​All UN sanctions against Mali will end on August 31, after Russia vetoed the proposal by France and the UAE to have them extended. Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, said the draft completely disregarded the concerns of both Bamako and Moscow.
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The Franco-Emirati draft would have extended both thesanctions and the mandate of the UN Expert Group charged with monitoring Mali, through August and September 2024, respectively. It received 13 votes in the UN Security Council, but failed because Russia voted against it. China abstained.

The council rejected Moscow’s alternative draft, which would have ended the Expert Group mandate immediately and given the sanctions a “final” 12-month extension. Japan voted no, and 13 other members abstained. 

According to AP, Moscow went after the Expert Group because its latest report criticized the Russian private military company Wagner, accusing it of “violence against women, and other forms of grave abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law” to “spread terror among populations.”

Bamako has justified its outreach to the Wagner Group by saying the Russian security advisers were far more effective against jihadist insurgents – unleashed across the Sahel in the wake of NATO’s 2011 regime-change intervention in Libya – than the French or the UN. 

The Franco-Emirati draft “took absolutely no account of the concerns of the Malian side and the position of the Russian Federation,” Nebenzia said after the vote, explaining his veto.

Nebenzia reminded the Security Council that Mali itself requested the sanctions against eight individuals in 2017, as part of a peace process. The Russian resolution, he said, “takes into account the position of the African members of the Council” that the sanctions should remain in effect for some time in order to promote the implementation of the peace agreement, but “not turn into an instrument of external influence on domestic political processes in Mali.”

France, the former colonial power in Mali, has already withdrawn all of its troops from the West African nation at the insistence of the military government in Bamako. Mali has also given some 15,000 UN peacekeepers and civilian staff until December 31 to depart the country. 

“We hope that in the future, sponsors of resolutions will prioritize a pragmatic approach and the interests of the host country in order to avoid unnecessary confrontation in the Security Council,” Nebenzia added. “Especially in the circumstances where a compromise agreement could have been made if certain delegations had the political will to do so.”

It’s been weeks since we looked into the adventures of the Biden administration’s foreign policy cluster, led by Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Victoria Nuland. How has the trio of war hawks spent the summer?
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Sullivan, the national security adviser, recently brought an American delegation to the second international peace summit earlier this month at Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. The summit was led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, who in June announced a merger between his state-backed golf tour and the PGA. Four years earlier MBS was accused of ordering the assassination and dismemberment of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, for perceived disloyalty to the state.

As unlikely as it sounds, there was such a peace summit and its stars did include MBS, Sullivan, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. What was missing was a representative of Russia, which was not invited to the summit. It included just a handful of heads of state from the fewer than fifty nations that sent delegates. The conference lasted two days, and attracted what could only be described as little international attention. 

Reuters reported that Zelensky’s goal was to get international support for “the principles” that that he will consider as a basis for the settlement of the war, including “the withdrawal of all Russian troops and the return of all Ukrainian territory.” Russia’s formal response to the non-event came not from President Vladimir Putin but from Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabkov. He called the summit “a reflection of the West’s attempt to continue futile, doomed efforts” to mobilize the Global South behind Zelensky. 

India and China both sent delegations to the session, perhaps drawn to Saudi Arabia for its immense oil reserves. One Indian academic observer dismissed the event as achieving little more than “good advertising for MBS’s convening power within the Global South; the kingdom’s positioning in the same; and perhaps more narrowly, aiding American efforts to build consensus by making sure China attends the meeting with . . . Jake Sullivan in the same room.” 

Meanwhile, far away on the battlefield in Ukraine, Russia continued to thwart Zelensky’s ongoing counteroffensive. I asked an American intelligence official why it was Sullivan who emerged from the Biden administration’s foreign policy circle to preside over the inconsequential conference in Saudi Arabia.

“Jeddah was Sullivan’s baby,” the official said. “He planned it to be Biden’s equivalent of [President Woodrow] Wilson’s Versailles. The grand alliance of the free world meeting in a victory celebration after the humiliating defeat of the hated foe to determine the shape of nations for the next generation. Fame and Glory. Promotion and re-election. The jewel in the crown was to be Zelensky’s achievement of Putin’s unconditional surrender after the lightning spring offensive. They were even planning a Nuremberg type trial at the world court, with Jake as our representative. Just one more fuck-up, but who is counting? Forty nations showed up, all but six looking for free food after the Odessa shutdown”—a reference to Putin’s curtailing of Ukrainian wheat shipments in response to Zelensky’s renewed attacks on the bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland.

Enough about Sullivan. Let us now turn to Victoria Nuland, an architect of the 2014 overthrow of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine, one of the American moves that led us to where we are, though it was Putin who initiated the horrid current war. The ultra-hawkish Nuland was promoted early this summer by Biden, over the heated objections of many in the State Department, to be the acting deputy secretary of state. She has not been formally nominated as the deputy for fear that her nomination would lead to a hellish fight in the Senate. 

It was Nuland who was sent last week to see what could be salvaged after a coup led to the overthrow of a pro-Western government in Niger, one of a group of former French colonies in West Africa that have remained in the French sphere of influence. President Mohamed Bazoum, who was democratically elected, was tossed out of office by a junta led by the head of his presidential guard, General Abdourahmane Tchiani. The general suspended the constitution and jailed potential political opponents. Five other military officers were named to his cabinet. All of this generated enormous public support on the streets in Niamey, Niger’s capital—enough support to discourage outside Western intervention.
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There were grim reports in the Western press that initially viewed the upheaval in East-West terms: some of the supporters of the coup were carrying Russian flags as they marched in the streets. The New York Times saw the coup as a blow to the main US ally in the region, Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who controls vast oil and gas reserves. Tinubu threatened the new government in Niger with military action unless they returned power to Bazoum. He set a deadline that passed without any outside intervention. The revolution in Niger was not seen by those living in the region in east-west terms but as a long needed rejection of long-standing French economic and political control. It is a scenario that may be repeated again and again throughout the French-dominated Sahel nations in sub-Saharan Africa.

​As the Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia dwindles to a screeching halt, failing to achieve its objectives, many questions are being raised about the former Soviet republic’s future.
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Will the Kiev regime concede defeat? Will Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fight Russians until the last Ukrainian? How much of the Ukrainian land will actually remain Ukraine?

The question of disputed territory is a sensitive topic. NATO military alliance officials are even floating the idea of giving up significant Ukrainian territory to end the war and usher in peace, an idea that may have been unimaginable prior to the Ukrainian counteroffensive. 

Although one can speculate back and forth about what land will become Russian and what land will stay Ukrainian, something far more sinister is happening beyond the public eye of what will happen to the territory that remains Ukraine. 

While media pundits are busy tracking the territorial losses and gains Ukraine is making, the Kiev regime is meeting with American financial firms to sell off Ukrainian land and infrastructure.

Even before Russia’s “military operation” completed its first year, Zelensky had been meeting with various American investment firms in order to “rebuild Ukraine.”

To the uninitiated, “rebuild Ukraine” sounds like a completely logical and legitimate initiative in the wake of a devastating war. However, Zelensky hasn’t been meeting with any average firm.

He has been actively preparing the ground for New York-based investment firm BlackRock to take over significant swaths of Ukrainian finances, primarily playing a leading role in advising Kiev on how to handle its post-war investments and funding.

BlackRock is a notorious “investment management” firm that has worked closely with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to hyper-privatize public assets, land, and infrastructure.

The world’s largest “asset manager”, it manages trillions of dollars in assets across the West and even acts as an advisor to European banks. Naturally, it is also involved in lobbying Western officials, essentially dictating and creating policy for its own benefit. 

However, with NATO encroaching east, it is expected that countries would surrender their public institutions even further to Western capitalists as they embrace neoliberal policies.

It is in recorded history that during Ukraine’s 2014 Maiden Coup, the United States was closely involved.

The then US Assistant Secretary of State Victory Neuland was directly on the ground supporting the fascist overthrow of the neutral Ukraine government for a pro-Western one.

Later, a leaked phone call revealed that Neuland was picking and choosing which Ukrainian officials were best to enter the new coup-installed regime.

It’s no surprise that Ukraine was headed towards a long road of privatization - supporters of the new regime even burned down a trade union building with people inside.

To this day, the victims have not seen justice as the perpetrators are free. 

Now, under the guise of war, the Kiev regime has taken significant steps to further bear the rotten fruits of the Maiden Coup. Zelensky’s wartime powers have allowed him to ban all opposition parties.

In August of 2022, Kiev ratified “Law 5371,” which strips all labor protections – impacting around 70 percent of Ukraine’s workforce. 

Many neoliberals would argue that it is necessary to maintain control of Ukraine’s exports during the war, but the law was first introduced in 2021 and could not be passed then due to trade union opposition.

Adding to it is the fact that Zelensky and his inner circle were notorious for their corrupt financial affairs.

Prior to the war, it was revealed by the Pandora Papers that Zelensky and his allies had swaths of money hidden in offshore bank accounts. This money could not be traced to them, and ignoring the fact that Zelensky’s allies were involved, local institutions would find it difficult to trace how they obtained it.

With trade union power dissolved and opposition parties out of the way, the Kiev regime moved to  auction off their state enterprises. 

It is important to note that there were multiple attempts to auction off some of the same assets prior to the 2022 military operation, to no avail.

The investment wasn’t as attractive to American capitalists because there were still many hurdles - primarily legal - that would make Ukrainian state assets an attractive investment.

With labor unions and political opposition away, foreign penetration will now not only become easy, but even competitive, and therefore profitable - not only for the American capitalists but for those who would eventually benefit from lobbying money - Zelensky and Co. 

The foreign aid given to Kiev to fend off Russians also does not come without a price. While the US sees fighting Russians as money well spent, Washington still expects an extra return on investment.

Highlighted in the National Recovery Plan are various figures that address auctioning off state investments, paying back IMF loans, and opening the country to foreign penetration.

Firms like BlackRock will play a key role in ensuring every last available asset is sold and privatized. 

Zelensky has taken Ukraine to the natural conclusion of the US-backed Maiden Coup. A once neutral country now turned into a vassal state of the US, Kiev has not only sacrificed thousands of Ukrainian men on the altar of US imperialism, it has quite literally sold the entire country to US capitalists. 

