Author: badru

by WYATT REED

The Grayzone has obtained a dossier detailing the identities of the Zionist hooligans who assaulted UCLA anti-genocide student protesters. It was sent to LA police, but no arrests have been made. And the cops still can’t explain why they disappeared for hours during the mob attack.

On April 30, thirty people were injured when a mob of Zionist hooligans savagely assaulted the pro-Palestine UCLA encampment shortly before midnight. For over three hours, local and campus police stood down as the masked thugs assaulted students, journalists, and even officers of the law with fireworks volleys, pepper spray, and metal pipes. Though multiple attackers have been identified by community members on social media, to date there have been no arrests of pro-Israel goons.

“30,000 motherfuckers. 30,000 and counting.” —pro-Israel supporter

Just an awful thing to say. pic.twitter.com/7r0dpcGuzq

— Film The Police LA (@FilmThePoliceLA) May 1, 2024

The Grayzone has obtained a dossier composed by anonymous sleuths claiming involvement with the UCLA student protests which apparently identifies some of the attack’s perpetrators. The students emailed the document to the UCLA administration and police (UCPD), as well as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. It contains detailed information about the identities of those who were filmed carrying out wanton violence.

Los Angeles-area police have arrested droves of students protesting Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza, accusing over 40 students and journalists of “conspiracy to commit burglary” for attempting a sit-in on school grounds. Yet local authorities have made a grand total of zero arrests in the coordinated Zionist mob assault against UCLA anti-genocide protesters on April 30. 

The LA Times has reported that local law enforcement is relying on sophisticated facial recognition technology to hunt down the attackers. But as the UCLA sleuths’ dossier makes clear, many assailants have already been identified by matching their identities with social media profiles.

The UCPD and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department did not respond to questions from The Grayzone about whether the persons identified in the dossier were under investigation, or had been taken into custody.

Alleged attackers listed in the email include:

• Liel Asherian. Asherian, who uploaded videos directly from the scene of the attack to Facebook, was reportedly seen assaulting pro-Palestine demonstrators with a tennis racket. In an interview with the New York Times, Asherian claimed without offering a shred of evidence that he was called a “dirty Jew” and doused in pepper spray. “That made me start breaking down their barricades,” he stated.

CAMPUS WATCH: Liel Asherian, identified among the group assaulting the @UCLA encampment pic.twitter.com/3qxwHr4EoD

— Stop Arab Hate (@StopArabHate) May 1, 2024

• Nouri Mehdizadeh. Footage from before and after the attacks show Medizadeh was a constant presence on the periphery of the protest encampment. According to the email from student activists, Mehdizadeh “was involved in planning violence continuously” and UCLA officials were likewise “warned about him continuously.” The email’s author suggested Mehdizadeh’s actions would constitute hate crimes, given that he “referenced a desire to attack those who were not his “Jewish brothers.” A photo of Mehdizadeh taken shortly before the violence erupted indicates he had foreknowledge of the assault and may have helped organize the attack.

• Later that evening, a masked Mehdizadeh was recorded attempting to destroy barricades while a compatriot with a speaker blasted “Mani Mantera,” a Hebrew-language children’s song that Israeli soldiers have played while torturing and/or taunting captive Palestinians on camera. Despite getting caught red-handed by several security officers — and despite nearly getting into a fistfight with another guard in a separate incident — Mehdizadeh was allowed to remain in the area.
• Tom Bibiyan. Footage uploaded to social media by Bibiyan himself reveals he personally participated in the April 30 attacks. A day after the assault, Bibiyan published a video on Instagram highlighting his involvement, alongside a caption boasting that “we rushed the terrorist encampment.” When another Instagram user asked Bibiyan to clarify his role in the violence, he bragged, “yeah I’m in this video” – apparently confident that he would face no legal repercussions for his crimes. Bibiyan reportedly spent several years participating in questionable cryptocurrency schemes while part of the Los Angeles NFT community, before being exiled from such groups following accusations of indecent exposure and sexual harassment. A website representing the Bibiyan Family Philanthropic Foundation indicates the family regularly donated to not only vehemently Zionist groups like the zealous and insular Chabad ultra-Orthodox cult, but also to liberal news outlets like Democracy Now.

