https://www.globalresearch.ca/neoliberal-war-dissent-west/5771577
The Neoliberal War on Dissent in the West
Those who most flamboyantly proclaim that they are fighting fascists continue to embrace and wield the defining weapons of despotism.
When it comes to distant and adversarial countries, we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored. Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence. Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state.
When a government that is adverse to the West engages in such conduct, it is not just easy but obligatory to malign it as despotic. Thus can one find, on a virtually daily basis, articles in the Western press citing the government’s use of those tactics in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and whatever other countries the West has an interest in disparaging (articles about identical tactics from regimes supported by the West — from Riyadh to Cairo — are much rarer). That the use of these repressive tactics render these countries and their populations subject to autocratic regimes is considered undebatable.
But when these weapons are wielded by Western governments, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited. That tyranny exists only in Western adversaries but never in the West itself is treated as a permanent axiom of international affairs, as if Western democracies are divinely shielded from the temptations of genuine repression. Indeed, to suggest that a Western democracy has descended to the same level of authoritarian repression as the West’s official enemies is to assert a proposition deemed intrinsically absurd or even vaguely treasonous.
The implicit guarantor of this comforting framework is democracy. Western countries, according to this mythology, can never be as repressive as their enemies because Western governments are at least elected democratically. This assurance, superficially appealing though it may be, completely collapses with the slightest critical scrutiny. The premise of the U.S. Constitution and others like it is that majoritarian despotism is dangerous in the extreme; the Bill of Rights consists of little more than limitations imposed on the tyrannical measures majorities might seek to democratically enact (the expression of ideas cannot be criminalized even if majorities want them to be; religious freedom cannot be abolished even if large majorities demand it; life and liberty cannot be deprived without due process even if nine of out ten citizens favor doing so, etc.). More inconveniently still, many of the foreign leaders we are instructed to view as despots are popular or even every bit as democratically elected as our own beloved freedom-safeguarding officials.
As potent as this mythological framework is, reinforced by large media corporations over so many decades, it cannot withstand the increasingly glaring use of precisely these despotic tactics in the West. Watching Justin Trudeau — the sweet, well-mannered, well-raised good-boy prince of one of the West’s nicest countries featuring such a pretty visage (even on the numerous occasions when marred by blackface) — invoke and then harshly impose dubious emergency, civil-liberties-denying powers is just the latest swing of the hammer causing this Western sculpture to crumble. In sum, you are required by Western propaganda to treat the two images below as fundamentally different; indeed, huge numbers of people in the West vehemently denounce the one on the left while enthusiastically applauding the one on the right. Such brittle mythology can be sustained only for so long:
The decade-long repression of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, standing alone, demonstrates how grave neoliberal attacks on dissent have become. Many are aware of key parts of this repression — particularly the decade-long effective detention of Assange — but have forgotten or, due to media malfeasance, never knew several of the most extreme aspects.
While the Obama DOJ under Attorney General Eric Holder failed to find evidence of criminality after convening a years-long Grand Jury investigation, the then-Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), succeeded in pressuring financial services companies such as MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and Bank of America to terminate WikiLeaks’ accounts and thus banish them from the financial system, choking off their ability to receive funds from supporters or pay their bills. Lieberman and his neocon allies also pressured Amazon to remove WikiLeaks from its hosting services, causing the whistleblower group to be temporarily offline. All of that succeeded in crippling WikiLeaks’ ability to operate despite being charged with no crime: indeed, as the DOJ admitted, it could not prove that the group committed any crimes, yet this extra-legal punishment was nonetheless meted out.
Those tactics pioneered against WikiLeaks — excluding dissenters from the financial system and coercing tech companies to deny them internet access without a whiff of due process — have now become standard weapons. Trudeau’s government seizes and freezes bank accounts with no judicial process. The “charity” fundraising site GoFundMe first blocked the millions of dollars raised for the truckers and announced it would redirect those funds to other charities, then refunded the donations when people pointed out, rightly, that their original plan amounted to a form of stealing. When an alternative fundraising site, GiveSendGo, raised millions more for the truckers, Canadian courts blocked its distribution. And it was just over a year ago when Democratic politicians such as Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) successfully pressured tech monopolies Google and Apple to remove Parler from its stores and then pressured Amazon to remove the social media site from its servers, at exactly the time the social media alternative became the single most-downloaded app in America. (This morning we published a new video report on Rumble that traces the emergence of this new anti-dissent tactic first pioneered on WikiLeaks and now widely used against dissent generally: “Banishment from the Financial System: the War on Dissent”).
