Author: Pablo

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Comparative value versus comparative worth.

Recent NACTFirst government assaults on female pay equity, public sector employment, labour regulations and other worker’s rights (to say nothing of trying to roll back Maori Treaty rights and enshrine the primacy of property right in NZ law), got me to thinking about how we measure value and worth in society. I tend to think of society being made of contributors and freeloaders. Contributors add value to their communities, be they large or small. They can be paid or unpaid, employed or volunteers, able-bodied or disabled. To me, these people are of high value and therefore of high worth. Freeloaders, on the other hand, are those who ride on the backs of others’ contributions. They can be criminals or hedge fund managers, financial advisors and consultants, rightwing bloggers and conspiracy theorists, gossip columnists or politicians. They do not create value in or for society. They appropriate worth when they can by appraising and selling themselves for more than their real value.

To be clear, this measure is not about surplus value in production and by whom it is appropriated. It is about the relationship between real value and actual worth, which may or may not be related.

Three illustrations of the spurious relationship of value and worth come to mind. There is an old saying in Latin America that a great bargain is to buy a person for their real value and then sell them for what they say they are worth. On another front, someone I know runs a financial advisory service where he caters to what he initially called “high value people.” When it was pointed out to him that he was conflating material worth with human value, he changed his firm’s logo but we have not had a good relationship since (he caters to clients with disposable investment assets of USD 10 million or more, including professional athletes). In a similar but opposite vein, my late mother, an organic intellectual if there ever was one, used to say that our wage scales are completely upside down. We should pay rubbish collectors and sewer cleaners the highest salaries and pay professional athletes and entertainers the minimum wage. Her reasoning was that athletes and entertainers provide some value to society but will receive many more benefits, material and otherwise, from the public adulation that they engender, and they will receive these benefits long after their active careers are done. Their material worth far exceeds their social value.

Conversely, those who do what in India is considered Untouchable work are essential to the good functioning of modern society and in fact critical to maintaining public health and well-being. Because of the nature of their work and the negative exposures involved in it, their careers are short and often brutish. And yet in modern society the reverse is true when it comes to their value and worth. They are paid far less (as a measure of worth) than their actual value to society. Why is that? Even if we factor in things like education, entrepreneurship and other intervening variables and admit for the existence of objectively fair measures of value and worth (and by this I do not mean the stupid comparisons of nurses and teachers versus cops and firefighter’s pay or any other gendered work comparisons), it seems that oftentimes the relationship between actual societal value and perceived worth is perversely skewed in inversely proportional ways.

That brings me back to the secondary teacher’s strike this past week. Although I left academia over a decade ago before the academic Taylorists turned universities into scholastic sweatshops whose focus is on revenue generation rather than intellectual advancement, and who believe that Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (now sometimes replaced by “Economics and Management” as the back end of the “STEM” mantra) should be the sole focus of university research and teaching (eliminating the Arts and Social Sciences), I maintain contacts with a number of academics who have managed to keep their jobs and still pursue the life of the mind while teaching within the limits of current Taylorist curriculum paradigms and business models.

One of these contacts has just been made redundant by the NZ university to which they are affiliated (which is in the process of dismantling its social science programs while still recruiting students for admission in to them), so is considering turning to secondary school teaching as a new career path. They are also thinking about working in a policy analyst role, including in a parliamentary or political party setting. As part of the research and preparation process for that transition, and in light of the current stand-off between the government and secondary teacher’s union about cost-of-living (COLA) wage increases, they reached out to fellow colleagues who do research on related subjects in order to get a comparative idea of wages in those career fields. Although there are a number of interesting facts that came from the materials that my contact received that are worth discussing at another time, this one was shared with me. It involves the comparative base remuneration of backbench MPs and the upper end of teacher’s pay scales.

The data begs some questions. Who brings more value to NZ society, MPs or teachers? How is their value measured? What is worth more to NZ society, politicians or teachers? How is their (comparative) worth measured? Comparatively speaking, in terms of their contributions to NZ society, who is valued more and who is worth more? More broadly, is there a relationship between value and worth in NZ?

As for the specifics of the chart. Why is is the worth of backbench MPs (as measured in wages) significantly higher than that of the most experienced and well paid teachers? Since MPs also receive non-wage benefits such as accomodation and travel allowances and are often “comped” by lobbyists and other interlocutors in the form of meals and other incidentals, why is the wage gap between them and the most experienced teachers so significant? As for work equivalence, it can be argued that both MPs and teachers work long hours beyond their assigned time in class or in the parliament debating chamber, and both sacrifice family life and other leisure pursuits in order to do so. Both have formal work hours and yet engage in much informal work (say, coaching sports teams or participating in civic groups). Both MPs and teachers have invested much time and resources into their own educations and qualifications as well as through practical experience. So why the difference in worth if their value to society is similar if not equal? Or is their value not equal and hence their worth simply reflects the difference?

That last question is key. Does NZ society value MPs more than teachers and thus pay them more as a measure of their worth? Admitting for a degree of autonomy in setting institutional wage standards, are the average parliamentarians worth that much more than the most experienced teachers? Is their comparative worth–and that of teachers–based on any measure of value?

Perhaps there is a market-based answer to the question such as “politicians are rare gems that are hard to find while teachers are a dime a dozen because they are like pebbles on a beach, etc.” But even if this were true, perhaps scarcity of a resource is not a true measure of value. Memecoins such as $TRUMP may be worth much (+USD8.36/coin with a market cap of over USD 1.6 billion) but do they have any intrinsic or tangible value?