Violent Zionist thugs wave the flag of the messianic Chabad cult on their way to assaulting anti-genocide protesters at UCLA pic.twitter.com/FNdsLI6Vii

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 1, 2024

• A man seen waving the “Moshiach” flag of the militant Zionist Chabad organization was identified by students as Rony Yehuda. An instagram account belonging to the virtually-unknown pro-Israeli rapper, @Judah_fire_,  indicates Yehuda is a Los Angeles resident. The email by student organizers said the 35-year-old provocateur has returned to UCLA campus on multiple occasions since the attacks, despite lacking any affiliation with the school — and despite claims by students that they alerted police to the presence of the aggressive outsiders.Among the most prominent cheerleaders of Yehuda’s actions were members of Team Moshiach, a Chabad-affiliated outfit which describes itself as “a global non-profit organization that unites Jews from around the world in acts of goodness and kindness.” In the days following October 7, Team Moshiach spearheaded a campaign to funnel military hardware to the Israeli military, and even uploaded a video to Instagram showing an Israeli soldier personally thanking the group for the equipment.The director of the nearby Chabad House claimed to the NY Times his organization had no role in organizing the attack at UCLA.

The Gray Zone for more

Polling shows that the vast majority of people in the US and Western Europe want a negotiated settlement to end the war in Ukraine, but NATO opposes a peace proposal made by China and Brazil, while refusing to invite Russia to a so-called “peace conference” in Switzerland. Ben Norton explains.

Topics 0:00 Intro 1:30 Biden authorizes attacks inside Russia 2:12 France plans to send military forces to Ukraine 3:52 US discusses increased nuclear weapon deployments 4:57 Poll: most people in US & W Europe want peace 7:04 China & Brazil propose peace plan 9:38 West’s “peace conference” didn’t invite Russia 11:26 China wants peace in Ukraine 15:45 Nicaragua backs China-Brazil peace plan 16:05 Outro || Geopolitical Economy Report

Youtube for more

by LINA MOE

In 1524, a peasant uprising against grinding poverty and feudal rule swept across parts of what is now Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Though it was eventually crushed, the revolt gave rise to folk legends that endured for centuries, among them the story of a towering woman fighter. ‘Black Anna’, as she was known – likely based on the peasant leader Margaret Renner – is the central figure in the German artist Käthe Kollwitz’s striking graphic cycle, ‘The Peasants’ War’ (1901-1908). Black Anna is depicted rallying her forces, her outstretched arms directing a line of armed men who surge across a field. The prints dramatize a dialectic of oppression and resistance: elsewhere we see the upward swoop of armed men rushing through a castle entryway, a mother bending over her dead son.

Kollwitz herself was an unusual figure in many respects. A female artist of the early twentieth century who was widely recognized during her lifetime, her primary medium was printing rather than painting. Committed to narrative and representation in a heyday of abstraction, Kollwitz valued sincerity over irony, distancing her from the key artistic movements – Dada, Neue Sachlichkeit – of the period. Never a member of the SPD or KPD, she nonetheless produced socially engaged art centred on the working class. A survey of her work currently showing at the Museum of Modern Art in New York – encompassing early paintings, numerous self-portraits, the major graphic series, the popular posters – brings these idiosyncrasies into relief. It also reveals some of the animating tensions of her oeuvre, among them the use of portraiture as means to represent collectivities, and of an intimate visual language to address world-historic themes.

She was born Käthe Schmidt in Königsberg in 1867, in what was then Prussia, and raised in an educated, upper-middle-class family of socialist and dissident religious convictions. Though neither of Kollwitz’s sisters worked outside the home, her father encouraged her to pursue an artistic career, paying for years of training and travel. Her ambitions were shaped by this paternal support, as well as encounters with socialism and feminism – formative writings included August Bebel’s Women and Socialism and the journalism of Clara Zetkin. In 1891, she married a doctor, Karl Kollwitz, and the couple settled in the working-class district of Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin.

SideCar – New Left Review for more

by ZAC CHAPMAN & NAIRUTI SHASTRY

Organizers and researchers Zac Chapman and Nairuti Shastry examine how movements can build power by working within, without, and against philanthropy.

