India: Farmers mark 100th day of protest, block highway

Indian farmers have blocked a six-lane expressway outside New Delhi to mark the 100th day of protests against the deregulation of agriculture markets, to add pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. Farmers young and old headed in cars, trucks and tractors to the highway for a five-hour roadblock on Saturday to oppose three farm laws enacted in September 2020 that they say will hurt them and destroy their livelihoods by opening up the agriculture sector to big private companies. Modi has called the laws much-needed reforms for the country’s vast and antiquated agriculture sector, and painted the protests as politically motivated. “The Modi government has turned this protest movement into an ego issue. They are unable to see the pain of the farmers,” Amarjeet Singh, a 68-year-old farmer from Punjab state, told Reuters news agency. “They have left us no option but to protest.” Their movement has gained international attention and support, including from celebrities such as climate activist Greta Thunberg and US singer Rihanna, but several rounds of negotiations between farmer leaders and the government have failed. Modi’s government has lashed out at supporters of the protests and stands accused by rights activists of using heavy-handed tactics to curb the demonstrations. While the protests have been mostly peaceful, a brief spate of violence on January 26 led to the death of a protester, and the police have filed criminal charges against eight journalists over alleged misreporting of the events of the day. “The Indian authorities’ response to protests has focused on discrediting peaceful protesters, harassing critics of the government, and prosecuting those reporting on the events,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement last month. As the capital braces for harsh summers and the harvesting season begins, farmers gathering on Saturday said they had no plans to turn back until their demands were met. “Bitter cold didn’t affect our movement, and neither will deathly heat,” said Raja Singh, a 58-year-old farmer from Punjab state.

Justice Finally Catches up With Sarkozy BY PHILIPPE MARLIÈRE

On Monday, a criminal court in Paris handed down its verdict in Nicolas Sarkozy’s corruption trial. The former French president was sentenced to three years in jail – two of them suspended – for bribery and influence-peddling. This is a legal landmark for the French judicial system for two main reasons. First, no former president had been sentenced to an actual prison sentence since France’s collaborationist leader Marshal Pétain in 1945. (This said, Sarkozy’s one-year jail sentence will probably not be spent behind bars, but under house arrest with an electronic tag). The former president Jacques Chirac received a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for embezzling public funds when he was Paris mayor. And second, the French judicial system has long been seen as being deferential to the government of the day in sensitive political cases. This court decision definitely runs counter to this tradition. It took a lot of tenacity on the part of the Parquet National Financier (the judicial institution in charge of tracking down complex financial crimes) to counter attempts by Sarkozy and his allies to undermine its authority. In the end, the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law prevailed. It was also the triumph of democracy: evidence that no citizen, however powerful he or she might be, is above the law. The case centred on phone conversations between Sarkozy and Thierry Herzog, his former lawyer. These calls were monitored by French police from September 2013, as part of an investigation into claims Sarkozy had received an illegal and undeclared donation to his 2007 presidential campaign from Muammar Gaddafi, then leader of Libya. (Sarkozy has denied any impropriety.) At the same time, a separate police investigation was under way into allegations that Sarkozy had received illegal payments from the ailing L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt for the 2007 campaign. (These charges against Sarkozy were dropped in October 2013.) The court heard that conversations between Sarkozy and Herzog in 2014 suggested that Sarkozy had promised a senior magistrate, Gilbert Azibert, a top job in Monaco in return for inside information about the Bettencourt inquiry. Judge Christine Mée ruled that compelling evidence demonstrated a “pact of corruption” between Herzog, Azibert and Sarkozy himself. She concluded that Sarkozy, a former lawyer, “knew that he was doing something wrong”. His actions and those of his lawyer had given the public “a very bad image of justice, and this called for a criminal sanction”. She also added that Sarkozy’s crimes were “extremely serious because they had been committed by a former president who, constitutionally, should guarantee the judiciary’s independence”. The damning verdict did not silence Sarkozy’s political supporters. They rushed to the broadcast studios to denigrate the decision and lambast the judges, questioning the fairness and independence of what they regard as