With multiple meetings between BlackRock, JP Morgan, and other investment firms to “rebuild Ukraine,” the fate of the country - no matter what it looks like after peace is reached - will be up to the ruling class of the United States.
Zelensky, instead of searching for peace, is actively acting as a salesman while thousands of his countrymen are being slaughtered on the frontlines. 

He was even quoted as saying that this situation is “the greatest opportunity in Europe since World War Two,” in reference to the incoming post-war investment.  

Very little stands in the way for Western capitalists to swoop in and hyper-privatize what is left of Ukraine post-invasion with BlackRock at the forefront advising Ukraine’s foreign investments and labor opposition completely eviscerated.

Clearly, this was the pathway for Ukraine when the 2014 coup regime announced its various intentions to fight off the labor movement. 

For the corrupt lot in Ukraine and the financial ruling class in the US, the Russian military operation provided a unique opportunity to become richer and filthier.

All it cost was the mere price of hundreds of thousands of lives lost and a country that was once sovereign to become a playground for the US financial class. 

As peace brokers devise a plan on what the new borders of Ukraine will likely look like, one thing is for certain - the new face of Ukraine within its borders will be completely made by and for Western elites.

​The African Union (AU) said on Wednesday, August 16, that it will not support the military intervention that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is planning, with the backing of France and the US, to restore ousted Mohamed Bazoum to Niger’s presidency. Bazoum was deposed in a popularly-welcomed coup on July 26.
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10 days after the expiry of the deadline given by ECOWAS to Niger’s military government to restore Bazoum, the sub-regional bloc is beset by internal disagreements and domestic opposition in its member states.

After the ECOWAS heads of states ordered on August 10 “the deployment of the ECOWAS Standby Force” and directed “the Chiefs of Defense Staffs to immediately activate” it, the chiefs were scheduled to meet on August 12 to set the wheels in motion.

However, due to “technical reasons,” the meeting was postponed, initially for an indefinite period. In the meantime, ECOWAS member Cabo Verde refused to support the military intervention, which its president Jose Maria Neves told AFP will only “make the situation worse, turning the region into an explosive zone.”

ECOWAS announced later on Tuesday that its member states’ chiefs of staffs will meet in Ghana’s capital Accra on Thursday and Friday to work out further details of the troop deployment.

Ghanaian MPs oppose deployment of its troops

Ahead of this meeting, an anti-war rally was reported on Monday, August 14, in Ghana’s city of Takoradi. Warning Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, against dragging the county into a “proxy geopolitical confrontation,” opposition MPs objected to the deployment of Ghanaian troops as a part of the ECOWAS effort.

“Military deployment will be the straw that breaks the back of the camel of “stability” in many West African countries. It could provoke mutinies, and accelerate, rather than halt, the wave of coups d’etat the region is experiencing,” the Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG) had earlier warned.

Should Akufo-Addo go on to send Ghanaian troops, the Ghana Union Movement (GUM), the country’s third largest party, will “back a very serious demonstration in the country,” its founder Christian Kwabena Andrews warned on Tuesday.

Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, MP from the largest opposition party National Democratic Congress (NDC) and a Ranking Member of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee deemed “Akufo-Addo’s refusal to submit his Niger Policy to Parliament” as “most undemocratic.” His statement added, “West African leaders who purport to be lecturing Niger on democracy must be seen leading by example at home.”

With the NDC having the same number of seats in the parliament as the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Akufo-Addo may struggle to secure parliamentary approval to deploy Ghanaian troops.

ECOWAS chairperson unable to gain support of his own country’s senate

Nigeria’s senate earlier this month refused to support President Bola Tinubu’s plan to deploy troops. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and its largest economy, amounting to about 67% of ECOWAS’ GDP. It also has the largest military in the bloc.

The killing of 23 army personnel on August 14 in an ambush by terrorists in Nigeria’s Niger state is another reminder of the pertinence of the senators’ warning that Nigeria’s military “is highly ill-equipped and not prepared to fight any war.”

Under the circumstances, they had argued, “the Federal Government should focus on solving the Boko Haram, banditry, and ESN/IPOB menaces… instead of contemplating going to war in a foreign country.”

Nevertheless, ECOWAS has persisted in threatening military intervention in Niger, even though Tinubu, who is its current chair, is unable to secure the support of his own senate for such an intervention.

Waving flags of Nigeria and Niger together, anti-war protesters, who took to the streets on Saturday in Nigeria’s Kano State on the border with Niger, sloganeered: “Nigeriens are our brothers; Nigeriens are also our family.” They denounced the plans for aggression against their northern neighbor as “a plot by Western forces.”

Senegal and Benin have committed an unspecified number of troops for the ECOWAS invasion. Joining the fray is also Sierra Leone, whose president Julius Bio is facing a crisis of domestic legitimacy after retaining power in June this year in a violent election, the credibility of whose results is widely challenged by domestic observers, the US, UK, France and the EU.
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Ivory Coast has committed 850 to 1,100 troops. “This coup d’etat is not acceptable,” maintains its president Alassane Ouattara, who came to power in 2011 with the help of a military offensive backed by US and France against the incumbent to whom Ouattara had officially lost a disputed election.

Liberia, along with Gambia — where the ECOWAS had previously intervened in 2017 — have been sitting on the fence, undecided as yet on whether or not to send troops.

ECOWAS backers, France and US, disagree

Further stultifying the bloc is the fact that strong disagreements are also surfacing between its main backers — Niger’s former colonizer France, which has up to 1,500 troops in the country, and the US, with another 1,100 troops in two bases.

Keener on military action, France is reportedly opposed to the US line of seeking further negotiations, and is unwilling to accept anything less than the reinstatement of its close ally Bazoum.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former member of France’s National Assembly and leader of France Unbowed, termed the French backing of ECOWAS’ military action as “irresponsible amateurism.” He insisted that “France must not engage in a military expedition against” the AU’s decision opposing it.

While this fractured coalition against Niger has been wavering after ordering the “deployment of the ECOWAS Standby Force,” Niger has received firm support from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea. All three were suspended and sanctioned by ECOWAS after similar popularly-supported coups, backed by anti-French mass movements.

Mali and Burkina Faso, whose popular military governments have successfully ordered the French troops out, have declared that their military forces will come to the defense of Niger, treating any attack on it as an attack also on them.

Niger’s military government consolidates domestic support

In the meantime, Niger’s military government, the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP), which ordered the French troops out soon after the coup against Bazoum, has been consolidating support domestically.

While France has refused to withdraw from Niger, arguing that it only recognizes the authority of Bazoum, thousands of Nigeriens protested outside its military base in capital Niamey last week.

On Monday, CNSP announced that Bazoum would be tried for “High Treason” for inviting foreign powers to invade Niger. The following day, Abdoulaye Seydou, leader of the M62 Movement which had been leading the protests demanding the removal of French and other foreign troops from the country, was released from prison.

Bazoum’s regime, which was cracking down on the anti-French movement, had arrested Seydou in January in what Frontline Defenders deemed to be an “arbitrary detention… directly linked to his peaceful and legitimate work in defense of human rights.”

Since the coup against Bazoum, tens of thousands have been taking part in demonstrations and rallies backing the CNSP against France and Bazoum, whom they perceive as the former colonizer’s puppet.

The statement released by the International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA) calling for the “immediate removal of foreign military bases from Niger and other African countries” was signed by organizations across the region such as Parti Comuniste de Benin, Nigerian Union of Allied Health Professionals, Socialist Movement of Ghana, Parti Communiste Révolutionaire de Côte d’Ivoire, Partido Africano para Independência de Guinee e Cabo Verde, Conféderation Libre des Travailleurs de la Mauritanie, Workers Democratic Way, The Collective of Saharawi Human Rights Defenders in Western Sahara, Communist Party of Jordan, Union of Iraqi Trade Unions, Party of Popular Socialist Coalition, Federation of Workers Councils and Unions, Tunisian Workers Party, Palestinian People Party, and the We Can Movement (Mauritania).

On July 26, 2023, Niger’s presidential guard moved against the sitting president—Mohamed Bazoum—and conducted a coup d’état. A brief contest among the various armed forces in the country ended with all the branches agreeing to the removal of Bazoum and the creation of a military junta led by Presidential Guard Commander General Abdourahamane “Omar” Tchiani. This is the fourth country in the Sahel region of Africa to have experienced a coup—the other three being Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali. The new government announced that it would stop allowing France to leech Niger’s uranium (one in three lightbulbs in France is powered by the uranium from the field in Arlit, northern Niger). Tchiani’s government revoked all military cooperation with France, which means that the 1,500 French troops will need to start packing their bags (as they did in both Burkina Faso and Mali). Meanwhile, there has been no public statement about Airbase 201, the US facility in Agadez, a thousand kilometers from the country’s capital of Niamey. This is the largest drone base in the world and key to US operations across the Sahel. US troops have been told to remain on the base for now and drone flights have been suspended. The coup is certainly against the French presence in Niger, but this anti-French sentiment has not enveloped the US military footprint in the country.

Interventions

Hours after the coup was stabilized, the main Western states—especially France and the United States--condemned the coup and asked for the reinstatement of Bazoum, who was immediately detained by the new government. But neither France nor the United States appeared to want to lead the response to the coup. Earlier this year, the French and US governments worried about an insurgency in northern Mozambique that impacted the assets of the Total-Exxon natural gas field off the coastline of Cabo Delgado. Rather than send in French and US troops, which would have polarized the population and increased anti-Western sentiment, the French and the United States made a deal for Rwanda to send its troops into Mozambique. Rwandan troops entered the northern province of Mozambique and shut down the insurgency. Both Western powers seem to favor a “Rwanda” type solution to the coup in Niger, but rather than have Rwanda enter Niger the hope was for ECOWAS—the Economic Community of West African States—to send in its force to restore Bazoum.

