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Political Rants

Thine is the power and the story

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As of this writing, the Saudis and Yemen have pulled together a tentative truce for Ramadan. As Ryan Grim reports in Deconstructed, the podcast by The Intercept, it’s essentially the first one in seven years of brutal war that has left almost 400,000 Yemenis dead. It’s quite possible that, by the time you read this, the Saudis will have resumed their merciless campaign of destruction, but I, for one, hope not.

There is truly nothing so invisible as a war promoted by your own government. In Russia, they need to make it a crime to refer to the war in Ukraine as a “war”. Over here, that’s not necessary. There are other ways to manipulate public opinion in a formal republic; as Orwell wrote, educated, thoughtful people understand that there are some things it simply would not do to say. No need for brute force – just a compliant professional/managerial class eager to get ahead.

Hidden in plain sight

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is being covered like practically no other conflict in my lifetime. That is a good thing. I just wish they would cover all wars, including the ones we start, with the same dedication to detail. I think the principle at work here is largely that of proximity to power. Ukrainians are culturally close to white Americans. Their attacker is an official enemy, a rival power. Those two factors, broadly speaking, drive the coverage.

Yemen is the opposite. The victims are not like “us” (i.e. white, christian, western people). They are being attacked by official allies – Saudi Arabia, UAE – with our help. They are friends with an official enemy (Iran). Those factors keep them off of the front pages. There are many horrific stories that can be told about the Yemen war, and we Americans have heard almost none of them. On the other hand, I have heard wrenching stories of suffering from Ukraine on a daily basis, many of them multiple times. This is not an accident – it is a reflection of power.

The limits of compassion

We are encouraged to empathize with our enemies’ victims. In the case of Afghanistan, the official argument for twenty years of war was partly built on concern for the fate of women and girls. That was during the war. Now that the war is over, however, we apparently couldn’t care less. The country is on the brink of starvation. They have been frozen out of the banking system and have no access to their own reserves. Even international aid organizations cannot operate effectively in Afghanistan under the current sanction regimes.

You will notice, also, that Afghanistan is not in the news all that much. That was the case during most of the 20-year American war. It only hit the headlines when Biden pulled out last year, and now it’s gone again. The news splash was mostly an expression of the war party in America (Republicans and Democrats) who were against withdrawing American troops from the country. Indeed, it was hard to find voices in favor of the withdrawal at the time.

Like a compass needle

I’ve said this about NPR in the past, but it’s basically true of all major media: they know where power resides in this country, and that is their true north star. Their compass needle will always point that way, regardless of the consequences.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

While you were looking over there

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As Russia continues to do what Russia always does, this time in Ukraine, other atrocities try to keep pace. The Saudis put 81 people to death this past week in one of their execution sprees. Ali AlAhmed shared some photos of the victims on Twitter, and it’s worth scrolling through the list just to afford these people a small portion of the humanity being accorded, quite rightly, to Ukrainians.

Then, of course, there’s Yemen – still Yemen. Over the weekend, UNICEF reported that almost 50 children were killed or maimed in January alone, adding to the more than 10,000 child casualties recorded since the war began, with our nod and crucial material support, in 2015. Yemen remains among the worst humanitarian crises in the world, and yet it has fallen from the front page, particularly in America.

Proximity, proximity is everything

It’s not surprising or outrageous that the mainstream corporate media, and much of the independent media, spends most of their time on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s a huge story, and it should be reported on. But some crises fail to command the attention that Ukraine has garnered over the past three weeks. Yemen is chief among them, but certainly not the only instance.

The reason? Impossible to be precise, but it’s not hard to discern a pattern. If an atrocity is being committed by an official enemy, it is all over the media. If, on the other hand, the atrocity is being committed by us or by a close ally, it gets much, much less coverage, by and large. Count the number of stories about the war in Yemen that have run in U.S. major media. You will have fingers left over. Now compare that with this wall-to-wall Ukraine coverage.

Conclusion: Ukraine is being attacked by someone we don’t like; Yemen is being attacked by an ally who’s dependent on our help to conduct the war. The less likely it is that we can stop a war, the more likely it is that our media will focus on it.

Sticking to what you know

Russia’s military, at Putin’s behest, is doing what they know how to do: blowing things up. That’s how they get people to bend to their will. It’s the sharpest imperial tool in their toolbox by far. They destroy whole cities and drive people into the wilderness. That’s all they know.

Bombs, missiles, shells, and bullets are what’s available to Putin. But he doesn’t have a corner on imperialism. The United States, on the other hand, has more than one way to skin a country. When we put a nation under sanction, it hurts very badly. We can shut off access to international financial institutions. We can starve whole populations and ruin their public health infrastructure. This is what we did to Iraq in the 1990s and early 2000s, between two spates of bombing. That’s how we bent them to our will.

Russia doesn’t have that. If they sanction someone, it doesn’t mean much. They don’t have anywhere near the leverage of the U.S. in international finance. All they have is the bombs.

Finding the exit

Maddeningly, this attack on Ukraine, all in the space of a few weeks, is doing what was done in Yemen, in Syria, in Iraq at the height of those conflicts – destroying societal infrastructure on a massive scale. Much as you have to admire the Ukrainians’ courage and stubbornness, I hope the sides aren’t getting so entrenched that some settlement can’t be reached.

This war will end. The question is, how much of Ukraine will survive that long? If Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and others are any indication, it’s better to find a way to settlement sooner rather than later. I think that’s one channel by which the international community can help.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

All the wrong parts of being right

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It’s been a busy week in politics and public policy, like drinking from a fire hose. In addition to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the State of the Union was on Tuesday night, not to mention primaries in Texas. Of course, the attack on Ukraine is dominating the news, and understandably so. There’s nothing right about Russia’s campaign.

