Ousted Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan with Russian President Vladimir Putin / credit: Twitter / Kremlin
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Multipolarista.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has accused a top U.S. diplomat of threatening his government as part of a “foreign conspiracy” to overthrow him.
This March, opposition politicians in Pakistan tried to push a no-confidence motion through the National Assembly, seeking to remove Khan from office.
Khan, who was democratically elected in 2018, said the U.S. government was supporting these opposition lawmakers in their attempt to oust him.
“I’m taking the name of U.S., the conspiracy has been hatched with the help of America to remove me,” the Pakistani prime minister said, in Urdu-language comments translated by the media.
In a meeting with leaders of his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Khan singled out Donald Lu, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.
According to the prime minister, Lu threatened Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed, warning that there would be serious “implications” if Khan was not ousted.
Washington allegedly told Majeed that U.S.-Pakistani relations could not improve if Khan remained in power.
Khan accused the U.S. embassy of organizing Pakistani opposition lawmakers to vote for the no-confidence motion in the National Assembly.
In previous comments, Khan had also said that Washington sent a letter threatening him for rejecting its attempts to create U.S. military bases in Pakistan.
Khan hinted that the soft-coup attempt was aimed at reversing his independent foreign policy. Under Khan, Pakistan has deepened its alliance with China, greatly improved relations with Russia, and maintained staunch support for Palestine.
Washington has rejected these allegations. However, Khan’s comments are bolstered by testimony that Lu himself gave in a March 2 hearing of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Near East, South East, Central Asia and Counterterrorism.
A video clip of Assistant Secretary of State Lu in the hearing, which went viral on Twitter, shows him admitting that the U.S. government had pressured Pakistan to condemn Russia for its military intervention in Ukraine.
Lu’s video testimony confirms that Washington is angry because of Islamabad’s growing relations with Moscow.
Imran Khan met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Beijing Olympics. The Pakistani leader subsequently took a trip to Moscow on February 24, the beginning of the military campaign in Ukraine.
After his visit, Khan announced that Pakistan would be expanding its economic ties with Russia, importing its wheat and gas, while ignoring Western sanctions.
Although the country is a close ally of China, Pakistan has for decades had a difficult relationship with Russia. Under Khan, Islamabad’s tensions with Moscow have significantly softened.
Pakistani scholar Junaid S. Ahmad published an article in Multipolarista analyzing the numerous reasons why Washington would want to remove Imran Khan from power, including his growing alliance with China and Russia, his refusal to normalize relations with Israel, and his gradual move away from Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan’s opposition is trying to overthrow Prime Minister Imran Khan with a no-confidence motion.
Khan says he has proof of foreign funding for a regime-change op to reverse his independent foreign policy – especially his alliance with China and Russiahttps://t.co/wdIqWDlqss
The deputy speaker of Pakistan’s National Assembly, Qasim Suri, suspended the opposition’s no-confidence motion, arguing that it was unconstitutional because it was part of a “conspiracy” supported by “foreign powers.”
This means that Khan has 90 days to hold snap elections.
There are worries in Pakistan, however, that the soft-coup attempt against Khan could escalate into an old-fashioned military coup.
Pakistan’s army is very powerful, and notorious for overthrowing civilian leaders. An elected Pakistani prime minister has never completed a full term.
Pakistan’s military is also closely linked to the United States, and frequently acts to promote its interests.
In concerning comments made in the middle of this controversy, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Qamar Javed Bajwa praised the United States and Europe. Breaking with the elected prime minister, he criticized Russia over its war in Ukraine.
These remarks suggest that Khan may have lost the support of top military leaders.
General Bajwa: ‘We share a long history of excellent relationship with the United States which remains our largest export market; UK/EU vital to our national interests; Russian aggression on Ukraine is very unfortunate, this is a huge tragedy.’
Ukrainian soldiers / credit: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
Editor’s Note: The article was originally published by Multipolarista.
I am a Ukrainian-American. I grew up and spent over half of my life in Ukraine, although now I live in the United States. I wanted to explain my thoughts on the ongoing crisis with Russia, because mainstream corporate media outlets don’t ever share perspectives like mine.
It is definitely a stressful time, for obvious reasons. Fortunately, my family and friends in the country are alive and are doing well enough under the circumstances. Unfortunately, in the past decade this isn’t the first time I have had to check in on my loved ones there, and for basically the same reasons. This is what I wanted to talk about.
You see, the U.S. government has meddled in Ukraine for decades. And the Ukrainian people have suffered because of this.
The overwhelming support that Western governments and media outlets have poured out for Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24 is not actually motivated by concern for the Ukrainian people. They are using us to advance their political and economic interests.
We know this because Washington overthrew our government twice in a decade, imposed neoliberal economic policies that made our country the poorest in Europe, and has fueled a devastating civil war that in the past eight years took the lives of 14,000 Ukrainians and wounded and displaced many more.
The following facts don’t get mentioned by the media, as they contradict the foreign-policy goals of the U.S. government. So unless you are actively engaged in the anti-war movement, the info below is probably new to you. That is why I wanted to write this article.
The first U.S.-backed soft coup in Ukraine occurred in 2004, when Western-backed presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko lost the election.
The winner of the November 2004 vote, Viktor Yanukovych, was portrayed as being pro-Russian, so Western governments refused to recognize his victory and declared electoral fraud.
Western-backed forces in Ukraine then mobilized and carried out a textbook color revolution, called the “Orange Revolution.” They forced another run-off vote that December, in which their candidate Yushchenko was declared president.