A day after the coup, ECOWAS condemned the coup. ECOWAS encompasses fifteen West African states, which in the past few years has suspended Burkina Faso and Mali from their ranks because of the coups in that country; Niger was also suspended from ECOWAS a few days after the coup. Formed in 1975 as an economic bloc, the grouping decided—despite no mandate in its original mission—to send in peacekeeping forces in 1990 into the heart of the Liberian Civil War. Since then, ECOWAS has sent its peacekeeping troops to several countries in the region, including Sierra Leone and Gambia. Not long after the coup in Niger, ECOWAS placed an embargo on the country that included suspending its right to basic commercial transactions with its neighbors, freezing Niger’s central bank assets that are held in regional banks, and stopping foreign aid (which comprises forty percent of Niger’s budget). The most striking statement was that ECOWAS would take “all measures necessary to restore constitutional order.” An August 6 deadline given by ECOWAS expired because the bloc could not agree to send troops across the border. ECOWAS asked for a “standby force” to be assembled and ready to invade Niger. Then, ECOWAS said it would meet on August 12 in Accra, Ghana, to go over its options. That meeting was canceled for “technical reasons.” Mass demonstrations in key ECOWAS countries—such as Nigeria and Senegal—against an ECOWAS military invasion of Niger have confounded their own politicians to support an intervention. It would be naïve to suggest that no intervention is possible. Events are moving very fast, and there is no reason to suspect that ECOWAS will not intervene before August ends.

Coups in the Sahel

When ECOWAS suggested the possibility of an intervention into Niger, the military governments in Burkina Faso and Mali said that this would be a “declaration of war” not only against Niger but also against their countries. On August 2, one of the key leaders of the Niger coup, General Salifou Mody traveled to Bamako (Mali) and Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) to discuss the situation in the region and to coordinate their response to the possibility of an ECOWAS—or Western—military intervention into Niger. Ten days later, General Moussa Salaou Barmou went to Conakry (Guinea) to seek that country’s support for Niger from the leader of the military government in that country, Mamadi Doumbouya. Suggestions have already been floated for Niger—one of the most important countries in the Sahel—to form part of the conversation of a federation that will include Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali. This would be a federation of countries that have had coups to overthrow what have been seen to be pro-Western governments that have not met the expectations of increasingly impoverished populations.

The story of the coup in Niger becomes partly the story of what the communist journalist Ruth First called “the contagion of the coup” in her remarkable book, The Barrel of the Gun: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d’états (1970). Over the course of the past thirty years, politics in the Sahel countries has seriously desiccated. Parties with a history in the national liberation movements, even the socialist movements (such as Bazoum’s party) have collapsed into being representatives of their elites, who are conduits of a Western agenda. The French-US-NATO war in Libya in 2011 allowed jihadis groups to pour out of Libya and flock into southern Algeria and into the Sahel (almost half of Mali is held by al-Qaeda-linked formations). The entry of these forces gave the local elites and the West the justification to further tighten limited trade union freedoms and to excise the left from the ranks of the established political parties. It is not as if the leaders of the mainline political parties are right-wing or center-right, but that whatever their orientation, they have no real independence from the will of Paris and Washington. They became—to use a word on the ground—“stooges” of the West.

Absent any reliable political instruments, the discarded rural and petty-bourgeois sections of the country turn to their children in the armed forces for leadership. People like Burkina Faso’s Captain Ibrahim Traoré (born 1988), who was raised in the rural province of Mouhoun, and Colonel Assimi Goïta (born 1988), who comes from the cattle market town and military redoubt of Kati, represent these broad class fractions perfectly. Their communities have been utterly left out of the hard austerity programs of the International Monetary Fund, of the theft of their resources by Western multinationals, and of the payments for Western military garrisons in the country. Discarded populations with no real political platform to speak for them, these communities have rallied behind their young men in the military. These are “Colonel’s Coups”—coups of ordinary people who have no other options—not “General’s Coups”—coups of the elites to stem the political advancement of the people. That is why the coup in Niger is being defended in mass rallies from Niamey to the small, remote towns that border Libya. When I traveled to these regions before the pandemic, it was clear that the anti-French sentiment found no channel of expression other than hope for a military coup that would bring in leaders such as Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, who had been assassinated in 1987. Captain Traoré, in fact, sports a red beret like Sankara, speaks with Sankara’s left-wing frankness, and even mimics Sankara’s diction. It would be a mistake to see these men as from the left since they are moved by anger at the failure of the elites and of Western policy. They do not come to power with a well-worked out agenda built from left political traditions.
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The Niger military leaders have formed a twenty-one-person cabinet headed by Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine, a civilian who had been a finance minister in a previous government and worked at the African Development Bank in Chad. Military leaders are prominent in the cabinet. Whether the appointment of this civilian-led cabinet will divide the ranks of ECOWAS is to be seen. Certainly, Western imperialist forces—notably the United States with troops on the ground in Niger—would not like to see this torque of coups remain in place. Europe—through French leadership—had shifted the borders of their continent from north of the Mediterranean Sea to south of the Sahara Desert, suborning the Sahel states into a project known as G-5 Sahel. Now with anti-French governments in three of these states (Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger) and with the possibility of trouble in the two remaining states (Chad and Mauritania), Europe will have to retreat to its coastline. Sanctions to deplete the mass support of the new governments will increase, and the possibility of military intervention will hang over the region like a famished vulture.

The war on Syria has vanished from the collective West ethos. Yet it’s far from finished. Multitudes across the Global Majority may feel the deepest empathy towards Syrians while acknowledging not much can be done while the Western Minority refuses to leave the stage.

In parallel, there are slim chances the New Development Bank (NDB) – the BRICS bank – will start showering Damascus with loans for Syria’s reconstruction. At least not yet, despite all the pledges by Russians and Chinese to help.

Under the lame excuse of “degrading the position for ISIS,” the US State Department de facto admits that the Empire’s illegal occupation of a third of Syria – the part rich in oil and minerals currently being stolen/smuggled – will persist, indefinitely.

Cue to virtually non-stop oil looting in northeastern Hasakah province, as in processions of dozens of oil tankers crossing to northern Iraq via the al-Waleed or al-Mahmoudiya border crossing, usually escorted by US-backed Kurdish separatist militias.

As if any reminding was needed, the Global Majority is fully aware ISIS is essentially an American black op, a spin-off of al-Qaeda in Iraq, born in camps at the Iraq-Kuwaiti border. The Syrian “Democratic” Forces (SDF) is hardly a democratic US proxy, predictably assembled as a “coalition” of ethnic militias, mostly run by Kurds but also incorporating a few Arab tribesmen, Turkmen, and Salafi-jihadi Chechens.

As if the non-stop looting of oil was not enough, the Pentagon keeps dispatching truckloads of ammo and logistical equipment to Hasakah.

Convoys run back and forth to illegal US military bases in the Hasakah countryside, with particular relevance to a base at the al-Jibsah oilfields near the town of al-Shaddadi.

Recently, 39 US military tankers crossed the – illegal – al-Mahmoudiya border towards Iraqi Kurdistan loaded with stolen Syrian oil.

Despite these crude facts, Russia remains excessively diplomatic on the issue. Mikhail Bogdanov, Putin’s special representative for the Middle East and Africa, recently told al-Arabiya, “Washington uses the pretext of combating terrorism to be present east of the Euphrates in economically important areas, where crude oil and strategic natural reserves are abundant.”

He highlighted US troops deployed at al-Tanf in southern Syria and American “support” for the SDF in northern Syria. Yet that’s not exactly a ground-breaking reveal that would light a fire under the Americans.

We steal your oil because we can 

According to Damascus, Syria’s energy sector as a whole was robbed by an astonishing $107 billion between 2011 and 2022 by a toxic mix of US occupation, “coalition” bombing, and theft or looting by terrorist and separatist gangs.

There are no less than a dozen US military bases in Syria – some bigger than the proverbial lily pads (less than 10 acres, valued at less than $10 million), all of them de facto illegal and certainly not recognized by Damascus. The fact that 90 percent of Syria’s oil and gas is concentrated east of the Euphrates in areas controlled by the US and its Kurdish proxies makes Empire’s job much easier.

The de facto occupation hits not only energy-rich areas but also some of Syria’s most fertile agricultural lands. The net result has been to turn Syria into a net importer of energy and food. Iranian tankers routinely face Israeli sabotage as they ship much-needed oil to Syria’s eastern Mediterranean coast.

Complaining does not register a whit with the Hegemon. Earlier this year, the Chinese foreign ministry urged the Empire of Plunder to give Syrians and the “international community” a full account of the oil theft.

This was in connection to a convoy of 53 tankers transporting stolen Syrian oil to US military bases in Iraqi Kurdistan in early 2023.

At the time, Damascus had already revealed that more than 80 percent of Syria’s daily oil production was stolen and smuggled by the Americans and its proxy “democratic” forces – only in the first half of 2022.

Syria’s permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh, has repeatedly denounced how the Empire of Plunder’s “theft of resources, oil, gas, and wheat” has plunged millions of Syrians into a state of insecurity, reducing a large part of its population to the status of displaced persons, refugees and victims of food insecurity.
The prospects for Syrian reconstruction are slim without expelling the western marauders. That will have to happen via detailed, concerted cooperation between Russian forces, the Syrian Arab Army, and the IRGC’s Quds Force units.

By itself, Damascus can’t pull it off. The Iranians constantly attack the Americans, via their militias, but results are marginal. To force the Empire out, there’s no other way apart from making the human cost of stealing Syrian oil unbearable. That’s the only message the US understands.

Then there’s the Sultan in Ankara. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is going all out to imprint the notion that relations with Moscow are always developing, and that he hopes to have his counterpart Vladimir Putin visit Turkiye in August. That’s not likely.

When it comes to Syria, Erdogan is mum. The Russian Air Force, meanwhile, keeps up the pressure on Ankara, bombing its proxy Salafi-jihadist terror gangs in Idlib, but not as heavily as it did between 2015 and 2020.

Palmyra reborn 

Countering so much doom and gloom, something nearly magical happened on July 23. Six years after the liberation of Palmyra – the legendary Silk Road oasis – and overcoming all sorts of bureaucratic hassles, the restoration of this pearl in the desert has finally started.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova found a way to celebrate the moment in a fitting comparison with Ukraine:

“To fight with monuments and fallen Soviet fighters, the Ukrofascists are the best. It is useless to appeal to the conscience or historical memory of the current Kiev regime – there are none. After the goals of the special military operation are achieved, all destroyed monuments in Ukraine will be restored. In Russia, there are specialists in post-war restoration. An example of their selfless work and professionalism is the restoration of Palmyra in Syria.”

Russian specialists unearthed and reset the ancient source of Efka, which used to irrigate the gardens of Palmyra since the Bronze Age.