I will leave it for readers to ponder these questions and the more general question about the relationship of social value and material worth. However, one thing should be clear. Only when that relationship is defined and put into practice can we begin to speak of working towards a fair and equitable democratic capitalist society.

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Some comments on NZ politics.

I had some time on my hands the past few days so spent more attention than usual consuming news about NZ domestic politics. My interests tend to lie further afield, but recent government assaults on Maori rights, women’s pay equity, constitutional neutrality, environmental, health and safety regulations, equitable taxation policy, state sector employment, Labour’s pandemic response and assorted other lesser insults have drawn me, perhaps like a moth to flame, to seek some illumination on the local political scene. These are a few tidbits that I took away this week., translated into social media posts.

  1. Chloe Swarbrick’s remarks about the government’s cowardice on the issue of Palestinian statehood in the wake of Israeli actions in Gaza.:

First all, Swarbrick is correct. If only six coalition MPs had some moral-ethical courage, then NZ could join the majority of the international community, including three of the 5 Eyes partners, in condemning Israel’s collective punishment of all Palestinians for the sins of Hamas on October 7, 2023, including the IDF’s use of ethnic cleansing and mass starvation as a means to that end. For that she was told to apologise by the Speaker (and National MP) for using the phrase “if six…members had a spine” and when she did not, ordered to leave the debating chamber. and later “named.” This is my comment on social media: “Peters, Jones and Seymour voice ugly boorish insults against their opponents (including racist taunts) and are allowed to remain in the House. Swarbrick correctly points out the spineless behaviour of government MPs regarding Gaza and gets thrown out. So much for Speaker impartiality” (referencing routine remarks made by the NZ First and Act leaders).

Also, as an aside to the particulars of this case, I should note that in light of prior history by Brownlee and other conservative MPs when it comes to progressive female members, there is a whiff of misogyny in the ruling. As a relative said to me (paraphrased here), male MPs can be loud, rude, condescending and bombastic when speaking to the House, but women cannot get angry or raise their voices even in defense of universal values. Now, I realise that Brownlee fashions himself as “old school” when it comes to parliamentary ethics and protocols, but if these boy’s club unwritten rules are part of the “old school” way of doing parliamentary politics, I say that he and others of his ilk need to be woken from their Rip Van Winkle stupor and shown the door.

By way of a broader backdrop, we should be clear that for all of its talk about foreign policy independence and having stood up to the US and its Anglophone allies with the 1985 non-nuclear declaration, NZ is a diplomatic follower, not a leader. It waits until other States make a move or show initiative on sticky international issues or events, then coattails on whatever seems most beneficial over the short-term. It pays lip service to international rules and norms but sniffs the wind when foreign policy smoke is in the air.

This syndrome has been accentuated in recent decades, particularly by National-led governments, and is now at rock bottom when it comes to NZ supination to other’s interests. The governing coalition’s current lack of resolve when it comes to denouncing the Palestinian catastrophe and upholding the right to Palestinian self-determination can be attributed to slavish obsequiousness to the US (Trump) position on the matter, perhaps abetted by the influence of the NZ Israeli lobby. Whatever ulterior ends the coalition of chaos may think that this approach may serve vis a vis the bilateral relationship with the US, they are sorely mistaken. NZ is just another squirrel looking for that elusive US nut.

2) On the decision to remove Maori words from schoolbooks :

I wrote “a main tool of cultural erasure is to remove all public references in a language other than that of the dominant social group. The CCP does it to the Uyghurs in the PRC. The excuse for doing so is usually to promote assimilation and social cohesion. The real motive is darker.”

I could go on about the attempts to erase indigenous languages and dialects in the public sphere is a host of places, particularly in Latin America, the region I am most familiar with, but also in Canada, the US, Africa and parts of the Pacific. The practice was so common in the colonial past that some linguists have written about the cultural genocide that follows erasing of a native language. When ti comes to identity and cultural preservation, language (and words) matter.

What is also remarkable is that it is well accepted that, rather than “confusing” in the Education Minister’s words, learning other languages at an early age promotes brain development and complex thought. Defending the removal of Maori words from children’s books is therefore doubly retrograde: it is the first step of an attempt at cultural erasure (at least in the public space), bookending similar attempts to remove te reo from public buildings and signage; and it is counter-productive (and counter-factual) as a pedagogical approach. Shame on Erica Stanford and her acolytes! And if a few Maori words are confusing, why not remove all non-English words from school books? Sacre bleu!

3) On the refusal of former Labour Ministers to front up to a public hearing of the Royal Common of Inquiry into the Pandemic Response:

“Why front up to a kangaroo court when the kangaroo judges are the political opposition? Especially after providing written answers to documented questions supplied by the kangaroos about events long in the public domain? Smacks of an ex-post political beat-up best avoided.” The fact that the Inquiry was instigated by ACT and NZ First as a partisan bludgeon after listening to conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers appears lost on the corporate media (partisan media like Plunket, Bridges and Hoskings just megaphone the anti-Labour lines). In fact, Labour should be pushing back harder at the political instigators, for example by questioning how they came to get involved in the witch hunt after actively supporting Labour’s pandemic response at the time, and who feeds them their talking points.

4) On a serving NZDF member is standing trial for espionage.