a “political verdict”. This reaction is reminiscent of Silvio Berlusconi’s attacks on Italian magistrates – whom the former Italian president labelled “red judges”. More worrying, though, was the reaction of Gérald Darmanin, the rightwing interior minister, whose role is to fight corruption. Though in Emmanuel Macron’s government, he’s a former member of Sarkozy’s party. Minutes after the verdict was released, he declared his “friendly support” for the ex-president. Such a statement could be a massive boost to the far right – whose support feeds off the sense that France’s elite are all in it for themselves. The public reaction on social media was incandescent. Several of Sarkozy’s friends and associates have also separately been convicted of financial wrongdoing, including his political mentor Charles Pasqua, his former prime minister François Fillon, his former chief of staff Michel Gaudin and a former close adviser, Boris Boillon. Yet, despite such baggage, Sarkozy was recently being touted as the potential conservative candidate for the 2022 presidential election. And, further fuelling distrust of the political elite, Macron is said to have been on cordial terms with Sarkozy before his conviction. In 2018, the current host of the Élysée Palace even asked Sarkozy to deputise for him in a state ceremony. How could Macron, the once feted young liberal leader, have been so reckless and entertained the most polarising president of the postwar period? How could he have befriended someone who epitomises “bling” and who once launched an astonishing attack on the “moral and intellectual permissiveness of May 1968” and the progressive, liberal attitudes it heralded? Leftwing critics may argue that the men are two sides of the same neoliberal-authoritarian coin. However, what they indeed have in common is that they were both elected to the presidency of the Fifth Republic – the “Gaullist Republic”, born in 1958 as a reaction to the ongoing French colonial war in Algeria. It allocates extraordinary constitutional powers to the president but imposes little accountability on him. As a consequence, French voters elect a “hyper-president” or a “republican monarch” with all the pomp that goes with it. It is no surprise that presidents, once in office, are rapidly perceived as out of touch. The Sarkozy brand is now irreversibly contaminated, and his political career is over. He is due to appear in court again later this month over the so-called Bygmalion affair, in which he is accused of having overspent in his unsuccessful 2012 re-election campaign. The Sarkozy trials may be heralding a change of political culture in France. The era of arrogant and aloof presidents who seem untouchable and above the law may be about to end. This criminal conviction is happening at a time when the French have grown exasperated at the lack of accountability of their president. With presidential elections taking place next year, and the left and the far right eager to capitalise on public discontent with the system, who knows what the political consequences might be? Philippe Marlière is a Professor of French and European Politics at University College London (UK). Twitter: @PhMarliere

"Weapons of Mass Destruction": The Last Refuge of the Global Interventionist

Ryan McMaken The threat of “nuclear proliferation” remains one of the great catch-all reasons—the other being “humanitarian” intervention—given for why the US regime and its allies ought to be given unlimited power to invade foreign states and impose sanctions at any given time. We saw this at work during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It was said that nuclear weapons were among the “weapons of mass destruction” being developed or harbored by Saddam Hussein’s regime. Thus, it was “necessary” that the United States invade Iraq and enact regime change. It is now very clear, of course, that the Bush-Cheney administration was lying and there was no credible evidence that Iraq’s long-defunct nuclear program had been revived. But let’s say for the sake of argument that Iraq was well on its way to developing a nuclear weapon in early 2003. Would it have become “necessary” for the US to invade Iraq and install a de facto puppet regime that would agree to not develop nuclear weapons? The question is relevant, of course, because interventionists are now making the same claims about Iran as were made about Iraq in 2003. The conventional thinking among neoconservatives and other interventionists in Washington is that yes, the United States is always justified in invading foreign states if it prevents nuclear proliferation. If this is not done, we are told, the new nuclear state will surely use its new weapons, or at least threaten to use them for purposes of blackmail. Unfortunately for the interventionists, history has repeatedly shown this claim to be tenuous at best. Since 1945, as more and more states have become part of the “nuclear club,” each new member has failed to live up to the predictions that proliferation will quickly lead to geopolitical destabilization and war. This has become more important in recent years, as humanitarian interventions have apparently lost