Global Research

Early on June 14, the Russian Aerospace Forces reportedly carried out airstrikes on positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham near the villages of al-Bara and Deir Sunbul in southern Idlib. Since the signing of the new de-escalation agreement with Turkey on March 5, the Russian military has halted active operations in Greater Idlib. Nonetheless, it continued isolated precise strikes on high value terrorist targets.

The June 14 airstrikes followed the creation of a new coalition by several al-Qaeda-linked groups operating in the region: Horas al-Din, Ansar al-Din, Ansar al-Islam, Liwa al-Muqatlin al-Ansar and Tansiqiyat al-Jihad. The coalition, dubbed “Fa Ithbatu”, is in fact an expanded variant of another al-Qaeda-linked coalition, Ghurfat Eamaliat wa-Harid al-Mu’minin. This very faction recently conducted a large attack on Syrian Army positions near Tanjarah and Fattirah killing several soldiers and destroying at least one BMP infantry fighting vehicle.

Therefore, despite the claims of pro-militant propaganda that militant groups are uniting their forces in order to fight back the possible aggression of the ‘bloody Assad regime’, the creation of Fa Ithbatulikely reveals preparations for more aggressive actions against government forces.

The Turkish leadership, which is also committed to pushing propaganda about the ‘evil Assad regime’, clearly understands the real situation on the ground. So, it has continued expanding the network of observation posts along the M4 highway in southern Idlib in an attempt to keep the situation under control. The most recent Turkish observation posts were created near the villages of Farkia, Bsanqul, Kafer Shalaya, Urum al-Jawz and Mareian. Nonetheless, even these extensive efforts did not allow Turkish forces to at least create the image of order in the so-called opposition-held area.

On June 13, fighting erupted between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and a local armed group in the village of Salqin near the Turkish border. The conflict started after Hayat Tahrir al-Sham members assaulted a displaced civilian from Ma`arat al-Nu`man for setting a food stand near their shop. The fighting stopped only after Hayat Tahrir al-Sham deployed large reinforcements to the village. This was just the most recent incident in a long pattern of violence, which has been ongoing in the militant-held areas.

On June 14 and June 15, warplanes of the Syrian Air Force bombed ISIS hideouts near the town of Uqayribat in southeastern Hama. Last weekend, the Syrian Army, the National Defense Forces and Liwa al-Quds launched an anti-ISIS operation in the very same area. The operation came in response to ISIS attacks near the town on June 11 and June 12. However, it is unlikely that limited security operations in the desert area, which are being conducted by government forces, will fully remove the ISIS threat from the region.

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When the superseding indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia against Julian Assange on May 23, 2019, there was one glaring omission.  It was an achievement, it might even be said the achievement, that gave the WikiLeaks publisher and the organisation justified notoriety.  Collateral Murder, as the leaked video came to be called, featured the murderous exploits by the crew of Crazy Horse 1-8, an Apache helicopter that slew 11 people on July 12, 2007 in east Baghdad.  Among the dead were Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and a driver and fixer, Saeed Chmagh. 

As WikiLeaks announced at the time,

“Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack.  The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers.  Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.”

It is worth remembering at the time that the current stable of media outlets, including the New York Times, preferred to see something rather different: that the video was purposely edited by WikiLeaks to convey maximum public impact while giving the impression of US venality in battle.  Patriotism, and the blinding of the record, comes first. 

This conveniently sidestepped the vacillations taking place in the Pentagon over the incident and its recording.  Dean Yates, who was Reuters Baghdad chief at the time, recalls in horrid vividness the unfolding events, including the seizure of Namir’s cameras and the US military statement:

“Firefight in New Baghdad.  US, Iraqi forces kill 9 insurgents, detain 13.”   

As Yates, who has been painfully silent over this episode, told the Guardian,

“The US assertions that Namir and Saeed were killed during a firefight was all lies.  But I didn’t know that at the time, so I updated my story to take in the US military’s statement.”   

On the return of the tampered cameras, no evidence of insurgent activity, or clashes with US forces, were evident. Yates and a Reuters colleague subsequently met two US generals responsible for overseeing the investigation, all off record, of course. They were told of the request by Crazy Horse 1-8 to engage “military-aged males” supposedly armed and acting “suspiciously”.  Photographs of AK-47s and an RPG [Rocket-propelled grenade] launcher, where produced.  Yates was left wondering “how much of that meeting was carefully choreographed so we could go away with a certain impression of what happened.”  For a time, he conceded, “it worked” with poisonous effect.   

What niggled was the revealing of some footage from the camera of Crazy Horse 1-8, a miserly three minutes.  Cue the permission sought by the Apache to engage on seeing Namir crouching with his long-lens camera, supposedly mistaken for an RPG.  The appearance of the van later in the scene, ostensibly to assist, was airily dismissed by the generals as an act of aid for insurgents.  Yates, disturbed, was left with the mistaken impression that Namir had somehow been responsible for his own demise and those of his companions.

In the meantime, Reuters persisted in their vain attempts to secure the full video, even as they continued good faith off-the-record meetings with the US military for reasons of safety. Yates wished to break the arrangement on the video; his superiors thought otherwise.  The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder began to show.  Sleeplessness crept in.  When the video was released on April 5, 2010, Yates was with is family walking in Cradle Mountain national park, Tasmania. 

The video casts a shadow over the indictment, despite being a screaming omission.  It is crude, expressive, and unequivocal in disclosing a war crime and its cold blooded execution. It codifies a form of deliberate, incautious violence.  It reveals breathtaking cruelty at play: “Look at those dead bastards; “Nice”; “Good shoot’n”.  As Christian Christensen remarked, “These particular images were, in many ways, the crystallization of the horrors of war.”   

Barrister Greg Barns, a tireless advisor to the Australian Assange Campaign claimed it to be “very much part of the broader prosecution case [because of what it illustrates about the US rules of engagement] and it is one of the many reasons to oppose what is happening to Assange”. 

Australian politicians otherwise unaccustomed to distract themselves from the teat of the US imperium have also noted the potency of the video, and the act of evading it in the indictment.  “The omission of the leaked Collateral Murder footage from the indictment surprised me,” suggested Australian Greens Senator Peter Whish Wilson of the Parliamentary Friends of the Bring Julian Assange Home Group, “but on reflection of course it’s not in the US government’s interests to highlight their own injustices, deceit and crimes.”  The effort to indict Assange for espionage charges is fatuous but dangerously calculating: to bury a narrative; to make history, at least as it is told by the leakers, disappear.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is by Elekhh – CC BY-SA 3.0

European Left-wing political scientists find difficult to understand that the colonial contradiction is at the heart of our present, they think it’s a conceptual error, something anachronistic, that the joyful postmodernity – the one that delivers their Macs to them at home – has gone beyond all that, and that Trump or Bolsonaro are racist accidents of History, or of the « free world ». It’s just the opposite. Under the advertising varnish of capitalist globalization, the deep History of our world has never disappeared, it has even come back to the surface, even stronger. The revolt that is happening in the United States is the same one that founds the resistance of the Venezuelan people.” – Thierry Deronne, Algeria Resistance Mohsen Abdelmoumen’s blog 2020

“Everyone is a philosopher, though in his own way and unconsciously, since even in the slightest manifestation of any intellectual activity whatever, in ‘language’, there is contained a specific conception of the world, one then moves on to the second level, which is that of awareness and criticism.” – Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks

Three of the four police officers involved in the murder of George Floyd were previously employed as stock boys by TARGET and Home Depot, and two had worked at McDonalds. One stocked for a grocery store. One didn’t graduate high school. In other words these were economically part of that large temp minimum wage workforce that is now increasingly unemployed.

The fourth, officer Kueng, whose file was redacted, was apparently more middle class, from a nice family and who graduated with some distinction from his high school. It’s interesting, first off, why his file was redacted.

But one of them had served in the military, Derek Chauvin, the man now charged with the murder. Chauvin also had 17 complaints filed against him for excessive force before he kneeled on George Floyd’s neck.

There are a couple things to consider here. One is why these men are not on the side of the people they abuse (and murder)? The answer is multifold. One is a culture of machismo and violence that saturates American society. Another is that the United States was a slave owning nation where twelve presidents owned slaves.

Racism and Calvinist and Puritan values have never left this society. And it was founded (and its in the constitution) as an unequal and anti democratic republic. Owners of property were established as privileged. And so it has contiuned. But it also the allure of the uniform. Now its understandable that being a cop and being handed a gun and impunity to harass and abuse the public is preferable to flipping burgers. One job is utter humiliation while the other is validated as heroic by popular culture.

Domestic police departments tend to hire military veterans before those without military service.

Those with special forces training tend to go into Private Security. One in four soldiers in theatre in Afghanistan are private contractors. The wars of empire are increasingly being outsourced.

Couple this to the growing social inequality in the country, where 15% live below the poverty line (in 2015, and which no doubt is closing in on double that post Covid), and where on the heels of the pandemic hysteria and government fear mongering, which resulted in a nation wide (and global) house arrest, the problems with a militarily trained and equipped domestic police force, one drawing its officers from the low end of the educational spectrum, and one that provides at best rudimentary training, is obvious.

A Buddhist friend of mine, was mentioning that at her retreat one of the Tibetan teachers observed that Covid19 and the authoritarian policies it has engendered will unleash cataclysmic dark forces. Spiritual forces, so I take it. Or anti spiritual, actually. And this is how it feels. And this is beyond the clear fascist agenda in play, but extends into realms of psychic transformation for the bourgeoisie in particular.

The anxiety and fear that has grown silently for this privileged class, grown steadily over the last twenty years, is now cracking open and the toxic emotional slag of the atrophied inner lives is spilling out on the rest of society at large. It feels or is felt most deeply, from my anecdotal experience, in the white bourgeoisie’s fear of the other.

And I have not felt this sort of collective confusion, anxiety, and fear since the days of Vietnam. Things surface for people. The psychological effects of this lockdown are being wildly underestimated (especially in the long term for children). The difference from the Vietnam war is five decades of screen damage and an accelerated transference of wealth to the top 1%.

The reality of such profound economic inequality is impossible to deny now, and the staggering numbers of homeless across the country eventually can’t be NOT seen, it finally starts to serve as a psychic wound, a constant silent witness to the crimes of the system.

The ruling class, or certainly at the least one corner of it, launched the ‘Covid19 panic’ as a means to shut down western society. No matter if the virus is man made or accidental or just a naturally occurring zoonotic virus… it served as a prop for their agenda.

The ultimate plan remains a bit opaque but it likely includes a wholesale eradication of what is left of civil liberties, intensification of an already draconian surveillance state, and a transformation and rebranding of the meager welfare state into something fit for 7th century serfs, only far worse actually.

This is the world of Bill Gates and those elite new green capitalists, royal families, and digital billionaires. It should be noted that global health bureaucracies like WHO and the CDC are political organizations first. Both have deep and long standing ties to big Pharma and various other corporate interests.

The WHO is privately funded (Gates essentially owns it and directs policy) and the CDC is actually a part of the Health and Human Services department of government. And the current head of the CDC is a former pharmaceutical company executive and a guy who worked with John Bolton drawing up the National Biodefense Strategy for president Trump. Anthony Fauci is the creepy and slimy little frontman for all the agencies involved in urging governments around the world to shut down (they like the term lockdown for its prison connotations).

Without digressing too much here, what is relevant is that when one starts to wonder how it is allowed for known white nationalists and Klansmen to openly serve as police officers, the answer is not that the decentralized nature of state and city police departments are hard to reform or clean up but rather that the very top officeholders in criminal justice share sympathy with the racists.

We are watching in real time the normalizing of martial law and the suspension of democracy. And these measures have given a bit of a boost to the beleaguered and increasingly brutish police departments across the country. When not even a high school diploma is necessary to be given a badge and gun, when the police recruit from the ranks of malcontent and angry TARGET stock boys and blank McDonald counter people, there must be a logic at work, and I suspect there is.

First, flipping burgers is the only thing many young men and women have open to them. I’ve done that kind of work. And I hated it, too. But the domestic police, those city departments fresh with new military hardware, don’t want empathic or imaginative young men, they want the emotionally dead.

As a side point here, I know martial arts masters who can train you to subdue the wildest suspect without any harm. Adroitly and calmly — but it would require a few months training, not a few hours. But that is not what the departments want. They want crude clumsy tactics, ones that instill fear and which cause pain and suffering and sometimes death.

Those few percent of military trained special force guys, they don’t go the Minneapolis police department, or San Diego, or Toledo or Indianapolis. They go into high-end private security.

This is not even to touch on the widespread use of steroids.

The police today are increasingly used for purposes of optics, as much as any real police work. Most crimes go unsolved and for uniformed cops in their black and white (usually) Cruisers the job description is essentially to function as an occupying force in poor neighborhoods. They carry out parole checks, harass and detain the poor, often on a whim. Most acutely in black inner cities.

They are a new gestapo. They are there to brutalize and frighten what is seen as a surplus population. The essence of America’s slave legacy is found right there, in the grim counter insurgency tactics of domestic police departments on the streets of black inner cities. For important work, for the protection of important persons and prestige property the ruling class have turned to private security.

That leaves the uniformed cops, badly paid, with minimum job security actually, as tools for enforcing racial oppression. And if any more proof were needed, one need only check the hyper incarceration rate in America’s prisons, and further, the results of the Innocence Project. The numbers of falsely convicted men and women is staggering, it is mind numbing and a spiritual stain on this society that can never be washed away.

It is the overriding and ineradicable symbol of a savage culture of strict class separation, a separation enforced with lethality and pointless cruelty. For the hyper incarceration starts right there, on the same streets where Eric Garner was choked, or Tamir Rice was shot, where George Floyd was murdered, and Trayvon Martin and Philando Castile and hundreds of others have suffered and died. One topic not discussed enough is post-arrest custodial deaths.

In properly staffed households throughout the world, the bodyguard is the new nanny, { } fear of terrorism, a volatile political climate and a pervasive sense that the wealth creation of a few has come at the expense of the many have made paranoia the norm.”
Town and Country, Dec 2016

We learned that the contractors in our sample are predominantly white man in their 40s who chose contracting as a second career. Most are veterans with significant military experience. Among those contractors who were previously deployed as service members, many are former officers and about half of them are Special Forces veterans.

They are more likely to have a college degree than their active-duty counterparts, but less likely than their fellow veterans in the general population. They come from parts of the U.S. or United Kingdom with higher unemployment rates and fewer job opportunities—not the areas with the strongest traditions for military service.”
Ori Swed and Thomas Crosbie, Pacific Standard, “The Demographics of America’s Private Military Contractors”. March 2019

In 2009, after Obama was elected, the Department of Homeland Security and FBI jointly wrote an intelligence study on white extremism in domestic police departments. Janet Napolitano, then DHS head, quickly and quietly swept the report under the proverbial rug.

Back in 1991 Los Angeles US District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr found that sheriffs at the Lynwood substation were, were engaged in what he called ‘racial hostility’ and ‘terrorist tactics’ against Latino and Black prisoners. And that the top brass for the Sheriffs department were well aware of this. In 2006 the FBI released a redacted memorandum warning of white nationalists in domestic police departments. Or look up the Joe Burge case in Chicago. In departments in Florida, Texas, and Ohio, there were active Klansmen in police departments.

It is common knowledge that across the country police culture is profoundly racist and reactionary. The educated classes in the U.S. have internalized the Hollywood version of all this. Just think how many hours of cop shows (all them, literally) you have watched and how every single one signs off on a fantasy version of police heroism …the thin blue line metaphor, and how it is only these handsome and beautiful (if slightly flawed, you know, human) public servants are protecting you and your family from the vicious underclass, from drug dealing gangs, all minority, and where all them, literally, portray inner cities are lawless wastelands without culture, brutish and bestial.

This has led to the new narrative archetype of ‘taking the wrong off ramp’. These are openly racist stories but the public has come to digest such pseudo storytelling in a sort of pattern recognition manner. And nearly every single cop show features one or more military veterans. Usually special forces, but not always. Service in the military is a signifier for virtue and honour.

Forward to 2019, and Los Angeles again, this time in the incorporated mostly black city of Compton in south LA. The details of the Ryan Twyman killing, by sheriffs again, is perhaps the most perfect example of American white supremacism and when empowered the violent consequences.

Ryan Twyman was unarmed inside a parked car when two Los Angeles sheriff deputies approached and fired 34 rounds. Video of the entire incident, which happened in roughly 50 seconds, was as shocking as many police brutality cases that have gone viral in the US. But the killing of the 24-year-old father of three barely made the news. On that day, his death was far from unique: officers across LA shot five people in five separate incidents in just over 24 hours. Only one person survived. Families and activists said the bloodshed on 6 June provided a terrifying illustration of the culture of police violence and a system that trains officers to kill – while ensuring they won’t face consequences.”
Sam Levine, Guardian, Aug 2019

This is not what you see on the new FOX cop show Deputy. Watch a few episodes and get back to me. But that is hardly a unique phenomenon, there is SWAT, Chicago PD, the various Law & Order franchises, or Criminal Minds. I could go on and on, obviously. The problem is not the violence depicted, for Shakespeare is violent. It is the naked propaganda and the racism. Anti black racism at the very top but today Islamaphobic narratives abound as well, often with pro-Israeli sub plots. Military shows follow the same blueprint.

The point is that you cannot separate the Imperialist wars of aggression across the planet, which serve as recruitment pools for domestic police and private security and you cannot separate the counter-insurgency tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan, or Syria, not to mention the covert activities against Venezuela and Bolivia both of which involved at least some uniformed military personnel, from the sadistic actions of America’s police. Nor can you separate these aggressions from the jingoistic entertainments (recruitment shows for the military and police) from Hollywood.

These foreign policy actions remain largely accepted and popular. The country may hate Trump, with good reason, but his foreign policy is so far actually less lethal than Obama’s or Bush’s or Clinton’s. In any event every President gets a bump in approval ratings when he kills a dark-skinned foreigner either by drone or my military actions.

The public didn’t much care at all about Fallujah, and the architect of that butchery, Jim ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, former Sec of State for Trump before being fired, is now a darling of the white educated liberals who are so incensed about the prez’ and his failure to lockdown the country even more, harder, and certainly for longer.

They are quite happy to cheer and identify with the FBI and war criminals like Mattis. That exaggerated hatred of Trump contains a number of contradictions. But for the purposes of this discussion the central one is that of soft or disguised racism vs. overt white sheets MAGA racism.

White paternalism knows no bounds. And the inherent tokenism of the educated white American has sort of reached its own, from their perspective, cultural horizon event. Another way of saying it is truly the death of irony epoch.

That Americans approve of military violence against the poor nations of the world suggests why the police in America are so steadfastly racist and white supremacist. They are hugely supported. Now, there is with the murder of Floyd a lot of discussion of defunding the police. The problem being, as many have pointed out, this would only increase privitization of security. The US spent 100 billion on domestic policing last year, give or take. And around 80 billion on prisons.

The US defense budget is four or almost five times that amount. So it would seem critical to defund the military right along with the police. It is clearly a positive to reallocate cop money to mental health and community infrastructure and education. But this is the nefarious aspect of Covid19 and the lockdown. I

n Philadelphia the proposed budget cuts, do the massive effects of the lockdown include cutting nearly all sanitation workers down to almost nothing, cutting stuff like soap in hospitals and upkeep of school and city buses. The Covid lockdown was a tool of the ruling class.

There is much press now given to polls showing American support for the Floyd protests. Except those polls are misleading.

Its that last sentence, you see.

Whatever grassroots movements achieve is always going to run up against that last sentence. But I’m not cynical about defunding cops. It is a concrete material step in developing alliances in the working class. The movements for prison abolition and defunding are doing the groundwork for alliance formation. It has to start somewhere. And they are the front edges of suggesting property and capitalism are the source of most all of their problems.

Gramsci envisioned the ‘hegemonic’ struggle as two-pronged – one to educate the working class from ideas that chain them to the existing order and their own exploitation, and two, to bring other ‘subaltern’ classes into what he called a ‘bloc’ with the working class.

I only see the average American remains bizarrely ignorant of US foreign policy. How many people know of Hillary Clinton’s coup in Honduras? I suspect not many. The violence against the global south has not abated for sixty years (ok, for three hundred).

From AT&T to United Fruit to Dole pineapple, the business interests of corporate America has stood on the backs of the developing world (sic). What would actually happen if police were defunded? What would massive upticks in privatized security look like? Possibly something out of Robocop. And that is the danger today, that is the situation in which we find ourselves.

Take a look at Alabama, which sits up top in the U.S. alphabetically and in the middle, population-wise: Since 1996, Alabama police departments have received $78,534,297.32 in planes, helicopters, rifles, and mine-resistant vehicles. How is there so much stuff to dole out? After 9/11, U.S. military funding increased 50 percent.

In fact, the average American has paid $23,386 in taxes to support the military and its war efforts since 2001. All that spending has translated to a lot of extra mine-resistant vehicles, which local police now own.”
AC Shilton (Fatherly, 2020)

Over the last thirty years funding for domestic police has grown over 400% according to the Justice Policy Institute. And there are millions of dollars shortfall for public education. The problem there is that public education sucks bad anyway. It is almost worse than no education, frankly (and yes I know there are exceptions). And this takes us back to the shelf stockers at Tesco and TARGET.

The elite Universities and prep schools are available for the rich, and increasingly the very rich only. And which serves as yet another factor in the acute resentment that seems to fuel so much American discourse. And while private schools are better (how could they be worse) the problem is the culture at large.

It’s not only a reflexive and embedded and indelible racism, it is an anti-intellectualism, and fast-eroding literacy. And then there are the screens. The pernicious effects of social media (which really is a machine for creating resentment and/or guilt) and smart phones, aps, algorithms … the entire attention economy, has produced a populace of emotional deadness, of crippling anxiety and insecurity about self, and it has done nothing to even mitigate in the slightest of ways the Imperialist project and what is called American Exceptionalism.

The cops that killed George Floyd, if prosecuted, will be exceptions that change nothing. Most cops serve with impunity. American soldiers shoot at Iraqi civilians as sport, amusement. The vicious IDF, fresh from killing teenagers, comes to the U.S. to teach domestic departments better how to instil terror and pain, nothing more. There is no secret magic Zionist martial art or mind control. Its just brute terrorizing. As it has always been for fascists. And as it has always been for plantations and chain gangs.

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Annexation of Palestine or “Uneventful Occurrence” — What Do You See?

By Rima Najjar, June 16, 2020

When you visualize it, as I try to, what does Israel’s forthcoming annexation of parts of the West Bank look like to you? I mean, what images do you expect to see when Israel makes its declaration, as is expected, in July? Do you perhaps imagine scenes of violence, terror and incitement to play out on social media and on the few seconds of mainstream TV that will be devoted to the announcement?

Israel’s Illegal Annexation of Palestine

By James J. Zogby, June 16, 2020

With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promising to annex portions of the West Bank, liberal critics here in the US and across Europe are in a tizzy. They have been quick to point fingers blaming this crisis on Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, since Trump’s “Deal of the Century” allows for Israel to claim at least 30 per cent of the West Bank. The critics, however, are wrong since paternity for this imminent extension of Israeli sovereignty over occupied Palestinian lands goes beyond the current Israeli government or the Trump Administration. There are, in fact, three culprits.

From Occupation to ‘Occupy’: The Israelification of American Domestic Security

By Max Blumenthal, June 16, 2020

Training alongside the American police departments at Urban Shield was the Yamam, an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in “counter-terror” operations but is better known for its extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders and long record of repression and abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Urban Shield also featured a unit from the military of Bahrain, which had just crushed a largely non-violent democratic uprising by opening fire on protest camps and arresting wounded demonstrators when they attempted to enter hospitals. While the involvement of Bahraini soldiers in the drills was a novel phenomenon, the presence of quasi-military Israeli police – whose participation in Urban Shield was not reported anywhere in US media – reflected a disturbing but all-too-common feature of the post-9/11 American security landscape.

Trump Risks Losing Washington’s Closest Allies to Defend Megacorporations that Support Biden

By Paul Antonopoulos, June 16, 2020

The Wall Street Journal said that the U.S. is preparing tariffs against a range of trading partners unless they back off proposals to impose taxes that would fall heavily on major American internet companies. The threat of tariffs is against many countries, including the entirety of the European Union, India, Indonesia, Turkey, and even Washington’s most loyal allies like the United Kingdom and Brazil.

If Israel Annexes Part of West Bank, Palestine “Will Declare Statehood on 1967 Borders”

By Global Research News, June 15, 2020

Palestinian officials “are stepping up pressure on Israel to cancel its planned annexation of part of the West Bank”.

If Israel proceeds, “they will immediately declare a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

The Palestinian government threatened  “to declare Palestine as a state along the internationally recognized 1967 borders if Israel presses ahead with its plan to annex parts of the West Bank.”

America’s Supernational Sovereignty

By Philip Giraldi, June 15, 2020

The conceit by the United States that it is the acknowledged judge, jury and executioner in policing the international community began in the post-World War 2 environment, when hubristic American presidents began referring to themselves as “leaders of the free world.” This pretense received legislative and judicial backing with passage of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987 (ATA) as amended in 1992 plus subsequent related legislation, to include the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act of 2016 (JASTA). The body of legislation can be used to obtain civil judgments against alleged terrorists for attacks carried out anywhere in the world and can be employed to punish governments, international organizations and even corporations that are perceived to be supportive of terrorists, even indirectly or unknowingly. Plaintiffs are able to sue for injuries to their “person, property, or business” and have ten years to bring a claim.

Trump’s Illegal Use of Military Against Anti-Racist Uprisings Portends Battles Ahead

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, June 15, 2020

The backlash against Donald Trump’s illegal show of military force against anti-racist protesters compelled him to withdraw the troops — for now. But we must continue raising the illegality of this use of the military and pushing for barriers to guard against future such deployments. The threat of a resurgence of this violation still looms because as the protests continue, Trump might change his mind. And if he loses the election, all bets are off.

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Last week several articles were published in the Swiss, Canadian and US press informing that Nestlé S.A. was considering to sell all its bottled water brands in the US and Canada.  As written in this article:

“Nestlé S.A.’s Board of Directors today approved a new strategic direction for its Water business. The company will sharpen its focus on its iconic international brands, its leading premium mineral water brands, and invest in differentiated healthy hydration, such as functional water products.(…) At the same time, the Board concluded that its regional spring water brands, purified water business and beverage delivery service at its Nestlé Waters North America unit lie outside this focus. As a result, the company has decided to explore strategic options, including a potential sale, for the majority of the Nestlé Waters business in North America (U.S. and Canada), excluding its International brands. This review is expected to be completed by early-2021.”

However, it seems that there is much more to this than just a business decision: rather it is a maneuver to protect the close relationship between Nestlé and the Swiss Government from public awareness.

This strategy was used previously by Nestlé in Brazil in 2018 when Nestlé announced the sale of all its bottled water brands in Brazil to a Brazilian company. For more than 15 years Brazilian citizens’ movements in the region of Circuito das Águas in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, had been fighting Nestlé’s water taking and bottling water facility in the city of São Lourenço. In 2006 the Citizens Movement had its first significant victory: Nestlé had to stop the production of “Pure Life” bottled water in São Lourenço. This victory was only possible due to the fact that the citizens’ movement brought their fight to Switzerland where several NGOs gave their support to their campaign. Articles about Nestlé in São Lourenço appeared in the Swiss French, Italian and German press, and the Swiss Italian TV did a short documentary on São Lourenço. This proved to be a decisive factor in the citizens fight against the giant Swiss corporation: the Swiss campaign was too damaging to Nestlé’s image in Switzerland.

In 2018 the World Water Forum took place in Brasilia, capital of Brazil. The WWF is the most important international event on the calendar of private corporations engaged in water privatization. In 2018 for the first time the WWF had the massive sponsorship of the bottled water sector: Coca-Cola, Nestlé and AB InBEV. The ‘message’ of the 2018 WWF to Brazil was: we want your water. Nestlé announced it would sell its Brazilian bottled water brands just a few months after this forum of multi-national companies. Nestle´s decision to sell the brands of water it bottles in Brazil made no sense unless something else was intended.

Nestlé was present at the WWF in Brazil in the official Swiss Pavilion, alongside the Swiss NGOs HELVETAS and Caritas Switzerland and also the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Although Switzerland has one of the best public water services in the world, the Swiss Government directs the SDC to fully support water privatization abroad and Nestlé is a close partner of SDC. The Water Resources Group (WRG), an  initiative launched by Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Pepsi to lobby worldwide for water privatization was funded by SDC and SDC’s Director has a seat on its ‘Governance Council’ (see this)

More than 20 Brazilian NGOs, trade-unions and social movements aware of this close relationship between SDC and Nestlé,– including Indigenous organizations and the Landless Movement –  sent a public letter to Ambassador Manuel Sager, then director of SDC, demanding that SDC stop its support to Nestlé’s privatization policies and instead engage for Public-Public Partnerships, therefore helping poorer countries to develop their own public water companies following the Swiss model. (The original letter in Portuguese is here).

The Swiss NGO MULTIWATCH translated this letter into German and made it public in its website (see here)

Moreover, Multiwatch asked several Swiss organizations, including political parties, to support the Brazilian demand. (see here).

It was then clear that the Brazilian demand could bring problems to SDC and its partnership with Nestlé. And it was in this context that Nestlé suddenly announced its decision to sell all its Brazilian bottled water brands to a Brazilian company. It was a decision taken in order to protect SDC’s image and to avoid another INTERNATIONAL campaign against Nestlé’s bottled water facilities and water takings in Brazil.

By “selling” the bottled water brands to a Brazilian company, Nestlé put  distance between the citizen’s movements fighting the water takings and bottling facilities. This maneuver removed the ‘stigma’ of the Nestlé brand from the new Brazilian owners and protected SDC’s image inside Switzerland from another international campaign that could damage SDC’s image.

The ‘selling’ of Nestlé brands changed nothing in Brazil. The bottling operations and the environmental damage caused by the bottling water facilities continued after the transfer from Nestlé to the Brazilian company. In fact, the only visible change was in the attention the media paid to the citizens’ movements efforts: they got LESS attention from the press because the fight against a giant transnational corporation like Nestlé has much more appeal than the fight against a locally owned bottling company. It was not possible to confirm if the sale really happened or not, since such transactions are kept secret. There was only the announcement made by Nestlé. And there was no information in the press about the ownerships of the Nestlé sources   – from where the water comes – only about the brands.

The situation is very similar today to what is happening in the US and Canada regarding Nestlé. A short chronology is necessary to understand the story:

In February 2019 a first international meeting between movements fighting Nestlé water grabbing took place in VITTEL, France, attended by Canadians and myself from Switzerland and Brazil. In November 2019 the Canadian grassroots organization Wellington Water Watchers organized the “All Eyes on Nestlé” event, bringing together citizens’ movements from the US, Canada, France and Brazil /Switzerland all engaged in the fight against Nestlé. Another international meeting, planned to take place in March 2020 in Switzerland, was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the meantime, the Swiss Minister for Foreign Affairs Ignazio Cassis pushed a new strategy for SDC: more engagement of the private sector – including Nestlé –with the Swiss Development Aid. An important step in this direction was already taken by SDC in October 2019 when Christian Frutiger – ex- Nestlé Head of Public Affairs – was appointed as Vice-Director of SDC! This nomination would have passed unnoticed by the Swiss public if it were not for an international petition launched in the US by Story of Stuff and addressed to Ignazio Cassis demanding that he revoke the nomination of Christian Frutiger. (See here) The Swiss press took up the issue and several articles were published on this issue.

The Swiss political NGO PUBLIC EYE then published a report (here in French) about the private sector and  Swiss development aid. Public Eye had access to some official documents that were made public in this report, including a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed in 2017 between Nestlé and SDC (see it in English here).

In this document the names of the people who signed the MOU on behalf of Nestlé and SDC were censored but a journalist from BLICK published an article on Sunday June 7^th confirming that Christian Frutiger signed it on behalf of Nestlé.

To make it clear: SDC and Nestlé agreed on a MOU where it is written on pg. 3:

“Nestlé is therefore prepared to invest resources and knowledge in communities and the environment through public-private partnerships, provided the investments create long-term business values too”

Less than 2 years later Mr. Christian Frutiger who signed this MOU on behalf of Nestlé is appointed Vice-Director of SDC. Under his direct control are SDCs program on Climate Change and…WATER!!!! The incestuous relationship between Nestlé and SDC is becoming a scandal in Switzerland and the Swiss Minster of Foreign Affairs Ignazio Cassis is under much public criticism.