“The espionage charge against a serving NZ soldier is remarkable. The defendant is accused of working for, at the behest, or on behalf of a foreign State. Many questions arise from soldier’s court martial/trial. 1st: Which State? 2nd: what motive(s)? 3rd: what was compromised?”

Charging an active duty NZDF member with spying is remarkable because that charge–espionage– is only brought if the accused is suspected of working as a covert foreign agent. It does not refer to any domestic interlocutor., patron or client. I seem to recall at the time of the arrest that the soldier was detained for having objectionable material, presumably extremist literature (the military does not court martial people for having porn unless it is of the illegal variety). The soldier was also said to have links to right wing white supremacist groups. So it would be premature and very possibly wrong to finger the PRC as the puppet master (as the usual suspect). Given its other dark activities in NZ, Russia is a possibility. Or some other State. What should be clear is that it would not be an ally of the NZDF like the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France or other countries that routinely share higher-level intelligence with the NZDF (say, on operations, deployments, capabilities and tactics) that the soldier could not easily access unless s/he was in a military intelligence billet.

There could be a mix of motives involved, including money, sex and ideology. The counter-intelligence aspects of uncovering the suspected spy are also worth considering. In that light the trial should be interesting and revelatory, assuming that coverage is not effectively shut down for reasons of national security (yeah, right).

Should it be your inclination, feel free to weigh in within the KP rules of discourse.







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Another Hollow Bluff.

I know from reviewing readership stats that KP readers are not as much interested in international relations as they are in NZ domestic and foreign policy and various social issues. There is some interest in what Donald Trump is doing to the world from his throne in the Oval Office, so I figured I would scratch that itch and write a brief about yet another moronic move that he has recently made.

After being trolled on Telegraph by former Russian president and current Russian National Security Council Deputy Chair Dimitry Medvedev, Trump posted on his Truth Social media account that he had ordered two nuclear submarines “closer to Russia” in “the (appropriate) regions.” He repeated this on the conservative Newsmax television channel a few hours later, claiming that what Medvedev said was a threat that needed a strong response. However, given the realities, I doubt that Medvedev or Putin are quaking in their boots. Let me break down why they are not.

To begin with, Trump is presumably talking about nuclear armed submarines like the Ohio-class “boomers” that carry sea launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The US has plenty of nuclear powered attack submarines (SSNs) like the Virginia class boats that are the basis of the AUKUS development project with Australia and Great Britain, but these do not carry SLBMs and would not provide any deterrent effect on Russia or another hostile nuclear-armed State. If the message is not meant as a strategic deterrent and SSN;s are being sent, then their strike value is limited and tactical.. Given that Trump’s complaints about Russia are about a strategic ceasefire in Ukraine, a tactical response is unlikely to move the Russians into compliance and will just escalate the situation beyond Ukrainian borders.

So Trump is likely referring to the Ohio class boats, which carry Trident II D5 SLBMs that have ranges of 4100-7600/11,500-14,000+ nautical miles/kilometers and travel at supersonic speeds ranging upwards from MACH 19 (20,000 feet per second or 18,000 mph/29,000 kph). The carry 8-14 multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) with warheads that have “throw-weights” of 100 to 435 kilotons (the latter deigned to hit “hardened” targets like missile silos, command bunkers and deep tunnel complexes. In comparison, the “Little Boy” bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was 15 kilotons). They tend to lurk in off shore deep waters, often in undersea canyons, waiting for the order to strike. Given their ranges and speeds, there is no need for SLBM platforms like the Ohio class boats to “get closer” to targets. In fact, to do so is folly.

Why? When the order comes, these submarines must rise from deep water (they are said to be able to dive as deep as 1,500 feet or more) to relatively shallow depths of 150-200 feet. That is because the underwater propulsion stage of the SLBM, which uses a sophisticated variant of steam-based propulsion, does not have the energy or pushing power to reach the surface from greater depths. Once the surface is reached, a solid gas propellant is ignited, accelerating the missile to supersonic speed before MIRV re-entry.

This is where Trump’s bluff is called. Ordering US SBMs “closer to Russia” negates the advantages of deep water concealment because it brings the submarines over shallower coastal shelves or seas (say, the Baltic or Black Seas). That makes it easier for Russian anti-submarine warfare (ASW) platforms (including attack submarines of their own) to hunt, locate and track them. In addition to sonar and radar as well as satellite imagery, modern hydrophone detection systems and seafloor thermal and acoustic mapping arrays are used to seek out and record the acoustic signatures of submarines (which can be as distinctive as finger prints), something that is easier in more shallow and warmer waters given sea layer temperature variations produced by water density, depth pressure, refraction, salinity, thermoclines, etc., including the waters of narrows, straits and other maritime chokepoints. Even deep water can conduct and bend sound over long distances, such as in the low frequency SOFAR channel that extends from 600-1200 meters down in low to middle latitudes to near the surface at higher latitudes (which is one way of listening to whale calls with hydrophones). All of which is to say that the frequency, wavelength, bend and amplitude of underwater sounds are related to water temperature and depth, so have become important markers for underwater scientists and engineers, including those in the submarine/ASW businesses.

Phrased another way that Trump might understand: cold and deep water good for submarines; warm and shallow, bad. Trump clearly has not gotten this brief. Or perhaps his version came from the same advisors who told him that a tariff is a non-transferable tax paid by foreign exporters to the US.

