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Solo shows for 2024
I’m doing a few solo poetry shows this year, starting this month with Chester, Lincoln & Scarborough.
I’ll be in Falmouth, Totnes & Launceston in April. And Belfast & Dublin in October.
If you fancy coming along to a show, you can get tickets here: https://brianbilston.com/events/
From Memes to Doxxing: Unmasking NATO’s Information Warfare Strategy
In November 2023, NATO’s “Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats” published a disturbing ‘working paper,’ “Humour in online information warfare: Case study on Russia’s war on Ukraine.” It received no mainstream attention. Yet, the contents offer unprecedented insight into the military alliance’s insidious weaponization of social media to distort public perceptions and manufacture consent for war. They also raise grave questions about online “trolling” of dissident voices over the past decade and beyond.
The working paper ostensibly “considers instances of humour put to effective use to counter disinformation and propaganda in online spaces, using Russia’s war on Ukraine.” It concludes, “humour-based responses…in the information space and in the physical domain have been found to deliver multiple clear benefits” for Ukraine and NATO.
Avowedly a “practical review seeking to identify examples of best practice from both government and civil society” for wider future application, the paper recommends Western states, militaries, and security and intelligence services master the art of online ridicule under the aegis of “counter-disinformation.”
It contends, “humour…reaches the parts that other countermeasures – like fact-checking or media user education – cannot.” Mass deployment of memes, moreover, “has the advantage of exploiting social media platform algorithms” and addressing “audiences that are not inclined to consume ‘boring’ products.”
As we shall see, the true value in weaponizing “humour” for NATO is distorting the battlefield reality in Ukraine – and future theaters of Western proxy conflict – for public consumption. Meanwhile, any social media user deviating from NATO-endorsed narratives can be subjected to intensive harassment, discrediting them and their message “among a wide sector of online audiences,” if not scaring them away from digital information spaces entirely. The working paper advocates the creation of an army of “private citizens” for the purpose.
‘Incredibly Serious’
The paper begins by noting that “state-backed parody and mockery of the enemy in conflict are nothing new,” citing satirical newspaper Wipers Times, distributed to British soldiers fighting in Western Front trenches during the First World War, and the BBC German Service, which “fought Hitler with humour.” Today though, “social media has democratised access and audience,” therefore “[opening] the playing field to self-motivated private individuals” while “[facilitating] their joining forces in informal collectives for greater effect.”
Multiple footnotes indicate weaponizing mockery is a longstanding NATO objective. A report published by the military alliance in 2017, “StratCom Laughs: in search of an analytical framework,” is cited, while an academic study, “Building a meme war machine: A comparative analysis of memetic insurgencies in cyberspace,” is said to be “forthcoming.” The former caused a mainstream stir upon release. It was, in turn, inspired by a NATO-sponsored paper authored two years earlier by Jeff Giesea, tech guru and Peter Thiel associate, which declared:
Trolling…is the social media equivalent of guerrilla warfare, and memes are its currency of propaganda. Daesh is conducting memetic warfare. The Kremlin is doing it. It’s inexpensive. The capabilities exist. Why aren’t we trying it?”
“StratCom Laughs” was highly influential. In May 2021, the Ukrainian government’s Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security wholeheartedly endorsed its findings while listing the benefits of “propagandistic humor.”
These included; “[making] perception less critical; [using] common contexts to convey messages with which the audience agrees; [simplifying] everything to the ‘obvious’; [creating] clear groups: strong and intelligent ‘we’ and clumsy and stupid ‘they.’ Of course, the audience associates itself with the former and begins to despise the latter”:
Simplified managed understanding is easily disseminated by the audience and creates the necessary social context for propagandists.”
The cover page of European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats case study, authored by Keir Giles
It’s a highly serendipitous coincidence that the North Atlantic Fella Organization (NAFO) was formed following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The vast, supposedly grassroots Twitter troll collective, identifiable by “doge” profile photos, inexorably blitzes “vatniks” – Russian officials and anyone failing to toe NATO’s line on the Ukraine proxy war – with a vicious blend of absurdity, ad hominem, memes, and ridicule, while raising money for Kiev’s war effort. The group embodies the pronouncements of “Stratcom Laughs” to a T.
NAFO features prominently in the working paper, with some activists quoted at length. It notes that the collective “grew from a fundraising initiative” for the Georgian Legion, a brutal paramilitary faction active in the proxy war. Unmentioned is that independent financing efforts are necessary because formal Western government backing for the group is politically and legally unfeasible. Its members openly boast of committing hideous war crimes, in particular, executing unarmed, bound Russian prisoners of war in cold blood.
NAFO founder Kamil Dyszewski is a Hitler-admiring antisemite who has heroized white supremacist mass murderers. The NATO paper quotes him saying, “all [Russians] see themselves as incredibly serious and important,” so they “struggle with being made fun of.” This perspective tallies perfectly with the military alliance’s perspective on online psychological warfare. The working paper repeatedly argues, “Russian and pro-Russian individuals and entities are intensely sensitive to mockery and show an inability to cope with being the object of derision.”
‘Courage and Resourcefulness’
The working paper judges NAFO to be an “ideal structure and format” for “countering disinformation, largely through the application of humour and mockery.” The group’s efforts were moreover found to “provide the base material for memes in the form of first-hand images and videos of Russian failures or Ukrainian determination.” This capability augmented “the responsiveness and impact” of Kiev’s “information campaigns,” which were, for example, “instrumental” in securing “US-made F-16 combat aircraft” in August 2023.
