From Minnesota to Middle East, by way of UK, Venezuela and China

Today I bring four third-party pieces, all short, but I start with a correction. In my post five days ago, on the prima facie  murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, I got two details wrong; one of them critical. I also quoted a vile, callous and misogynist remark by “an ICE agent”  not five seconds after the fatal shooting.

Both the corrected details and the identity of that misogynist agent are given in a new footnote 2 to my post of January 10:

One, Renee’s SUV did not slo-mo collide with a parked car but, as my lead image shows, a wooden post. Two, the ICE killer identified as Jonathan Ross did not fire thrice into the windscreen as I’d said. He fired once into the windscreen, creating the bullet hole shown above, then twice through Renee’s open driver-side window. This latter detail is the more important. Any ambiguity surrounding that first shot is resolved by the second and third, which establish beyond doubt that Ross’s victim was indeed moving away from him: giving the lie to the narrative of Trump, Vance and Noem that he acted in self defence. It also now appears that the “fucking bitch” expletive came from Ross himself. When CNN lead anchorman Jake Tapper put this to Kristi Noem she word-saladed but did not contest the point.

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This week I wrote three posts in two days on Iran. All stress my refusal to condemn its leaders – as I’d refused to condemn Ba’athist Syria prior to Assad’s ouster by Western backed jihadists – and so side with a globe-spanning empire which slaughters by the million, ravages economies and seeds terror of jihadist, neo-Nazi or straightforwardly criminal stripe – whatever advances US oligarchic agendas – regardless of whether its nominal head is endorsed by blue segment or red of the billionaire interests whose backing is a sine qua non of holding high office.

And all have cited – one in full, one in part, one in footnotes – Caitlin Johnstone. Unsurprisingly, then, the first of my four third party pieces today features her on the subject of Iran. The point I just made cannot be made too often, and few do so with such withering accuracy.

On “Leftists” And “Anarchists” Who Cheer For Regime Change In Iran

Is there anything more undignified than “leftists” and “anarchists” who cheer on the fall of empire-targeted governments even as the empire moves war machinery into place?

Ooh look at me I’m sticking it to the man by supporting the same agendas as the US State Department. I’m being punk rock by regurgitating the same war propaganda talking points as John Bolton. I’m fighting the power by backing the foreign policy objectives of the most powerful empire that has ever existed. ¹

Fucking embarrassing, man …

Read the full piece on Caitlin’s site …

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“What did China do for Venezuela?”, allies and adversaries alike ask. The answer is now clear: without declaring war, China acts, influences, and imposes new realities.

My second pick moves the focus by way of Venezuela to China, already identified (footnote 1) as the ultimate target of all current US aggression, be it in the Americas, Greenland, Iran, Ukraine, Nigeria, Myanmar or anywhere else on this Godforsaken planet.

Writing three days ago, in Africa News, German academic Kurt Grotsch offers a counterweight to criticisms from some sections both of the left and more broadly anti-imperialist circles that China has been left floundering by Trump’s chutzpah, beginning with his snatching of Nicolás Maduro twelve days ago. While I don’t dispute the truth of the details Mr Grotsch cites here, I haven’t the depth of knowledge to say what they all add up to, and need constantly to remind myself as much as readers how easily we can be led astray by wishful thinking.

As always we need to triangulate our sources, both against one another and against emerging realities, while recognising that, on matters of empire concern, corporate media in the West are systemically incapable of being truthful. That’s too big an ask given their business models.

With these caveats made, over to Africa News and the good professor. ²

After the Abduction of Venezuela’s President and His Wife, and Threats Against Europe and Iran: What Did China Do?

War on the Dollar and Economic Escalation Against Washington. Has a Comprehensive Political-Economic Confrontation Begun?

Without empty rhetorical displays in the style of Trump or Macron, China embarked on a series of concrete actions, driven by its assessment that the United States has turned control over Venezuelan oil into a tool to curb China’s presence in South America and obstruct a trajectory of rapid, irreversible growth.

China took measures that directly targeted the flotation line of the American empire, as the aggression against Venezuela constitutes a declaration of war against the multipolar world project and against the BRICS group.

Only hours after news broke of President Nicolás Maduro’s abduction, President Xi Jinping convened an emergency meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party, lasting exactly 120 minutes. No official statements were issued and no diplomatic threats were made. Instead, a silence preceding the storm prevailed, activating what Chinese strategists describe as a “comprehensive asymmetric response” to aggression targeting China’s partners in the Western Hemisphere …

Read the full piece in Africa News …

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My third choice returns to the Middle East by way of the UK; specifically, on how a Zionist outfit risibly enjoying charity status on this sceptred isle uses aggressive ‘lawfare’ to silence critics of Israel. Thankfully, it was unsuccessful in the case of Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah, seen here in a thirty second clip on IDF targeting of children in Gaza:

Over to Jonathan Cook on the mendacity of UK Lawyers for Israel – UKLFI – in its attempts to have Dr Sittah struck off by the GMC.

Every time, the media sides with the discredited apologists for genocide

Stop making moral outcasts of doctors and teachers for their principled opposition to genocide. Turn your fire instead on MPs, the media and pro-Israel lobby groups for their pitiless hypocrisy

British-Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu Sittah was cleared last week by a UK tribunal of misconduct charges, related to social media posts, that could have seen him removed from medical practice.