In April 2022, grassroots organization Mijente unveiled a political framework in which it advocated for a threefold strategy of working within, without, and against the state to achieve its political goals. This framing was inspired by a movement group in Chile, the Movimiento de Pobladores en Lucha.

We propose a similar path: building strategic alignment across groups working within, without, and against philanthropy. We aim to share the historical and present-day value of diverse approaches to fundraising that include but are in no way limited to philanthropic investment. Moreover, we seek to show how aligning work within, without, and against philanthropy can catalyze power building on the Left.

New Gilded Age

This April marked twenty years since INCITE!’s landmark conference, “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded,” shifted the conversation about how the Left organizes and funds our movements. The conference and eponymous anthology published in 2007 put forth incisive critiques of how the “nonprofit industrial complex”—largely due to its pernicious relationship with philanthropy—professionalizes, derails, and cools off dissent that would otherwise go toward mass movement building.

INCITE!’s own experience was informed by a 2004 incident in which the Ford Foundation retracted a $100,000 grant after catching wind of a letter the group had written in support of Palestinian liberation. Two decades later, censorship continues, and funders remain largely silent about the escalating genocide and collective punishment wrought on the Palestinian people.

The past two decades have marked the rise of a “new gilded age” of capitalist accumulation. Foundations currently hoard upward of $1.5 trillion. Moreover, movement organizations on both the Left and Right increasingly rely on this capital to advance their work, no matter how frustrating the funding process may be. In March 2024, the New Economy Coalition (an organization with whom we both work) hosted “Will the Revolution Be Funded?,” an event marking the launch of a new Solidarity Economy Funding Library. When asked to share a word or a phrase participants might use to describe what resourcing has looked like for their communities at large, the chat flooded with hundreds of comments: keywords included “gaslighting,” “exploitative,” “scarce,” and “soul theft and spirit murder.”

Foundations gave away an estimated $105.21 billion in 2022—a 2.5 percent increase from the previous year—so why does it still feel like there is not enough?

Thrice-Stolen Wealth

As Justice Funders note in their Just Transition Investment Framework, foundations “[contribute] over 13 times [more] to extractive global stock markets” than to grants through their portfolio assets. Ruth Wilson Gilmore refers to philanthropic wealth as “twice stolen,” but it could really be viewed as thrice stolen: the $1.5 trillion in current US philanthropic assets are not just (1) stolen from wage laborers and (2) warehoused outside of the realm of taxation but are also (3) actively invested every day into ensuring this same extractive cycle continues.

Forge Organizing for more

by NATALIA MARQUES

Past efforts to ban the enormously popular app in the United States have failed. Recent success could be linked to the popularity of the Palestine solidarity movement

On March 13, the House of Representatives acted far quicker than usual in passing a bill that would force the Chinese parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, to sell the video-sharing app to a US company or be banned in the United States. The bill was passed by an overwhelming majority of 352 in favor and 65 against—with most members of both major parties voting in favor. The bill is now in the Senate, after which, if passed, Biden has vowed to sign it into law.

The digital front of the Cold War

The piece of legislation, entitled “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” seeks to “protect the national security of the United States from the threat posed by foreign adversary controlled applications.”

For years, the widespread popularity of Chinese-owned TikTok among young people in the US has spun politicians and other operatives into a Cold War-era frenzy. This is not the first time that the government has tried to ban TikTok—in 2020, amid a mass protest movement that had just ignited after the killing of George Floyd, Trump signed an executive order to ban the app unless it was sold to a US parent company, similar to the current bill. The order was stalled after a challenge in a federal court. At the time, videos and imagery from the mass protests across the country were drawing millions of views.

Brian Becker, anti-imperialist organizer and Executive Director of the ANSWER Coalition, spoke about the latest attempt to ban TikTok in his show The Socialist Program and said is just another facet of the New Cold War against China. Becker likens the ban to the House Un-American Activities Committee, a House of Representatives committee tasked with repressing communists and those with alleged ties to the Soviet Union. 

