Human Rights

In siding with Russia over Ukraine, Trump is not putting America first – he is hastening its decline

Matthew Sussex, Associate Professor (Adj), Griffith Asia Institute; and Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. Has any nation squandered its diplomatic capital, plundered its own political system, attacked its partners and supplicated itself before its far weaker enemies as rapidly and brazenly as Donald Trump’s America? The fiery Oval Office meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday saw the American leader try to publicly humiliate the democratically elected leader of a nation that had been invaded by a rapacious and imperialistic aggressor. And this was all because Zelensky refused to sign an act of capitulation, criticised Putin (who has tried to have Zelensky killed on numerous occasions), and failed to bend the knee to Trump, the country’s self-described king. What’s worse is Trump has now been around so long that his oafish behaviour has become normalised. Together with his attack dog, Vice President JD Vance, Trump has thrown the Overton window – the spectrum of subjects politically acceptable to the public – wide open. Previously sensible Republicans are now either cowed or co-opted. Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is gutting America’s public service and installing toadies in place of professionals, while his social media company, X, is platforming ads from actual neo-Nazis. The FBI is run by Kash Patel, who hawked bogus COVID vaccine reversal therapies and wrote children’s books featuring Trump as a monarch. The agency is already busily investigating Trump’s enemies. At the Pentagon, in a breathtaking act of self-sabotage, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered US Cyber Command to halt all operations targeting Russia. And cuts to USAID funding are destroying US soft power, creating a vacuum that will gleefully be filled by China. Other Western aid donors are likely to follow suit so they can spend more on their militaries in response to US unilateralism. What is Trump’s strategy? Trump’s wrecking ball is already […]

Rachel Kushner’s revolutionary spy novel reflects on our hurtle towards extinction

-Alex Howard,Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney Rachel Kushner ranks among the finest novelists working today. The recipient of several major literary awards and a former Guggenheim Fellow, Kushner, who has a background in political economy and United States foreign policy, uses her fiction to explore the historical and geopolitical pressures that bear down on and determine everyday life and patterns of social behaviour. “What is shaping people? What are the pressures that delineate how they think, act, speak?” These are some of the questions she poses in her body of work. Her new novel, Creation Lake (2024), is longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize and tackles the topic of ecological terrorism. Clearly inspired by influential spy and crime writers like John le Carré and Jean-Patrick Manchette, it subverts genre conventions and playfully challenges reader expectations. A touch more tonally measured than her previous novels, Creation Lake is by far Kushner’s most accomplished and engrossing work to date. We get a sense of the scale and depth of Kushner’s interests in her debut novel, Telex from Cuba (2008). Set in the years leading up to the Fidel Castro helmed revolution of 1959, the novel interrogates questions of gender and the brutalities of colonialism, and sheds fresh light on what now seems, somehow, to be a long-distant, half-forgotten historical moment. Kushner’s interest in explosions of revolutionary fervour and periods of social upheaval carries over into her geographically and temporally expansive second book, The Flamethrowers (2013), an exhilarating account of radicalism, motorcycle racing and avant-gardism that unfurls against the politically charged backdrop of 1970s Italy. After addressing the interwoven issues of inequality and mass incarceration in contemporary America with her third novel, The Mars Room (2018), set in a women’s prison, Kushner shifts her focus back to Europe in her audacious new page-turner. Taking part in troubled times “All my life […]

The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society

A major reappraisal, by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel-prizewinning economist, of the relationship between capitalism and freedom. Despite its manifest failures, the narrative of neoliberalism retains its grip on the public mind and the policies of governments all over the world. By this narrative, less regulation and more ‘animal spirits’ capitalism produces not only greater prosperity, but more freedom for individuals in society – and is therefore morally better. But, in The Road to Freedom Stiglitz asks, whose freedom are we – should we be – thinking about? What happens when one person’s freedom comes at the expense of another’s? Should the freedoms of corporations be allowed to impinge upon those of individuals in the ways they now do? Taking on giants of neoliberalism such as Hayek and Friedman and examining how public opinion is formed, Stiglitz reclaims the language of freedom from the right to show that far from ‘free’ – unregulated – markets promoting growth and enterprise, they in fact reduce it, lessening economic opportunities for majorities and siphoning wealth from the many to the few – both individuals and countries. He shows how neoliberal economics and its implied moral system have impacted our legal and social freedoms in surprising ways, from property and intellectual rights, to education and social media. Stiglitz’s eye, as always, is on how we might create the true human flourishing which should be the great aim of our economic and social system, and offers an alternative to that prevailing today. The Road to Freedom offers a powerful re-evaluation of democracy, economics and what constitutes a good society—and provides a roadmap of how we might achieve it.