These excerpts are striking, for throughout the first 18 months of the proxy conflict, “Russian failures” and “Ukrainian determination” absolutely dominated Western media coverage of the war. The narrative that the invasion was an unmitigated disaster and huge embarrassment for Moscow in every way, and Kiev could pull off a spirited underdog victory and repel the invaders, if not ultimately march upon the Kremlin, as long as sufficient Western Wunderwaffe arrived, was universal and indomitable.
In reality, while there were undoubtedly “Russian failures” and “Ukrainian determination” aplenty from the start, Kiev was economically and militarily crippled within weeks. The “Special Military Operation” was concerned not with conquering every inch of the country but with compelling Volodymyr Zelensky’s government to implement the Minsk Accords and declare neutrality. This was almost achieved in April 2022 via Turkey-brokered peace talks. But then-Prime Minister of the UK Boris Johnson flew to Kiev, offering the Ukrainians the blankest of blank cheques to keep fighting.
The scale of Ukraine’s losses, the dire situation for the country from day one of Russia’s invasion, and British and American intelligence connivances that produced the conflict, concealed from Western audiences by their governments and media, meant siding with and arming Kiev appeared to be the objectively sensible, reasonable, moral position. After all, they were fighting an enemy that embodied absolute evil and incompetence. Helpfully, NAFO was always on hand to relentlessly remind the public of both qualities – particularly the latter.
“Stratcom Laughs” had triumphed. Public perceptions were rendered “less critical.” Serious, complex questions were simplified to “the obvious.” “Clear groups” were created – “strong and intelligent ‘we’ and clumsy and stupid ‘they.’” And Western audiences, “of course,” associated themselves with the former while “despising” the latter. Fast forward to today, and mainstream polls indicate that just one in ten Europeans believe Ukraine can win, with most believing a “compromise settlement” is the only way to end the conflict.
In June 2023, Ukraine launched a “counteroffensive.” Originally intended to start months earlier, it was much delayed due to adverse weather conditions and late weapon deliveries. Officials in Kiev, many Western journalists and pundits, and NAFO all heavily hyped the effort in advance. The group published many memes – some promoted a beach party for “fellas” in Crimea that Summer and others depicted “orcs” fleeing from swarms of leopards.
The latter played on a trope that Ukrainian political and military chiefs and the Western media were extremely keen to perpetuate – that Moscow’s soldiers, terrified of German Leopard 2 tanks, would abandon their positions as the armored vehicles advanced. Instead, they were easily blown to smithereens by extensive minefields created by Russian forces while they waited for the counteroffensive to commence and low-cost lancet drones.
Within just a month, Ukraine had lost 20% of the vehicles and armor supplied by the West, with nothing to show for it. This remained the case when the counteroffensive fizzled out at the end of 2023, with just 0.25% of the territory occupied by Russia in the initial phase of the invasion regained. Meanwhile, casualties may have exceeded 100,000. This can only be considered an absolutely horrendous catastrophe from every angle.
The Washington Post published an extensive post-mortem on the counteroffensive in December of that year. It is clear that among other failures, a fatal error in planning for the effort – overseen by the Pentagon – was the assumption that the Russians would flee in many areas. No alternative scenarios were considered. The Wall Street Journal has also highlighted other egregious strategic shortcomings, which made the counteroffensive’s calamity inevitable:
Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons – from shells to warplanes – that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.”
It seems Ukrainians were dispatched on a suicide mission because Western military apparatchiks bought into the simplistic, misleading propaganda narrative of “Russian failures” versus “Ukrainian determination.” Courage and resourcefulness are admirable qualities that Ukrainians have consistently exhibited since February 2022. But they are no match – let alone substitute – for landmines, tanks, fighter jets, artillery shells, and other weapons of war. That confirming this self-evident fact came at the cost of so many lives is a criminal tragedy.
Nobody has all the details but one thing is clear: this counteroffensive will rewrite military history.#Ukraine has stuff in the pipeline the Russians will never see coming. And much of what they do see coming, they won’t be able to stop anyway. #SpringIsComing
— Jessica Berlin (@berlin_bridge) May 6, 2023
‘Punching Upwards’
Throughout the working paper, axiomatic reference is made to how weaponizing humor “imposes costs” on “adversaries” and “aggressors.” Contradictorily, though, it is conceded that “the direct impact on Russia itself is hard to measure.” Indeed, it seems implausible that Kremlin officials and Russian soldiers on the frontline suffer any “costs” whatsoever from the mockery of anonymous Western social media users. This begs the obvious questions of why this approach is considered effective and who the true “adversaries” in NATO’s comedic crosshairs are.
A clue is offered by a passage celebrating how “the overall effect of a community built around humour has been to turn the tables on social media platforms.” As a result, “the agents of influence and other servants of authoritarian regimes, who for so long held the advantage, are turned into the targets rather than the deliverers of mockery and abuse”:
This causes both Russian officials and their extended network of influencers, enablers and trolls to realise that if they choose to serve a criminal regime, they expose themselves to mass ridicule and mockery.”
For “influencers, enablers and trolls,” read: anti-war, anti-NATO, anti-Empire journalists, researchers, activists, and private citizens who dare express the “wrong” opinions or expose inconvenient truths online that challenge NATO-endorsed narratives. This is certainly the case in my regard. The working paper cites me curtly, responding to puerile abuse from a detractor on Twitter as an example of how “those who oppose Russia, China or other hostile regimes publicly face consequences by the hostile regime itself or by its agents and sympathisers.”
Elsewhere, the paper endorses harassment, stalking, doxxing, and creating parody accounts of such “influencers, enablers and trolls” while also warning these are “potential hazards” faced by “individuals taking on authoritarian propaganda structures.” A NAFO activist is quoted as saying, “I’ve seen people get doxxed and harassed, and it doesn’t look fun. I want my family to be safe.” This sentiment is no doubt shared by NAFO’s many targets – but as they “serve a criminal regime,” they’re fair game from NATO’s perspective.
