933 Chinese-led projects launched in Laos since 2015, valued at around U.S.$16.4 billion. Among the projects are new rail lines, highways, and dams.

As more Chinese flock to Laos, a Lao trade official told RFA that the government is monitoring the newcomers to ensure they play by the rules.

“In the past, we have received reports that some Chinese investors have violated our rules and regulations,” he said. “Trade officials strictly monitor Chinese investment in Laos in order to make sure investors are following the rules, and if we find any violations, authorities will address the problem.”

Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Lao.

But the price limits are making it hard for some merchants to make money.

One pork trader in the capital, Vientiane, told Radio Free Asia that the mandated government price of 75,000 kip (U.S.$4.42) per kilogram isn’t enough. 

“For me, I must sell at 80,000 kip (U.S.$4.72) or 85,000 kip (U.S.$5.01) per kilogram,” said the trader, who like others requested anonymity for security reasons. “I only make a small profit. Sometimes I even lose money.”

Authorities are planning to send inspectors to markets to check prices, Vice Minister of Industry and Trade Bountheung Duangsavanh said at a March 7 government meeting.

If retailers sell their products at higher prices than those set by the government, they’ll be re-educated and fined 3 million kip (U.S.$177) to 10 million kip (U.S.$590), a trade official in the resort town of Luang Prabang said.

Or they could face jail time from six months to two years, according to the law.

“We often inspect the prices at the markets; the traders who break the order, will be charged accordingly,” the official said. “We’re doing this to prevent price gouging.” 

The prices are set based on current market rates, the official said.

“We’re realistic. We, the government, adjust prices according to the price of fuel and on exchange rates,” the official said. “We’re not controlling the price of everything, just the 23 items.”

A list of 23 items with prices that will be controlled and fixed by the government, which also includes beef, fish, chicken and cement, was published late last month by the Lao Ministry of Industry and Trade. 

The move was a response to rising worldwide inflation that has hit Laos especially hard. Government figures showed the rate in Laos surged 41.3% in February, despite measures like import restrictions and the closure of private money exchangers.

Soaring inflation has been driven by a depreciation in the Lao currency – the kip – and declines in foreign investment.

‘It’s never worked’

But one Vientiane resident was skeptical that setting prices and inspecting markets will solve the issue. Prices keep rising anyway. 

A bag of rice, for example, is now 600,000 kip (U.S.$35.38), up from 300,000 kip (U.S.$17.69) a year ago, the resident said.

“The government can’t control the prices; they keep going up,” the resident said. “The government has tried to control prices many times before. It’s never worked.”

Another Vientiane pork trader suggested that the government try to control prices at the source by getting farmers to reduce their prices.

“The authorities from the Ministry of Industry and Trade ask us why we’re selling at higher prices, I tell them to ask the farmers,” the trader said.

A Vientiane pig farm owner pointed to the cost of animal feed from Thailand, which is now twice as much as it was a year ago. Transportation costs are also high, the exchange rate with the Thai baht has become less favorable and there are taxes as well, the farm owner said.

Laos will continue to have issues with imports, an economist in the country said. Because of the mountainous terrain, there is only so much agricultural land and Laos will have to continue to bring in even basic necessities from outside the country.

“We want to produce more in this country, but we can’t,” he said.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Lao.

Photograph Source: Anztowa – CC BY 2.0

In a previous article, I discussed pending legal cases against Monsanto and the legal precedent that may be created if Monsanto were to succeed with a favorable ruling from the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in June. When this case is heard, Monsanto will certainly argue that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) pre-empts states from imposing label requirements “in addition to or different from” those imposed under FIFRA. If Monsanto succeeds, this would create a split in the circuit courts which means a Supreme Court challenge would be the next judicial step. In this piece I ironized how many states such have tighter regulations around gambling and online casinos than do they for mitigating environmental damage. And I wasn’t exaggerating an iota. The reason for this is simple: the agrochemical sector is flanked by PR and astroturfing firms that have set up elaborate stages upon which they give the illusion that grassroots movements oppose proposed bans of glyphosate.

Big Tobacco left in its tracks a legacy of marketing and public relations for future having successfully recruited the participation of physicians who, in the first half of the twentieth century, recommended smoking to their patients, many suggesting that smoking was healthy. This lesson in grift has been taken up today by public relations companies that have pushed glyphosate onto farmers and governments. The PR firms have even pressured the European Union not to ban glyphosate in the wake of the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) 2015 cancer report.

