Showing posts from category: National politics
Filibustering in the USA: Quintessentially American but Not Exclusively American
Anyone following contemporary US politics would likely be familiar with the term ‘filibuster’ – the spectacle conjured up is of a politician, bunkering down, holding the Senate floor to ransom in an endless monologue. The object of such stonewalling is to perversely delay the passage of some piece or other of legislation they are opposed to. Many movie fans of the “Golden Age of Hollywood” cinema will recall the idealistic young ‘greenhorn’ senator (played by James Stewart) engaging in an agonising 24-hour, non-stop talking marathon to try to block corrupt legislation being passed…the junior senator droning on about the Constitution and the Bible before dramatically collapsing, exhausted, on a ‘bed’ of protest letters and telegrams (Mr Smith Goes to Washington, 1939).
(Illustration: Diana Morales/MPA)
The right to ‘speechify’: Extraneous and unrelated to the legislative matter at hand The principle on which filibustering is predicated—that any senator should have the right to speak as long as necessary—has seen real-life politicians resort to reading material just as prosaic as the fictional Mr Smith’s tedious ‘talkathon’. Louisiana demagogue Huey Long punctuated recitations of Shakespeare and passages from the Constitution with readings of his favourite recipes – especially fried oysters and pot-likkers. Ted Cruz read Dr Seuss to his daughters while trying to stymie Obamacare. The negativity of filibustering is neatly summarised in Senate historian Donald Ritchie’s definition: a filibuster “is a minority of Senators who prevent the majority from casting a vote, knowing otherwise the majority would prevail” [‘Whatever Happened to the Old-Fashioned Jimmy Stewart-Style Filibuster?’, (Aaron Erlich), www.hnn.us/].
⇩ Huey Long (Source: www.npr.com)
Reining in its excesses The impediment of senatorial filibustering—legislation delayed is legislation denied—led to attempts to curb its disruptiveness. Under the Wilson presidency, the Senate accepted a rule whereby a filibuster could be ended on the achievement of a two-thirds majority vote. In DC-speak this device is called invoking ‘cloture’. In 1975 the requirement was amended, necessitating only a three-fifths majority vote (ie, 60 votes out of the 100 senators) [‘Filibuster and Cloture’, United States Senate, www.senate.gov].
The device of the political filibuster, though quintessentially American, is equally a feature of legislatures of other Western democracies such as the UK, Australia, France and Canada※…and it’s a practice that goes way back to Ancient Rome and Cato the Younger’s all-day talk fests in the Roman Senate circa 60 BCE [‘The art of the filibuster: How do you talk for 24 hours straight?’, (12-Dec-2012, www.bbcnews.com].
⇧ The filibuster phenomena continues to provide political cartoonists in the US with endless inspiration
(Image: www.davegranlund.com)
꧂ ꧂ ꧂ ꧁ ꧁ ꧁
The other type of filibuster
The etymology of ’filibuster’ dates from the late 16th century, it is first used in the sphere of Spain’s imperial possessions in the “New World”. The Spanish term filibustero⍟ described the activities of freelance buccaneers and pirates who plundered the riches of Spanish America (typified by Sir Francis Drake and his raid on Panama in 1573). ’Filibuster’ re-emerges in 19th century United States to refer to North American adventurers and ‘chancers’ who organised schemes and private militias in an attempt to take over foreign countries and territories in Latin America [May, Robert E. “Young American Males and Filibustering in the Age of Manifest Destiny: The United States Army as a Cultural Mirror”. The Journal of American History, vol. 78, no. 3, 1991, pp.857-886. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2078794. Accessed 10 Oct. 2020].
Pirate gold doubloons from the Americas ⇩
(Photo: NY Post)
Burr, godfather of US filibustering The first tentative steps of US filibustering in the early period of the republic probably starts with Vice-President Aaron Burr in the first decade of the century. After Burr’s political career imploded in 1804 as a result of his killing of former Treasurer secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel, the disgraced VP is believed to have hatched a plan to invade and seize Spanish territories in the west of the North American continent. The scheme was never implemented, however Burr was subsequently tried for treason but acquitted [‘The Burr Conspiracy’, National Counterintelligence Center, www.fas.org/]◰. Other filibusters followed Burr’s lead…early American adventurers like James Long and Augustus Magee formed expeditions to try to wrest control of Texas from the Spanish colonialists.
⇩ Aaron Burr (Image credit: Bettmann/Getty Images/HowStuffWorks)
Manifest Destiny west and south The activity really took off after US territorial gains at Mexico’s expense stemming from the 1846-48 war and the discovery of gold in California. In the 1850s filibuster expeditions became a regular occurrence as ambitious US citizens, schemers and “soldiers of fortune”, launched raid and raid mainly on northern Mexico but also Central American lands in an attempt to appropriate territory for themselves or in the name of the US. Venezuelan-born Narcisco López was one of the first, trying unsuccessfully with the assistance of American southerners to capture Cuba from the Spanish on three separate occasions. Most of these filibusters were inspired by (or found legitimacy for their actions) in the emerging credo of Manifest Destiny, the belief that Americans possessed a kind of “quasi-divine Providence” to expand into new territories (be they held by native populations or Mexicans), annex them and thus spread American democracy to them [‘Manifest destiny’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
۵〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥۵ 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥۵〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥۵ 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥۵
※ by no means is it confined to Western democracies
⍟ filibustero – from the Dutch vrijbuiter, meaning ‘freebooter’, ‘pirate’ or ‘robber’
◰ Burr was also largely responsible for the introduction into the Senate of the above form of filibuster, the procrastination ploy
An Aegean War of Words: Presaging Strife for the Old Enemies of the Eastern Mediterranean?