That the U.S. and UK Governments have kept Assange himself — one of the most effective dissidents in the West in decades — in a cage for years with no end in sight by itself highlights how repressive they are. But the precipitating cause of Assange’s apprehension from the Ecuadorian Embassy has been forgotten by many and it, too, illustrates the same disturbing trend.
In 2017, mass protests erupted in Barcelona as part of a movement in Catalonia for more autonomy from the Madrid-based Spanish government, culminating in a referendum for autonomy on October 1. In 2019, even larger and more intense protests materialized. The methods used to crush the protests shocked many, as such domestic aggression had been rarely seen for years in western Europe. Spain treated the activists not as domestic protesters exercising their civic rights but as terrorists, seditionists and insurrectionists. Violence was used to sweep up Catalans in mass arrests, and their leaders were charged with terrorism and sedition and given lengthy prison sentences.
About the crackdown, a protest video proclaimed that Spain had just witnessed “a degree of force never seen before in a European member state.” While a fact-check by the BBC failed to affirm that maximalist claim, it documented multiple grave attacks by the police on protesters in Catalonia. Meanwhile, “Spanish police engaged in excessive force when confronting demonstrators in Catalonia during a disputed referendum, using batons to hit non-threatening protesters and causing multiple injuries,” Human Rights Watched concluded, adding that though the protesters were “largely peaceful,” some “hundreds were left injured, some seriously. Catalonia’s Health Department estimated on October 2 that 893 people had reported injuries to the authorities.”
From the Ecuadorian Embassy, Assange, in both 2017 and then again in 2019, used WikiLeaks’ platforms to vocally publicize and denounce the actions of the Spanish government — not to express support for Catalonian independence but to denounce the civil liberties assaults used to crush the protest movement. Assange made multiple media appearances to object to the use of violence by the state police, and WikiLeaks’ Twitter account, virtually on a daily basis, was publicizing videos and other testimonial evidence of the crackdown.
It was Assange’s reporting on and denouncing of violence by the Spanish government against its own citizens that was the final cause of Ecuador’s decision to rescind its asylum. The Spanish government made clear to Ecuador how indignant they were that Assange was publicizing their abuses. It was just several months after the first protest movement that Ecuador announced it was cutting off Assange’s internet access, claiming the WikiLeaks founder had been “interfer[ing] with other states” — meaning speaking out on the civil liberties abuses by Madrid. And it was the following year that Ecuador, pressured by the U.S., UK and Spain, withdrew its asylum protection and allowed the London police to enter its embassy, arrest Assange, and then put him in the high-security Belmarsh prison where he has remained ever since despite being convicted of no crime other than a misdemeanor count of bail-jumping. All of this reflects, and stems from, a clear and growing Western intolerance for dissent.
It is, after all, based in the central recognition that there is mass, widespread anger and even hatred toward the neoliberal ruling class throughout the West. Trump, Brexit and the rise of far-right parties in places where their empowerment was previously unthinkable — including Germany and France — is unmistakable proof of that. Rather than sacrifice some of the benefits of inequality that have generated much of that rage or placate or appease it with symbolic concessions, Western neoliberal elites have instead opted for force, a system that crushes all forms of dissent as soon as they emerge in anything resembling an effective, meaningful or potent form.
So many of the controversies over the last decade, often analyzed in isolation, have been devoted to this goal. The pervasive surveillance systems constructed by the West — revealed during the Snowden reporting but only partially reined in at best since then — are crucial tools, as surveillance powers always are, for monitoring and thus stifling dissent. We have now arrived at the point where the U.S. Government and its security state is officially and explicitly clear that it regards the greatest national security threat not as a foreign power such as China or Russia, and not as non-state actors such as Al Qaeda or ISIS, but rather “domestic extremists.” For years, this has been the unyielding message of the DHS, FBI, CIA, NSA and DOJ: our primary enemies are not foreign but are our fellow citizens who have embraced ideologies we regard as extremist.
This new escalation of repression depends upon a narrative framework. Those who harbor dissenting ideologies — and particularly those who do not embrace that dissent passively but instead take action to advocate, promote and spread it — are not merely dissenters. The term “dissent,” in Western democracies, connotes legitimacy, so that label must be denied them. They are instead domestic extremists, domestic terrorists, seditionists, traitors, insurrections. Applying terms of criminality renders justifiable any subsequent acts of repression: we are trained to accept that core liberties are forfeited upon the commission of crimes.