The case was initiated by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), a fanatical pro-Israel lobby group that seeks to use abusive legal procedures to intimidate and silence critics of Israel. But more disturbing still, the case was taken up by the General Medical Council (GMC), the regulatory authority overseeing the medical profession.

Had the case been successful, Abu Sittah would have been struck off on the entirely spurious basis that he is antisemitic and a supporter of terrorism. Hundreds of patients who depend on his world-renowned reconstructive surgery skills would have been denied treatment from him as a result.

The three-person panel of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, which cleared him, dismissed all the allegations. It concluded that the UKLFI and the GMC had “cherrypicked” and misrepresented two posts on X and an article published in Arabic, and failed to provide accurate translations of Abu Sittah’s arguments …

Read the full piece on Jonathan’s substack …

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And so to the 47th POTUS, in his own write. As with the Africa News piece on China’s response to US thuggery in Venezuela, I’m indebted to Dave Hansell for alerting me to a Trump decree of eight days ago that’s drawn scant media attention. For reasons compellingly argued by, among others, political economist and debt specialist Michael Hudson, the West in general and US in particular have spent close to five decades offshoring manufacturing to the global south while transforming the home economies into sources of rent extraction.

Trump built his ‘MAGA’ base by promising to “bring American jobs home” and end “Biden’s war” in Ukraine – a war which has highlighted the folly, from a military standpoint, of that offshoring of industry. As I put it a month ago in Why China beat the USA on rare earths:

… financialising the imperial hub created a disconnect between GDP and real wealth creation to the point where, in the proxy war in Ukraine, the lower GDP of Russia – John McCain’s “gas station with nukes” – led a US-captured West to think she could be brought to her knees both militarily and – Joe Biden’s “we’ll reduce the rouble to rubble” – economically.

What could go wrong? Only that on top of the West confusing GDP with manufacturing capacity to wage a war of attrition, the dirigisme of post-Yeltsin Russia’s arms sector has in the Ukraine shone a terawatt beam on the Milo Minderbinderism of America’s military industrial complex.

Take the ability to swiftly raise mass production of ordnance and other materiel. Surge capacity means maintaining slack – plant standing idle – for near instant stepping up of arms production when needed. Such wastefulness from a profit-centric standpoint requires levels of state oversight which are anathema to the neoliberal mind. Add to this the fact of Raytheon et al having every incentive – costs + 10%  – to make eye-wateringly expensive weaponry which can wow arms fairs, and may do lethally well in seven-day wars on the global south, but whose shortcomings – inability to produce at scale, and unreliability in the heavy usage of protracted war as opposed to the quick-win conditions of “shock and awe” – stand exposed in Ukraine. Ditto that revolving door between government and the military industrial complex.

Bear this in mind while I turn to my final piece, its author ³ the tangerine narcissist himself.

PRIORITIZING THE WARFIGHTER IN DEFENSE CONTRACTING

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1.  Purpose.  As Chief Executive and Commander in Chief, I am committed to ensuring that the United States military possesses the most lethal warfighting capabilities in the world.  Our Nation can only be at peace if we maintain strength.  The performance of America’s defense industrial base is critical to this capacity.  After years of misplaced priorities, traditional defense contractors have been incentivized to prioritize investor returns over the Nation’s warfighters.  

While the United States produces the best military equipment in the world, we do not make enough of it quickly enough to meet the needs of our military and our partners.  As a result, in these dangerous times, it is imperative that our defense contractors be held to the highest standards intended to ensure the advancement of core national interests, including with respect to the timeliness and quality of the defense items that they deliver.

Although some contractors have made critical investments in increased production capacity and been responsive to our Nation’s vital interests, far more have not.  Many large contractors — while underperforming on existing contracts — pursue newer, more lucrative contracts, stock buy-backs, and excessive dividends to shareholders at the cost of production capacity, innovation, and on-time delivery. 

Effective immediately, they are not permitted in any way, shape, or form to pay dividends or buy back stock, until such time as they are able to produce a superior product, on time and on budget.

Every firm across our economy has a right to profit from prudent investment and hard work, but the American defense industrial base also has the responsibility to ensure that America’s warfighters have the best possible equipment and weapons.  These two objectives are not mutually exclusive …

Whether Trump’s advisers on this matter realise the enormity – as with ‘bringing American jobs home’ –  of what stands in their way, and whether they have the chops to push through a project decades in the making, there’s honesty here, albeit that of an empire recognising that so violent a reassertion of its waning dominance over the planet will require extreme measures at home.

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1. Here’s a cartoon I’ve shown before. A de facto alignment of ‘progressive’ and ‘anarchist’ elements with Neocon agendas applies not just to Iran, Syria, Libya, Venezuela and Russia – to name but a few of the governments vilified as tyrannical abusers when their real crime is to stand in the path of empire designs – but to the ultimate obstacle to US continuing hegemony.

   

2. His byline tells us that Kurt Grotsch is a:

   German academic and researcher, PhD from the University of Nuremberg, MBA from Madrid, professor and lecturer at European and international universities. Specialist in culture, communication, and creative industries; founder of several cultural institutions; Vice President of the “China Chair” and ambassador of Minzu University of China.

3. I say “its author” but – given on the one hand the capacity for intelligent imperial self assessment shown by the presidential decree, on the other Trump’s miniscule attention span – it’s more accurate to describe the piece as signed off by the president.