AMERICAN DUPLICITY

JANICE KORTKAMP—China of course hasn’t been shredding one country after another in endless wars sold with pure lies like the US war machine has. Reports usually say at least a million people, but in reality many millions are dead now because of US wars and interventions just in the past 20 years. Tens of millions have been displaced from their homes. Economies and infrastructures of several countries have been laid waste. Trillions have been spent and trillions more are unaccounted for by the Pentagon. Thousands of Americans have been killed in these conflicts with thousands more suffering from PTSD, drug and alcohol abuse and addictions, unemployment, homelessness, while suicides among veterans and active serving are far above even the horrific civilian rates.

AJIT SINGH—The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been central to the rising international prominence of the Uyghur separatist movement. In 2020, the NED boasted that it has given Uyghur groups $8,758,300 since 2004 (including $75,000 in annual funding to the UAA) and claimed to be “the only institutional funder for Uyghur advocacy and human rights organizations.” 

“As a result of NED’s support, the Uyghur advocacy groups have grown both institutionally and professionally over the years,” said Akram Keram, a program officer and regional expert at NED. “These groups played critical roles in introducing the Uyghur cause in various international, regional, and national settings against China’s false narratives, bringing the Uyghur voice to the highest international levels, including the United Nations, European Parliament, and the White House. They provided firsthand, factual resources documenting the atrocities in East Turkistan, informing and inspiring the introduction of relevant resolutions, sanctions, and calls for action to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable.”

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—“Tankie” used to be a term which referred specifically to British communists who supported the Soviet Union, but under the facilitation of narrative managers like Smith it’s enjoying a mainstream resurrection in which it is commonly weaponized against anyone to the left of Bernie Sanders who opposes US imperialist agendas. I wrote against anti-imperialism for years without anyone ever applying that pejorative to me, but now it comes up on a near-daily basis. I haven’t changed the basics of my beliefs or my approach to anti-imperialism, but the widespread use of “tankie” as a pejorative against people like me most certainly has changed.

EDWARD CURTIN—On March 30, 2018, The Washington Post’s crime reporter, Tom Jackman, published a four-column front-page article, “Who killed Martin Luther King Jr.?  His family believes James Earl Ray was framed.”  While not close to an endorsement of the trial’s conclusions, it is a far cry from past nasty dismissals of those who agreed with the jury’s verdict as conspiracy nuts or Hitler supporters.  After decades of clouding over the truth of MLK’s assassination, some rays of truth have come peeping through, and on the front page of the WP at that. Jackman makes it very clear that all the surviving King family members – Bernice, Dexter, and Martin III – are in full agreement that James Earl Ray, the accused assassin, did not kill their father, and that there was and continues to be a conspiracy to cover up the truth.

SERGE HALIMI—One of the most promising features of the Biden package is its universality. More than 100 million Americans have already received a Treasury cheque for $1,400. For a quarter of a century, most western states have made their social policies conditional on ever more stringent means testing, permanent surveillance, and punitive, humiliating employment ‘activation policies’ (2). As a result, people who no longer receive anything despite being in need are encouraged to hate public policies that they have paid for but which benefit someone else. Then, riled by the media, they come to believe they are subsidising cheats and freeloaders. The Covid-19 crisis has interrupted that kind of talk.