British Ministry of Defence apparatchik Keir Giles authored the working paper. It reveals he “briefly tried to earn a living as a stand-up comedian,” so “knows what it feels like when a joke falls flat.” An apologia he recently authored for Baltic state Nazi collaborators implicated in the Holocaust, in which he claimed they are misunderstood, was certainly not received with much humor. He has promoted the output of a dedicated parody account of none other than myself for some time.
Ironically enough, I would’ve found the account’s posts amusing if they were actually funny. Instead, it has mocked the victims of sexual abuse and also dabbled in antisemitism. In late January, the parody account published a post mocking me for being tormented as a child over my name. Little did I know these lame attempts at ridicule were a dedicated NATO psychological warfare operation.
The latter post gained little traction, and in response, many Twitter users expressed shock and revulsion at such playground bullying behavior. This highlights another shortcoming of NAFO’s approach – the group’s visceral, unabashed, genocidal hatred of Russia and all Russians is so extreme that they frequently repulse audiences to the extent of making them ask if they’re supporting the wrong side by backing Ukraine. Moreover, as Aleksei Navalny ally Leonid Volkov has observed, this output actively assists the Kremlin’s propaganda strategies.
Left-wing alternative comedy legend Stewart Lee has written about the paucity of right-wing standup comedians. He attributes this deficit to right-wing politics being overwhelmingly concerned with punching downward, which is simply unfunny bullying when performative comedy is “a heroic little struggle,” which “should always be punching upwards”:
Who could be on a stage, crowing about their victory and ridiculing those less fortunate than them without any sense of irony, shame or self-knowledge? That’s not a stand-up comedian. That’s just a c***.”
This may well explain why Keir Giles failed in his quest to become a standup comedian and why his “jokes” continue to fall flat to this day. But for all those who oppose war, his working paper is no laughing matter. It is advocacy for the military alliance to create a permanent online harassment battalion to inflict psychological, emotional, personal and professional damage on them while convincing decent people to hate the oppressed and cheer the oppressors.
Keir Giles was repeatedly approached for comment by MintPress News for comment, but did not respond prior to publication.
Feature photo | Keir Giles is pictured with NAFO meme mascot, the NAFO doge | Illustration by MintPress News
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.
The post From Memes to Doxxing: Unmasking NATO’s Information Warfare Strategy appeared first on MintPress News.
New article about the effort to ban basic income pilots in the U.S. and who’s behind it
Image credit: Scott Santens and Midjourney v6 The Foundation for Government Accountability – a Florida-based lobbying group backed by the richest 1% – is working to get basic income experiments banned by state legislators across the U.S. As a well-known quote often wrongly attributed to Mahatma Ghandi says, “First they ignore you, then they laugh […]
New article about the effort to ban basic income pilots in the U.S. and who’s behind it
Met confirms arrest of Gaza protester at Thornberry’s office
Outrage among activists at anti-genocide protest
The Metropolitan Police Service has confirmed the arrest of a protester on Monday night at what outraged other protesters have said was a lively but entirely peaceful protest, outside the Islington office of Shadow Attorney Emily Thornberry, against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the Labour regime’s support for it.
A Met spokesperson told Skwawkbox that a woman had been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred and bailed ‘pending further investigations’:
A small demonstration was held in Islington High Street during the evening of Monday, 26 February. A woman was arrested at the scene on suspicion of inciting racial hatred. She was taken into custody and later released on bail pending further enquiries. Next due on a date in April.
Protesters against genocide and for the human rights of Palestinians have been demonised by politicians and supporters of Israel for supposed ‘hate speech’ since Israel’s slaughter of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank accelerated after the Hamas raid and the Israel military’s well-known – but ignored by the UK ‘mainstream’ media and politicians – killing of ‘immense’ numbers of its own citizens. The Tory government, aided by ‘opposition leader’ Keir Starmer, have continued to attack the civil rights of the UK people to protest.
Right-wing MPs, along with pro-Israel campaigners, continue to call for tougher police action against demonstrators, despite the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of protests.
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A Profound Act Of Sincerity
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/748900638762390db63b5ed17b73e083/href
One of the main reasons the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell is having such an earthshaking impact on our society is because it’s the single most profound act of sincerity that any of us have ever witnessed.
In this fraudulent civilization where everything is fake and stupid, we are not accustomed to such sincerity. We’re accustomed to vapid mainstream culture manufactured in New York and Los Angeles, airheaded celebrities who never talk about anything real, self-aggrandizing Instagram activism, synthetic political factions designed to herd populist discontent into support for status quo politics, phony shitlib “I hear you, I stand with you [but I won’t actually do anything]” posturing, endless propaganda and diversion from the mass media and its online equivalents which are algorithmically boosted by Silicon Valley tech plutocrats, and a mind-controlled dystopia where almost everyone is sleepwalking through life in a psyop-induced fog.
That is the sort of experience we have been conditioned to expect here in the shadow of the western empire. And then, out of nowhere, some Air Force guy comes along and does something real. Something as authentic and sincere as anything could possibly be, with the very noblest of intentions.
He live-streamed himself lighting himself on fire and burning to death in order to draw people’s attention to how horrific the US-backed atrocities in Gaza actually are. Knowing full well how painful it would be. Knowing full well he’d either die or survive with horrific burns and wish he’d died. Knowing full well that once he connected the flame with the accelerant he poured onto his body, there’d be no turning back.