Hostilities between the Greeks and the Turks go back to antiquity, at least to the Late Bronze Age if we accept Homer’s classic literary work The Iliad as evidence of an approximate historical actuality – although Homer referred to the mortal combatants in Asia Minor as Achaeans and Trojans. In the modern era the focus of tension between Greece and Turkey has centred on the Aegean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean…the violent division and disputed status of the island of Cyprus in 1974 has been the most dramatic consequence of the ongoing enmity between the two countries.
(Source: OU News)
Tensions rose again in July of this year – Turkish president Recep Erdoğan dispatched the research vessel Oruc Reis along with a formidable military escort into Greek territorial waters to do seismic surveys of the region in search of gas deposits. Greek protests against Ankara’s territorial incursions being in breach of international law was met with “bellicose rhetoric” and threats by Erdoğan, and the tiny Greek island of Kastellorizo became a hotspot for the dispute. Other incidents followed, in August a Greek frigate collided with one of the Turkish military escorts in the vicinity of Crete, and another Turkish vessel started drilling off the coast of Northern (Turkish-controlled) Cyprus [Turkey-Greece Relations: Why are the two countries locked in a dispute over drilling rights?’, (David Walsh), Euronews, 26-Aug-2020, www.euronews.com].
What accounts for all the recent turmoil and agitation in the region is the discovery a decade ago of natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean. Both Turkey and Greece are eager to exploit this lucrative source of energy and revenue. The problem for Turkey is the myriad EEZs (exclusive economic zones) relating to the numerous Greek islands in the Aegean which blocks Turkey’s scope of activity. The problem for Greece (and other onlookers within the EU) is that Turkey does not accept the legality of Greek sovereignty over the islands and their proximity to the Turkish mainland, its perennial bugbear.
Historic grievances Old sores have been opened for Turkey and its right wing president Erdoğan, who cite the unjust treaties (as they view it) of Sèvres and Lausanne following WWI as retarding Turkeys’s capacity to explore and access natural resources of the eastern Mediterranean. Ankara maintains that the treaties left Turkey “landlocked despite (having) 8,000km of coastline”, that the maritime rights handed the Greek islands in the Aegean by the 1923 treaty box in Turkey from accessing large areas of sea, which it maintains it has a de jure right to❋. Erdoğan, imbued with the “spirit of the Ottoman sultanate”, has threatened to “tear up the immoral maps and documents” in disregard of the International Court of Justice. [‘How a rush for Mediterranean gas threatens to push Greece and Turkey into war’, (Patrick Wintour), The Guardian, 11-Sep-2020, www.theguardian.com; ‘Tiny island Kastellorizo at centre of growing confrontation between Greece and Turkey’, (Benjamin Brook), News, 14-Sep-2020, www.new.com.au].
Turkey’s “Blue Homeland adventurism” and ‘maximalist’ v ‘minimalist’ island continental shelves Railing loudly against the ‘invasion’ of Greece of its ‘sacred’ islands has been a long-standing article of faith for Turkish politicians…Turkish expansionist propaganda has characterised the Greek island-dotted Aegean as its “Blue Homeland” (a doctrine known the Turks as Mavi vatan) in defiance of the Lausanne Treaty [‘Blue Homeland: The Heated Politics Behind Turkey’s New Maritime Strategy’, (Ryan Gingeras), War On The Rocks, 02-Jun-2020, www.warontherocks.com]. Turkey’s counter-argument to Greece’s is that “Greek islands far from the mainland and closer to Turkey cannot have a continental shelf” (continental shelves equate with national mainlands). It also notes that Greek islands such as Meis and Kastellorizo lie a mere two kilometres from the Turkish mainland but many hundreds of kilometres from the Greek coastline— making a nonsense, they argue, of Greece’s “maximalist continental shelf claims”◰ [‘Turkey-Greek tensions escalate over Turkish Mediterranean drilling plans’, BBC News, 25-Aug-2020, www.bbc.com; ‘Turkey ignores Greece’s dispute, moves on with Mediterranean seismic surveys’, (Onur Ant), World Oil, 22-Jul-2020, www.worldoil.com; Walsh]. The question of whether the maritime areas (the continental shelves) of islands should be equal to that of mainlands (Greece’s position) or not is a thorny international one, only resolvable by complex ICJ arbitration – something Ankara would be reluctant to undertake (Wintour).