“The new McCarthyism, the anti-China campaign [is] reaching truly demented levels. A true hysteria. But that’s true about the last witch hunt too, the one in 1946, 47, 48. The [HUAC] wasn’t getting that much traction in their anti-communist crusade until they could start to target Hollywood,” said Becker, referring to the US government’s repression of artists working in the film industry on the loose basis of having communist ties. “That guaranteed a lot of publicity… a lot of this is driven by these opportunist politicians, Democrat and Republican alike, who are trying to get lots of attention for themselves by showing that they’re the ones standing up to China.”

Indeed, politicians in the US are whipping up the public into a frenzy over TikTok’s purported “national security” threat, although US intelligence officials themselves have admitted that this threat is entirely hypothetical.

People’s Dispatch for more

by SPENCER Y. KWON, YUERAN MA, & KASPAR ZIMMERMANN

Abstract

We collect data on the size distribution of all U.S. corporations for 100 years. We document thatcorporate concentration (e.g., asset share or sales share of top businesses) has increased persistentlyover the past century. Rising concentration was stronger in manufacturing and mining beforethe 1970s, and stronger in services, retail, and wholesale after the 1970s. Furthermore, risingconcentration in an industry aligns with greater technological intensity and more fixed costs.Industries with higher increases in concentration also exhibit higher output growth. Among theleading hypotheses for rising concentration, stronger economies of scale appear consistent withthe long-run trends.

1 Introduction

The role of large businesses in the economy is an important question for researchers, policymakers,and the public. The finding of rising concentration among U.S. industries since the 1980s (as shownbyAutor et al.(2020) and others using comprehensive census data covering this period) has attractedparticular attention. Recent discussions of this evidence often focus on the special features of today’sworld. In the archives of history, however, lives an old conjecture that rising concentration is a feature,if not a law, of industrial development. In fact, bothMarx(1867) and Marshall(1890) wrote thattechnological progress increases economies of scale and raises the concentration of production.Lenin(1916) gathered census statistics in the early 1900s to back up the conviction that “the enormous growthof industry and the remarkably rapid concentration of production…are one of the most characteristicfeatures of capitalism.” After the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) was established in1920 to provide “exact and impartial determinations of facts,” one of its first publications also noted thespread of mass production at that time, as well as a general view that “each generation believes itself tobe on the verge of a new economic era” but what appears to be new often represents recurring themesin history (Committee on Recent Economic Changes,1929).

In this paper, we collect data covering the population of U.S. corporations for 100 years, from 1918to 2018. We use these data to study the long-run evolution of the concentration of production, namely the extent to which a small set of top businesses account for a large share of production assets or output.We document that corporate concentration in the U.S. (measured using the asset share, sales share, ornet income share of top businesses) has increased over the past century. Among different sectors, rising concentration was stronger in manufacturing and mining before the 1970s, and stronger in services,retail, and wholesale after the 1970s. We then examine the leading hypotheses about the economicmechanisms behind rising concentration, including economies of scale, globalization, regulation, amongothers. Overall, our data show that increasing concentration of production activities has been a featureof the U.S. economy for at least a century, and long-run forces can be important for this development.

We obtain long-run data on the business size distribution in the U.S. by digitizing historical publi-cations of the Statistics of Income (SOI) and the associated Corporation Source Book from the InternalRevenue Service (IRS). Since 1918, the SOI has been reporting annual statistics of the population ofcorporations by size bins, including the number of businesses and their financial information (e.g.,assets, sales, net income). We use these size bins to estimate top businesses’ shares in the aggregate,the main sectors (roughly one-digit SICs), and the subsectors (roughly two-digit SICs). Our baseline estimation method uses the generalized Pareto approach by fitting a Pareto curve to each size bin(Blanchet, Fournier, and Piketty,2022); results are over 0.99 correlated if we instead fit a lognormalcurve to each size bin, or directly add the top bins up to a given number of businesses. The SOI datacapture production activities in the U.S. (similar to the gross output convention in the national accounts),which align with our focus on the concentration of production.

Concentration100Years.pdf for more

by SUZI WEISSMAN

Sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky, a prominent Russian Marxist imprisoned by Vladimir Putin’s government on false charges, has had his appeal denied. He deserves our solidarity.

Once again Boris Kagarlitsky requires our solidarity.