Some Canadian organizations sent letters to Alliance Sud – a coalition of Swiss NGOs – setting out their worries about the nomination of Christian Frutiger at SDC and informing Alliance Sud about some of the problems with Nestlé in Canada. (These letters can be read here)

It is in this context that Nestlé announced it is considering to sell its bottled water brands in the US and Canada. It is very hard not to see in this announcement a similar strategy to the one employed in Brazil to protect Nestlé and SDC in Switzerland. Otherwise, why Nestlé is considering exactly NOW the selling of the bottled water brands?

If the bottled water brands of the US and Canada are sold to other companies – local or national ones – Nestlé immediately ceases to be the target of the many community groups fighting to keep their waters or to protect their environment – this problem is transferred to the new owners. Even better: an international campaign addressing Nestlé in Switzerland for what is happening in the US and Canada is not any more possible. Nestlé Switzerland can claim it has nothing any more to do with the issue, as it did in Brazil, even if the ‘selling’ is just a maneuver, a fiction built exactly to avoid an international campaign focussed in Switzerland. Such a campaign would also show that there are patterns repeating themselves wherever Nestlé is taking water for its bottling facilities – the problems in the communities in US or Canada or France are basically the same: a consequence of the water policies of Nestlé decided at the higher levels of the corporation.

SDC, the Swiss Government, Swiss political parties – from the right to the left – and NGOs engaged in protecting Nestlé in Switzerland are spared from a very embarrassing situation if Canadian and US citizens’ organizations do not come to Switzerland to denounce what Nestlé is doing in communities  in these countries. Nestlé is very much aware that social movements fighting Nestlé in  Canada and the US have the means and the power to challenge this corporation in its home country  Switzerland. And although SDC of course do not provide ‘development aid’ to northern countries and theoretically SDC has nothing to do with countries such as France, Canada or the US, the fact that in such rich and traditional western democracies communities are fighting against Nestlé to preserve their environment and waters is a clear warning about what  happens when Nestlé – with the support of SDC – is active in poorer countries with much more fragile democratic institutions.

Every possible measure should and will be taken in order to keep Nestlé’s close relationship with the Swiss Government protected from a deeper look by the Swiss citizens. The image of Nestlé in Switzerland is too valuable and the partnership with the Swiss government too important to be risked. This is the main reason why Nestlé is considering to ‘sell’ its bottled water brands in the US and Canada: so that everything can remain the same.

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Although it may not seem this way, Serbia is in fact in a far more fragile condition than visitors may imagine. 

Elections to the parliament will be held in several days, but the outlook of the country is not expected to change. The incumbent president’s party, that is sure to receive over the 126 seats of 250 in total, has been consistent and steadfast in his path towards EU membership, despite the fact that this very membership resulted in untold suffering to the people of Greece, Italy, Spain, and even Croatia.

He has allowed and accepted EU’s dumping of cheap goods into the economy, that inevitably hurt deeply Serbian industries. And he is precisely the type who can bring the Serbs into the EU and seal their serfdom: He is not from the Left, he comes from the nationalist right, he uses nationalist terms to justify his capitulation, he presents the path towards the EU as inevitable, and he is the only candidate who can present sacrificing Kosovo, the heart of Serbian c, as a necessary evil, leading to the much bigger prize, prosperity in the EU. 

The prime minister says Serbs will soon get a 900 Euro salary per month. Talk never cost anything, but he is not entirely in error. There has been a growing strata of professionals in the high-tech and other industries who are making fat checks and seeing their life quality grow. Their reality does not reflect the majority, but they are eager to join the EU. Meanwhile, the EU has been pouring billions into the country with various honey traps of multiple kinds. A European company operating in Serbia receives free money from the government which it can then pocket as it sees fit and move out of the country when it deems appropriate after 2 or 3 years, for instance. The justice system at the top level is quite corrupt, allowing government officials to get away with far more than what meets the eye. This includes, but is not limited to, money laundering and drug trade by some of Belgrade’s inhabitants. But this expanding grey economy will not be what prevents Serbia from joining the EU. As colonial powers of the past, the core of the EU has no problem with outright ugly scenes of corruption as long as they are away from sight and do not take place in the centre  but in the periphery. 

Is Serbia’s Facing Pressure from the United States’ Deep State?

At first, despite having a wife from Slovenia, perhaps because if it, possibly due to a general isolationist tendency, thanks to the need on focusing in rekindling US labour market, or due to bad relations with the German Republic’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and a refocusing on igniting a trade war between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, President Trump refrained from meddling in the Balkans, thereby ending a long standing tradition of the Democratic Party.  

But at least a year ago the bad omens seem to have started.

First, calls  from the White House to pressure Serbia into recognising Kosovo began to be heard about a year ago. They may have quite possibly not been initiated from President Trump personally, but from the all-prevalent Deep State. Then, in March, the Serbian and Kosovar presidents met in the White House. Jared Kushner also attended. The major deal maker was Richard Grenell, the former US ambassador to Germany who fell out of odds with Berlin. There seems to have been intense dialogues behind the scene on how to solve the Kosovo issue. One possible solution proposed may have been to convince Serbia to recognise it, with the carrot being a speedy entry into the European Union.  Most recently, Richard Grenell said that on June 27th, both sides will meet again. There is an attempt, it seems, to take Kosovo off the table. Grenell phrased it nicely: ‘’temporarily pause the derecognition campaign and the seeking of international membership.’’

While there will be parliamentary elections in Serbia in several days, there has been an ongoing campaign to boycott Serbian goods in Kosovo. The campaign knew ups and downs and was supported by various figures in Kosovo, both from the opposition and the government. Such a boycott was probably a move meant to pressure Serbia to reach an agreement that would recognise Kosovo, an area rich in history and meaning for the Serbian people, that has declared independence against international law by with the support of the Clinton administration. But Kosovo is not strong enough to pressure Serbia. 

Serbia remains a stumbling block for the European Union and the NATO alliance. Its military, deeply weakened by the current government as funds have dwindled, is pro-Russia. Its citizenry, backward and primitive in the eyes of some. The Balkans is sure to become one of the next zones of a geopolitical battle between the west and Russia and China. China has been developing good relations with Serbia, to the benefit of both countries. While Serbia was desperate for medical equipment during the coronavirus outbreak, China stepped in to help. The EU did nothing.  But the EU is currently facing a major economic crisis. Coronavirus crippled the German economy, which, though strong, is likely to decline by at least 10% in the next quarter. The EU, a major neoliberal project, is suffering economically. The EU needs to expand to solve its own internal contradictions. Taking Serbia into the EU, is a sure way to both limit Russian and Chinese influence in the region, cut off Serbia from Russia, dump more good into Serbia, suck out its resources and industries, and destroy whatever is left of the Serbian economy. 

Serbia is facing an increasingly complicated geopolitical reality

The current geopolitical arrangement is not the best for those who wish to see a strong and independent Serbia. Trump’s popularity has declined from 49% to 44%. Not that he did not begin to meddle in Serbia, but a Joe Biden presidency may be far worse from Serbia’s perspective, if to judge by the history of the Democratic Party’s engagement with the region. The current ongoing uprising in the United States against police brutality and the murder of African Americans, the coronavirus debacle, and the chaos resulting from different policies being taken regarding a lockdown, placed Trump in a vulnerable position. His re-election is not to be taken for granted.

Russia, Serbia’s long time partner and ally is also in retreat. Oil prices are in historical low. The lockdown decimated the Russian economy, especially its Middle Class. Russia has long hoped for Trump to win the second elections. But now, with chaos engulfing US cities, 116,000 deaths, a mailed in ballots subject to possible manipulation, Trump may well lose to Joe Biden. This would mean that Biden, who played an active role In promoting the war in Iraq, may now decide to go for the Balkans and even start a conflagration with Russia. 

In Montenegro, a major nationalist campaign against Serbs has been taking place. It is somewhat unsafe for Serbs to visit the region. Montenegro is a NATO member.

The possible honey trap

The various liberal think-tanks have had decades to analyse the Serbian society and mentality. They know that most Serbs will not be coerced by force or intimidation. Instead, the honey trap is a far better option, though it requires patience. Serbia could be offered a speedy-track to EU membership, easy lines of credit, and major investments from the EU. But all these would be short-term. In the long run, the economy would be impoverished. The issue of Kosovo could be put off by a few years, it need not be decided now. With enough carrots for the Serbs, Serbia can become a supposedly prosperous EU member if prosperity means growing unemployment, the ability to travel and a higher cost of living. Then, after 10 years, when Serbia is well inside the EU and cannot possibly issue its own money, it will be forced to accept both Kosovo’s independence and entry into the EU. By then, there will be nearly nothing Serbia can do to resist.

Joe Biden, as part of the Obama school of thought, if it can indeed be given that name, and as a follower of Clinton, may have a weak spot for Kosovo and a strong animosity towards the Serbs, perpetuated by the late ambassador, Richard Holbrook. The contours of a potential scenario can already be seen: Biden winning the presidency, and getting a Germany on board. EU needing to expand. Serbia’s government willing to join the EU as it has already allowed EU to dump cheap goods into the market weakening the local industries and its food and cosmetics production. Serbians told that they can be rich and wealthy members of the EU superstate and can go to relocate to Paris and Rome, resulting in an even deeper brain-drain for the country and its loss of young potential. Whatever is left will be looted.

Ever since the NATO attacks, the expulsion of Serbs from Bosnia and Croatia, the severe ecological damage caused to the environment by NATO bombs, the lack of clean water, the promotion of EU postmodernist education, the Serbs have gradually become insecure and lost their touch with their roots and power. Their heart, Kosovo, has been taken from them at gunpoint in contravention of international law. All that is left for them is to join the EU, where they will finally lose their independence.  Now they may face a long and slow death, metaphorically and perhaps even realistically, as they are gradually positioned by EU austerity, adopt an obese lifestyle due to fast food and a loss of agricultural production. As the numbers die out, the proud country that once provoked World War I by daring to assassinate a foreign ruler, may now face slow extinction. 

Who Will come for the Rescue?

Since the dissolution of Yugoslavia egged on by the US and Germany, the NATO bombings, the expulsion of Serbs from Bosnia and Croatia, the severe ecological damage caused to the environment by NATO’s aerial blitzkrieg, the lack of clean water, the promotion of EU postmodernist education, and the demonisation campaign in the western media, the Serbs have gradually but surely lost touch with their roots and power. If they join the EU, they may finally lose whatever is left of their independence.  They may face a long and slow death, metaphorically or not, as they will be gradually poisoned by EU austerity, adopt an obese lifestyle due to fast food and a loss of agricultural production, and an even more extreme neoliberal regime than the one that they are currently facing. As the numbers die out, the proud country that once provoked World War I by daring to assassinate an Austrian ruler, may now face slow extinction. 

If Serbs are looking for allies, they may be wise to turn to Turkey. Russia has too many of its own problems after President Putin decided to opt for a total lockdown, decimating the economy in the process, unlike Belarus whose President Lukashenko wisely kept the economy going and with the Soviet-era vast epidemiological network left in tact.  Turkey, on the other hand, may also not want to see Kosovo join the EU, as this would mean a loss of influence in the Muslim region.  No one likes to be left outside of a party for the entire night, waiting in the cold. But ultimately, as in earlier battles, the Serbs may have to fight for their freedom and independence on their own. 

A graffiti in Belgrade stated that the future is yet to be written. 

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Joshua Tartakovsky is an independent American journalist residing in Belgrade.

All images in this article are from the author

The 45th president of the United States made his first international appearance on June 14, 1946. According to Donald Trump’s birth certificate, he was born at Jamaica Hospital in Queens, New York at 10:54 a.m.

Five minutes later, across town at Hunter College in the Bronx, UN Secretary General Trygve Lie called to order the inaugural meeting of the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, established by the new UN General Assembly’s first (and understated) resolution “to deal with the problems raised by the discovery of atomic energy and other related matters.” Lie then gave the floor to the US representative, Bernard Baruch, who relayed a brief message from President Truman to the 12 members of the Commission: “Nothing concerns the whole world more than the achievement of the purpose that brings them together.”

Then Baruch presented the United States’ blueprint for taking everything related to nuclear energy, including its own weapons, out of the hands of sovereign states and placing it under  international control.

“We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead,” he began. “That is our business.”

The notion that the United States would volunteer to give up its entire nuclear arsenal sounds like science fiction, especially these days. In many ways, Bernard Baruch can be considered the antithesis of Donald Trump, even beyond his approach to international nuclear diplomacy. Baruch was a lifelong Democrat; Woodrow Wilson nicknamed him “Dr. Facts”; he was widely respected for his financial acumen; and he enjoyed talking about politics with people gathered near his favorite park bench in Washington D.C.’s Lafayette Park. There were some parallels too: A New York Times review of a Baruch biography suggested that “he knew better than any public figure of his time how to exploit the press’s need for news.” 

But on June 14, 1946, as Trump continued to adjust to life outside the womb, Baruch continued his presentation to the Atomic Energy Commission. “The United States proposes the creation of an International Atomic Energy Development Authority,” he said, “to which should be entrusted all phases of the development and use of atomic energy, starting with the raw material.” This new authority would alone have “control of all potentially dangerous atomic activities” and full power to conduct inspections for violations.

Baruch detailed the terms, including:

When an adequate system for control of atomic energy, including the renunciation of the bomb as a weapon, has been agreed upon and put into effective operation and condign punishments set up for violations of the rules of control which are to be stigmatized as international crimes, we propose that:

1. Manufacture of atomic bombs shall stop;
2. Existing bombs shall be disposed of pursuant to the terms of the treaty, and
3. the authority shall be in possession of full information as to the know-how for the production of atomic knowledge.

Let me repeat, so as to avoid misunderstanding: my country is ready to make its full contribution toward the end we seek, subject, of course, to our constitutional processes, and to an adequate system of control becoming fully effective, as we finally work it out.

More than seven decades later, it has not been worked out.

In the months before and after the June 1946 meeting, the recently launched Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists devoted many pages to discussion of the Baruch plan and the Acheson-Lilienthal report it was based on. An unsigned Bulletin editorial in the July issue stated: “We cannot afford to become angry or impatient, if other nations do not agree immediately with what we consider as a generous and equitable plan proposed in good faith. The establishment of an Atomic Energy Authority of the kind contemplated in the Baruch proposal is for us a matter of enlightened self-interest; we must bend all efforts towards persuading the USSR that it is equally a matter of enlightened self-interest for the Russians.”  

A belated correction: The July 1, 1946 edition of the Bulletin identified the date of the first United Nations Atomic Energy Commission meeting as June 13. The date was June 14.

When the Baruch plan finally came up for a vote at the end of 1946, the Soviet Union abstained, guaranteeing that it would not be approved in the Security Council (where the Soviets had the veto). The underlying cause of the plan’s demise is a matter of some debate. The Soviets were concerned that the United States would take advantage of its stature at the United Nations to simply maintain its monopoly on atomic weapons. Another view is that the Soviet Union would not accept the robust inspection regime that was at the core of Baruch’s scheme. The US proposal to discard the veto power on nuclear-related issues may have been an intentional wrench in the works that the Soviet Union opposed. The truth is likely all of the above, and historians argue that neither Truman nor Stalin were particularly enthusiastic to begin with (cables published and translated online this month from the Russian State Archive reveal some of the deliberation that went on between New York and Moscow at the time).

The arms race dynamic took hold. US presidents publicly advocated for nuclear disarmament at various points throughout the Cold War (a term first used in the US-Soviet context by Baruch himself), but the Baruch plan was as near as a major nuclear power  has come to relinquishing its warheads. In 1951—when Donald Trump was five years old and still living in Queens, just down the street from the United Nations’ temporary offices in Lake Success—Truman gave a radio address ostensibly intended to rekindle elements of the original plan, but at the same time he continued to point the finger at the Soviet Union:

“It is true that we have met rebuffs and refusals from the Soviet government, ever since the day we offered to give up our monopoly of atomic weapons and to prohibit them under a system of International control. Nevertheless, as responsible men and women, we must try for disarmament in spite of all difficulties. We cannot permit the history of our times to record that we failed by default.”

At age 15, Trump might have tuned in again as his future predecessor John F. Kennedy renewed a call for disarmament during his September 1961 address to the United Nations.

“We far prefer world law, in the age of self-determination, to world war, in the age of mass extermination,” Kennedy said. “The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us… And men may no longer pretend that the quest for disarmament is a sign of weakness–for in a spiraling arms race, a nation’s security may well be shrinking even as its arms increase.”

But by the time Donald Trump was old enough not to drink, the United States nuclear arsenal had neared its 1966 peak of more than 31,000 warheads.

Over the next several decades, disarmament efforts were outshined by bilateral arms control and non-proliferation agreements as the primary achievements of nuclear diplomacy. From the 1970 Nonproliferation Treaty to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile and 1987 INF treaties, and from SALT I and II to START and then New START, limits on nuclear weapons have been far more successful than attempts to eliminate them altogether. But nuclear weapons have never been controlled in the ways first proposed by the members of the UN Atomic Energy Commission.

When the Baruch plan turned 40 in 1986, so did Trump. Around that time he reportedly met with another Bernard, Bernard Lown—founder of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. According to Lown, Trump wanted his help connecting with Mikhail Gorbachev so he could become Ronald Reagan’s indispensable nuclear negotiator.

“[Trump] said he would go to Moscow and he’d sit down with Gorbachev,” Lown told the Hollywood Reporter. “And then he took his thumb and he hit the desk and he said, ‘And within one hour the Cold War would be over!’ I sat there dumbfounded. ‘Who is this self-inflated individual? Is he sane or what?'”

Later that year Gorbachev and Reagan famously contemplated ridding the world of nuclear weapons once and for all at their summit in Reykjavik—but contemplation is as far as it got. Those discussions did, however, give the ambitious goal of total disarmament a new lease on life.

Few could have predicted then that New York’s most notorious real-estate developer would eventually occupy Reagan’s seat and become the world’s most effective nuclear deal breaker. Under Trump’s watch, the United States has subverted most of the major nuclear agreements of the past four decades, beginning with the Iran deal (signed by former secretary of state John Kerry on Trump’s birthday in 2015), the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, and the Open Skies treaty. The New START treaty that limits and provides for inspection of US and Russian nuclear warheads is on its final lap, while the White House gestures toward unlikely new trilateral agreements and mulls resuming nuclear tests.

In fact, Trump has moved in the opposite direction, urging massive expenditures for modernization of the nuclear arsenal and potentially unnecessary plutonium pit production. The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review expanded the possibility of nuclear weapons being used to respond to non-nuclear attacks, and opened up a new era of warhead development that led to the deployment late last year of so-called “low-yield” nuclear-tipped missiles on submarines—each with explosive power only marginally less than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few weeks before Trump was conceived. Born together with the beginnings of international disarmament, he has become one of its greatest enemies, ignoring experts and surrounding himself with opponents of international agreements.

Now, nations of the world are learning to move on as best they can absent the interests outlined by the United States in 1946. The text of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was agreed to by 122 countries in 2017, at the second session of the UN Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination (which began the day after Trump’s 71st birthday). Last week, Lesotho became the 38th country to ratify the treaty, which will enter into force with 12 more ratifications. 81 states have signed. Although the nine nuclear states show no intention of joining in, the “paper victory” is still seen by the treaty’s proponents as a critical step forward in the long delayed project of eliminating nuclear weapons for good.

Donald Trump turns 74 this Sunday, just a few days before he appears set to ignore the pandemic and take his 2020 reelection campaign back out on the road. While the president may lack similar enthusiasm for international nuclear disarmament, the effort has lasted as many years as he has, ever since Baruch first left his “bench of inspiration” to address the UN in 1946.

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A timeline of nuclear events on (or around) Donald Trump’s birthday on June 14

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Thomas Gaulkin is multimedia editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Prior to joining the Bulletin in 2018, he spent the previous decade working in communications at the University of Chicago, first with the centers for International Studies and International Social Science Research, and later as director of News and Online Content for the Division of the Social Sciences. From 1999-2002 and again in 2006 Gaulkin produced Worldview, Chicago Public Radio’s daily global affairs program.

Featured image is by Thomas Gaulkin. (National Museum of the US Air Force photo by Kelly Michals/CC-BY-NC)

With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promising to annex portions of the West Bank, liberal critics here in the US and across Europe are in a tizzy. They have been quick to point fingers blaming this crisis on Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, since Trump’s “Deal of the Century” allows for Israel to claim at least 30 per cent of the West Bank. The critics, however, are wrong since paternity for this imminent extension of Israeli sovereignty over occupied Palestinian lands goes beyond the current Israeli government or the Trump Administration. There are, in fact, three culprits.

In the first place, blame must be placed squarely on the shoulders of all Israeli governments going back to the beginning of the occupation over one-half century ago. Since then, Israel has repeatedly violated international law by establishing settlements in the occupied territories, initially claiming it was for “security reasons:” to thicken its border, to surround and lay claim to an expanded Jerusalem and to control the Jordan Valley.

In the late 1970s, Likud embraced a plan to both accelerate settlement construction in these areas while also expanding settlements in the interior of the West Bank. The plan also called for building roads to connect these settlements to pre- ‘67 Israel for the expressed purpose of carving up the West Bank making a contiguous Palestinian area impossible.

After signing the Oslo Accords, the pace of settlement expansion in the West Bank intensified with settler population doubling in the first eight years. In the past two decades, the number of settlers doubled once again.

In reality, whether Israel formally extends sovereignty or not, today Israel has virtually annexed much of the West Bank, exercising near complete control over the occupied territories. They have moved over 650,000 of their citizens beyond the internationally recognised border, built roads and infrastructure to connect these settlers to Israel proper, constructed a 466 kilometres wall, much of it on Palestinian land, and set up over 100 checkpoints, denying Palestinians freedom of movement. In the Jordan Valley, they have burned thousands of acres of Palestinian agricultural land and fenced off much more. As a result, the West Bank and what the Israelis call “East Jerusalem” (actually 24 Palestinian villages now termed “neighbourhoods” in the fiction Israelis call “Greater Jerusalem”) are now even further divided without access to land and water.

Fault must also be found with successive American administrations which protested or complained, but ultimately acquiesced to this Israeli colonial conquest. During this half-century, US policy shifted from calling settlements “illegal”, to “obstacles to peace”, to “unhelpful”, to saying “continued settlement expansion is illegitimate”.

Beginning with the Bush Administration and continuing under the Obama Administration, while new settlement expansion was frowned upon, existing settlements were viewed as “realities”. For the Israelis, the lesson was clear, settlement expansion might be frowned upon, but once built, they were accepted, so why not let the US whine while continuing to build? The refusal or inability of the US to act decisively to put the brakes on settlement expansion led to an Israeli sense of impunity. In this context, the approach taken by the Trump Administration in its “Deal of the Century” is the logical extension of 50 years of US acquiescence.

Even liberal US voices who oppose annexation fall short in their criticism. Their critiques are all too often hollow and toothless, since they refuse to couple their warnings with any promise to cut aid to Israel or any other sanctions that might cause an Israeli government to reconsider. Their pious claims of wanting to protect the “two state solution” are, at best, hollow — more of a “two-state absolution” — as if this show of support absolves them of their failures to call for the very measures that might make such a Palestinian state a reality.

Last but not least, Europe must share some of the blame. We are 100 years after the notorious San Remo Conference, which not unlike the Trump “Deal of the Century”, arrogated to itself the right to carve up the region and support the Balfour Declaration without any consultation with or consideration for the rights of the indigenous people of whose lands they were giving away. In the intervening years Europe changed, but only somewhat.

It was 40 years ago this month, that nine major European countries, frustrated with the lack of US leadership, issued the Venice Declaration, in which they called for an end to the occupation in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolutions 224 and 338, the right of the Palestinians to be represented by the PLO, and their right to self-determination.

But in the four decades that have passed, while Europe has passed numerous declarations and voted to condemn Israeli policies on a number of occasions, including a recent statement warning against Israel’s annexation of the territories, they continued to cede control of Israeli-Palestinian peace to US. In addition, European declarations are without teeth, so their warnings have been ignored. And so, while the US has become either Israel’s coat holder or cheerleader, Europe has rendered itself an impotent bystander in a conflict for which they have some paternity and toward which they could have an impact.

If we are to learn any lessons from past failures, on the eve of Israel’s threat to formally annex parts of the West Bank, here’s what must be done:

First, Israel must be called to account not only if it moves forward with annexation, but for its half-century of lawless behaviour. To end impunity, there must be accountability. The response cannot just be recognition of a Palestinian state. Because this state will still not be in control of its territory, economy, and resources, such recognition will be a hollow gesture. Accountability requires sanctions, because if there are no economic and political consequences, then bad behaviour will continue.

In line with this, it is of critical importance that the human rights of the Palestinian people be elevated as a concern by the international community. The Palestinian people cannot remain defenceless as they continue to be victimised by the Israeli occupation and settler violence. Land theft, home demolitions, collective punishment of civilian populations, mass incarceration, abuse of children, the daily humiliation at checkpoints and other forms of repression will continue to scar Palestinians as long as the international community feigns powerlessness.

Exposure of these Israeli crimes is the first step. Accountability and sanctions are the remedy.

Europe, or at the European states who issued the Venice Declaration, should recognise that the factor, the US inability to act as an honest broker, that led them to assert (but then fail to deliver on) their “special role” and responsibility still exists. They should assume a greater role to balance that played by the US. That will, of necessity, require political and economic sanctions, because mere statements of condemnation will continue to be ignored.

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James J. Zogby is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute.

Just a week or so ago the mainstream media and thousands representing the “medical community” told us we must throw out the “stay-at-home” orders and go to the streets to protest the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police. The Covid-19 virus will not bother people who are protesting this injustice, they said. The virus only attacks people leaving their homes to protest the stay-at-home orders.

Now, after thousands of businesses – many of them black-owned – have been reduced to rubble and innocent people in the inner cities no longer have anywhere to shop for the basic necessities of life, the mainstream media has backed off of its non-stop coverage of the protests. Suddenly last week they all simultaneously embraced a new fear story to terrify the masses: a “second wave” of coronavirus was among us. It was targeting those states that dared to “open up” their economies and begin a return to relatively normal lives.

Texas, Florida, and California were singled out to scare the rest of the country into thinking that if you dare leave your homes you will catch coronavirus and die. There was a “spike” in coronavirus “cases” they claimed. Funny, just a month or so ago they were demanding that we massively increase testing, which would produce just that “spike” in coronavirus cases they are now using to scare authorities into reinstating the incredibly destructive stay-at-home orders.

In the county here in Texas that includes Houston, the young judge who somehow seized the power to shut down the third largest city in the United States warns us that she may again shut down Harris County to fight this “second wave” of cases. She even threatened to again pour millions of dollars into a “field hospital” at a Houston football stadium that did not see a single patient in the “first wave” of coronavirus. It’s hard not to wonder which politically-connected companies are reaping millions in contracts for an obviously un-needed hospital. Thousands of hospital beds in Houston are vacant, while cancer patients have been refused their screenings and desperately needed treatments.

As former Congressman David Stockman points out, the actual coronavirus numbers do not in any way support the media assertion that a “second wave” of infection is cresting over Texas. Stockman informs us that in Texas the “reported infected case rate of 256 per 100,000 is just 10 percent  of the real ‘hot spot’ rate of 2,477 per 100,000 in the five boroughs of New York City; and its mortality rate of 6.2 per 100,000 population is just 3 percent of New York City’s 196 per 100,000 rate.”

There are no “hot spots” in Texas. It’s just more media hype.

It’s funny that they don’t dare mention Georgia, which has also opened its economy and has seen no “spike” at all.

The same people who were demanding more testing are now screaming that we must shut the economy down again because these tests – which are notoriously unreliable – are showing more coronavirus cases. This is a disease that 99.9 percent of the people who are infected with survive! But 40 million people out of work and the thousands of lives that will end due to the shutdown are never mentioned.

There is something else going on here and it is in no way related to public health.

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In October, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department turned parts of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley into an urban battlefield. The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual SWAT team exposition organized to promote “mutual response,” collaboration and competition between heavily militarized police strike forces representing law enforcement departments across the United States and foreign nations.

At the time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department was preparing for an imminent confrontation with the nascent “Occupy” movement that had set up camp in downtown Oakland, and would demonstrate the brunt of its repressive capacity against the demonstrators a month later when it attacked the encampment with teargas and rubber bullet rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in critical condition and dozens injured. According to Police Magazine, a law enforcement trade publication, “Law enforcement agencies responding to…Occupy protesters in northern California credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.”

Training alongside the American police departments at Urban Shield was the Yamam, an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in “counter-terror” operations but is better known for its extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders and long record of repression and abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Urban Shield also featured a unit from the military of Bahrain, which had just crushed a largely non-violent democratic uprising by opening fire on protest camps and arresting wounded demonstrators when they attempted to enter hospitals. While the involvement of Bahraini soldiers in the drills was a novel phenomenon, the presence of quasi-military Israeli police – whose participation in Urban Shield was not reported anywhere in US media – reflected a disturbing but all-too-common feature of the post-9/11 American security landscape.

The Israelification of America’s security apparatus, recently unleashed in full force against the Occupy Wall Street Movement, has taken place at every level of law enforcement, and in areas that have yet to be exposed. The phenomenon has been documented in bits and pieces, through occasional news reports that typically highlight Israel’s national security prowess without examining the problematic nature of working with a country accused of grave human rights abuses. But it has never been the subject of a national discussion. And collaboration between American and Israeli cops is just the tip of the iceberg.

Having been schooled in Israeli tactics perfected during a 63 year experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an indigenous population, local police forces have adapted them to monitor Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods in US cities. Meanwhile, former Israeli military officers have been hired to spearhead security operations at American airports and suburban shopping malls, leading to a wave of disturbing incidents of racial profiling, intimidation, and FBI interrogations of innocent, unsuspecting people. The New York Police Department’s disclosure that it deployed “counter-terror” measures against Occupy protesters encamped in downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park raised serious questions about the extent to which Israeli-inspired tactics have been used to suppress the Occupy movement in general.

The process of Israelification began in the immediate wake of 9/11, when national panic led federal and municipal law enforcement officials to beseech Israeli security honchos for advice and training. America’s Israel lobby exploited the climate of hysteria, providing thousands of top cops with all-expenses paid trips to Israel and stateside training sessions with Israeli military and intelligence officials. By now, police chiefs of major American cities who have not been on junkets to Israel are the exception.

“Israel is the Harvard of antiterrorism,” said former US Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer, who now serves as the US Senate Sergeant-at-Arms. Cathy Lanier, the Chief of the Washington DC Metropolitan Police, remarked, “No experience in my life has had more of an impact on doing my job than going to Israel.” “One would say it is the front line,” Barnett Jones, the police chief of Ann Arbor, Michigan, said of Israel. “We’re in a global war.”

Changing the way we do business

The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) is at the heart of American-Israeli law enforcement collaboration. JINSA is a Jerusalem and Washington DC-based think tank known for stridently neoconservative policy positions on Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians and its brinkmanship with Iran. The group’s board of directors boasts a Who’s Who of neocon ideologues. Two former JINSA advisers who have also consulted for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, went on to serve in the Department of Defense under President George W. Bush, playing influential roles in the push to invade and occupy Iraq.

Through its Law Enforcement Education Program (LEEP), JINSA claims to have arranged Israeli-led training sessions for over 9000 American law enforcement officials at the federal, state and municipal level. “The Israelis changed the way we do business regarding homeland security in New Jersey,” Richard Fuentes, the NJ State Police Superintendent, said after attending a 2004 JINSA-sponsored Israel trip and a subsequent JINSA conference alongside 435 other law enforcement officers.

During a 2004 LEEP trip, JINSA brought 14 senior American law enforcement officials to Israel to receive instruction from their counterparts. The Americans were trained in “how to secure large venues, such as shopping malls, sporting events and concerts,” JINSA’s website reported. Escorted by Brigadier General Simon Perry, an Israeli police attaché and former Mossad official, the group toured the Israeli separation wall, now a mandatory stop for American cops on junkets to Israel. “American officials learned about the mindset of a suicide bomber and how to spot trouble signs,” according to JINSA. And they were schooled in Israeli killing methods. “Although the police are typically told to aim for the chest when shooting because it is the largest target, the Israelis are teaching [American] officers to aim for a suspect’s head so as not to detonate any explosives that might be strapped to his torso,” the New York Times reported.