The effects of glyphosate on farmers and gardeners who come into contact with it have been litigious, especially since the World Health Organisation’s agency on cancer labelled the glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic” in 2015. This “probably” is where Monsanto dances about using its wealth to buy the “maybe not” version of this tale.

In 2018, American agrochemical behemoth Monsanto paid an Irish PR consultancy firm, Red Flag Consulting, up to €200,000 to set up a “grassroots farmers” operation across Europe to oppose a prospective EU ban on glyphosate. They called their campaign “Freedom to Farm” and this is a maneuver that is today called “astroturfing”: a political movement that appears to be autochthonous and led by grassroots groups when it is, in fact, an PR vehicle created to serve and financed by a specific industry. Astroturfing usually gives the image to outside viewers and politicians that the participants of these groups are genuinely created by well-meaning, earnest citizens, who support or reject a certain proposed law or policy in order to demonstrate to those with vested economic interests and politicians themselves that there is genuine discontent in favor of the astroturfing funder.

Of course, when these operations in France were discovered, Red Flag Consulting’s CEO, Karl Brophy, claimed that theirs was not lobbying claiming that Red Flag provided “factual information about the science on glyphosate” to farmers and other individuals who “elected to be educated” and who then “made their concerns known in their own voices and by their own volition.” When approached by journalists for Unearthed, Monsanto defended the firm it hired to instigate the astroturfing stating, “Thousands of farmers across Europe have supported this initiative and made their voices heard in support of maintaining access to this vital for modern and sustainable agriculture.”  These operations which took place in at least six other EU countries.

But Red Flag Consulting is in good company with FleishmanHillard which was hired by Monsanto in 2016 and 2017 to compile for it a list of Monsanto’s opponents. It was dubbed the “stakeholder list.” This activity was part of a wider lobbying campaign that Monsanto had farmed out to various PR firms to secure a new licence for glyphosate, the principle ingredient of it controversial weedkiller Roundup.

In 2019 French media discovered that FleishmanHillard created and kept lists of influential people in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom on behalf of Monsanto. In February 2019, French prosecutors stated that they had opened an inquiry into Monsanto after newspaper Le Monde filed a complaint alleging that Monsanto had stored a file of 200 names, to include journalists and lawmakers in hopes of influencing their positions on pesticides. Along with Monsanto, public relations firm FleishmanHillard, was placed into the prosecutors’ crosshairs. By May of 2019 Bayer, which had bought Monsanto the year prior, apologized for both Monsanto and FleishmanHillard.

From 2018, Freedom to Farm began attending agricultural events and farmers’ markets across Europe and aside from marketing itself as a grassroots effort led by farmers, the group had the audacity to warn of the “threat to farming” posed by restricting the use of glyphosate. Read that again.

The Freedom to Farm campaign was spread across seven EU nations: Free to Farm in the UK, Liberta di coltivare in Italy, Raum für Landwirtschaft in Germany, Libertad para consultar in Spain, Rolnictwo Dobrej Praktyki in Poland and Vrijheid om te Boeren in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, nowhere in Freedom to Farm’s materials did Monsanto’s name appear, the entire operation was fully staffed and supported by PR firms working for Monsanto. It was the agro-chemical’s version of The Producers, only the flop they were to produce—the failure of EU nations to ban glyphosate—would reap Monsanto billions.

In 2016, FleishmanHillard authored a report for Monsanto evidencing the scope of the operation which included 39.5 full-time equivalent staff from four PR firms who promoted “Freedom to Farm” across seven countries. The report also states that there were “56 trained operatives are supporting the on-site recruiting process for grassroots” in addition to the campaign team. It also notes “370 decision makers and influencer (targets) identified in France, Germany, Italy, UK, Poland and Spain. This increased by four targets from last week due to additions in Italy and Spain. Targets for the Netherlands and Brussels/EU will be added in December.”

The PR machinery driving campaigns meant to appear like they are coming from independent bodies like Red Flag’s fictional set up Freedom to farm is one of many examples of how Monsanto astroturfs its way around bans and legal setbacks. When you study Monsanto’s internal documents—and I urge everyone to read this document—it is clear that Monsanto uses third-parties and fake third-parties to disseminate its messaging on glyphosate. And while many of these industry allies present themselves to the public and to governments as independent authorities on pesticides and GMOs, there are definitive links that can tie the pro-glyphosate messaging of these third parties—and in many cases their funding—back to Monsanto.