On June 5, 2024 the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber rejected Boris Kagarlitsky’s appeal against his five year prison sentence for “justifying terrorism.” Kagarlitsky must now remain confined to a penal colony in Torzhok, some 155 miles northwest of Moscow. The decision was unjust, but not unexpected, and will be contested.

Kagarlitsky was initially jailed in July 2023 and held for nearly five months in pretrial detention. He was charged with “justifying terrorism” for ironic remarks he made on his social media channel after the 2022 explosion on the Crimean Bridge. In December 2023, a military court freed him after imposing a fine. But in February 2024, in an unexpected appeal trial, prosecutors overturned the December verdict, citing excessive leniency.

During the June 5 appeal hearing, Kagarlitsky said naming the offending YouTube video “Explosive Congratulations for Mostik the Cat” — a reference to a stray cat that lived on the Crimea bridge, was “an extremely unfortunate joke.” But he argued that his jail term was disproportionate to the offense. Kagarlitsky’s attorney plans to appeal the verdict with Russia’s Constitutional Court on the grounds that his client received excessive punishment.

The appeal court judges refused to change Kagarlitsky’s sentence, despite an appeal from thirty-seven international political figures and intellectuals, including Jeremy Corbyn, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and Yanis Varoufakis, as well as Spanish government ministers and members of parliament from France, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium, and Brazil. An international petition demanding Kagarlitsky’s freedom has collected more than eighteen thousand signatures.

Spurred by the international campaign to free Boris, academic positions were secured for Kagarlitsky from top universities in Brazil and South Africa. It was hoped that Moscow might be induced to free him if he agreed he leave the country. But at the June 5 hearing, the judge refused to allow the official letters of appointment from the deans, rectors, and presidents of these universities, stating they were not relevant to the case. The judicial panel, however, decided to include the documents in the record.

For the time being Kagarlitsky is sitting in the gulag-period penal colony in Torzhok. Because of his age, sixty-five, Kagarlitsky is housed with other pensioners and is not required to work. But the conditions in this colony are inferior to those he had in pretrial detention in the Komi Republic. That was apparent when Kagarlitsky appeared in the courtroom through video link from Torzhok. He has lost weight and appeared haggard.

The judge’s decision ignored basic democratic and legal rights. It was simply a decision handed down in advance from the regime, determined to crush domestic opposition to the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine. It represents a gross but entirely deliberate miscarriage of justice.

Jacobin for more

by RENEE DUDLEY (with research by DORIS BURKE)

Former employee says software giant dismissed his warnings about a critical flaw because it feared losing government business. Russian hackers later used the weakness to breach the National Nuclear Security Administration, among others.

Microsoft hired Andrew Harris for his extraordinary skill in keeping hackers out of the nation’s most sensitive computer networks. In 2016, Harris was hard at work on a mystifying incident in which intruders had somehow penetrated a major U.S. tech company.

The breach troubled Harris for two reasons. First, it involved the company’s cloud — a virtual storehouse typically containing an organization’s most sensitive data. Second, the attackers had pulled it off in a way that left little trace.

He retreated to his home office to “war game” possible scenarios, stress-testing the various software products that could have been compromised.

Early on, he focused on a Microsoft application that ensured users had permission to log on to cloud-based programs, the cyber equivalent of an officer checking passports at a border. It was there, after months of research, that he found something seriously wrong.

The product, which was used by millions of people to log on to their work computers, contained a flaw that could allow attackers to masquerade as legitimate employees and rummage through victims’ “crown jewels” — national security secrets, corporate intellectual property, embarrassing personal emails — all without tripping alarms.

To Harris, who had previously spent nearly seven years working for the Defense Department, it was a security nightmare. Anyone using the software was exposed, regardless of whether they used Microsoft or another cloud provider such as Amazon. But Harris was most concerned about the federal government and the implications of his discovery for national security. He flagged the issue to his colleagues.

They saw it differently, Harris said. The federal government was preparing to make a massive investment in cloud computing, and Microsoft wanted the business. Acknowledging this security flaw could jeopardize the company’s chances, Harris recalled one product leader telling him. The financial consequences were enormous. Not only could Microsoft lose a multibillion-dollar deal, but it could also lose the race to dominate the market for cloud computing.