Cathy Lanier, now the Chief of Washington DC’s Metropolitan Police Department, was among the law enforcement officials junketed to Israel by JINSA. “I was with the bomb units and the SWAT team and all of those high profile specialized [Israeli] units and I learned a tremendous amount,” Lanier reflected. “I took 82 pages of notes while I was there which I later brought back and used to formulate a lot of what I later used to create and formulate the Homeland Security terrorism bureau in the DC Metropolitan Police department.”

Some of the police chiefs who have taken part in JINSA’s LEEP program have done so under the auspices of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a private non-governmental group with close ties to the Department of Homeland Security. Chuck Wexler, the executive director of PERF, was so enthusiastic about the program that by 2005 he had begun organizing trips to Israel sponsored by PERF, bringing numerous high-level American police officials to receive instruction from their Israeli counterparts.

PERF gained notoriety when Wexler confirmed that his group coordinated police raids in 16 cities across America against “Occupy” protest encampments. As many as 40 cities have sought PERF advice on suppressing the “Occupy” movement and other mass protest activities. Wexler did not respond to my requests for an interview.

Lessons from Israel to Auschwitz

Besides JINSA, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has positioned itself as an important liaison between American police forces and the Israeli security-intelligence apparatus. Though the ADL promotes itself as a Jewish civil rights group, it has provoked controversy by publishing a blacklist of organizations supporting Palestinian rights, and for condemning a proposal to construct an Islamic community center in downtown New York, several blocks from Ground Zero, on the basis that some opponents of the project were entitled to “positions that others would characterize as irrational or bigoted.”

Through the ADL’s Advanced Training School course on Extremist and Terrorist Threats, over 700 law enforcement personnel from 220 federal and local agencies including the FBI and CIA have been trained by Israeli police and intelligence commanders. This year, the ADL brought 15 high-level American police officials to Israel for instruction from the country’s security apparatus. According to the ADL, over 115 federal, state and local law enforcement executives have undergone ADL-organized training sessions in Israel since the program began in 2003. “I can honestly say that the training offered by ADL is by far the most useful and current training course I have ever attended,” Deputy Commissioner Thomas Wright of the Philadelphia Police Department commented after completing an ADL program this year. The ADL’s relationship with the Washington DC Police Department is so cozy its members are invited to accompany DC cops on “ride along” patrols.

The ADL claims to have trained over 45,000 American law enforcement officials through its Law Enforcement and Society program, which “draws on the history of the Holocaust to provide law enforcement professionals with an increased understanding of…their role as protectors of the Constitution,” the group’s website stated. All new FBI agents and intelligence analysts are required to attend the ADL program, which is incorporated into three FBI training programs. According to officialFBI recruitment material, “all new special agents must visit the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to see firsthand what can happen when law enforcement fails to protect individuals.”

Fighting “crimiterror”

Among the most prominent Israeli government figure to have influenced the practices of American law enforcement officials is Avi Dichter, a former head of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service and current member of Knesset who recently introduced legislation widely criticized as anti-democratic. During the Second Intifada, Dichter ordered several bombings on densely populated Palestinian civilian areas, including one on the al-Daraj neighborhood of Gaza that resulted in the death of 15 innocent people, including 8 children, and 150 injuries. “After each success, the only thought is, ‘Okay, who’s next?’” Dichter said of the “targeted” assassinations he has ordered.

Despite his dubious human rights record and apparently dim view of democratic values, or perhaps because of them, Dichter has been a key figure in fostering cooperation between Israeli security forces and American law enforcement. In 2006, while Dichter was serving as Israel’s Minister of Public Security, he spoke in Boston, Massachusetts before the annual convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Seated beside FBI Director Robert Mueller and then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Dichter told the 10,000 police officers in the crowd that there was an “intimate connection between fighting criminals and fighting terrorists.” Dichter declared that American cops were actually “fighting crimiterrorists.” The Jerusalem Post reported that Dichter was “greeted by a hail of applause, as he was hugged by Mueller, who described Dichter as his mentor in anti-terror tactics.”

A year after Dichter’s speech, he and then-Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff signed a joint memorandum pledging security collaboration between America and Israel on issues ranging from airport security to emergency planning. In 2010, Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano authorized a new joint memorandum with Israeli Transport and Road Safety Minister Israel Katz shoring up cooperation between the US Transportation Security Agency – the agency in charge of day-to-day airport security – and Israel’s Security Department. The recent joint memorandum also consolidated the presence of US Homeland Security law enforcement personnel on Israeli soil. “The bond between the United States and Israel has never been stronger,” Napolitano remarked at a recent summit of AIPAC, the leading outfit of America’s Israel lobby, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The Demographic Unit

For the New York Police Department, collaboration with Israel’s security and intelligence apparatus became a top priority after 9/11. Just months after the attacks on New York City, the NYPD assigned a permanent, taxpayer-funded liaison officer to Tel Aviv. Under the leadership of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, ties between the NYPD and Israel have deepened by the day. Kelly embarked on his first trip to Israel in early 2009 to demonstrate his support for Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip, a one-sided attack that left over 1400 Gaza residents dead in three weeks and led a United Nations fact-finding mission to conclude that Israeli military and government officials had committed war crimes.

Kelly returned to Israel the following year to speak at the Herziliya Conference, an annual gathering of neoconservative security and government officials who obsess over supposed “demographic threats.” After Kelly appeared on stage, the Herziliya crowd was addressed by the pro-Israel academic Martin Kramer, who claimed that Israel’s blockade of Gaza was helping to reduce the numbers of “superfluous young men of fighting age.” Kramer added, “If a state can’t control these young men, then someone else will.”

Back in New York, the NYPD set up a secret “Demographics Unit” designed to spy on and monitor Muslim communities around the city. The unit was developed with input and intensive involvement by the CIA, which still refuses to name the former Middle East station chief it has posted in the senior ranks of the NYPD’s intelligence division. Since 2002, the NYPD has dispatched undercover agents known as “rakers” and “mosque crawlers” into Pakistani-American bookstores and restaurants to gauge community anger over US drone strikes inside Pakistan, and into Palestinian hookah bars and mosques to search out signs of terror recruitment and clandestine funding. “If a raker noticed a customer looking at radical literature, he might chat up the store owner and see what he could learn,” the Associated Press reported. “The bookstore, or even the customer, might get further scrutiny.”

The Israeli imprimatur on the NYPD’s Demographics Unit is unmistakable. As a former police official told the Associated Press, the Demographics Unit has attempted to “map the city’s human terrain” through a program “modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank.”

Shop ‘til you’re stopped

At Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport, security personnel target non-Jewish and non-white passengers, especially Arabs, as a matter of policy. The most routinely harassed passengers are Palestinian citizens of Israel, who must brace themselves for five-hour interrogation sessions and strip searches before flying. Those singled out for extra screening by Shin Bet officers are sent to what many Palestinians from Israel call the “Arab room,” where they are subjected to humiliating questioning sessions (former White House Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala encountered such mistreatment during a visit to Israel last year). Some Palestinians are forbidden from speaking to anyone until takeoff, and may be menaced by Israeli flight attendants during the flight. In one documented case, a six-month-old was awoken for a strip search by Israeli Shin Bet personnel. Instances of discrimination against Arabs at Ben Gurion International are too numerous to detail – several incidents occur each day – but a few of the more egregious instances were outlined in a 2007 petition the Association for Civil Rights in Israel filed with the country’s Supreme Court.

Though the Israeli system of airline security contains dubious benefits and clearly deleterious implications for civil liberties, it is quietly and rapidly migrating into major American airports. Security personnel at Boston’s Logan International Airport have undergone extensive training from Israeli intelligence personnel, learning to apply profiling and behavioral assessment techniques against American citizens that were initially tested on Palestinians. The new procedures began in August, when so-called Behavior Detection Officers were placed in security queues at Logan’s heavily trafficked Terminal A. Though the procedures have added to traveler stress while netting exactly zero terrorists, they are likely to spread to other cities. “I would like to see a lot more profiling” in American airports, said Yossi Sheffi, an Israeli-born risk analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Transportation and Logistics.

Israeli techniques now dictate security procedures at the Mall of America, a gargantuan shopping mall in Bloomington, Minnesota that has become a major tourist attraction. The new methods took hold in 2005 when the mall hired a former Israeli army sergeant named Mike Rozin to lead a special new security unit. Rozin, who once worked with a canine unit at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, instructed his employees at the Mall of America to visually profile every shopper, examining their expressions for suspicious signs. His security team accosts and interrogates an average of 1200 shoppers a year, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting.

One of the thousands who fell into Rozin’s dragnet was Najam Qureshi, a Pakistani-American mall vendor whose father accidentally left his cell phone on a table in the mall food court. A day after the incident, FBI agents appeared at Qureshi’s doorstep to ask if he knew anyone seeking to harm the United States. An army veteran interrogated for two hours by Rozin’s men for taking video inside the mall sobbed openly about his experience to reporters. Meanwhile, another man, Emile Khalil, was visited by FBI agents after mall security stopped him for taking photographs of the dazzling consumer haven.

“I think that the threat of terrorism in the United States is going to become an unfortunate part of American life,” Rozin remarked to American Jewish World. And as long as the threat persists in the public’s mind, Israeli securitocrats like Rozin will never have to worry about the next paycheck.

“Occupy” meets the occupation

When a riot squad from the New York Police Department destroyed and evicted the “Occupy Wall Street” protest encampment at Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan, department leadership drew on the anti-terror tactics they had refined since the 9/11 attacks. According to the New York Times, the NYPD deployed “counterterrorism measures” to mobilize large numbers of cops for the lightning raid on Zuccotti. The use of anti-terror techniques to suppress a civilian protest complemented harsh police measures demonstrated across the country against the nationwide “Occupy” movement, from firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets into unarmed crowds to blasting demonstrators with the LRAD sound cannon.

Given the amount of training the NYPD and so many other police forces have received from Israel’s military-intelligence apparatus, and the profuse levels of gratitude American police chiefs have expressed to their Israeli mentors, it is worth asking how much Israeli instruction has influenced the way the police have attempted to suppress the Occupy movement, and how much they will inform police repression of future examples of street protest. What can be said for certain is that the Israelification of American law enforcement has intensified police fear and hostility towards the civilian population, blurring the lines between protesters, criminals, and terrorists. As Dichter said, they are all just “crimiterrorists.”

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Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

The Wall Street Journal said that the U.S. is preparing tariffs against a range of trading partners unless they back off proposals to impose taxes that would fall heavily on major American internet companies. The threat of tariffs is against many countries, including the entirety of the European Union, India, Indonesia, Turkey, and even Washington’s most loyal allies like the United Kingdom and Brazil.

These countries became the target of U.S. President Donald Trump as they are about to impose taxes on U.S. internet giants accustomed to enjoying special tax privileges – particularly Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple. However, in order to defend their unwritten privileges guaranteed in a neoliberal economic system, Trump is ready to seriously hinder relations with its closest allies to defend the interests of megacorporation’s, making a mockery of his “America First” slogan.

Multinational companies record their income and financial statements in countries with minimum taxation regardless of the country in which they actually provided their services. Theoretically, this system can be used by any company, but historically it has been shown that the main beneficiaries of such systems are American companies. The problem is so acute that the informal international name of this tax is GAFA – Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple.

If we look at France for example, they are requesting only €500 million a year, suggesting that the amount that has to be paid by these companies is not a big issue. The issue for the U.S. is defending the principle of free market neoliberalism. As early as 2019, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire responded sharply to criticism of this tax by stating that “France is a sovereign country, its decisions on tax matters are sovereign and will remain sovereign.”

The digital tax is a precedent for demonstrating true sovereignty, and it is because of this aspect that even Trump is willing to enter economic conflict with Washington’s closest allies for the interests of companies that are in fact against Trump and support presidential candidate rival Joe Biden. It is a matter of defending American economic hegemony and neoliberalism, which is also to the interest of Trump’s business ventures.

The U.S. has even imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court in The Hague for investigating war crimes against American soldiers. According to Deutsche Welle, Trump has ensured U.S.-based assets belonging to persons who will be participants in the International Criminal Court’s proceedings against American employees will be blocked. Such persons will also be prohibited from setting aside money, and they and their families will be denied entry to the U.S.

In this context, threats against France to introduce prohibitive tariffs on French wine, cheese and luxury goods are quite common. This threat alone was enough to force France to postpone the introduction of the tax, setting the new to date to the end of 2020. But the coronavirus pandemic has drastically changed the situation. The European Union and other countries need money to deal with the economic consequences of the pandemic. In addition, U.S. authority on the international stage has declined. Eventually, Washington may find itself in a situation where protecting American internet giants will require a real economic war with most of the world and could create a huge separation between Washington and its closest allies. If necessary, Trump will most likely do this, but such a policy has a high cost.

The European Union is about to set another precedent for demonstrating its sovereignty – with much more serious financial consequences. According to The Wall Street Journal, the European Commission is preparing to formally charge Amazon with antitrust violations and using its dominant market position to copy successful European-made products and then sell their own cheap copies, depriving European companies of revenue from within their own market.

These are no longer taxes that are being introduced at low rates in anticipation of their future growth, but potential fines in the tens of billions of dollars and perhaps even administrative bans on certain activities in the European Union. In the future, most American information technology giants could easily be exposed to similar antitrust measures, creating a place for European companies in their own markets to prosper and grow.

It is clear that U.S. sanctions, tariffs and threats are still very powerful weapons. But every day, the number of those who want to test the power of this hegemon is increasing, and their attempts are becoming more daring and extensive. For this reason, there is a strong possibility that the American president will impose sanctions against his country’s closest allies to get them back under U.S. economic control, but it is unlikely to be successful.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Muitas indústrias e empresas de serviços estão a falhar ou a redimensionar-se devido ao ‘lockdown’ e à crise consequente. Ao contrário, existe quem ganhou com tudo isto. O Facebook, Google (proprietário do YouTube), Microsoft, Apple e Amazon – escreve o New York Times – “estão a fazer agressivamente novas apostas, visto que a pandemia do coronavírus os tornou serviços quase essenciais”.

Todos estes “Tech Giants” (Gigantes da Tecnologia) são dos Estados Unidos. O Facebook – não mais definido como rede social, mas como “ecossistema”, do qual fazem parte o WhatsApp, Instagram e Messenger – ultrapassou os 3 biliões de utilizadores mensais. Portanto, não é de admirar que, em plena crise do coronavírus, o Facebook lance o projecto de uma das maiores redes de cabos submarinos, a  2Africa: com 37.000 km de comprimento (quase a circunferência máxima da Terra), que rodeará todo o continente africano, ligando-o a norte à Europa e a leste ao Médio Oriente.

Os países interligados  serão, inicialmente, 23. Partindo da Grã-Bretanha, a rede ligará Portugal antes de iniciar o seu círculo em volta de África através do Senegal, Costa do Marfim, Gana, Nigéria, Gabão, República do Congo, República Democrática do Congo, África do Sul, Moçambique, Madagascar, Tanzânia, Quénia, Somália, Djibuti, Sudão, Egipto. Nesta última secção, a rede será ligada a Omã e à Arábia Saudita. Então, através do Mediterrâneo, chegará a Itália e daqui a França e a Espanha.

Esta rede de grande capacidade – explica o Facebook – será “o pilar de uma enorme expansão da Internet em África: as economias florescerão quando houver uma Internet amplamente acessível para as empresas. A rede permitirá que centenas de milhões de pessoas acedam a banda larga até à 5G”. Esta é, em resumo, a motivação oficial do projecto. Para pô-la em dúvida, basta um facto: na África subsaariana, cerca de 600 milhões de pessoas não têm acesso à elecricidade, o equivalente a mais da metade da população. Então, para que servirá a rede de banda larga?

Para ligar mais estreitamente às empresas-mãe das multinacionais, as elites africanas que representam os seus interesses nos países mais ricos em matérias-primas, enquanto aumenta o confronto com a China, que está a reforçar a sua presença económica em África. A rede também serve outros propósitos.

Há dois anos, em Maio de 2018, o Facebook estabeleceu uma parceria com o Atlantic Council (Conselho Atlânico), uma influente “organização não partidária”,  com sede em Washington, que “promove a liderança e o compromisso USA no mundo, juntamente com os aliados”. O objectivo específico da parceria é garantir “o uso correto do Facebook nas eleições em todo o mundo, monitorando a desinformação e a interferência estrangeira, ajudando a educar os cidadãos e a sociedade civil”.

Qual é a honestidade do Conselho Atlântico, particularmente activo em África, pode ser deduzido da lista oficial de doadores que o financiam: Pentágono e NATO, Lockheed Martin e outras indústrias de guerra (incluindo a italiana Leonardo), ExxonMobil e outras empresas multinacionais, o Bank of America e outros grupos financeiros, as Fundações de Rockefeller e Soros.

A rede, que ligará 16 países africanos a 5 aliados europeus da NATO, sob comando USA e a 2 aliados USA no Médio Oriente, poderá desempenhar um papel não só económico, mas político e estratégico.“Laboratório de Pesquisa Digital Forense” do Conselho Atlântico, através do Facebook, poderá comunicar diariamente à comunicação mediática e aos políticos africanos quais as notícias que são “falsas” e quais as “verdadeiras”. As informações pessoais e os sistemas de rastreio do Facebook podem ser usados ​​para controlar e atingir os movimentos da oposição. A banda larga, mesmo em 5G, pode ser usada pelas forças especiais USA e por outras,  nas suas operações em África.

Ao anunciar o projecto, o Facebook sublinha que África é “o continente menos ligado” e que o problema será resolvido pelos seus 37.000 km de cabos. No entanto, podem ser usados como uma versão moderna das antigas correntes coloniais.

Manlio Dinucci

 

Artigo original em italiano :

Facebook accerchia l’Africa

il manifesto, 16 de Junho de 2020

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

Molte industrie e società di servizi stanno fallendo o ridimensionandosi a causa del lockdown e della conseguente crisi. C’è invece chi ha guadagnato da tutto questo. Facebook, Google (proprietario di YouTube), Microsoft, Apple e Amazon – scrive The New York Times – «stanno facendo aggressivamente nuove scommesse, poiché la pandemia del coronavirus li ha resi servizi quasi essenziali».

Tutti questi «Tech Giants» (Giganti della tecnologia) sono statunitensi. Facebook – definito non più social network ma «ecosistema», di cui fanno parte anche WhatsApp, Instagram e Messenger  – ha superato i 3 miliardi di utenti mensili. Non c’è quindi da stupirsi se, in piena crisi da coronavirus, Facebook lancia il progetto di una delle maggiori reti di cavi sottomarini, la 2Africa: lunga 37.000 km (quasi la massima circonferenza della Terra), circonderà l’intero continente africano, collegandolo a nord all’Europa e ad est al Medioriente.

I paesi interconnessi saranno inizialmente 23. Partendo dalla Gran Bretagna, la rete collegherà il Portogallo prima di iniziare il suo cerchio attorno all’Africa attraverso Senegal, Costa d’Avorio, Ghana, Nigeria, Gabon, Repubblica del Congo, Repubblica Democratica del Congo, Sudafrica, Mozambico, Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Gibuti, Sudan, Egitto. In quest’ultimo tratto, la rete sarà collegata a Oman e Arabia Saudita. Quindi, attraverso il Mediterraneo, arriverà in Italia e da qui in Francia e Spagna.

Questa rete a grande capacità – spiega Facebook – costituirà «il pilastro di una enorme espansione di Internet in Africa: le economie fioriscono quando c’è un Internet largamente accessibile per le imprese. La rete permetterà a centinaia di milioni di persone l’accesso alla banda larga fino al 5G». Questa, in sintesi, la motivazione ufficiale del progetto. A metterla in dubbio basta un dato: nell’Africa subsahariana non hanno accesso all’elettricità circa 600 milioni di persone, equivalenti a oltre la metà della popolazione. A cosa servirà allora la rete a banda larga?

A collegare più strettamente alle case madri delle multinazionali quelle élite africane che ne rappresentano gli interessi nei paesi più ricchi di materie prime, mentre cresce il confronto con la Cina che sta rafforzando la sua presenza economica in Africa.La rete servirà anche ad altri scopi.

Due anni fa, nel maggio 2018, Facebook ha stabilito una partnership con l’Atlantic Council (Consiglio Atlantico), influente «organizzazione nopartisan», con sede a Washington, che «promuove la leadership e l’impegno Usa nel mondo, insieme agli alleati». Scopo specifico della partnership è garantire «il corretto uso di Facebook nelle elezioni in tutto il mondo, monitorando la disinformazione e l’interferenza straniera, aiutando a educare i cittadini e la società civile».

Quale sia l’affidabilità dell’Atlantic Council, particolarmente attivo in Africa, lo si deduce dalla lista ufficiale dei donatori che lo finanziano: il Pentagono e la Nato, la Lockheed Martin e altre industrie belliche (compresa l’italiana Leonardo), la ExxonMobil e altre multinazionali, la Bank of America e altri gruppi finanziari, le Fondazioni di Rockefeller e Soros.

La rete, che collegherà 16 paesi africani a 5 alleati europei della Nato sotto comando Usa e a 2 alleati Usa in Medioriente, potrà svolgere un ruolo non solo economico, ma politico e strategico. Il «Laboratorio di ricerca digitale forense» dell’Atlantic Council, attraverso Facebook, potrà comunicare ogni giorno ai media e ai politici africani quali notizie sono «false» e quali «vere». Le informazioni personali e i sistemi di tracciamento di Facebook potranno essere usati per controllare e colpire i movimenti di opposizione. La banda larga, anche in 5G, potrà essere usata dalle forze speciali Usa e altre nelle loro operazioni in Africa.

Nell’annunciare il progetto, Facebook sottolinea che l’Africa è «il continente meno connesso» e che il problema sarà risolto dai suoi 37.000 km di cavi. Essi possono essere usati, però, quale moderna versione delle vecchie catene coloniali.

Manlio Dinucci

 

 

Palestinian officials “are stepping up pressure on Israel to cancel its planned annexation of part of the West Bank”.

If Israel proceeds, “they will immediately declare a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

The Palestinian government threatened  “to declare Palestine as a state along the internationally recognized 1967 borders if Israel presses ahead with its plan to annex parts of the West Bank.”

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Stayyeh stated at a Press Conference:

“We are waiting and pushing for Israel not to annex. If Israel is going to annex after July 1, we are going to go from the interim period of the Palestinian Authority into a manifestation of a state on the ground. That is where we will be heading in the next phase,”

Palestine views Annexation as an  “existential threat…a total erosion of our national aspirations,”

PM Shtayyeh put forth a plan by the Palestinian Authority for the creation of a “sovereign Palestinian state, independent and demilitarized”. This plan is outlined in a 4 1/2 page proposal which has not been made public. It envisages the possibility of land swaps.

Palestine will not wait for an agreement with Israel if the latter declares annexation of the West Bank lands in July, he warned.

Ishtaye noted that the Palestinians have rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan known as the Deal of the Century.

A four-and-a-half page counterproposal to Trump’s plan has been submitted to the quartet of Middle East mediators: the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations, said the Palestinian prime minister.

It proposed a demilitarized Palestinian state with “minor border modification wherever it is needed” and exchanges of land equal “in size and volume and in value” with Israel, he told reporters.

On Monday, Ishtaye said Palestine will stop its recognition of Israel if the Israeli government implements its annexation plan.

On May 19, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared the abolition of all agreements signed with Israel and the United States, including security coordination, in response to the Israeli plan to annex the occupied West Bank territories. (Xinhua)

Germany’s foreign minister “warned Israel that its plan to begin annexing parts of the West Bank would violate international law, but he declined to say how Germany or Europe would respond.”

Speaking at a news conference, Maas said that Germany and the European Union were seeking clarity about the Israeli plan, but he made a point that Europe considers annexation incompatible with international law.

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Featured image: A graffiti of Naji al-Ali’s Handala on the West Bank separation wall

Martedì 9 giugno è stata issata la bandiera italiana; venerdì 12 l’inaugurazione della nuova sede del Comando delle Forze Speciali dell’Esercito (COMFOSE), presente il ministro della Difesa Lorenzo Guerini. L’area a nord della grande base di Camp Darby, in Toscana, è stata presa in consegna dalle forze armate italiane a seguito della decisione del Pentagono di rivedere le modalità organizzative e di gestione di quello che è il principale hub di stoccaggio di mezzi e sistemi d’arma delle forze terrestri Usa nel sud Europa. Con un investimento infrastrutturale plurimilionario, l’Esercito italiano potrà così coronare il sogno di realizzare in provincia di Pisa un centro strategico dove ospitare le forze d’elite destinate alle guerre “non convenzionali” e alle famigerate operazioni psicologiche.

“Sono particolarmente lieto di incontrare il personale di questo centro nevralgico di integrazione e coordinamento di tutte le attività di formazione, addestramento e approntamento delle Forze Operative Speciali e delle unità PSYOPS dell’Esercito”, ha dichiarato il ministro Guerini in occasione della sua visita al Comprensorio militare “Tenente Dario Vitali” di Pisa. Ad accoglierlo, il Capo di Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, generale Salvatore Farina e il Comandante di COMFOSE, generale Ivan Caruso. “Il nuovo Comprensorio Militare sorge su una vasta area con superficie di 35 ettari, ex sedime di parte della base militare statunitense di Camp Darby, territorio recentemente rientrato nella disponibilità delle Autorità Italiane; la sua riorganizzazione e l’utilizzo di moderni standard infrastrutturali consentirà di incrementare la capacità operativa dei Reparti che saranno ospitati e accrescere le condizioni di vita e il benessere del personale militare e delle proprie famiglie”, riporta la nota del ministero della Difesa. “Il ministro Guarini ha poi visitato le sedi del Centro Addestramento Operazioni Speciali e del Reparto Supporto Operazioni Speciali, articolazioni di recente costituzione deputate alla formazione degli Operatori Base per Operazioni Speciali, il primo, ed al sostegno logistico delle Forze Speciali in operazioni, il secondo”.

Secondo lo Studio progettuale presentato dallo Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito nel dicembre 2018, nell’ambito del programma European Infrastructure Consolidationimplementato dal Comando Europeo dell’Esercito statunitense (EUCOM), “in data 28 gennaio 2015 è stata formalizzata dall’Office of Defence Cooperation l’intenzione di restituire al Governo Italiano una porzione del sedime in questione della base di Camp Darby, ed al cui interno sono state realizzate dagli Stati Uniti varie infrastrutture con diversa destinazione d’uso (uffici, alloggi, funzioni logistiche e tempo libero) ancora in buone/ottime condizioni”. “In tale quadro – prosegue lo Stato Maggiore – l’Esercito ha formalizzato l’interesse alla ripresa in consegna dell’aliquota che si renderà disponibile a seguito del rilascio da parte degli USA. L’ipotesi progettuale elaborata ha inteso individuare una possibile razionalizzazione degli spazi interni per la ridislocazione del COMFOSE e del dipendente 9° Reggimento Col Moschin. Il costo complessivo di tale ipotesi ammonta a circa 42 milioni di euro ed è stato stimato sulla base di una prima valutazione che prevede, in particolare, la realizzazione presso il sito di ulteriori strutture per le esigenze delle unità”. Nello specifico per l’area logistica di 15.000 mq è prevista una spesa di 13 milioni; per quella sportiva (8.000 mq), 8,3 milioni; per l’area alloggiativa (20.000 mq) 16 milioni di euro. Il piano per il nuovo comprensorio “italiano” a Camp Darby rientra nell’ambito dell’ambizioso programma di rinnovamento del patrimonio immobiliare e di realizzazione di basi militari di nuova generazionedenominato “caserme verdi”, per cui l’Esercito prevede di spendere un miliardo e mezzo di euro da qui ai prossimi dieci anni.

Il Comando di COMFOSE che si è insediato nell’area settentrionale di Camp Darby sovrintende alle attività, all’addestramento e all’acquisizione dei materiali delle unità dell’Esercito assegnate alle cosiddette “operazioni speciali”. Istituito il 19 settembre 2014 all’interno della più ampia riforma dello strumento militare del 2012 voluta dall’allora ministro della Difesa, ammiraglio Giampaolo Di Paola, COMFOSE ha avuto il suo quartier generale prima nella Caserma “Gamerra” a Pisa e poi presso il Centro Interforze Studi e Applicazioni Militari (CISAM) di San Piero a Grado. Come ricorda lo studioso Manlio Dinucci de Il Manifesto, questo Comando italiano “mantiene un collegamento costante con lo U.S. Army Special Operation Command, il più importante comando statunitense per le operazioni speciali formato da circa 30 mila specialisti impiegati soprattutto in Medio Oriente”.

Dal COMFOSE dipende innanzitutto il 9° Reggimento d’Assalto Paracadutisti “Col Moschin”, il reparto di incursori composto da personale addestrato ed equipaggiato per condurre l’intero spettro delle operazioni speciali. Sino ad oggi è stato ospitato nella caserma “Vannucci” di Livorno; quando tutti i suoi uomini saranno trasferiti a Camp Darby, l’immobile sarà riassegnato al Reparto comando supporto tattici della “Folgore” di stanza nella caserma “Rugiadi”, anch’essa a Livorno. Altro reparto delle forze speciali dell’Esercito è il 185° Reggimento Paracadutisti Ricognizione e Acquisizione Obiettivi “Folgore” di Livorno con funzioni spiccatamente d’intelligence, d’ingaggio di “obiettivi a distanza” e di penetrazione e infiltrazione in territorio “nemico”. Ci sono poi il 4° Reggimento Alpini Paracadutisti “Ranger” di Verona, designato per condurre operazioni in ambiente montano e artico e il 28° Reggimento “Pavia”, l’unica unità delle forze armate italiane che si occupa di “comunicazioni operative”, quelle cioè finalizzate “a creare, consolidare o incrementare il consenso della popolazione locale nei confronti dei contingenti militari impiegati in missione di pace all’estero”.

Di stanza nella caserma “Del Monte” di Pesaro, il 28° Reggimento “Pavia” rappresenta la componente di COMFOSE che più interpreta le nuove frontiere della guerra moderna globale. Non è infatti casuale che i militari del “Pavia” siano intervenuti in tutti gli scacchieri bellici internazionali: dall’Iraq all’Afghanistan, dal Kosovo al Libano e in Libia. “Le unità specialistiche del 28° Reggimento usano mezzi di comunicazione di massa per diffondere messaggi alla popolazione: si spazia dai tradizionali volantini e poster, efficaci in aree a elevato tasso di analfabetismo e basso sviluppo tecnologico, fino ai più complessi prodotti multimediali, compresi i new e social media nelle aree più progredite”, riferisce lo Stato Maggiore. “Inoltre il personale studia e analizza la realtà socio-antropologica delle aree di missione in modo da comunicare in modo idoneo ed efficace con la popolazione nel rispetto di usi, costumi e tradizioni locali”.

Quelli che a prima vista potrebbero sembrare interventi di natura meramente politico-diplomatico-sociale s’inquadrano invece nelle cosiddette “guerre psicologiche”, note in ambito militare come “operazioni psicologiche” o “PSYOPS” come le ha invece chiamate in lingua inglese il ministro Guerini all’inaugurazione della nuova sede di COMFOSE a Camp Darby.

Sulle finalità e le modalità delle “operazioni PSYOPS” si è soffermata la ricercatriceFrancesca Angius dell’Archivio Disarmo di Roma. “Si tratta del complesso delle attività psicologiche pianificate in tempo di pace, crisi o guerra, dirette verso gruppi obiettivo nemici, amici o neutrali, al fine di influenzarne gli atteggiamenti ed i comportamenti che incidono sul conseguimento di obiettivi prefissati di natura politica e militare”, spiega Francesca Angius. “Le PSYOPS sono, quindi, finalizzate alla conquista delle menti attraverso la gestione ad arte delle informazioni e delle verità e costituiscono uno strumento di strategia militare (…) il cui scopo principale consiste nell’influenzare le percezioni, gli atteggiamenti ed il comportamento di un determinato gruppo obiettivo. L’esigenza di dotarsi di un’unità PSYOPS è nata, in seno alla NATO, dalla convinzione che l’uso programmato delle comunicazioni di massa possa influenzare, anche in modo decisivo, l’esito di un conflitto. Il dominio delle informazioni è sempre più una dimensione fondamentale del moderno campo di battaglia, dove propaganda, disinformazione e manipolazione delle informazioni ne rappresentano una parte essenziale”.