They also managed to find the Roman aqueduct that once fed Palmyra with potable water, 12 km away from the city. The Romans had dug a tunnel of nearly human size, then covered it in stone, and the ensemble was buried. It was found nearly intact.

In the 20th century, when the French built the Meridien Hotel in Palmyra, they blocked the aqueduct, so there was no water flowing by. Russian archeologists quickly set to work, and the aqueduct was cleaned. The problem is the French ruined this source of potable water: The aqueduct is totally dried up.

Plans for Palmyra include the restoration of the legendary theater before the end of 2023. The restoration of the arch, blown up with dynamite by ISIS, will take two years. The 1st century AD temple of Bel and other historical infrastructure will be restored. Archeologists are already looking for financial sources.

Somebody should place a call to the NDB in Shanghai.

Of course, the restoration of Syria as a whole is an enormous challenge. It could start by making it easy for Syrian companies and abolishing domestic taxes.

Russia and China can help by setting up a structure to buy Syrian products, with uniform quality control, and sell them in their markets, alleviating the bureaucratic burden on the shoulders of the average Syrian worker and trader. Russians could also exchange Syrian products for wheat and agricultural machinery.

Solutions are possible. Restoration is at hand. Global Majority solidarity, in Syria, should be able to soundly defeat the Empire of Chaos, Plunder and Lies.

Tuesday, August 15, marks China's first National Ecology Day. On August 15, 2005, 18 years ago, Xi Jinping, then Secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), first put forward the concept that green mountains are themselves gold mountains, when he visited Yucun, a village in Zhejiang Province.

At a national conference on ecological and environmental protection in July 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China should support high-quality development with a high-quality ecological environment and promote the modernization featuring the harmonious co-existence between human and nature. 

Over the past decades, China has made extraordinary progress, emerging as a world leader in renewable energy, electric vehicles, green public transport and biodiversity protection.

A BBC News article of June 29 noted that, of the half a trillion US dollars spent worldwide on wind and solar last year, China accounted for 55 percent. China's solar capacity is now greater than that of the rest of the world combined. Indeed, it can reasonably be considered as the first "renewable energy superpower."

Around 99 percent of the world's electric buses are in China, along with 70 percent of the world's high-speed rail. China is carrying out the largest reforestation project in the world, with forest coverage having doubled from 12 percent in 1980 to 24 percent last year.

And China's commitment to green development is only deepening. Environmental sustainability is a central theme at all levels of government, and the nation's ambitious goals to achieve peak carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 are actively informing China's economic strategy.

A detailed report by the San Francisco-based NGO Global Energy Monitor found that China's green energy targets for 2030 are likely to be reached in 2025. As the British environmentalist Mike Berners Lee wrote: "More than in most countries, if a policy idea is seen as a good thing, the Chinese can bring it about." This is of course a reflection of China's socialist system, which is structured in such a way that political and economic priorities are determined not by capital's drive for constant expansion but by the needs and aspirations of the people. 

China's sustained investment in renewable energy has meant a global reduction in costs, such that in much of the world, solar and wind power are increasingly price-competitive with fossil fuels. According to the International Energy Agency, China's huge investment in green energy has "contributed to a cost decline more than 80 percent, helping solar PV to become the most affordable electricity generation technology in many parts of the world."

China's construction of an ecological civilization constitutes a profound contribution to humanity. 

One might expect Western countries to be appreciative of China's role. It is precisely these countries that should really be taking the lead on sustainable development; after all, they are responsible for the bulk of historic emissions, and continue to top the charts when it comes to per-capita emissions. The New York Times reported in 2021 that "23 rich, developed countries are responsible for half of all historical CO2 emissions," with the US alone accounting for just under 25 percent, in spite of its representing just 4 percent of the global population.

The principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities, agreed at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, makes it clear that rich, industrialised countries should be blazing a trail on preventing climate breakdown, and should be supporting developing countries to adopt an environmentally-friendly development model.

The unfortunate reality is that these rich countries have made barely any progress on tackling climate change. Inasmuch as they have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions, it has been achieved largely through exporting their industry to manufacturing powerhouses in the developing world, principally China.

Meanwhile, the US' accelerating drive to preserve its hegemony at all costs is causing major setbacks to humanity's shared project of maintaining a planet fit for human habitation.

As part of its proxy war on Russia, the Biden administration has been heavily promoting sanctions on Russian gas and pushing Europe toward reducing its reliance on Russian energy long term. The results of this include a huge increase in US exports of fracked shale gas to Europe; a rise in coal consumption in Europe; and ramped up oil drilling in the North Sea.

This year alone, the US government has approved the enormous Willow oil drilling project on Alaska's North Slope - "a huge climate threat" which is "inconsistent with this administration's promises to take on the climate crisis," according to Jeremy Lieb of the environmental law group Earthjustice. The Biden administration also announced in May that it would sell off more than 73 million acres of waters in the Gulf of Mexico for purposes of offshore oil and gas drilling, thereby locking in fossil fuel development in the region for decades to come.

Germany, for decades a poster child of the renewable energy movement, has started reopening its coal mines. Its coal use is up, corresponding to a decrease in natural gas imported from Russia.

The British government is majorly backtracking on its climate commitments. Just a few days ago, with the world experiencing unprecedented temperatures - along with wildfires and floods - Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to "max out" the country's oil and gas reserves, revealing plans for a new round of North Sea drilling.

The West should be cooperating with China on tackling the climate crisis - developing integrated supply chains, transmission capacity, biodiversity protection systems and more. What the US and its allies do instead is to impose blanket sanctions on China - on the basis of disgusting, absurd and false slanders about human rights abuses in Xinjiang - in a bid to cripple China's solar energy industry. It seems the slogan "better dead than red" lives on in the 21st century.

The governments of the Global South on the other hand, lacking the monstrous motivations of the new cold war, are enthusiastically cooperating with China and benefitting from its experience, support and investment. Prominent Tsinghua University economist Hu Angang writes that China's model can "provide southern countries with a new path leading to ecological civilization and development - the green development path."

Chinese financing for renewable power generation overseas has increased exponentially in the last decade, and now accounts for the large majority of Chinese-financed overseas power generation capacity. China is involved in huge renewable energy projects throughout Africa and Latin America.

Meanwhile, an important set of guidelines has been issued for greening the Belt and Road Initiative, identifying key steps to reduce emissions, reduce pollution and protect biodiversity in China-financed infrastructure projects worldwide.

The countries of the Global South are joining hands to build a greener future, while the West pushes repeatedly on the self-destruct button. Environmentalists in the West should draw the appropriate lessons, resolutely reject anti-China hysteria, oppose decoupling, oppose the new cold war, and promote maximum global cooperation to save the planet.
​

Right-wing politicians in Argentina want to adopt the US dollar as the national currency to fight inflation. Development economist Ha-Joon Chang said this is “insane”, warning dollarization would make the Latin American nation a “colony”.

Argentina is suffering from high rates of inflation, largely due to odious debt owed in US dollars to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Western vulture funds.
​
The South American nation sometimes suffers from a current account deficit, and relies heavily on imports of oil, technology, and medical equipment. Low revenue from its mostly agricultural exports means that Argentina faces a chronic shortage of foreign currency – and most of the dollars it gets end up flowing out of the country to paying interest on the unsustainable external debt, draining the country’s foreign-exchange reserves and making it difficult to stabilize the national currency, the peso.

National elections are approaching in October, and among the presidential hopefuls is far-right politician Javier Milei.

Milei describes himself as a “libertarian” and is running on an extreme neoliberal platform, pledging to slash all social spending, privatize the health system, sell off state companies, remove all currency controls, and abolish the central bank – while simultaneously militarizing the country, giving police more authority to arrest “criminals”, and building private prisons.

Despite his “libertarian” pretenses, Milei vowed to make abortion illegal as well, promising to take Argentina “back to being the thriving country that we were at the start of year 1900”.

Milei’s proposed solution to end inflation is for Argentina to abandon its monetary sovereignty, drop the peso, and adopt the US dollar as the country’s official currency.

His call for dollarization has been echoed by fanatical Austrian School economists like former Ronald Reagan advisor Steve Hanke, who is publicly supporting Milei and tweeted, “It’s time to dump the pathetic PESO and DOLLARIZE NOW“.

Prominent South Korean development economist Ha-Joon Chang has shot back, denouncing this as “the worst idea” and “insane”.

Chang warned that dollarization would turn Argentina into a US “colony”.

In an interview during a visit to Argentina this May, first reported on by Nick Corbishley at Naked Capitalism, Chang explained:

If you want to adopt the dollar as your official currency, you should apply to become a colony of the United States of America, because that’s what it makes you. Because this means that your macroeconomic policies will be written in Washington, DC.

Now, in a big country like the United States, actually, when the macroeconomic policies are made in Washington DC, there will be states elsewhere in the US that suffer, because the federal government might be tightening the economy, because in general there is inflation, but then in some regions there might already be recession, and then they’ll be in big trouble.

So the fact [that it is] a single country, what you do is you make transfers to these regions suffering from recession. And, most importantly, people in those regions in economic recession can move elsewhere, to take up jobs in the areas that are doing well.

A fiscal union and labor market integration are the necessary conditions for this to make the currency union viable.

And the reason why the Eurozone had such crisis was because they didn’t do this enough. The labor market is integrated, but there’s a language barrier; so it’s not perfect. There is no fiscal union, so they cannot make a transfer to the poor regions. So this is why they had such trouble.

Now, Argentina unilaterally accepting the US dollar as a currency is insane, because you don’t have labor market integration; you don’t have fiscal transfers.

It’s not as if the [North] Americans are going to say, ‘Oh you cute guys in Argentina, now that you want to use the dollar as your currency, we will accept more immigrants from you; we’ll give you some money’. No.
This is the worst idea.

While Latin America’s left wants to de-dollarize, the region’s right dollarizes

While Argentine right-wingers are calling for dollarization, the left across Latin America – and in many other parts of the Global South – are advocating for de-dollarization.

The government of Brazil’s President Lula da Silva has initiated research to develop a currency for trade within the region, which will tentatively be called the Sur.

This issue is clearly important for Lula, because he used his first foreign trip after returning to the presidency in January, a visit to Argentina for the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), to publicly announce the plans to develop the pan-Latin American currency.