their cache with the American public. In recent years, Washington has tried to drum up support for regime change invasions in both Venezuela and Syria, yet those efforts failed to catch on. Threat of nuclear proliferation, then, likely offers the last hope for the interventionists when it comes to regime change in Iran. Those Guys Are Crazy! Perhaps the most-used argument made against tolerating proliferation often rests on the idea that most regimes are too insane, irrational, or incompetent to manage nuclear weapons responsibly—however one might define "responsible" stewardship of weapons that exist to destroy entire metropolitan populations. The claim is thus made that regimes in Iran, Iraq, and North Korea—to name just three examples—are likely to be unrestrained by the instinct of self-preservation and that thus we cannot apply traditional theories of nuclear deterrence to these regimes. Yet, this theory has yet to amass any evidence to support it. Are we to believe that the Soviet and Chinese regimes have always been headed by eminently sane people? After all, as John Mueller notes, the weapons have proliferated to large, important countries run by unchallenged monsters who, at the time they acquired the bombs, were certifiably deranged: Josef Stalin, who in 1949 was planning to change the climate of the Soviet Union by planting a lot of trees, and Mao Zedong, who in 1964 had just carried out a bizarre social experiment that resulted in an artificial famine in which tens of millions of Chinese perished. Mueller suggests that it is incumbent on the opponents of an Iranian bomb to show that Iran’s leaders are less sane than Stalin.Some might nevertheless claim (however implausibly) that Muslims are somehow more naturally murderous than Stalin. Yet we might note that this doesn’t explain how the Islamic Republic of Pakistan—an occasional military dictatorship—has somehow refrained from using its nuclear arms against its hated rival India. In actual experience, regimes that acquire a bomb tend to moderate their behavior. As Kenneth Waltz points out: every new nuclear state has behaved exactly the way the old nuclear states have behaved. One can describe the way all nuclear states have behaved in one word: responsibly. When the United States contemplated the Soviet Union one day having its own nuclear weapons, we were horrified by the prospect. How could we live? How could the world live with such a country as the Soviet Union—which we saw as bent on world domination—having nuclear weapons? And when China developed its own nuclear weapons, we repeated the same way of thinking—“My God! China? China is crazy!” But in fact, if you think of the Cultural Revolution, China took very good care of its nuclear weapons. They ensured that they would not fall under the hands of the revolutionaries and came through that horrible ten-year period. The fact is that people worry that a new nuclear country, once it gets a nuclear shield, would then begin to behave immoderately or irresponsibly under the cover of its own nuclear weapons. Well, that has never happened. Every country that has had nuclear weapons has behaved moderately. (Of course, by “moderately” he only means in terms of provoking full-scale war with rivals.) In any case, the notion that regimes that acquire nuclear warheads then go off the deep end has yet to be observed in real life. This is why, in a 2012 forum for PBS, John Mearsheimer noted that if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, this would likely stabilize the region rather than destabilize it: I think there's no question that a nuclear-armed Iran would bring stability to the region, because nuclear weapons are weapons of peace. They're weapons of deterrence. And because nuclear weapons are useful only for deterring attacks, they cannot be used for so-called nuclear blackmail: We have created this myth in this country over the past few years in talking about Iran that any country that acquires nuclear weapons can blackmail other countries or use those nuclear weapons for offensive purposes. We have a lot of theory and a huge amount of empirical evidence, 67 years now, which show that no country with nuclear weapons can blackmail another country, as long as somebody is protecting that country or it has its own nuclear weapons. Rather, in the case of Iran, according to Waltz, if the goal is stability in the region, that answer lies in ending Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the region—which has been a source of enduring instability. In the July/August 2012 issue of Foreign Affairs, Waltz observed: Israel's regional nuclear monopoly, which has proved remarkably durable for the past four decades, has long fueled instability in the Middle East. In no other region of the world does a lone, unchecked nuclear state exist.Of course, it is easy to understand why Israel wants to remain the sole nuclear power in the region and why it is willing to use force to secure that status. In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq to prevent a challenge to its nuclear monopoly. It did the same to Syria in 2007 and is now considering similar action against Iran. But the