… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Tag: Russia

  • Vance Dossier Shows Not All Hacks Are Created Equal

    Spread the love

    Original article by Ari Paul republished from FAIR under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

    Ken Klippenstein, an independent reporter operating on Substack and an investigative alum of the Intercept, announced (Substack, 9/26/24) that he had been kicked off Twitter (now rebranded as X). His crime, he explained, stemmed from posting the 271-page official dossier of Republican vice presidential candidate’s J.D. Vance’s campaign vulnerabilities; the US government alleges that the information was leaked through Iranian hacking. In other words, the dossier is a part of the “foreign meddling campaign” of “enemy states.”

    Klippenstein is not the first reporter to gain access to these papers (Popular Information, 9/9/24), but most of the reporting about this dossier has been on the intrigue revolving around Iranian hacking rather than the content itself (Daily Beast, 8/10/24; Politico, 8/10/24; Forbes, 8/11/24). Klippenstein decided it was time for the whole enchilada to see the light of day:

    As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been altered, but even if it was, its contents are publicly verifiable. I’ll let it speak for itself.

    “The terror regime in Iran loves the weakness and stupidity of Kamala Harris, and is terrified of the strength and resolve of President Donald J. Trump,” Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign, responded when I asked him about the hack.

    If the document had been hacked by some “anonymous”-like hacker group, the news media would be all over it. I’m just not a believer of the news media as an arm of the government, doing its work combating foreign influence. Nor should it be a gatekeeper of what the public should know.

    The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement that alleged Iranian hacking (9/18/24) was “malicious cyber activity” and “the latest example of Iran’s multi-pronged approach…to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process.”

    Where’s the beef?

    Ken Klippenstein (Substack, 9/26/24) argued that the Vance dossier ” is clearly newsworthy, providing Republican Party and conservative doctrine insight into what the Trump campaign perceives to be Vance’s liabilities and weaknesses.”

    The Vance report isn’t as salacious as Vance’s false and bizarre comments about Haitians eating pets (NPR, 9/15/24), but it does show that he has taken positions that have fractured the right, such as aid for Ukraine; the report calls him one of the “chief obstructionists” to providing assistance to the country against Russia. It dedicates several pages to Vance’s history of criticizing Trump and the MAGA movement, suggesting that his place on the ticket could divide Trump’s voting base.

    On the other hand, it outlines many of his extreme right-wing stances that could alienate him with putative moderates. It says Vance “appears to have once called for slashing Social Security and Medicare,” and “is opposed to providing childcare assistance to low-income Americans.” He “supports placing restrictions on abortion access,” and states that “he does not support abortion exceptions in the case of rape.”

    And for any voter who values 7-day-a-week service, Vance “appears to support laws requiring businesses to close on Sundays.” It quotes him saying: “Close the Damn Businesses on Sunday. Commercial Freedom Will Suffer. Moral Behavior Will Not, and Our Society Will Be Much the Better for It.” That might not go over well with small business owners, and any worker who depends on their Sunday shifts.

    ‘Took a deep breath’

    The Washington Post (8/13/24) suggested that Vance dossier was different from Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails in 2016 because of “foreign state actors increasingly getting involved” in US elections.

    Are the findings in the Vance dossier the story of the century? Probably not, but it’s not nothing that the Trump campaign is aware its vice presidential candidate is loaded with liabilities. There are at least a few people who find that useful information.

    And the Washington Post (9/27/24) happily reported on private messages Vance sent to an anonymous individual who shared them with the newspaper that explained Vance’s flip-flopping from a Trump critic to a Trump lover. Are the private messages really more newsworthy than the dossier—or is the issue that the messages aren’t tainted by allegedly foreign fingerprints? Had that intercept of material involved an Iranian, would it have seen the light of day?

    In fact, the paper (8/13/24) explained that news organizations, including the Post, were reflecting on the foreign nature of the leak when deciding how deep they should report on the content they received:

    “This episode probably reflects that news organizations aren’t going to snap at any hack that comes in and is marked as ‘exclusive’ or ‘inside dope’ and publish it for the sake of publishing,” said Matt Murray, executive editor of the Post. Instead, “all of the news organizations in this case took a deep breath and paused, and thought about who was likely to be leaking the documents, what the motives of the hacker might have been, and whether this was truly newsworthy or not.”