He didn’t back down. He didn’t go home and stuff his face with snacks and gossip in the group chat and see what types of mindless escapism are available on Netflix or Pornhub. He lit the flame. He even struggled to light it at first, and he still did.
There’s nothing in our society that can prepare us for that kind of sincerity. That kind of selflessness. That kind of purity of intention. It stops us dead in our tracks, as if the fabric of our world has been ripped asunder. And, in a way, it has.
We’re not really living in the same world we were living in before Aaron Bushnell lit himself on fire at 1 PM on February 25th. It was far too sincere an act, committed in the least sincere city on this planet. It shook things around far too much for all the pieces to fit fully back into place.
I myself am permanently changed. I find myself reapproaching the Gaza genocide with fresh eyes, renewed vigor, and invincible determination. I now write with a different kind of fire in my guts.
And looking around I can see it’s much the same for others. Where previously we’d begun seeing the opposition to the incineration of Gaza beginning to lose a bit of energy due to despair and how hard it is to keep something energized for months on end, we are now seeing electrifying enthusiasm.
More importantly, this is shaking things up in mainstream society and not just within the pro-Palestine crowd. We’re seeing Bushnell’s final words about the US empire’s complicity with genocide shared on mainstream networks like CNN and ABC, while Israel apologists run around falling all over themselves trying to tell people nobody cares about what Bushnell did like a guy sending a woman dozens of texts saying he’s totally unbothered that she rejected his advances. A member of the US military lighting himself on fire while screaming “Free Palestine” is absolutely devastating to the information interests of Israel and the United States, because it shakes people awake like nothing else ever could.
All around our fake plastic dystopia people are now opening their eyes, saying “Wait, huh? That man did what? Why? I thought nothing matters but my comfort and my feelings and my small circle of people I care about? My country is complicit in a what now? Is it possible I’ve been missing something important?”
With his profound act of sincerity, Aaron Bushnell extended the world an invitation to a very different way of looking at life. An invitation to pierce through the veil of superficiality and narcissism to a radical authenticity and a deep compassion for our fellow human beings. To a profound sincerity of our own, with which we can shake the world awake in our own unique ways.
At 1 PM on February 25th, Aaron Bushnell lit more than one kind of fire. A fire that drives us to act. A fire that lights the way. A fire that inspires us. A fire that shows us another way of being. A fire which shows us a better world is possible.
We won’t forget his message. We couldn’t if we tried.
______________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
New Study on a European UBI
Financed by the European Parliament and written by three Catalonian economists, “The fundamental part of this research means to answer the following question: can UBI be financed by the EU? And more specifically, to answer the key question of how it can be financed, through three taxes: income tax, wealth tax and carbon tax.” To […]
Aaron Bushnell Burned Himself Alive To Make You Turn Your Eyes To Gaza
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/c63ebd61dc332ce69b8ed0330465978e/href
I watched the uncensored video of US airman Aaron Bushnell self-immolating in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington while screaming “Free Palestine”. I hesitated to watch it because I knew once I put it into my mind it’s there for the rest of my life, but I figured I owe him that much.
I feel like I’ve been picked up and shaken, which I suppose was pretty much what Bushnell was going for. Something to shake the world awake to the reality of what’s happening. Something to snap us out of the brainwashed and distracted stupor of western dystopia and turn our gaze to Gaza.
The sounds stay with you more than the sights. The sound of his gentle, youthful, Michael Cera-like voice as he walked toward the embassy. The sound of the round metal container he stored the accelerant in getting louder as it rolls toward the camera. The sound of Bushnell saying “Free Palestine”, then screaming it, then switching to wordless screams when the pain became too overwhelming, then forcing out one more “Free Palestine” before losing his words for good. The sound of the cop screaming at him to get on the ground over and over again. The sound of a first responder telling police to stop pointing guns at Bushnell’s burning body and go get fire extinguishers.
He remained standing for an unbelievable amount of time while he was burning. I don’t know where he got the strength to do it. He remained standing long after he’d stopped vocalizing.
Bushnell was taken to the hospital, where independent reporter Talia Jane reports that he has died. It was about as horrific a death as a human being can experience, and it was designed to be.
Shortly before his final act in this world, Bushnell posted the following message on Facebook:
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’
“The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
Aaron Bushnell has provided his own answer to this challenge. We’re all providing our own right now.
I would never do what Bushnell did, and I would never recommend anyone else does either. That said, I also can’t deny that his action is having its intended effect: drawing attention to the horrors that are happening in Gaza.
I know this is true because everywhere I see Aaron Bushnell being discussed online I see a massive deluge of pro-Israel trolls frantically swarming the comments in a mad rush to manipulate the narrative. They all understand how destructive it is to US and Israeli information interests for people to be seeing an international news story about a member of the US Air Force self-immolating on camera while screaming “Free Palestine”, and they are doing everything they can to mitigate that damage.
As I write this, there are with absolute certainty people digging through Bushnell’s history searching for dirt that can be spun as evidence that he was a bad person, that he was mentally ill, that he was steered astray by pro-Palestine activists and dissident media — whatever they can make stick. If they find something, literally anything, the smearmeisters and propagandists will run with it as far as they can.
That’s what they’re choosing to do at this point in history. That’s what they would have done during slavery, or the Jim Crow south, or apartheid. That’s what they’re doing while their country commits genocide right now. People are showing what they would have done with their response to Gaza, and they’re showing what they would have done with their response to the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell.
I’m not going to link to the video here; watching it is a personal decision on which you should probably do your own legwork to make sure it’s really what you want. Whether you watch it or not, it happened, just like the incineration of Gaza is happening right now. We each own our personal response to that reality. This is who we are.