A ”Pax Mediterranea“ excluding Turkey Athens responded to Ankara’s aggressive steps predictably by calling it tantamount to “illegal gunboat diplomacy”. Greece has actively pursued cooperation initiatives with other eastern Mediterranean rim countries including Egypt to jointly exploit gas reserves which by-passes Turkey (eg, the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum). Athens’ efforts to exclude and isolate Turkey have secured the willing participation of France. The EU, at the urgings of France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, imposed a sanction on Turkey for its aggressive behaviour in the Aegean. Ankara’s response to the attempted snooker has been to broker an agreement with the Libyan Government of National Accord to establish its own EEZ in the Mediterranean between the two countries. The EU have condemned the arrangement as infringing the maritime rights of Greece and Cyprus, and not complying with the Law of the Sea ◰. Turkey’s initiative is “a clear signal to other coastal states in the region that the gas game will not be played without Ankara’s consent” [‘Why did Turkey sign a maritime deal with Libya?’, TRT, 10-Dec-2019, www.trtworld.com].
Kastellorizo 🔻
For the time being tensions over the Kastellorizo hotspot in the Dodecanese islands have eased, President Erdoğan has pulled back its seismic survey vessels to the Turkish mainland. But with Erdoğan defiantly vowing to assert Turkey’s rights in the sea and Greece unwilling to make concessions to its traditional foe, the chance remains that an isolated incident may escalate into something more serious in the foreseeable future◘ [Turkish President Erdogan blinks first in eastern Mediterranean standoff’, (Menekse Tekyak), Arab News, 13-Sep-2020, www.arabnews.com]. 
🔺 Erdoğan visiting Hagia Sophia in July
(Photo: Turkish Presidential press office via Agence France–Presse — Getty Images)
Postscript: Ankara’s intransigent view of the ‘foreign’ Greek islands within the “Blue Homeland” remains the central stumbling block to security in the region. There are other recent developments in Turkey that have added to the tense trans-Aegean climate. President Erdoğan, always keen to show his Islamist credentials, in July restored Hagia Sophia—until 1453 a symbol of Christian Orthodoxy—to its former status as a functioning mosque, drawing criticism from many quarters including Greece, the Vatican, other international ecclesiastical councils and UNESCO. A second, current source of tension with its neighbour to the west derives from Erdoğan recently deciding to allow large numbers of refugees and migrants to flood into Europe via the Evros River border and Greece (BBC News).
⥽ ⥼⥼⥽⥽⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼⥼⥽⥽⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥽ ⥼⥼⥽⥽⥼ ⥽ ⥼⥼⥽⥽⥼ ⥽ ⥼ ⥽ ⥼⥽ ⥽
❋ Erdoğan and the Turks argue that the 1923 Lausanne Treaty allowed Greece and Cyprus to steal Turkey’s continental shelf (Brook). The letter of the law supports Greece, however Turkey’s frustrations are understandable given that such a large swath of its coastline is punctuated with a multitude of Greek EEZs
◰ which Turkey continues to refuse to ratify
◘ most observers feel that despite Erdoğan’s bellicosity, Turkey is unlikely to declare war any time soon, given it is militarily overextended in Syria and Libya and the current state of the Turkish economy [‘Turkish-Greek relations tense amid fears of military showdown’, Arab News, 13-Jun-2020, www.arabnews.com]
The Palme Assassination, Sweden’s JFK Complex: A Coda?
THE modern history of Sweden has been one of continuous, peaceful state existence. Non-participation in any war since 1814, no political assassinations in the country for nearly two centuries (following the murder of King Gustav III in an aristocratic coup attempt in 1792). This remarkable run, free of political violence, was shattered on the night of 28th February 1986 with the seemingly unfathomable murder of Sweden’s incumbent democratic socialist prime minister, Olof Palme＊.
Sveavägen murder scene 🔻
(Photo: Anders Holmström/Svenskt Pressfoto)
‘Clouseauesque’ policing
The Swedish PM’s shooting in Sveavägen, one of Stockholm’s busiest streets, by a single assassin, was followed by an amateurish investigation that was a complete shambles from the start. An initial mix-up over phone calls meant the police were slow to respond to the crime, losing precious minutes while the murderer made good his escape. On arrival, they failed to cordon off the murder scene properly, allowing onlookers to contaminate potential forensic evidence; key witnesses were allowed to leave the scene without being questioned. Established crime protocol—a street-by-street search of the area (a dragnet)—was not implemented [“Olof Palme: Sweden believes it knows who killed PM in 1986’, BBC News, 100-Jun-2020, www.bbc.com/].
🔺Head of investigation, H Holmér
(Image: www.news.sky.com)
The police investigation was headed by Hans Holmér who assumed more or less from day one that the crime was politically motivated, eventually becoming fixated on the Kurdish militant group the PKK as the likely perpetrators, to the neglect of other leads (injudiciously, witnesses with key information were ignored). After a haul of locally-based Kurdish immigrants were arrested and then released for lack of solid evidence, the prosecutors and media turned against Holmér’s handling of the case, forcing him to resign [‘“Murder Most Foul” – the Death of Olof Palme’, (Jan Lundius), Inter Press Service, 30-Jun-2020, www.ipsnews.net; BBC News]⦿.