    Double standards for leaks

    Politico (10/7/16) quoted a Clinton spokesperson: “Striking how quickly concern about Russia’s masterminding of illegal hacks gave way to digging through fruits of hack.” This was immediately followed by: “Indeed, here are eight more e-mail exchanges that shed light on the methods and mindset of Clinton’s allies in Brooklyn and Washington.”

    There seems to be a disconnect, however, between ill-gotten information that impacts a Republican ticket and information that tarnishes a Democrat.

    Think back to 2016. When “WikiLeaks released a trove of emails apparently hacked from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman email account, unleashing thousands of messages,” as Politico (10/7/16) reported, the outlet didn’t just merely report on the hack, it reported on the embarrassing substance of the documents. In 2024, by contrast, when Politico was given the Vance dossier, it wrote nothing about its contents, declaring that “questions surrounding the origins of the documents and how they came to our attention were more newsworthy than the material that was in those documents” (CNN, 8/13/24).

    The New York Times and Washington Post similarly found the Clinton leaks—which were believed at the time to have been given to WikiLeaks by Russia—far more newsworthy than the Vance dossier. The Times “published at least 199 articles about the stolen DNC and Clinton campaign emails between the first leak in June 2016 and Election Day,” Popular Information (9/9/24) noted.

    FAIR editor Jim Naureckas (11/24/09) has written about double standards in media, noting that information that comes to light through unethical or illegal means is played up if that information helps powerful politicians and corporations. Meanwhile, if such information obtained questionably is damaging, the media focus tends to be less on the substance, and more on whether the public should be hearing about such matters.

    For example, when a private citizen accidentally overheard a cell phone conversation between House Speaker John Boehner, former Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Republican congressmembers, and made a tape that showed Gingrich violating the terms of a ethics sanction against him, news coverage focused on the illegality of taping the conversation, not on the ethics violation the tape revealed (Washington Post, 1/14/97; New York Times, 1/15/97).

    But when climate change deniers hacked climate scientists’ email, that produced a front-page story in the New York Times (11/20/09) scrutinizing the correspondence for any inconsistencies that could be used to bolster the deniers’ arguments.

    When Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Michael Gallagher wrote a series of stories about the Chiquita fruit corporation, based in part on listening without authorization to company voicemails, the rest of the media were far more interested in Gallagher’s ethical and legal dilemmas (he was eventually sentenced to five years’ probation) rather than the bribery, fraud and worker abuse his reporting exposed.

    Meet the new boss

    Musk personally ordered the suspension of the account of antifascist activist Curt Loder, the Independent (1/29/23) revealed, noting that “numerous other accounts of left-leaning activists and commentators have been suspended without warning.”

    There’s a certain degree of comedy in the hypocrisy of Klippenstein’s suspension. Since right-wing billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter, he has claimed that his administration would end corporate censorship, but instead he’s implemented his own censorship agenda (Guardian, 1/15/24; Al Jazeera, 8/14/24).

    The Independent (1/29/23) reported that Musk “oversaw a campaign of suppression that targeted his critics upon his assumption of power at Twitter.” He

    personally directed the suspension of a left-leaning activist, Chad Loder, who became known across the platform for his work helping to identify participants in the January 6 attack.

    Al Jazeera (2/28/23) noted that “digital rights groups say social media giants,” including X, “have restricted [and] suspended the accounts of Palestinian journalists and activists.” Musk has likewise fulfilled censorship requests by the governments of Turkey (Ars Technica, 5/15/23) and India (Intercept, 1/24/23, 3/28/23) officials, and is generally more open to official requests to suppress speech than Twitter‘s previous owners (El Pais, 5/24/23; Washington Post, 9/25/24).

    Meanwhile, Musk’s critics contend, he’s allowed the social network to be a force multiplier for the right. “Elon Musk has increasingly used the social media platform as a megaphone to amplify his political views and, lately, those of right-wing figures he’s aligned with,” AP (8/13/24) reported. (Musk is vocal about his support for former President Donald Trump’s candidacy—New York Times, 7/18/24.)