In that light ordering US SLBM submarines into shallower and possibly warmer waters near Russian coasts as a show of force and then giving the precise number of those being told to so is a breach of basic submarine operational security. It allows the opportunity the Russians the opportunity to refine their ASW skills and perhaps even get a better idea of how the two particular submarines in question look and sound like underwater. In other words, besides the childish nature of the tit-for-tat spat with Medvedev, Trump has been suckered into blurting out, yet again, potentially sensitive information about US naval capabilities and operations.

The US Navy has choices to make. It can do nothing and try to pretend that it followed his orders, hoping that his minions in the Navy and Pentagon are kept out of the submariner information loop. It could order the ships to drive around in circles and claim that it followed orders. It can object to the commander-in-chief’s order and try to convince him to rescind it at the risk of having careers ended (if he in fact issued one). Or they can salute and follow commands as they are instructed to do even if it puts crews and contingency plans at risk. None of this was necessary given current US submarine operational protocols and capabilities, so this was not a believable warning much less a credible threat. It was theatrical bluster without merit.

But then again Trump is a mixture of ignorance, impulse, thin-skinned ego, bully and pomposity, so his meaningless showman’s gesture will remind Medvedev, Putin and many otherwise US-allied leaders yet again that there is a petulant knucklehead sitting in the Oval Office as POTUS.

MAGA!

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Kash Patel comes to town.

This week FBI Director Kash Patel arrived in Wellington to open a full time Legal Attache office (previously Legal Attaches rotated from offices at the US embassy in Canberra depending on need). Like excited children government ministers lined up for photo ops and the corporate media breathlessly reported on what Patel had to say. What he had to say, and how it was reported, was a mixture of circus side-show and fawning toadying, all uncritically covered by click-bait obsessed media scribes.

In view of that, please allow me to correct the record.

To begin with, the FBI is a law enforcement agency with powers of arrest, not an intelligence agency that does not have arrest powers. It is not a secret spy agency. Its NZ partner agency is the NZ Police, not the SIS or GCSB. In that role the FBI is a consumer of intelligence streams coming from 5 Eyes agencies (in NZ, the GCSB) as well as the NZ Police and SIS, but is not part of the 5 Eyes network. 5 Eyes is a signals and technical intelligence gathering and sharing network to which the FBI does not belong. INTERPOL is an international law enforcement partnership that the FBI is a member of. Although INTERPOL may share intelligence that originates in 5 Eyes, it has a distinct organisation, function and role. As 5 Eyes partners, the GCSB counterpart in the US is the NSA, and the US partner of the SIS ( a human intelligence agency) is the CIA.

In short, the FBI is an altogether different type of security agency and should not be confused with intelligence agencies properly defined.

Patel’s talk of direct FBI/5 Eyes links is therefore PR spin pushed by the US and Trump’s entourage that has no actual basis in fact. Using the LEGAT office ribbon-cutting ceremony in Wellington as an excuse, Patel’s visit was an overdue “show the flag” exercise by a US senior official more than 6 months after Trump entered office, and rather than Secretary of State Marco Rubio the US sent a conspiracy theorist-turned-second tier executive branch official instead, who then ran the anti-PRC/5 Eyes line even if Legal Attaches (FBI agents) deal with transnational crime, not strategic balancing or geopolitical competition and do not participate directly in 5 Eyes activities. (Note to readers: the FBI director is not a US cabinet position and is subordinate to the Attorney General in the US Department of Justice, so trotting out NZ cabinet ministers for a meet-and-greet, including those involved in intelligence matters, was obsequious in the extreme).

Be that as it may, Patel engaged in a bit of diplomatic performance art using the NZ government and media as props with which to push Trump’s anti-PRC agenda rather than focus on the relatively mundane business of opening a stand-alone LEGAT office, which are common in most US embassies and which, again, other than intelligence sharing on transnational crime via INTERPOL and partner agencies in foreign countries like the NZ Police,, do not directly engage in espionage or other forms of intelligence gathering (the fact that the office is outside the main US embassy complex and has undergone a slight name change does not mean anything particularly significant other than the need for more dedicated space and Trump’s obsession with putting his branding on everything. But a “law enforcement attache” is just a LEGAT by another name, and having separate office space may simply be a matter of re-allocating physical resources).

Patel’s remarks about the LEGAT office opening being a counter to the PRC that bolstered the 5 Eyes was a purposeful distraction from what should have been a low-key affair and should have been treated as such because for NZ bringing in an adversarial take on the PRC in an otherwise unremarkable and unrelated matter makes for disproportionate diplomatic discomfort. Neither the US embassy or MFAT press releases mentioned the PRC or 5 Eyes., so the cringe factor must have been high amongst the diplomatic corps. Then again, Patel likely knew that, but since hype and showmanship is what Trump is all about and Patel’s main audience was the one in the Oval Office, the NZ government and corporate media dutifully obliged by indulging the dog-and-pony show about the PRC and 5 Eyes. It was a pitiful display of diplomatic supination that may well have adverse consequences down the road.

To be clear. The significance of Patel’s visit to open a dedicated full time LEGAT office in NZ lies in the fact that it is official recognition that transnational crime is now a major problem in the Southwest Pacific and hence a priority for the US and other Western security agencies. In the measure that the PRC is involved in things like drug smuggling and cyber crimes in the region, it will be on the radar of these agencies, but in that regard it is just one of many state and non-State actors operating in what are known as “grey area” zones where criminal organisations and some State actors cooperate out of mutual interest. North Korean and Russian use of South-Pacific flagged ships to circumvent sanctions and smuggle oil is one example of this, as is the cyber-hacking activities of criminal entities tied to the Kremlin, Iran and PRC (among others). Likewise, transnational crime networks presence in island States like the methamphetamine trade in the Samoas (where drugs sourced in the US and Mexico are smuggled from American Samoa to Samoa across their common land border) require better resourced and coordinated regional law enforcement responses. The new US LEGAT office in Wellington is part of that effort.