Harris said he pleaded with the company for several years to address the flaw in the product, a ProPublica investigation has found. But at every turn, Microsoft dismissed his warnings, telling him they would work on a long-term alternative — leaving cloud services around the globe vulnerable to attack in the meantime.

Propublica for more

by ELANA SPIVACK

The Mediterranean diet might conjure images of whole grains, fish, a side of cucumber and tomato salad, and a glass of red wine. While the diet, known for its link to longevity and health, has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years, this eating pattern is far from new. In fact, a recent study reveals that this way of eating has persisted for millennia. Published today in the journal PLoS ONE, a paper looked at the agricultural and diet patterns of people living in what’s now Syria during the Middle Bronze Age, which occurred from 2000 to 1600 BCE. It turns out humans have been eating a Mediterranean diet since at least the Bronze Age.

The research looks at plant, animal, and human remains from an archaeological site in modern-day Syria known as Tell Tweini on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Tell Tweini is located near the modern town Jableh, and was once part of an ancient harbor city called Gibala, the southernmost town of the Ugarit Kingdom in the Levant.

“Understanding ancient cultures is not only important for archaeologists, but for anyone interested in the history of the origins and development of humankind,” Simone Riehl, professor of archaeobotany at the University of Tübingen in Germany, tells Inverse. Food especially is telling of all sorts of conditions. “One of the oldest culturally anchored expressions of human life is food.”

Inverse for more

by MAGED MANDOUR & HOSSAM EL-HAMALAWY

Why the Egyptian military regime is more powerful — and more brutal — than its predecessors

It has been over a decade since a military coup in Egypt definitely quashed the hopes inspired by the Arab Spring. Led by officers under the command of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the regime he subsequently constructed consolidated itself on a foundation of mass repression and debt-fuelled infrastructure projects that systematically funnel money to the ruling elite while impoverishing wide swathes of the population.

How were Egypt’s revolutionary ambitions so decisively snuffed out? And what makes the new regime so ironclad and impervious to opposition? Hossam el-Hamalawy spoke with Maged Mandour, author of Egypt under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge, about the political economy of Egypt’s military dictatorship and why he believes Sisi will be much more difficult to topple than any of the strongmen who came before him.

Can you tell us what your new book is about, and what knowledge gaps it aims to fill?

The book looks at the emergence of the Sisi regime as a new phenomenon in Egyptian politics. Simply put, I argue that the regime represents a complete break with all post-1952 regimes. It is the first time that Egypt is ruled directly by the military, with no mass party or facade to counterbalance its dominance. It has led to a complete militarization of the state, political system, and economy.

This hyper-concentration of power has bred one of the most violent and radical regimes in the Middle East. As far as I know, mine is the first book looking exclusively at the Sisi regime, trying to chart its evolution, from the political, economic, and social perspectives.

How is Sisi’s regime different from its predecessors?

The hyper-concentration of power in the hands of the military has not only led to the complete closure of public space, but also to a fully militarized political system and economy — a new mode of militarized state capitalism, with devastating consequences for the poor and the middle class.

This, however, was only possible through the emergence of a revamped form of ideological justification for military rule, what I call a “Sisified version of Nasserism”. This ideological construct views the nation as an organic whole, an ethereal entity that has existed for thousands of years, with the military at the helm. It makes opposition to the military regime equivalent to national treason, which hence must be repressed. This proto-fascist ideology is augmented, and the explosive mix completed, by conspiracy theories of the fifth column, cosmic conspiracies against the state, and fourth- and fifth-generation wars.

This paved the way for a tidal wave of repression that is yet to abate, which was also fuelled by mass popular participation, what I term “societal repression”. The tactic is simple, yet devastating. Sisi has a skill for popular mobilization, using what can only be termed mass hysteria and blood lust, fuelled by his propaganda machine, for his mass repression. That has created a strong bond between him and his base, allowing him to claim that repression has a popular mandate — the ideal setting for a mass bloodletting the likes of which Egypt had not seen since the founding of the modern Egyptian state.

You write extensively on Egypt’s repressive apparatus. Why has the country seen such a high level of lethal and carceral violence since 2013?

Rosa Luxemburg Stiftungfor more