    “Twitter Antisemitism ‘Skyrocketed’ Since Elon Musk Takeover—Jewish Groups,” blasted a Newsweek headline (4/25/23). Earlier this year, Mother Jones (3/13/24) reported that Musk “has been retweeting prominent race scientist adherents…spreading misinformation about racial minorities’ intelligence and physiology to his audience of 176.3 million followers.”

    ‘Chilling effect on speech’

    The message Ken Klippenstein got from X announcing he had been kicked off the platform.

    Now Musk’s Twitter is keeping certain information out of the public view—information that just happens to damage the presidential ticket he supports. With Klippenstein having been silenced on the network, anyone claiming X is a bastion of free speech at this point is either mendacious or simply deluded.

    Klippenstein (Substack, 9/26/24) explained that “X says that I’ve been suspended for ‘violating our rules against posting private information,’ citing a tweet linking to my story about the JD Vance dossier.” He added, though, that “I never published any private information on X.” Rather, “I linked to an article I wrote here, linking to a document of controversial provenance, one that I didn’t want to alter for that very reason.”

    The journalist (Substack, 9/27/24) claims that his account suspension, which he reports to be permanent, is political because he did not violate the network’s code about disclosing personal information, and even if he did, he should have been given the opportunity to correct his post to become unsuspended. “So it’s not about a violation of X’s policies,” he said. “What else would you call this but politically motivated?”

    Klippenstein is understandably concerned that he is now without a major social media promotional tool. “I no longer have access to the primary channel by which I disseminate primarily news (and shitposts of course) to the general public,” he said. “This chilling effect on speech is exactly why we published the Vance Dossier in its entirety.”

    UPDATE: Klippenstein (Substack, 9/29/24) reports that his publication of the Vance dossier is being censored not only by X, but by Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Google as well: “The platforms said that the alleged Iranian origin of the dossier — which no one is calling fake or altered — necessitated removing any links to the document.”

    FAIR’s work is sustained by our generous contributors, who allow us to remain independent. Donate today to be a part of this important mission.

    Original article by Ari Paul republished from FAIR under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

  • Germany lurches further to the right

    Spread the love

    Original article by Matthew Read republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    Anti-AfD protest in Magdeburg. (Photo: via Standing Up Against Racism)

    The German government has defied EU law by imposing border controls, while Green politicians decry “the poison of Islam” in parliament. Meanwhile, the far-right AfD has surged in recent state elections. What’s driving Germany’s sharp shift to the right?

    Germany is entering a period of reaction. This is not only evident from the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD), but also from the hardline policies of the governing coalition’s so-called centrist parties. The Social Democrats (SPD), Greens, and Liberal Democrats (FDP) have introduced unprecedented measures against migrants and critics of state policies. In September 2024, Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) imposed border controls, defying European criticism and undermining the EU’s Schengen Agreement. Political scientist Christopher Wratil of the University of Vienna said that Berlin can “no longer claim others are not complying with EU law,” adding that the government is acting “as if the AfD were already in power.” Soon after Faeser’s announcement, Green parliamentary leader Katharina Dröge referred to “the poison of Islam” (das Gift des Islams) during a Bundestag session.

    Germany challenged on multiple fronts

    To explain this drastic rightward shift, it is necessary to understand the international situation confronting Germany’s ruling class. There are three main fronts on which the German state is currently bogged down.

    Firstly, in Ukraine, where NATO’s confrontation with Russia is stalling, if not collapsing entirely. As the second-largest backer of the Zelensky regime, Berlin remains fully committed to winning the war. The government’s July 2024 decision to approve the stationing of US Tomahawk cruise missiles on German soil confirms this. Sanctions on Russia have strained the German economy, especially energy-intensive industries, but the state has absorbed much of the burden through subsidies. The Federation of German Industries, representing 100,000 companies, continues to back the government’s policies. However, popular support for the war is crumbling, as recent EU and state elections show. The two parties most critical of arms deliveries to Ukraine – the AfD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance for Reason and Justice (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, BSW) – made record gains, while the governing coalition suffered heavy losses.