The suspects and the conspiracy theories◘
In the 34 years since the Palme shooting the police have conducted 10,000+ interviews and 134 people have confessed to the murder. Aside from the PKK, another international suspect was the white South African regime. Palme was a charismatic figure in world politics but also a controversial and polarising one, as a foreign policy-minded social democrat he elicited criticism from both left and right, including from both the superpowers. In addition, his high-profile anti-apartheid stance was a thorn in the side of the Pretoria government. One theory suggests a conspiracy between South Africa’s security and intelligence forces and right-wing extremist mercenaries within Sweden to execute Palme. The view gained some traction but Swedish investigators have never satisfactorily connected the dots between these elements.
🔺 Stockholm: Intersection of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan
Palme’s economic reforms, especially those geared towards promoting worker control, did not endear him to the capitalist class in Sweden. More specifically there was Palme’s strong stance against the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors who was illegally selling weapons to several proscribed nations. When Iran was blocked from receiving a shipment one scenario advanced is that an Iranian hitman liquidated the Swedish PM [‘Sweden’s Bofors Arms Scandal’, Directorate of Intelligence, 04-Mar-1988, www.cia.gov/].
Political pressure for “a result”
Refocusing domestically on individuals, the spotlight turned to Christer Pettersson who had a criminal record including manslaughter. Pettersson was dubiously convicted of Palme’s murder in 1989, in part because Palme’s widow, prompted by police officers, picked him out in a police lineup. The seriously compromised verdict was easily overturned on appeal (lack of a murder weapon or motive) [‘Who killed Sweden’s prime minister? 1986 assassination of Olof Palme is finally solved – maybe’, (Andrew Nestingen), The Conversation, 11-Jun-2020, www.theconversation.com]. The investigation team’s eagerness to ‘fit’ Pettersson for the crime despite being bereft of hard evidence, reflects the pressure exerted by the ruling Social Democratic Party on the police to secure a quick resolution of the crime “acceptable to the public” [‘Who killed the prime minister? The unsolved murder that still haunts Sweden’, (Imogen West-Knights), The Guardian, 16-May-2019, www.theguardian.com].
Another, more ‘political’ suspect to attract the police’s interest early on was Victor Gunnarsson. Gunnarsson was an activist with connexions to various right-wing groups, especially the European Workers Party which held grudges against Palme. Gunnarsson was briefly detained by Holmér but the case against him however dissolved when witnesses failed to locate him at the murder scene at the time of the crime. Gunnarsson later emigrated to the US where he himself ironically became a homicide victim [‘Victor Gunnarsson’, People Pill, www.peoplepill.com].
‘Skandiamannen’✪
Another name on the person of interest list of police was Stig Engström. Engström willingly offered himself up to police as a ‘witness’ at the time of the assassination and though questioned, the police eventually discounted him as a serious suspect. But some 20 years after the murder, a new theory, originating in a book by Lars Larsson and developed by journalist Thomas Pettersson, gained traction. The case put by Pettersson that Engström was the killer rested on a conjunction of factors—the “right timing, the right clothing, (he had) unique information, he had close access to guns of the right type, he was right wing and Palme unfriendly” [‘After 34 Years, Sweden Says It Knows the Killer of Olof Palme’, (Thomas Erdbrink & Christina Anderson), New York Times, 10-Jun-2020, www.nytimes.com]. Petersson handed over his findings to the police in 2016, leading to a reopening of the investigation.
Palme, then Swedish communications minister, (with actress Lena Nyman), appeared in the controversial 1960s “erotic-drama” ‘I am Curious – Yellow’ 🔻
‘Resolved’ but left up in the air?
Earlier this year the state prosecutor announced that he had come to the conclusion that Engström was probably Palme’s killer, but, given that Engström himself died in 2000, he promptly closed the case. Not everyone in Sweden is satisfied by the conclusion to the Palme case, many questions remain unanswered about the inconclusiveness of the evidence…eg, no DNA match, where is the missing murder weapon and what was the motive? (BBC). To paraphrase one antagonistic perspective on the case resolution: “it settles none of the unanswered questions”, instead it “underlines the determination of powerful political forces to continue the cover-up surrounding Palme’s murder” [‘Decades-long cover-up continues of assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme’, (Jordan Shilton), World Socialist Web Site, 13-Jun-2000, www.wsws.org/].
(Source: www.latimes.com)Endnote: Palmology and parallels with the JFK conspiracy saga
The collective trauma felt by Swedes with Olof Palme’s 1986 assassination—many expressing a sense of lost national innocence, no longer immune from political violence◘—recalls the devastating effect the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 had on the American psyche (Lundius). Both leaders’ violent deaths triggered a runaway train of conspiracy theories, some plausible and some highly implausible◕. In the years since 1986 Sweden’s national obsession with the unsolved murder, labelled Palmessjukdom (“Palme sickness”) has inspired a raft of plays, films, television and musical works on the topic. It has even been cited as a contributing “factor in the worldwide explosion of Scandinavian (noirish) crime fiction”. ‘Palmology’ has spawned a veritable Swedish industry of privatspanarna – a legion of private investigators (such as Thomas Pettersson) conducting independent inquiries into the baffling crime…some have been serious researchers, others espousing “crackpot theories” (West-Knights).