Argentine’s current, center-left government has joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative and signed several economic agreements with Beijing, including currency swap lines between the countries’ central banks, seeking to replace the dollar with the renminbi in their bilateral trade.

Argentina, which has the third-largest economy in Latin America, has also formally applied to join the BRICS bloc, joining its neighbor Brazil, which has the biggest economy in the region.

There are two countries in Latin America that already use the dollar as their national currency: El Salvador and Ecuador.

El Salvador dollarized starting at the end of 2000, under the conservative government of President Francisco Flores, from the far-right, staunchly pro-US ARENA party.

Flores was notorious for his extreme corruption, and when he died in 2016, he was under house arrest for stealing millions of dollars that were donated by Taiwan, in what was effectively a bribe to maintain diplomatic recognition. (El Salvador formally recognized the People’s Republic of China in 2018, under leftist President Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the socialist FMLN party.)

Ecuador’s right-wing government surrendered its monetary sovereignty and adopted the dollar in 1999, in response to a banking crisis that devalued the national currency.

The economic minister who oversaw that dollarization was Ecuador’s current right-wing president, Guillermo Lasso.

Steve Hanke, the ultra-neoliberal Austrian School economist who is calling for Argentina to dollarize and publicly supporting far-right politician Javier Milei, took credit for Ecuador’s lack of monetary sovereignty, boasting on Twitter: “The only thing stable & reliable in Ecuador is its money: the USD. With an assist from yours truly, Ecuador dollarized in 2000”.

In May 2023, Lasso dissolved Ecuador’s unicameral parliament – the National Assembly, in which the opposition had a majority – and essentially declared himself a dictator.

He is now ruling by decree, and ramming through extreme neoliberal policies.

Lasso plans to impose laws that will cut wages, make new employees work for five months without benefits, and even force workers to pay back their employers a month of their salary if they are unilaterally fired (while making it significantly easier for companies to fire their employees).

The US government has strongly supported Lasso as he has dissolved parliament and declared a de facto dictatorship.

Author

Ben Norton is an investigative journalist and analyst. He is the founder and editor of Geopolitical Economy Report, and is based in Latin America. (Publicaciones en español aquí.) 

Republished from Geopolitical Economy Report.

​With the public support for a national single payer system remaining strong and the need greater than ever, why is the movement stalled? What are the key sources of our power? Who are our allies? What can we do and how do we focus our energies to build the power necessary to end profiteering and make health care free at the point of service?

More than a decade after the misnamed Affordable Care Act, (ACA) we still have tens of millions without any coverage while millions more are saddled with high deductible, narrow network “junk health insurance” plans. The pandemic exposed the USA’s bankrupt for-profit privatized “healthcare system.” The industry and bipartisan political response continues to prioritize profits over public health, resulting in more than a million deaths – including hundreds of thousands who died due to the lack of basic health care. Rather than expose this system of corporatized healthcare fiefdoms and push for national single payer, both Democrats and Republicans continue to support billions in tax subsidies to prop up the alleged “market based” plans that would collapse without them.

A Society in Crisis

This healthcare catastrophe is but one part of the systemic social, economic, and political crises now unfolding in the USA. Clarity is required. Root causes must be identified, and we must unite around real solutions.

Income inequality is rising, almost fifty-eight percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, medical debt is the largest form of consumer debt, plaguing nearly two-in-ten, of which 60% are covered with health insurance. Student and credit card debts are literally killing the working class. Poverty is now the fourth leading cause of death. As Biden, Democrats, and Republicans united to cut 15 million poor from Medicaid health benefits and millions more from Food Stamps (including new “work requirements” added for those aged 50-54 in the “debt ceiling” deal), liberals, labor, and NGOs remained silent.

Despite the fact that traditional Medicare was created because insurance companies could not make enough profit covering seniors, the decades-long privatization of traditional Medicare continues under Biden as with Trump and all previous Presidents and Congresses. The ACA has even immortalized a Fraud and Abuse Waiver that voids prosecution and literally encourages corporations and private equity to privatize Medicare under the guise of “innovation.” It has no Congressional oversight.

The USA has the highest maternal and infant mortality rate among any other high income countries despite spending the most on health care. Lifespans are down, food pantries are overwhelmed. Corporate profits from the world’s top 722 companies were more than 1 billion in 2021 and 2022, 89% higher than their average over the previous four years. While profits are sky high, real wages remain stagnant and homelessness is growing, but there is always billions and billions of dollars for war. And all these crises have a much greater impact on the poor, minorities, women, seniors and children.

Weak Ineffective Insider Strategy is Not The Solution

As Ralph Nader recently stated, many have succumbed to “the satiety of exposing and denouncing, without moving to action.” Is describing the evils of privatization, war spending and corporate profiteering enough? There is a need for new and bold initiatives exposing not just the “bad actors” and their enablers, but the wholesale corporate takeover of America as the source of our dilemma.

Instead of organizing a real fight, we have the siren song of incrementalism pushed by the Democrat Party and aligned nonprofit groups who are now openly discouraging the fight for national single payer because the ”political climate” is just not right.

It undermines, demoralizes, and weakens the movement’s principles and makes it incapable of providing the necessary practical and bold program the country needs and wants. It reduces the fight for healthcare as a human right to the whims of opportunistic politicians and political horse trading. It shows a total lack of confidence in the necessary strategy of winning people over to support single payer when the “political climate” of public opinion is in fact receptive to our message. As if the corporate monster and their political enablers are receptive to piecemeal legislation when every social and labor gain won through mass struggle in the USA is now under attack. We must have the courage and endurance to understand and fight back.

Inside the unions, the top leaders are following a similar Democrat Party line that falsely merges labor and the public interest with corporatism. Going backwards from over 600 union endorsements for John Conyers’s HR 676 more than a decade ago, labor leaders

parrot the corporate line of privatization which includes selling tax-subsidized for-profit Medicare Advantageplans and ignoring the ongoing privatization of traditional Medicare. Rather than raising the demand to take healthcare “off the table,” they continue the approach that pigeonholes each union into making health coverage an individual “bargaining item,” extracted at the expense of improved wages and working conditions. This strategy has already proven it can not lower costs or provide secure benefits to union members, retirees or the public.

Similarly, many Democrat and labor operatives attribute the privatization of traditional Medicare to Republicans and Donald Trump – when in fact the program has been under constant attack by corporate interests supported by both parties since its inception. Trump picked up and used the program created by the Affordable Care Act under Obama to accelerate the corporatization of Medicare which Biden continues. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation was originally given a ten year billion dollar budget to privatize under the guise of innovation.

Not surprisingly, the AFL-CIO refuses to issue any statement against Medicare privatization since they too are selling the “product.”

How Can We Make A Difference?

National Single Payer welcomes and encourages a vigorous debate to help shift the direction of our struggle to create a nonpartisan independent popular movement, connecting healthcare to the broader issues of inequality.
We need labor unions that will initiate rank and file and public education programs that explain and expose the for profit healthcare system and how national single payer can change people’s lives for the better.

In the late 1990’s the local Central Labor Council in Pennsylvania where I was President held a public Town Hall on the threat of Social Security privatization. Hundreds attended, including union members and the public. Many remarked that you could see and feel the untapped potential to change the political discourse if hundreds of similar town halls were organized by labor in conjunction with allies. A good example of the kind of independent politics that is both possible and incredibly necessary today.

Let’s use this understanding to reach out and explain, build relationships with everyday people and the organizations they are involved in to help push them into action. We need to garner popular support by encouraging grassroots organizing activities like town halls, rallies, teach-ins, voter referendums, petition drives, mass meetings with public officials that encourage citizen involvement and the building of coalitions of like minded people. Do we have the clarity to understand the necessity of a peoples solution as the only way out?

​For centuries, Africa has been subject to hyper-exploitation by the colonial West. From the plunder of resources, the facilitation of multiple waves of the slave trade, and the outright genocide -- the cruel subjugation of the continent and its resources has known no bounds. 
​
To this day, African countries are subjected to exploitation. France imposes a colonial-era tax that ensures Africans live subsistence-level lives while ensnaring state enterprises with predatory loans.

The United States also joins in, using the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to destroy the public sector, privatizing them for the gain of American capitalists.

Any steps to deviate outside of these instruments are met with unilateral and ruthless sanctions.

Interestingly, the citizens of colonial countries that benefit most from the plunder of Africa are taught that Africa is poor. That if it were not for the West, Africa would still be centuries behind in the past.

However, nothing could be further from the truth.

Colonial countries do not ransack “poor” countries. They do not spend billions of dollars per year to maintain military bases and outposts in “poor” countries. They do not create economic structures of exploitation to keep countries in check if there is no value to exploit.

The fact of the matter is that Africa is rich and powerful. And the West knows this - which is why it is intent on keeping the continent subjugated. It is no surprise then that African nations have been looking eastward for sustainable partnerships, rather than doubling down with the predatory West. 

In July alone, African nations have taken a step forward towards development - all while rejecting the apparatuses and rhetoric of the West, particularly the widely condemned US sanctions regime.

Meetings with China, Iran, and Russia highlight a much-needed focus toward African autonomy - something the West has invested billions of dollars to prevent.

July started halfway through the third China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo, which focused on the theme of “Common Development for a Shared Future." Central to the meeting is the Chinese Belt-and-Road initiative, which 52 out of the 54 African countries have signed onto.

Over the last decade, Chinese projects have exceeded $700 billion in Africa. Projects include power facilities, roads, and railways, which are created and facilitated by local leadership.

Critics and officials in the West decry this as “Chinese imperialism.” But this is a smokescreen for their pure hypocrisy - all one needs to do is take a look at the developments and who they benefit.

When the West subjugated Africa, they built railroads that lead from natural resources like rubber and iron to ports meant for Europe. These railways did not benefit the African people, as they were meant to make plundering easier and smoother. 

However, the Belt and Road initiative is interlinking African countries to ease transport and facilitate trade between African countries, all while connecting them with Asia and Europe for global trade facilitation.

This allows for independent trade endeavors without the approval and predatory benefit of colonial Western nations.

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raeisi also embarked on a tour of Uganda, Kenya, and Zimbabwe earlier this month, signing a series of agreements with the three African countries.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has made notable steps towards its economic growth this year while dodging illegal sanctions of Western countries at the behest of the United States.