In a shockingly honest 2004 report titled “U.S. campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev,” Britain’s establishment newspaper The Guardian admitted that the “Orange Revolution” was “an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing,” bankrolled with at least $14 million.
“Funded and organised by the U.S. government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and U.S. non-government organisations, the campaign” attempted to topple governments “in four countries in four years,” The Guardian boasted, targeting Serbia, Georgia, Belarus, and Ukraine.
Much like in the United States, Ukrainian presidents are appointed and govern in the interest of wealthy oligarchs, so no Ukrainian president ends his tenure with a particularly high rating. The U.S.-backed Yushchenko, however, set a new record for the lowest popular support in history.
In the next presidential election, in 2010, Yushchenko got just 5% of the vote, which should give you an insight into how popular he actually was.
During his first term Yushchenko implemented a program of austerity, reduced social spending, bailed out large banks, deregulated agriculture, advocated for NATO membership, and repressed the rights of language minorities like Russian speakers.
The second U.S.-backed coup d’etat in Ukraine was launched in late 2013 and consolidated power in 2014, just a decade after the first one.
Viktor Yanukovych, who was frequently called pro-Russian by Western media but in reality was just neutral, won the 2010 presidential election fair and square.
But in 2013, Yanukovych refused to sign a European Union Association Agreement that would have been a step toward integrating Ukraine with the EU. In order to be part of this program, Brussels had demanded that Kiev impose neoliberal structural adjustment, selling off government assets and giving the Washington-led International Monetary Fund (IMF) even more control over Ukrainian state spending.
Yanukovych rejected this for a more favorable offer from Russia. So, once again, Western-backed organizations brought out their supporters into the Maidan Square in Kiev to overthrow the government.
As was the case during the “Orange Revolution” in 2004, the United States sent politicians to meet with the leaders of the demonstrations, and later coup leaders, in late 2013 and early 2014. U.S. Senators John McCain, Chris Murphy, and others spoke in front of large crowds in Maidan.
At some point the control of the stage and leadership of the protests was overtaken by far-right forces. Leaders of such organizations as Svoboda (a neo-Nazi party) and Right Sector (a coalition of fascist organizations) spoke to the protesters, sometimes standing side-by-side with their American backers like McCain.
Later their organizations acted as the spear of attack against the Ukrainian police in the violent February 2014 coup d’etat, and they were the first to storm government buildings.
With the success of the U.S.-backed forces and fascists, President Yanukovich fled the country to Russia.
U.S. government officials met with coup leaders and appointed a right-wing neoliberal, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, to lead the new regime, because they recognized they couldn’t appoint the fascists and maintain legitimacy.
A leaked recording of a phone call between Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, and the U.S. ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, showed that Washington chose who the leaders of the new coup regime would be.
Nuland referred to Yatsenyuk affectionately as “Yats,” saying, “Yats is the guy.”
The first actions of the post-2014 coup government were to ban left-wing parties in the country and reduce language-minority rights even further. Then Ukrainian fascists attacked anti-coup demonstrations in the streets all over the country.
As the anti-coup protests were being violently broken up by the far-right, two areas in the east of the country, Donetsk and Luhansk, rose up and declared independence from Ukraine.
The people of Crimea also voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia. Crimea has a Russian military base, and under their protection they were able to vote safely.
The people in Donetsk and Luhansk were less lucky. The coup government dispatched the military to suppress their insurrections.
At first many Ukrainian soldiers refused to shoot at their own countrymen, in this civil war that their U.S.-backed government started.
Seeing the hesitation of the Ukrainian military, far-right groups (and the oligarchs that were backing them) formed so-called “territorial defense battalions,” with names like Azov, Aidar, Dnipro, Tornado, etc.
Much like in Latin America, where U.S.-backed death-squads kill left-wing politicians, socialists, and labor organizers, these Ukrainian fascist battalions were deployed to lead the offensive against the militias of Donetsk and Luhansk, killing Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
In May 2014, neo-Nazis and other far-right forces assaulted an anti-coup demonstration in the major city of Odessa. 48 people were burned alive in a labor union building.
This massacre added more fuel to the civil war. The Ukrainian government promised to investigate what happened, but never really did.
My point: Without understanding the Maidan massacre and bringing to justice its perpetrators, it is impossible to understand and resolve peacefully the internal and international conflicts involving Ukraine and the dangerously escalating war in the Donbas. https://t.co/Hxyq0L4sA8
After the 2014 coup, Ukraine held an election without any serious opposition candidates, and Western-backed billionaire Petro Poroshenko won.
Poroshenko was seen as the most “moderate” of the right-wing coup coalition. But that didn’t mean much, considering many opposition parties were banned or assaulted by the far-right when they tried to organize.
Additionally, the areas that would have heavier support for the voices who wanted peace with Russia, such as Crimea and the Donbas, had seceded from Ukraine.
The new president had the impossible task of trying to appear sufficiently patriotic for the far-right while at the same time sufficiently “respectable” for the West to continue backing him publicly.
To appease the far-right, Poroshenko gave out awards to World War Two veterans “on both sides,” including the ones that fought in Nazi Germany-aligned militias like the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
The Ukrainian government officially honored the leaders of these organizations, Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukevych, who organized massacres of many thousands of Poles, Jews, Russians, and other minorities during World War Two, and who willingly participated in the Holocaust.
The holiday Defenders of Ukraine Day, or Day of Ukrainian Armed Forces, was changed to October 14, to match the date of founding of the Nazi-backed Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
This is why you sometimes see red-and-black badges on Ukrainian soldiers. This symbol shows support for the fascist Ukrainian forces during World War Two.
Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, shared of photo of herself holding a fascist symbol at a rally where the same fascist flag was everywhere. And yet, Canadian media has ignored it completely.
(Also I have to make a separate but important point here: Ukraine was previously part of the Soviet Union, and the majority of the Ukrainian population during World War Two supported the Red Army and actively resisted Nazi occupation of their country. The Ukrainian fascist collaborationists and parties did not have as broad support as the anti-fascist resistance did, and were mostly active during the period of Nazi occupation.)
A large portion of the civil war that broke out in Ukraine after the 2014 coup was waged under Poroshenko.
From 2014 to 2019, in five years of civil war in Donbas, the geographic region that encompasses the Luhansk and Donetsk republics, more than 13,000 people were killed, and at least 28,000 were wounded, according to official Ukrainian government statistics. This was years before Russia invaded.
The Ukrainian army and its far-right paramilitary allies were responsible for the vast majority of civilian casualties, with the United Nations reporting in January 2022 that, between 2018 and 2021, 81.4% of all civilian casualties caused by active hostilities were in Donetsk and Luhansk.
These are Russian-speaking Ukrainians being killed their own government. They are not secret Russian forces.
Researchers at the U.S. government-sponsored RAND Corporation acknowledged in a January 2022 report in Foreign Policy magazine that, “even by Kyiv’s own estimates, the vast majority of rebel forces consist of locals—not soldiers of the regular Russian military.”
Meanwhile, millions of Ukrainians fled the country due to the conflict, especially from the eastern regions that saw most of the fighting.
The United States strongly supported Poroshenko and the Ukrainian government as it was waging this brutal war that killed thousands, injured tens of thousands, and displaced millions.
This is why I say the U.S. government doesn’t actually care about Ukraine.
In 2019, the Ukrainian people clearly showed that they opposed this war by overwhelmingly voting against Poroshenko at the ballot box. Current Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky got 73% of the vote, compared to just 24% for Poroshenko.
Zelensky ran on a platform of peace. He even addressed the Russian-speaking eastern parts of the country in Russian.
Very quickly after entering office, however, Zelensky changed his tone. Much like the supposedly “moderate” Poroshenko, Zelensky was told that he was risking losing Western backing, and the loyalty of the far-right, which could threaten to kill him.
So Zelensky did a 180 on his peaceful rhetoric, and he continued to support the civil war.
Here it is important to address another important point: The Ukrainian government is not directly run by fascists, but in Ukraine fascist forces do have significant influence in the state.
After the 2014 U.S.-backed coup, neo-Nazis were absorbed by Ukraine’s military, police, and security apparatus.
So while the parliamentary representation of fascist parties is not large (they often get just a few percentage points of the vote in elections), these extremists continue to be supported by taxpayers’ money through unelected state institutions.
Additionally, these neo-Nazis have the street muscle to terrorize political opponents. They can quickly mobilize dozens or hundreds of people on a moment’s notice to attack opponents.
Moreover, these fascists are highly motivated combatants that ensure the loyalty of the Ukrainian military. They represent a powerful faction of the Ukrainian political spectrum, and one of the forces in Ukrainian society that pushes for escalating war with the separatist regions and Russia.
I sometimes see people try to reject this fact by saying, “How can Ukraine have all these Nazis if their president is Jewish?” Here is the answer: the Nazis are not appointed by Zelensky.
These fascists have a major influence in the unelected state security apparatus. The have systematically infiltrated the military and police. And they even enjoy support and training from Western governments and NATO.
NATO is sending weapons and trainers to help neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s white-supremacist Azov movement fight Russia, as the US floods the country with weapons.
This follows numerous reports of Western government support for Ukrainian far-right extremists.https://t.co/5gYgmU8PFo
The position of fascists grew substantially stronger in Ukraine in the eight years of the civil war, from 2014 to 2022.
For those reasons Ukrainian presidents (Jewish or not) have to take the position of the far-right into consideration. (Not to mention the possibility that far-right gangs could threaten to kill the president or other politicians if they defy them.)
Furthermore, all forces that normally oppose fascism or would oppose the civil war have not existed en masse for eight years in Ukraine: following the 2014 coup, many left-wing parties and socialists got banned by the Ukrainian government, and were assaulted in the streets by the fascists.
Any Ukrainian president, especially since the coup, is highly dependent on the support of the U.S. government as well. So Zelensky is very much a hostage of the situation.
When Washington tells Zelensky he must continue the civil war in Ukraine against his own electoral promises, support NATO membership, ignore the Minsk II agreement of 2015, or even ask for nuclear weapons, he does everything he is told.
Like any other U.S. puppet regime, Ukraine doesn’t have any real independence. Kiev has been actively pushed to confront Russia by every U.S. administration, against the will of the majority of Ukrainian people.
The fact that most Ukrainians wanted peace with Russia was reflected by the fact that they voted for the peace candidate Zelensky in such overwhelming numbers, 73%. And the fact that Zelensky did a total 180 on that promise shows how little political power he actually has.
Now to circle back to the present moment and what to do now. I don’t support the invasion Russia is carrying out. But the only government I can influence by the virtue of living in the United States is the U.S. government.
Luckily, that is extremely relevant, because Washington is one of the root causes of what is happening in Ukraine now.
For the past eight years, I spoke out against the coup and the civil war in Ukraine that the United States supported, promoted, and funded.