The Age of Unpeace

-Mark Leonard In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, global leaders have been integrating the world’s economy, transport and communications, breaking down borders in the hope of making war impossible. In doing so, they have unwittingly created a formidable arsenal of weapons for new kinds of conflict and the motivation to keep fighting. Troublingly, we are now seeing rising conflict at every level, from individuals on social media all the way up to nation-states in entrenched stand-offs. The past decade has seen a new antagonism between the US and China; an inability to co-operate on global issues such as climate change or pandemic response; and a breakdown in the distinction between war and peace, as overseas troops are replaced by sanctions, cyberwar and the threat of large migrant flows. As a leading authority on international relations, Mark Leonard has been inside many of the rooms where our futures, at every level of society, are being decided – from Facebook HQ and facial-recognition labs in China to presidential palaces and remote military installations.

Daniel Ellsberg

-Doug Green, publisher, The Mirror Daniel Ellsberg has died; he was 92 years old. He suffered from pancreatic cancer. A graduate of Harvard, he volunteered to go to Vietnam as a marine, a decision that made him determined to do everything he could to stop the war. His notoriety came from him helping to write – and then releasing in 1971 – The Pentagon Papers, a monolithic 7,000-word, top secret document, which detailed two decades of lies about the war in Vietnam. The papers were released to the New York times and ultimately led to the impeachment of Richard Nixon. The “Plumbers”, set up in the basement at Watergate, was done so to discredit Ellsberg – their primary goal. The White House established this plan to destroy him; however, through their illegal activities and practices Ellsberg was found not guilty of treason. At one stage he was facing prison time of 115 years. In 2003 he wrote a book called Secrets, about his foreign policy career and the FBI undertook a nationwide search for him to no avail. At the same time, he continued to distribute copies of The Pentagon Papers. Funnily enough, Secrets came out in the same year that the false war on Iraq was declared. A documentary about Daniel Ellsberg’s life, ‘The Most Dangerous Man in America’ was released in 2010, nominated for an Academy Award. It is hard to find these days to watch. To the end he was supporting those against nuclear weapons and of Taiwan. He was a long-time friend of Noam Chomsky. He lived by his convictions…the type of person we need more of in the world today.

Trump’s unprecedented call for protests is the latest sign of his aim to degrade America’s institutions

-Shelley Inglis, Executive Director, University of Dayton Human Rights Center, University of Dayton In a social media post on March 18, 2023, former President Donald Trump announced that he would be arrested on March 21 on charges stemming from an investigation led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Bragg’s office is probing hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, which were allegedly made to spare candidate Trump embarrassment on the eve of the 2016 presidential election. Scholar Shelley Inglis spent more than 15 years with the United Nations, where she advised governments and democracy advocates on how to strengthen the rule of law, human rights and democratic governance. We asked her about Trump’s post. What did you think about when you heard his call for protests? Let me begin by quickly describing populism, because it’s important to my thoughts about Trump’s post. Populist movements portray “the people in a moral battle against elites,” as scholars Jane Mansbridge and Stephen Macedo describe it. Some level of populism is inherent in democracies where candidates appeal to be elected by “the people.” But what I call autocratic populists use this narrative to claim they are the sole voice of “the people” and those against them are “bad” or even “evil.” They undermine any and all opposition to them and attempts to hold them accountable, including independent institutions like courts, elections and the media. This is how such populists become so dangerous for democracy and the rule of law. Members of the media set up cameras in front of the courthouse on March 20, 2023, in New York, ahead of former President Donald Trump’s anticipated indictment. AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez Trump has that autocrat’s populism, in which he says that not only is he anti-elite but that he is “the only one” who can represent the people and […]

Are we being poisoned? Part 2

#poisoning #fluoride #drinking water Cariola Carabel https://ocultoaplenavista.blogspot.com/ In Vermont, USA, a few days ago, a town employee was found to have reduced fluoride levels in the municipal water for the last 5 years. A mother was reported to be outraged because her children’s dentist had recommended against supplemental fluoride because fluoride was already added to the town’s water. What this shows is that adding fluoride to water is a medical decision that affects everyone, whether someone has had already significant amounts of fluoride or not; whereas taking supplemental fluoride or using fluoridated toothpaste is a personal choice. It has been argued that poorer people cannot afford fluoridated toothpaste and are thus helped by water fluoridation. In fact, as I shall show, poor people are the ones most harmed by the measure. In any case, the solution would seem to be to guarantee that poor people have enough money to buy basic necessities, or to prescribe poor people free toothpaste and fluoride tablets where necessary, and educate everyone on the importance of oral health and good diet for avoiding tooth decay, obesity and diabetes. Does any of this matter? We assume that fluoride added to water must be innocuous and, of course, good for our teeth. But is it? In fact fluoride is a neurotoxin that in 21 out of 23 studies was found to reduce children’s intelligence and should be categorised like lead, mercury, arsenic… It is a component of many insecticides and rodenticides (in these cases generally as sodium fluoroacetate). Excess fluoride causes stains on teeth, hypothyroidism, and possible bone disease (because excess fluoride collects in the body’s calcium, i.e. bones and teeth), including weakened bones. It also collects in the pineal gland (more of that later) and may cause mental impairment, tiredness and gastrointestinal problems. Those with impaired kidneys are unable to process fluoride, resulting […]