very acts that have allowed Israel to maintain its nuclear edge in the short term have prolonged an imbalance that is unsustainable in the long term. Israel's proven ability to strike potential nuclear rivals with impunity has inevitably made its enemies anxious to develop the means to prevent Israel from doing so again. In this way, the current tensions are best viewed not as the early stages of a relatively recent Iranian nuclear crisis but rather as the final stages of a decades-long Middle East nuclear crisis that will end only when a balance of military power is restored. Nuclear Arms Offer a Solution to Threats of Regime Change Indeed, the case of Israel is not unique in the sense that the United States provokes the same sort of instability worldwide. The United States has either carried out regime change or threatened to do so in a number of cases. This means those countries targeted by the US are highly motivated to acquire arms, which these regimes correctly see as the only reliable deterrent against US invasion. Waltz continues: There is only one way that a country can reliably deter a dominant power, and that is by developing its own nuclear force. When president Bush identified the countries that he said constituted an “axis of evil”—namely, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea—and then proceeded to invade one of them—namely, Iraq—that was certainly a lesson quickly learned by both Iran and North Korea. That is to say, that if a country wants to deter the United States it has to equip itself with nuclearforce. I think we all have seen that demonstrated very clearly. In other words, it is the United States, and to a lesser extent the State of Israel, which have created situations in which states become highly motivated to acquire nuclear arms for defensive reasons. If the US really wanted to reduce the likelihood of regimes like Iran and North Korea seeking and expanding nuclear capabilities, the US would disavow its doctrine of regime change explicitly. It would also renounce the notion of an “axis of evil” and cut back the US’s nuclear arsenal to a force designed for minimum deterrence. Until that happens, the United States itself remains a primary motivation for nuclear armament among regimes that have run afoul of the Washington establishment. This, however, is unlikely to happen, because a perpetual stance of antiproliferation and regime change pays many dividends in Washington. It keeps the Pentagon’s budget sky-high, and it allows the regime to claim it is enforcing worldwide peace, even while it remains a source of instability. In the sloppy world of public debates over foreign policy, this appears to many voters to make sense. As Mueller has suggested, it’s easy to just keep pushing the panic button and then taking the credit for the fact that World War III has yet to break out: Alarmists have one great advantage. If their alarm proves to be justified, they will look like prophets. If nothing happens, they can claim that this desirable condition has been the result of efforts their alarmism has inspired. Thus, when New York Police Department Commissioner David Cohen is asked how he knows whether his extensive counterterrorism programs (which have had an almost perfect record of not finding any terrorists) have been successful, he curtly responds, “They haven’t attacked us.” Reporting this comment, reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman note that “the absence of a terrorist attack has been the silver‐bullet argument for national security pro‐fessionals.” Although it is a “flawed argument” logically, they continue, it has been “nearly irrefutable” politically. The dodge, then, is, (1) we are trying to keep them from attacking; (2) they haven’t attacked; therefore (3) it must be our efforts that have kept them from doing so. The question we must ask ourselves, however, is: At what cost? How many more countries will the United States bomb or invade in the name of wiping out weapons of mass destruction? We’ve already seen the side effects of these efforts. Not only are hundreds of thousands of human beings killed in these wars—as was the case in Iraq—but these conflicts also create immense refugee and immigration crises while creating power vacuums. ISIS, for example, would have never gained much success at all had the US not destroyed Saddam's secularist Ba’athist regime in Iraq. These costs are sure to be studiously ignored. Whether we’re talking about global warming or covid-19, or “weapons of mass destruction,” the strategy today is that we must trust the regime to take whatever drastic steps it wishes or else we face an existential threat. We must adopt environmental regulations that would force billions of Africans and Asians back into poverty “or else.” We must destroy civil liberties and impose lockdowns on countless millions “or else.” We must carry out regime change in yet another country “or else.” This narrative has worked wonders for regimes seeking ever more power. They won’t abandon this strategy any time soon. Author: Contact Ryan McMaken Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and The Austrian, but read article guidelines first.