Whether glyphosate can be classed as a carcinogen—whether it is a driver for cancer in humans—is the primary point of contention around the herbicide that is contested between stakeholders but also within the scientific community and between public agencies. How many of these scientists and public agencies have been bought by Monsanto is still unclear.

What we do know is that Monsanto has already astroturfed the “academic” field. Air quotes are necessary when discussing these fake enterprises such as the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). The ACSH is an organization that purports to be independent of industry but it has published over 5,000 articles attacking journalists and scientists whose work contradicts Monsanto’s agenda. Articles written by ACSH writers have appeared in USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes.

Academics Review is another astroturfing group whose website is no longer in existence but which was set up in 2010. Monsanto has paid off academics in return for their favorably reviewing Roundup (glyphosate) and for collaborating in the creation of an astroturfing operation such as Academics Review. The Academics Review website describes its founders:

Academics Review was founded by two independent professors of food-related microbiology, nutritional, and safety issues on opposite ends of the planet: in rural central Illinois, and in urban Melbourne, Australia. Bruce M. Chassy, Ph.D., and David Tribe, Ph.D., are two of the most widely recognized experts in the world on how plants grow, and the resulting effects plants, as foods, can have on human health.

The website also claims, “Academics Review only accepts unrestricted donations from non-corporate sources to support our work.” All of the above is patently untrue. Both Cassy and Tribe were paid to set up this front organisation and were paid handsomely for their services to Monsanto. Or, as Monsanto president Eric Sachs put it in his 2010 emailto Chassy, the money was paid, “in support of biotechnology outreach.” This email details how Monsanto directed the creation of Academics Review.

The European Commission officially approved a temporary extension of the widely-used herbicide glyphosate on 2 December 2022. At the end of this year we can only hope that glyphosate is finally banned in the EU.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Andy  Hsieh.

Photograph Source: Anztowa – CC BY 2.0

In a previous article, I discussed pending legal cases against Monsanto and the legal precedent that may be created if Monsanto were to succeed with a favorable ruling from the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in June. When this case is heard, Monsanto will certainly argue that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) pre-empts states from imposing label requirements “in addition to or different from” those imposed under FIFRA. If Monsanto succeeds, this would create a split in the circuit courts which means a Supreme Court challenge would be the next judicial step. In this piece I ironized how many states such have tighter regulations around gambling and online casinos than do they for mitigating environmental damage. And I wasn’t exaggerating an iota. The reason for this is simple: the agrochemical sector is flanked by PR and astroturfing firms that have set up elaborate stages upon which they give the illusion that grassroots movements oppose proposed bans of glyphosate.

Big Tobacco left in its tracks a legacy of marketing and public relations for future having successfully recruited the participation of physicians who, in the first half of the twentieth century, recommended smoking to their patients, many suggesting that smoking was healthy. This lesson in grift has been taken up today by public relations companies that have pushed glyphosate onto farmers and governments. The PR firms have even pressured the European Union not to ban glyphosate in the wake of the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) 2015 cancer report.

The effects of glyphosate on farmers and gardeners who come into contact with it have been litigious, especially since the World Health Organisation’s agency on cancer labelled the glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic” in 2015. This “probably” is where Monsanto dances about using its wealth to buy the “maybe not” version of this tale.

In 2018, American agrochemical behemoth Monsanto paid an Irish PR consultancy firm, Red Flag Consulting, up to €200,000 to set up a “grassroots farmers” operation across Europe to oppose a prospective EU ban on glyphosate. They called their campaign “Freedom to Farm” and this is a maneuver that is today called “astroturfing”: a political movement that appears to be autochthonous and led by grassroots groups when it is, in fact, an PR vehicle created to serve and financed by a specific industry. Astroturfing usually gives the image to outside viewers and politicians that the participants of these groups are genuinely created by well-meaning, earnest citizens, who support or reject a certain proposed law or policy in order to demonstrate to those with vested economic interests and politicians themselves that there is genuine discontent in favor of the astroturfing funder.