_____________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Deconstructing H.R. 3202: The Israel Lobby’s Persistent Role in Sanctioning Syria
On February 13, the U.S. House of Representatives deliberated on Resolution 3202, the “Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act of 2023.” The following day, the House passed the bill with a 389 to 32 bipartisan majority. Now, the bill moves on to the Senate, where it will most likely pass with similar bipartisan support and a ringing endorsement from President Biden once it reaches his desk.
The bill was pushed with a veneer of Syrian support represented by the advocacy of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF) and the Syrian American Council (SAC) – Syrian opposition groups in the U.S. While its aims seem, at face value, to focus on humanitarian issues and a quest for accountability, the reality is much more complicated.
The Bill’s Stated Aims
The bill was presented to the public as a tool for accountability purely targeting the Assad-led government of Syria and any of its in-country partners. The bill purports to achieve this by “Prohibiting any U.S. official action to normalize relations with any Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad, “Strengthening the human rights sanctions levied on Syria,” and” Examining the Assad government’s manipulation of the United Nations.”
In keeping with the polite presentation of the bill, Moaz Moustafa, SETF Executive Director, said: “We are proud to see legislation that holds the Assad regime and those normalizing with war criminals accountable” as a response to the passage of the bill.
Similarly, on the House floor, House Foreign Relations Committee chairman Mike McCaul announced that “Congress is sending a message that it remains committed to justice for the Syrian people.”
The Bill’s True Aims
While the stated aims seem to be focused on accountability and human rights, the real thrust of the bill was conveniently left unmentioned in the SETF and house representatives’ celebratory posts on X (formerly Twitter).
One line, deep within the 22-page bill, reads: “Section 7438 of the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 is amended by striking ‘the date that is 5 years after the date of the enactment of this Act’ and inserting ‘December 31, 2032.'” This hidden line, left out of all the explainer content dished out by SETF and SAC, extends the Caesar Act, set to expire in 2024, for eight more years.
The perversely named Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 has immiserated the more than 12 million Syrian people living under the government of Syria. Since the enactment of the Act, the percentage of the Syrian population below the poverty line has reached 90%, 600,000 Syrian children’s growth was stunted, and cases of anemia in pregnant and breastfeeding women saw a 60% rise.
Described as “unprecedented,” as one of the “strictest and most complex collective regimes in recent history,” and as the “most complicated and far-reaching sanctions regimes ever imposed,” the Syrian groups pushing for Caesar’s eight-year extension understandably shied away from mentioning the most crucial part of this new bill, even though they helped provide Syrian cover for its passing.
None of the four articles written by the SETF mention the extension of the Caesar Sanctions to 2032
As for normalization, although the bill purports to impose only a U.S. policy of wholesale rejection of normalization with the Syrian government, in reality, the bill lists several measures that would threaten a whole list of other countries wishing to restore diplomatic relations with Syria.
The bill calls on the Secretary of State to submit an annual report to Congress detailing a “strategy to describe and counter actions taken or planned by foreign governments to normalize, engage with, or upgrade political, diplomatic, or economic ties with the regime led by Bashar al-Assad in Syria.” This annual report must also include “a full list of diplomatic meetings at the Ambassador level or above, between the Syrian regime and any representative of the Governments” mentioned.
The report must also include a list of any transaction of $500,000 or more between any “foreign person located in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, or Lebanon” and any “recipient in any area of Syria held by the Assad regime.”
Sanctioning Syria: A Washington Tradition
H.R. 3202 is not the first, nor will it be the last, sanctions bill to target Syria. The economic war that the United States has been waging against Syria started long before a Tunisian banana salesman self-immolated, launching what would come to be known as the Arab Spring.
In 1973, as the October War was waging, Henry Kissinger was perfecting his shuttle diplomacy in hopes of breaking the thorn that was former Syrian President Hafez Al Assad. Kissinger tried everything in his arsenal to get the then-Syrian president to abandon the military struggle and resistance of alliances he was waging against the U.S. presence in the Middle East, particularly Israel.
Upon failing to sway Assad’s Syria from supporting Hezbollah, Palestinian Jihad, Hamas, and other resistance groups, and once Syria’s position was weakened by the Egyptian signing of the 1978 Camp David Accords, the ire of the U.S. State Department and Treasury, fell upon the Arab Republic.
Syria’s name was written atop the inaugural “State Sponsors of Terrorism” (SST) list in 1979, along with Iraq, Libya, and South Yemen. Today, Syria remains the only inaugural member still on the list, sharing the limelight with newly added countries: Cuba, Iran, and North Korea.
A timeline showing the membership of the US State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Source | Wikipedia
For the past 45 years since Syria made it on the SST list, the sanctions have never stopped. Below is a summarized list of all the sanctions that have been progressively levied upon the country of Syria and its people:
- In 1979, the Export Administration Act added Syria to the SST and thus restricted Syria from receiving foreign assistance funds from the United States. The Act added that the Secretary of State must notify Congress before licensing the export of goods or technology worth more than $7 million to Syria.
- In 1985, the threshold for notifying Congress before licensing the export of goods or technology to Syria was lowered from $7 million to $1 million.
- In 1986, the Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Antiterrorism Act of 1986 and Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986 respectively banned U.S. military sales to Syria and denied foreign tax credits on income or war profits from Syria with both of these laws citing alleged Syrian government support for terrorism.
- In 1989, the threshold for notifying Congress before licensing the export of goods or technology to Syria was lowered from $1 million to any value.
- In 1994, an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 mandated that the United States withhold a proportionate share of funding and contributions to international organizations for programs that benefit Syria.