Nel 2006, l’allora tenente colonnello Luca Fontana (poi generale di brigata e vice capo divisone presso la NATO Rapid Deproyable Corps Italy di Solbiate Olona, Varese”), ha pubblicato per conto dello Stato Maggiore della Difesa un rapporto intitolato significativamente Le Operazioni Psicologiche Militari (PSYOP). La “Conquista” delle menti. “E’ opinione diffusa che l’importanza delle PSYOP stia costantemente crescendo a garanzia del successo di ogni azione che si debba intraprende ovunque nel mondo, sia essa di carattere diplomatico o militare”, affermava l’alto ufficiale. “L’ormai costante e significativa partecipazione di forze occidentali, spesso con preponderanza – almeno iniziale – degli USA, alle operazioni di Peacekeeping, dove l’uso della forza è rigidamente prescritto da dettagliate regole d’ingaggio, ha ulteriormente enfatizzato la necessità di mettere in atto efficaci attività informative. Nell’effettuazione di tali operazioni, le Unità militari di PSYOP possono ragionevolmente pensare di essere chiamate ad operare per un lungo periodo di tempo in un’area dove, talvolta, sussiste la presenza di strumenti mediatici significativi e penetranti, i cui messaggi competono con quelli lanciati dagli operatori militari alleati”.

“Nel futuro, il valore delle PSYOP continuerà ad essere utilizzato al meglio prima e dopo un conflitto”, concludeva profeticamente Luca Fontana. “Le operazioni psicologiche messe in atto prima aiuteranno a preparare il contesto operativo nel quale le truppe si troveranno ad operare e talvolta, se opportunamente combinate con qualche altro tipo di intervento, potranno anche prevenire lo scoppio delle ostilità. Mentre, negli anni a venire, saranno comunque le bombe, i missili e l’occupazione del territorio con truppe di terra a determinare sul piano militare il vincitore ed il perdente, le operazioni psicologiche, in misura sempre maggiore, determineranno la durata dei conflitti e l’impatto dello sforzo militare sugli interessi strategici di lungo termine…”.

Antonio Mazzeo

A century ago, on 13 March 1920, a far-right coup d’etat was implemented against the nascent Weimar Republic, known as the Kapp Putsch, which stood as an early warning signal for the Nazi Party’s rise. The author here had intended to write a piece in March on the exact centenary date, but a certain virus intervened instead.

The Kapp Putsch was an attempt to destroy Social Democratic governance in Germany, and replace it with an outright dictatorship. The new regime would be led, on paper, by Dr Wolfgang Kapp, a reactionary 61-year-old Prussian civil servant and politician. The reality on the ground suggests otherwise, however. Partaking in this coup from the outset were prominent German military men, including General Erich Ludendorff, one of the major figures in 20th century history.

During the First World War, Ludendorff had been the de facto dictator of Germany for a two year period, from the autumn of 1916 until the conclusion of hostilities. In the following years Ludendorff was positioned at separate times on the right, but mostly towards the far-right, of the political spectrum. He disseminated the stab-in-the-back legend and, as he got older, became increasingly militaristic and anti-semitic. Ludendorff strongly criticised the “terrible inroads” and pernicious effects that Roman Catholicism was having on the German people.

Occasionally it has been claimed that Ludendorff was “the first Nazi”, but there is little evidence to provide substance to this assertion. While lauded for his numerous victories in warfare, it can be recalled that in the field of politics he was inexperienced at best; like so many military commanders, Ludendorff would lack the temperament and judgement to make a telling transition to the political arena.

Putschists in Berlin. The banner warns: “Stop! Whoever proceeds will be shot”. (CC BY-SA 3.0 de)

At war’s end, following a three month exile in the southern Swedish town of Hässleholm, Ludendorff returned to Berlin in February 1919. The 53-year-old general continued to don his World War One uniform. As a consequence, Ludendorff was quickly recognised by some of his supporters in Berlin who, astonished to see him walking down the street, began cheering loudly. Richard J. Evans, the veteran English historian, wrote of Ludendorff, “Such was the prestige he had gained in the war, that he quickly became the figurehead of the radical right” (1). Donald J. Goodspeed, Ludendorff’s biographer, acknowledged that he “commanded considerable respect throughout the country”. (2)

In March 1921, Ludendorff was introduced to the little known extremist politician Adolf Hitler, when the latter had by then been a Nazi Party member for about a year (3). Ludendorff and Hitler would be on close terms during the mid-1920s. In late 1924 Ludendorff, largely because of his illustrious name, was elected to the Reichstag as an MP with the pan-Germanic association, the National Socialist Freedom Party (NSFP). Ludendorff co-founded the NSFP with Albrecht von Graefe, a fascist German politician and landowner who was an early associate of Hitler. In February 1925 the NSFP was absorbed into the Nazi Party, two months after Hitler’s release from Landsberg Prison. Ludendorff therefore became a fully-fledged Nazi Party MP, and would remain so until 1928.

By the beginning of the 1930s, Ludendorff was issuing stark public warnings against Hitler (4). Lee McGowan, senior lecturer in European Politics at Queen’s University Belfast, wrote that “Ludendorff, one of Hitler’s initial but temporary rivals, was one of the few individuals to register doubts” about the Nazi leader. McGowan highlighted that Ludendorff’s “concern” regarding Hitler “was ignored” by those who later put him in power. Ludendorff prophetically described Hitler as “one of the greatest demagogues of all time” who would “cast our Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery”. (5)

In his prime, Ludendorff was possessed with bundles of energy, intelligence and ruthlessness. These character traits, blended with a rare talent for tactical organisation, made him a formidable leader in war. Lieutenant-Colonel Goodspeed, professor emeritus at Brock University in Ontario, called him “the guiding genius of the German Army”. By early 1920 Ludendorff’s ambition, or rather his megalomania, was sky high. Appalled by the Treaty of Versailles signed in late June 1919, Ludendorff’s aim was to reassume the dictatorship of Germany as soon as feasibly possible, restore her lost territories, and thereafter grant his nation the “place in the sun” she deserved. For now, recognising Germany’s unfavourable international position, Ludendorff proceeded with some caution.

The nominal leader of the impending putsch, Wolfgang Kapp, was elected to the Reichstag in January 1919 as a monarchist. In September 1917 Kapp had been a leading founder of the far-right German Fatherland Party (Deutsche Vaterlandspartei). He was a firm backer of Ludendorff’s expansionist programs in the war, including the hawkish strategy of unrestricted U-boat attacks. Goodspeed noted that Kapp was “a portly intriguer who for many years had been a hard-working but obscure civil servant in the East Prussian Lands Offices. During the war, Kapp had won some notoriety as a leader of the opposition to the relatively moderate policies of Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg”. (6)

By August 1919 Kapp sought out General Ludendorff, and became acquainted with him in person. In October 1919 they established the right-wing National Association (Nationale Vereinigung), an organisation considered the “crystallisation core” of the Kapp Putsch. Another key member of the National Association was Captain Waldemar Pabst, a high-ranking German officer who would later make contact with Hitler and Mussolini. Pabst gained infamy for ordering the executions of the revolutionary socialists, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebnecht, on 15 January 1919 (7). The loss in particular of Luxemburg, one of the most remarkable women in modern times, was a serious blow to the socialist movement.

In the opening weeks of 1920 the Freikorps, German paramilitary groups comprising ex-World War One soldiers, were openly debating a manoeuvre that would overthrow the Weimar Republic. The 39-year-old Pabst, commander of the Freikorps Guards Cavalry, was one of the first to be drawn into the scheme. He rented an office in central Berlin, and rallied those who were convinced that a coup was needed to save the Fatherland. Colonel Max Bauer joined the plotters. He was a distinguished soldier and Ludendorff’s Chief of Operations from 1916 to 1918.

Kapp still required a mighty sword with which to wield his putsch. He looked inevitably to Ludendorff but Germany’s war icon again advanced with due care, and would not consent to lead it. Kapp had to settle for General Walther von Lüttwitz, a diminutive and fiery Prussian aged in his early 60s, dubbed the “Father of the Freikorps”. Von Lüttwitz, a commander of some note in the First World War, had been scheming since July 1919 to topple the government.

Von Lüttwitz first met Kapp on 21 August 1919, and realised that the civil servant was not really the man to rule Germany. Once the coup succeeded, the German Army would take over as von Lüttwitz and others had planned. The putsch was to be executed with the Freikorps Marine Brigade, a force of 5,000 troops led by the fanatical Lieutenant-Commander Hermann Ehrhardt. His soldiers had an unforgiving reputation. At different times in 1919, they viciously put down a number of leftist developments in Germany, including the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic.

Ehrhardt’s Marine Brigade was photographed, beginning on 12 March 1920, with swastikas emblazoned on their helmets and armoured vehicles. It was with the Marine Brigade that the swastika symbol first experienced widespread notoriety, before it was adopted by the Nazi Party a few months later, in the summer of 1920 (8). One could argue these men were among the first Nazis, and indeed many of them became followers of Hitler. A youthful Hitler initially looked favourably on the Kapp Putsch, and he even belatedly flew to Berlin from Munich so as to meet the conspirators. Kapp had arranged Hitler’s flight. (9)

Under the Versailles Treaty’s conditions, the Freikorps were to be dissolved and the powerful Ehrhardt Brigade was soon up to be axed, on 10 March 1920. On hearing this, a panic-stricken Ehrhardt approached von Lüttwitz, who reassured the younger man by saying, “Don’t do anything and keep quiet. I won’t permit the troops to be disbanded”. The coup was originally expected to take place some time in April 1920 but, mainly because of the above demobilisation order, it was brought back for early or mid-March.

On 9 March 1920, Ludendorff’s right-hand man Colonel Bauer went to see Major-General Neill Malcolm, Chief of the British Military Mission to Berlin. Bauer wanted to know if the English, with their ambivalent attitude towards Germany, would acquiesce to their putsch. Bauer remarked to Malcolm that a resurgent Germany “would be a useful counterpoise to France on the continent”. Malcolm responded that a military coup in Germany would be “sheer madness” (10). Bauer was unperturbed by this frank encounter, and went away telling everyone that the British government had assured the plotters its friendly neutrality.

Image on the right: Walther von Lüttwitz (centre) and Gustav Noske (right), c. 1920 (CC BY-SA 3.0 de)

On 10 March 1920 Gustav Noske, the Weimar Republic’s defence minister, became alarmed when he heard that the Ehrhardt Brigade was not dismantled as scheduled. General Hans von Seeckt, the effective leader of the new German Army (the Reichswehr), told Noske that von Lüttwitz had resisted the demobilisation command. Von Seeckt, a cunning operator, sat on the fence over coming days. It was only late on the 12th of March – within hours of the coup starting – that defence minister Noske discovered by chance the Ehrhardt Brigade was leaving its base at Döberitz, 15 miles from Berlin, and marching on the capital. Noske did his best to nip the coup in the bud, by relaying orders over the telephone, but it was too late.

Noske knew that the German Army would not defend the Weimar Republic against the Freikorps. Von Seeckt informed Noske just before the putsch that German troops do not fire on each other, particularly past comrades in war. To compound matters, Berlin’s Security Police were on the side of the rebels too. Noske informed the government hierarchy, President Friedrich Ebert and Chancellor Gustav Bauer, that they would have to flee Berlin post haste, along with the rest of their cabinet colleagues. At 5am they escaped southwards in a fleet of motor cars, travelling to Dresden and then Stuttgart, declaring that city the temporary capital of the Reich.

Ehrhardt and his battalion, armed with rifles and stick grenades, entered Berlin just before dawn at 6am on Saturday the 13th of March. They rested briefly in the Tiergarten park in central Berlin, adjacent to the Unter den Linden boulevard, and less than a kilometre from the Reich Chancellory. The weather was unusually mild and calm. After a few minutes in the Tiergarten, some members of the Ehrhardt Brigade saw Ludendorff, in full military attire, striding down the Unter den Linden. Ludendorff spotted them also, in fact had expected to see them, and he stopped near the Unter den Linden to talk to von Lüttwitz. A flustered Dr Kapp arrived – the ceremonial dictator was suitably dressed for the occasion in morning coat, top hat, striped trousers and spats.

Ludendorff walked over to greet Ehrhardt and his men, who fell into formation. With the clock fast approaching 7am, the Imperial colours of black, white and red were unfurled. A brass band was organised. Goodspeed wrote that,

“Ludendorff, von Lüttwitz and Kapp took up their positions in front of the troops; the brass band struck up Deutschland über Alles; and away they went, goose-stepping through the great arch of the Brandenburger Tor, up Unter den Linden with the Quadriga of Victory looking down on them, and so on to the Government quarter of Berlin”. (11)

With it being a Saturday some Berliners, up early for grocery shopping and entirely unaware of what was unfolding, stared in amazement as Ludendorff and company marched past them. Other residents of Berlin, awakened by the brass band, gazed out of their windows and from balconies. Kapp, von Lüttwitz and Ludendorff went straight to the Reich Chancellory and entered the main door, but found the place deserted; apart from, that is, the presence of the liberal vice-chancellor Eugen Schiffer, who agreed to stay behind as a representative of the legal government.

Lieutenant-Commander Ehrhardt, on learning that the Weimar leaders and ministers were allowed to escape, reacted angrily. He felt, at the least, that they should have been apprehended and thrown in jail. Von Lüttwitz, believing they were merely a rascally bunch of politicians, was content to let them go. Throughout Saturday, the burgeoning Freikorps paramilitary formations surrounded Berlin and took control with ease. War weary Berliners reacted to the coup, for the most part, with indifference or contempt, but large street demonstrations against the conspirators did not unfold. When news spread across Berlin that Ludendorff was directly involved, and present in the Reich Chancellory, some hundreds of his supporters – monarchists and rightists – gathered outside the building, waving Imperial flags, and hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

The Reich Chancellory was filling up with an assortment of people: From his holiness Gottfried Traub, a Lutheran Pastor and former Court Chaplain to the Kaiser, now to be the Minister of Culture, to Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln, jack of all trades and Kapp’s Foreign Press Censor. Colonel Bauer and Captain Pabst were there, jovial and enthusiastic.

It was becoming clear, however, that neither Kapp nor von Lüttwitz had the first notion of how to govern. Kapp was having difficulty in finding a typewriter and typewritist, in order to compose his proclamation to the German public. He remembered at last that his daughter had taken a typing course during the war, and summoned her to the Reich Chancellory at once. To his extreme irritation Kapp could not locate the new Press Chief, Hans Schnitzler, and he shouted down the corridor “Where is Schnitzler? I cannot govern without Schnitzler!” (12). Unknown to Kapp, Schnitzler had earlier been refused entry to the Reich Chancellory by the storm-troopers, who did not know him.

Von Lüttwitz, arguing demonstratively into the telephone, was busy dealing with a case of insubordination from his son-in-law, Colonel Kurt von Hammerstein. The Colonel courageously refused to send his troops into Berlin to bolster the coup. General von Seeckt, upon hearing this, commented drily, “How can you expect von Lüttwitz to run the country, when he can’t control his own son-in-law?”

Come the following day, Sunday evening, the coup was beginning to crack as the trade unions turned against the dictatorship. In Stuttgart the exiled Weimar government signed a proclamation for a nationwide general strike, which was duly obeyed by the workers in Berlin on Monday the 15th of March. No essential services were exempt and the capital ceased to function. Elsewhere the industrial Ruhr was paralysed. Also on Monday some of the locals, discerning the conspirators’ incompetence, were becoming restless and antagonistic. The Freikorps responded with brutality, not for the last time, in opening fire on unarmed civilians. (13)

During Monday evening Kapp was informed that the British High Commissioner, Lord Kilmarnock, said Colonel Bauer’s story of British support was “a damned lie”. Kapp turned pale on hearing this (14). The putsch in reality could not have succeeded under any circumstances, because the Allies would not have allowed it so shortly after the war’s conclusion. It was this factor, and not the general strike as is often claimed, which was truly decisive in the coup’s failure. The ink was barely dry on the Versailles Treaty documents. France especially would have relished a chance to march deeper into a weakened Germany’s territory.

On Tuesday afternoon, Major-General Malcolm officially outlined to von Lüttwitz that the British government, led by David Lloyd George, would not recognise the Kapp regime. That night, the beleaguered putschists convened in the heavily guarded Reich Chancellory. Since they could think of no action to rescue their coup, they started arguing bitterly among themselves. When it was clear that von Lüttwitz was not going to be present, they blamed all of their problems on him. The recriminations continued until dawn. Bauer, with tears streaming down his cheeks, requested that Ludendorff now lead the putsch. Ehrhardt in particular supported this suggestion, but Ludendorff wisely declined the offer, with thanks.

By the morning of Wednesday the 17th of March, Kapp learnt that the Berlin Security Police had reversed their position and were demanding his resignation. With further unrest breaking out through Germany, the writing was on the wall. Badly losing his nerve, Kapp decided it was time to resign and so ended the putsch that bore his name.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1 Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (Penguin Publishing Group, 25. Jan 2005), p. 176

2 Donald J. Goodspeed, The Conspirators (Macmillan, 1 Jan. 1962), p. 116

3 Michael Kellogg, The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Emigres and the Making of National Socialism (Cambridge University Press; First Edition, 2 Feb. 2001), p. 128

4 Walter Otto Julius Görlitz, “Erich Ludendorff, German General”, Britannica

5 Lee McGowan, The Radical Right in Germany, 1870 to the Present (Routledge, 1 edition, 14 Feb. 2003), p. 64

6 Goodspeed, The Conspirators, p. 116

7 Wolfram Wette, The Wehrmacht, History, Myth, Reality (Harvard University Press, 2 Nov. 2007), p. 44

8 David Luhrssen, Hammer of the Gods: The Thule Society and the Birth of Nazism (Potomac Books, Inc., 26 April 2012), p. 131

9 Kellogg, The Russian Roots of Nazism, p. 105

10 Goodspeed, The Conspirators, p. 120

11 Goodspeed, The Conspirators, p. 127

12 Frank E. Smitha, “Coup Attempts and Violence, 1920-21”, Fsmitha.com

13 Adriana Popa, “German citizens defend democracy against Kapp Putsch, 1920”, Nvdatabase.Swarthmore.edu, 27 November 2011

14 Goodspeed, The Conspirators, p. 134

(As a preface to this column, this writer has been an adherent of the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda. Thus, I believe wholeheartedly in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and that he was truly ‘Anointed with the Christ spirit’.)

This Sunday morning I decided to drive to the beach and take a walk along the shore. Using our very old Camry (2003) it only had AM/FM radio. As I strolled thru the dial every other station I came to had religious shows, with the name of Jesus repeated continuously.

The preachers, regardless of what church they represented, talked of ‘Serving God’ and ‘Accepting Jesus as savior’. I could agree with that 100%. Disappointedly, none of the preachers touched upon topics like injustice or prejudice, or economic unfairness. No Sir! That is taboo when it comes to what I refer to as ‘ Evangelical Radio and Television’. If ‘God is Love’ as the wise ones always claim, then it goes to reason that Mega Millionaires who keep most of  their fortune cannot practice Love for their fellow man. Since ‘God is Love’ then they are NOT with their God… or any God!

My late friend and Peace Activist Ed Dunphy once was in North Carolina on business back in 2004. Ed was a marathon runner and thought that the campus at North Carolina State was a nice place to work out. As he was running he passed by a bible class that was outdoors on this beautiful afternoon. After he finished his run, Ed walked over to the group. “I heard you  all discussing abortion, and I agree with you about abortion. I am not in favor of it also. Yet, I wonder if you all are opposed to what our government has done to the people of Iraq with our carpet bombing campaign of ‘Shock and Awe’?” They looked at him as if he was an ET that just landed. “What I mean is are you as angry about aborting fetuses as you should be towards our government’s bombing and destroying pregnant women carrying fetuses with what is excused as ‘Collateral Damage’? “The teacher asked Ed to please leave or he would call security.

Imagine all those Sunday morning Bible Thumping preachers and their flocks who gave full support to men like Bush Jr. and now Trump? Of course, since most of them do vote Republican, no need to bring up Obama, another war criminal, who I suppose most ‘Born Again’ Democrats supported. Getting back to the other two war criminals, one wonders how someone can quote scripture and believe in Jesus as the Son of God, and then cheer for those two despicable men? It seems as long as someone comes down hard on abortion and the LBGT community, it matters not what we do to those dark peoples in the Middle East. Can we now make the connection of controlling the desert poor to the poor black and browns in our inner city ghettoes? The hypocrisy is astounding! Imagine the latest news of John Bolton, infamous war-mongerer since the Vietnam era (where, he said he supported that ‘War’ but did not like how it was being handled, so he chose NOT to go) coming out hard against Trump. Imagine! More food for thought about this Military Industrial Empire and its various factions, who all SUCK, but still have differences as to best control the rabble.

When the day comes, and it will, and the very people who blindly support this empire and its minions realize that THEY are next in line to be on that food bank and welfare line. Jesus was correct: No one can serve TWO masters!

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Countercurrents.org, and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid ‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].

The failure of the NHS to provide adequate protective equipment for its employees—including basic items such as gloves and masks—has been among the many unpleasant shocks of the covid-19 crisis for healthcare professionals. Yet there is a murkier scandal about the procurement of these everyday items that the NHS has yet to face.

“Slavery is prospering in the 21st century—with the NHS turning a blind eye. Economics is all that matters; manufacturers try to sell at maximum profit and purchasers minimise cost,” said Mahmood Bhutta, consultant in ear, nose, and throat surgery at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust. Bhutta founded the Medical Fair and Ethical Trade Group in 2006. He said he feels “ashamed as a doctor to be wearing gloves manufactured using human exploitation.”

Labour rights violations are widespread in the manufacture of healthcare goods globally, including disposable surgical instruments in Pakistan, surgical masks in Mexico, and healthcare uniforms in India.

Gloves off

More evidence is emerging of the British government developing motivational online media platforms targeted at young women as part of a covert counter-terrorism campaign.

Security officials have acknowledged that a Facebook page and Instagram account entitled Stoosh were created as part of the UK’s controversial Prevent counter-radicalisation programme.

The admission comes nine months after the same officials confirmed that a similar online platform entitled This Is Woke had been created as part of the programme.

Stoosh draws its name from a Jamaican patois term meaning superior, while This Is Woke draws upon the expression “stay woke”, a call – originally African-American – to remain aware of social and racial justice issues.

Stoosh Facebook’s page was created on 20 March 2017, according to Facebook transparency information. Neither the Facebook nor Instagram pages have been updated since 6 March 2018.

Stoosh describes itself on Facebook as a page that “aims to promote a safe online environment for young women to tell their stories, taking ownership of their own narrative”.

Both Stoosh and This is Woke described themselves on Facebook as having been produced by a “media/news company”.

In fact, they were created by a London-based communications company called Breakthrough Media, which was under contract to the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT), a unit within the UK government’s Home Office.

‘Like a cult’

One person who worked on the Stoosh programme at Breakthrough described how a number of people with large social media followings were recruited as influencers, and paid to promote it by using hashtags or retweeting its content.

This person said that extensive research was carried out by examining the social media usage of potential influencers – some of them as young as 16 – before they were approached and asked to assist.

“They weren’t told what was going on, they weren’t told about the Home Office,” this person said.

“And we were warned by managers not to talk about Breakthrough outside the office, or put anything about it on our CVs.

“New arrivals to Breakthrough weren’t told what was going on. They were left to work it out.

“It felt like being in a cult. There was a lot of paranoia around the office. People used to walk to the other side of the Thames to have conversations about what they were doing at work.”

The Stoosh Instagram page was last updated on 6 March 2018 (Screengrab)

Breakthrough’s office in London at the time was located close to the river near Waterloo station, on the opposite bank to parliament and nearby government departments including the Home Office.

One influencer – a fashion and lifestyle blogger with tens of thousands of followers on Instagram and YouTube – told Middle East Eye that she had been told that Stoosh was a women’s empowerment project when she was approached and asked to make a film for it.

“I wasn’t told anything about the government or the Home Office,” she said.

Breakthrough has since rebranded itself as Zinc Network, a change that began in Australia, after the company was caught persuading Muslims and a Christian clergyman to promote Australian government policies, without explicitly informing them that it was working for the government.

Other work that Zinc Network undertakes for the British government includes the monitoring of “fake news” emanating from Russia.

‘Code of ethics’

A spokesman for Zinc Network said the company helps its clients tackle some of the world’s toughest social issues.

“We have always taken seriously our responsibility to operate transparently and act with integrity,” he said. “In 2019 we reviewed all internal processes and have installed a code of ethics that respects the agency of everyone taking part in our projects including influencers.

“Supporting communities, brands and governments to promote positive social change is the driving force of our agency.”

The OSCT confirmed its role in the creation of Stoosh following a request made under the UK’s Freedom of Information Act by Faisal Qureshi, a British film scriptwriter and producer.

After Qureshi asked the Home Office for any information it held on Stoosh, the OSCT replied, confirming that it did hold material but was considering whether it should be withheld on national security grounds.

The unit then said it would cost too much to provide the information. Qureshi is now asking the UK’s Information Commissioner, which oversees compliance with the Act, to order disclosure of the material.

The OSCT also cited national security concerns when refusing to disclose information it held on its This Is Woke platform under the Freedom of Information Act.

Stoosh’s Instagram page featured motivational slogans, videos and images posted by other influencers (Screengrab)

The unit will not explain how it believes its bogus “media/news” platforms protects the UK’s national security.

However, a series of leaks from within the Home Office and its private sector contractors have shown that one purpose of the Prevent programme is to “effect attitudinal and behavioural change” among British Muslims, and to create what one document refers to as “a reconciled British Muslim identity”.

Much of the work is known to be co-ordinated by a secretive propaganda section within the OSCT called the Research, Information and Communications Unit, which has employed behavioural psychologists and anthropologists, as well as marketing and digital media specialists.

Before it was exposed as one of the OSCT’s covert counter-radicalisation initiatives, This Is Woke featured videos with titles such as “A trillion-ton iceberg has broken off Antarctica” and “Millions of pangolins are hunted each year” alongside others with titles such as “It’s time to hold extremism to account for terrorism, not Islam”.

The site also featured short panel discussions, with four young people sitting on a sofa debating subjects such as “What is fake news?” Interspersed among them videos with titles such as “What does wearing a hijab mean to you?”

Much of the Stoosh Instagram and Facebook material focuses on women who are described as “real women” and “empowered”.

Prominent among them is Angela Davis, the Marxist African American activist and academic, who is described on the Stoosh Facebook page as “influential”, “intelligent” and “incredible”. Another woman featured is veteran Egyptian feminist campaigner Nawal El-Sadawi who is described as a “protector”, “powerful” and “tenacious”.

Other unacknowledged OSCT projects have included a film about Muslim athletes, which was filmed in Afghanistan and Pakistan without the director being informed that he was working for the British government; programmes broadcast on local radio stations across Britain during Ramadan; and stalls set up during freshers’ fairs at universities.

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Featured image: An image posted on the Stoosh Facebook page showing political activist Angela Davis (Facebook)

Private prisons in the United States incarcerated 121,718 people in 2017, representing 8.2% of the total state and federal prison population. Since 2000, the number of people housed in private prisons has increased 39%.

However, the private prison population reached its peak in 2012 with 137,220 people. Declines in private prisons’ use make these latest overall population numbers the lowest since 2006 when the population was 113,791.

States show significant variation in their use of private correctional facilities. Indeed, the New Mexico Department of Corrections reports that 53% of its prison population is housed in private facilities, while 22 states do not employ any for-profit prisons. Data compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and interviews with corrections officials find that in 2017, 28 states and the federal government incarcerated people in private facilities run by corporations including GEO Group, Core Civic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America), and Management and Training Corporation.

Eighteen states with private prison contracts incarcerate more than 500 people in for-profit prisons. Texas, the first state to adopt private prisons in 1985, incarcerated the largest number of people under state jurisdiction, 12,728.

Since 2000, the number of people in private prisons has increased 39.3%, compared to an overall rise in the prison population of 7.8%. In six states the private prison population has more than doubled during this time period: Arizona (479%), Indiana (310%), Ohio (277%), Florida (199%), Tennessee (117%), and Georgia (110%).

Proportion of incarcerated population in private prisons, 2017

The Federal Bureau of Prisons maintains the nation’s highest number of people managed by private prison contractors. Since 2000, its use increased 77%, and the number of people in private federal custody — which includes prisons, half-way houses and home confinement — totaled 27,569 in 2017. While a significant historical increase, the population declined 15% since 2016, likely reflecting the continuing decline of the overall federal prison population.

Among the immigrant detention population, 26,249 people – 73% of the detained population – were confined in privately run facilities in 2017. The privately detained immigrant population grew 442% since 2002.

Political influences have been instrumental in determining the growth of for-profit private prisons and continue today. However, if overall prison populations continue the current trend of modest declines, the privatization debate will likely intensify as opportunities for the prison industry dry up and corrections companies seek profit in other areas of criminal justice services and immigration detention.

Overall private prison population numbers

Table 1. Private prison populations

a. Data is for 2019 and was reported by the New Mexico Corrections Department.
b. Data reported by the North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
~ Use of private prisons implemented after 2000
* D.C. count incorporated in federal numbers

Sources: Prisoners Series (2017, 2000), Bureau of Justice Statistics. Interviews with North Dakota and New Mexico corrections officials. Overall private prison population total for 2017 differs from Bureau of Justice Statistics report due to the inclusion of data from New Mexico obtained by The Sentencing Project which had not been available to the Bureau. Average daily immigrant detention numbers obtained from Immigration and Custom Enforcement and Removal Operations division by Detention Watch Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

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The current uprising against police violence and racism is just beginning. It is rapidly shifting public consciousness on issues of policing, violence against Black people and others, and systemic racism. The movement is deepening and becoming broader as well as putting forward solutions and making demands.

The confluence of crises including recent police violence, the COVID-19 pandemic, and economic collapse along with the ongoing crises of lack of healthcare, poverty, inequality, homelessness, personal debt, and climate plus awareness of mirage democracy in the United States have created a historic moment full of possibilities. If we continue to organize and build power, the potential for dramatic change is great.

As we wrote last week, there are dangers coming from liberal Democrats and the black misleadership class who are trying to quell the protests with distractions and weak reforms. To achieve changes that will solve the crises we face, demands must address the root causes of them. And, we must understand the dynamics of demands in social movements – what it takes to win and to hold the ruling class accountable for enacting them.

Demands to Defund and Abolish the Police

The demands to defund and abolish police are now part of the national dialogue. This is a major advancement for the movement against police violence. The pushback against these demands is coming from across the mainstream political spectrum from Donald Trump to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

When the bi-partisans unite, they are often wrong as they represent two parties funded by the millionaires and billionaires who put their interests first. Bipartisan means the various wings of the ruling class, represented by the two corporate parties, are uniting and that means a united attack on the people. They seek to protect systems that have created horrendous inequality and injustice. The police are the enforcement arm that protects the ruling class from the population impacted by that inequality and injustice.

Christy E. Lopez, a professor at Georgetown Law School who co-directs the Program on Innovative Policing, has worked inside the government on efforts to reform and control police for 25 years. Her conclusion:

“it has become clear to me that ‘reform’ is not enough. Making sure that police follow the rule of law is not enough. Even changing the laws is not enough.”

There is tension within the movement against police violence between those who seek reform and those who want to change the whole system – to abolish policing as it exists and create alternatives. In 2016, activists across the country built encampments to heighten awareness for the demand to abolish the police, provide reparations for victims, and invest in black and brown communities. They demanded “community-based forms of policing in its place that are accountable to residents.”

Advocates of abolition consistently make the point that “abolition requires more than police officers disappearing from the streets. . . Police abolition could mean and require society to decrease and eliminate its reliance on policing.” It also means decriminalizing many activities that result in police abuse, i.e. decriminalizing or legalizing drugs and the untaxed sale of cigarettes that create illegal markets. Police spend more than 90 percent of their time on things people find annoying or social and health issues that police are ill-equipped to handle. These lead to police interactions that result in police violence, especially in black and brown communities.

Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson writes that the movement needs to become more radical, not more moderate. He points out that the solutions to the current crisis are deeper than reforming the police, explaining there are “calls to eradicate white supremacy, capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and settler-colonialism that have been on clear display.” The founding of police came out of the most extreme form of capitalism, slavery, where those with money owned other people as unpaid workers. Slave patrols developed into modern-day police so the very root of policing is rotten.