Of course, when these operations in France were discovered, Red Flag Consulting’s CEO, Karl Brophy, claimed that theirs was not lobbying claiming that Red Flag provided “factual information about the science on glyphosate” to farmers and other individuals who “elected to be educated” and who then “made their concerns known in their own voices and by their own volition.” When approached by journalists for Unearthed, Monsanto defended the firm it hired to instigate the astroturfing stating, “Thousands of farmers across Europe have supported this initiative and made their voices heard in support of maintaining access to this vital for modern and sustainable agriculture.”  These operations which took place in at least six other EU countries.

But Red Flag Consulting is in good company with FleishmanHillard which was hired by Monsanto in 2016 and 2017 to compile for it a list of Monsanto’s opponents. It was dubbed the “stakeholder list.” This activity was part of a wider lobbying campaign that Monsanto had farmed out to various PR firms to secure a new licence for glyphosate, the principle ingredient of it controversial weedkiller Roundup.

In 2019 French media discovered that FleishmanHillard created and kept lists of influential people in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom on behalf of Monsanto. In February 2019, French prosecutors stated that they had opened an inquiry into Monsanto after newspaper Le Monde filed a complaint alleging that Monsanto had stored a file of 200 names, to include journalists and lawmakers in hopes of influencing their positions on pesticides. Along with Monsanto, public relations firm FleishmanHillard, was placed into the prosecutors’ crosshairs. By May of 2019 Bayer, which had bought Monsanto the year prior, apologized for both Monsanto and FleishmanHillard.

From 2018, Freedom to Farm began attending agricultural events and farmers’ markets across Europe and aside from marketing itself as a grassroots effort led by farmers, the group had the audacity to warn of the “threat to farming” posed by restricting the use of glyphosate. Read that again.

The Freedom to Farm campaign was spread across seven EU nations: Free to Farm in the UK, Liberta di coltivare in Italy, Raum für Landwirtschaft in Germany, Libertad para consultar in Spain, Rolnictwo Dobrej Praktyki in Poland and Vrijheid om te Boeren in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, nowhere in Freedom to Farm’s materials did Monsanto’s name appear, the entire operation was fully staffed and supported by PR firms working for Monsanto. It was the agro-chemical’s version of The Producers, only the flop they were to produce—the failure of EU nations to ban glyphosate—would reap Monsanto billions.

In 2016, FleishmanHillard authored a report for Monsanto evidencing the scope of the operation which included 39.5 full-time equivalent staff from four PR firms who promoted “Freedom to Farm” across seven countries. The report also states that there were “56 trained operatives are supporting the on-site recruiting process for grassroots” in addition to the campaign team. It also notes “370 decision makers and influencer (targets) identified in France, Germany, Italy, UK, Poland and Spain. This increased by four targets from last week due to additions in Italy and Spain. Targets for the Netherlands and Brussels/EU will be added in December.”

The PR machinery driving campaigns meant to appear like they are coming from independent bodies like Red Flag’s fictional set up Freedom to farm is one of many examples of how Monsanto astroturfs its way around bans and legal setbacks. When you study Monsanto’s internal documents—and I urge everyone to read this document—it is clear that Monsanto uses third-parties and fake third-parties to disseminate its messaging on glyphosate. And while many of these industry allies present themselves to the public and to governments as independent authorities on pesticides and GMOs, there are definitive links that can tie the pro-glyphosate messaging of these third parties—and in many cases their funding—back to Monsanto.

Whether glyphosate can be classed as a carcinogen—whether it is a driver for cancer in humans—is the primary point of contention around the herbicide that is contested between stakeholders but also within the scientific community and between public agencies. How many of these scientists and public agencies have been bought by Monsanto is still unclear.

What we do know is that Monsanto has already astroturfed the “academic” field. Air quotes are necessary when discussing these fake enterprises such as the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). The ACSH is an organization that purports to be independent of industry but it has published over 5,000 articles attacking journalists and scientists whose work contradicts Monsanto’s agenda. Articles written by ACSH writers have appeared in USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes.

Academics Review is another astroturfing group whose website is no longer in existence but which was set up in 2010. Monsanto has paid off academics in return for their favorably reviewing Roundup (glyphosate) and for collaborating in the creation of an astroturfing operation such as Academics Review. The Academics Review website describes its founders:

Academics Review was founded by two independent professors of food-related microbiology, nutritional, and safety issues on opposite ends of the planet: in rural central Illinois, and in urban Melbourne, Australia. Bruce M. Chassy, Ph.D., and David Tribe, Ph.D., are two of the most widely recognized experts in the world on how plants grow, and the resulting effects plants, as foods, can have on human health.