How Salman Rushdie has been a scapegoat for complex historical differences

Vijay MishraEmeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Murdoch University. The Chautauqua Institution, southwest of Buffalo in New York State, is known for its summer lectures – and as a place where people come seeking peace and serenity. Salman Rushdie, the great writer and influential public intellectual, had spoken at the centre before. On Friday August 12, he was invited to speak on a subject very close to his heart: the plight of writers in Ukraine and the ethical responsibility of liberal nation-states towards them. Rushdie has been an outspoken defender of writers’ freedom of expression throughout his career. In the audience of around 2,500 at Chautauqua was Hadi Matar, 24, of New Jersey, who jumped on stage and stabbed Rushdie in the neck and the abdomen. The fatwa and the spectre of death It was more than 30 years ago – February 14, 1989 (Valentine’s Day) – when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, 88, the then spiritual ruler of Iran, condemned Rushdie to death via a fatwa, a legal ruling under Sharia Law. His crime was blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad in his novel The Satanic Verses, on a number of levels. The most serious was the suggestion that Muhammad didn’t solely edit the message of Angel Gibreel (Gabriel) – that Satan himself had a hand in occasionally distorting that message. These, of course, are presented as hallucinatory recollections by the novel’s seemingly deranged character, Gibreel Farishta. But because of a common belief in the shared identity of author and narrator, the author is deemed to be responsible for a character’s words and actions. And so the author stood condemned. Blasphemy against Muhammad is an unpardonable crime in Islam: a kind of divine sanctity surrounds the Prophet of Islam. The latter is captured in the well-known Farsi saying, Ba khuda diwana basho; ba muhammad […]

A deconstruction of a famed mogul’s harmful influence on American business

In ‘The Man Who Broke Capitalism’, David Gelles, “Corner Office” columnist for the New York Times, focuses on Jack Welch (1935-2020), CEO of GE from 1981 to 2001, whom he sees as “the personification of American, alpha-male capitalism, a pin-striped conquistador with the spoils to prove it.” Welch joined GE in 1960 after completing a doctorate in chemical engineering, soon rising through the company’s ranks. Notoriously “impatient, impulsive, and crass” as well as ambitious and energetic, when he took over as CEO, he lost no time inaugurating his vision—and that of economist Milton Friedman—of “maximising profits at the expense of all else.” GE had been known as a caring company that gave its workers exceptional benefits. Welch shattered that reputation, enacting massive layoffs, carrying out extensive mergers and acquisitions, and turning GE into “a giant unregulated bank.” When Welch ascended at GE, writes Gelles, “half of GE’s earnings came from businesses dating back to the Edison era: motors, wiring, and appliances. Yet Welch, an extremist in all he did, drastically overcorrected.” Instead of trying to fix American manufacturing, he effectively abandoned it, and would soon start shuttering factories around the country and shipping jobs overseas. His influence was far-reaching. By the time he retired, 16 public companies were run by men “who had studied at his knee.” However, remarked a Goldman Sachs board member, “they were just cost cutters. And you can’t cost-cut your way to prosperity.” Gelles capably traces GE’s downfall from being the most valuable company in the world in 1993 to its begging for a bailout in 2008, and he exposes the many business titans who followed Welch’s strategies. He sees hope, however, in the “handful of idealistic capitalists”—leading businesses such as Unilever, PayPal, Patagonia, and Seventh Generation—who consider their companies’ impacts on employees, the environment, and society. […]

The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality

A landmark, radically uplifting account of our species’ progress from one of the world’s pre-eminent thinkers – with breakthrough insights into the power of diversity and our capacity to tackle climate change. In a captivating journey from the dawn of human existence to the present, world-renowned economist and thinker Oded Galor offers an intriguing solution to two of humanity’s great mysteries. Why are humans the only species to have escaped – only very recently – the subsistence trap, allowing us to enjoy a standard of living that vastly exceeds all others? And why have we progressed so unequally around the world, resulting in the great disparities between nations that exist today? Immense in scope and packed with astounding connections, Galor’s gripping narrative explains how technology, population size, and adaptation led to a stunning “phase change” in the human story a mere two hundred years ago. But by tracing that same journey back in time and peeling away the layers of influence – colonialism, political institutions, societal structure, culture – he arrives also at an explanation of inequality’s ultimate causes: those ancestral populations that enjoyed fruitful geographical characteristics and rich diversity were set on the path to prosperity, while those that lacked it were disadvantaged in ways still echoed today. As we face ecological crisis across the globe, The Journey of Humanity is a book of urgent truths and enduring relevance, with lessons that are both hopeful and profound: gender equality, investment in education, and balancing diversity with social cohesion are the keys not only to our species’ thriving, but to its survival.

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