Max Rameau and Netfa Freeman write:

“The core issue is POWER, not racism. We cannot change our reality by ending ‘racism,’ or the attitudes and opinions others hold of us. Our conditions will only change when we shift power into our own hands and exercise self-determination, thereby rendering the opinions of racists irrelevant.”

When it comes to changing the power dynamic, one demand — democratic community control of the police — stands out among the others. Communities being able to hire and fire police officers, review their budgets, impanel a grand jury to investigate crimes, and approve police contracts among other changes, reverse the power dynamic. The people would be in democratic control of how their communities are policed and by whom. This is a long-term demand dating back to the Black Panthers, as Green presidential candidate Howie Hawkins points out. This transition to people-power over police is seen by many as the key transition step to abolition or replacement of the police.

Rameau and Freeman conclude that “the police MUST exist in order to protect property and wealth from those who do not have.” They argue that defunding police without changing that dynamic means the wealthy elites will find other ways to protect themselves, private police who are even less accountable than the public institution.

Akuno urges “the demand for abolition should be raised to heighten the contradictions. But, it must be accompanied by the call for revolution, and the organizing effort to dismantle the entire system.” He adds we “have to resist the elevation of the liberal and Democratic party narratives and positions. We have to assert a counter-narrative in all arenas — one that aims towards transforming the Floyd rebellion into something potentially transformative.”

Building Power for Positive Change

The power structure has started to make some concessions over the past few weeks of protests, but none of these has altered the systems that maintain the current inequalities and injustices.

Some police have been fired and charged for committing violence and murder. It remains to be seen if they will be convicted and kept from policing anywhere in the future. Some cities are talking about defunding or disbanding the police, but it remains to be seen what the details will be. Schools are breaking contracts with police. More segments of the population from the media to athletes to tech companies are challenging racism and oppression in our society. These changes are happening because the people power being displayed has exposed injustice, garnered support and put the elites in a panic. The elites need to give the people something to stop the protests.

The widespread actions of militarized police using extreme violence across the country backfired and resulted in the protests growing. Federal courts in Colorado and Washington ordered governments to stop using chemical warfare against US citizens. Adding 17,000 National Guard troops in 23 states caused the National Guard troops’ morale to plummet in embarrassment over using military force to stop people from exercising their constitutional rights. President Trump’s threat of military force caused divisions in the military as retired and active generals, GI’s and National Guard troops spoke out against it.

Popular power is growing in the United States, but to build enough power to win demands that significantly alter the economic and political systems will require sustained effort. While some reforms are significant because they may meet some needs of those in the movement, we can’t stop there.

As we describe in the second class of the Popular Resistance School, if movements make concessions too early, before they have the power to make sure their demands are met and to hold leaders accountable for their actions, they will fail. The ruling class will often feign concessions to quiet the rebellion knowing all along that they are still in control.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, after signing a police reform bill, exemplified this when he said, “You don’t need to protest, you won. You accomplished your goal.”

When negotiating demands, it is all about power. If the sides coming together to negotiate do not have equal power, then the weaker side will lose. They may be given promises, but they can’t force the power holders to keep them. It is significant that elements in the society are opposed to military attacks on people expressing their First Amendment rights, but we must continue to heighten the conflict until there are real splits within the power structure.

In order to maintain their power, the ruling class requires support from the people.

• They require people to give them authority. That is why the autonomous zone in Seattle is so powerful, it is challenging that legitimacy.
• They require people to do the actual work, from the bureaucrats to city maintenance workers to other essential workers. That is why the call for a general strike is so powerful. If workers slow down or withhold their labor, governments and cities won’t function.
• They require skills and knowledge of people. The ruling elites don’t know how to run the machines or systems on which they depend.
• They require control over material resources such as energy, water and property. Last December, electrical workers in France cut off power to the police stations, big businesses and management and turned the power on for workers and the poor.
• They require the ability to punish people who disobey them. If guards and police refuse to stop people, courts refuse to prosecute and jails refuse to hold people, the power elites lose that control.

The bottom line is that we have the ability to remove power from the ruling class and that must be our goal if we are to win the changes we need in this moment of multiple crises. The seeds of transformation have been planted, now it is our task to nurture them.

We do that by putting out a vision of the changes we require and continuing to protest in support of that vision. We need to build relationships with others in our community to raise awareness of the crises and how to stop them. We need to support each other through mutual aid and building alternative systems to meet basic needs. Through our collective effort, we can stop the destructive machine and create a new world.

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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published. 

It’s all desperately sad to watch, isn’t it? At TruePublica we have consistently warned since David Cameron’s 2015 electoral win that Britain was in grave danger. We warned that Cameron, little more than an over-privileged corporate public relations agent would usher in the decline of Britain leading to a proud nation circling the plughole.

We warned that Brexit would happen, we warned that global Britain would rapidly decline, we warned that Conservatism would die, that a technocrat would bring us a techno-Starsi-state and we warned of economic decline, social breakdown and what the undermining of institutions to uphold civil society would do. We’ve spent five years on the same drum, writing articles and books, investigating, publishing and lobbying politicians.

Take a good look, because this week should give some clue as to what is really happening in Britain today and what our future looks like.

Boris Johnson’s handling and record of leading the country through the Covid-19 crisis speaks volumes. The worst fatality rate in Europe. The world’s worst death rate per million. Public health workers raising funds to sue the government for negligence. Tens of thousands of families have been shattered because of right-wing dogma – who are also gearing up class-action lawsuits to bring justice to loved ones lost.

The economic crisis is soon to follow. April was the worst recessionary month this country has ever witnessed, as it has been all over the world. But in Britain, the OECD predicts it will be the worst recovery of all developed countries across the planet.

In the space of a week, a culture war erupted that started with the Black Lives Matter movement in a country still coming to terms with its own colonial history and ended with a bunch of beer-soaked white nationalists attacking the police and urinating over statues of heroes defending the nation from terrorism that we rightly should be proud of. In true Trumpism, Johnson, a known racist himself condemned the violence as “racist thuggery” in a post on Twitter. That was it.

But Johnson really should have been revelling in his ‘no-extension’ speech that no-one heard because all the other noise of division is much louder. Meanwhile, British business leaders went on the offensive and roundly hit out at Downing Street because they rightly feel that dealing with the pandemic and a hard-Brexit on December 31st is simply too much. So Johnson had to embarrassingly back down and agree to reduce hard border checks with the EU. This was only two weeks after admitting that a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland was both A) a lie and B) an inconvenient truth.

Like Trump, Johnson could only think to lie again and said that “Confidence will return and you will see a bounce back in the UK” – without a shred of evidence that it will. Indeed all the indicators and predictors of economic performance say the opposite – just as the OECD confirmed.

The furlough scheme, which as of last week had seen nearly 9 million jobs supported by the government at a cost of about £20 billion, has been largely responsible for preventing a historic spike in unemployment. Some experts are now forecasting unemployment will approach or even exceed 10 per cent at the year-end, something not seen in the U.K. since the depression years of the 1930s. But if that was bad enough, wait until those beer-bellied yobs lose their jobs and get in a queue at the Job Centre where the Universal Credit computer says no.

In a TruePublica article last year entitled: Cruel Britannia – the Road to Ruin, we said:

“Whilst, on the subject of right-wing nationalists, another social grenade with the pin pulled by the likes of Farage, Johnson and Co, is the rise of white nationalism – or as some like to mistakenly call it ‘Britain’s exceptionalism’ (which is a different failure). The tiniest spark and Britain’s cities could go up in the bi-coloured flames of white versus black. Black people in Britain have many genuine grievances. Windrush is just one awful example of many and they will no doubt air them – but white supremacism/nationalism is a cancer that needs swift surgical targeting. It’s how Hitler convinced a nation to kill millions and leave the world in ruins.”

It’s no coincidence that the pandemic has highlighted the very deep inequalities that exist in Britain when figures also released last week showed people in England’s poorest areas are more than twice as likely to have died from COVID-19 than in the richest areas. And this also happens to be where racial tensions are high.

Imperial College’s epidemic modelling expert Neil Ferguson, who was thrown under a political bus to save the fires burning around Boris Johnson’s feet, did not mince his words by saying that had the U.K. gone into lockdown just one week earlier — a decision that ultimately rested with Johnson – the Covid death toll, estimated by the FT at well over 60,000, could have been halved.

Then, to add more pain, the government plan to get children back to school to release the workforce emphatically failed because teachers no longer trust the government. The ‘trace and track’ app then failed because one-third of the public also doesn’t trust … the government.

Corruption and malfeasance have been uncovered in the heart of this government throughout the last month. In just one incident of several, GCHQ demanded the cyber-security keys to the entire NHS database and within days, Palantir – the American company at the centre of the Cambridge Analytica scandal has taken the personal health records of every man, woman and child in the country to sell to American ‘healthcare’ and insurance giants.

“It’s what they wanted all along and this is what national division looks like – white nationalists pissing over our heroes outside the home of democracy while riot police protect a boarded up statue of Winston Churchill”

Boris Johnson, a man with little interest in either hard work or detail has insisted his government has been “led by the science” and taken the “right decisions at the right time.” Unfortunately, even many of his own team concede it’s all gone a bit ‘Pete Tong.’ Asked last Wednesday to pinpoint his biggest regrets, England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty said: “there’s a long list of things we need to look at very seriously,” but also conceded that slowness to increase its testing capacity at the start of the outbreak was key.

Then it emerged from the National Audit Office – also last week, that 25,000 elderly patients had been discharged from hospitals into care homes between March 17 and April 15. This was done with no policy in place to test for COVID-19. The outcome of that is still being investigated. Even Jeremy Hunt – a man who despises the ideology of a taxpayer-funded NHS, now chair of the governments’ health committee said it was “extraordinary we did not appear to consider risks of asymptomatic infection.”

Then the former advisor to Boris Johnson, Tim Montgomerie – a Times columnist, came out with an article entitled – “Boris Johnson Isn’t Fit To Lead.” “There is little escaping an obvious reality: this is a prime minister without clothes. The country can see this, even if cabinet ministers and Tory MPs pretend not to. He is what he is and he is not up to the job.

The Spectator, the mouthpiece of centre-right politics concluded that the “prime minister is painfully out of his depth.”

The letters that spell “Cummings” now sends shivers up the national spine. This unelected sociopath is the maniac running the country from Downing Street, which Charlie Cooper at politico describes as – “as a closed shop, running things from the centre under a “reign of terror.”

The Telegraph also withdraws support from the government when it headlines with a piece entitled: Britain is a ship of fools heading for the rocks. “What has become of your country?” one foreign diplomat asked me the other day. “We see only a ship of fools and a plague ship at that.”

The result to all of this is that the newly elected Boris Johnson, who would normally be on his political honeymoon has crashed in all of the poll-ratings bar none. Keir Starmer, the newly elected leader of the Labour party – a man who has the arduous task of repairing a party riven in discord – is now 20 points ahead. An Ipsos MORI published last Friday, saw Starmer at +31 – the best approval rating of any opposition leader since Tony Blair in the 1990s.

In other words, the ideology of the hard left under Corbyn and hard-right under Johnson has almost universally collapsed. For Corbyn, it was about perceived militant economic extremism and for Johnson, its everything he’s screwed up – which is everything he turns his hand to.

The division sowed by the likes of David Cameron who desperately swung the party to the right to appease its flagging popularity and those over 65 who wanted Brexit have led Britain to where we are right now – divided. We now have a fully-fledged binary nation where baby boomers despise millennials, the left hates the right, and we’re all either in or out, black or white and so on. There’s no stopping it. We can’t agree on anything. It’s what Britain is today.

Michael Gove said last week – “On 1 January 2021 we will take back control and regain our political & economic independence.” This was his idea of how brilliant Britain will be by denying her a few months breathing space by allowing for a Brexit extension. Gove lied about the process in the beginning, lied about what would happen throughout, and even lied specifically about the extension option. This is why Britain is literally falling to pieces at the seams – because it’s now built of a raft of lies and division.

Britain is now completely immersed in it and it is no better exemplified than baying white nationalists spoiling for a fight, pissing over heroes outside the home of democracy, while riot police protect a boarded up statue of Winston Churchill.

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One of the most disturbing aspects of American foreign policy since 9/11 has been the assumption that decisions made by the United States are binding on the rest of the world, best exemplified by President George W. Bush’s warning that “there was a new sheriff in town.” Apart from time of war, no other nation has ever sought to prevent other nations from trading with each other, nor has any government sought to punish foreigners using sanctions with the cynical arrogance demonstrated by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The United States uniquely seeks to penalize other sovereign countries for alleged crimes that did not occur in the U.S. and that did not involve American citizens, while also insisting that all nations must comply with whatever penalties are meted out by Washington. At the same time, it demonstrates its own hypocrisy by claiming sovereign immunity whenever foreigners or even American citizens seek to use the courts to hold it accountable for its many crimes.

The conceit by the United States that it is the acknowledged judge, jury and executioner in policing the international community began in the post-World War 2 environment, when hubristic American presidents began referring to themselves as “leaders of the free world.” This pretense received legislative and judicial backing with passage of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987 (ATA) as amended in 1992 plus subsequent related legislation, to include the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act of 2016 (JASTA). The body of legislation can be used to obtain civil judgments against alleged terrorists for attacks carried out anywhere in the world and can be employed to punish governments, international organizations and even corporations that are perceived to be supportive of terrorists, even indirectly or unknowingly. Plaintiffs are able to sue for injuries to their “person, property, or business” and have ten years to bring a claim.

Sometimes the connections and level of proof required by a U.S. court to take action are tenuous, and that is being polite. Suits currently can claim secondary liability for third parties, including banks and large corporations, under “material support” of terrorism statutes. This includes “aiding and abetting” liability as well as providing “services” to any group that the United States considers to be terrorist, even if the terrorist label is dubious and/or if that support is inadvertent.

The ability to sue in American courts for redress of either real or imaginary crimes has led to the creation of a lawfare culture in which lawyers representing a particular cause seek to bankrupt an opponent through both legal expenses and damages. To no one’s surprise, Israel is a major litigator against entities that it disapproves of. The Israeli government has even created and supports an organization called Shurat HaDin, which describes on its website how it uses the law to bankrupt opponents.

The Federal Court for the Southern District of Manhattan has become the clearing house for suing the pants off of any number of foreign governments and individuals with virtually no requirement that the suit have any merit beyond claims of “terrorism.” In February 2015, a lawsuit initiated by Shurat HaDin led to the conviction of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization of liability for terrorist attacks in Israel between 2000 and 2004. The New York Federal jury awarded damages of $218.5 million, but under a special feature of the Anti-Terrorism Act the award was automatically tripled to $655.5 million. Shurat HaDin claimed sanctimoniously that it was “bankrupting terror.”

The most recent legal victory for Israel and its friends occurred in a federal district court in the District of Columbia on June 1^st, where Syria and Iran were held to be liable for the killing of American citizens in Palestinian terrorist attacks that have taken place in Israel. Judge Randolph D. Moss ruled that Americans wounded and killed in seven attacks carried out by Palestinians inside the Jewish state were eligible for damages from Iran and Syria because they provided “material support” to militant groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The court will at a future date determine the amount of the actual damages.

It should be observed that the alleged crime took place in a foreign country, Israel, and the attribution of blame came from Israeli official sources. Also, there was no actual evidence that Syria and Iran were in any way actively involved in planning or directly enabling the claimed attacks, which is why the expression “material support,” which is extremely elastic, was used. In this case, both Damascus and Tehran are definitely guilty as charged in recognizing and having contact with the Palestinian resistance organizations though it has never been credibly asserted that they have any influence over their actions. Syria and Iran were, in fact, not represented in the proceedings, a normal practice as neither country has diplomatic representation in the U.S. and the chances of a fair hearing given the existing legislation have proven to be remote.

And one might well ask if the legislation can be used against Israel, with American citizens killed by the Israelis (Rachel Corrie, Furkan Dogan) being able to sue the Jewish state’s government for compensation and damages. Nope. U.S. courts have ruled in similar cases that Israel’s army and police are not terrorist organizations, nor do they materially support terrorists, so the United States’ judicial system has no jurisdiction to try them. That result should surprise no one as the legislation was designed to specifically target Muslims and Muslim groups.

In any event, the current court ruling which might total hundreds of millions of dollars could prove to be difficult to collect due to the fact that both Syria and Iran have little in the way of remaining assets in the U.S. In previous similar suits, most notably in June 2017, a jury deliberated for one day before delivering a guilty verdict against two Iranian foundations for violation of U.S. sanctions, allowing a federal court to authorize the U.S. government seizure of a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. It was the largest terrorism-related civil forfeiture in United States history. The presiding judge decided to distribute proceeds from the building’s sale, nearly $1 billion, to the families of victims of terrorism, including the September 11th attacks. The court ruled that Iran had some culpability for the 9/11 attacks solely based on its status as a State Department listed state sponsor of terrorism, even though the court could not demonstrate that Iran was in any way directly involved.

A second court case involved Syria, ruling that Damascus was liable for the targeting and killing of an American journalist who was in an active war zone covering the shelling of a rebel held area of Homs in 2012. The court awarded $302.5 million to the family of the journalist, Marie Colvin. In her ruling, Judge Amy Berman Jackson cited “Syria’s longstanding policy of violence” seeking “to intimidate journalists” and “suppress dissent.” A so-called human rights group funded by the U.S. and other governments called the Center for Justice and Accountability based its argument, as in the case of Iran, on relying on the designation of Damascus as a state sponsor of terrorism. The judge believed that the evidence presented was “credible and convincing.”

Another American gift to international jurisprudence has been the Magnitsky Act of 2012, a product of the feel-good enthusiasm of the Barack Obama Administration. It was based on a narrative regarding what went on in Russia under the clueless Boris Yeltsin and his nationalist successor Vladimir Putin that was peddled by one Bill Browder, who many believe to have been a major player in the looting of the former Soviet Union. It was claimed by Browder and his accomplices in the media that the Russian government had been complicit in the arrest, torture and killing of one Sergei Magnitsky, an accountant turned whistleblower working for Browder. Almost every aspect of the story has been challenged, but it was completely bought into by the Congress and White House and led to sanctions on the Russians who were allegedly involved despite Moscow’s complaints that the U.S. had no legal right to interfere in its internal affairs relating to a Russian citizen.

Worse still, the Magnitsky Act has been broadened and is now the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act of 2017. It is being used to sanction and otherwise punish alleged “human rights abusers” in other countries and has a very low bar for establishing credibility. It was most recently used in the Jamal Khashoggi case, in which the U.S. sanctioned the alleged killers of the Saudi dissident journalist even though no one had actually been arrested or convicted of any crime.

The long-established principle that Washington should respect the sovereignty of other states even when it disagrees with their internal or foreign policies has effectively been abandoned. And, as if things were not bad enough, some recent legislation virtually guarantees that in the near future the United States will be doing still more to interfere in and destabilize much of the world. Congress passed and President Trump has signed the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act, which seeks to improve Washington’s response to mass killings. The prevention of genocide and mass murder is now a part of American national security agenda. There will be a Mass Atrocity Task Force and State Department officers will receive training to sensitize them to impending genocide, though presumably the new program will not apply to the Palestinians as the law’s namesake never was troubled by their suppression and killing by the state of Israel.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

According to American media, U.S. President Donald Trump plans to withdraw 9,500 American soldiers from Germany. U.S. troop numbers in Germany will be reduced to about 25,000 at a time when Warsaw insists on the strengthening of American military presence in Poland.

Germany pays for 35,000 foreign soldiers and 17,000 civilian workers, along with their families, to be in the European country. Between 2012 and 2019, Berlin allocated €480 million to all expenses related to hosting NATO soldiers in Germany. This was almost exclusively for the Americans. For 2019-2030, another €650 million was allocated. The claim that Germany is receiving American defense for free is completely untrue.

Even the withdrawal of nearly 10,000 American soldiers from Germany will not change anything significantly for the European country. This is because the main heart of the U.S. presence in Germany is the Ramstein base. The U.S. will never leave Ramstein as it is effectively an American enclave on German soil and is the center of military logistics and an important point to observe Eastern Europe.

In the end, the deployment of American troops is only part of the U.S.’ long-term plans for Europe, which was once well explained by a Polish-American political scientist and political adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Namely, the U.S. wants to control France, Germany, Poland and Ukraine as they can collectively oppose Russia. Since the presidency of Charles de Gaulle (1959-1969), Washington has never been able to fully control Paris, especially since there are no U.S. military bases in France. Germany however operated according to the American model and is one of its most loyal allies to progress U.S. interests in Europe. Poland under conservative rule is strengthening its historical hostilities towards Russia, and to a lesser extent against Germany, too. This makes Poland an ideal partner for the U.S. in Europe, and today, probably even more so then Germany. Meanwhile, Ukraine is always proving to be a willing agent of Washington against Russia.

Some German politicians in response to the withdrawal of some American soldiers are leading mass hysteria. They want to win or buy Washington’s favor. This is despite the fact that Germany from an economic perspective will benefit from the partial American withdrawal; while on the other hand, Germany does not have its so-called security concerns weakened since the American soldiers will be placed just a few hundred kilometers away in Poland, which of course is to put further pressure against Kaliningrad.

From the point of view of security policy, Germany nevertheless remains dependent on the U.S. military and political establishment and can be caught up in American aggressions that it does not need to be involved in. European emancipation in the field of security policy is only being pushed by the French and the status quo of American dominance is ardently defended by many other European countries, especially Poland.

Russia has already expressed its concerns that the potential relocation of American soldiers is directed against its country. Spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova said “as for the White House initiative mentioned earlier, it is also worrying because immediately there was a proposal to move American soldiers still stationed in Germany to neighboring Poland. I would like to emphasize that the reconfiguration of the U.S. presence towards Russian borders will not only deepen the already high tension in the sphere of security on the continent, but will further complicate the prospects for the development of constructive dialogue between Russia and NATO in the military and political sphere.”

However, Poland is facing competition for the relocation of these American soldiers. The Atlantic Council of Bulgaria is urging for the Balkan country’s government to not pass up the opportunity and advocates that they should ask the U.S. to relocate American soldiers from Germany to Bulgaria.

In a Facebook post, the Atlantic Council of Bulgaria argues that “The urgent need to strengthen NATO’s southeastern flank, in the context of the violated balance of powers in the Black Sea in favor of the Russian Federation” and “a new generation of people who are permanently oriented towards the values of the Euro-Atlantic family and firmly determined to permanently interrupt Russian dependencies, which are still stumbling the development of the state,” are reasons why the U.S. must relocate its troops to Bulgaria.

Whether these soldiers are relocated to Poland, or potentially even Bulgaria, the purpose is to strengthen countries that are willingly and wanting to oppose Russia. Despite some German concerns that their security will be weakened, Ramstein base will remain the jewel of American military deployments in Europe. Although some commentators believe the American soldiers leaving Germany was a partial U.S. withdrawal from Europe, it is actually an escalation aimed at pressuring Russia.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Since taking office, the Trump regime upped the stakes in Washington’s long war by other means on Iran.

US hostility toward the Islamic Republic has nothing to do with a national security threat that doesn’t exist.

It’s all about its sovereign independence, wanting Israel’s main regional rival neutralized and returning Iran to US client state status, along with gaining control over its huge hydrocarbon resources, some of the world’s largest.

The Trump regime is waging all-out war on Iran by other means.

In early June, the CIA-connected Washington Post falsely claimed that Tehran might attack US regional positions ahead of its November 3 presidential election.

Separately, recent reports by Fox News and the Times of Israel perpetuated the myth about Iran getting closer to being able to produce nukes.

Unreliable sources for these claims come from Israel and US Iranophobes, no credible evidence supporting them because none exists.

What’s going on is longstanding US/Israeli propaganda war on Iran, pushing the envelope toward possible direct confrontation beyond what already happened.

It’s a dangerous, high-risk game, risking war with a nation able to hit back hard if preemptively attacked.

The latest inflammatory accusation against Iran comes from UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, a figure dismissive of US, NATO, Israeli high crimes of war and against humanity.

Never condemning them, his customary response to naked aggression is urging both sides to “show restraint.”

His latest support for imperial interests over world peace came from a conveniently leaked UN report last week that cites him.

It claimed Iranian missiles were used to attack Saudi oil installations last September, backing Trump regime accusations at the time.

Ignored was longstanding US war on Yemen since October 2001 — launched by Bush/Cheney, escalated by Obama with Saudi involvement, Trump upping the stakes exponentially.

In October 2016, Reuters claimed that Iran was supplying Yemeni Houthis with weapons through neighboring Oman — unnamed US, other “Western” officials its source, along with Saudi Arabia.

In response, Omani Foreign Minister Yousef bin Alwi debunked the accusation, saying:

“There is no truth to this. No weapons have crossed our border and we are ready to clarify any suspicions if they arise.”

Reuters admitted the following:

Yemeni “Houthis gained a trove of weapons when whole divisions allied to former Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh sided with them at the start of the war last year,” adding:

“US and (other) Western officials who spoke to Reuters about (access to weapons by Houthi fighters said their claim) was based on intelligence they had seen but did not elaborate on its nature” — its credibility very suspect not explained by the wire service.

According to the leaked UN report, missiles used by the Houthis have Iranian “design characteristics (and/or) bear Farsi markings.”

Left unsaid was if Iran was supplying missiles to Houthis, why would its authorities let them be easily identified, notably by Farsi markings on them?

In response to 2018 accusations of Iran supplying Houthis with missiles, then IRGC commander General Ali Jafari debunked the claim, saying:

“How is it possible to send weapons, especially missiles, to a country which is fully under siege and there is even no possibility to send medical aid and foodstuff?”

“Missiles fired at Saudi Arabia belong to Yemen which have been overhauled and their range has been increased.”

Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami denounced a pattern of false US accusations, while ignoring its own imperial high crimes.

On Saturday, Iran’s UN envoy Majid Takht Ravanchi slammed the leaked UN report, saying:

“Iranian origin of arms (to Yemeni Houthis) is a fallacy. The UN secretariat lacks capacity, expertise and knowledge to conduct investigations,” adding:

“It seems the US, with its history of Iran-bashing, sits in the driver’s seat to shape UN assessments.”

On Friday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the leaked UN report as unacceptable propaganda, adding:

“The UN Secretariat’s report is clearly under political pressure from the US and Saudi regimes.”

It appears that the report “was prepared under direction of the (Trump regime) to be used…in the Security Council against Iran.”

“Such dictated processes will cause severe damage to the credibility and undermine the integrity of the United Nations.”

“The (Trump regime) is the gravest violator of Security Council Resolution 2231, and no one can clear the name of that State from systematic violations of international rules.”

Iran is the region’s leading proponent of peace, stability, and mutual cooperation with other nations — at war with none, threatening none.

Its military capabilities are solely for defense, its legal right under international law.

Its involvement in Syria is all about aiding government forces combat US supported ISIS and likeminded terrorists, Iranian military advisors in the country, not combat troops.

The US, its key NATO allies, Israel, and the Saudis are aggressor states, waging preemptive regional wars.

Instead of laying blame where it belongs for what’s gone on endlessly in the Middle East, the region transformed into a permanent war theater by the US and its allies, Guterres falsely suggested that Iran breached Security Council Res. 2231, unanimously affirming the JCPOA.

Since adopted in 2015, taking effect in January 2016, Iran has been in full compliance with its provisions — no evidence suggesting otherwise.

In sharp contrast, the US breached the agreement, notably by Trump abandonment of what’s binding international and US constitutional law under its Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2).

Britain, France, Germany, and the EU breached the landmark agreement by failing to observe its provisions.

Iran slammed the new UN report, saying it was prepared and leaked because of “political pressure from the (Trump) and Saudi regimes.”

Its timing comes when Pompeo and other Trump regime hardliners want the expiring UN arms embargo on Iran kept in force permanently, along with UN sanctions ended by the JCPOA reimposed.

The Security Council has final say on these issues. Russia and China firmly oppose reimposition.

The US, no longer part of the JCPOA because of Trump’s unlawful abandonment of the deal, is pushing hard for reimposition.

Which way EU countries intend to go remains uncertain.

Will they uphold the rule of law and save the JCPOA, or let it die by siding with hostile Trump regime policies against nonbelligerent Iran.

What happens will be known as things play out in the weeks and months ahead.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

The backlash against Donald Trump’s illegal show of military force against anti-racist protesters compelled him to withdraw the troops — for now. But we must continue raising the illegality of this use of the military and pushing for barriers to guard against future such deployments. The threat of a resurgence of this violation still looms because as the protests continue, Trump might change his mind. And if he loses the election, all bets are off.

Government officials, legislators, lawyers and civil society should strenuously oppose the recall of federal troops because it would be deadly as well as illegal.

“Armed forces taking on protesters may cause them to go away, but make no mistake: People would die. And even one more death is too many,” Kelsey Baker, a former Marine who deployed to Kuwait and Iraq, wrote for Newsweek.

Although Trump didn’t invoke the Insurrection Act to justify his deployment of troops against Black people and their allies, he may well do so in the future. A review of how Trump ordered military personnel to Washington, D.C., is instructive and alarming.

As the collective outrage at the police lynching of George Floyd filled streets nationwide, Donald Trump threatened to use the U.S. military against anti-racist protesters exercising their First Amendment rights.

On May 28, Trump warned he would “send in the National Guard & get the job done right,” tweeting,

“….These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”

On June 1, Trump announced he had dispatched federal troops to Washington, D.C., “to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights.” Trump said he was ordering “thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers” to the nation’s capital.

The U.S. president sees the Movement for Black Lives as the enemy to be vanquished by his military. Trump’s attempt to co-opt Floyd’s memory and his appeal to his gun rights base were shameful.

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us,” former Defense Secretary James Mattis charged.

“All around the country, protests against police violence have been met with more police violence,” Gerry Condon, former president of Veterans For Peace (VFP), told Truthout. “Calling in the Army and the National Guard, however, will make things worse — not better.”

Moreover, it would be illegal.

Trump Threatens Governors and Deploys Troops to Washington

Trump challenged the nation’s governors to deploy large numbers of National Guardsmen in order to “dominate the streets.” Otherwise, he warned, “they’re gonna run over you, you’re gonna look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate.” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper echoed Trump, telling the governors, “the sooner that you mass and dominate the battlespace, the quicker this dissipates and we can get back to the right normal.”

Several governors said thanks, but no thanks. “I reject the notion that the federal government can send troops into the state of Illinois,” Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker told CNN. “The president has created an incendiary moment here…. His rhetoric is inflaming passions. He should stay out of our business. Every day he has inflamed racial tensions.”

In a joint statement, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock noted,

“There is no need for the deployment of U.S. troops to maintain order in our city. The President’s threat to deploy federal troops is counterproductive and will only stoke the potential for worse violence and destruction.”

About 1,600 troops from Fort Bragg and Fort Drum began arriving in Washington on June 1. Trump wanted 10,000 active duty troops dispatched throughout the country, but Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley reportedly talked him out of it.

“The military is not trained in peacekeeping or de-escalation. Soldiers are trained to use lethal force, which is often employed against civilians in faraway lands,” said Condon. “Now they are being ordered to suppress peaceful protesters in this country who are exercising their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.”

Indeed, The New York Times reports the Pentagon used Army National Guard helicopters in Washington “as a show of force usually reserved for combat zones.” On June 1, two helicopters flew low over protesters, sending them running for cover and tearing posters from the sides of buildings. Intended as a “persistent presence,” pilots were given no guidance and were forced to wing it. “The wind speeds created by a low-hovering helicopter can lift objects and cause serious damage, potentially leading to injury or death,” according to a Human Rights Watch report.

On June 7, after his threat to use federal troops against people exercising their constitutional rights drew widespread condemnation from military leaders, defense officials and members of Congress, Trump complied with Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser’s demand and ordered the National Guard to withdraw from Washington, adding, “now that everything is under perfect control.”

But Trump had threatened on June 4 that “all options are on the table” and when he gave the June 7 order, he said the troops “can quickly return if needed.”

Generals and Defense Officials Oppose Using Troops Against Protesters

In a stunning statement, 89 former defense officials said on June 5, “We are alarmed at how the president is betraying [his] oath [to support and defend the Constitution] by threatening to order members of the U.S. military to violate the rights of their fellow Americans.” They wrote that Trump gave governors “a stark choice: either end the protests that continue to demand equal justice under our laws, or expect that he will send active-duty military units into their states.” The defense officials called on Trump “to immediately end his plans to send active-duty military personnel into cities as agents of law enforcement, or to employ them or any another military or police forces in ways that undermine the constitutional rights of Americans.”