It should come as no shock that African nations would want to expand ties with a country that has navigated through illegal sanctions while continuing to grow and prosper. 

Prior to the visit, trade between Iran and African countries, in general, remained somewhat stagnant. Now, trade is expected to increase to the tune of nearly 10 billion dollars over the next three years.

All without the predatory loopholes and schemes that would come with Western governments. 

Iran’s cooperation with the African nations seeks to improve economic trade but also empower Africa with new technologies - such as drones for agricultural purposes - to help counter the economic pressure mechanisms of the West. 

 “With Africa's assistance, we should prevent the US and certain states that still have a colonial mindset from utilizing the deadly tool of sanctions against nations,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said following the hugely successful three-nation tour.

Russian leadership also met with African leaders this month as Russian President Vladimir Putin invited six African nations to Moscow for a Russia-Africa Summit.

Putin pledged “joint determination to counter neocolonialism, the practice of applying illegitimate sanctions” before promising the delivery of grain to the countries and writing off billions in debt. 

Burkina Faso President Ibrahaim Traore, who has boosted relations with Russia, condemned Western exploitation at the summit, saying African leaders “shouldn’t behave like puppets in the hands of imperialism. We must ensure that our countries are self-sufficient, including food supplies...”

“Self-sufficient” holds the key. The “development projects” of the West have long kept African nations ensnared. When African nations would not bend to the political demands of the United States, for example, they were slapped with sanctions that would destroy their economies.

Eritrea President Isaias Afwerki would agree. At the summit, he denounced the US-led sanctions that Eritrea has struggled against.

“They are not manufacturing anything at all, it's printing money. This has been one of their weapons globally - the monetary system... sanctions here, sanctions there... We need a new financial architecture globally,” Afwerki was quoted as saying.

The new shifts from African countries won’t come without its challenges. Countries seeking independence from neocolonial structures can expect the usual assortment of tricks from the West - coup attempts, “uprisings” engineered by foreign adversaries, and sabotage.

African nations must be prepared. Investment into security and intelligence will be much needed, and perhaps even just as important - trustworthy allies.

When push comes to shove, solidarity and cooperation among nations not seeking to exploit situations will be necessary. This is precisely why the West has sought to keep African nations isolated, engineering conflicts to keep African nations atomized. 

The recent partnerships between Africa and the East are foundational to a new, global economic system that is not dominated by the dollar. Mutual benefit and respect for independence is paving the way for the destruction of the “rules-based order” which is designed to only benefit American capitalists.

Late Burkina Faso leader Thomas Sankara, who was murdered by French-backed militants, said it best: “Imperialism is a system of exploitation that occurs not only in the brutal form of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms, as loans, food aid, and blackmail. We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on Earth to rule all of humanity.”

​Author​

Shabbir Rizvi Political analyst that specializes in US foreign and domestic policy, geopolitics, and military science; Anti-war organizer.

Originally published in Press TV.

De-dollarization is apparently here, “like it or not,” as a May 2023 video by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a peace-oriented think tank based in Washington, D.C., states. Quincy is not alone in discussing de-dollarization: political economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson outlined its mechanics across four shows between February and April 2023 in their fortnightly YouTube program, “Geopolitical Economy Hour.” Economist Richard Wolff provided a nine-minute explanation on this topic on the Democracy at Work channel. On the other side, media outlets like Business Insider have assured readers that dollar dominance isn’t going anywhere. Journalist Ben Norton reported on a two-hour, bipartisan Congressional hearing that took place on June 7—“Dollar Dominance: Preserving the U.S. Dollar’s Status as the Global Reserve Currency”—about defending the U.S. currency from de-dollarization. During the hearing, Congress members expressed both optimism and anxiety about the future of the dollar’s supreme role. But what has prompted this debate?
​
Until recently, the global economy accepted the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency and the currency of international transactions. The central banks of Europe and Asia had an insatiable appetite for dollar-denominated U.S. Treasury securities, which in turn bestowed on Washington the ability to spend money and finance its debt at will. Should any country step out of line politically or militarily, Washington could sanction it, excluding it from the rest of the world’s dollar-denominated system of global trade.

But for how long? After a summit meeting in March between Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping, Putin stated, “We are in favor of using the Chinese yuan for settlements between Russia and the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.” Putting that statement in perspective, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria said, “The world’s second-largest economy and its largest energy exporter are together actively trying to dent the dollar’s dominance as the anchor of the international financial system.” Already, Zakaria noted, Russia and China are holding less of their central bank reserves in dollars and settling most of their trade in yuan, while other countries sanctioned by the United States are turning to “barter trade” to avoid dependence on the dollar.

A new global monetary system, or at least one in which there is no near-universal reserve currency, would amount to a reshuffling of political, economic, and military power: a geopolitical reordering not seen since the end of the Cold War or even World War II. But as a look at its origins and evolution makes clear, the notion of a standard global system of exchange is relatively recent and no hard-and-fast rules dictate how one is to be organized. Let’s take a brief tour through the tumultuous monetary history of global trade and then consider the factors that could trigger another stage in its evolution.

Imperial Commodity Money

Before the dollarization of the world economy took place, the international system had a gold standard anchored by the naval supremacy of the British Empire. But a currency system backed by gold, a mined commodity, had an inherent flaw: deflation. As long as metal mining could keep up with the pace of economic growth, the gold standard could work. But, as Karl Polanyi noted in his 1944 book, The Great Transformation, “the amount of gold available may [only] be increased by a few percent over a year… not by as many dozen within a few weeks, as might be required to carry a sudden expansion of transactions. In the absence of token money, business would have to be either curtailed or carried on at very much lower prices, thus inducing a slump and creating unemployment.”

This deflationary spiral, borne by everyone in the economy, was what former U.S. presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan described in his famous 1896 Democratic Party convention speech, in which he declared, “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” For the truly wealthy, of course, the gold standard was a good thing, since it protected their assets from inflation.

The alternative to the “cross of gold” was for governments to ensure that sufficient currency circulated to keep business going. For this purpose, they could produce, instead of commodity money of gold or silver, token or “fiat” money: paper currency issued at will by the state treasury. The trouble with token money, however, was that it could not circulate on foreign soil. How, then, in a global economy, would it be possible to conduct foreign trade in commodity money and domestic business in token money?

The Spanish and Portuguese empires had one solution to keep the flow of metals going: to commit genocide against the civilizations of the Americas, steal their gold and silver, and force the Indigenous peoples to work themselves to death in the mines. The Dutch and then British empires got their hands on the same gold using a number of mechanisms, including the monopolization of the slave trade through the Assiento of 1713 and the theft of Indigenous lands in the United States and Canada. Stolen silver was used to purchase valuable trade goods in China. Britain stole that silver back from China after the Opium Wars, which China had to pay immense indemnities (in silver) for losing.

Once established as the global imperial manager, the British Empire insisted on the gold standard while putting India on a silver standard. In his 2022 PhD thesis, political economist Jayanth Jose Tharappel called this scheme “bimetallic apartheid”: Britain used the silver standard to acquire Indian commodities and the gold standard to trade with European countries. India was then used as a money pump for British control of the global economy, squeezed as needed: India ran a trade surplus with the rest of the world but was meanwhile in a trade deficit with Britain, which charged its colony “Home Charges” for the privilege of being looted. Britain also collected taxes and customs revenues in its colonies and semi-colonies, simply seizing commodity money and goods, which it resold at a profit, often to the point of famine and beyond—leading to tens of millions of deaths. The system of Council Bills was another clever scheme: paper money was sold by the British Crown to merchants for gold and silver. Those merchants used the Council Bills to purchase Indian goods for resale. The Indians who ended up with the Council Bills would cash them in and get rupees (their own tax revenues) back. The upshot of all this activity was that the Britain drained $45 trillion from India between 1765 and 1938, according to research by economist Utsa Patnaik.

From Gold to Gold-Backed Currency to the Floating Dollar

As the 19th century wore on, an indirect result of Britain’s highly profitable management of its colonies—and particularly its too-easy dumping of its exports into their markets—was that it fell behind in advanced manufacturing and technology to Germany and the United States: countries into which it had poured investment wealth drained from India and China. Germany’s superior industrial prowess and Russia’s departure from Britain’s side after the Bolshevik Revolution left the British facing a possible loss to Germany in World War I, despite Britain drawing more than 1 million people from the Indian subcontinent to serve (more than 2 million Indians would serve Britain in WWII) during the war. American financiers loaned Britain so much money that if it had lost WWI, U.S. banks would have realized an immense loss. When the war was over, to Britain’s surprise, the United States insisted on being paid back. Britain squeezed Germany for reparations to repay the U.S. loans, and the world financial system broke down into “competitive devaluations, tariff wars, and international autarchy,” as Michael Hudson relates in his 1972 book, Super imperialism, setting the stage for World War II.

After that war, Washington insisted on an end to the sterling zone; the United States would no longer allow Britain to use India as its own private money pump. But John Maynard Keynes, who had written Indian Currency and Finance (1913), The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), and the General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), believed he had found a new and better way to supply the commodity money needed for foreign trade and the token money required for domestic business, without crucifying anyone on a cross of gold.

At the international economic conference in 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, Keynes proposed an international bank with a new reserve currency, the bancor, that would be used to settle trade imbalances between countries. If Mexico needed to sell oil and purchase automobiles from Germany, for instance, the two countries could carry out trade in bancors. If Mexico found itself owing more bancors than it held, or Germany had a growing surplus of them, an International Clearing Union would apply pressure to both sides: currency depreciation for debtors, but also currency appreciation and punitive interest payments for creditors. Meanwhile, the central banks of both debtor and creditor nations could follow Keynes’s domestic advice and use their powers of money creation to stimulate the domestic economy as needed, within the limits of domestically available resources and labor power.

Keynes made his proposal, but the United States had a different plan. Instead of the bancor, the dollar, backed by gold held at Fort Knox, would be the new reserve currency and the medium of world trade. Having emerged from the war with its economy intact and most of the world’s gold, the United States led the Western war on communism in all its forms using weapons ranging from coups and assassinations to development aid and finance. On the economic side, U.S. tools included reconstruction lending to Europe, development loans to the Global South, and balance of payments loans to countries in trouble (the infamous International Monetary Fund (IMF) “rescue packages”). Unlike Keynes’s proposed International Clearing Union, the IMF imposed all the penalties on the debtors and gave all the rewards to the creditors.