(Source: www.cnbc.com/)
𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪
＊ not however the country’s last political murder, in 2003 Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, was assassinated by another “lone wolf” assassin
⦿ marginalising SÄPO (Säkerhetspolisen – the state secret police) from the investigation didn’t make the task any easier
✪ Engström was dubbed “Skandia Man” by Lars Larsson because he worked in the Skandia Insurance Co tower building which fronts on to Sveavägen-Tunnelgatan
◘ and perhaps in some measure jolting Swedes out of a lingering outlier complacency
◕ among the multitude ‘fingered’ for the hit on the Swedish PM, was the Swedish police, the Yugoslav secret service, even Palme’s own wife, Lisbet
“We’re All Individuals!”: “Living Persons” in the Bubble of their Own “Sovereign Nation“ Speak Out
Who’d have thought that it’d take a pandemic to bring to light just how many cynics and crazies are out there? Before COVID-19 we only had the climate change deniers and the occasion conspiracy peddler to cope with. Since the virus first descended, coronavirus deniers have been coming out of the woodwork, a contagion not confined to the USA.
Human rights or human life? Recently, a new phenomena has popped up on social media and TV screens – from the “Republic of Covididiocy”. Provocateurs have taken to filming themselves confronting police and retail shop personnel during lockdown – provocatively refusing to wear masks, not giving their personal details and declaring loudly that their human rights were being transgressed. The extreme position adopted by these protesters connects them to conspiratorial views held by fringe extremists in the US✱.
Conspiracy heaven ⍌
A universal scofflaw mindset These individuals are part of a loosely-organised movement of people who call themselves “Sovereign Citizens” (or “Sov-Cits” or just ‘Sovereigns’, for short), whose purpose is to assert some set of existing natural rights which, they purport, places them outside of the jurisdiction of the government and the law. In a climate of pandemic-induced restrictions many of these people may just be (over)reacting to the state’s clampdown on their freedom of movement and activity, a knee-jerk libertarian impulse. However the concept of Sovereign Citizenry long pre-dates the current pandemic as a conspiracy-driven stratagem, with its origins, unsurprisingly, found in America.
The world according to Sovereign Citizens “The Sovereign Citizens Movement promotes the tantalising fantasy that anyone can declare himself or herself above and beyond the jurisdiction of the government by invoking arcane legal terminology”. ~ Southern Poverty Law Center
(Source: www.radicalisationresearch.org)
In the 1990s the SCM picked up the earlier Posse Comitatus movement’s baton of unrelenting enmity towards the federal government, portraying themselves as the “true defenders of the Constitution”. Sov-Cit beliefs rest on the same premise as that established by Posse Comitatus. They believe that the US government is illegitimate…it is, they say, a corporation that has duped ‘natural’ citizens (read “Sovereign Citizens”) into an unlawful contract. Sovereign theorists cite the 14th Amendment in 1868 and FD Roosevelt’s 1933 abandonment of the gold standard as a back-up to the paper currency as historical ‘proof’ of federal deception.
Gurus and methods The SCM is a loosely organised group of litigants, commentators, tax protesters/deniers and financial scheme promoters…leadership comes from “redemption gurus” who advise Sovereigns to use ‘legal’ phrases to remove themselves from the jurisdiction of government (BBC).
Prison recruitment, outreach and education Gurus and other Sovereign ‘mentors’ incarcerated for fraud or for not paying taxes have found prison an ideal environment to indoctrinate and recruit new adherents. Imprisoned drug dealers and embezzlers were particularly willing recruits to the cause, jumping at the chance to put Sov-Cit theories into place in the hope of getting out of jail, or to retaliate against the public officials and law enforcement officers who put them there! The pseudo-legal strategy employed by Sov-Cits (again following Posse Comitatus) is based on the ludicrous “Theory of Redemption”—a secret (and mythical) fund of money created for everyone at birth by the US government—which Sov-Cits can supposedly redeem or claim to pay debts [‘Sovereign Citizens Movement Resurging’, Southern Poverty Law Center, Spring Issue 2009, 26-Feb-2009, www.splcenter.org].
“American National”, the preferred nomenclature for Sovereigns ⍌
Before the advent of the internet training of Sov-Cits took place at seminars held at remote extremist compounds. Now recruits learn via online videos and forums (like You Tube and MySpace) which disseminate SCM doctrine and tactics. Some Sovereign groups sell booklets like “The Prison Packet” which purports to guide inmates towards the realisation of their freedoms. Religious outreach, through the agencies of numerous Christian fundamentalist fringe organisations in the US, is another avenue for recruiting Sov-Cits into the fringe fold (Southern Poverty Law Center).