MBS approved Khashoggi murder: US intelligence report

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is responsible for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the US administration has revealed in the summary of a long-awaited report detailing the American intelligence community's findings on the murder. The report will likely alter US policymakers' ties with Saudi Arabia and the crown prince, known as MBS, particularly. "We assess that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi," the report, a summary of which was released on Friday, said. President Joe Biden has already suggested that he would forgo the young prince - the de facto ruler of the kingdom - and deal directly with the ageing King Salman. The report said US intelligence officials concluded that MBS ordered the assassination, based on his control of major decisions in the kingdom. 'Aides were unlikely to question Mohammad bin Salman's orders or undertake sensitive actions without his consent' - US report "We base this assessment on the Crown Prince's control of decisionmaking in the Kingdom since 2017, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Mohammad bin Salman's protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince's support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi," the US intelligence document said. The US intelligence assessment added that MBS's aides could not have killed the journalist without the crown prince's blessings. "At the time of the Khashoggi murder, the Crown Prince probably fostered an environment in which aides were afraid that failure to complete assigned tasks might result in him firing or arresting them," it said. "This suggests that the aides were unlikely to question Mohammad bin Salman's orders or undertake sensitive actions without his consent." US-Saudi relations Biden spoke on the phone to King Salman less than 24 hours before releasing the report, but a White House statement describing their conversation did not mention Khashoggi. "The President told King Salman he would work to make the bilateral relationship as strong and transparent as possible," it said. "The two leaders affirmed the historic nature of the relationship and agreed to work together on mutual issues of concern and interest. Khashoggi killers used planes seized by Saudi crown prince: Report Read More » Khashoggi, a former Saudi government insider, became a democracy advocate and an influential critic of the crown prince before his death in October 2018. Saudi government agents killed and dismembered him at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul. Saudi officials insisted for 17 days after the murder that Khashoggi had left the building alive before eventually acknowledging that he was killed. Riyadh, however, still says the assassination was an unauthorised operation that occurred without the approval of top leaders. Khashoggi was a US resident who wrote for the Washington Post and Middle East Eye. His murder caused a massive backlash from legislators of both major parties, who demanded accountability for the killing. But former President Donald Trump moved to shield Saudi leaders from the brewing wrath in Washington, often citing Riyadh's geopolitical role in countering Iran and arms deals with US weapons manufacturers. Late in 2019, Congress passed a law ordering the US intelligence chief to submit to lawmakers within 30 days an unclassified report outlining "the advance knowledge and role" of any Saudi official in "the directing, ordering, or tampering of evidence in the killing of Khashoggi". The Trump administration simply ignored the legally-binding request. It released a statement to Congress arguing that releasing such a report would compromise the US intelligence community's sources and methods. It has been long assumed that an operation of the magnitude of the Khashoggi assassination - where the hit team used Saudi state and diplomatic resources - could not have happened without MBS's approval. US media reports indicated late in 2018 that the CIA concluded that MBS is responsible for the murder. Legislators who received classified intelligence briefings on the matter have also come to the same conclusion. "If the crown prince went in front of a jury, he would be convicted in 30 minutes," then-Republican Senator Bob Corker told reporters in December 2018, after a meeting with intelligence officials behind closed doors. Still, advocates for justice for the slain journalist have long maintained that releasing the US intelligence report to the public is an important step towards ensuring accountability for the