While I never thought a war with Russia was possible, I and many other Ukrainians are against Ukraine joining NATO and escalating tensions with the separatist republics and Moscow.
Any further escalation by the U.S. right now can only lead to a larger war.
I even hear some U.S. politicians playing around with the idea of a “no-fly zone,” which means they are calling for NATO to shoot down Russian planes. This is the quickest way to World War Three.
The support for Ukraine that fills the Western media now is not out of real solidarity with the people of Ukraine. If that were the case, the U.S. wouldn’t have overthrown our government twice in a decade; it wouldn’t have supported the policies that made us the poorest country in Europe; it wouldn’t have fueled a brutal civil war for the past eight years.
The reason U.S. media outlets and politicians are all backing Ukraine now is because they want to use the Ukrainian military and civilian population as cannon fodder in a proxy war with a political adversary.
Washington is willing to fight until the last Ukrainian to weaken Russia.
For that reason, I am absolutely against U.S. sanctions in general, and this round of U.S. sanctions against Russia in particular.
The harsh Western sanctions imposed on Russia target the civilian population.
Sanctions don’t affect ruling elites, and all U.S. sanctions ever do is collectively punish working-class people of a country where Washington doesn’t like their government.
Devaluing the Russian currency, the ruble, is effectively a form of shrinking workers’ wages, cutting the pensions of retirees, and preventing regular people from being able to access food or medicine.
This isn’t to mention the cost that these sanctions are now also having on the people in the United States itself, with gas prices as high as $6 a gallon and even $7 in parts of California.
The skyrocketing oil prices caused by this crisis will lead to more inflation. And while the official U.S. inflation figure is 7.5%, the real number is probably in the double digits.
All of this makes life harder for average working people, in Ukraine, Russia, the U.S., and around the world.
Another factor in the Ukraine crisis is the rampant surge of russophobia.
Since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election, Democrats have blamed Donald Trump’s victory on Russian hacking without any solid proof. All of the supposed evidence they presented fell apart when investigated.
Many U.S. politicians demonized Russia as much as they could, just to push the blame for their candidate losing on someone else.
Now Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine has made it okay to be openly xenophobic. I have even seen some people call for killing all Russians, boycotting all Russian businesses, revoking student visas for Russians, etc.
Even in the more “respectable” media, you see talking heads speaking about Russian people as if they’re not human.
Under Donald Trump, many of these same people demonized China, and then acted surprised when there was a wave of hate crimes in the U.S. against East Asians.
During the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the press demonized Arabs and Muslims, leading to hate crimes against their communities.
My point is that demonizing nationalities is never acceptable, and people can see through the flimsy excuses of hiding one’s own xenophobia behind the declarations of “solidarity” with my country.
In conclusion, I wanted to say that, if you live in the United States, the only government you can actually influence through demonstrations and other forms of protest is our own.
I absolutely think it is a crime right now to support the U.S. government’s drive for war, sanctions, or further escalation of tensions in Ukraine.
The U.S. government has been stoking this conflict for decades. Washington has funded coups and fueled a civil war in Ukraine.
Now, U.S. corporations stand to greatly benefit from what is happening.
The government doesn’t care about the people here in the U.S., and the only reason it says it cares about people abroad is so it can justify further military spending and advance its foreign-policy goals – which aren’t good for anyone except for a handful of rich American oligarchs.
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in MintPress News.
LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas—In June, a federal appeals court upheld an Arkansas law barring state contractors from boycotting Israel, sparking concerns over First Amendment rights in the United States.The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a decision made last year by a panel of three judges who found that mandating a pledge to not boycott Israel is unconstitutional.
However, the recent court ruling determined boycotts are not expressive conduct and instead related to commercial activity and therefore the state can regulate such actions.
“It only prohibits economic decisions that discriminate against Israel,” Judge Jonathan Kobes, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, wrote in the court’s opinion. “Because those commercial decisions are invisible to observers unless explained, they are not inherently expressive and do not implicate the First Amendment.”
“By declaring Arkansas’ Anti-BDS Law to be constitutional, the court has tacitly endorsed a Palestine-exception to the First Amendment,” Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) National Litigation Director, Lena Masri, said in a statement.
In 2018, The Arkansas Times sued the state over its Israel boycott law after refusing to sign the pledge. Originally, Arkansas Times publisher Alan Leveritt lost in District Court but won when he appealed to the Eighth Circuit Court. The state then appealed to the full appeals court and was granted a rehearing.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented The Arkansas Times, confirmed it plans to appeal to the Supreme Court. Brian Hauss, the ACLU’s chief litigator on the case, said in a statement that the court’s decision “misreads Supreme Court precedent and departs from this nation’s longstanding traditions.” “It ignores the fact that this country was founded on a boycott of British goods and that boycotts have been a fundamental part of American political discourse ever since,” Hauss said.
Breaking news: The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that boycotts are not protected by the First Amendment. @ACLU has confirmed it'll take the case to the Supreme Court, with huge implications for free speech in America.🧵
Leveritt, who is not participating in a boycott of Israel, told MintPress News that, as a matter of free speech, he wouldn’t sign the pledge.
“No media protected by the First Amendment in this country should take a political position in return for advertising,” Leveritt said. “This is America. The government doesn’t dictate to us what we say and do and think, so that’s why we’re fighting it.”
A clause in the law mandates contractors who do not sign the pledge must then reduce their fees by 20%, which Leveritt said has severely hurt the publication’s finances.
Israeli Government Influencing U.S. Laws
Bills targeting the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement have spiked in recent years, according to Palestine Legal, an organization protecting the rights of pro-Palestine activists.