Reacting to Esper’s characterization of U.S. streets filled with protesters, retired Army Gen. Tony Thomas, who commanded the U.S. Special Operations Command, said that U.S. soil should not be called a “battlespace” unless a foreign power invades it.

Mattis issued a scathing rebuke of Trump’s reaction to the anti-racist protests. “‘Equal Justice Under Law’ … is precisely what the protesters are rightly demanding,” he wrote in a statement. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

The former defense secretary was describing Trump’s cynical staged appearance in front of a church holding a Bible after his administration used tear gas and flash-bang explosions to disperse a peaceful crowd protesting in front the White House on June 1.

Before the 2018 midterm elections, Trump also deployed active-duty troops to the southern U.S. border as a prop to show how “tough” he was.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who lost both legs serving as a military helicopter pilot in Iraq, said that Esper’s and Milley’s participation in Trump’s photo op in front of the church “sends a horrifying message to our troops — including our black and brown troops — that our military’s leaders will not protect them from unlawful orders.”

The Duty to Disobey Unlawful Orders

Members of the military “will obey lawful orders,” retired Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote for The Atlantic.

“But I am less confident in the soundness of the orders they will be given by this commander in chief, and I am not convinced that the conditions on our streets, as bad as they are, have risen to the level that justifies a heavy reliance on military troops.”

The Uniform Code of Military Justice requires that all military personnel obey lawful orders. Article 92 says, “A general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the Constitution, the laws of the United States.” A law that violates the Constitution or a federal statute is an unlawful order. Both the Army Field Manual and the Nuremberg Principles create a duty to disobey unlawful orders.

Using federal troops for civilian law enforcement violates the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA). The Insurrection Act contains an exception to the PCA. But it is reserved for extreme emergencies and has largely been used to enforce, not to violate, civil rights.

There are four ways to trigger the Insurrection Act to deploy the military on U.S. soil:

First, when the legislature or governor of a state asks the president for assistance to put down an insurrection against the government (section 251);

Second, when the president “considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings” (section 252);

Third, when “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” deprives people of a legal right, privilege, immunity, or protection, that results in the denial of Equal Protection (section 253(1)); or

Fourth, where “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy …. opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.” (section 253(2)).

Most of the times the Insurrection Act has been invoked have occurred pursuant to section 251. For example, in 1992, California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush to deploy federal troops to suppress the uprising after the officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted in their state trial.

Section 252, which is triggered by the president’s subjective belief, requires him to find that it is “impracticable” for the courts and criminal legal system to work properly. That threshold has not been met in the current situation. Although courts would be unlikely to overrule the president’s subjective decision, service members may decide that his order was illegal and refuse to obey it.

Moreover, there has been no violation of the Equal Protection Clause sufficient to trigger the use of section 253, which was enacted after the Civil War to ensure that Southern states enforced the federal rights of Black people. In 1962 and 1963, President John F. Kennedy used this section to send federal troops to Alabama and Mississippi to enforce civil rights laws. And President Lyndon Johnson also used section 253 in 1965 to protect civil rights demonstrators from police violence during the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

But Trump would use federal troops to violate, not protect, the civil rights of anti-racist protesters exercising their First Amendment rights.

Veterans For Peace called on “all current National Guard members to lay down their weapons and refuse to fight against their neighbors and fellow community members” and “refuse to serve violent and racist interests.” VFP cited “a connection between increasing racist violence in the United States and the massive indiscriminate killing of hundreds of thousands of people in other lands. Growing racism against black, brown and Muslim people in the United States is a reflection of the racism that justifies killing non-white people abroad.”

“To their credit, many soldiers and National Guard members know this is wrong,” said VFP’s Condon. “Some have already gone AWOL. Others are contacting the GI Rights Hotline for information about their legal alternatives. They do not want to attack people right here in the United States.”

The National Lawyers Guild’s Military Law Task Force (MLTF) issued a statement strongly condemning the use of National Guard and other active duty troops against anti-racist protesters. The MLTF is urging “anyone who is activated or deployed or might be facing a future deployment to call us for referral to a civilian attorney or counselor to discuss your options.”

Congress Members Oppose Using Troops Against Protesters

Almost two dozen Democratic senators wrote to Esper and Milley, opposing the use of the Insurrection Act to deploy federal troops within the United States. They called it “a significant departure from important historical uses of the law.” The senators “oppose in the strongest terms the use of U.S. military to impede the First Amendment rights of Americans,” who, they said, “are exercising their civil liberties in a call to hold government institutions to a higher standard in the fight for racial justice.” They added, “The military should never be weaponized by the President to limit these expressions for liberty and justice.”

On June 2, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia announced he would propose an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act this week to prevent federal funding for the use of military force against protesters.

When called by Rep. Adam Smith, Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, to testify about the role of the military in the protests, Esper and Milley refused.

Although the outcry against Trump’s deployment of federal troops to Washington pressured him into removing them, he could recall them at any time. We must be vigilant and sustain the opposition to Trump’s illegal use of the military against anti-racist protesters.

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Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.

Featured image is from AP Photo/Alex Brandon

There are more people behind bars in the United States than there are living in major American cities[1] such as Phoenix or Philadelphia. According to a 2018 report from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly 2 million adults[2] were being held in America’s prisons and jails. Of these 2 million prisoners, about 128,063[3] were detained in federal or state facilities operated by private prison facilities, a 47 percent increase from the 87,369[4] prisoners in 2000.

In 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) inspector general initiated a review[5] to examine conditions at a number of for-profit prisons that the federal government contracted with from fiscal year 2011 through fiscal year 2014. A report on the findings indicated that private prisons had a 28 percent[6] higher rate of inmate-on-inmate assaults and more than twice as many inmate-on-staff assaults compared with federally run or operated prisons. Furthermore, the report found that for-profit prisons in the United States were more likely to endanger inmates’ security and rights. These problems were so significant that in August 2016, the Obama administration announced that it would begin to phase out private prisons.[7]

As the number of incarcerated individuals in for-profit prisons grew, so did the number of immigrants detained in such facilities. According to a report by the Sentencing Project[8], about 4,841 immigrants were detained in for-profit facilities in 2000. By 2016, that number had soared to 26,249 immigrants—a 442 percent increase.[9] In the wake of the DOJ’s decision to phase out the use of for-profit prisons, the Homeland Security Advisory Council reviewed[10] the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) use of private immigration detention facilities. Immediately after this review was announced, the stock prices of private prison company giants CoreCivic—formerly the Corrections Corporation of America—and the GEO Group Inc. dropped by 9.4 percent and 6 percent, respectively.[11] A majority of the council agreed with the view that DHS should begin to move away from using private prison facilities but recommended that while they were still in use, they “should come with improved and expanded [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] oversight.”[12]

Following the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January 2017, however, the administration immediately shifted course to robustly support private prisons. In February of that year, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions revoked the Obama administration’s initiative,[13] and by April 2017, the DOJ began requesting bids for contracts to house federal inmates in private prison facilities[14] once again. That same month, the GEO Group won a $110 million[15] contract to build the first detention center under the new administration.

The fact that private prisons have serious, documented flaws raises questions as to why the Trump administration is so eager to support them. It is noteworthy that a pro-Trump PAC[16] and the president’s inaugural committee[17] have benefited from the private prison industry’s financial contributions. The Trump family business has benefited from the industry’s patronage as well.[18]

This issue brief details how Trump administration policies have increased the migrant detainee population—and the profits of private prisons—as well as endangered the lives of migrants being held in detention. The brief then illustrates just how much money private prisons have spent in U.S. political campaigns.

Trump administration policies have increased the number of migrants in detention

The Trump administration has implemented policies that have increased the number of migrants in detention. In early 2017, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,”[19] which instituted a massive expansion of immigration enforcement within the United States.[20] It defined enforcement priorities so broadly[21] that all undocumented individuals became subject to deportation orders, regardless of how long they had been in the country. The order represented a radical departure from the Obama administration’s approach, which prioritized the removal of migrants who had been found guilty of crimes. The executive order also directed state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws.

Similarly, in April 2019, current Attorney General William Barr rescinded a decision[22] that enabled eligible asylum-seekers to request bond from immigration judges. This decision effectively instituted indefinite detention[23] due to the fact that some migrants will now be held in detention for months or years before their cases are adjudicated. Moreover, in July 2019, DHS increased its application of expedited removal, a fast-track summary process[24] for deporting noncitizens without a hearing from an immigration judge.

Last week, the Trump administration issued a final rule in a legally questionable attempt to make changes[25] to the 1997 Flores agreement,[26] a long-standing legal agreement specifying basic standards of care for minors in detention. As interpreted, this agreement requires that minors not be held in unlicensed secure detention facilities for more than 20 days. If implemented, the administration’s changes would effectively cause undocumented children and their families to be detained in inadequate, unlicensed facilities indefinitely.[27] According to the president[28] of the American Academy of Pediatrics, “no child should be placed in detention … even short periods of detention can cause psychological trauma and long-term mental health risks.”

As expected, the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration[29] policies have led to a record-high number of immigrant detainees.[30] Currently, there are about 54,344 immigrants[31] detained in about 200 detention centers across the country. In 2017, the last time ICE produced such data, more than three-fourths[32] of the average daily detainee population was being held in a for-profit detention facility. CoreCivic and the GEO Group are recipients of more than one-half of private prison industry contracts.[33] These companies manage the detention[34] of immigrants seeking asylum, those awaiting hearings in immigration courts, and those who have been identified for removal. For every 100 immigrant detainees, 32 are in GEO Group facilities, and 21 are in CoreCivic facilities.[35]

A record number of immigrants have died in detention.[36] Since 2017, 27 immigrants have died in ICE custody, including a transgender woman named Roxsana Hernandez. Johana Medina Leon, also a transgender woman, died shortly after being released from custody.[37] Of these 27 immigrants, 21 have died in facilities[38] that are owned or operated by for-profit prison companies. In June 2019, the government’s own investigators determined that conditions in major private prison facilities were “unsafe and unhealthy”[39] and violated ICE’s own standards.[40] Despite these failures, the industry is benefiting enormously. Trump administration policies around enforcement priorities and detention practices have led to an increase in the demand for detention space, which has resulted in record-high profits for private detention facilities.

Under the Trump administration, ICE has significantly increased its enforcement operations, which has directly contributed to the rise in the migrant detainee population. In order to achieve this, ICE has consistently exceeded its budget. According to reporting from Buzzfeed News, there were 52,398[41] people in ICE custody in May 2019. Congress provided funds for ICE to maintain an average of 45,000 people in detention per day in the latest budget, but with about 54,344 migrants in detention currently, the agency is overspending these funds by more than 15 percent.[42] DHS has also increasingly begun diverting funds that had been earmarked for other agency operations to ICE in order to fund enforcement and detention operations. According to a Roll Call report, DHS intends to divert more than $200 million from other programs—including disaster relief programs—to fund immigration detention. This is the fourth consecutive fiscal year in which DHS has repurposed funds meant for other agency operations toward immigration enforcement.[43]

Significantly increasing the number of immigrants in detention means record-high profits for private prisons

During his 2016 campaign, then-candidate Trump expressed support for expanding the role of private prisons and espoused hard-line immigration policies.[44] The morning after his election, stocks in CoreCivic increased by 34 percent,[45] and those in the GEO Group rose by 18 percent.[46] The two companies have informed their shareholders that federal government contracts are integral to their[47] profitability.[48] In memos to their shareholders, both companies acknowledge that policies with the potential to reduce the U.S. detainee population constitute potential risk[49] factors[50] to their business model.

Table 1 indicates the extent to which both CoreCivic and the GEO Group are dependent on three government agencies—ICE, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the U.S. Marshals Service—for their business.

In light of the fact that both CoreCivic and the GEO Group have depended on just three agencies charged with enforcement and detention operations for an average of about 48 percent of their revenues over the past two years, these two companies have a vested interest in the Trump administration’s punitive immigration policies to ensure that they remain profitable.

Conditions in private detention facilities endanger immigrants’ lives

In FY 2018, DHS received $3 billion for custody operations.[51] At least 75 percent of the detention facilities for which DHS contracts are privately owned or operated. Despite this level of funding, conditions at these detention centers remain dangerous, and detainees’ rights are routinely violated. A 2019 Office of Inspector General (OIG) report[52] on an investigation of ICE oversight of its contracted detention facilities indicates that the agency routinely waives its own standards, including those meant to ensure the health and safety of detainees. Additionally, ICE often fails to include its quality assurance surveillance plan (QASP)[53]—a key tool for ensuring that facilities meet ICE’s performance standards—in facility contracts and rarely imposes financial consequences for facilities that are noncompliant.

According to the OIG report, only 28 out of the 106[54] contracts reviewed contained a QASP. The report[55] also stated that between October 1, 2015, and June 30, 2018, ICE imposed financial penalties on only two occasions despite documenting thousands of instances in which facilities failed to comply with detention standards. The OIG also investigated three GEO Group facilities[56] and found “egregious violations of detention standards.” All three facilities were found to have expired food, putting detainees’ health at risk. The GEO Group-operated Aurora, Colorado, facility failed to provide recreation and outdoor activities to detainees. At another GEO Group-operated facility in Adelanto, California, the OIG identified detainee bathrooms that “were in poor condition, including mold and peeling paint on the walls, floors, and showers, and unusable toilets.” All of these infractions violate ICE’s standards.[57]

According to a 2018 letter[58] from the Office of Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY) to DHS, “Of the 298 transgender people ICE detained in FY 2017, 13% were placed in solitary confinement.” This not only has adverse effects on detainees’ mental health and well-being but is also against ICE’s rules.[59] While there is existing Obama-era guidance[60] on how to provide care for transgender migrants in ICE custody, the guidance is not mandatory. Due to ICE’s negligence, LGBTQ+ immigrants continue to face a higher risk of sexual violence[61] than the general population. And as for-profit prisons continue to play an outsize role in immigration detention while providing substandard care, the health and safety of vulnerable populations such as LGBTQ+ migrants remain especially at risk.

Private prison companies are major players in political spending

Although private prisons have been ineffective at providing high-quality detention services, they have been effective at supporting political allies. In the 2016 presidential election, for example, the GEO Group and CoreCivic donated $250,000[62] each to President Trump’s inaugural committee. In 2017, the GEO Group moved its annual conference[63] to a Trump-owned resort in Boca Raton, Florida. Additionally, the GEO Group contributed heavily[64] to the campaigns of some members of the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, the congressional subcommittee charged with funding DHS.

These companies and their employees also contribute to congressional candidates, donating overwhelmingly to those running as Republicans. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, CoreCivic and its employees have spent about $3 million[65] on campaign contributions to federal candidates and PACs since 1990. Eighty-five percent of CoreCivic’s contributions to federal candidates since 1990 have gone to Republicans, while 13 percent of its contributions have gone to Democrats. Additionally, CoreCivic has spent $26.1 million on lobbying since 1998. The GEO Group and its employees have donated about $4.4 million[66] to federal candidates and PACs since 2004. Since that year, 54 percent of the GEO Group’s campaign contributions went to Republican candidates, while 15 percent went to Democratic candidates.

Conclusion

The Trump administration’s immigration policies as well as existing immigration legislation create structural incentives to increase detention, which has largely been achieved through the use of private prisons. This increased role drives these companies’ profitability while endangering the lives of immigrants through inadequate care and a lack of accountability. Special interests should not profit from immigration enforcement. Congress and the administration should hold private detention facilities that violate ICE’S standards accountable.

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Hauwa Ahmed is a research assistant for Democracy and Government at the Center for American Progress.

Notes

1. Drew Kann,“5 facts behind America’s high incarceration rate,” CNN, April 21, 2019, available at https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/28/us/mass-incarceration-five-key-facts/index.html.

2. Danielle Kaeble and Mary Cowhig, “Correctional Populations in the United States, 2016” (Washington: U.S Department of Justice, 2018), available at https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus16.pdf.

3. Kara Gotsch and Vinay Basti, “Capitalizing on Mass Incarceration: U.S Growth in Private Prisons” (Washington: The Sentencing Project, 2018), available at https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/capitalizing-on-mass-incarceration-u-s-growth-in-private-prisons/.

4. Ibid.

5. Office of the Inspector General, “Review of the Bureau of Prisons Monitoring of Contract Prisons”(Washington: U.S Department of Justice, 2016), available at https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2016/e1606.pdf.

6. Ibid.

7. Matt Zapotosky and Chico Harlan, “Justice Department says it will end use of private prisons,” The Washington Post, August 18, 2019, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/18/justice-department-says-it-will-end-use-of-private-prisons/?postshare=9221471534255226.

8. Gotsch and Basti, “Capitalizing on Mass Incarceration.”

9. Ibid.

10. Homeland Security Advisory Council, “Report on the Subcommittee on Privatized Immigration Detention facilities” (Washington: U.S Department of Homeland Security, 2016), available at https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/DHS%20HSAC%20PIDF%20Final%20Report.pdf.

11. Julia Edwards, “U.S to review use of private immigration prisons, shares slide,” Reuters, August 29, 2016, available at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-prisons-immigration-idUSKCN1141W7.

12. Homeland Security Advisory Council, “Report on the Subcommittee on Privatized Immigration Detention facilities.”

13. Eric Beech, “U.S reverses Obama-era move to phase out private prisons,” Reuters, February 23, 2017, available at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-prisons/u-s-reverses-obama-era-move-to-phase-out-private-prisons-idUSKBN1622NN.

14. Lauren-Brooke Eisen, “Trump’s first year has been the private industry’s best,” Salon, January 14, 2018, available at https://www.salon.com/2018/01/14/trumps-first-year-has-been-the-private-prison-industrys-best/.

15. Ibid.

16. Mirren Gidda, “Private Prison Company GEO Group Gave Generously to Trump and Now Has Lucrative Contract,” Newsweek, May 11, 2017, available at https://www.newsweek.com/geo-group-private-prisons-immigration-detention-trump-596505.

17. Fredreka Schouten, “Private prisons back Trump and could see big pay offs with new policies,” USA Today, February 23, 2017, available at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/02/23/private-prisons-back-trump-and-could-see-big-payoffs-new-policies/98300394/.

18. Avery Anapol, “Private prison company moves annual conference to Trump golf course,” The Hill, October 26, 2017, available at https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/357282-private-prison-company-moves-annual-conference-to-trump-golf-course.

19. Executive Office of the President, “Executive Order: Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” Press release, January 25, 2017, available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-enhancing-public-safety-interior-united-states/.

20. American Immigration Council, “Summary of Executive Order ‘Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States” (Washington: 2017), available at https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/immigration-interior-enforcement-executive-order.

21. Ibid.

22. Mica Rosenberg and Kristina Coke, “Trump attorney general’s ruling expands indefinite detention for asylum seekers,” Reuters, April 16, 2019, available at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-bond/trump-attorney-generals-ruling-expands-indefinite-detention-for-asylum-seekers-idUSKCN1RT053.

23. Ibid.

24. American Immigration Lawyers Association, “Practice Alert: Trump Administration Expands Application of Expedited Removal,” July 22, 2019, available at https://www.aila.org/advo-media/aila-practice-pointers-and-alerts/trump-administration-expands-expedited-removal.

25. Department of Homeland Security and Department of Health and Human Services, “Apprehension, Processing, Care, and Custody of Alien Minors and Unaccompanied Alien Children,” Federal Register 84 (164) (2019): 44393–44535, available at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-08-23/pdf/2019-17927.pdf.

26. Elizabeth Elkin and Emily Smith, “What is the Flores settlement?”, CNN, July 10, 2019, available at https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/10/politics/flores-settlement-history/index.html

27. Veronica Stracqualursi, “Trump immigration official says new rule detaining families indefinitely is a ‘deterrent’,” CNN, August 23, 2019, available at https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/politics/ken-cuccinelli-flores-settlement-cnntv/index.html.

28. American Academy of Pediatrics, “Family Separation and Detention,” available at https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/federal-advocacy/Pages/family-separation-and-detention.aspx (last accessed August 2019).

29. John Burnett, ”How the Trump Administration’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policy Changed The Immigration Debate,” NPR, June 20, 2019, available at https://www.npr.org/2019/06/20/734496862/how-the-trump-administrations-zero-tolerance-policy-changed-the-immigration-deba.

30. Isabela Dias, “ICE Detaining More People Than Ever—And For Longer,” Pacific Standard, August 1, 2019, available at https://psmag.com/news/ice-is-detaining-more-people-than-ever-and-for-longer.

31. Hamed Aleazis, “More than 52,000 People Are Now Being Detained By ICE, An Apparent All-Time High,” BuzzFeed News, May 20, 2019, available at https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/ice-detention-record-immigrants-border.

32. Detention Watch Network and Center for Constitutional Rights, “New Information from ICE ERO’s July Facility List” (Washington: 2018), available at https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/sites/default/files/DWN%20Spreadsheet%20Memo.pdf.

33. Livia Luan, “Profiting from Enforcement: The Role of Private Prisons in U.S Immigration Detention” (Washington: Migration Policy Institute, 2018), available at https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/profiting-enforcement-role-private-prisons-us-immigration-detention.

34. Madison Pauly, “Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Is a Boom Time for Private Prisons,” Mother Jones, May 2018, available at https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/05/trumps-immigration-crackdown-is-a-boom-time-for-private-prisons/.

35. Ibid.

36. American Immigration Lawyers Association, “Deaths at Adult Detention Centers,” July 25, 2019, available at https://www.aila.org/infonet/deaths-at-adult-detention-centers.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid.

39. Office of the Inspector General, “Concerns about ICE Detainee Treatment and Care at Four Detention Facilities” (Washington: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2019), available at https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2019-06/OIG-19-47-Jun19.pdf.

40. Ibid.

41. Aleazis, “More Than 52,000 People Are Now Being Detained by ICE, An Apparent All-Time High.”

42. Dias, “ICE Detaining More People Than Ever—And For Longer.”

43. Tanvi Mirsa, “Trump wants to reprogram DHS money for ICE detention operations,” Roll Call, August 27, 2019, available at http://www.rollcall.com/news/trump-wants-reprogram-dhs-money-ice-detention-operations.

44. Dylan Scott, “Trump is repeating his most explosive immigration rhetoric during the family separation crisis,” Vox, June 19, 2018, available at https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/19/17479542/family-separation-trump-mexico-rapists.

45. Hanna Kozlowska and Jason Karaian, “The first big winners of Donald Trump’s victory are private prison companies, whose stocks are soaring,” Quartz, November 9, 2016, available at https://qz.com/832775/election-2016-private-prison-company-stocks-cca-and-geo-group-are-surging.

46. Ibid.

47. United States Securities and Exchange Commission, “Form 10K: The GEO Group, Inc.,” available at https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/923796/000119312519050054/d663410d10k.htm (last accessed August 2019).

48. United States Securities and Exchange Commission, “Form 10K: CoreCivic, Inc.,” available at http://ir.corecivic.com/static-files/f289bea9-086c-4540-82b2-114dbfb95e4e (last accessed August 2019).

49. United States Securities and Exchange Commission, “Form 10K: The GEO Group, Inc.”

50. United States Securities and Exchange Commission, “Form 10K: Core Civic, Inc.”

51. National Immigration Forum, “The Math of Immigration Detention, 2018 Update: Costs Continue to Multiply” (Washington: 2018), available at https://immigrationforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Math-of-Detention-2018-Update-FINAL.pdf.

52. Office of Inspector General “ICE Does Not Fully Use Contracting Tools to Hold Detention Facility Contractors Accountable for Failing to Meet Performance Standards” (Washington: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2019), available at https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2019-02/OIG-19-18-Jan19.pdf.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

55. Ibid.

56. Office of the Inspector General “Concerns about ICE Detainee Treatment and Care at Four Detention Facilities” (Washington: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2019), available at https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2019-06/OIG-19-47-Jun19.pdf.

57. Ibid.

58. The Office of Rep. Kathleen M. Rice, “Re: Detention of LGBTQ immigrants in ICE detention,” U.S. House of Representatives, May 30, 2018, available at https://kathleenrice.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2018.05.30_lgbt_immigrants_in_ice_detention_letter_to_sec_nielsen.pdf.

59. Department of Homeland Security, “Standards to Prevent, Detect and Respond to Sexual Abuse and Assault in Confinement Facilities; Final Rule,” Federal Register 79 (45) (2014): 13100–13183, available at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2014-03-07/pdf/2014-04675.pdf.

60. Thomas Homan, “Re: Further guidance regarding the care of transgender detainees,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, June 19, 2015, available at https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Document/2015/TransgenderCareMemorandum.pdf.

61. Sharita Gruberg, “ICE’s Rejection of Its Own Rules Is Placing LGBT Immigrants at Severe Risk of Sexual Abuse,” Center for American Progress, May 30, 2018, available at https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/news/2018/05/30/451294/ices-rejection-rules-placing-lgbt-immigrants-severe-risk-sexual-abuse/.

62. Alex Baumgart, “Companies that funded Trump’s inauguration came up big in 2017,” The Center for Responsive Politics, January 19, 2018, available at https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/01/companies-that-funded-trumps-inauguration/.

63. Steve Contorno, “Why is a Florida for-profit company backing bipartisan criminal justice reform?”, Tampa Bay Times, December 7, 2018, available at https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2018/12/07/why-is-a-florida-for-profit-prison-company-backing-bipartisan-criminal-justice-reform/.

64. Rachel Cohrs, “Company that runs immigration detention centers is top donor for three Texas congressmen,” Dallas News, June 21, 2018, available at https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/06/20/company-runs-immigration-detention-centers-top-donor-two-texas-congressmen.

65. Center for Responsive Politics, “CoreCivic Inc.: Total Contributions by Party of Recipient,” available at https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000021940&cycle=2018 (last accessed June 2019).

66. Open Secrets.org, “GEO Group: Total Contributions by Party of Recipient,” available at https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000022003&cycle=2018 (last accessed June 2019).

Featured image: A prison for male offenders located in Walpole, Massachusetts, June 2011. (Getty/Jessey Dearing/The Boston Globe)

‘Unless you’re able to record some of this data in a way that people can use it’s going to be difficult to go back to anything like a near normal in things like transport,’ said Tony Blair.

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Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair has called for the creation of digital IDs to track “disease status” as part of the plans for restarting international travel after the global coronavirus crisis.

Blair, who now leads the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said in a recorded message digital IDs were a “natural evolution of the way that we’re going to use technology in any event to transact daily life, and this covid crisis gives an additional reason for doing that.”

“I could be wrong about this, but when I can look at for example how you restart some businesses, how you restart international travel…I think people’s disease status, for example have they been tested? What is the result of that test? Have they had the disease? Do they have the disease? I think unless you’re able to record some of this data in a way that people can use it’s going to be difficult to go back to anything like a near normal in things like transport,” Blair said.

An article published in Forbes last month said that future air travel could involve “no cabin bags, no lounges, no automatic upgrades, face masks, surgical gloves, self-check-in, self-bag-drop-off, immunity passports, on-the-spot blood tests and sanitation disinfection tunnels.”

“Digital technologies and automation will play a critical role in the future of air travel,” Forbes predicted.

“The need to reduce ‘touchpoints’ at airports implies mandatory use of biometric boarding that allows passengers to board planes with only their face as a passport.”

The Forbes article noted that a number of airlines including British Airways, Qantas, and EasyJet are already using the technology.

Earlier this week an article published in The Guardian warned that proof of immunity to the coronavirus could be used to create “a new class system.”

“Experts predict that if [coronavirus] survivors are found to be immune, they could perform a range of jobs and services – such as volunteering in hospitals and nursing homes, caring for coronavirus patients and working in shops and food processing plants – risk-free,” journalist Miranda Bryant wrote.

“And, depending on how authorities, business and society at large respond, they could also be entitled to greater freedoms.”

Bryant pointed to Chile issuing “release certificates” to people who “complete quarantine after testing positive” for the coronavirus and comments from Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Ezekiel J Emanuel supporting the idea of immunity “certificates” or “passports.”

Emanuel is advising former Vice President and 2020 candidate Joe Biden. Fauci has been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for decades and is one of the top people leading President Donald Trump’s coronavirus response.

Even left-wing groups such as The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have cautioned against plans to introduce coronavirus “immunity passports.” In an article published last month, senior members of the ACLU argued that immunity passports could “harm public health, incentivize economically-vulnerable people to risk their health by contracting COVID-19, exacerbate racial and economic disparities, and lead to a new health surveillance infrastructure that endangers privacy rights.”

“An immunity passport system is fundamentally different from a regime whereby employers routinely test workers for COVID-19 or screen for symptoms, to ensure that no one with active infection is entering a workplace. In the latter system, only contagious workers are prevented from going to work and only for the period of time in which they are contagious,” the article continues.

“But an immunity passport system would divide workers into two classes — the immune and the non-immune — and the latter might never be eligible for a given job short of contracting and surviving COVID-19 if an immune worker is available to take the slot.”

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Donald Trump claims to be the law-and-order president of the United States.  There does not seem much sign of this as the stitching of the Republic gets undone.   Protestors have been given a considerable roughing up across several states; police forces are in retreat before proposals of defunding while protocols for arrests are being changed. Police chiefs are resigning and, in the rarest of cases, officers are being charged for police brutality.

What, then, of the empire’s own policing capabilities overseas?  Here, the Trump message is a treat of confusion.  He wishes to be armed for unilateralism.  No more needless policing endeavours in the international arena.  No unnecessary use of US armed forces to intervene in the murky, squalid affairs of international relations.

The interventionist, policing streak in foreign policy reached its height with the 2005 declaration by President George W. Bush in his second inaugural address that it was “the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”  This was ambitiously dangerous, foolhardy and a promise of a global US chokehold to be applied to any regime suspect of not sighing to the sirens of liberty.  (Well, at least the US variant of it.)  “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.  The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

President Barack Obama was not much of an improvement on this doctrine of permanent revolution: the US had to continue remaining the sheriff of exceptionalism, a protector of “dignity”.  In a speech to West Pointers at a military academy commencement ceremony in May 2014 he acknowledged the old warning of George Washington “against foreign entanglements that do not touch directly on our security or economic wellbeing” and the interventionists’ assertion “that we ignore these conflicts at our own peril”.  He preferred a middle way hardly different from his predecessors.  The US could not be isolationist; history had imposed upon the Republic solemn burdens.  There was “a real stake, an abiding self-interest, in making sure our children and our grandchildren grow up in a world where schoolgirls are not kidnapped and where individuals are not slaughtered because of tribe or faith or political belief.”

Trump’s language, at least on the subject of meddling in the name of liberty, or policing a form of international morality, seem unsentimental and alien to this strand of thought.  On June 13, in an address to the US Military Academy at a West Point graduation ceremony, he proclaimed, or more appropriately reiterated, his task of “ending the era of endless wars.”  He preferred “a renewed, clear-eyed focus on defending America’s vital interests.”  The ears of traditional isolationists would have pricked up in interest:  “It is not the duty of US troops to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have never heard of.  We are not the policemen of the world.” 

The address was filled with the usual fripperies.  “To the 1,107 who today become the newest officers in the most exceptional Army ever to take the field of battle, I am here to offer America’s salute.  Thank you for answering your nation’s call.”  But the reining in of US military forces has not fallen well on an obese establishment with a permanent eye to larger budgets and deeper troughs.  Despite that, Trump did still throw them a vast bone, speaking of “a colossal rebuilding of the American Armed Forces, a record like no other.”  Over $2 trillion had been put into a program of “new ships, bombers, jet fighters, and helicopters by the hundreds; new tanks, military satellites, rockets, and missiles”.  And that fabulous hypersonic missile.

Of interest is how such a speech stirs the critics of Trump.  Peter Bergen, using his CNN pulpit as national security analyst, spent little to no time examining the contents of what was said.  He preferred to focus on the shallow optics of it all, “the growing disconnect between [Trump] and the US military.”  The clumsy exercise of involving the military, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, in a photo op after walking from the Rose Garden at the White House to St. John’s Church, seemed to be of more interest.  Protestors had been violently dispersed for a caricatured still of power: the commander-in-chief, clumsily sporting a Bible, military officialdom nearby.  Defense Secretary Mike Esper’s reluctance to share in the show was also noted.  Suddenly, the military had hopped on the “peace is our business” train, including four former chairmen of the joint chiefs stretching back to the administration of President George H. W. Bush.