    The second front, not yet erupted into open conflict, is East Asia, in the confrontation with China. German capital faces the same dilemma as its US counterpart: while business with China remains lucrative, Chinese producers are outpacing American and European competitors, challenging Western hegemony. Germany has been more reserved than the US in taking a confrontational stance, but the government’s plan to invest 10 billion euros into a 30-billion-euro Intel chip production project in Germany shows its intent to reduce reliance on China. Meanwhile, the Green foreign minister, who called Xi Jinping a “dictator” in 2023, has led a cross-party effort to instrumentalize Taiwan against Beijing. The Ministry of Defense’s recent decision to send a warship through the Taiwan Strait is the latest move in this confrontational policy.

    The third front is West Asia, where Germany remains the most outspoken advocate of Israel’s genocidal offensive in Gaza. Unlike the other fronts, there are no economic concerns holding German capital back from fully supporting Israel. This unified stance on Zionism and opposition to the so-called axis of resistance has allowed the government to swiftly implement policies against the Palestinian solidarity movement. While smearing protesters as antisemitic, basic rights such as freedom of assembly and speech are thrown out of the window. Homes are raided, activists arrested, solidarity organizations banned, and laws tightened—most recently with the liberal FDP calling to strip non-EU citizens of the right to assembly. Yet, the Western-backed offensive in Gaza has also stalled, with Israel unable to eliminate Hamas. Domestically, Germany uses force to suppress dissent, but it cannot do so internationally. States from the Global South are openly challenging Germany’s unconditional support for Israel. Namibia accused Berlin of supporting genocide while shirking responsibility for colonial crimes. Nicaragua has filed a case against Germany in the International Court of Justice, accusing it of violating the 1949 Genocide Convention. Others, like Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, have directly confronted German politicians: “Where have we thrown away our humanity? Why this hypocrisy?”

    The escalations on these fronts, along with rising domestic discontent, are fueling insecurity among Germany’s ruling class. A shift to the right is seen as necessary to capture broad sections of the population, keep them integrated into the system, and conjure scapegoats. The consistent messaging around the “Russian threat” and “Islamic terrorism” is used to justify massive military spending, cuts to social programs, and sweeping surveillance laws, including the right to secretly invade private homes. Meanwhile, migrants are blamed for housing shortages and the collapse of the healthcare system.

    The collapse of the governing parties in eastern Germany

    Elections for two state governments in eastern Germany made international headlines in August 2024 after the far-right AfD made massive gains, even becoming the strongest political force in Thuringia, where it led by almost 10%. There are several reasons for the far-right’s success.

    Firstly, there is the historical trajectory of the post-1989 era. Over 30 years have passed since the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) was incorporated into the Federal Republic, yet West German promises of “blossoming landscapes” remain unfulfilled. The privatization of the East German economy was the largest wealth transfer in European history: millions lost their jobs and were deprived of their rightful shares in the public property they had built. This left East Germans with little to pass to their children. Almost all key positions in the state and economy were taken by West Germans. Deindustrialization led to higher unemployment, lower incomes, and longer working hours compared to the West. The result was a mass exodus, with nearly 4 million people moving westward since 1989 to escape the bleakness.

    The East German population has essentially been relegated to second-class citizens in the Federal Republic. This has fostered a general distrust of Western political parties, whose approach has often been to “educate” rather than represent the East: “Your system lost, you have lost, so we will show you how it’s done.” The natural rejection of this condescending, paternalistic attitude has long been reflected in voter support for anti-establishment parties like The Left (Die Linke) and, more recently, the far-right AfD.

    While The Left enjoyed broad support in the early 2000s for opposing the neoliberalization of the labor market, it gradually fell out of favor after joining regional and city governments, where it helped implement the same neoliberal policies it once opposed (such as the privatization of public housing in Berlin). This created a political vacuum in which the AfD was able to present itself as the only oppositional force, despite being a neoliberal party. The AfD taps into the economic and social challenges people face, blaming migrants or incompetent politicians in Berlin rather than the economic system itself. It has been especially successful among skilled laborers and small business owners—those most threatened by, or fearful of, social degradation.