As for terrorism and people smuggling (other designated priority areas announced by the US embassy during Patel’s visit), the role of the PRC is marginal at the very worst. And yet Patel placed it front and centre in his remarks at the opening ceremony

Regardless of the US spin so slavishly reported in NZ, opening a dedicated LEGAT office in Wellington is not about countering the PRC or bolstering 5 Eyes. It is about strengthening bilateral crime-fighting capabilities between the US and NZ in the Southwest Pacific. And if there is anyone other than criminals tracked and caught by the enhanced inter-agency law enforcement cooperation and regional presence of the FBI in the SW Pacific who have most to fear by the upgrade, it is those who may have extradition warrants issued by the US for their arrest. That is because Legal Attaches are the main vehicle for executing US warrants in any given country.

Kim Dotcom, are you paying attention?

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Careful what you wish for.

One gets the sense that Netanyahu has used his post-October 7 military successes (including ethnic cleansing and IDF war crimes in Gaza) to prepare for this moment of friction vis a vis Iran while manoeuvring Trump into a corner on joining the war in pursuit of regime change as much or more than nuclear non-proliferation (as I have pointed out in previous posts, Trump is an empty intellectual vessel devoid of firm policy positions other than those that he thinks serve himself. He is therefore highly susceptible to suggestions that appeal to his vanity and self-interest, such as being “the saviour of Iran” if he joins Israel in the military campaign against the theocratic regime).

Already, the son of the deposed Shah, Reza Pahlavi, has broadcast statements claiming that he and his supporters will return to Iran soon after the collapse of the current theocratic regime. Pahlavi is close to Netanyahu and Trump’s inner circle and US-based heirs of the Shah’s exiled supporters (many concentrated in and around LA) are willing to assume control of a post-theocratic government under Reza Pahlavi’s leadership. The stage appears to being set for a regime take-over following military defeat of the ayatollahs.

The trouble is that while many Iranians abhor the mullahs and Revolutionary Guard, they also remember very well what the Shah’s rule was all about (SAVAK, anyone?). They remember well that Israel was the Shah’s best ally, and that Mossad helped train and shared intelligence with SAVAK. So it is not clear that his heirs will be universally welcomed, something that sets the stage for prolonged internal conflict within the Persian power. In addition, with the old leadership gone a new generation of militant leaders may emerge in their place, hardened by their experiences with Israel and its Western backers. They may not prove easily removable or amenable to a negotiated compromise on governing alongside Western-backed groups.

Even if the West gets its way and the ayatollahs are deposed, there is the issue whether a new generation of Iranian expats, many coming from monied backgrounds in places like Southern California, have the skillsets with which to govern a country, and culture, that mixes pre-modern beliefs with post-modern technologies and a ponderous bureaucracy that straddles a stark urban/rural demographic divide. Will the US pour in aid to help them with the task of reconstruction at a time when DOGE is cutting back on all types of US foreign aid? Will Iranians welcome such assistance and the US/Western personnel that deliver it? Or will they resist what could be seen as an affront to their nationalistic and cultural pride?

This is a noteworthy point. Persian nationalism is rooted in millennia, not the last half century. Persians come in many faiths and ethnicities, and what unites them isa rejection of foreign interference in their affairs, especially by Sunni Arabs and Western colonisers (and their descendants). In the US and other interested parties there appears to be a failure to understand how deep Persian nationalism runs as an ideological glue in Iranian society. This could prove costly for the adherents of forcible regime change in that country.

The US and Israel appear to believe that after they bomb Iranian nuclear development and storage sites, military infrastructure and command and control facilities and kill leaders of the revolutionary regime, the people will rise up, the regime will fall, a new government will be installed and everyone will go home happy. The truth is otherwise. Iran will have to undergo a long term military occupation if a new order is to be imposed. Who is going to do that? Iran is a huge country and as mentioned, not all of its inhabitants welcome foreign interference in their affairs. The US and Israel do not have the capability to impose an occupation regime, not does any other State in part because of their realistic unwillingness to do so. So the operative assumption in Washington and Tel Aviv about regime change in Iran seems to be based on a pipe dream conjured up in the war-fevered minds of Trump and Netanyahu’s strategic advisors. And a reality check is also worth noting: the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan this century by Western-led coalitions have not ended well for them or with the stated objectives of their missions being achieved.

Then there is the reaction of the global Shiite diaspora to seeing their most venerated leaders killed, incapacitated or imprisoned by Western powers or those backed by the West. Iran may not be able to defend itself against Israel and the US by conventional and nuclear military means, but it has many unconventional assets at its disposal, and they have global reach. The current tit-for-tat exchanges may be a prelude to a widening regional and perhaps global conflict fought by unconventional means. The end to the current (fairly short) conventional military war may be just the beginning of a protracted unconventional, asymmetrical conflict that could spill into other States in the region and beyond.