The website also claims, “Academics Review only accepts unrestricted donations from non-corporate sources to support our work.” All of the above is patently untrue. Both Cassy and Tribe were paid to set up this front organisation and were paid handsomely for their services to Monsanto. Or, as Monsanto president Eric Sachs put it in his 2010 emailto Chassy, the money was paid, “in support of biotechnology outreach.” This email details how Monsanto directed the creation of Academics Review.

The European Commission officially approved a temporary extension of the widely-used herbicide glyphosate on 2 December 2022. At the end of this year we can only hope that glyphosate is finally banned in the EU.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Andy  Hsieh.

Phillip Berrigan holding a sign prior to being arrested for not having a permit during a protest on the sidewalk in front of the White House in Washington D.C.. on October 16, 1984. (Photo by Mark Reinstein via ShutterStock).

Peace activists take on the Pentagon and its corporate outposts.

Days after a U.S. warplane bombed a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing forty-two people, twenty-four of them patients, the international president of MSF, Dr. Joanne Liu walked through the wreckage and prepared to deliver condolences to family members of those who had been killed. A brief video, taped in October, 2015, captures her nearly unutterable sadness as she speaks about a family who, the day before the bombing, had been prepared to bring their daughter home. Doctors had helped the young girl recover, but because war was raging outside the hospital, administrators recommended that the family come the next day. “She’s safer here,” they said.

The child was among those killed by the U.S. attacks, which recurred at fifteen minute intervals, for an hour and a half, even though MSF had already issued desperate pleas begging the United States and NATO forces to stop bombing the hospital.

Dr. Liu’s sad observations seemed to echo in the words of Pope Francis lamenting war’s afflictions. “We live with this diabolic pattern of killing one another out of the desire for power, the desire for security, the desire for many things. But I think of the hidden wars, those no one sees, that are far away from us,” he said. “People speak about peace. The United Nations has done everything possible, but they have not succeeded.” The tireless struggles of numerous world leaders, like Pope Francis and Dr. Joanne Liu, to stop the patterns of war were embraced vigorously by Phil Berrigan, a prophet of our time.

“Oppose any and all wars,” he urged. “There has never been a just war.”  “Don’t get tired!” he begged people, adding, “I love the Buddhist proverb, ‘I will not kill, but I will prevent others from killing.’ ”

People who’ve embraced his message continue meeting at the Pentagon, as happened December 28 when activists commemorated the “Feast of the Holy Innocents.” Christians traditionally dedicate this day to the remembrance of a time when King Herod ordered the massacre of children under two years of age because of a paranoid belief that one of the recently born children in the region would grow up to oust Herod from power and kill him. Activists gathered at the Pentagon held signs decrying the slaughter of innocents in our time. They’ll protest the obscenely bloated military budget which the U.S. Congress just passed as a part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023.

As Norman Stockwell of The Progressive recently noted, “The bill contains nearly $1.7 trillion of funding for FY2023, but of that money, $858 billion is earmarked for the military (‘defense spending’) and an additional $45 billion in ‘emergency assistance to Ukraine and our NATO allies.’ This means that more than half ($900 billion out of $1.7 trillion) is not being used for ‘non-defense discretionary programs’—and even that lesser portion includes $118.7 billion for funding of the Veterans Administration, another military-related expense.”

By depleting funds desperately needed to meet human needs, the U.S. “defense” budget doesn’t defend people from pandemics, ecological collapse, and infrastructure decay. Instead it continues a deranged   investment in militarism.  Phil Berrigan’s prophetic intransigency, resisting all wars and weapons manufacturing, is needed now more than ever.

Outraged by the reckless slaughter of innocent people in wars ranging from Vietnam to Afghanistan, Phil Berrigan insisted that weapons manufacturers profiting from endless wars should be held accountable for criminal activity. The weapons corporations rob people, worldwide, of the capacity to meet basic human needs..