Personally, I am all in favor of extensive press coverage during wartime. What we’re seeing, though, in the United States is the propaganda machine kicking into high gear. Yes, it’s in support of the Ukrainian people, and yes, that’s the right position to take, but the level of overblown hyper patriotic romanticized treatment of war and resistance is really disturbing. That’s in part because I’ve seen this machine running on all cylinders before, and that never leads to good things.

Here are some of the things that bug me about mainstream coverage of the conflict:

They’re like us. And so are their lawns.

We’ve heard this from multiple correspondents on multiple news outlets. Sam Seder’s Majority Report talked about the phenomenon on Monday. They look like us, not like “refugees”. They’re prosperous, Christian, and, well, white. They’ve got homes and lives much like ours and could even live in the same neighborhood. Therefore, they are more worthy of our sympathy than those grimy old middle easterners.

Now, I should point out that these observations come in the midst of vital reporting about what’s happening in Ukraine. That coverage is essential, whether it’s delivered by major networks or by lowly citizen journalists. I just wish to hell they would cover every war with this level of energy, particularly ones like the Yemen conflict, which literally could not continue without our active help.

The mythical “no-fly zone”

The suggestion of a no-fly zone over Ukraine has been advanced by a number of people, including officials of the Ukrainian government. I don’t know what’s in those officials’ minds, but people over here don’t have a clear idea of how such a zone works. For one thing, it’s typically employed against developing nations who step out of line, like Iraq, which effectively had no air force.

Contrary to popular belief, no-fly zones are not a magic impenetrable shield. It involves deploying forces in mass, shooting down enemy (i.e. Russian) aircraft, when necessary, and keeping it up over the long term. If we were to undertake such a strategy, it would mean World War III. How that would help the Ukrainians is unclear to me. In fact, what’s abundantly clear is that this is the worst conceivable outcome and should be avoided at all costs. Crazy talk.

Kindness of strangers (or lack of same)

Over the past few days, I’ve been hearing television commentators wax poetic about the generosity of Ukraine’s neighboring countries with respect to their acceptance of refugees. On Morning Joe, panel members were gushing to Mika Brzezinski about how proud her father (architect of the first Afghan war) would have been of the Polish government.

What they haven’t been talking about so much is how the Poles are treating African and Indian residents of Ukraine who show up at their border. Democracy Now! covered this on Wednesday, and it isn’t pretty. But then Poland, like some other countries in the region, has a long record of turning away dark-skinned people. So much for the pride of Dr. Brzezinski.

Nuclear blackmail goes both ways

Putin made a big show of putting his nuclear forces on high alert. It’s not clear what this means exactly, but it’s been all over U.S. television, and it is unnerving, as it should be. What should be a much larger story, though, is the obvious fact that the United States maintains an effective first-strike policy with respect to nuclear weapons. That is to say, we have always refused to rule out first use. That is an implicit threat that the entire world, including Russia, has had to live with for more than seventy years. (See Dan Ellsberg’s book, The Doomsday Machine, for the full story.)

Bottom line, this is becoming a full orchestra of emotionally potent, manipulative coverage blasting out across multiple channels. Even though it’s obvious that a neo-fascist Russian government is unjustly attacking Ukraine, we need to keep our bearings. Don’t get swept away. We’ve seen this play before, and it doesn’t end well.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

No peace.

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The much-anticipated summit in Vietnam between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un ended without a deal. It’s pretty obvious that Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip approach to diplomacy is less than optimal. On top of that, there’s plenty of space in the empty skull of his for unsavory characters like John Bolton to take up residence. I suspect he was the cause of the breakdown. It sounds as though the discussion about nuclear technology was broadened by the U.S. delegation to include chemical and biological weapon systems as well. The president’s post-summit statement didn’t go there, of course, but that’s no surprise. I’m not convinced that he knows entirely what took place in Vietnam, he’s such a ding dong.

There's a lot of love there.

Nevertheless, his impulse towards talking this out is positive, and I support the effort, even though he’s probably coming at it from entirely the wrong direction. Any effort towards peace on the Korean peninsula is worth pursuing, in my view, though U.S. policymakers of both major parties would likely disagree. I’ve written elsewhere in these pages about my thoughts on our government’s motivations for prolonging this conflict. I don’t think Trump is part of that consensus, and that is probably a frustration to the foreign policy establishment. It’s hard to be sure about what’s happening here, but we are faced with the unusual circumstance of the president being very nearly right about something.

Of course, the upshot of this is that the mainstream, center-left media, like MSNBC, are pummeling Trump over his failure to reach a deal. Worse, they criticize his decision not to hold those enormous joint military exercises with South Korea, characterizing it as a gift to Kim Jong Un. They have also been harping on American student Otto Warmbier, who died after being released from North Korean custody. And just this week, the focus has been on North Korea’s mothballed missile site showing signs of being brought back into operation. It’s kind of a full-court press on the evils of Kim and the incompetence of Trump.

This is just stupid. I understand the impulse to oppose Trump at every opportunity (except, of course, on Venezuela), but this hammering over Korea turns the heat up on a volatile situation that threatens hundreds of thousands of lives. We were a whisker away from all-out war a little over a year ago, and that was not a good place to be. I’m not saying to avoid reporting on this diplomatic dance; I’m saying that the editorializing is over- the-top and not helpful to the cause of peace.

So, liberals … dial back the Korea rhetoric a bit. Let’s encourage this administration to do something useful, like end this pointless conflict that began with our hubris and stupidity more than 70 years ago. There are plenty of things you can attack Trump over – this shouldn’t be one of them.

luv u,

jp