And here is another background thought: The modern Western-led international community has always reacted poorly to revolutionary regimes, e.g.: USSR, PRC, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Angola, Algeria, Granada, DPRK, etc.. The specific evolutionary ideology matters less than the usurpation of power by force because it upsets the international status quo because it upsets an international status based on acceptance of shared rules and norms (if not values). That is, states agree to get along within established rules of conduct and revolutionaries do not respect that basic rule of the game and seek parametric change in their societies as well as in their relations with the external world..

In response, revolutionary regimes tend to support each other against former colonial and imperialist Western powers, creating a vicious circle of hostile action/reaction. It may be 46 years after the Iranian revolution, but perhaps this is somehow at play here?

Whatever the case, I have a bad feeling that this is not going to end well, except perhaps for Netanyahu (who will receive a boost in domestic support after the Iranian regime is ousted as well as perhaps further delay his court trial on corruption charges and the collapse of his coalition government). Trump is being slow-walked by Netanyahu into joining a war of convenience rather than necessity that may spiral into a deeper regional confrontation that will consume US blood and treasure for some time to come (in exact contravention of Trump’s promises to end US foreign “entanglements”). With the US mid-term elections scheduled for next year, prolonged involvement in Iran may prove damaging to Trump’s allies in Congress and hinder pursuit of the GOP/MAGA policy agenda if they lose one or both majorities in the Deliberative Chambers. Meanwhile, Iran’s allies Russia and China sit quietly on the sidelines, either out of impotence or because they are hedging their bets. One gets the feeling that, especially with regard to the PRC, they are not impotent.

The slanted (often triumphant) Western media coverage of the conflict disguises the fact this may not be entirely over soon, and that whatever its battlefield successes Israel may pay a heavy reputational and diplomatic price for its actions, as the rise of global anti-semitism suggests is in fact now the case.

Dark and sad times ahead, I’m afraid.

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Pre-emptive or preventive?

I do not mean to be pedantic about this sort of thing, but since it lies within my area of supposed “expertise,” here goes:

Unlike what is being reported in the corporate media and by some defense officials, the Israeli strike on Iran was not “pre-emptive.” “Pre-emptive” means “a sudden strike thwarting an imminent attack.” That is not the case here. Iran was not about to imminently attack Israel. What Israel has done is a preventive attack designed to degrade Iran’s nuclear R&D/storage facilities, missile launcher sites and command and control capabilities. The IDF attack is focused on preventing and delaying development of Iran’s nuclear strike capability before it reaches operational status and was telegraphed in advance (remember the US pulling out embassy staff and military families from facilities in the Middle East this week). Both suspected weapons-grade nuclear stores as well as launching platforms were on the target list, as were those responsible for them.

The preventive nature of the move may help moderate the Iranian response. On the other hand, killing the Revolutionary Guard Commander and Deputy Commander is a serious affront that will require a response in order for the Iranian regime to save face among its domestic audiences. So the escalation scenario is real, albeit not as bad as it could be. What is clear is that unlike preemptive attacks, the Israeli preventive attack has no justification in the Laws of War (jus ad bellum) and is therefore illegal under International law. One might understand why the Israelis conducted the strikes and there is plenty of precedent for them, but that does not make them legal.

Just like his response to October 7 with the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, Netanyahu has seized his moment of opportunity because, quite frankly, he can. No one will stop him (certainly not the Iranians) and the US backs him, with most of the West tacitly supporting Israel with their silence or tepid responses to the conflict. This, I suspect, is due to Israel’s value as an intelligence partner of the West as much as any other reason.

Let’s see how this plays out….

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Sending in the Marines.

One of the basic foundations of democratic civil-military relations is that the active duty military is organised and trained to fight and defeat foreign enemies in combat–that is, by using organised lethal force until the enemy is defeated. Domestic security is a matter of national/federal, state and local law enforcement. Their training and organization is in ensuring via non-combat means civilian adherence to the rule of law. Although use of lethal force is one component of domestic law enforcement, it is constrained by legal and social frameworks in a way that military combat lethality is not (and even then the military is supposed to adhere to the Laws of War, both in terms of jus ad bellum (reasons for going to war) and jus in bello (conduct in war)). Domestic security is about keeping the peace and maintaining control of civilian populations; external security is about prevailing over armed adversaries of the State.

Domestic and external security represent the Janus faces of what Althusser and others labeled the repressive state apparatuses (RSAs). Both internal and externally-focused repressive apparatuses are wrapped around an inner core of ideology, usually framed as patriotism, nationalism and selfless sacrifice (for external agencies) and community service, protection and duty of care (for internal agencies). There are elements and agencies other than the military and uniformed constabulary services in the RSAs, including such things as paramilitary units and criminal courts, that involve several shades of grey when it comes to repressive focus. The US is an exemplar in this regard, what with its proliferation of security agencies and militarization of local police forces, but the principle of separation between domestic and external repression has long been considered sacrosanct in US civil-military relations. So much so that the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. 1385) specifically prohibits the use of active duty troops for domestic security purposes unless authorized by Congress.

In the US reserve military units such as the National Guard are called upon during periods of serious security crisis as a backup to local law enforcement. This usually happens at the orders of the State government but can happen by order of the president in extenuating circumstances. In the majority of cases they do not carry combat weaponry, instead deploying non-lethal tools appropriate for their law enforcement support roles (say, tear gas for crowd control).

Both reserve and active duty military can and are used for natural disaster and humanitarian relief, but they do not carry live weapons when doing so. Their assistance is focused on provision of critical goods and services to affected communities, not enforcing security.