The appallingly greedy Pentagon budget represents a corporate takeover of the U.S. Congress. As the coffers of weapons manufacturers swell, these military contractors hire legions of highly paid lobbyists tasked with persuading elected officials to earmark even more funds for companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon United, and General Atomics. According to militarists, stockpiles of weapons must be used up, in order to justify more weapons manufacturing. Media complicity is necessary, and can be purchased, in order to frighten U.S. taxpayers into the continued bankrolling of what could become worldwide annihilation.

Mark Reinstein

Phil Berrigan, who in his lifetime evolved from soldier to scholar to prophetic anti-nuclear activist, astutely linked the racial oppression he opposed as a civil rights activist to the rising oppression caused by militarism. He likened racial injustice to a terrible hydra that contrives a new face for every area of the world. Throughout his life, Phil Berrigan identified with people menaced by the hydra’s new faces of war. Elaborating on this theme in a book called No More Strangers, published in 1965, he wrote that the dispassionate decision of people in the United States to practice racial discrimination made it “not only easy but logical to enlarge our oppressions in the form of international nuclear threats.”

How can we in the United States prevent the killing that goes on, in our name, in multiple wars, exacerbated by weapons made in the U.S.A? How can we resist the growing potential, acute scourge of a nuclear exchange as warring parties continue issuing nuclear threats in Ukraine and Russia?

One step we can take involves both political and humanitarian efforts to hold accountable the corporations profiting from the U.S. military budget. Drawing on Phil Berrigan’s steadfastness, activists worldwide are planning the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal scheduled to be held November 10 to 13, 2023. The Tribunal intends to collect evidence about crimes against humanity committed by those who develop, store, sell, and use weapons to commit crimes against humanity. Testimony is being sought from people who’ve borne the brunt of modern wars, the survivors of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, and Somalia, to name but a few of the places where U.S. weapons have terrified people who’ve meant us no harm.

“We render you, corporations obsessed with war profiteering, accountable; answerable!,” declares the Reverend Dr. Cornel West on the Tribunal’s website.

On November 10, 2022, organizers of the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal and their supporters served a “subpoena” to the directors and corporate offices of weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon United, and General Atomics. The subpoena, which will expire on February 10, 2023, compels them to provide to the Tribunal all documents revealing their complicity in aiding and abetting the United States government in committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, bribery, and theft.

People menaced by the hydra’s new faces of war often have nowhere to flee, nowhere to hide. Thousands upon thousands of the victims are children.

Mindful of the children who are maimed, traumatized, displaced, orphaned, and killed by all of the wars raging today, we must hold ourselves accountable as well. Phil Berrigan’s challenge must become ours:  “Meet me at the Pentagon!” Or at its corporate outposts.

Humanity literally cannot live in complicity with the patterns that lead to bombing hospitals and slaughtering children.

This article is posted at The Progressive.org; a shorter version appears on the World BEYOND War website.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kathy Kelly.

Days after a U.S. warplane bombed a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing forty-two people, twenty-four of them patients, the international president of MSF, Dr. Joanne Liu walked through the wreckage and prepared to deliver condolences to family members of those who had been killed. A brief video, taped in October, 2015, captures her nearly unutterable sadness as she speaks about a family who, the day before the bombing, had been prepared to bring their daughter home. Doctors had helped the young girl recover, but because war was raging outside the hospital, administrators recommended that the family come the next day. “She’s safer here,” they said.

The child was among those killed by the U.S. attacks, which recurred at fifteen minute intervals, for an hour and a half, even though MSF had already issued desperate pleas begging the United States and NATO forces to stop bombing the hospital.

Dr. Liu’s sad observations seemed to echo in the words of Pope Francis lamenting war’s afflictions. “We live with this diabolic pattern of killing one another out of the desire for power, the desire for security, the desire for many things. But I think of the hidden wars, those no one sees, that are far away from us," he said. “People speak about peace. The United Nations has done everything possible, but they have not succeeded.” The tireless struggles of numerous world leaders, like Pope Francis and Dr. Joanne Liu, to stop the patterns of war were embraced vigorously by Phil Berrigan, a prophet of our time.