- In 1996, under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the U.S. President was required to withhold aid to third countries that provided assistance or lethal military equipment to Syria.
- In 2003, the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act (SALSRA) imposed broad sanctions based on alleged WMDs accusations against Syria and Syria’s support of “Hezbollah, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.”
- In 2004, Bush announced an executive order expanding upon the SALSRA. The expansion cited Syria as being “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States” in its “undermining of […] stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq.“
- In 2008, three years before the Arab Spring, the Bush administration imposed further blocks on assets related to public corruption in Syria.
Once the uprisings of the Arab Spring reached Syria, the trickle of sanctions became a flood, and a bevy of bills and executive orders levied an array of sanctions on multitudes of industries in Syria, all culminating in the 2019 Caesar Civilian Protection Act.
Today, Syria is the most heavily sanctioned country per capita in the world. Falling third behind only Russia (after the Ukraine war) and Iran. Syria, however, is much smaller than the valedictorian and salutatorian of U.S. sanctions and orders of magnitude worse off economically, therefore desperately tethered to the international export-import economy for its survival and more vulnerable to the damage of sanctions.
Who’s Responsible for the Tradition of Sanctions?
Although H.R. 3202 is not the first bill sanctioning Syria, it shares a crucial element with all its predecessor bills that have targeted Syria for the past half-century: the Israel Lobby.
The 1979 bill that introduced Syria to the cruel reality of sanctions was a direct response to Syria’s role in the October War of liberation waged against Israel and for Syria’s unwavering support of the Palestinian resistance.
The SALSRA Act of 2003 and the Caesar Civilian Protection Act of 2019 – the second and first most robust sanctions bills imposed upon Syria, respectively – were both written by Eliot Engels, a former Democratic congressman from the Bronx.
Engels, a New York Democrat accused of tax fraud, is one of the top recipients of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) money in Congress, with a total of $1,847,342 raised from the Zionist PAC.
OpenSecret’s profile of former Congressman Eliot Engel’s campaign fundraising sources
As a member of the Arab-Israeli Peace Accord Monitoring Group, Congressional Hellenic-Israeli Alliance, and the Israel Allies Caucus, Engels is perhaps the foremost supporter of Israel amongst his Democrat peers.
One of the first bills he introduced was to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. He also wrote a resolution condemning a United Nations Security Council Resolution that condemned illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and was one of the few Democrats who broke rank and voted with their Republican peers to kill a bill that would have banned the sale of U.S. made-cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia – cluster bombs that would later be dropped on Yemeni civilians by the monarchy.
Eliot Engel, center, greets Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz, left, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 27, 2015. Carolyn Kaster | AP
Following in Engels’ footsteps, Joe Wilson, the author of H.R. 3202, also receives AIPAC money, albeit much less than the man whose work he extended by eight years.
OpenSecret’s profile of South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson’s campaign fundraising sources
Wilson, a South Carolina Republican who cut his teeth as a young aide working for civil rights opponent Strom Thurmond and later defended his legacy, has also been one of the most ardent supporters of Israel in Congress throughout his service.
Grateful for the opportunity to join my colleagues in a bicameral, bipartisan support of Israel. Thousands gathered on the National Mall to hear the collective sounds of solidarity in the ‘March for Israel. March to Free Hostages. March Against Antisemitism.’ #StandWithIsrael pic.twitter.com/IKjRr50qnK
— Joe Wilson (@RepJoeWilson) November 14, 2023
In an interview with AIPAC, Wilson, who also serves as the chair of the Middle East and North Africa subcommittee, Global Counter Terrorism Committee member, and House Committee on Foreign Affairs member, raised the alarm about threats posed by Iran and the Houthis towards Israel and the United States. He added that he is “grateful for the military service and what America has provided for the world.” So extensive is Wilson’s dedication to the cause of Israel that he once bragged that a Jewish person described him as “a real mensch,” Yiddish nomenclature meaning ‘a person of honor.’
Syrian Window Dressing
Even the facade of faux grassroots Syrian support that was put forth for H.R. 3202 has shady links to account for its advocacy of regime change and rampant sanctions.
The Syrian Emergency Task Force has been widely documented to have direct funding links to the U.S. State Department and extensive ties to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and AIPAC. The group was condemned for its incessant push to get the Obama Administration to launch a Libya, or even Iraq-style invasion of Syria in order to force a regime change.
Mouaz Moustafa (left) stands with Mike Pompeo, second right, and Joe Wilson, right, at an event condemning the Syrian government. Source | Twitter
As journalist Max Blumenthal documented for Mondoweiss magazine, SETF has publicly celebrated a donation of $1 million from Cuba regime change organizations in a post on their website that has since been removed.
As for the neocon-aligned 501 (c) Syrian American Council (SAC), a more bloodthirsty front organization for regime change war could not be found. In 2018, as a response to the now debunked Douma chemical attacks, the SAC urged President Trump to “follow through on his tweets Sunday morning, and to take immediate action against this tyrannical regime…by grounding Assad’s air force.”
In 2017, the SAC publicly lamented Trump’s refusal to continue the Obama administration CIA funding program of Jihadist terrorists in Syria, claiming that the $1 billion a year program “was always too weak to tip the scales.”
Syrian Civilians: Not an American Priority
After the death toll of Palestinian children in Gaza reached a staggering 12,000, skepticism arises when observing the Permanent U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas, vetoing a fourth U.N. Security Resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. It becomes evident that the U.S. establishment’s concern for the lives of the Syrian people, let alone non-Israelis in the Middle East, is dubious at best.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield raises her hand in opposition to a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, February 20, 2024. Photo | Yomiuri Shimbun via AP
Likewise, anyone listening to U.S. special envoy for Syria, James Jeffrey, characterize the suffering of the Syrian people as part of a geostrategic policy to transform Syria into “a quagmire for the Russians,” akin to the U.S. experience in Vietnam can comprehend the true motivations behind H.R. 3202 and preceding bills imposed on Syria.