What is most notable, though, is that this alleged criminality is not adjudicated through judicial proceedings — with all the accompanying protections of judges, juries, rules of evidence and requirements of due process — but simply by decree. When financial services companies “choked” WikiLeaks back in 2010, they justified it by pointing to the government’s claim that the group was engaged in crimes and therefore in violation of the rules of the platforms (“‘MasterCard rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal,’ spokesman Chris Monteiro said” when explaining its shutting of WikiLeaks’ account). The same was done to 1/6 protesters who have been punished in countless ways prior to conviction. And now Canadian truckers have been magically transformed into criminals without the inconvenience of a trial; “‘we now have evidence from law enforcement that the previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation, with police reports of violence and other unlawful activity,’ GoFundMe said” when explaining why it shut down fund-raising accounts.
Last June, PayPal announced a new partnership with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), whereby the liberal activist group would identify individuals and groups whose ideology is, in the eyes of the ADL, “extremist.” This would enable not only PayPal but financial services companies around the world to then terminate their accounts and exclude them from the financial system. Clearly, once the ADL declares a person or group to be “extremist” and PayPal banishes them, no other mainstream corporation will want to be accused of hosting them. As PayPal’s founding Chief Operating Officer David Sacks warned at the time the partnership was announced, the purpose of this program is “shutting down people and organizations that express views that are entirely lawful, even if they are unpopular in Silicon Valley.” Comparing this to the spate of unified Silicon Valley censorship that has erupted over the last several years, Sacks explained why this power is so alarming:
As for the notion of building your own PayPal or Facebook: because of their gigantic network effects and economies of scale, there is no viable alternative when the whole industry works together to deny you access.
Kicking people off social media deprives them of the right to speak in our increasingly online world. Locking them out of the financial economy is worse: It deprives them of the right to make a living. We have seen how cancel culture can obliterate one’s ability to earn an income, but now the cancelled may find themselves without a way to pay for goods and services. Previously, cancelled employees who would never again have the opportunity to work for a Fortune 500 company at least had the option to go into business for themselves. But if they cannot purchase equipment, pay employees, or receive payment from clients and customers, that door closes on them, too.
This is why it is so imperative for the Democratic Party and their media allies to describe the four-hour riot at the Capitol on January 6 as an insurrection and attempted coup. If those are mere protesters or even just rioters, then all the standard protections and legal safeguards apply to them, as liberals demanded be applied to protect BLM and Antifa protesters, even ones who used violence. If, however, they are part of a broader insurrectionary movement — an ongoing attempt to overthrow the U.S. Government — then they are elevated from ordinary political adversaries into a faction of sustained criminality, and anything and everything, from censorship and detention to extra-legal means of banishment such as no-fly lists and exclusion from the financial system, becomes justified, even necessary. (Note that such repressive tactics, cheered by liberals and even many on the left, have often swept up anti-establishment voices on the left, such as when PayPal banned Antifa-linked individuals along with Proud Boys members, and when animal rights activists are targeted for persecution by the FBI along with Oath Keepers, but such is the inevitable outcome of censorship and dissent-repressive schemes).
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/fear-loathing-washington/5771635
Fear and Loathing in Washington. “Vital Issues of War and Peace”
The Biden Administration’s Crimes Against Humanity
One can frequently disagree with government policies without necessarily regarding them with disgust, but the Joe Biden Administration has turned that corner, first with its senseless promotion of a new Cold War that could turn hot with Russia and, more recently, with its actions undertaken to undermine and punish Afghanistan. The fact that the White House wraps itself in the sanctimonious, self-righteous twaddle that is so much the hallmark of the political left is bad enough, but when the government goes out of its way to harm and even kill people around the world in pursuit of an elusive global dominance it is time for the American people to rise up and say “Stop!”
As a former CIA operations officer, I departed government service in 2002 in part due to the impending invasion of Iraq, which I knew was completely unjustified by the web of largely fabricated information that was flowing out of the Pentagon to justify the attack. In the years since I have been appalled by the Obama era attacks on Syria and Libya as well as by the assassinations and cruise missile strikes carried out under Donald Trump. But all of that was a Sunday in the park compared to the hideous nonsense being pursued by Biden and his crew of reprobates.
Trifling with the use of force as part of negotiations intended to go nowhere over Ukraine could well by misstep, false flag or even design escalate into nuclear war ending much of the life on this planet as we know it, and we are now also witnessing the cold, calculated slaughter of possibly hundreds of thousands of civilians just because we have the tools at hand and believe that we can get away with it. What we are seeing unfold right in front of us goes beyond appalling and it is time to demand a change of course on the part of a runaway federal government that is drunk on its own self-assumed unbridled right to exercise total executive authority over vital issues of war and peace.
I am most particularly shocked and dismayed over what the Biden Administration did to Afghanistan on February 11th, which is unambiguously a crime against humanity. On that day the President of the United States Joe Biden, still smarting from the botched departure from Afghanistan and low approval ratings, issued an executive order invoking emergency powers stipulating that the $7 billion in Afghan government money being held and frozen in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York would be retained by the US and divided in two.