Paper terrorism Sovereigns employ what are saturation methods, submitting countless bogus court filings containing hundreds of pages which are virtually indecipherable. The purpose? “To punish, to harass and mislead public officials”. The paper terrorism may take the form of elaborate scams, the generation of fake letters of credit or tax forms, frivolous law suits or other faux legal documents [‘Understanding the sovereign citizen movement: a guide for corrections professionals’, The Free Library, www.thefreelibrary.com/].
Law-enforcement officers in the Sovereigns’ cross-hairs Some Sov-Cits are out and out “con artists”, transparently pure 100% charlatan, but as Michael Barkun warns, others are politically-motivated anti-government extremists⧆…and dangerous! In 2010 a Sov-Cit duo, father and son, killed local police officers in West Memphis, Arkansas. A New Hampshire shootout in 1997 resulted in the death of five people including the Sovereign provocateur acting as a “lone wolf”❂. Cop killing by Sovereigns is not confined to America – in 2016 a Reichsbürger, the German version of the Sov-Cit, shot dead a policeman in that country. The FBI has declared some Sovereign Citizens to be domestic terrorists. Often inmates utilise the Sov-Cit strategies from within the prison system to carry out protracted vendettas against judges, IRS officials, prosecutors and local sheriffs (Southern Poverty Law Center).
(Source: www.bbc.com/)
The lengths a Sov-Cit will go to
Your dedicated Sovereign is not adverse to creating fake car licence plates or printing his or her own currency and then trying to pass it off as real money. One SCM provocateur in Florida, in acrimonious conflict with his local Bank of America branch, sent it a bogus foreclosure notice and even barricaded the branch during opening hours (SPLC).
Francis: “It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression” Reg: “Its symbolic of his struggle against reality” ~ Monty Python’s Life of Brian
Sovereigns don’t believe they need to hold a licence in order to drive (or to fish for that matter). When stopped by police patrols they have been known to deny that they are driving and affirm rather that they are in fact merely travelling⚅ (Dr Kaz Ross, interview, ABC Radio). And travelling, Sovereigns insist, is “a God-given right”. Some Sovereigns go even further than just mouthing the mantra that they are outside of federal jurisdiction, proclaiming to be citizens of other entities, eg, the Montana Freemen, the “Republic of Texas” (The Free Library)✫.
Anti-government protest in Oregon ⍓
(Source: http://m.dk.com)
Endnote: Sovereign Citizens are one of a panoply of Alt-Right, conspiracy-obsessed fringe hate groups in the US which might loosely be subsumed under the umbrella term “patriot movement”. There is a lot of blurring of the lines between SCM, QAon, the Three Percenters, the Boogaloo Bois, the Proud Boys, the Anti-Vaxxer groups and various others of a similarly contrarian ilk. In particular, the Sov-Cits’ emphasis on the duality of US citizenship echoes the philosophy of another group – the Freemen-on-the-Land movement. The latter proclaim that “with special knowledge and careful language, we can circumvent these laws and regulations and live freely as an alternative vision of ourselves under our own ‘natural‘ laws” (a virtual identikit image of the SCM’s credo and tactics) [’What is the ‘sov cit movement?’, BBC News, 05-Aug-2020, www.bbc.com; ’The seriously weird belief of Freeman on the Land”, (Shelley Stocken), News, 09-Jul-2016, www.news.com.au].
xxxx
PostScript: Black separatism On the surface you might think Sov-Cits would be an exclusively Caucasian phenomena, given its links to White Supremacist outfits like Christian Identity. But there is an African-American separatist subset that adheres to the Sovereign Citizens credo. Given their disproportionate representation in US prisons, Black inmates not surprisingly have been attracted to the SCM ideology. A clique of African-American drug-dealers on trial for murder in the 2000s in Baltimore employed its obstructionist ploys to delay proceedings for years [‘Too Weird for The Wire’, (Kevin Carey), Washington Post, May/June/July 2008].
↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼
✱ the great danger here “is when fringe beliefs and proponents begin to slip into the mainstream”, eg, President Trump’s spruiking of alleged coronavirus cures which are not scientifically proven and possibly harmful, ‘The threads that don’t connect: Covid gives Australian conspiracy theorists a home’, (Michael McGowan), The Guardian, 02-Aug-2020, www.theguardian.com.au] ⊞ a right to hold possession of property owned by another until they discharge the debt (www.lexico.com/) ⧆ Barkun describes them as “a stubbornly resilient sub-culture, a community of the alienated” ❂ many Sovereign groups are thought to be aligned with militia groups ⚅ ‘driving’, they assert, is what a truck driver or a taxi driver does for a living ✫ it’d be stating the obvious to say that Sovereigns have a cockeyed notion of the rule of law, one based on the false premise that an individual can choose which law they consent to, and which they don’t (SPLC)
United Fruit, CIA, Do Business with Guatemala, Cold War Style: 1) 1944 Revolution to FBFortune
From the late 19th century to the Second World War Guatemalan politics followed a familiar path to most states in Latin America at the time – dominance by caudillos – military strongmen who were favourably disposed towards foreign investment and economic exploitation, especially from the USA. Under General Jorge Ubico (president 1931-44), this practice intensified with massive concessions given to Guatemala’s biggest foreign investor, the US United Fruit Company (UFCo), and to the country’s wealthy landowning class.