Lastly, observers noting the statements of Dana Stroul – Democratic co-chair of the bipartisan Syria Study Group (2018-2020), former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East (2021-2023), and current researcher at WINEP – discussing the “rubble” that the U.S. intends to keep Syria in and the “leverage” it plans to maintain over Syria, grasp that the policy of sanctioning Syria and obstructing reconstruction has long been endorsed by the bipartisan consensus in Washington. The driving force behind these detrimental policies has consistently been neoconservative regime change proponents and individuals affiliated with pro-Zionist think tanks.
Biden official Dana Stroul in 2019: via military occupation, US “owns” Syria’s “resource-rich” “economic powerhouse” region. And via sanctions, it can “preventing reconstruction aid and technical expertise from going back”, leaving Syria in “rubble.” pic.twitter.com/WmZSfvXrKR
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) June 13, 2021
In an interview with Joshua Landis, one of the few Independent U.S. experts on Syria, Landis shared his opinion on the crass and transparent language used by the likes of Jeffrey and Stroul, telling MintPress,
They’re saying that even if we don’t succeed in getting rid of Assad.. At least we lock [Syria] into a stalemate… A stalemate that denies Iran and Russia a strategic Victory.”
In describing the U.S.’ long-term goals in Syria to MintPress, Landis evokes the Arabic word for swamp or mustanka’a. “The long-term goal of America is to deny Syria as a strategic asset that’s got some money, and that can help [Russia and Iran], and so keep it as poor as possible and make it mustanka’a,” Landis concluded.
Long Term Damage
The Anti-Assad Regime Normalization Bill is the latest in a series of measures that the U.S. has taken against the Syrian people for the crime of winning a regime-change war imposed upon them.
The U.S. hypocrisy on the global stage is now clearly evident to all who wish to see it. While the U.S. condemns and sanctions Venezuela for barring an opposition leader convicted of treason from running in the upcoming election, it supports and even provides IMF loans for Pakistan even after the latter ousted its democratically elected leader who chose neutrality in the Ukraine war.
The U.S. system of rules-based order that has prevailed since 1945 with the establishment of the Bretton Woods Institutions is slowly unraveling. The dollar’s strength is waning, and the bite of U.S. unilateral sanctions has become duller over the years, as evidenced by the failure of the Russian sanctions regime.
While the U.S. will undoubtedly succeed in causing another generation of Syrian kids’s growth to be stunted, and while it will succeed in bringing more Syrian families below the poverty line during the coming eight years of Caesar Sanctions, it is all the while wrecking any semblance of credibility it might still have on the global stage, and – most unfortunate as Joshua Landis surmised while sharing his thoughts on the new bill – losing its identity along the way.
Through much of American history, America believed that a stronger middle class made democracy and contributed stability in the world. But with this promiscuous use of sanctions, America is betraying its own values to lift people into the middle class. And now by trying to drive them into poverty, and using sanctions as a central instrument of its foreign policy, it’s creating deeper anger, and impoverished people who are less educated, and less capable of competing in the modern world. In theory, all this is to promote democracy or Justice … but of course it’s not going to do that. It’s just going to make people more desperate, more Islamist, and more available to radical ideologies.”
Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News
Hekmat Aboukhater is a Syrian American investigative journalist reporting from France, the U.S., and Syria. Hekmat hosts the WhatTheHekmat Podcast and the Conversations With Dissidents show. He has written for The Grayzone and Al Mayadeen. Follow him on X @WhatTheHekmat.
The post Deconstructing H.R. 3202: The Israel Lobby’s Persistent Role in Sanctioning Syria appeared first on MintPress News.
Israel-Palestine Isn’t ‘Complicated’, You Just Support Killing Palestinians
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/eaf93e4d5cac055a65f8af8146886e7d/href
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The Julian Assange extradition appeal hearing concluded on Wednesday, with no date yet set for a verdict. The entire thing was plagued by media access issues, which has been a constant in every Assange court hearing in every courtroom I can remember. This is a historic case and they’re given months of notice to prepare, and yet the errors persist and always fall on the side of limiting transparency. At a certain point you have to rule out incompetence and assume it’s deliberate.
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It’s wild to think we could be close to seeing Assange whisked away and disappeared from public view for the rest of his life because he committed the crime of good journalism.
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Keep in mind when you read that the US is attempting to jail a journalist for exposing war crimes, that because of Gaza you actually now know what war crimes look like in real life. War crimes are the absolute worst of crimes where the most powerful prey on the most vulnerable. We absolutely must be able to expose them.
https://medium.com/media/410f9a7d29f5431c08f20fb069572c39/href
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Israeli media are now reporting that ten hostages were killed as a result of Israeli attacks on buildings where the IDF knew hostages were located. Israel supporters can go ahead and stop babbling about hostages when trying to justify the attack on Gaza. It’s never been about saving hostages.
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Israel-Palestine isn’t complicated, you just support colonialism and genocide.
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The US-centralized empire is currently backing a literal genocide and deliberating whether it should begin extraditing and incarcerating foreign journalists for reporting on its war crimes, while continuing to condescendingly wag its finger at the global south over human rights.
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Australia is now doubling its fleet of warships in a buildup aimed at China. I write about the US war machine so much because it’s the most destructive force on this planet by far and it’s harmful to humanity as a whole, but I’ve also got a personal stake in it as an Australian: I oppose our being used as a pawn in Washington’s future war with China.