killing. Agnes Callamard, the UN rapporteur on extrajudicial killings who found in a 2019 probe that the murder was a state-sanctioned crime, has been calling on Washington to share its findings on the killing. "From an international legal standpoint and an international political standpoint, the public release of a document with the CIA assessment - a document that could be probed by others - will make it far more difficult for the rest of the world, particularly governments, to ignore Mohammed bin Salman's personal involvement in the operation that led to the killing and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi," Callamard told MEE last year. The crown prince has personally denied involvement in the assassination. Asked whether he ordered the operation, bin Salman told CBS News in 2019: "Absolutely not." Calls for sanctions During her confirmation hearing in January, director of national intelligence Avril Haines committed to releasing the report. The unclassified document comes as the Biden administration says it is reassessing US-Saudi relations. On Wednesday, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki reaffirmed the US president will bypass MBS when dealing with Saudi Arabia, and correspond with King Salman instead - "counterpart to counterpart". Early in February, Biden ended US support for Saudi "offensive operations" in Yemen, but reaffirmed Washington's commitment to the kingdom's security. Advocacy groups were quick to call for consequences for Riyadh. "This confirmation of bin Salman's role underscores the urgent need for a new approach to the US-Saudi relationship," William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, said in a statement. "The Saudi regime must be held accountable for its crimes at home and abroad, including not only the Khashoggi murder but in its central role in creating the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen." Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee who has been pushing for making the report public, vowed on Friday to continue to push for justice for the murder. "The highest levels of the Saudi government, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, are responsible for the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi," Schiff wrote on Twitter. "There must be accountability, and we will continue to press for it." Late in 2018, Washington announced sanctions against 17 Saudi individuals, including Saud al-Qahtani, a senior adviser to the crown prince, for "having a role in the killing". At the time, critics of the previous administration said the measures were not adequate because they did not punish the officials who ordered the assassination. On Thursday, Mike Eisner, general counsel at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a rights group envisioned by Khashoggi that was fully established last year, said the sanctions should be imposed on the crown prince himself.

Satellite Images Show Israel Expanding Secretive Nuclear Weapons Facility

Dave DeCamp Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press reveal a large construction project taking place at a secretive Israeli nuclear facility near the city of Dimona. The Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center is home to laboratories that are used to obtain weapons-grade plutonium for Israel’s undeclared nuclear bombs. The pictures show what AP describes as a “dig about the size of a soccer field” near where the facility’s reactor is located. Israel did not respond to requests for a comment on the images. The images first surfaced last week, and Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif pointed out the hypocrisy in Western leaders who ignore Israel’s secretive nuclear weapons program while obsessively focusing on Iran’s civilian nuclear program that is subject to stringent inspections. Zarif described the Dimona facility as the region’s only “nuclear bomb factory.” Israeli officials are also constantly accusing Iran of having a secret nuclear weapons program when it is Israel that is secretly making nuclear bombs. The images come as Israel is warning against a revival of the Iran nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA. Because the JCPOA does not last forever, Israel claims it will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran. But that ignores the fact that Iran is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which forbids it from ever obtaining nuclear weapons. Israel, on the other hand, refuses to sign the NPT. Estimates put Israel’s nuclear arsenal at somewhere between 90 and 300 nuclear warheads.