Half of the $7 billion would be placed in a US government administered trust fund. The money would in theory go to fund humanitarian relief in Afghanistan to be carried out by agencies unidentified but presumed to be acting in coordination with the barracudas at the Treasury Department while the other half would go to benefit the victims of 9/11. This money is not just “frozen assets,” it is the entire reserve of the Afghan central bank, and its appropriation by the US will destroy whatever remains of the formal Afghan economy, making Afghanistan entirely reliant on small rations of foreign aid that come through channels unconnected with the Afghan government.
The other half of the story is that Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11 but instead became a victim of the US lust for revenge. After 9/11, the Taliban government offered to turn over Osama bin Laden to the United States if Washington were able to provide evidence that he was somehow involved in the attacks in New York and Virginia. The George W. Bush Administration was unable to do so, but chose to invade instead.
Afghanistan now has a government that is recognized by the United Nations and many other countries, though not by Washington, which insists that the Taliban are terrorists. Sanctions pressure being exerted by Washington on the new Taliban dominated regime has inter alia brought about a major humanitarian disaster, with various international agencies predicting that many thousands of Afghan civilians will die of starvation because there is no money available to provide relief. The United Nations has reported that three-quarters of Afghanistan’s population has plunged into acute poverty, with 4.7 million people likely to suffer severe or even fatal malnutrition this year.
The money in New York unambiguously belongs to the Afghan government and the country’s central bank. It is not money that came from the United States, which means that what Biden, who is already stealing Syria’s oil, is engaging in yet one more large scale theft, this time from people dying from famine and disease. Furthermore, as the US was de facto an occupying military power in Afghanistan, the responsibility to protect the civilian population is explicitly required under the articles of the Geneva Convention, to which the US is a signatory. That Washington will watch many thousands of civilians die because it has used its position as an occupying power to steal money that might alleviate the suffering is unconscionable and amounts to a war crime.
Undoubtedly the half of the money allegedly allocated for humanitarian relief will be directed to organizations that will do Washington’s bidding in terms of how the aid is distributed and who gets it. It is being reported that it will take months to set up the aid network, by which time thousands will die. That is to be expected and may have been intentional. And as for the other half of the money directed towards 9/11 “victims,” just watch how that plays out. There are undoubtedly instances of Americans who lost multiple and even cross generational family members at 9/11 and are still in need of assistance. Fine, that is a given, but why punish the Afghans to deal with that? And as soon as the money is on the table you know exactly what will happen. All the shyster lawyers working on a percentage of the payoffs will come out of the woodwork and the major beneficiaries of all the loot will be people who know how to manipulate and game the system. That is what happened to the billions that came raining down as a consequence of the insurance claims on the World Trade Center and also in the distribution of other monies that followed. You can bank on it.
Washington has become adept at lying to cover up its crimes overseas, but foreigners, who are not likely inclined to read the Washington Post and are directly affected by the deception, frequently have a more facts-based understanding of what exactly is going on. And it is why no one any longer trusts the United States. And, it is interesting to note how inevitably the lying by the US government is both bipartisan and inclined to blame the victim as a fallback position. This was seen in Donald Trump’s assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani over two years ago. Soleimani was in Baghdad for peace talks and was falsely accused by the White House of preparing to attack American soldiers. There is also the more recent assassination of alleged ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and killing of 13 additional women and children in Syria where accounts of villagers don’t quite square with the Pentagon version of what allegedly took place.
And then there is a long-concealed atrocity also in Syria which took place in the town of Baghuz in March 2019. At least 80 mostly women and children died in an attack by American F-15 fighter bombers, which was only reported in the media in November 2021. Reportedly, a large crowd of women and children were seen by photographic drones seeking shelter huddled against a river bank. Without warning, an American attack jet dropped a 500-pound bomb on the group. When the smoke cleared, another jet tracked the running survivors and dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of them. Military personnel at the Udeid Airbase in Qatar watching the attack by way of the drone camera reportedly reacted in “stunned disbelief” at what they were witnessing. A Pentagon cover-up followed and to this day the official comment on the attack is that it was “justified.”
So, by all means
go and listen to lying Jen Psaki and pencil neck Ned Price or to
Secretary of State Tony Blinken and possibly to the ultimate nitwit
himself, President Honest Joe Biden. Or you can just pick up a New York Times or Washington Postwhere
deliberately leaked government lies are backed up by what the
newspapers pretend to be editorial integrity. These folks just might
drop us into a nuclear war or could possibly continue in their larcenous
ways to rob the world. Sooner or later the chickens will be coming home
to roost and accountability for America’s war crimes will be demanded.
Stay tuned.
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