    This dynamic, which had already been unfolding for several years – was accelerated by the escalation of the Ukraine war in 2022. The question of arms deliveries to Kiev now played a central role in political debates.

    The EU elections in June 2024 – in which the whole country participated – showed that Germans are dissatisfied with the governing coalition (SPD, Greens, and liberal FDP). Voters are now turning to the conservative CDU and far-right AfD, both of which call for tougher social cuts in response to current crises. The AfD gained nearly 5%, becoming the second-largest German party in the EU parliament, surpassing even the SPD. While the AfD has criticized further arms deliveries to Ukraine, it does not oppose NATO or the ongoing militarization in Germany. Many likely voted for the AfD due to its demagoguery on Ukraine, particularly calls to end the war with Russia. Polls from September 2024 show more Germans now oppose further arms deliveries to Ukraine (51%) than support them (38%), and 52% believe diplomatic efforts for peace have been insufficient. The BSW, a new party that split from The Left in 2023, centered this issue in its campaign and secured 6% of the national vote in the EU elections.

    The two state elections in August 2024 further revealed that consensus around the Ukraine war effort is breaking down, especially in eastern Germany. All three governing parties lost votes, while the AfD and BSW made record gains. The Left, which had been the strongest party in Thuringia and supported arms deliveries to Ukraine, lost nearly 18% and was overtaken by the BSW. The AfD is now the largest party in Thuringia, winning almost a third of the vote. In Saxony, the AfD came close, with 30.6% compared to the CDU’s 31.9%. Notably, the CDU leader in Saxony has broken from the party’s line, calling for an end to arms deliveries and diplomatic negotiations with Russia.

    The successes of the AfD and BSW have left the two eastern German states without a clear path forward. All parties currently refuse to form coalitions with the far-right AfD. While mainstream parties have derided the BSW as the “long arm of the Kremlin,” they also acknowledge the need to contend with this new party. Wagenknecht has stated that the BSW will only join coalitions with parties that oppose the stationing of US Tomahawk cruise missiles in Germany—a largely symbolic stance, as state governments have no control over this decision. More concerning for centrist parties is the disintegration of the political landscape, which could allow the opposition to block decisions requiring a two-thirds majority, including the election of constitutional judges. There is a palpable angst that minority parties in federal and state parliaments could “shut down” Germany’s constitutional courts.

    Dark prospects

    The upsets in eastern Germany are driven, at least in part, by dissent over NATO’s war effort against Russia. Both the AfD and BSW, from different perspectives, argue that supplying more weapons to Ukraine is not in Germany’s “national interest.” This domestic dissent, coupled with military setbacks in Donbass, is clearly causing doubts within the governing coalition. Just days after the elections in Thuringia and Saxony, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) expressed support for diplomatic negotiations with Moscow to “discuss how we can move from this war situation towards peace more quickly.”

    While the German ruling class grapples with the Ukraine dilemma, its commitment to militarizing society remains strong. In this endeavor, the AfD does not stand in its way. Although the far-right party differs on issues like the war against Russia, relations with the USA, and the future of the EU, it poses no threat to German capital. On the contrary, centrist parties can mask themselves as an anti-fascist bulwark, rallying much of the population (including many on the left) around the slogan of “stopping the AfD,” while simultaneously enacting similarly racist and inflammatory policies toward migrants.

    Asylum seekers are once again being deported back to Afghanistan, in flagrant disregard of the EU’s own human rights convention. Even “liking” certain social media posts warrants deportation, according to Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD). At the same time, the German government is ramping up its “brain drain” strategy against the Global South. Just a few days after ordering controls on all of Germany’s borders, Faeser signed an agreement with the Kenyan government to make it easier for Germany to poach Kenyan professionals. A similar agreement with Uzbekistan followed a week later.

    Germany’s increasingly aggressive neo-colonial policies abroad and its ever-more repressive policies at home are thus two sides of the same coin.

    Original article by Matthew Read republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • For decades, governments have subsidised fossil fuels. But why?

    Spread the love
    Sobrevolando Patagonia/Shutterstock

    Bernard Njindan Iyke, La Trobe University

    Even now, decades after we first began trying to avert the worst of global warming, more than 80% of the world’s total energy comes from fossil fuels.