As detailed in the documentary, “Boycott”, the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs established the propaganda project, Concert, as a public benefit corporation in order to circumvent U.S. laws on foreign interference. Concert’s primary purpose is to quell growing support for the BDS movement worldwide.
Through Concert, Israel has been able to funnel millions of dollars to organizations that would then lobby for these anti-BDS bills. Christians United for Israel — one of the main advocates for pro-Israel legislation — received $1.3 million from the Israeli government. Other groups include Eagle’s Wings, Hasbara Fellowships, America-Israel Friendship League, and the Israel Allies Foundation.
How the Supreme Court May Rule
If the Arkansas case does reach the Supreme Court, opponents of anti-BDS legislation like CAIR are optimistic the recent appeals court decision will be overturned.
“We realized the Supreme Court is not always a friend of civil rights, but the Eighth Circuit is very conservative, far more conservative than the Supreme Court even,” Justin Sadowsky, trial attorney with CAIR, said. “We’re very hopeful that the Supreme Court, which has often been champions of the First Amendment, will take a more nuanced look at it.”
CAIR’s deputy executive director, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, agreed with this sentiment. He noted that most of the Supreme Court justices take an originalist approach when interpreting the law, meaning they consider the original text of the constitution and apply it to modern scenarios.
“If they really look at what the constitution says — the plain meaning of it — and then also the history of it as originalists tend to do, then they have to rule that these laws are an unconstitutional violation of the free speech of the American people,” Mitchell told MintPress News.
Yet Alison Weir, founder and executive director of the independent research institute, If Americans Knew, outlined the Supreme Court’s pro-Israel influences – something that could lead to a less favorable ruling.
Weir explained in a recent article how the Supreme Court has a history of handing down decisions related to Israel that have changed longstanding U.S. traditions.
These included a 1967 ruling which sided with an Israeli citizen and overturned a ban on dual citizenship and a decision in 1998 that handed the Israel lobby’s flagship organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a victory over allegations the group violated federal election laws.
These decisions can be attributed to Israel partisans on the court like former Justices Abe Fortas and Stephen Breyer. Today, the court is still packed with Israel loyalists. Kentanji Brown Jackson, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh all have pro-Israel influences hidden in their education and career beginnings. Weir surmised Justice Elena Kagan may also pose a potential problem, given her love for Israel and her admiration for the country’s former Supreme Court president, Aharon Barak.
Setting a ‘Dangerous Precedent’
Other versions of the boycott law have passed in 33 states since 2016. Several U.S. residents have challenged these laws in recent years — in Texas, Georgia, Arizona, and Kansas — suing their states for violating their First Amendment rights and winning. But Arkansas is an outlier. Leveritt fears that if he loses in the Supreme Court, this could overturn favorable rulings in lower courts as well.
But it is not just Israel boycotts that are under threat. Boycotts, in general, appear to be at risk in the U.S. “In upholding Arkansas’ anti-BDS law, the court refused to confront the reality that these laws are part of an effort to shield Israel from accountability,” Palestine Legal said in a statement. “Given the proliferation of anti-boycott laws targeting other social justice movements, this decision sets a dangerous precedent for anyone interested in seeking social, political, or economic change.”
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has been instrumental in passing anti-BDS laws across the country, is now targeting financial firms for divesting from the fossil fuel industry.
The group works with corporate lobbyists and Republican state legislators to author legislation. In 2021, ALEC drafted the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act, requiring companies of 10 or more full-time employees to provide written verification it doesn’t boycott fossil fuel businesses before entering into a government contract. So far, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and Texas have signed similar legislation into law. Texas has also passed legislation prohibiting contracts with companies that boycott the firearms industry. ALEC is funded primarily by Koch Industries and a host of other energy and utility companies.
Other states are also using the anti-boycott model to target politically-charged industries. Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin all have drafted anti-BDS legislation.
Julia Bacha, director of the documentary “Boycott”, described the rapid trajectory of anti-BDS legislation in the U.S. in a Twitter thread following the Eighth Circuit Court ruling. “When we started production, the risk that the anti-BDS bill would be used as a template was still theoretical. By the time we locked-picture, it was a reality,” she wrote.
But she also cautions U.S. residents to not solely pin the blame on Republicans over anti-BDS bills becoming the norm, writing:
Beware of press coverage that points the finger at Republicans for stripping away our rights without recognizing that Democrats were complicit in opening the pandora’s box when they overwhelmingly supported anti-BDS bills. There’s no First Amendment Exception to Palestine and this is as good [sic] time as any for the Democratic Party to learn this lesson, before irreparable damage to our rights in America is done.”
Thus, if certain pro-Israel and pro-fossil fuel advocates get their way, a fundamental right to protest will be removed from U.S. residents.
Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist for MintPress News covering Palestine, Israel, and Syria. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The New Arab and Gulf News.
Editor’s Note: The following represents the writers’ opinion.
A free and transparent media is critical for any democracy. But in every society, defending the integrity of the media requires constant vigilance. We found ourselves drawn into the work of exercising this vigilance by complete chance.
When the independent left publication New Frame closed down after four years of operations, the liberal media rushed in, in unseemly haste, to put the boot in. Perhaps the worst of the attacks was penned by Sam Sole and Micah Reddy of the investigative journalism outfit amaBhungane. They alleged, based on nothing more than salacious gossip, that there was an attempt to influence public discourse in South Africa by the Chinese state. Not a shred of evidence was provided for this conspiracy theory by Sole and Reddy in an article that was largely based on innuendo. They abused the institutional authority of amaBhungane as a trusted publication to give credence to a conspiracy theory, one that aligned closely with the
key tropes being driven by the United States in the New Cold War.
