Bits and Pieces, March 14, 2023

For this week’s Bits and Pieces, I am mostly reposting from other media I subscribe to. The polycrisis continues to surface in so many different ways, and we need to see the interconnections, but just being aware of what’s happening is a beginning. I’ve edited the reposts for brevity and made an occasional comment, always in italics.

The good news: Focusing the attention away from the glitz of Hollywood

From the Huffington Post

March 14, 2023

Just one day after her historic Oscars win, Michelle Yeoh used her spotlight to redirect attention to the inequalities women and girls globally face after a disaster. In an op-ed, she recalled her 2015 trip to Nepal, where she experienced the deadly 7.8-magnitude earthquake. The recent quakes in Turkey and Syria brought back those memories. “Crises aren’t just moments of catastrophe: They expose deep existing inequalities. Those living in poverty, especially women and girls, bear the brunt,” she wrote. (Tell it like it is, Michelle!)

 

Long shadow of US invasion of Iraq still looms over international order (or disorder?)

From the Guardian, by Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic editor

March 13, 2023

The French statesman Georges Clemenceau once said: “War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.” In the case of the invasion of Iraq, however, the war that began 20 years ago started in victory (of sorts, if you ignore the destruction and deaths caused by the US “shock and awe” campaign) and has ended in a series of catastrophes.

When the US rightly denounces Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and extols the sacrosanct virtues of national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the UN charter, it only takes seconds for China and Russia, along with a distrustful global south, to point to the example of Iraq and accuse the US of double standards.

“Countries have memories,” Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, recently conceded…The invasion certainly had a profound immediate impact on Vladimir Putin, at the time only three years into his first term as president. American unilateralism in Iraq was critical in convincing Putin, initially an ally in Bush’s war on terror, of what he saw as the irredeemable arrogance of the US.

(Tony) Blair’s press secretary, Alastair Campbell, in his diaries captures the confrontation between Putin and Blair at a press conference in May 2003, and how it spilled over into the dinner afterwards: “This was someone who felt he ought to be treated as an equal and was not being treated as an equal. He said the whole post-9/11 response was designed to show off American greatness.” The US was demanding that Russia acquiesce to a unipolar world in which it was accountable to no one.

From Putin’s perspective, everything the US did subsequently – including flirting with Islamists during the Arab Spring, misleading him over UN authorization for the toppling of Gaddafi in Libya, siding with groups that included jihadists against Assad’s Syria and support for Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan protests – were signs of a country that saw no distinction between a “rules-based order” and American hegemony.

This gives a much different picture of the motivation of the Russians, not just Putin, with regard to US/NATO/EU actions between 2014 and the start of the war in Ukraine. Are the Russians trying to re-establish the Soviet Empire, or reacting to the fear that the US/NATO/EU are attempting, with a great deal of success so far, to assert hegemony over countries on its borders, and isolate it?

US Increases Dominance as World's Top Arms Exporter

From Common Dreams, by Brett Wilkins

March 13, 2023

"The impacts of the global arms trade aren't just about the volume of weapons delivered," said one expert, citing "a few examples of how U.S. arms deliveries can make the world a more dangerous place."

A Sweden-based research institute published a report Monday showing that the United States accounted for 40% of the world's weapons exports in the years 2018-22, selling armaments to more than 100 countries while increasing its dominance of the global arms trade. The United States saw a 14% increase in arms exports over the previous five-year period analyzed by SIPRI. U.S. arms were delivered to 103 nations from 2018-22, with 41% going to the Middle East.

And who is getting these weapons. In the Middle East, Israel is the largest recipient, followed by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates. One might question why the US is arming these historic enemies, whose human rights records are hardly impeccable? Hmm, could it be that we are getting ready for a war with Iran? In the name of promoting democracy and human rights? Another coalition of the willing?

Former top U.S. admiral cashes in on nuclear sub deal with Australia

From The Washington Post, by Craig Whitlock and Nate Jones

March 7, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EST

In its quest to build nuclear-powered submarines, the government of Australia recently hired a little-known, one-person consulting firm from Virginia: Briny Deep.

Briny Deep, based in Alexandria, Va., received a $210,000 part-time contract in late November to advise Australian defense officials during their negotiations to acquire top-secret nuclear submarine technology from the United States and Britain, according to Australian contracting documents.

U.S. public records show the company is owned by John M. Richardson, a retired four-star U.S. admiral and career submariner who headed the U.S. Navy from 2015 to 2019.

Richardson, who declined to comment, is the latest former U.S. Navy leader to cash in on the nuclear talks by working as a high-dollar consultant for the Australian government, a pattern that was revealed in a Washington Post investigation last year. 

I can hear the ghost of  President Eisenhower reminding us, “Beware of the Military/Industrial Complex.”

And, are we firming up the coalition of our allies in the Pacific (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization + Japan & South Korea) as we abrogate our longstanding One China policy?

 

And finally, at home - Look who gets bailed out and who doesn’t

From Inequality.org, March 13, 2023

The Silicon Valley Bank collapsed this past week.

Like Senator Elizabeth Warren, we see a clear connection between the bank’s demise and a bill Donald Trump signed in 2018 that undid essential banking reforms enacted in 2010, paving the way for financial institutions to chase after profits and disregard the downsides. SVB’s top dog Greg Becker, Senator Warren points out, took home almost $10 million last year for boosting his bank’s profitability — “and its riskiness.”

Federal officials are now strategically positioning their rapid-fire involvement in SVB’s financial recovery as definitely not a taxpayer-funded “bailout.” We find more convincing the analyses that see the rush to protect SVB’s clients as a sign of the outsized political power of rich bad actors that gives lower-income people the short end of the stick.

SVB, a bank with $200 billion in assets, collapses and gets rescued on a 48-hour timeline. Meanwhile, average Americans are now approaching $2 trillion in crushing student debt. Ask activists at the Debt Collective, a debtors union working to cancel student debt: “What have we gotten?”

They’re asking the right kind of question: How can the federal government spring to action to bail out mercurial venture capitalists while letting the debt of hard-working Americans pile up as banks levy heavy overdraft fees and the cost-of-living skyrockets?

No comment needed!

Have a great St. Paddy’s Day, while remembering that in the 1850s, it was the Irish immigrants who were “coming to America” in large numbers as a result of the potato famine and Imperial British rule over Ireland, and who were the target of the racist Know-Nothing Party.