    You might think this would make fossil fuel production extremely profitable. But it’s not always the case. Much of the most accessible oil has already been extracted and burned. Many countries want to shore up domestic sources of fossil fuels to boost energy security. Energy price fluctuations and competition from new energy sources such as solar, wind and fossil gas have made it harder for some fossil fuel companies to make money, especially in coal.

    This is where fossil fuel subsidies come in. Australia gave A$14.5 billion in subsidies to major fossil fuel producers and consumers in 2023–24 alone.

    You might have wondered – why would some of the largest companies on Earth need subsidies? Here’s why.

    LNG tanker
    Australia’s surging liquefied natural gas industry has been boosted by government funding. KDS Photographics/Shutterstock

    Private companies, public money

    Globally, private companies dominate fossil fuel production, though fossil fuel-rich nations often have state-owned companies, such as Saudi Arabia’s Aramco and Russia’s Rosneft.

    Why would governments give fossil fuel companies money? Many reasons. But the most important is that wealthy countries have historically needed huge volumes of fossil fuels for manufacturing, transport and power. Many countries have some sources of fossil fuels inside their borders, but only a few are self-sufficient. This has enabled fossil fuel giants such as Saudi Arabia to become wealthy beyond belief.

    Many governments have used subsidies to boost their energy security and encourage local producers to seek out new sources of coal, gas and oil. These subsidies can make all the difference in making fossil fuel companies competitive internationally. For instance, Canada spent billions on subsidies to boost its oil sands and fracking projects.

    Subsidies were essential in the United States’ fracking revolution. Novel approaches to extracting fossil gas and oil – boosted by major tax incentives – turned the US from a major importer of oil and gas into a net exporter by 2019.

    You can see why the US did this. At a stroke, it went from being dependent on energy provided by foreign nations to being independent.

    Once subsidies are in place, they become very hard to remove. Indonesia’s lavish fuel subsidies now account for 2% of the nation’s GDP. When the national government tried to walk these back, there were riots.

    And there’s another reason, too. Fossil fuels are still playing an important role in boosting the economy in most nations. Subsidising them has long been seen as a way to maintain economic growth and stability.

    Globally, these subsidies are estimated at a staggering $10.5 trillion each year.

    This figure has grown sharply in recent years, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As European nations tried to wean themselves off Russia’s gas, energy prices surged worldwide. In response, some countries introduced new subsidies to support businesses and consumers.

    The top-line figure of $10.5 trillion includes two types of subsidy – explicit (meaning real dollars change hands) and implicit (for example, governments building roads and railways to encourage crude oil transport).

    Explicit subsidies

    Explicit fossil fuel subsidies are direct financial incentives from governments to fossil fuel producers and consumers. These incentives come in different forms, such as tax breaks, direct payments, grants and price controls. All of them aim to reduce the financial burden associated with fossil fuel production and use.

    In Australia, explicit subsidies include fuel tax credits and exploration tax reductions. Fossil fuel companies can get subsidies to offset the losses they make during the years it takes to find and begin extracting new fossil fuels.

    In the US, oil and gas companies benefit from the oil depletion allowance, which permits them to deduct a percentage of their gross income from oil and gas sales as an expense. They can also claim tax deductions for intangible drilling costs, such as the wages of workers and material needed to find new sources of oil and gas.

    China, too, uses direct subsidies, discounted land-use fees, and preferential loans as explicit subsidies to boost coal production and consumption. The national government also supports fossil fuel consumption through direct payments to consumers.

    coal miners China
    China has used subsidies to encourage exploitation of its large coal resources. zhaoliang70/Shutterstock

    Implicit subsidies

    Implicit subsidies are often described as “imaginary”. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, just that they’re not a direct transfer to directly paid to fossil fuel producers.

    For instance, the cost of burning fossil fuels is borne by the global community and the natural world, in the form of climate change, damage to human health and other harms. Most fossil fuel companies don’t have to pay a cent for the pollution their products cause – so in effect, they are being granted an indirect subsidy.