US Bombs Militia Targets in Eastern Syria, 22 Reported Killed

Dave DeCamp Posted The US bombed targets in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border on Thursday. According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 22 members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) were killed in the strikes, although the number is unconfirmed. An Iraqi militia source told Reuters that at least one person was killed in the bombing. The PMF is a group of mostly Shia Iraqi state-sponsored militias that formed in 2014 to fight ISIS. The US framed the bombing as “defensive,” blaming the groups they targeted for recent rocket attacks on US bases in Iraq, but no evidence has been presented to substantiate the claim. Earlier this month, rockets hit a US base in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, killing one contractor. “We’re confident that the target was being used by the same Shia militia that conducted the strikes,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said of Thursday’s bombing. The Pentagon described the targets as “infrastructure utilized by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria.” “Specifically, the strikes destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups, including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said. Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada are both militias under the umbrella of the PMF. Kataib Hezbollah denied any role in the Erbil attack or other recent incidents at US facilities. “We absolutely did not target Erbil or the Green Zone and have no knowledge of the group that did,” Kataib Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Mohi told Reuters, referring to the Green Zone in Baghdad where the US embassy is located. Rockets were fired towards the embassy on Monday, but no casualties were reported. Mohi said he wants the US to withdraw the remaining 2,500 troops it has in Iraq and believes detente between the US and Iran can lead to that, a sign that Kataib Hezbollah has no interest in escalating tensions. Iran has also denied any role in the Erbil attack. With the Iranians seeking sanctions relief from the new administration, they have no reason to orchestrate attacks on the US in Iraq. Considering the US has been bombing Iraq for 30 years now, there are many groups inside Iraq that have their own reasons to fire on the US. There are also groups like ISIS that would benefit from a war between the US and Iraq’s Shia militias. At the end of 2019, the US blamed Kataib Hezbollah for an attack on a base in Kirkuk, Iraq, that killed a US contractor. The Kirkuk attack kicked off the series of events that led to the US assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, who was killed alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of the PMF. Without presenting evidence, the Trump administration blamed Kataib Hezbollah for the Kirkuk attack and bombed members of the militia in Iraq and Syria. The airstrikes killed 25 Kataib Hezbollah fighters, enraging many in Iraq, and demonstrators stormed the US embassy in Baghdad. President Trump then ordered the drone strike that killed Soleimani and Muhandis. It was later revealed that Iraqi intelligence believed the Kirkuk attack was more likely carried out by ISIS, a group that celebrated Soleimani’s killing.

“Islamo-Leftism”: Macron’s Witch Hunt Against Critical Academics BY PHILIPPE MARLIÈRE

Speaking recently on CNews, France’s equivalent of Fox News, the higher education minister launched an unprecedented attack on the whole French academic community. Frédérique Vidal argued that French academia is “gangrened by Islamo-gauchisme” or “Islamo-leftism”. The “Islamo-leftism” tag is today used uncritically by members of the government, large sections of the media and conservative academics. It is reminiscent of the anti-semitic “Judeo-Bolshevism” slur of the 1930s which blamed the spread of communism on Jews. In reality, “Islamo-leftism” is an elusive pseudo-concept which voluntarily confuses Islam – and Muslims – with Islamic extremism and points the finger at “left-wing academics” who allegedly collude with these nebulous Islamic entities. The notion, which is dismissed by the scientific community as unsound, was coined by the academic Pierre-André Taguieff in the early 2000s. The neologism was originally forged to point to the alleged political convergence between leftist “alter-globalists” and Muslim extremists fighting the “Americano-Zionist” partners. Taguieff argued that an unlikely alliance which expressed a “New Judeophobia” was formed between the two camps in the name of the struggle against imperialism and neoliberal globalisation. Taguieff today readily goes along the new usage of his own word. He is a co-founder of an academic network called “Vigilance Universités”, which monitors the alleged “racialist drift” in French academia. The network’s actions comprise flagging up to the government some of the academic research carried out by alleged “Islamo-leftists” on race, intersectionality or de-colonial/post-colonial studies. On the same day of the CNews interview, the higher education minister declared that she would ask the state-funded national research centre, CNRS, to investigate academic research in French universities. She pledged to identify “militant and ideologically driven work” in academia. The minister cited post-colonial studies as an example of “un-scientific” research. Still referring to post-colonial studies, she confessed being “extremely shocked when spotting Confederate flags in the Capitol” during the attack by Donald Trump’s supporters. This comparison bordered on the absurd and left commentators speechless. French academics at large perceive her intervention as an attack on academic freedom and the sign that the “thought police” have