The dollar’s unique position gave the United States what a French minister of finance called an “exorbitant privilege.” While every other country needed to export something to obtain dollars to purchase imports, the United States could simply issue currency and proceed to go shopping for the world’s assets. Gold backing remained, but the cost of world domination became considerable even for Washington during the Vietnam War. Starting in 1965, France, followed by others, began to hold the United States at its word and exchanged U.S. dollars for U.S. gold, persisting until Washington canceled gold backing and the dollar began to float free in 1971.

The Floating Dollar and the Petrodollar

The cancellation of gold backing for the currency of international trade was possible because of the United States’ exceptional position in the world as the supreme military power: it possessed full spectrum dominance and had hundreds of military bases everywhere in the world. The U.S. was also a magnet for the world’s immigrants, a holder of the soft power of Hollywood and the American lifestyle, and the leader in technology, science, and manufacturing.

The dollar also had a more tangible backing, even after the gold tether was broken. The most important commodity on the planet was petroleum, and the United States controlled the spigot through its special relationship with the oil superpower, Saudi Arabia; a meeting in 1945 between King Abdulaziz Al Saud and then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on an American cruiser, the USS Quincy, on Great Bitter Lake in Egypt sealed the deal. When the oil-producing countries formed an effective cartel, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and began raising the price of oil, the oil-deficient countries of the Global South suffered, while the oil exporters exchanged their resources for vast amounts of dollars (“petrodollars”).

The United States forbade these dollar holders from acquiring strategic U.S. assets or industries but allowed them to plow their dollars back into the United States by purchasing U.S. weapons or U.S. Treasury securities: simply holding dollars in another form. Economists Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler called this the “weapondollar-petrodollar” nexus in their 2002 book, The Global Political Economy of Israel. As documented in Michael Hudson’s 1977 book, Global Fracture (a sequel to Super Imperialism), the OPEC countries hoped to use their dollars to industrialize and catch up with the West, but U.S. coups and counterrevolutions maintained the global fracture and pushed the global economy into the era of neoliberalism.

The Saudi-U.S. relationship was the key to containing OPEC’s power as Saudi Arabia followed U.S. interests, increasing oil production at key moments to keep prices low. At least one author—James R. Norman, in his 2008 book, The Oil Card: Global Economic Warfare in the 21st Century—has argued that the relationship was key to other U.S. geopolitical priorities as well, including its effort to hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. A 1983 U.S. Treasury study calculated that, since each $1 drop in the per barrel oil price would reduce Russia’s hard currency revenues by up to $1 billion, a drop of $20 per barrel would put it in crisis, according to Peter Schweizer’s book, Victory.

In 1985, Norman recounted in his book that Saudi Arabia “[opened] the floodgates, [slashed] its pricing, and [pumped] more oil into the market.” While other factors contributed to the collapse of the oil price as well, “Russian academic Yegor Gaidar, acting prime minister of Russia from 1991 to 1994 and a former minister of economy, has described [the drop in oil prices] as clearly the mortal blow that wrecked the teetering Soviet Union.”

From Petrodollar to De-Dollarization

When the USSR collapsed, the United States declared a new world order and launched a series of new wars, including against Iraq. The currency of the new world order was the petrodollar-weapondollar. An initial bombing and partial occupation of Iraq in 1990 was followed by more than a decade of applying a sadistic economic weapon to a much more devastating effect than it ever had on the USSR (or other targets like Cuba): comprehensive sanctions. Forget price manipulations; Iraq was not allowed to sell its oil at all, nor to purchase needed medicines or technology. Hundreds of thousands of children died as a result. Several authors, including India’s Research Unit for Political Economy in the 2003 book Behind the Invasion of Iraq and U.S. author William Clark in a 2005 book, Petrodollar Warfare, have argued that Saddam Hussein’s final overthrow was triggered by a threat to begin trading oil in euros instead of dollars. Iraq has been under U.S. occupation since.

It seems, however, that the petro-weapondollar era is now coming to an end, and at a “‘stunning’ pace.” After the Putin-Xi summit in March 2023, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria worried publicly about the status of the dollar in the face of China’s and Russia’s efforts to de-dollarize. The dollar’s problems have only grown since. All of the pillars upholding the petrodollar-weapondollar are unstable:

• The United States is no longer the dominant manufacturer and China is catching up in science and technology as well.
• The United States does not seem to be an attractive development model for Global South countries anymore and is not able to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative deals in Africa and other parts of the developing world.
• The United States has sanctioned so many countries (Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and China) that they are beginning to achieve a critical mass by trading with one another.
• U.S. military power is no longer seen as supreme after its lack of success in bringing about a regime change in Syria and its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
• While the United States may have succeeded in dramatically reducing Russian gas sales to Europe by—if Seymour Hersh’s widely believed February report is eventually vindicated—blowing up Nordstream, it has been unable to convince India or China to go along with its plans in this regard: both countries are purchasing Russian energy and reselling it as well.
• After watching the United States steal Russia’s reserves and Venezuela’s gold and force the sale of Venezuela’s oil company CITGO, even U.S. allies are reluctant to hold assets in dollars or keep their assets in the United States lest they be seized. Saudi Arabia will be trading with China in yuan instead of dollars, has canceled its U.S.-backed war on Yemen, made peace with Iran, and hosted Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad at the Arab League summit in May 2023.

But what will replace the dollar?

“A globalized economy needs a single currency,” Zakaria said on CNN after the Xi-Putin summit. “The dollar is stable. You can buy and sell at any time and it’s governed largely by the market and not the whims of a government. That’s why China’s efforts to expand the yuan’s role internationally have not worked.” But the governance of the U.S. dollar by the “whims of a government”—namely, the United States—is precisely why countries are looking for alternatives.

Zakaria took comfort in the fact that the dollar’s replacement will not be the yuan. “Ironically, if Xi Jinping wanted to cause the greatest pain to America, he would liberalize his financial sector and make the yuan a true competitor to the dollar. But that would take him in the direction of markets and openness that is the opposite of his current domestic goals.” Zakaria is wrong. China need not liberalize to internationalize the yuan. When the dollar was supreme, the United States simply excluded foreign dollar-holders from purchasing U.S. companies or assets and restricted them to holding U.S. Treasury securities instead.

But as Chinese economist Yuanzheng Cao, former chief economist of the Bank of China, argued in his 2018 book, Strategies for Internationalizing the Renminbi (the official name of the currency whose unit is the yuan), Beijing can internationalize the yuan without attempting to replace the dollar and incurring the widespread resentment that would follow. It only needs to secure the yuan’s use strategically as one of several currencies and in a wider variety of transactions, such as currency swaps.

Elsewhere, Keynes’s postwar idea for a global reserve currency is being revived on a more limited basis. A regional version of the bancor, the sur, was proposed by Brazil’s President Luis Inácio (“Lula”) da Silva. Ecuadorian economist and former presidential candidate Andrés Arauz described the sur as follows in a February interview: “The idea is not to replace each country’s national, sovereign currency, but rather to have an additional currency, a complementary currency, a supranational currency for trade among countries in the region, starting with Brazil and Argentina, which are the sort of two powerhouses in the Southern Cone, and that could then amplify to the rest of the region.” Lula followed up the sur idea with an idea of a BRICS currency; Russian economist Sergey Glazyev proposes a kind of bancor backed by a basket of commodities.

Currency systems reflect power relations in the world: they don’t change them. The Anglo gold standard and the American dollar standard reflected imperial monopoly power for centuries. In a multipolar world, however, we should expect more diverse arrangements.​

​The First Amendment of the United States Constitution says that “Congress shall make no law… Abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Yet in 2023 the United States is attempting to extradite Julian Assange because he published proof of U.S. civilian executions in Iraq, systematic torture at Guantanamo Bay, and the DNC rigging of the 2016 primary election against Democratic Socialist candidate Bernie Sanders, which is itself a violation of the Democratic rights enshrined in the American Constitution. The U.S., with its supposed constitutional guarantee of free speech and media, has indicted four leaders from the African People's Socialist Party (APSP) and Uhuru Movement on flimsy claims of “advancing Russian propaganda,” simply because they challenge the narrative of the imperialist financial cartels and war mongers. Even if we look only at these examples, how can we say there is freedom of speech or press in our modern age of neoliberal capitalist-imperialism? The Political establishment has shown that it will crack down on anyone who shares information that is damaging to its foreign policy interests, and most social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, owned by wealthy shareholders like Mark Zuckerberg and others, have proven not only to be impressionable to the influence of US intelligence agencies like the FBI and other institutions of the ruling class, but (after the release of the Twitter files) directly steered by them at times.
           
​No social media platform is more tightly linked to the intelligence community, NATO, or US State Department than the incredibly popular Tik Tok app. In 2020 the Midwestern Marx Institute for Marxist Theory and Political Analysis, within a few months of work, amassed 375,000 Tik Tok followers when the app was still owned and operated by the Beijing, China based company Bytedance, a testament to the people-oriented algorithms of Bytedance that allow any content that is genuinely popular to go “viral”, and a stark contrast to the money-centered way our Western software works. Unfortunately, that year the Biden administration would force ByteDance to hand over management of their U.S. servers to the Texas-based company ORACLE, a company with intimate ties to the CIA. No sooner had news of this forced change of control happened would the Institute have its account, which received millions of views on many videos containing factual information that challenged the narratives of the US war machine, banned from the platform. A second account that we started when the first one was wiped quickly accumulated 200,000 followers, and right when a growth parallel to the previous account was evident, the second account would also be banned. This blatant censorship would continue without explanation as the Institute had five more accounts banned by Tik Tok after they started to quickly gain popularity. It was later revealed that Oracle had hired a litany of former US State Department and Intelligence Operatives to manage the content for Tik Tok, as well as a few NATO executives for good measure. Tik Tok said that they deleted 320,000 “Russian accounts” which included many American socialist organizers who have never been associated with Russia in any way, such as an account ran by an organization of socialist organizers called “The Vanguard” that had over 100,000 followers when it was deleted.
           