    Implicit incentives also include government investment in facilities such as transport networks, pipelines, oil refineries and port infrastructure, which will accelerate fossil fuel production and delivery. Think of the Middle Arm development in Darwin, funded by both the federal and territory government.

    Why are these subsidies still being paid?

    As the world grapples with a worsening climate crisis, fossil fuel subsidies are under great scrutiny.

    It’s politically difficult to withdraw subsidies once given. This is why governments around the world have instead begun to give subsidies and tax incentives to green energy developers, including the enormous $500 billion Inflation Reduction Act in the US, the European Union’s Green Deal, and China’s massive subsidies of green technologies such as electric vehicles and solar panels.

    The goal here is to make renewable energy and electrified transport steadily more affordable and competitive – just as fossil fuel subsidies did for oil, gas and coal.

    Bernard Njindan Iyke, Lecturer in Finance, La Trobe University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

  • The black, and Red, contribution to Nazi defeat must never be forgotten

    Spread the love

    Original article at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/victory-over-nazis-was-black-and-red

    A photograph from the battle of Kohima, in north-east India, during World War II

    We have long struggled for black and Asian Allied soldiers to be properly acknowledged in Europe’s commemorations — but now a worse travesty is upon us, as Russia’s crucial role is purged from the record, writes ROGER McKENZIE

    …

    President Putin took part in the commemoration of the 60th D-Day anniversary in 2004 and again, 10 years later, for the 70th anniversary — but he was not invited to this one.

    The USSR, of which Russia was a key part, lost around 25 million people in the fight against Nazi Germany. But even this until recently undisputed fact is now under challenge.

    In fact, the Red Army caused 80 per cent of all WWII German military losses and themselves lost 30 times more people than Britain, France and the US combined.

    The Red Army’s defeat of the Nazis at Stalingrad is cited by many experts as being the decisive turning point in World War II. Between 150,000 and 250,000 Germans are estimated to have died at Stalingrad.

    For Nazis, Stalingrad was not the battle that exacted the highest death toll, but the psychological impact of the battle was immense and was decisive in winning the war. It occupied and depleted massive Nazi resources which paved the way for the eventual Allied victory.

    Over half a million Soviet soldiers and civilians died in the Battle of Stalingrad, among them numerous civilians. But that clearly was not enough to be invited.

    Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, on the other hand, was in attendance — as he always seems to be at pretty much anything. I now expect to see Zelensky at any event where a photo opportunity exists but the fact that he is invited to a commemoration of an event about the defeat of the Nazis is particularly insulting given the number of Nazis in his own forces and his applause in Canada last year for a veteran of a Waffen SS brigade that fought in Ukraine.

    But the Russians are not the only ones that have been deliberately written out of history. The role of black people of African or Asian descent has continually been discarded.

    …

    More than 134,000 travelled from other colonies, including some 10,000 from the Caribbean to help defeat the Nazis. Only when casualties began to mount during the war were black people enlisted to join the fighting or become part of the Merchant Navy.

    But there was no suspension in the standing orders of racism. Caribbean men joining the Merchant Navy were paid around one-third of the wages that white sailors were paid.

    …

    Around two and a half million fighters came from India to support the war effort. About the same time as the D-Day landing Indian, Gurkha and African soldiers fought the historic but little talked about — at least in Britain or the US — battles in Kohima, in north-east India.

    These battles fought alongside British soldiers were among some of the toughest in the war and helped to turn the tide against the Japanese. Not for nothing did many of the troops who fought in battles in India and what is now Myanmar during the war call themselves “the Forgotten Army.”

    I think they are probably wrong. I don’t think they were forgotten. I believe they were ignored because much of the fighting was carried out by black people. The Battle of Kohima and Imphal was the bloodiest of World War II in India, and it cost Japan many of its most elite fighters.

    None of this seems to matter though to those that continue to hide the contribution made by people of African and Asian origin to the victory over the Nazis. We know the erasure of the role of the Red Army in World War II is being carried out for a different purpose.

    The leaders of the Western powers can’t bring themselves to acknowledge the massive sacrifice of the Soviet people lest it demonstrate the skill and bravery of its soldiers and the refusal to be defeated by the seemingly invincible Nazis.

