Hundreds of lawyers from around the world called on the US to end the use of unilateral economic sanctions, saying the tool amounts to collective punishment of civilians and is illegal under international law.
In a letter to President Joe Biden, the lawyers, legal organizations and scholars decried the USâs increased reliance on sanctions to punish and coerce its adversaries and said the measures can lead to economic instability, hunger and reduced access to medicine and essential goods.
âCollective punishment is a standard practice of US foreign policy today in the form of broad, unilateral economic and financial sanctions,â the signatories said. While the use of sanctions is different from conventional warfare, âits collective impact on civilians can be just as indiscriminate, punitive, and deadly,â they said. (...)
The Pentagon is in the midst of a massive $2 trillion multiyear plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines. A large chunk of that funding will go to major nuclear weapons contractors like Bechtel, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. And they will do everything in their power to keep that money flowing.
This January, a review of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program under the Nunn-McCurdy Act â a congressional provision designed to rein in cost overruns of Pentagon weapons programs â found that the missile, the crown jewel of the nuclear overhaul plan involving 450 missile-holding silos spread across five states, is already 81% over its original budget. It is now estimated that it will cost a total of nearly $141 billion to develop and purchase, a figure only likely to rise in the future.
That Pentagon review had the option of canceling the Sentinel program because of such a staggering cost increase. Instead, it doubled down on the program, asserting that it would be an essential element of any future nuclear deterrent and must continue, even if the funding for other defense programs has to be cut to make way for it. In justifying the decision, Deputy Defense Secretary William LaPlante stated: âWe are fully aware of the costs, but we are also aware of the risks of not modernizing our nuclear forces and not addressing the very real threats we confront.â
Cost is indeed one significant issue, but the biggest risk to the rest of us comes from continuing to build and deploy ICBMs, rather than delaying or shelving the Sentinel program. As former Secretary of Defense William Perry has noted, ICBMs are âsome of the most dangerous weapons in the worldâ because they âcould trigger an accidental nuclear war.â As he explained, a president warned (accurately or not) of an enemy nuclear attack would have only minutes to decide whether to launch such ICBMs and conceivably devastate the planet. (...)
American flags purchased by the federal government will soon be required to be completely produced and manufactured in the United States. (...)
The government had previously only been required to buy flags that contain at least 50% American-made materials.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) introduced the All-American Flag Act. He said he believed this wasnât the law sooner because of corporate interest groups that moved jobs to China.
âThere never should be an American flag flying over a military base, whether itâs the Toledo air base or whether itâs a post office. There should never be an American flag flying over a government building thatâs not entirely made by American workers,â Brown said.
Brownâs office says in 2017, the U.S. imported 10 million American flags and all but 50,000 came from China.
How did this suddenly become the summer of âthe draftâ?
There are a number of proposals in the annual defense policy bill (National Defense Authorization Act) that deal with the subject. There is one to expand selective service registration to women. Another that would make Selective Service registration for American men âautomatic.â
Still another proposed amendment to the NDAA, which has also been introduced as a freestanding bill, S. 4881, would repeal the Military Selective Service Act entirely. Meanwhile, the Center for a New American Security just published an exhaustive blueprint for modernizing mobilization, including readiness to activate conscription.
As such, there are currently ten thousand draft board members who have been appointed and trained to adjudicate claims for deferment or exemption. As recently as this month, states have been openly seeking volunteers to fill empty slots. And both the SSS and hawkish think-tanks have been war-gaming the governmentâs contingency plans to activate a draft. (...)
I know this will probably annoy you, but you and I have a very similar view of American Empire and Hegemony. Trump will learn quickly he will have to go into negotiation mode heavy after the immediate rebuff of this ridiculous peace plan by Putin, but I believe he will and hope that he gets the opportunity because if he doesn't just stock up on your iodine pills cause you ain't far from us.
1. ~1/3 of all nations on Earth now face some form of US sanctions. Huge increase from when mostly applied to Cuba & a handful of regimes
2. +*60%* of *all poor countries* are under US sanctions of some kind. Has become almost a reflex of US foreign policy
3. Sanctions have spawned multi-billion-dollar lobbying & influence industry, enriching former US officials who are hired by foreign countries & oligarchs
4. Sanctions have had devastating effects on innocent civilians. In Cuba, they've made critical medical supplies impossible to import. In Venezuela, they contributed to a financial collapse 3X greater than the US Great Depression. Syria faces its greatest humanitarian crisis this year after a decade civil war & sanctions.