The hostility towards us in this story can only be because our new organization, the Pan-African Institute for Socialism (PAIS), aims to create a non-sectarian space on the left to reach consensus on a pragmatic minimum program to increase the prospects for the Black poor and working-class majority in South Africa, Africa and the Global South.
PAIS has never had any sort of connection to New Frame aside from a single meeting held at their offices to inquire about the process for submitting opinion pieces for consideration, something that never actually happened in the end. But, to our complete astonishment, we found PAIS, a new and entirely unfunded organization, drawn into the conspiracy theories recycled by Sole and Reddy. This quite bizarre experience led us to wonder who funded amaBhungane, and what the drivers were for such vehemence by publications that claim to be fair, even-handed, and balanced. Those questions soon led us to an intricate web of relationships that are clearly designed to hide the influence of powerful funders and networks.
What is the real project of these U.S.-led imperialists and their surrogates in South Africa? A common thread has been the use of proxies to stymie the liberation of the majority of South Africans, particularly the Black working class and rural poor. First was Inkatha.1 Then came the DA. Lately, it is a hodge-podge of xenophobic opportunists. In addition, there are organizations that pose as being ‘Left’ and the so-called independent media. They all have one thing in common. They have an agenda to drive the ANC vote below 50 percent, in towns, cities, provinces and ultimately nationally.2
While PAIS may irritate them because we shine a spotlight on these reactionaries, their real target is the liberation movement. They wish to stymie the realization of the National Democratic Revolution, the as-yet unrealized goal of the struggle.
In this graphic the authors provided, they connect South African media leaders to major funders and the U.S. government / credit: Phillip Dexter and Roscoe Palm
We have been stunned by the extent of the capture of much South African media by the U.S. state and how most of it is hiding in plain sight. The first article to come out of our ongoing research project, “Manufacturing consent: How the United States has penetrated South African media”3 noted a few key points, including the following:
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created in 1983 during the Reagan era to conduct operations and functions previously carried out by the CIA.4 It supported the mujahideen in Afghanistan and the Contras in Nicaragua and has been involved in many U.S.-backed coups.5 It now has vast tentacles across Africa.6
The NED funds the Mail & Guardian’s (M&G) weekly publication The Continent7 via its own non-profit arm, Adamela Trust, and international organisations like the International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM),8 and the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA),9 all of which are linked to key people and organisations in the South Africa media. The editor-in-chief of the Continent is Simon Allison, former Africa editor of M&G, Africa correspondent of Daily Maverick, and a former consultant with Open Society Foundation (OSF)-funded Institute for Security Studies.10 11 It is noteworthy that the NED has continued its program through Republican and Democratic administrations, from Reagan through to Biden, and was headed by Carl Gershman from its inception until 2021. Its agenda has not changed. 3. The OSF and Luminate, another major foundation, are official U.S. government partners that often work closely with the NED and other parts of the U.S. state, strategically taking on and funding projects that the U.S. state cannot or does not wish to directly undertake.12 Among the many examples of direct collaboration is that the NED and the OSF jointly founded Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD).13 The Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) is an official initiative of NED that coordinates this work and lists OSF as a partner.14 Luminate, together with the MIDF, has facilitated “dedicated coaching and newsroom expertise in topics such as marketing, newsletters, community building, and audience development” for M&G.15 4. Key senior people in publications like the M&G and amaBhungane, including three former editors-in-chief of the M&G have gone on to work for U.S. and Western government-supported organizations, including three separate projects funded by the NED.16 17 18 5. At least fifteen people who passed through the fellowship program run by amaBhungane have been directly tied to U.S. government organizations and programs including the Voice of America.19amaBhungane has also led the formation of a regional investigative journalism network, IJ Hub.20 6. The M&G, the Daily Maverick and amaBhungane, as well as smaller projects like the M&G-linked Daily Vox and the local U.S. embassy-linked Africa Check,21 are part of a list of at least 24 publications that have been funded by one or more of the major funders that regularly partner with the U.S. government.22
As we continue with our research we are finding more NED links. For instance the NED has funded the Institute for Race Relations (IRR),23 which publishes the Daily Friend,24 a publication that is ostensibly liberal, but veers towards the reactionary right wing weltanschauung. Sam Sole, the editor of amaBhungane, is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ),25 which is funded by the NED.26 We are also finding more and more links between organizations, like the OSF and Luminate, and the U.S. state. It is also likely that some journalists are funded directly by organizations, so that the claim to independence of organizations can be upheld.
The Oppenheimer family, whose wealth was wrung from the super-exploitation of Black labor in the mines, have long had considerable influence over political life in South Africa, including during the negotiations where the right of capital to continue to exploit was affirmed.27 But it is clear that, like OSF and Luminate, the Oppenheimers are also key partners of the U.S. state. The Oppenheimers fund amaBhungane28 and are given the red carpet treatment by the Daily Maverick to platform for their surrogates such as Greg Mills to propagate their pro-Western worldview.29 Founded by Branko Brkic, the Daily Maverick does list some funders, but asks you to take a leap of faith that a group of ten trusts, companies, and individuals that own anything between 0.1 percent and 15 percent of its investment holding company, are not compromised or party to any external leverage, as a cohort or as individual opaque entities. It also raises questions that the Daily Maverick and its biggest shareholder, Inkululeko Media, are indexed by Google as sharing the same office address in St. George’s Mall, Cape Town.30 31 Their opaqueness flies in the face of the Daily Maverick’s claims of transparency, which are merely a marketing strategy. Since their reader covenant was drafted in 2009, the Daily Maverick has become an important and influential player in the polity. It has evolved beyond being a blog with an angle that punched above its lightweight class and has accrued a tremendous amount of institutional authority in shaping discourse and curating narratives. With this power comes the responsibility to precisely disclose its funding. In short, it’s time for Daily Maverick to grow up, just like its peers in the mediascape.