    It is also part of the inexorable lurch towards a conflict with Russia as Nato ramps up the warmongering rhetoric that could lead to World War III and the catastrophic nuclear destruction of the planet.

    Western powers seem far more willing to associate themselves with the Nazis surrounding the leadership of Ukraine and to hobnob with the likes of fascist-inspired Italian leader Giorgia Meloni.

    I wonder how fast they will move for a photo opportunity should the far-right Marine Le Pen win the National Assembly election later this month or the next French presidential vote.

    They say that history is written by the winners. Well, it seems not all the winners count. This means we must all call out the continued drive to rewrite history.

    Original article at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/victory-over-nazis-was-black-and-red

  • Morning Star: Fight the far right to commemorate the D-Day heroes

    Spread the love

    Republished from https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-fight-far-right-commemorate-d-day-heroes

    Royal Marine commandos moving off the Normandy Beaches during the advance inland from “Sword” beach, June 6, 1944

    WITH the Tories and Labour exchanging blame over Channel crossings, we mark 80 years since a Channel crossing of a different kind.

    On June 6 1944 British, US and allied troops crossed the Channel to open a second front against the Nazis in Europe, something the Soviet Union, which had borne the brunt of the war against fascism for the previous three years, had long urged.

    Veterans are arriving in Normandy for commemorations of this heroic chapter in Europe’s liberation. Modern hostilities overshadow celebration of the anti-Nazi alliance of the 1940s, with the US and Britain criticising France for inviting Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine, though they themselves have never been excluded from World War II memorials while laying waste to countries from Vietnam in the cold war to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya more recently.

    These diplomatic divisions raise a question we should be asking our own politicians. Have you any right to claim the inheritance of anti-fascist victory if you are dismantling its achievements?

    The world war against fascism was the crucible of international institutions as we know them today. The United Nations was established in a joint declaration by Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and China on January 1 1942: it formalised the alliance against the Axis powers Germany, Italy and Japan, and a condition of membership was to declare war against Nazi Germany and its allies.

    The foundation of the UN and new treaties like the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (on the conduct of war) and 1951 (on the treatment of refugees) expressed hope that a more civilised world order would stop any future descent into Nazi barbarism.

    These agreements are not perfect, and powerful countries have often ignored them. But their existence is a legacy of the sacrifice made by those who gave their lives to smash fascism on D-Day, or at the battles of Stalingrad or Berlin, or among the heroic resistance movements that sprang up across Nazi-occupied Europe.

    Politicians talk now as if the rules are outdated: the refugee conventions were drawn up by people who couldn’t conceive of the scale of “irregular” migration today. It isn’t true: World War II and its aftermath saw huge population displacement, the uprooting of millions of people. The Refugee Convention of 1951 set out universal obligations to refugees because of these horrific experiences.

    Those obligations are ones governments across Europe, including ours, are trying to erase. The end of EU search-and-rescue operations, the active persecution of civil rescue crews by states like Italy, have fatally undermined the binding responsibility to aid anyone in distress at sea. The odious Nigel Farage clearly approves, having insulted brave volunteer lifeboat crews by calling the Royal National Lifeboat Institution a “migrant taxi service” for presuming to save people from drowning.

    Farage has never yet been elected, but his ability to call the tune at Westminster is as great as ever if the first leaders’ debate is anything to go by: with Labour’s Keir Starmer calling Rishi Sunak, the PM of the Rwanda deportations scheme and the Bibby Stockholm prison barge, “the most liberal prime minister we have ever had on immigration.”

    This is gutter politics, and a betrayal of what the D-Day heroes fought for. But so, at home, is the systematic destruction of the NHS and welfare state built after defeating fascism, fruits of a victorious people’s war and a recognition that fascism had emerged from a Europe wracked by poverty and unemployment.

    It is no coincidence that today, with living standards falling, public services failing and the brazen theft of our wealth by an ever smaller corporate elite, the far-right politics of grievance and hate are on the march across the continent.

    The real commemoration of D-Day must be to mobilise against them. For peace and socialism, against fascism and war.

    Republished from https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-fight-far-right-commemorate-d-day-heroes