While Trump appears to be within his authority to order the California National Guard into Los Angeles for law enforcement purposes, “federalising” what should normally be the Governor’s decision, and may even have authority to order other state’s National Guard units to join the forces gathered in LA (there is debate on this), his ordering of a US Marine infantry brigade into LA is an egregious assault on the separation of internal and external security functions under democratic conditions and a major erosion of a core tenet of US civil-military relations. The Marines are trained and organised to seek out and destroy the enemy, not practice crowd control. Their entire orientation is towards prevailing in lethal combat, not convincing rowdy crowds engaging in protest and dissidence to go home.

Perhaps the deployment of Marines is an intimidation tactic and they will not be carrying combat weapons or live ammunition. But if they are, we are now facing the real prospect of US soldiers killing US citizens and residents on home soil.

Years ago I shared space with the Haiti Task Force in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. I heard them discussing sending in Marines to quell anti-American violence in Port-au-Prince (there is a history of US Marines in Haiti). I chimed in from the sidelines that I thought it was a bad idea to use combat troops to engage in what was supposed to be civilian peace enforcement operations. The US has military police and paramilitary units like the US Marshalls and Border Patrol (and now ICE!) who train in those sort of things. I was ignored by my colleagues and a brigade of Marines were ordered and deployed to enforce the peace. When confronted by a rock-throwing mob they opened fire, killing over 100 people. The streets did in fact go quiet.

I asked the head of the Haiti Task Force why they chose that option when there were others available. He simply said that the people to be confronted where foreigners on foreign soil, so it was permissible to use combat troops for crowd control under those circumstances. In fact, today US private military contractors have been engaged to do exactly the same thing in Haiti given the breakdown in law and order there. It seems like in Haiti history repeats, but in different garb.

More importantly, deployment of Marines to LA is not a case of lethally confronting foreigners on foreign soil. For all the talk of “illegal aliens” and “invasion,” the protesters are on US soil exercising their right to peacefully protest and dissent. Those who act violently certainly can be handled by local law enforcement without the resort to combat-oriented troops whose missions primarily involved killing people abroad.

This is more than authoritarian-minded over-reach by a fear-mongering president. It is what a democracy’s slide into dictatorship looks like.

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The 2nd amendment spectre.

Given that the US 2nd Amendment was drafted in part to resist “oppressive”government armed overreach, it may be only a matter of time before 2nd amendment supporters decide to invoke the clause to forcibly resist kidnappings by masked and warrantless ICE agents. Things could get ugly.

What may be stopping things from getting to that point up until now is 1) most 2nd amendment supporters lean Right on the political spectrum and support Trump’s deportations policies; and 2) most of those detained so far have been foreigners of varying immigration status, although that is changing with significant arrests of US citizens for whatever reason (mistaken identity, faulty paperwork, etc.).

While it is true that the Founders envisioned “well regulated militias” to be the armed-bearing citizen’s ultimate defense against “oppressive” (presumably foreign) government, things have changed a bit since its promulgation and the federal authorities are now the focus of 2nd amendment supporter’s concerns. Although the possibility exists, 2nd amendment resistance is less likely to come in the form of civil war or lesser armed confrontations than in the form of social and political problems for law enforcement and the Trump administration. That does not bode well, especially if the gun lobby and conservative media and politicians side with 2nd amendment resistors, civil rights advocates and even police unions (because of the warrantless nature and lack of specific charges filed in many cases) in what will inevitably become constitutional challenges to ICE’s policies. That could well spell trouble for Trump’s immigration agenda and GOP election prospects in the upcoming midterm and general elections.

The Reagan Presidential Library has an interesting summary of the legal evolution of the clause: https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/constitutional-amendments…”-,Constitutional%20Amendments%20–%20Amendment%202%20–%20“The%20Right,to%20Keep%20and%20Bear%20Arms”&text=Amendment%20Two%20to%20the%20Constitution,their%20rights%2C%20and%20their%20property.

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Say it again: Hate crimes are not terrorism.

Since I have written extensively about this subject over the years I will not bore readers with more tedious expositions. But in light of recent events I thought it would be permissible to height some basic facts about hate crimes and terrorism. Here goes:

Government officials, politicians and media have misidentified the recent murders of two Israel embassy staffers in DC as terrorism. It is not. It is a hate crime. In this instance there is no differentiation between target, subject and object of the attack, which is what separates terrorism from hate crimes. Hate crimes are acts of violence against specified “others” and confined to the acts themselves. They can be done for political (i.e., ideological, partisan), and/or non-political reasons (e.g., basic racism, religious animosity, greed, jealously). They can be motivated by revenge, which in turn is most often fuelled by hate. But in all instances the target, subject and object are the same. For the perpetrators, focused violence IS the intent and does not extend beyond itself (even if repercussions do).

Terrorism involves separate targets (victims), subjects (audiences) and object(ives) that go beyond a given violent event. For example, innocents are killed in order to influence the perceptions and will of both sympathetic and antipathetic audiences with the intent of altering their behaviour to or away from certain courses of action (say, regarding an occupation). The motives of terrorism may dovetail with those of hate crimes but the subject and object are broader than just the targets.

While they matter in terms of specific causality chains and the impact derived from them, terrorism is not defined by the identities of the victims, perpetrators or the motives of the latter. It is defined by the act of violence set against a broader context involving actors, audiences and behaviours. It is grotesque theatre of the macabre. In contrast, hate crimes are about the identity of the victims, not their behaviours per se. Hate crimes are designated as a special category of crime because they involve a “usual” act of violence (e.g., murder or rape) committed against someone for ascriptive reasons, that is, because of who they are, not what they do. Terrorism makes no such distinction.