5. Treasury staffers drafted a ~40 page plan aimed at reforming the sanctions process that was dramatically whittled down amid disagreements w/ State
6. OFAC is widely described as overwhelmed by tens of thousands of requests. WH officials have brainstormed sanctions scenarios w/ outside nonprofits
7. Biden has unleashed unprecedented volley of +6K sanctions in 2 years. Higher than even previously unprecedented rate of Trump.
âWe donât think about the collateral damage of sanctions the same way we think about the collateral damage of war ... But we should.â
The (collective) punishment will continue until morale improves.
A top U.S. military general wants a "Marshall Plan" for Latin America but is likely more concerned about China's encroachment into America's backyard with "dual use" infrastructure than about what poor people in the Global South actually need.
But then again, Gen. Laura Richardson, SOUTHCOM commander, is a military officer, not a diplomat or humanitarian program lead at USAID.
Richardson told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum last week that the U.S. has been MIA in the region while Russia and especially China has been exploiting the post-COVID economic downturn with both military outreach (Russia recently in Cuba) and development projects (Beijing's Belt and Road). That is why Washington needs to offer its own "Marshall Plan" to Latin America, which it views as it its own sphere of influence.
She said 22 of the 31 countries in the region have signed on to the Belt and Road development program.
âHow are we competing Team USA and Team Democracy with the tenders that are coming out from (other) countries? How are we getting our U.S. quality investment and talking about our U.S. companies investing in the region? We have a lot of companies in the region. I donât think weâre branding Team USA as we should. It should be better. Weâve got to be bragging about what U.S. quality investment does,â she said. (...)
Therein lies the crux of the situation. On one hand she is absolutely right. As in Africa, Global South countries are reacting to economic outreach from China and Russia because a) they need it and America (private nor public) isn't in the game and b) help from China and Russia doesn't appear to come with as many strings as U.S. assistance might demand. She may also be on point that there are a dearth of high-level visits and attention to the region, giving the very real impression that Latin America is an afterthought.
But we should also ask why the military is taking the lead on asking the real questions here. Where are the diplomats? Is this just another argument for putting more military eyes and assets in the region?
Among the worldâs historically stable democracies, America has a particularly complicated relationship with the idea of political violence. This is, after all, a country born out of violent struggle, as the T-shirts and bumper stickers and speeches at any Republican event endlessly attest. This is also a country where the major expansions of civil rights, from Emancipation to desegregation, happened under the fact or threat of state violence, and where few on the left are willing to categorically condemn violent protest in the name of social justice. It is a country where many still nod at Thomas Jeffersonâs aphorism that âThe tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,â or to Malcolm X vowing âby any means necessary.â (...)
In a June survey, the political scientists Nathan P. Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason, who have conducted a yearslong study exploring American attitudes toward political violence, found that about 20 percent of respondents believed that political violence was at least sometimes justified. A full 60 percent â up from 40 percent four years ago â believed it was at least sometimes justified if people from the other political party committed an act of violence first, figures that varied little between Republicans and Democrats. In their discomfiting 2022 book âRadical American Partisanship,â they argue that ârather than asking whether Americans support political violence, the better question is when.â (...)
In February 2021, Kalmoe and Mason, the political scientists, asked a sample of Americans whether it was justified for members of their party to kill opposing political leaders to advance their political goals. Twelve percent of Republicans and 11 percent of Democrats replied that it was. âGeneralizing to the population of American partisans,â they write, âmeans roughly 20 million who endorse assassinating U.S. leaders.â
If the acceptance of political violence in America has been with us since the beginning, its contours have changed, in important and alarming ways. Since the 1990s, as Americans have sorted themselves into sharply diverging ideological and cultural camps along partisan lines, citizens on opposite sides of this divide have come to think of each other in decreasingly human terms. In 2017, Kalmoe and Mason found that 60 percent of Republicans and Democrats believed that the other party was a âthreatâ; 40 percent believed it was âevilâ; 20 percent believed its members were ânot human.â All three figures rose over Trumpâs presidency â more for Republicans than Democrats, but not by much.
The result is a climate of what Kalmoe and Mason call âmoral disengagement.â It is not violence, but an essential precursor, and it has reshaped the language of political violence in this country â and its targets. Rhetoric that two or three decades ago might have been directed at the federal government is now directed at other partisans, too.
Neocons are melting down over JD Vance Some of the reflexive militarism of Bush-Cheney era is fading and many Republicans are having a hard time with it