Countless hours of our work that helped inform millions of people were stripped from the internet with little to no explanation, while truly hateful and incendiary accounts were allowed to remain up. Our institute's co-founder and editor, Eddie Liger Smith, was doxxed twice during this period, having his phone number, job, private social media profiles, and location shared by two creators working in tandem to attack Midwestern Marx. Both responsible accounts, Cbass429 and ThatDaneshGuy, were allowed to remain up until recently, when Cbass429 was finally banned for a completely unrelated incident. However, ThatDaneshGuy still has 1.6 million followers on Tik Tok, where he consistently calls for his political opposition to be fired from their jobs. ThatDaneshGuy called for his followers to contact Eddie’s place of employment and ask for his firing, claiming that it was deserved because of Eddie’s stance against US backed regime change efforts in Iran, which Danesh conflated with support for the Iranian Government executing people. Similar campaigns to these have been waged against other Institute co-founder Carlos Garrido and Institute contributor Kayla Popuchet, the latter who, like Eddie Smith, was fired from their place of employment because of the work they do for the Institute. On Tik Tok, the voices which speak the truth and champion peace are quickly banned, while those who harass and deceive people with imperialist lies are upheld by the algorithms.
           
Since the transfer of power to US entities, Tik Tok users have been fed a steady diet of neoliberal and imperialist propaganda, while critical voices are systematically being censored by the app’s content moderation staff. Neoliberal commentators like Philip Defranco are never made to retract errors, such as when Phil claimed that Russia blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline, despite all the evidence at the time pointing towards a Biden Administration sabotage. Award-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh later proved this to be the case in his detailed report on the incident. Despite all this, Defranco never had his account suspended or removed for posting this misinformation, and his video remains on the platform to this day, as do his comments accusing anyone who suggested the US might have sabotaged the pipeline of believing “Putin propaganda.” The Midwestern Marx Institute had predicted that Biden sabotaged the pipeline before it was revealed in detail and was unsurprisingly attacked and reported for doing so.
           
Censorship, clearly, does not emerge out of a void. And so, we must ask the question: what are the social conditions which make censorship necessary? Who does the censored speech threaten? Who does it uplift? In whose interests is censorship carried out? On whose side is truth - a category our moribund imperialist era, dominated by postmodern philosophical irrationalism, scoffs at? The liberal ideal of freedom of press can never be actualized so long as the press is owned by a small ruling class, by corporations and shareholders who profit from war and the exploitation of the mass of people. They will always censor dissent and push coverage that suits their foreign and domestic interests. This has been the case throughout history, and the modern Western ruling class is, in this regard, no different from any other. It lies, it manipulates, it misinforms to the best of its ability. It needs a population that can view its actions as ethical and just, and so it must spend countless hours and dollars papering over every crack that appears in the facade its media apparatus has built around the minds of the people.

A revolving door between the media, intelligence agencies, NATO, and the U.S. State Department is only the logical result of a society based on capitalist relations of production, where capitalists not only control the production of material goods, but the production of information as well. The ruling class sees the media, including social media, as a vital part of the societal superstructure that is needed to maintain and reproduce the relations of production at the core of society. In other words, they see it as an important tool to convince you that capitalism and U.S. Imperialism are good and eternal. Under these social relations, the constitutional right to free speech and media have always been exclusive - it excludes all speech and media which substantially challenges the dominant forms of societal intercourse. The freedom of speech and media is, therefore, actually the freedom of pro-capitalist speech and media. V. I. Lenin’s description of the media in capitalist society rings truer than ever in the 2020s, it is dominated by an “atmosphere of lies and deception in the name of the ‘freedom and equality’ of capital, equality of the starved and the overfed.” Any absolute statements about the freedom of the press must be followed by the Leninist question: “freedom of the press… for which class?” The capitalist media’s freedom to deceive the masses in their defense of the existing order is in contradiction to the masses’ interests in searching for and publicizing the truth.

 Those who keep our people misinformed and ignorant, who have made their life’s purpose to attack truth-tellers, do so under the insidiously categorized guise of ‘combating misinformation.’ In their topsy-turvy invented reality, as Michael Parenti called it, they posit themselves as the champions of truth and free speech – a paradox as laughable as a vegan butcher. Anyone with the courage to fight for the freedom to speak truth to power should unite in fighting this blatant attack on our constitutional rights. We must stand against this censorship from our ruling class, those who are the worst purveyors of misinformation imaginable, and who now, in the backwards-world name of ‘fighting misinformation,’ censor the truth. 

There is ‘fighting misinformation,’ and there is fighting misinformation. The divide of class interests between the ruling class of the West, and the good, honest, hard-working people who live under their regime could not be clearer. One side finds it necessary to invent a reality, under the guise of fighting the ‘mis-informers,’ that paints the world in a disfigured backwardness, the other side, on the contrary, is sick to death of being lied to by the media machine, and their screams of “fake news” grow more and more common every day. The American people not only deserve the truth, but absolutely need its existence to find commonality in the world, stability, and the ability to pursue lives of meaning and dignity. They are tired of the private monopolization of media that has erased the ability for regular working people to speak on an equal playing field; they feel their voices drowned in a sea of well-funded lies by MSNBC, Fox News, and the rest of them. This struggle has crystallized into a fight over The Truth itself.

And so, if fighting misinformation is to be done, we must begin by asking: Where was the crackdown on the media outlets who got 4.5 million people killed by claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? Where are the crackdowns on those who are lying us into a third World War with nuclear-armed powers? Where are the crackdowns against those who play the drums for those marching humanity towards nuclear Armageddon? Why is it only the outlets calling for peace that are dubbed “Putin propagandists” and wiped from the internet? Where are the crackdowns on the blood-thirsty warmongers? The answer is: they are nowhere, and they will continue to be nowhere while giant corporate financial interests control the lives and realities of regular Americans. Truth is censored and lies are proliferated because it serves the interests of the ruling capitalist class, and only through the overthrow of this class can a real freedom of thought, not an abstract empty freedom to deceive the people, be achieved. Until then, all we can have – it seems – is a media and culture that elevates the most odious imperialist voices while suppressing those who seek truth and peace. Nonetheless, the fight must continue, and with the dignity that comes from the incessant speaking of truth to power, the enemies of humanity will fall.

Let us remember the words of Julian Assange, whom the imperialists have rotting in a prison because of his sterling bravery… because he is a true journalist and not a lapdog of the powerful: “if wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by TRUTH.”

Authors

Edward Liger Smith is an American political scientist and editor at the Midwestern Marx Institute.

Carlos L. Garrido is a philosophy teacher at Southern Illinois University, editor at the Midwestern Marx Institute, and author of The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism and Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview.

Noah Khrachvik is a working class organizer, teacher, and editor at the Midwestern Marx Institute. 

​He was known to be aggressive and argumentative, the kind of patron who made others at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh branch uneasy.
​
But one day last year, the man walked into the building in a much darker mood, harassed a librarian, and threatened to kill her.

Fortunately, library workers had joined the United Steelworkers (USW) in 2019 and built safeguards into their first contract to address dangers exactly like this.

The librarian received a temporary transfer to another building. And the library system banned the patron, ensuring he wouldn’t turn up again either to look for the person he threatened or target somebody else.

April 28 is Workers Memorial Day in America and the Day of Mourning in Canada, a time to remember those killed, injured, or sickened at work. It’s also a day when union workers rededicate themselves to the fight for safer working conditions and renew their pledge to look out for one another, along with others in the workplace, leveraging all of the power that collective action provides.

“We are open to the public, which means everybody is welcome to come in, and we do our best to serve everybody,” explained David King, a steward for USW Local 9562 and a librarian in the music, film, and audio department at the system’s main location in Oakland.

“We’re proud of that. We’re sincerely proud that we’re one of the few truly public spaces still left. But that does come with some of these dangers,” he added, noting that library workers face patrons who create disruptions, brawl, carry in weapons, damage property, overdose in restrooms, and even stalk them.

Because library management failed to adequately address these risks, union members stood in solidarity together and negotiated a contract that not only provides temporary transfers for endangered workers but also includes notification procedures to alert workers at various branches when a patron is banned.

“That is a huge change from before we negotiated the contract,” King pointed out, noting that workers previously “had no recourse” if they were harassed. “They just had to put up with it. They just had to stay in the same location.”

The contract also establishes minimum staffing at the 19 branches to ensure the safety of workers and visitors, said King, noting some locations have delayed opening at times because of worker shortages.

And the union advocates for workers as other issues arise, such as when it forced repairs to the fire alarm system on the third floor of the Oakland building last summer, secured increased security after a student brawl and other violent incidents at another branch several months ago, and won systemwide protections at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Unionization gave us the power to say, ‘You need to listen to us,’” recalled Kate Buick, a Local 9562 steward who works at the North Side branch, noting the pandemic measures included remote work options, safe spacing of computers at every branch, safety walkthroughs of the buildings, and creation of a labor-management safety committee.

“Having that committee was a game-changer,” she said. “We at least knew there would be no retaliation and we could say what we wanted.”

Because they deliver these kinds of protections, unions help to ensure that workers return safely home at the end of their shifts.

A study by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for example, found that union construction sites had significantly fewer health and safety violations than nonunion ones. Another study, led by researchers at George Washington University and other institutions, revealed that unionized nursing homes had much lower COVID-19 infection and death rates than nonunion facilities.

When incidents occur, unions fight to hold employers accountable. But the drive for safer working conditions needn’t be adversarial, as a recent collaboration between the USW and Safety-Kleen in East Chicago, Indiana, shows.

The union and company sometimes disagreed on various issues. But Local 1011 President Steven Serrano repeatedly pointed out the benefits of cooperation and responded enthusiastically a few months ago when Safety-Kleen, which provides environmental services to various industries, sought the union’s help on a new safety initiative.

The parties negotiated a memorandum of agreement that, among other improvements, convened a union-management health and safety committee, established union-management incident investigations, and empowered workers to unilaterally stop work when confronted with hazardous conditions or processes.

The union’s involvement boosts the company’s efforts to obtain Voluntary Protection Program recognition from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

And it built solidarity among the 80 or so USW members at Safety-Kleen, who belong to Local 1011 along with hundreds of workers from the nearby Cleveland-Cliffs steel plant.

“Now, they have a seat at the table,” said Serrano, noting workers understand the dangers of their workplace better than anyone else. “Now, they have a voice.”

​Author​​​

Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.