The Oppenheimers also fund the Institute for Race Relations (IRR),32 the South African Institute for International Affairs,33 and their own foundation, the Brenthurst Foundation34. In each case, the links to the U.S. state are clear. Chester Crocker, who was Ronald Reagan’s point man in southern Africa at the height of the Cold War35 is an “honorary life member” and board member of the IRR.36 The Brenthurst Foundation has clear and open links of various kinds to NATO. The director of the Brenthurst Foundation, Greg Mills,37 served as a special advisor to the NATO Commander David Richards, who commanded the Western coalition forces as they stomped their way across Afghanistan.38 Greg Mills39 is one of four foreign policy right-wing hawks who are “allowed” to write on geopolitical affairs by the Daily Maverick. The other three are former U.S. diplomat Brooks Spector,40 former editor of M&G and president of consultancy group Calabar Consulting, Phillip van Niekerk,41 and lifetime foreign affairs hawk and stenographer of Western imperial interests, Peter Fabricius. Fabricius and Spector are also linked to the South African Institute of International Affairs as “experts”.42 The SAIIA is funded by USAID and the U.S. Department of State.43 But the systemic capture of much of our mediascape by the U.S. state and its partners extends beyond questions of funding, training programs, revolving doors, boards and collaborations of various kinds. There is also the question of editorial lines. In a number of publications, there is a systemic bias towards pro-U.S. positions, and very, very little critique of U.S. imperialism. There are a number of people writing as independent analysts, who are in fact embedded in the U.S. state in various ways. We also see that while the media has often served the interests of the public in terms of uncovering corruption in government, it has often done comparatively little in terms of doing the same in terms of private sector corruption, abuse of workers and control of policy.
All this is just scratching the surface. We are finding much, much more evidence of widespread media capture with every hour of research. Already some key questions are emerging for future research and articles. They include the following:
Why is the Daily Maverick’s funding not fully and precisely disclosed—including, in particular, the details on all equity, loan, or subsidy transactions?
How are the amaBhungane fellowship and training programs funded? Are there project costs, fees and expenses received from programs funded directly or indirectly from U.S. government agencies? Why do such large numbers of the fellows go on to work for U.S. government funded projects?
Which publishers, editors and journalists have attended the regular events for editors held by the U.S. consulate in Cape Town? What are the details of other briefings held by U.S.-directly or -indirectly funded organizations that senior leaders of South African media attend?
Who are the former publishers, editors and journalists who now work for the U.S. state or for U.S.-state directly or -indirectly funded organizations?
What other media projects are funded by the NED, OSF, Luminate and the Oppenheimers?
What is the percentage of articles in our “independent” media on geopolitics that support the U.S. line on international affairs and the percentage of those that are critical?
Transparency is a basic democratic value. It is time we knew who the masters of our media really are. It cannot be acceptable that while the editors and reporters of these publications demand accountability and transparency of those in government, labor and, occasionally, in business, they arrogate to themselves the right to not meet the same standards.
Our research project is growing in scope and urgency by the day. We need help from all interested citizens of South Africa who wish to contribute to media reform in the interests of transparency and the important work of defending and deepening our democracy. As a start, we welcome suggestions for further questions for us to explore and, in due course, to present to the South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF). Please do contact us at [email protected] and share the questions that you think should be raised.
Phillip Dexter and Roscoe Palm are co-founders of the Pan-African Institute for Socialism, which can be found on Twitter at @PaisSocialism.