Remember that October 7 can be properly called a terrorist act in part because a number of those killed, kidnapped and held hostage were not Jewish or Israelis (e.g., Filipino agricultural workers). For Hamas the objective of the attacks was to sow fear in Israel and among its rival in the Palestinian Authority while demonstrating resolve to the Palestinian people, allies like Iran and Hezbollah and the world in general when asserting Hama’s claim to leadership of the Palestinian cause.. As targets, the victims props and pawns in the larger stage play.

Although politically-motivated, the DC murders are not terrorism. Attaching that label in order to influence popular perceptions and add legal weight to prosecutions for partisan purposes is an egregious instance of conceptual stretching that renders the term terrorism meaningless. In fact, “terrorism” is now used to describe pretty much any act of politically-motivated violence precisely because it is such an emotionally-charged term, one that gets trotted out by authorities, politicians and media depending on who the perpetrators and victims are.

Worse yet, deliberate misuse of the term “terrorism” often serves as a type of what is legitimately known as “stochastic terrorism.” Stochastic terrorism involves the framing of social narratives in order to invite, incite or provoke violence against a designated group or entity (one example is Great Replacement theory, which argues that there is a plot by Jews and other nefarious actors to replace the white races with non-Christian people of color. That was a major rallying point of the racist violence in Charlottesville, VA in 2017. You can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally).

Misuse of the term “terrorism”also allows governments to clamp down on dissent, opposition and civil society in general by invoking national security threats related to those designated as such. For example, the Trump administration has designated the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua criminal gang as a “terrorist entity” in order to detain and deport thousands of Venezuelans resident in the US (regardless of their immigration status or the fact that most have no affiliation with T de A).

Because of the very real dangers associated with the misuse of the term, we really need to demand conceptual clarity when and where political or ethnographic-religious/racial/sectarian violence is concerned. Otherwise we are on just another race to the bottom when it comes to understanding the darkness that surrounds us.

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Trump’s theatre of the absurd.

I know that it is undiplomatic to say so, but I sure wish that some foreign leader would interrupt one of Trump’s Oval Office public humiliation stunts to tell him to his face in front of the media that he is an adolescent bullying imbecile who seems to think that such stunts make him look strong. And then up and leave.

King Hussein of Jordan, President Zelensky of Ukraine and now President Ramaphosa of South Africa have been subject to the ambush/humiliation stunt, so all future foreign dignitaries are on notice that they too can become props in an act of staged political onanism inside Trump’s Oval Office (except Putin, who if he ever makes it to DC while Trump is POTUS will likely see Trump greeting him by bending over and grabbing his ankles).

Of course, foreign leaders could just refuse to do the staged photo op knowing that they will be ambushed and keep any one-on-one discussions private, or they could simply refuse to do any White House one-on-one visits while Trump is in residence. Whatever they do, someone has to start standing up to Trump in public. The bullying, the photoshopped handouts and edited videos, the endless false claims and lies, the fawning array of nodding sycophants surrounding the main characters in the staged farce–at what point do foreign leaders decide that prostrating themselves in this theatre of the absurd is a bridge too far? Do they really think that if they grin and bear it that they will get something from the Trump administration? Seriously?

It seems that people acquiesce to his boorishness because they want to curry his personal favour, believing that will translate into individual, diplomatic, economic, military or some other (national) benefit to them given the personalist authoritarian nature of Trump’s rule. Or they are just scared. They fail to understand that his “transactional” approach to foreign relations is mostly one-way, from them to him, and that he does not repay their favours or ass-kissing by responding in kind. To the contrary. We have now moved into emperor-has-no-clothes, clown show territory with he and his crowd (as seen in recent congressional testimony by his cabinet members), so the house of cards is starting to look increasingly flimsy. Clearly fake props like the MS 13 knuckle photoshop or the edited South African video and doctored handouts are signs of incompetence among his PR people. For a guy who is all about tough image, THAT is a major Achilles heel.

As an aside–it is pretty obvious that Trump’s interest in the plight of Afrikaner farmers in South Africa is due to the racist influence of Elon Musk and Peter Theil. Musk and others on Twitter/X post dozens of memes, mostly containing false and often crude narratives that include references to black intellect and culture, about the white “genocide” occurring in South Africa. This is not a coincidence and may be due in part to Musk and Theil’s South African heritage, their distaste for black majority rule (as Curtis Yarvin- influenced oligarchy-supporting “techbros”) and their intense dislike of South Africa’s role in trying to bring war crimes charges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the Israeli leadership for its actions in Gaza and the West Bank. That dovetails with Trump’s racist dog-whistling (if not outright beliefs) and slips into the “s**thole country” storyline that he used in his first term. In taking up the Afrikaner “refugee” trope Trump reveals himself to be a puppet of the South African billionaires as well as the ringleader of the MAGA clown show.

The good news is that even if foreign dignitaries suffer further indignities from Trump, the damage to the US reputation (and national pride!) will be such that foreign States will work to avoid dealing with Trump altogether while he is still in office. As I have written elsewhere, among all the other things that Trump is and is not, he and his minions are not serious people and should be treated as such. Avoiding Oval Office photo ops is just a start. Best leave that to Kid Rock and other useful MAGA fools and tools.