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The US and Israel are doing everything they can to instigate a wider war in the middle east while leaders in Iran and Hezbollah do everything they can to avoid one. It’s so glaringly, blatantly obvious which side is the aggressor here.
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Once you decide a drastic geopolitical agenda MUST be forced through no matter what you have to do or who you have to kill, you’re guaranteed a lot of bloodshed. That’s what we’re seeing with the agendas of both US planetary hegemony and the maintenance of a Jewish ethnostate.
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The trick is to be a collectivist about the collective and an individualist about yourself as an individual.
Billions of humans cannot exist on this planet without very extensive planning and coordination; it’s way too many large mammals introduced way too quickly to the biosphere to do otherwise. So we need to think collectively about ourselves as a group, and organize accordingly. There’s no getting around it, and failure to accept this is a sign of intellectual and/or emotional immaturity.
But with regard to your own thoughts, your own worldview, your own understanding of the world and your place in it, you must be fiercely individual. Humanity is in a state of mass delusion and confusion, and if you go along with the group — ANY group — in your thinking and understanding, you will surely be led astray. Some groups are far more lucid than others, but they’re all comprised of highly fallible human beings at a point in spacetime when humans are extremely prone to error, and mass-scale psychological manipulation operations by the powerful are further muddying the waters. You’ve got to stand on your own two feet and take full responsibility for your understanding and perspective on all matters, even if/especially when it means standing alone against the crowd.
In other words we must take responsibility for our own minds, but we also have a responsibility toward the wellbeing of humankind as a whole. These two points don’t conflict in the slightest, and are actually kind of obvious if you think about it.
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One thing a lot of people miss about the rising authoritarianism in our society is that such measures are not being rolled out with the goal of constructing a new dystopia that will look wildly different from what we see today, but to lock our current dystopia into place.
Many skeptically-minded individuals look at emerging trends like rising internet censorship, the push to eliminate online anonymity, the war on critical journalism, digital currencies, increasingly sophisticated surveillance, facial ID, artificial intelligence and the normalization of robots in the police force, and they imagine these things will be used to create some kind of pseudo-communist dystopia where human behavior is forced by tyrannical overlords to look wildly different from the way our current civilization looks.
This misconception is based on the erroneous assumption that the powerful are not already getting everything they want from normal human beings, when they absolutely are.
Think about it: why would the people who currently rule over our society want something different from the system upon which their rule is premised? It would be like a king arbitrarily deciding “You know what? Let’s abolish the monarchy and replace it with something completely different, like an oligarchic theocracy or anarchist collective.” They’d be acting against their own power interests.
We’re already working, consuming and voting in perfect alignment with the interests of the powerful, and for the most part we’re thinking and speaking as the powerful want us to as well. This is because our education and media systems have successfully trained us to act in ways our rulers want us to act.
So authoritarian measures aren’t being quietly implemented with the goal of changing our current systems, but as a prophylactic measure in case we ever decide we’re fed up with the exploitative and oppressive nature of those systems and want to start revolting. They’re not preparing to change the nature of the prison or the way it’s being run, they’re just bolstering the locks on the doors.
If you’re in prison, which is more significant for you in your personal life: the fact that you’re in prison, or the fact that they’re improving the locks on the prison’s doors? For most people the issue of more immediate concern would be the fact that they are in prison. The fact that they are not free.
And this is what the prison looks like. Our rulers have already achieved what they were trying to achieve. This mind-controlled dystopia where everyone thinks, speaks, acts, votes, works and consumes in accordance with the interests of the rich and powerful is everything the rich and powerful could possibly want from us.
Some dissident-minded people miss this because they are sympathetic to the values of capitalism, and they have been trained to believe that freedom looks like being free to choose what you will consume and which exploitative capitalist you want to have your labor extracted by, and how you will spend your “free time” when your labor is not being exploited. They therefore imagine that this current dystopia is what freedom looks like, and that the powerful are plotting to inflict some future alien dystopia upon them that looks more collectivist and communismy.
This is simply not the case. This civilization is saturated in mass-scale psychological manipulation geared toward tricking us into believing that this is what we want, that we built this horrifying dystopia ourselves, that it serves our interests, and that this is what freedom looks like — but we only believe such things because we were trained to believe them. That is the doctrine of the dystopian capitalist empire we live under, and all the information systems in our society are slanted toward tricking us into thinking it’s the truth. The delusion that dystopia would be experientially different from what we are currently experiencing is itself part of the propaganda prison.
This is not what freedom looks like. Humanity could be so, so much more than this, and it should be. We should not be locked into these abusive competition-based models wherein nations compete with other nations, political factions compete with other political factions, scientists compete with other scientists, workers compete with other workers. We should not be clawing our way to the front of the rat race and stepping on the heads of our brothers and sisters trying to scramble to the top, we should be collaborating together for the common good of all humankind, and for the good of this planet’s biosphere upon which we depend for survival.
Right now the only thing stopping us from having a healthy and harmonious world where nobody’s left out and everyone has enough is the fact that skillful manipulators have slyly constructed this competition-based dystopian prison around us without our noticing. The sooner we start noticing, the sooner we can start plotting our escape. And the sooner the better, because the prison’s security systems are only getting tougher and tougher to break through.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Eight BIEN Podcasts Now Available on YouTube
BIEN has issued eight approximately one-hour podcasts that are now available on YouTube, and more will be put out in the future. The latest is an interview with Jurgen De Wispelaere by Ahmed ElBas where they discuss various topics and take a look at Latin America for the first time. To see the full playlist […]