been sent to closely monitor what they are allowed to research. Vidal’s statements drew unusually robust rebuttals from two of the most influential academic institutions in France. First, the traditionally low-key Conference of University Presidents (CPU) dismissed “Islamo-leftism” as a pseudo-concept which belongs to the gutter press and far-right rhetoric. It further argued that university was not a “place of indoctrination which fosters fanaticism”. In short, the CPU said that the minister was talking nonsense. Shortly after came an equally strongly worded rebuttal from CNRS itself. Despite complying with the ministerial order to review research in academia, the national research centre reiterated that the word “Islam-leftism” has no scientific grounds. It stated that it “firmly condemned” attacks on academic freedom and “attempts to delegitimise different fields of research, such as postcolonial studies, intersectional studies and research on race.” Vidal’s injurious statements did not appear out of thin air. In June 2020, President Macron himself declared that “the academic world, looking for a niche, is guilty of having encouraged the racialisation of socio-economic issues. The outcome of this can only be a secessionist one. It boils down to breaking down the Republic.” Macron made these disparaging comments following George Floyd’s assassination in the United States and in the wake of the most important antiracist protests that France had experienced since the 1980s. It is no coincidence that those words started a new wave of anti-American rhetoric against so-called “un-French” concepts such as “white privilege”, “racialised people”, “state racism” or “decolonial thought”. France is familiar with systemic police brutality against people of colour from poorer backgrounds. However, when it comes to race, the French establishment is in complete denial. Most politicians and journalists revert to the tired argument that to talk about “race” is “racism”. They argue that France, a “colour-blind Republic”, has to uphold its “universal” values, the best defence against racism and division. In a televised address to the nation the day after a historic anti-racist march in Paris, President Macron labelled the anti-racist demonstrators “separatist” and “communautaristes” – a very pejorative term implying they reject the laws and traditions of the Republic, and cultivate instead their own “community-driven” values and lifestyles. Macron celebrated instead “republican patriotism” and “republican order”, expressions which traditionally pander to the French right and far-right. Eminent members of the government followed suit: Jean-Michel Blanquer, the education minister, was the first to cross the line and use the “Islamo-leftist” tag traditionally associated with conservative or far right media. On a major French radio channel, he declared that “Islamo-leftism is creating havoc in academia.” As ever, those claims were unsubstantiated. More recently, Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, tried to outbid Marine Le Pen by being even more right-wing than the far-right leader herself on immigration. He accused her of being “too soft on Islam.” Those public statements culminated in February 2021 with the passing of a controversial bill aimed at tackling so-called Islamic “separatism”. Many in France see the bill as an infringement on religious freedom, enshrining Islamophobia as state doctrine. Yet the accusation of “Islamo-leftism” is dismissed out of hand by the main academic institutions and no one has ever been able to define exactly what an “islamo-leftist” is. Post-colonial and de-colonial studies, race studies and intersectionality studies remain extremely marginal and under-rated in French academia: only two percent of publications in French sociological journals have been devoted to those studies since the 1960s. So why such a fuss about “Islamo-leftism”? Academics who work on intersectionality, race or decolonial issues take gender-related and race-related discriminations and inequalities seriously. Their research findings are therefore unpalatable to the government which upholds the view that there is no structural sexism and racism in France, or nothing to discuss about France’s colonial past. Hence the concerted attacks on “critical academics” to discredit their work and silence them. What is more, Macron knows that he is now perceived as a man from the right by a majority of voters. His electorate has also dramatically shifted to the right since 2017. He is betting on facing Le Pen again in the second round of next year’s presidential election by presenting himself as the respectable face of conservatism. To achieve that, he believes that “being tough on patriotic values and Islam” will win over conservative voters. Macron regards Le Pen as a weaker opponent because the assumption is that moderate voters from the left will rally around him to stop the far-right from winning the decisive second round. This strategy worked in 2017, but it might not work again next time round. Following combative social movements opposed to his economic reforms such as the Yellow Vests, an inadequate handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and major concessions to the far-right on law and order issues, Macron is no longer seen as a credible bulwark against the rising tide of the far-right. By aping and outbidding the far-right on its traditional themes of immigration and Islam, Macron has been playing with fire. His economic failures, his unpopularity and the lack of popular candidates from the centre left and centre right could see France sleepwalking into voting for a far-right president, almost by default. Philippe Marlière is a Professor of French and European Politics at University College London (UK). Twitter: @PhMarliere