⇑ Belize (to the west of Guatemala) was the colony of British Honduras till 1964
By 1944 the economy in Guatemala was effectively monopolised by a “Big Three” oligopoly of US corporations – UFCo, in commanding control of the banana industry, International Railways of Central America, with its stranglehold (together with UFCo) over the country’s rail and ports facilities, and Electric Bond and Share, which controlled over 80% of Guatemala’s electricity supply. Poverty among the bulk of the rural population was endemic, agricultural workers earned between five and 20 centavos a day. 72% of the country’s land was held by just 2% of the population and there was an over-reliance on food imports because of the under-utilisation of land. Ubico’s oppressive rule was iron-tight and likened by international visitors to a “police state” [Gordon, Max. “A Case History of U. S. Subversion: Guatemala, 1954.” Science & Society, 35, no. 2 (1971): 129-55. Accessed July 27, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/40402561].
Guatemala. Izabal. Banana plantation.(Source: AFAR)
The spring of democracy 1944-1954 In 1944 a coalition of middle class professionals, teachers and junior army officers❈, with the backing of trade unions, forced Ubico’s removal [Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America, (2011)]. This “Guatemalan Revolution” paved the way for free elections and an overwhelming victory for liberal professor Juan José Arévalo. The Arévalo government followed a moderate reformist path, establishing civil rights, a social welfare apparatus and achieved considerable success in improving national literacy levels. Arévalo was succeeded in 1951 by another democratically elected government, this time led by former soldier and defence minister Jacobo Árbenz. The progressive Árbenz moved beyond his predecessor in introducing much-needed, comprehensive agrarian reforms, something Arévalo had carefully avoided for fear of antagonising Guatemala’s landed elite and being branded pro-communist [‘Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Guatemala’, Office of the Historian, www.history.state.gov/].
President Árbenz Guzman ⇓ (www.wikia.org)
Decreto número 900 This put the Árbenz regime on a collision course with UFCo and the US government. The government’s Agrarian Reform Law (Decree 900) allowed for the expropriation of all Guatemalan land more than around 600 acres in size that was not under cultivation (which nonetheless only added up to less than 5% of all private land-holdings). UFCo’s reaction was to complain to Washington that Árbenz’s land reforms threatened its monopolistic position in Guatemala. The Company’s resolve to resist the Guatemalan move was hardened by the government’s offer of about $627,000, a figure derived from UFCo’s own estimate of the land value for tax purposes. The US State Department then demanded compensation from Guatemala of over $15,800,000 for UFCo’s properties in the country [‘Decree 900’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/].
Árbenz’s ‘gift’ to the landless masses (Source: Life Mag.) ⇓
Upturning democracy: the build-up to the coup UFCo turned its energies to lobbying Washington to secure its assets and investments in the small Central American country. The US government however had its own (wider) agenda in mind. With America in the grip of the “Second Red Scare” of McCarthyism in the early 1950s, the US chose to see Árbenz’s anti-colonial land reforms (an attempt by the Third World agrarian country to extricate itself from a backward feudal mode of existence) as prefiguring an encroachment of communism onto the Guatemalan political landscape⍟. The US government, operating through the agency of the CIA⚄, initiated a smear campaign against the Árbenz regime, using misinformation and infiltration to try to undermine its legitimacy within the country and the region. By 1952 the decision had been made to intervene in Guatemala. President Truman authorised the CIA to launch Operation PBFORTUNE, with the complicit involvement of Nicaraguan dictator Somoza García (Snr), but when its cover was prematurely blown the operation was quickly aborted. Plans in Washington for the coup d’état were shelved – for the time being, and the CIA and its co-conspirators resumed the covert task of subverting and destabilising the increasingly isolated Guatemalan government.
⇑ Allen Dulles, CIA director
§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§
❈ drawing inspiration from FD Roosevelt’s American “New Deal” and from Mexico’s nationalising Cárdenas regime
⍟ Árbenz has the support of the small Guatemalan Communist Party and some communists filled minor offices in the administration but there were no communist members in the ruling cabinet
⚄ which had connexions with UFCo through those arch-cold warriors, the Dulles brothers, John Foster and Allen
“Coronavirus’ Continuing Story: “Model Countries”, The “Second Wave”, More of the “New Normal”
Virtually from the onset of the pandemic, public health boffins around the world, mindful of the deadly follow-up wave of the Spanish Flu in the northern hemisphere autumn of 1918, were warning countries that even if they managed to suppress the virus, the danger of a second strain was incredibly real. And now it seems that second wave has come to fruition⍝. Australia, which had pretty much contained the spread of coronavirus by early June in all states and territories, has seen a renewed spike of infections in metropolitan Melbourne and a reimposition of border lockdowns by other states in the Commonwealth. In addition, another Covid cluster is currently emerging in a pocket of south-west Sydney.