“Oppose any and all wars,” he urged. “There has never been a just war.” “Don’t get tired!” he begged people, adding, “I love the Buddhist proverb, ‘I will not kill, but I will prevent others from killing.’ ”

People who’ve embraced his message continue meeting at the Pentagon, as happened December 28 when activists commemorated the “Feast of the Holy Innocents.” Christians traditionally dedicate this day to the remembrance of a time when King Herod ordered the massacre of children under two years of age because of a paranoid belief that one of the recently born children in the region would grow up to oust Herod from power and kill him. Activists gathered at the Pentagon held signs decrying the slaughter of innocents in our time. They’ll protest the obscenely bloated military budget which the U.S. Congress just passed as a part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023.

As Norman Stockwell of The Progressive recently noted, “The bill contains nearly $1.7 trillion of funding for FY2023, but of that money, $858 billion is earmarked for the military (‘defense spending’) and an additional $45 billion in ‘emergency assistance to Ukraine and our NATO allies.’ This means that more than half ($900 billion out of $1.7 trillion) is not being used for ‘non-defense discretionary programs’—and even that lesser portion includes $118.7 billion for funding of the Veterans Administration, another military-related expense.”

By depleting funds desperately needed to meet human needs, the U.S. “defense” budget doesn’t defend people from pandemics, ecological collapse, and infrastructure decay. Instead it continues a deranged investment in militarism. Phil Berrigan’s prophetic intransigency, resisting all wars and weapons manufacturing, is needed now more than ever.

Outraged by the reckless slaughter of innocent people in wars ranging from Vietnam to Afghanistan, Phil Berrigan insisted that weapons manufacturers profiting from endless wars should be held accountable for criminal activity. The weapons corporations rob people, worldwide, of the capacity to meet basic human needs.

The appallingly greedy Pentagon budget represents a corporate takeover of the U.S. Congress. As the coffers of weapons manufacturers swell, these military contractors hire legions of highly paid lobbyists tasked with persuading elected officials to earmark even more funds for companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon United, and General Atomics. According to militarists, stockpiles of weapons must be used up, in order to justify more weapons manufacturing. Media complicity is necessary, and can be purchased, in order to frighten U.S. taxpayers into the continued bankrolling of what could become worldwide annihilation.

Phil Berrigan, who in his lifetime evolved from soldier to scholar to prophetic anti-nuclear activist, astutely linked the racial oppression he opposed as a civil rights activist to the rising oppression caused by militarism. He likened racial injustice to a terrible hydra that contrives a new face for every area of the world. Throughout his life, Phil Berrigan identified with people menaced by the hydra’s new faces of war. Elaborating on this theme in a book called No More Strangers, published in 1965, he wrote that the dispassionate decision of people in the United States to practice racial discrimination made it “not only easy but logical to enlarge our oppressions in the form of international nuclear threats.”

How can we in the United States prevent the killing that goes on, in our name, in multiple wars, exacerbated by weapons made in the U.S.A? How can we resist the growing potential, acute scourge of a nuclear exchange as warring parties continue issuing nuclear threats in Ukraine and Russia?

One step we can take involves both political and humanitarian efforts to hold accountable the corporations profiting from the U.S. military budget. Drawing on Phil Berrigan’s steadfastness, activists worldwide are planning the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal scheduled to be held November 10 to 13, 2023. The Tribunal intends to collect evidence about crimes against humanity committed by those who develop, store, sell, and use weapons to commit crimes against humanity. Testimony is being sought from people who’ve borne the brunt of modern wars, the survivors of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, and Somalia, to name but a few of the places where U.S. weapons have terrified people who’ve meant us no harm.

“We render you, corporations obsessed with war profiteering, accountable; answerable!,” declares the Reverend Dr. Cornel West on the Tribunal’s website.

On November 10, 2022, organizers of the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal and their supporters served a “subpoena” to the directors and corporate offices of weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon United, and General Atomics. The subpoena, which will expire on February 10, 2023, compels them to provide to the Tribunal all documents revealing their complicity in aiding and abetting the United States government in committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, bribery, and theft.

People menaced by the hydra’s new faces of war often have nowhere to flee, nowhere to hide. Thousands upon thousands of the victims are children.

Mindful of the children who are maimed, traumatized, displaced, orphaned, and killed by all of the wars raging today, we must hold ourselves accountable as well. Phil Berrigan’s challenge must become ours: “Meet me at the Pentagon!” Or at its corporate outposts.

Humanity literally cannot live in complicity with the patterns that lead to bombing hospitals and slaughtering children.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kathy Kelly.

The post Waltzing Toward Armageddon with the Merchants of Death appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Chris Hedges.