Bergen’s refusal to engage the content of the speech conforms to a syndrome across a press corps and commentariat fixated by form and pantomime. This is one of Trump’s remarkable, though not commendable achievements: to convert his critics into one vast persona of his own shallowness, a projection of vulgarity taken with baubles and the show.  The result of this transformation is one of Twitter-sized relevance.  Best focus on the distracting asides: the way, for instance, the president walked down the stairs after his address. 

The president’s bodily movement transfixed Yale University psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee, who claims to be uninvolved in politics until it “invades my area of expertise”.  That, evidently, did not involve scouring the contents of a speech suggesting the sparing of lives US or otherwise in futile and dangerous adventurism.  Far better to focus on Trump’s neurological disposition.  “The uneven gait is something I have remarked at least since his fall visit to Walter Reed, and a forward-leaning posture is associated with the difficulty holding a cup.  Note that there has not been an annual report on his health this year.”

There was even room for Lee to bellyache about treatment (or lack of) from the New York Times “citing only the reporter’s own speculations, and quoting just the president and his former doctor – for a field that arguably needs the MOST expertise”.

The military and Trump might not see eye-to-eye on points, but this is a needlessly flogged horse.  When it comes to matters of shredding international security pillars as the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, he has had support.  At its core, the imperium breeds consensus.  “Treaties stand in the way of freedom of action,” noted Michael Krepon. It is exactly that sort of freedom the US military chiefs, and the commander-in-chief, crave.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

In mid-June, the US sanctions against Syria will escalate, with the enactment in Congress of “Caesar’s Law“, sanctions designed to “pursue individuals, groups, companies, and countries that deal with the Damascus government.” This law – purportedly named after a Syrian army officer who smuggled out thousands of photos of torture by the Syrian army in prisons – is designed to prevent companies and countries from opening diplomatic channels with Syria, and to prevent them from contributing to reconstruction, investment, and the provision of spare parts for the energy and aviation sectors in Syria. The sanctions also affect the Syrian central bank, freezing the assets of individuals who deal with Syria and invalidating any visa to America. Who will abide by this law, and what are its consequences for Syria, Lebanon, and the countries that stand beside Syria?

Torture is a common practice in many nations around the world. Syria practised torture (the case of Maher Arar) on behalf of the United States of America and the Bush administration. At least 54 countries (Middle Eastern and African nations but also western countries like Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and more) supported US “extraordinary renditions” in 2001 and secret detentions under President Barack Obama. Washington thus lacks any moral authority to claim opposition to torture as a basis for its policies. Over recent decades the US has become notorious for authorising gruesome forms of torture, stripping people of their most basic rights, and generally violating human rights in defiance of the Geneva convention and above all the 1984 UN convention against torture. James Mitchell, a CIA contract psychiatrist who helped draft and apply “enhanced interrogation techniques“, disclosed several methods approved by the US administration to torture prisoners placed in detention in “black sites” outside the US, illegally but with official authorisation. Images of torture in Abu Ghraib prisons showed the world that the US use of torture and illegal methods of interrogation against detainees in Iraq.

Thus, US sanctions on Syria cannot plausibly indicate US concern for human values and opposition to the abuse of power. Moreover, the US administration’s adherence to its own Constitution is in grave doubt, given the reaction of the security forces against demonstrators in America in response to widespread racial discrimination and racially motivated police attacks.

These new US sanctions, under the name of Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, can in no way be ascribed to some moral value, but rather to the failure by the US, Israel and several Western and Arab countries to change the regime in Syria, and their refusal to acknowledge defeat. They keep trying, and in this case, imagine that through harsh sanctions against Syria and its allies they can achieve what they have failed to accomplish through many years of war and destruction. 

In the 1990s, the US imposed sanctions on Iraq (oil-for-food). Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens died as a result of US sanctions on Iraq without Saddam Hussein’s regime and his entourage being affected. Consequently, we can predict that US sanctions in general primarily affect the population and not the leaders.

The US fails to realize that it is no longer the only superpower in the world, and in the Middle East in particular. Russia has done what many thought was impossible and elbowed its way into the Levant to remain in Syria and confront NATO at the borders. China has followed as a rising economic superpower to make its way into the Middle East, mainly Iraq and Syria. Iran has already a strong presence and powerful allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Palestine. These three countries, along with Syria, are playing a leading role in actively eliminating US hegemony in this part of the world.

In Beirut, the government cannot adopt and abide by “Caesar’s Law” and close its gates to Syria. Lebanon’s only land borders are through Syria since Israel is considered an enemy. Any national economic plan to revitalise the abundant local agriculture sector and export to Syria, Iraq or other countries in the Gulf would fail if “Caesar’s Law” were put into effect. Any regenerated industry or import/export from the Middle Eastern countries must go through the “Syrian gate”. Besides, the current Lebanese government risks falling if it implements the US sanctions. Washington is not providing any financial assistance to the Lebanese economy in crisis and clearly has no intention of offering necessary and immediate help to the crippled Lebanese economy. The US, as has become the norm, seeks to impose sanctions and conditions on the nations it targets but offers little in return to affected countries. In the case of Lebanon, its budget deficit is close to 100 billion dollars following decades of corruption and mismanagement.

The government of Prime Minister Hassan Diab is, theoretically, a technocratic and non-political government. It does not consider the US an enemy but neither is it likely to follow US dictates, since it is close to the “March 8 Alliance” whose strongest members are not US friendly. Hence, the only solution for this government or any future government is to go east towards China, Russia and Iran. America will likely lose in Lebanon, with its “March 14 Alliance” allies rendered voiceless and powerless.

There is no doubt that the Christian party within the “March 8” political group will be challenged and affected by US sanctions. These have an international relationship to look after and maintain as well as external bank accounts. Regardless, “Caesar’s Law” cannot be implemented in Lebanon, whatever the consequences of its violation.

As for Iran, it has already been subject to “maximum pressure” and harsh sanctions increasing year after year since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, for daring to reject US hegemony. Hence, it has no consideration whatsoever for the US “Caesar’s Law”. Even more, Iran is certainly not unhappy that the US blocked the return and reopening of Gulf countries’ embassies – who dare not disobey the US wishes – in Syria. Gulf companies are no longer in the field as competitors to divide shares in Iran’s reconstruction contracts related to projects in the field of industry, trade and energy. Iran has already challenged US and EU sanctions on Syria by sending oil tankers to Damascus. Also, Tehran sent five tankers to Venezuela, another country suffering from harsh US sanctions. The Gulf and European countries – US’s allies – are thus losing their opportunity to return to Syria, to be involved in its reconstruction and to regain their foothold in the Levant.

As for Russia, it has just signed a deal with the Syrian government to expand its military airport and naval bases in Tartous, Hasaka and Hmeymim. Furthermore, it is supplying Syria with modern military hardware and fulfilling the Syrian army needs to come up to full strength. It supplied Syria with squadrons of the updated MiG-29 fighters this month in a clear message to the US and its “Caesar Act” sanctions.

As for China, it is now in a “cold war” situation over US accusations that Beijing is responsible for the outbreak of COVID-19. The US is seeking to prevent Beijing from doing business with the European market, and particularly to prevent Europe from embracing China’s 5G network and technology. The US administration is also pushing Israel to curtail trade with China and to call off its billion-dollar contracts signed with China to avoid “hurting the relationship with the US”. Moreover, the Iraqi-US relationship took a severe blow when the former Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi signed off on a $20 billion “oil for reconstruction” agreement with China. Thus China, already involved in different projects in Syria, is not likely to abide by “Caesar’s Law”.

As for Syria, it will never accept starvation nor buckle under the US’s economic siege. President Bashar al-Assad is reconstructing the liberated areas under the government forces’ controls. He is rebuilding infrastructure for the Syrian population present in the homeland, excluding the areas abandoned by refugees who fled the country many of whom will not return. The Syrian government is not suffering from the absence of the five to seven million refugees in Idlib, in refugee camps outside the control of the government or in nearby bordering countries. Those refugees are financed and looked after by the international community and the United Nations. This relieves the central government of a considerable financial burden.

Consequently, Syria does not need to reconstruct the refugees’ homes or provide them with oil, electricity, schools, infrastructure and subsidies for as long as Western countries want them to stay outside Syria. The international community wants these refugees to remain away from the central government’s control and is doing everything in its power to prevent their return so as to be able to reject a future Presidential election- where Bashar al-Assad’s victory is guaranteed.

President Assad will work with Iran, Russia and China to secure his needs. Iran has defied US-European sanctions by sending oil tankers to Syria through the Straits of Gibraltar twice. Iran is building drug and medicine factories in Syria, and is also working on other projects that it shares with Russia and China. Syria is heading toward the east, not the west, since that it is the only remaining option left to it. This is the long-awaited dream of the “Axis of Resistance”. Lebanon, Syria and Iraq are looking to Asia to reverse the US-European sanctions against them and their allies in the Middle East. By imposing further unaffordable sanctions on Syria, the US is helping the Levant come out of the US sphere of influence and presence.

Iran, Russia, China and Syria are uniting as allies with an integrated project against US hegemony. There is no place for the domination of one state over another in this gathering of nations because solidarity is required to help Syria, for example, stand as a healthy and reliable country to confront the US. Their strength grows as the weakness of the US becomes more apparent, at a time when President Donald Trump is struggling domestically and his world influence is weakening. Washington is unilaterally imposing sanctions on nations and populations, forcing some allies to follow but also forcing them to consider seriously future possibilities for detaching from this burdensome “umbilical cord.”

The US “Caesar’s Law” aims to submit and suppress the Syrian nation and people, as Washington has attempted with Iran and Venezuela, so far failing miserably. This policy can no longer be effective because the Russian – Chinese – Iranian alliance has now become important to many countries in the Middle East. The influence of this alliance now extends to the Caribbean Sea. “Caesar’s Law” will turn against its architects: “he who prepared the poison shall end up eating it.”

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FAO The Rt Hon Robert Buckland QC MP
Lord Chancellor & Secretary of State for Justice

CC The Hon Bob Neill MP
UK Commons Justice Committee Chair

Dear Sir,

REQUEST FOR COMPASSIONATE RELEASE OF JULIAN ASSANGE

As current and former elected representatives in democracies committed to human rights, the presumption of innocence and the rule of law, we wish to support the urgent appeal sent to you by Australian MPs Andrew Wilkie and George Christensen, who wrote:

“We ask that you urgently reconsider providing Mr Assange with release from Belmarsh Prison to monitored home detention, as he fits all of the grounds noted for such early release by leading organisations as the World Health Organisation, the United Nations and the UK Prison Officers Association. These organisations have been unanimous in calling for the release of all non-violent COVID-19 prisoners, and we ask that you give compassionate consideration to the following:

• Mr Assange is a non-violent remand prisoner with no history of harm to the community. He is not convicted and is thus entitled to the presumption of innocence.
• Doctors of Mr Assange warn he is at high risk from dying if he contracts COVID-19 as he has a pre-existing chronic lung condition.
• We are advised that COVID-19 is rapidly spreading throughout UK prisons, and that there are infections [and at least one death] at Belmarsh Prison.
• We understand that the prison is short staffed and normal activity regimes are suspended.
• Mr Assange is in poor mental health due to spending so much time in solitary confinement over recent years, and prison COVID-19 lockdown measures are further undermining his mental health.

We ask that you give further consideration to the very reasonable request by Mr Assange’s lawyers that this non-violent Australian prisoner be released into home detention with a 24-hour ankle monitor.”

With the director of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention warning of a second wave of coronavirus during influenza season, we stress that even those vulnerable prisoners, such as Julian Assange, who survive the current crisis remain at risk.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, former Member of the Legislative Council of NSW, Australia

Clare Daly, Member of the European Parliament, Republic of Ireland

Andrew Feinstein, former Member of the African National Congress, South Africa

Mike Gravel, former US Senator, United States

Heike Hänsel, Member of the German Bundestag, Germany

Eva Joly, former Member of the European Parliament, France

Ogmundur Jonasson, former Member of the Icelandic Parliament, Iceland

Ron Paul, former US Congressman, United States

Yanis Varoufakis, Member of the Greek Parliament, Greece

Mick Wallace, Member of the European Parliament, Republic of Ireland

Chris Williamson, former Member of Parliament, United Kingdom

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NATO has extended yet another in a long line of “incentives” designed to tease Ukraine with the prospects of joining the transatlantic alliance, while stopping short of actual membership.

For two months now, most of America has endured a government-imposed lockdown. I hate to use that word — lockdown — as it connotes locking prisoners into their cells during prison disturbances. But it is the word that the government itself uses when referring to its orders of confinement.

Today, we are the government’s prisoners. Wear your mask. Stay at home. Don’t go to work. Don’t open your business. Don’t go to church. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t gather in any group larger than 25 — unless it is to speak words of which the government approves.

Here is the backstory.

When the United States was founded, the folks who framed the new government shared many political and philosophical views. Some of those views were reprehensible, unnatural and contrary to the others — most notably that the new Constitution would permit the states to enforce a system of human slavery.

That colossal error brought us 75 more years of human degradation, a horrific war, the military occupation of the southern states, Jim Crow, lynching, the advent of the KKK, official segregation and the denigration of blacks by much of the government even today.

When the pre-Civil War Supreme Court was asked to rule on whether a slave who made it to the north could sue his former captors for permanent freedom, the Court ruled that blacks were not persons, as contemplated by the Constitution, and thus did not enjoy the rights of persons that the Constitution protects.

The Dred Scott decision not only triggered the Civil War but also the abuse of blacks, which has followed to this day.

The public torture and murder of George Floyd — a 46-year-old black man — by white Minneapolis cops has crystallized the public awareness of our collective history of looking the other way when these horrors have happened.

The same framers who were willing to compromise on slavery were unwilling to compromise on other issues. Among them were that the purpose of government is to protect rights and that no government is moral or lawful absent the consent of the governed. The latter requires that we have not only consented to the existence of the government but also to the powers that we have given it.

This theory — embraced by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence and by James Madison in the Constitution — mandates that human beings are born free, that we have natural rights integral to our humanity, that we are free to surrender a small part of those rights to a government, that the purpose of the government is to protect the rights we have not surrendered, that the government (today) must be colorblind and that the government only has the powers that we have surrendered to it.

Stated differently, if we, as free people, did not consent to giving certain powers to the government — like the powers state governors have exercised to lock us down or the police exercised to murder Floyd — the government, quite simply, lacks those powers and should be removed from office by an angry citizenry when it tries to exercise them.

The stated purpose of the lockdown is to shield us from infection. But this raises very serious questions about our relationship to government. We never authorized the government to shield us from infection. We never authorized it to lock us down. We never authorized the police to enforce anything other than legislatively enacted statutes. We never authorized the police to murder confined prisoners.

Here in New Jersey, the police are handing out summonses that look like parking tickets. In the place where they are supposed to write the statute that the recipient has allegedly violated, they have written “Violation of Governor’s Executive Order…” This is madness. Crimes consist only of behavior properly condemned in writing by a popularly elected representative body. It is not a crime to refuse to comply with the paternalistic wishes of one person.

If the governor of New Jersey can haul you into court for violating his executive orders, can he be hauled into court for violating our basic liberties — which are guaranteed by the Bill of Rights he swore to protect?

When the Black Lives Matter movement manifested its disgust with government failures to restrain the police, huge gatherings of people defied lockdown orders of governors. Most were peaceful. Most were the quintessential exercise of the freedom to travel, to assemble and to tell the government what you think of it.

To paraphrase the poet William Makepeace Thackeray, folks were shaking their fists in the tyrant’s face. A small number of people got arrested for violence, but no one got arrested for violating a gubernatorial lockdown order.

When New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy was asked why he violated his lockdown orders by personally marching in one of those large peaceful assemblies while his police were issuing summonses for participation in other assemblies, he observed that racism is more troubling than closed nail salons. Good for him.

But he cannot use the power of government to support assembly, travel and speech with which he agrees and punish that with which he disagrees. That’s why we have a Constitution.

What a gross misunderstanding of the American ethos he has. He will bar your work. He will permit you to shop for a car but not for a book. You can walk with your family down an aisle at Walmart but not up to an altar to receive Holy Communion.

George Floyd died because the government itself put a knee on his throat. In New Jersey, the governor — without the consent of the governed and thus without any lawful authority — has his knee on the state’s throat, choking the air and lifeblood out of those yearning to be free.

How much longer will free people accept this?

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Officers from the US police force responsible for the killing of George Floyd received training in restraint techniques and anti-terror tactics from Israeli law-enforcement officers.

Mr Floyd’s death in custody last Monday, the latest in a succession of police killings of African Americans, has sparked continuing protests and rioting in US cities.

At least 100 Minnesota police officers attended a 2012 conference hosted by the Israeli consulate in Chicago, the second time such an event had been held.

There they learned the violent techniques used by Israeli forces as they terrorise the occupied Palestinian territories under the guise of security operations.

The so-called counterterrorism training conference in Minneapolis was jointly hosted by the FBI.

Israeli deputy consul Shahar Arieli claimed that the half-day session brought “top-notch professionals from the Israeli police” to share knowledge with their US counterparts.

It is unclear whether any of the officers involved in the incident in which Mr Floyd was killed attended the conference.

But in a chilling testimony, a Palestinian rights activist said that when she saw the image of Derek Chauvin kneeling on Mr Floyd’s neck, she was reminded of the Israeli forces’ policing of the occupied territories.

Neta Golan, the co-founder of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) said:

“When I saw the picture of killer cop Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd by leaning in on his neck with his knee as he cried for help and other cops watched, I remembered noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique of leaning in on our chest and necks when we were protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006.

“They started twisting and breaking fingers in a particular way around the same time. It was clear they had undergone training for this. They continue to use these tactics — two of my friends have had their necks broken but luckily survived — and it is clear that they [Israel] share these methods when they train police forces abroad in ‘crowd control’ in the US and other countries including Sudan and Brazil.”

The training of US police officials by Israeli forces is widespread.

Even Amnesty was compelled to report that hundreds of police from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state and Washington DC had been flown to Israeli for training.

Thousands more have been trained by Israeli forces who have come to the US to host similar events to the one held in Minneapolis. According to the somewhat selective rights organisation, many of these trips are taxpayer-funded, while others are privately funded.

Since 2002 the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have paid for police chiefs, assistant chiefs and captains to train in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), it said.

The Minneapolis Police Department was contacted for comment.

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Featured image: Brutal: A Minnesota police officer sprays protesters with pepper spray at the weekend (Source: Morning Star)

“Revolutions are often seen as spontaneous. It looks like people just went into the street. But it’s the result of months or years of preparation. It is very boring until you reach a certain point, where you can organize mass demonstrations or strikes. If it is carefully planned, by the time they start, everything is over in a matter of weeks.” Foreign Policy Journal

Does anyone believe the nationwide riots and looting are a spontaneous reaction to the killing of George Floyd?

It’s all too coordinated, too widespread, and too much in-sync with the media narrative that applauds the “mainly peaceful protests” while ignoring the vast destruction to cities across the country. What’s that all about? Do the instigators of these demonstrations want to see our cities reduced to urban wastelands where street gangs and Antifa thugs impose their own harsh justice? That’s where this is headed, isn’t it?

Of course there are millions of protesters who honestly believe they’re fighting racial injustice and police brutality. And more power to them. But that certainly doesn’t mean there aren’t hidden agendas driving these outbursts. Quite the contrary. It seems to me that the protest movement is actually the perfect vehicle for affecting dramatic social changes that only serve the interests of elites. For example, who benefits from defunding the police? Not African Americans, that’s for sure. Black neighborhoods need more security not less. And yet, the New York Times lead editorial on Saturday proudly announces, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police–Because reform won’t happen.” Check it out:

“We can’t reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police….There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against black people. Policing in the South emerged from the slave patrols in the 1700 and 1800s that caught and returned runaway slaves. In the North, the first municipal police departments in the mid-1800s helped quash labor strikes and riots against the rich. Everywhere, they have suppressed marginalized populations to protect the status quo.

So when you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man’s neck until he dies, that’s the logical result of policing in America. When a police officer brutalizes a black person, he is doing what he sees as his job…” (“Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police–Because reform won’t happen”, New York Times)

So, according to the Times, the problem isn’t single parent families, or underfunded education or limited job opportunities or fractured neighborhoods, it’s the cops who have nothing to do with any of these problems. Are we supposed to take this seriously, because the editors of the Times certainly do. They’d like us to believe that there is groundswell support for this loony idea, but there isn’t. In a recent poll, more than 60% of those surveyed, oppose the idea of defunding the police. So why would such an unpopular, wacko idea wind up as the headline op-ed in the Saturday edition? Well, because the Times is doing what it always does, advancing the political agenda of the elites who hold the purse-strings and dictate which ideas are promoted and which end up on the cutting room floor. That’s how the system works. Check out this excerpt from an article by Paul Craig Roberts:

“The extraordinary destruction of white and Asian businesses in many instances wiping out a family’s lifetime work, the looting of national businesses whose dumbshit CEOs support the looters, the merciless gang beatings of whites and Asians who attempted to defend their persons and their property, the egging on of the violence by politicians in both parties and by the entirely of the media including many alternative media websites, shows a country undergoing collapse. This is why it is not shown in national media. Some local media show an indication of the violent destruction in their community, but it is not accumulated and presented to a national audience. Consequently, Americans think the looting and destruction is only a local occurance… I just checked CNN and the BBC and there is nothing about the extraordinary economic destruction and massive thefts.” (“The Real Racists”, Paul Craig Roberts, Unz Review)

Roberts makes a good point, and one that’s worth mulling over. Why has the media failed to show the vast destruction of businesses and private property? Why have they minimized the effects of vandalism, looting and arson? Why have they fanned the flames of social unrest from the very beginning, shrugging off the ruin and devastation while cheerleading the demonstrations as a heroic struggle for racial justice? Is this is the same media that supported every bloody war, every foreign intervention, and every color-revolution for the last 5 decades? Are we really expected to believe that they’ve changed their stripes and become an energized proponent of social justice?

Nonsense. The media’s role in concealing the damage should only convince skeptics that the protests are just one part of a much larger operation. What we’re seeing play out in over 400 cities across the US, has more to do with toppling Trump and sowing racial division than it does with the killing of George Floyd. The scale and coordination alone suggests that elements in the deep state are probably involved. We know from evidence uncovered during the Russiagate probe, that the media works hand-in-glove with the Intel agencies and FBI while–at the same time– serving as a mouthpiece for elites. That hasn’t changed, in fact, it’s gotten even worse. The uniformity of the coverage suggests that that same perception management strategy is being employed here as well. Even at this late date, the determination to remove Trump from office is as strong as ever even though, in the present case, it has been combined with the broader political strategy of inciting fratricidal violence, obliterating urban areas, and spreading anarchy across the country. This isn’t about racial justice or police brutality, it’s about regime change, internal destabilization, and martial law. Take a look at this article at The Herland Report:

“What the Black Lives Matter movement does not understand is that they are being used by the billionaire white capitalists who are fighting to push the working class even lower and end the national sovereignty principles that president Trump stands for in America….

The rightful grievance over racism against blacks is now used to get Trump since Russia Gate, Impeachment, the corona scandal and nothing else has worked. The aim is to end democracy in the United States, control Congress and politics and assemble the power into the hands of the very few…

It is all about who will own the United States and have free access to its revenues: Either the American people under democracy or globalist billionaire individuals.” (“Politicized USA Gene Sharp riots is another attempted coup d’etat – New Left Tyranny” The Herland Report

That sounds about right to me. The protests are merely a fig leaf for a “color revolution” that bears a striking resemblance to the more than 50 CIA-backed coups launched on foreign governments in the last 70 years. Have the chickens have come home to roost? It certainly looks like it. Here’s more from the same article:

“Use a grievance that the local population has against the system, identify and support those who oppose the current government, infiltrate and strengthen opposition movements, fund them with millions of dollars, organize protests that seem legitimate and have paid political instigators dress up in regular clothes to blend in.”

So, yes, the grievances are real, but that doesn’t mean that someone else is not steering the action. And just as the media is shaping the narrative for its own purposes, so too, there are agents within the movement that are inciting the violence. All of this suggests the existence of some form of command-control that provides logistical support and assists in communications. Check out this excerpt from a post at Colonel Pat Lang’s website Sic Semper Tyrannis:

“The logistical capabilities of antifa+ are also impressive. They can move people around the country with ease, position pallet loads of new brick, 55 gallon new trash cans of frozen water bottles and other debris suitable for throwing on gridded patterns around cities in a well thought out distribution pattern. Who pays for this? Who plans this? Who coordinates these plans and gives “execute orders?”

Antifa+ can create massive propaganda campaigns that fit their agenda. These campaigns are fully supported by the MSM and by many in the Congressional Democratic Party. The present meme of “Defund the Police” is an example. This appeared miraculously, and simultaneously across the country. I am impressed. Yesterday the frat boy type who is mayor of Minneapolis was booed out of a mass meeting of radicals in that fair city because he refused to endorse abolishing the police force. Gutting the civil police forces has long been a major goal of the far left, but now, they have the ability to create mass hysteria over it when they have an excuse.” (“My take on the present situation”, Sic Semper Tyrannis)

Colonel Lang is not the only one to marvel at Antifa’s “logistical capabilities”. The United States has never experienced two weeks of sustained protests in hundreds of its cities at the same time. It’s beyond suspicious, it points to extensive coordination with groups across the country, a comprehensive media strategy (that probably preceded the killing of George Floyd), a sizable presence on social media (to put people on the street), and agents provocateur whose task is to incite violence, loot and create mayhem.

None of this has anything to do with racial justice or police brutality. America is being destabilized and sacked for other purposes altogether. This a destabilization campaign similar to the CIA’s color revolutions designed to topple the regime (Trump), install a puppet government (Biden), impose “shock therapy” on the economy pushing tens of millions of Americans into homelessness and destitution, and leave behind a broken, smoldering shell of a country easily controlled by Federal shock troops and wealthy globalist mandarins. Here’s a short excerpt from an article by Kurt Nimmo at his excellent blog “Another Day in the Empire”:

“The BLM represents the forefront of an effort to divide Americans along racial and political lines, thus keeping race and identity-based barbarians safely away from more critical issues of importance to the elite, most crucially a free hand to plunder and ransack natural resources, minerals, crude oil, and impoverish billions of people whom the ruling elite consider unproductive useless eaters and a hindrance to the drive to dominate, steal, and murder….

It is sad to say BLM serves the elite by ignoring or remaining ignorant of the main problem—boundless predation by a neoliberal criminal project that considers all—black, white, yellow, brown—as expliotable and dispensable serfs.” (“2 Million Arab Lives Don’t Matter“, Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire)

The protest movement is the mask that conceals the maneuvering of elites. The real target of this operation is the Constitutional Republic itself. Having succeeded in using the Lockdown to push the economy into severe recession, the globalists are now inciting a fratricidal war that will weaken the opposition and prepare the country for a new authoritarian order.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

The Rockefeller Foundation has presented the “National Covid-19 Testing Action Plan”, indicating the “pragmatic steps to reopen our workplaces and our communities”. However, it is not simply a matter of health measures as it appears from the title.

The Plan – that some of the most prestigious universities have contributed to (Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins and others) – prefigures a real hierarchical and militarized social model.

At the top, the “Pandemic Testing Board (PTB), akin to the War Production Board that the United States created in World War II“. The Pandemic Testing Board would “consist of leaders from business, government and academia” (government representatives would not in the first row, but finance and economic representatives being listed in order of importance).

This Supreme Council would have the power to decide productions and services with an authority similar to that conferred to the President of the United States in wartime by the Defense Production Act.

The plan calls for 3 million US citizens to be Covid-19 tested weekly, and the number should be raised to 30 million per week within six months. The goal is to achieve the ability to Covid-19 test 30 million people a day, which is to be realized within a year.

For each test, “a fair market reimbursement (e.g. $100) for all Covid-19 assays” is expected. Thus, billions of dollars a month of public money will be needed.

The Rockefeller Foundation and its financial partners will help create a network for the provision of credit guarantees and the signing of contracts with suppliers, that is large companies that manufacture drugs and medical equipment.

According to the Plan, the “Pandemic Control Council” is also authorized to create a “Pandemic Response Corps”: a special force (not surprisingly called “Corps” like the Marine Corps) with a staff of 100 to 300 thousand components.

They would be recruited among Peace Corps and Americorps volunteers (officially created by the US government to “help developing countries”) and among National Guard military personnel. The members of the “Pandemic Response Corps” would receive an average gross wage of $40,000 per year, a State expenditure of  $4-12 billion a year is expected for it.

The “pandemic response body” would above all have the task of controlling the population with military-like techniques, through digital tracking and identification systems, in work and study places, in residential areas, in public places and when travelling. Systems of this type – the Rockefeller Foundation recalls – are made by Apple, Google and Facebook.

According to the Plan, information on individuals relating to their state of health and their activities would remain confidential “whenever possible”. However, they would all be centralized in a digital platform co-managed by the Federal State and private companies. According to data provided by the “Pandemic Control Council”, it would be decided from time to time which area should be subject to lockdown and for how long.

This, in summary, is the plan the Rockefeller Foundation wants to implement in the United States and beyond. If it were even partially implemented, there would be further concentration of economic and political power in the hands of an even narrower elite sector to the detriment of a growing majority that would be deprived of fundamental democratic rights.

The operation is carried out in the name of “Covid-19 control”, whose mortality rate has so far been less than 0.03% of the US population according to official data. In the Rockefeller Foundation Plan the virus is used as a real weapon, more dangerous than Covid-19 itself.

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This article was originally published on Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

Putting your destiny into the hands of a drug company is much like seeking reassurances from an opportunistic pimp.  The returns are bound to mixed, dressed up in deceptive language.  The promises, however, are always remarkable.  The back-breaking pace in finding a vaccine for COVID-19 is something that is bringing out the pimps of industry, notably those in Big Pharma.

One such candidate is the British-based AstraZeneca, which has busied itself with striking vaccine-agreements with alliances and countries across the globe.    Last month, a bombastic press release from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it was responding to President Donald Trump’s call made under “Operation Warp Speed” to produce “at least 300 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine AZD1222” in collaboration with the company to be “delivered as early as October 2020.”  AZD1222 is a COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by the University of Oxford but licensed to the company.   

The agreement between AstraZeneca and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) “will accelerate the development and manufacturing of the company’s investigational vaccine to begin Phase 3 clinical studies this summer with approximately 30,000 volunteers in the United States.”  There is much in the way of offsetting costs: BARDA promises up to $1.2 billion in support.

The pharma giant is spreading itself ambitiously.  While the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi, and the US biotech company Moderna, have also dedicated themselves to the quest of developing a coronavirus vaccine, they seem dwarfed by the entrepreneurial gravitas of AstraZeneca.  There are agreements, for instance, with the Norway-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Gavi, the international vaccine alliance.  Similar understandings have been reached with the United Kingdom and the Serum Institute of India, the latter promising up to 1 billion doses.

On Saturday, a deal between four EU countries (Germany, France, Italy and The Netherlands) and the Anglo-Swedish giant was announced capitalising on momentum gathered from the US deal.  The agreement between Europe’s Inclusive Vaccines Alliance and AstraZeneca, should it be successful, will also make any resulting vaccine available to any EU country willing to participate.  The company’s CEO Pascal Soriot could be forgiven for feeling a little cocky.  “This agreement will ensure that hundreds of millions of Europeans have access to the Oxford University’s vaccine following its approval.”

The concern here is how uncritically willing government officials are willing to get into the king sized bed that is Big Pharma.  Behind every drugs company celebration is a scandal and behind that scandal an entire platoon of lawyers, publicists and regulators.  To that end, the field of AstraZeneca’s improprieties, actual and alleged, is vast.  Its operations, at times, have resembled those of the most daring privateers and cutthroat mercantilists. 

In 2016, AstraZeneca agreed to pay $5.5 million in a settlement over charges they had violated the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  Improper payments had been made to health care providers based in Russia and China between 2005 and 2010.  Such conduct interested the US Securities and Exchanges commission, which instituted cease-and-desist proceedings which had the effect of inducing an offer of settlement.  In the words of the order, AZN “failed to devise and maintain a sufficient system of internal accounting controls relating to the interactions of its China and Russia subsidiaries with government officials, the vast majority of whom were health care providers (‘HCPs’), at state-owned and state-controlled entities in China an Russia.”