Elsewhere there are even more concerning trends of new flare-ups. In Covid-19 ravaged Europe, Portugal was until recently thought to be an exemplar of sorts on how to handle the pandemic and minimise its harmful impact. While neighbours Spain and France had been beset by rapid rates of infection and steepling mortality counts in the earliest phase of the pandemic’s first wave, Portugal by April was coping comparatively well. The republic’s small population (about 10.25 million) no doubt aided the authorities’ efforts to fight the pandemic, but this was counterbalanced by inherent drawbacks – an elderly population (3rd highest population of over 80s in Europe) and underfunded health system (just 4.2 critical care beds per 100.000 people). Portugal’s centralised system of government and the early implementation of measures—locking down public places and events—was key to the country’s success in slowing the pace of infection, reflected in the comparative death rates [‘How Portugal became Europe’s coronavirus exception’, (Paul Ames), Politico, 14-Apr-2020, www.politico.com].
|
European country |
Per capita mortality from coronavirus |
|
Portugal 🇵🇹 |
3% |
|
Spain 🇪🇸 |
>10% |
|
Britain 🇬🇧 |
12% |
|
France 🇫🇷 |
15% |
|
(as at mid-April 2020) |
{Ames} |
(Source: Reuters/ Rafael Marchante / File Photo)
Portugal’s relative success at that time, 18,091 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 599 deaths, was also attributed to a unified political approach—opposition and government working towards the common goal of tackling the pandemic—and to the self-discipline of Portuguese people in faithfully adhering to the stay-at-home guidelines during the crisis (Ames). The situation in Portugal now sits at 46,818 confirmed cases and 1,662 deaths (14-Jul-2020) – the result of the reopening of economic activity and relaxation of restrictive measures [‘How Sweden and Portugal Went from Pandemic Role Models To Record Infections’, (Marina Velasco), Huffington Post, 11-Jul-2020, www.huffpost.com]. This surge in virus numbers is centred around the capital Lisbon.
Next door Spain is currently confronted with two new very serious cluster points in the north of the country. Galicia region (the northwest) and autonomous Catalonia (the northeast) have both imposed a second lockdown after the earlier easing of restrictions due to a similar upsurge in infections [‘Coronavirus: Spain imposed local lockdown in Galicia’, BBC News, 05-Jul-2020, www.bbcnews.com] . The timing of the spike is not good, especially as Spain and Portugal have just reopened their common border at the start of July.
🔺 Before the second strain: as of around 1st May Portugal had the Iberian bragging rights for best at weathering the coronavirus storm sown up (Source: www.ft.times)
Israel is another country whose fortunes with the pandemic have ebbed in recent weeks – going from “model nation fighting the novel coronavirus to a small, isolated country whose citizens face a long, deadly summer locked down”. An early, enforced lockdown saw Israel hold its fatalities to only 271 by May, with Israeli prime minister Netanyahu proclaiming it “the safest country on earth”. Two months later everything has gone pear-shaped in Israel, virus cases are spiking concurrently with a cratering economy and 23% unemployment (all adding to Netanyahu’s pre-existing political woes). The head of Israel’s public health service has quit in protest, frustrated by the government’s handling of the crisis – alleging a hesitant, disjointed, stop-start approach from the government (“six wasted weeks”), and equally worrying, a Trump-like reluctance by the prime minster to heed official public health expert advice✥. Adding his voice to the chorus of critics of the government’s approach, President Rivlin has commented that “Israel has failed to develop a clear and coherent doctrine to combat the coronavirus” [Noga Tarnopolsky, ‘“The Second Wave” of COVID Hits Israel Like a Tsunami’, Daily Beast, 10-Jul-2020, www.thedailybeast.com].
Ashdod, one of Israel’s virus hotspots (Source: www.timesofindia.com) 🔻
PostScript: “Second wave-ism”✪ and relaxed response mode⊡ In fact “second wave” contagion seems quite a global prospect at the moment. Other countries such as Germany, Singapore, South Korea and China have all managed to contain the first wave outbreak in their respective countries, only, as restrictions on movement and travel get lifted, to be hit afresh with subsequent clusters of local infections [‘New Covid-19 clusters across world spark fear of second wave’, (Emma Graham-Harrison), The Guardian, 27-Jun-2020, www.theguardian.com].
(Image: Getty Images)
﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀
⍝ Professor Nick Talley (Australian Journal of Medicine) refutes the view that Australia is experiencing a “second wave” of the virus, contending that the current outbreak is actually the “real first wave”
✥ over a six-week period the number of confirmed cases multiplied by 499%; currently (14-Jul-2020) Israel has confirmed 40,632 cases and 365 deaths from the pandemic
✪ the concept of what constitutes a virus second wave is not a definitive or consensual one – “no precise epidemiological definition” (Harvard School of Public Health). It can be applied to “anything from localised spikes in infection to a full-blown national crisis” – so some medical experts avoid the term itself (Graham-Harrison)
⊡ epidemiologists worry that “social distancing fatigue” arising from being in lockdown for extended periods can contribute to pockets of new infections emerging