Footnotes
1 The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) started as a cultural movement in present day KwaZulu-Natal, but quickly morphed into a political movement to oppose the ANC’s liberation struggle. See “Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP),” South African History Online. 2 For example, in a recent opinion piece in Financial Times, Gideon Rachman wrote, “The best thing [the ANC] could do for the country’s future would be to lose the next election and leave power.” Gideon Rachman, “South Africa’s fear of state failure,” Financial Times, Aug. 15, 2022 3 See Ajit Singh and Roscoe Palm, “Manufacturing consent: How the United States has penetrated South African media,” MR Online, Aug. 8, 2022. 4 See David Ignatius, “Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups,”The Washington Post, Sept. 22, 1991 (“‘A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,’” agrees [Allen] Weinstein.” Weinstein was a co-founder of the NED.) 5 See David K. Shipler, “Missionaries for Democracy: U.S. Aid for Global Pluralism,”The New York Times, June 1, 1986. 6 For example, in FY2021 alone, the NED’s Africa program granted $41.5 million dollars across 34 countries and hundreds of projects. See National Endowment for Democracy, 2021 Annual Report. 7 See National Endowment for Democracy, “Regional: Africa 2021,” Feb. 11, 2022. 8 See International Fund for Public Interest Media, “About”. 9 See National Endowment for Democracy, Awarded Grants Search, (search: “Media Institute of Southern Africa”). Additionally, MISA has received funding from and is a “key partner” of the U.S. Agency for International Development. See United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs, Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations for 2002: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, One Hundred Seventh Congress, First Session, U.S. Government Printing Office, 2001, p. 870. 10 See Simon Allison LinkedIn. 11 See Institute for Security Studies, “How we work”. 12 “Private sector funding of independent media abroad … has several advantages over public financing. Private funders can be more flexible … and their programs can operate in countries where U.S. government-funded programs are unwelcome. “In many places around the world, the people we train are more open to participating in programs funded by private sources than those funded by the U.S. government,” says Patrick Butler, ICFJ [International Center for Journalists] vice president.” National Endowment for Democracy, Center for International Media Assistance, Empowering Independent Media Inaugural Report: 2008, Ed. Marguerite Sullivan, (cited in Manufacturing consent article). 13 According to the Global Forum for Media Development, OSF and NED are its “core funders.” See Global Forum for Media Development, “Partnerships”. 14 See Center for International Media Assistance, “Partners”. 15 See Luminate Group, “Sixteen media selected for Membership in News Fund,” Feb. 4, 2021. 16 Roper became editor-in-chief of M&G in 2009 and left in 2015 to become the Deputy CEO of Code for Africa (CfA). CfA is a member of Code for All, which is funded by the NED. Additionally, Roper was a Knight Fellow at the International Center for Journalists, which is also funded by the NED. See, Chis Roper LinkedIn profile; Code for All, “Our Supporters”; International Center for Journalists, Impact Report, 2022, p. 17. 17 Former editor-in-chief Khadija Patel (2016-2020) left the M&G to chair the NED-sponsored International Press Institute. In 2021, Patel became head of programs at the NED-funded International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM). See fn. 2 (above) (NED funding of IFPIM); International Press Institute, “Supporters and Partners”; International Press Institute, “Executive Board”; International Fund for Public Interest Media, “About”. 18 Former editor-in-chief Phillip van Niekerk (1997-2000) left the M&G to take up a senior position at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington D.C. ICIJ is funded by the NED. See “New editor of M&G,”Mail & Guardian, Mar. 20, 1997; “Over to you, Dr Barrell,”Mail & Guardian, Dec. 15, 2000; International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, “Our Supporters”. 19 See “Manufacturing consent: How the United States has penetrated South African media.” Full citation at fn. 3. 20AmaBhungane “is incubating the Hub… As incubator, amaBhungane has continued to support the Hub administratively.” IJ Hub, Annual Narrative Report 2021/21. 21 See Africa Check, “Partners” (“The U.S. Embassy in South Africa is proud to team up with Africa Check to tackle misinformation and disinformation in the media.”). 22 In addition to their own media-related grants, OSF and Luminate jointly founded the South African Media Innovation Program, a multi-million dollar media investment initiative managed by the Media Development Investment Fund, which is also funded by OSF and Luminate. See South Africa Media Innovation Program; Luminate Group, “South Africa Media Innovation Program (SAMIP) launched by Open Society Foundation of South Africa (OSF-SA), Omidyar Network, and Media Development Investment Fund,” Aug. 29, 2017. 23 See i.e. South African Institute of Race Relations, 86th Annual Report, 2015, p. 7. Additionally, the IRR has partnered with the International Republican Institute, which is one of NED’s four core institutes. See International Republican Institute, “Democratic Governance in Africa”; National Endowment for Democracy, “How We Work”. The IRR is also a member institute of the NED’s Network of Democracy Research Institutes. (See National Endowment for Democracy, “NDRI Member Institutes” (https://www.ned.org/ideas/network-of-democracy-research-institutes-ndri/ndri-member-institutes/#Top). 24 “The Daily Friend is the online newspaper of the Institute of Race Relations.” Daily Friend, “About” (https://dailyfriend.co.za/about/). 25 See International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, “Sam Sole”. 26 See International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, “Our Supporters”. 27 See Sampie Terreblanche, “The New South Africa’s original ‘State Capture’”, Africa Is a Country, Jan. 28, 2018. 28 See amaBhungane, “About Us”. 29 See https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/ray-hartley-and-greg-mills 30 See https://www.sayellow.com/view/south-africa/daily-maverick-in-cape-town 31 See footer on Inkululeko website for address. 32 See Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, “All Beneficiaries – S” 33 See Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, “All Beneficiaries – S” 34 See The Brenthurst Foundation, “Our Story”. 35 Interestingly, a 1983 New York Times profile of the Oppenheimer empire opens with the following: “In an oracular vein, an academic named Chester A. Crocker once said of South Africa: That country is by its nature a part of the West. It is an integral and important element of the Western global, economic system. Mr. Crocker, who has since become the State Department’s top Africa hand and author of the Reagan Administration’s policy of “constructive engagement” with South Africa’s white minority Government, was openly embracing a premise found in both South African propaganda and the arguments of Marxist analysts: that the West’s formal condemnations of apartheid mask an enormous stake in the outcome of the shadowy struggle between the races there.” See Joseph Lelyveld, “Oppenheimer of South Africa,”The New York Times, May 8, 1983. 36 See South African Institute of Race Relations, 92nd Annual Report, 2021, p. 6. 37 See The Brenthurst Foundation, “Greg Mills”. 38 See Greg Mills, From Africa to Afghanistan: With Richards and NATO to Kabul, Wits University Press, 2007. 40 See J. Brooks Spector author page at Daily Maverick. 41 See Phillip van Niekerk author page at Daily Maverick. 42 See South African Institute of International Affairs “Expert” pages for Peter Fabricius and Brooks Spector. 43 See South African Institute of International Affairs, “Funders”.