The company also has a few stand outs on the product side of things, a salient warning to governments the world over that doing deals with such an entity is potentially harmful and inherently corrupting.  Seroquel, AstraZeneca’s second best-selling pharmaceutical, was promoted by the company to physicians and psychiatrists between 2001 and 2006 for mental disorders not covered by US Food and Drug Administration approval.  (The approval range spanned the treatment of schizophrenia, short term treatment for certain manic episodes linked to bipolar disorder, and then, in 2006, bipolar depression.) 

A whistleblower lawsuit subsequently alleged that the company had marked Seroquel to cover everything from dementia to anger management, post-traumatic stress disorder and sleeplessness. Doctors were also paid to give advice to the company on how best to market the drug for unapproved uses.  Resorting to a technique it has come to master over the years, AstraZeneca refused to admit liability for such a marketing strategy while still paying $520 million in the civil suit.

Such short and sharp practice has extended to manipulating the clinical record, something that should make any investors into a COVID-19 vaccine vary.  The company has been known to fudge the results of clinical trials, stressing supposedly positive findings while diligently hiding nastier ones.  The notorious CAFE (Comparison of Atypicals in First Episode) study on comparing the effectiveness of three “atypical” antipsychotic drugs – Seroquel, Zyprexa and Risperdal – was accused by Cardiff University’s David Healy, a senior psychiatrist, of being “a non-study of the worst kind”, designed as “an entirely marketing-driven exercise” rather than having any scientific value.  The criteria of effectiveness – for instance, whether the drugs were taken to the end of the study – suggested that the designers from the AstraZeneca were only interested in one thing: that candidates using them stuck with the programme. This said nothing about effectiveness as such, a point made even more glaring by the study’s omission of older antipsychotics.

The speed of this entire exercise is also a danger.  Speed can be fatal in scientific endeavours, be it in terms of the outcome, or in terms of the mission.  This is also being prompted by what can politely be described as a paradox.  The leader of the Oxford University group and Soriot have one big lament: that declining transmission rates in countries with experimental vaccines may doom the effectiveness of any potential product to combat COVID-19.  Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford, put it rather curiously to the Sunday Telegraph: his team was facing the prospect that the virus might actually disappear.  Good for some; not for others.  “Now the problem we will have, I think,” claimed Soriot, “is we are running against time a little bit, because we see already the disease in Europe is declining.”

All that cash promised and expended; all those potential profits that just might go begging.  Coronavirus may yet prove to have a few more tricks to bedevil those on the vaccine trail, but the problem of Big Pharma’s corruption of public institutions remains a stubborn warning.  So far, it is not being heeded.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

The above headlined Pompeo’s hostile May 27 remarks on Iran.

Perpetuating the myth about an Iranian nuclear threat ignores what the whole world knows.

Throughout its existence since the 1950s, Iran’s legitimate nuclear program had and still has no military component.

Reality has been confirmed time and again by the nuclear watchdog IAEA and US intelligence community.

In the 1950s, the US supplied the Tehran Nuclear Research Center (TNRC) with a small 5MWt research reactor (TRR), fueled by highly enriched uranium.

Under the so-called US Atoms for Peace program, Washington provided Iran with technical assistance to develop its nuclear program.

It’s always been for peaceful purposes, fully observing Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) provisions — what nuclear outlaws USA and Israel systematically breach.

In return for Iran agreeing to limit its legitimate nuclear activities, Security Council members unanimously adopted Res. 2231, affirming the JCPOA nuclear deal, making it binding international law.

UN imposed nuclear related sanctions on Iran were lifted. Trump regime hardliners want them illegally reimposed.

They want a permanent UN arms embargo on Iran. The current one expires in October, Pompeo roaring:

“We cannot allow the Islamic Republic of Iran to purchase conventional weapons (sic)” — its legitimate right.

Trump unlawfully abandoned the JCPOA in May 2018, abandoning as well any say over its implementation and enforcement.

His regime’s aim is all about wanting Iran weakened, its economy crushed, its people ill-nourished, starved, and immiserated, its huge hydrocarbon resources looted — by whatever it takes to achieve its objectives.

Pompeo falsely accused Iran of “nuclear brinksmanship by expanding proliferation of sensitive activities” — a bald-faced Big Lie.

It’s how the US, NATO, and Israel operate, constituting an unparalleled threat to world peace and humanity’s survival.

Pompeo’s “Keeping the World Safe From Iran’s Nuclear Program” by diabolical Trump regime policies will make the region and world less safe by wanting the JCPOA killed, along with provocatively pushing things toward possible US confrontation with Iran.

Both are key objectives of Israel and Iranophobes in Washington.

The Big Lie claim about development of nuclear weapons by Iran persists.

On Sunday, the Times of Israel said Netanyahu regime war minister Benny Gantz was told “that Tehran is just six months away from producing all the components of an atomic bomb, and two years away from assembling such a bomb (sic).”

Time and again through the years, similar disinformation and Big Lies were proliferated by Israeli and US Iranophobes.

No corroborating evidence was ever presented because none existed earlier or now.

Unlike nuclear armed and dangerous USA and Israel, Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful.

According to a June 12 Foreign Policy magazine report, the Trump regime is going all out to kill the JCPOA before US November 3 presidential and congressional elections.

It wants UN nuclear related sanctions reimposed, along with a permanent arms embargo.

The publication warned of possible “irreparable damage” to the Security Council if Trump regime hardliners get their way.

Trump’s pullout left the JCPOA in limbo, Russia and China firmly on board to preserve it, EU signatories Britain, France and Germany time going along with US interests even when harming their own.

It’s unknown whether they’ll go against Washington to save the JCPOA, what they haven’t done so far, no evidence suggesting a change of policy.

Last week, EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell said the Trump regime pulled out of the JCPOA and has no say over demanding a permanent conventional arms embargo on Iran.

His regime threatened secondary sanctions on nations, entities, and individuals engaging in normal trade relations with Iran — demanding the world community go along with its hostile agenda.

It includes wanting imports of food, medicines, medical equipment, and other humanitarian goods blocked from entering Iran.

Its “maximum pressure” on the country aims to inflict maximum pain and suffering on its people, including by denying them essentials to life, health, and well-being.

A Security Council showdown looms in the weeks ahead.

Key is whether EU JCPOA signatories will defy diabolical Trump regime anti-Iran objectives or bend to its will at the expense of regional stability and the rule of law.

The jury is very much out on which way Britain, France, Germany, and Brussels will go.

A lot depends on how things play out in the run-up to US November 3 elections.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from OneWorld

The marriage of post-Lockdown and George Floyd protests has nurtured a rough beast that is still immune to any form of civilized debate in the U.S.: the Seattle Commune.

So what really is the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone cum People’s Republic all about?

Are the communards mere useful idiots? Is this a refined Occupy Wall Street experiment? Could it survive, logistically, and be replicated in NYC, L.A. and D.C.?

An outraged President Trump has described it as a plot by “domestic terrorists” in a city “run by radical left Democrats”. He called for “LAW & ORDER” (in caps, according to his Tweetology).

Shades of Syria in Seattle are visibly discernable. Under this scenario, the Commune is a remixed Idlib fighting “regime counter-insurgency outposts” (in communard terminology).

For most American Right factions, Antifa equals ISIS. George Floyd is regarded not only as a “communist Antifa martyr”, as an intel operative told me, but a mere “criminal and drug dealer”.

So when will “regime forces” strike – in this case without Russian air cover? After all, as dictated by Secretary Esper, it’s up to the Pentagon to “dominate the battlefield”.

But we’ve got a problem. Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) is supported by the city of Seattle – run by a Democrat – which is supported by the governor of Washington State, also a Democrat.

There’s no chance Washington State will use the National Guard to crush CHAZ. And Trump cannot take over Washington State National Guard without the approval of the governor, even though he has tweeted, “Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game.”

It’s enlightening to observe that “counter-insurgency” can be applied in Afghanistan and the tribal areas; to occupy Iraq; to protect the looting of oil/gas in eastern Syria. But not at home. Even if 58% of Americans would actually support it: for many among them, the Commune may be as bad if not worse than looting.

But then there are those firmly opposed. Among them: the “Butcher of Fallujah” Mad Dog Mattis; color revolution practitioners NED; Nike; JP Morgan; the whole Democratic Party establishment; and virtually the whole U.S. Army establishment.

Welcome to the Only Occupy Others movement.

Still the question remains: how long will “Idlib” be able to defy the “regime”? That’s enough to cause an alleged “bully”, Attorney General Barr, many a sleepless night.

Real Black Power

Trump and Barr have already threatened to criminalize Antifa as a “terrorist organization” – even as Black Lives Matter has pointed a yellow dagger in the asphalt of 16th St. in D.C. towards the White House.

And that brings us to the across the board legitimacy enjoyed by Black Lives Matter. How’s that possible? Here is a good place to start.

Black Lives Matter, founded in 2013 by a trio of middle class, queer black women very vocal against “hetero-patriarchy”, is a product of what University of British Columbia’s Peter Dauvergne defines as “corporatization of activism”.

Over the years, Black Lives Matter evolved as a marketing brand, like Nike (which fully supports it). The widespread George Floyd protests elevated it to the status of a new religion. Yet Black Lives Matter carries arguably zero, true revolutionary appeal. This is not James Brown’s “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud”. And it does not get even close to Black Power and the Black Panthers’ “Power to the People”.

The gold standard on civil rights, Dr. Martin Luther King, in 1968, concisely framed the – structural – heart of the matter:

“The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.”

The Black Panthers, young, extremely articulated intellectuals who had mixed Marx, Lenin, Mao, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X and Frantz “Wretched of the Earth” Fanon took MLK’s diagnosis to a whole new level.

As summed up by the Panthers’ Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver: “We believe in the need for a unified revolutionary movement … informed by the revolutionary principles of scientific socialism.” That synthesized the insights of MLK, who was, crucially, a proponent of color blindness.

Fred Hampton, the target of a de facto state assassination in December 1969, made sure the struggle transcended race:

“We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I’m talking about the white masses, I’m talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don’t fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.”

So this is not only about race. This is not only about class. This is about Power to the People fighting for social, political and economic justice under a system that’s intrinsically unequal. It expands on the in-depth analysis by Gerald Horne in The Dawning of the Apocalypse, where the 16th century is fully dissected, “creation myth” of the U.S. included.

Horne shows how a bloodthirsty invasion of the Americas engendered fierce resistance by Africans and their indigenous populations allies, weakening imperial Spain and finally enabling London to dispatch settlers to Virginia in 1607.

Now compare this depth of analysis with the meek, almost begging for mercy “Black Lives Matter” slogan. One is reminded, once again, of Malcolm X’s sharpness: “We had the best organization the black man’s ever had—niggers ruined it!”

To solve the Black Lives Matter question, one must, once again, follow the money.

Black Lives Matter profited in 2016 from a humongous $100 million grant from the Ford Foundation and other philanthropic capitalism stalwarts such as JPMorgan Chase and the Kellogg Foundation.

The Ford Foundation is very close to the U.S. Deep State. The board of directors is crammed with corporate CEOs and Wall Street honchos. In a nutshell; Black Lives Matter, the organization, today is fully sanitized; largely integrated into the Democratic Party machine; adored by mainstream media; and certainly does not represent a threat to the 0.001%.

The Black Lives Matter leadership, of course, argues that this time, “it’s different. Elaine Brown, the formidable former chairwoman of the Black Panthers, takes no prisoners: Black Lives Matter has a “plantation mentality”.

Try to set the night on fire

Set the Night on Fire is an extraordinarily absorbing book co-written by Jon Wiener and the inestimable Mike Davis of City of Quartz and Planet of Slums.

Cataloguing in exhaustive detail the L.A. of the Sixties, we are plunged into the Watts riots in 1965; the antiwar movement joining the Black Panthers to form a uniquely Californian Peace and Freedom Party; the evolving grassroots unity of the Black Power ethos; the Che-Lumumba club of the Communist Party – which would become the political base of legendary Angela Davis; and the massive FBI and LAPD offensive to destroy the Black Panthers.

Tom Wolfe notoriously – and viciously – characterized L.A. supporters of the Black Panthers as ‘radical chic”. Elaine Brown once again sets the record straight: “We were dying, and all of them, the strongest and the most frivolous, were helping us survive another day.”

One of the most harrowing sections of the book details how the FBI went after Panthers sympathizers, including the sublime Jean Seberg, the star of Otto Preminger’s Saint Joan (1957) and Godard’s Breathless (1960).

Jean Seberg contributed anonymously to the Panthers under the codename “Aretha” (yes, as in Franklin). The FBI’s COINTELPRO took no prisoners to go after Seberg, enrolling the CIA, military intel and the Secret Service. She was smeared as a “sex-perverted white actress” – as in having affairs with black radicals. Her Hollywood career was destroyed. She went into deep depression, had a stillbirth (the baby was not black), emigrated, and her – decomposed – body was found in her car in Paris in 1979.

In contrast, there have been academic rumblings identifying the sea of converts to the Black Lives Matter religion as mostly products of the marriage between wokeness and intersectionality – the set of interlinked traits that since birth privileges heterosexual white men, now trying to expiate their guilt.

Generation Z, unleashed en masse from college campuses across the U.S. into the jobs market, is a prisoner of this phenomenon: in fact a slave to – politically correct – identity politics. And once again, carrying zero revolutionary potential.

Compare it once again to immense political sacrifices of the Black Panthers. Or when Angela Davis, already a pop icon, became the most famous black political prisoner in American history. Aretha Franklin, when volunteering to post bail for Davis, famously framed it: “I’ve been locked up for disturbing the peace, and I know you’ve got to disturb the peace when you can’t get no peace.”

Elaine Brown: “I know what the BPP [Black Panther Party] was. I know the lives we lost, the struggle we put into place, the efforts we made, the assaults on us by the police and government – I know all that. I don’t know what Black Lives Matter does.”

It’s open to endless debate whether Black Lives Matter is intrinsically racist and even inherently violent.

And it’s also debatable whether taking a knee, now a household ritual practiced by politicians (complete with Kente scarves from Ghana), cops and corporations, really threatens the foundations of Empire.

Noam Chomsky has already ventured that the protest wave so far carries zero political articulation – and badly needs a strategic direction, far beyond the obvious revolt against police brutality.

The protests are dying down just as the Commune emerges.

Depending on its evolution that may pose a serious problem to Trump/Barr. The President simply cannot allow a running color revolution to develop in the middle of a major American city. At the same time he’s impotent as a federal authority to dissolve the Commune.

What the White House can do is to dog whistle its own counter-insurgency units, in the form of armed to their teeth white supremacist militias, to go on the offensive and crush the already flimsy supply lines of the wokeness-cum-intersectionality crowd.

Occupy after all took over key areas of 60 American cities for months just to suddenly dissolve into the ether.

Additionally, the Deep State has already war-gamed plenty of scenarios to deal with siege situations way more complex than the Commune.

Whatever happens next, one key vector is immutable. A state of permanent insurrection only benefits the 0.00001% plutocracy comfortably ensconced while the plebs set the night on fire.

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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

From day one in office to now, Trump breached virtually all his positive pledges to the American people.

No “transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the people” occurred.

No governance serving all Americans equitably, “starting right here and right now.”

No “forgotten men and women of our country…forgotten no longer, (no) stop(ing) (of) the American carnage, (no) allegiance to all Americans.”

No end to US imperial wars by hot and other means that rage in multiple theaters with no prospect for ending them.

Like most others in Washington, Trump’s lofty promises were empty rhetoric by a president serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of peace, equity, justice, the rule of law, and other democratic values throughout his time in office.

Is the transformation of Trump from belligerent president, hostile toward ordinary people everywhere, to peacenik likely ahead?

Has he about-faced on wanting “a very, very strong military,” wanting it more “buil(t) up” than already, wanting to more “greatly strengthen and expand” the US nuclear arsenal (to) outmatch (and) outlast” other nations by leading the nuclear arms race?

The US is a belligerent state, an imperial state, a nation from inception run by its privileged class for its own self-interest — a nation at war on invented enemies at home and abroad throughout most of its history.

No real ones existed, notably not for the past 75 years, no threats to national security from foreign nations.

Yet, with all categories included, the US spends as much or more on militarism, the Pentagon’s global empire of bases, its intelligence apparatus, and wars on humanity than all other nations combined.

Throughout his time in office, Trump supported all of the above.

On Saturday, he addressed West Point graduates.

It’s one of five US military academies that are symbolic of America’s violent culture, its endless wars, its abhorrence of world peace and stability.

“There is no place on earth I would rather be than right here with all of you,” DJT “trumpeted,” adding:

“(T)he American warrior (is) noble (and) righteous…American heroes (sic).”

The US “military’s contributions to our society are an everlasting inspiration to us all (sic).”

It “carr(ies) on the traditions of freedom, equality, and liberty that so many gave their lives to secure (sic).”

From colonial America to the present day, US military forces massacred Native Americans “from sea to shining sea.”

US troops were involved in stealing half of Mexico in the mid-19th century — today’s California, Utah, Nevada, as well as parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming and Colorado.

Following the 1898 Spanish-American war based on a Big Lie, the US illegally annexed Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, Samoa, Hawaii, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Canal Zone, Puerto Rico and other territories.

After pledging to keep the US out of WW I if reelected president, Woodrow Wilson’s propaganda campaign transformed pacifist Americans into raging German haters — giving him the war he wanted.

Franklin Roosevelt manipulated Japan to attack Pearl Harbor. US intelligence tracked the Japanese fleet across the Pacific, fleet commander Admiral HE Kimmel not warned.

Mass casualties gave FDR the war he wanted.

Numerous 1949/1950 South Korean cross-border incursions provoked Pyongyang’s June 1950 defensive response. Truman got the war he wanted.

US war on North Vietnam followed the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin false flag.

In October 1983, US forces invaded Grenada — based on a Big Lie about a threat to US medical students that didn’t exist.

In 1989, Panama was invaded by US troops, former ally Manuel Noriega deposed for forgetting who’s boss.

So-called Operation Just Cause massacred thousands of civilians.

For the past 30 years, endless preemptive US wars of aggression followed.

Based on Big Lies and deception, one nation after another was raped and destroyed, millions of lives lost.

US troops led by graduates of West Point and other US military academies waged and continue to wage preemptive war on humanity.

Their training and indoctrination are all about serving US imperial interests — endless wars against nations threatening no one Washington’s favored strategy.

In his 1935 book titled “War Is a Racket,” General Smedley Butler (1881 – 1940), two-time congressional medal of honor recipient explained what US imperial wars are all about, saying:

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.”

“In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914.”

“I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.”

“I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.”

“I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912.”

“I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916.”

“I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.”

“Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

For the rest of his term and if reelected, will Trump focus on peacemaking over “endless wars (by the US) policeman of the world?”

Was saying “(w)e are ending the era of endless wars…(It’s) no longer the policy of US forces to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have not even heard of” an unprecedented change of longstanding US policy?

Not a day of world peace and stability existed throughout his tenure, the same true for most of his predecessors.

The US ruling class considers peace, stability, and adherence to the rule of law anathema to its imperial aims for unchallenged dominance of planet earth, its resources, and populations.

What Trump called “defending America’s vital interests” is all about waging war on humanity by hot and other means at home and abroad so privileged US interests can benefit at the expense of vitally needed peace, equity and social justice.

Changing longstanding US policy won’t ever come from sitting presidents, legislators, the courts, or so-called elections that assure continuity when held.

US ruling authorities yield nothing without being pushed.

Positive change can only come from sustained nonviolent activism in the streets nationwide, not quitting until achieved.

It’s the only way possible for government serving everyone equitably, not just for the privileged few like now.

Nothing else can work, not now or ever.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

There is only one solution for the insane mess that goes under the name of ‘democracy’ to day, and that is to return to human scale largely self governing communities.

This was the great cry that went up in 1381 as the farmer revolutionary Wat Tyler jumped up onto a hay cart to denounce the despotic power mongering of the barons operating under the mantle of King Richard II. It was the pronouncement that sparked the ‘peasants revolt’.

Wat and his loyal army of peasants struck a highly resonant chord amongst the down-trodden countryside community of that time. Communities forced to pay poverty inducing tithes to the despotic barons while struggling to feed their families on the meagre acreage accorded to them.

If that sounds familiar, it’s hardly surprising. Just substitute ‘government’ for barons and ‘taxation’ for tithes and one immediately sees how the top down grip over working people has failed to change over the past six hundred or so years.

Keeping that fact in mind, now add the more recent historical advent of big banking, big pharma, monopolised media, global surveillance systems, the military industrial complex and the political/corporate centralisation of power – and you will have in front of you the main new tools of oppression we are faced with today.

The tools may be different but the repression is the same. What is missing is the revolt.

Now when one stops to really consider this situation, we are ready for such a revolt. We are done with fake democracy and undisguised top-down exploitation. The fact that it is tolerated is more a reflection of a lethargic and lack-lustre state of mind, than the fact that to be a slave is a tolerable condition. It isn’t and will never be.

There is an earthy, honest element within the family of man, that has not given-in to the seduction of ‘convenience’ and the shallow narcissistic materialism on display to day. There is an element capable of recognising that, thanks to the increasingly despotic powers of central control, centuries of hard fought gains in justice and dignity now hang by a perilous thread.

Some inspired counterforce needs to rise-up to reinstate them. A Wat Tyler; a people’s revolt; the revival of truth over the lie.

England is a country with a reputation for standing-up for the rights of the individual. For freedom.

So where are these qualities hiding today?

In 2020, with this country half way out of the vampiric clutches of the European Union and half way through a grim story of government imposed home imprisonment, insane ‘social distancing, mad masks and the promise of a completely useless CV-19 testing programme – what are the prospects for the future of the good people of this notorious island?

How can the citizens of 21^st century Britain break free?

Wat Tyler is our clue “England should be a nation of self governing communities” declared Tyler as the answer to the relentless top down repression exerted by the arrogant barons.

The peasants revolt, fought with pitchforks, machetes and whatever other weapons could be fashioned out of farmyard tools, took on their oppressors and gave them a good hiding, until the farmer’s hero was publicly knifed in the back in front of the crowd at Smithfield in London, while meeting in open air debate with King Richard II, to negotiate the future of the farming community he had so bravely led out of slavery.

There is unfinished business to be addressed here. Too many times the tyrannical forces of Westminster have pretended to negotiate a better deal for the electorate they are supposed to represent. Too many times they have deceived and betrayed their constituents. Too many times they have sold-out to the forces of greed, power and arrogance. Too many times.

We have now arrived at the point of no return. The madmen and women of Westminster are mocking their electorate with complete disdain. Disdain for the basic needs and rights of all citizens. They are marionettes of the swingeing banking moguls corporate giants and multi billionaire families who between them dictate the agenda for the greater part of the world. The man on the street and in the field is simply a pawn in a calculated, preplanned attempt to enslave humanity.

It’s past time to follow Wat’s proclamation. It’s time to break-out of the centralised control system once and for all and to re-establish ourselves in human scale communities, with human scale technologies and human scale farming practices.

We need to ditch government and become “self governing” so as to run our own lives on our own terms and at our own discretion.

Destiny beckons. The people will rise!

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and teacher. His latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is particularly prescient reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The self-inflicted cultural defenestration of what passes for Western Civilization in the United States continues apace. As George Orwell described the process in 1984

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present…”

Ironically, even as America’s Founding Fathers are being pilloried through the prism of contemporary values, not every bit of customary behavior is being challenged. Even though the United States is going through a devastating health care and national identity crisis, the Federal Government continues to grind out legislation that is favorable to Israel and to certain Jewish interests. “The Never Again (Holocaust) Education Act,” for example, passed through the House of Representatives (H.R. 943) by a 395-3 vote followed by a unanimous vote in the Senate on S.2085on May 13^th.  It will help to indoctrinate school children regarding an easily challengeable narrative of perpetual victimhood which in turn generates billions of dollars for the racist state of Israel, but it was described by Congressional supporters as merely an instrument to support the already existing educational resources at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), which is also taxpayer funded.

The House bill’s sponsor Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York preened that “Combatting hate and intolerance must always be a priority and I’m glad that the Senate agrees. Passing this bill by unanimous consent today sends a strong message that the Congress is overwhelmingly united in combatting antisemitism…” and the Senate bill’s sponsor Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada explained how “…the Never Again Education Act will give schools needed resources to cover one of the darkest chapters in our history. Through education, we can provide insight into the past, and use it to prevent anti-Semitism now.”

If Americans Knew has documented how there were 68 pieces of legislation focused on providing goods and services to Israel in 2019, with 18 more added, identified here, so far this year. The most well known piece of legislation is S.3176, “US-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2020 (To amend the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the US-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014 to make improvements to certain defense and security assistance provisions and to authorize the appropriations of funds to Israel, and for other purposes),” which is the upper chamber’s version of House bill H.R.1837, which was passed last July. S.3176 passed out of committee on May 21^stand is scheduled for a floor vote. The Senate bill was sponsored by Marco Rubio of Florida, a favorite of the Israel Lobby and its oligarch funders.

The House and Senate bills derive from an agreement entered into by President Barack Obama committing the U.S. Treasury to give Israel a minimum of $3.8 billion a year for the next ten years. The current version of the legislation has tweaked the language to make that $3.8 billion Danegeld a minimum, subject to increase as circumstances dictate. The bill also provides Israel additional military equipment off the books, funds several co-production arrangements and basically commits Washington to supporting Israel militarily even if the Jewish state starts the war.

Other pro-Israel bills include H.R.5595 – the “Israel Anti-Boycott Act (To impose additional prohibitions relating to foreign boycotts under Export Control Reform Act of 2018, and for other purposes),” which includes criminal penalties to target businesses, organizations and individuals who attempt to boycott or disrupt commercial activity operating out of Israel’s West Bank settlements. It was drafted in response to the publication of a United Nations database identifying over 100 Israeli companies doing business in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. S.Res. 570  “A resolution opposing and condemning the potential prosecution of United States and Israeli nationals by the International Criminal Court,” meanwhile is an attempt to block any consideration by the international court of Israeli as well as American war crimes.

Other legislation (S.3775 “The United States Israel Military Capability Act” involves developing and sharing military technology even though Israel frequently steals what is developed and H.Res.837 “Reaffirming the need for transatlantic cooperation to combat anti-Semitism in Europe” encourages European countries to do more to teach about the so-called holocaust and anti-Semitism.

But the most bizarre resolutions currently circulating on the Congressional circuit are S.3722 and H.R.6829 “To authorize funding for a bilateral cooperative program with Israel for the development of health technologies with a focus on combating COVID-19.” The respective bills were introduced on May 12^th and 13^th and are now in committee. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been lobbying Congress hard by playing the China-as-threat card. The House version is consequently dubbed the “Expanding Medical Partnerships with Israel to Lessen Dependence on China Act.”

What the bills will do is establish a partnership with Israel to develop a vaccine and other medical responses to the pandemic virus. The costs will be shared, but Israel’s pharmaceutical industry will market the products, which promises to be enormously profitable if the endeavor succeeds.

And finally, there is Iran, Israel’s bête noire. On June 8^th U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran’s shipping network took effect, months after they were announced in December following claims made by the State Department relating to alleged Iranian support for proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Commercial and maritime industries and even governments now risk U.S. sanctions if they do any business with the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and/or its Shanghai-based subsidiary, E-Sail Shipping Company. The new sanctions are being touted by Republican Congressmen as the “toughest ever.”

So, what is the average American citizen to do confronted by an avalanche of Congressional action benefitting Israel while the United States is going through its most trying time since the Great Depression? Israeli lobbying groups like AIPAC, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) have large budgets, hundreds of staff and full and immediate access to Congressional offices. They even write the legislation that is then rubber stamped by the House and Senate, and although they are clearly agents of Israel, they are never required to register as such under Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

One can always contact a Congress-critter and complain but that is generally speaking a waste of time. A brave man and friend of mine who was a survivor of the brutal Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967 did write to his Senator and ask why, when the nation is in crisis, Congress is spending so much time and money on Israel. This was the reply he got from Senator Rick Scott of Florida:

“Thank you for contacting me regarding our greatest ally, Israel. Florida has maintained a strong relationship with Israel for many generations and I have always worked to improve policies and investments between our two countries.

During my time as Governor of Florida, I visited Israel three times. My first two visits were to promote Florida and to build international trade relationships between Israel and Florida. My third visit was for the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, for which I strongly advocated.

I also signed anti-BDS legislation, secured $2 million for security at our Jewish schools, and I opposed the reckless Iran Deal.

As your United States Senator, I will continue to work every day to protect and support our greatest ally and fight to take actions against those who wish to do them harm.

Again, thank you for your insightful correspondence. I am proud to represent every citizen in Florida and I appreciate the time you took to provide your position on this matter. Should you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact me.”

Clearly Senator Scott claims to be proud of representing “every citizen” in Florida, but he regards some citizens as more important than others. Concerning his trade missions, one might be interested in knowing what the balance of trade and job creation between Israel and Florida actually is, as these arrangements are generally heavily loaded to favor Israeli businesses and investors. Also, the good Senator might recall that it was a Florida public school that recently was on the receiving end of a mass shooting, so perhaps the money he so proudly gave to Jewish schools for security was not exactly well spent. And Scott seems to be unaware that Jewish organizations already get over 90% of Department of Homeland Security discretionary grants, so they hardly need more taxpayer money.

Acting on behalf of a foreign country, Senator Scott also is willing to shut down the First Amendment for most Americans in his zeal to crush the non-violent BDS movement. And his rejection of the “Iran Deal” demonstrates that he does not support policies that actually enhance the security of the United States, presumably out of deference to the interests of Israel and at least some of his Jewish constituents.

Finally, Senator Scott should perhaps look into the treaties that Washington has entered into with foreign powers. There is no defense treaty with Israel and the Jewish state is no ally, much less a “greatest ally.” It is, in fact, a major strategic liability, involving Americans in regional wars that need not be fought and demonstrating to all the world the risible reality of a military and economic superpower that is being led to perdition during a time of crisis by a ruthless and irresponsible client state.

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This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Florida Senator Rick Scott, who previously served as the state’s governor, visited the Kosel in August 2019. Credit: Rick Scott/ Twitter

The only thing controversial about taking down statues of white supremacist US and other Western figures is why they were erected in the first place, and why it took so long for a campaign to remove them.

In Britain, over two dozen Oxford city councillors, students, and thousands more Brits called for removing the statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oxford University’s Oriel College.

He’s one of the most odious symbols of Britain’s white supremacist, imperial, colonial past.

Founder of Rhodesia (today’s Zambia and Zimbabwe), he once called Anglo-Saxons “the first race in the world.”

He called for Britain to colonize new lands “to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines,” praising the scourge of imperialism in the pursuit of this agenda at the expense of exploited people.

In Richmond, VA on Wednesday, the confederacy’s former capital, protesters took down a statue of confederate president Jefferson Davis.

A statute of Christopher Columbus was removed in Camden, NJ, a statement by the city saying its presence “long pained residents of the (Farnham Park) community.”

Overnight Wednesday in Boston’s North End, a statue of Columbus was beheaded.

Other Columbus statues came down in Minneapolis, Richmond, VA, and reportedly elsewhere in the US.

The late historian, anti-war, anti-imperial activist Howard Zinn explained the “real Columbus” in his People’s History of the United States, other writings, and public addresses.

His arrival with a crew of brigands chosen for plunder in what’s now the Bahamas, then Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and Cuba over 500 years ago was followed by the mass slaughter of around 100 million indigenous people for centuries, an unprecedented genocide ignored or glossed over by establishment Western history.

Zinn explained the following:

“Arawak men and women…swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat” they spotted.

“When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts.”

They “were remarkable…for their hospitality, their belief in sharing” — polar opposite Western civilization’s ruling class.

Columbus sought gold, other riches and slaves for Spain. A second voyage followed the first. Native people were slaughtered throughout the Caribbean.

Scant gold was found, just hundreds of human beings taken captive, those surviving the journey to Spain sold like sheep or goats.

Zinn: “In return for bringing back gold and spices (to Spanish royalty, he was) promised 10 percent of the profits, governorship over newfound lands, and the fame that would go with a new title: Admiral of the Ocean Sea.”

“He was a merchant’s clerk from the Italian city of Genoa, part-time weaver (the son of a skilled weaver), and expert sailor.”

Heading to Asia from Europe, “he came upon…unchartered land…the Americas.”

He didn’t discover it as US school children are taught. It was there, inhabited by indigenous people for thousands of years before his arrival.

His first voyage was followed by a second one in search of gold and slaves.

There were plenty of the latter. “The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams,” Zinn explained.

Columbus first arrived in 1492. By 1650, “none of the original Arawaks or their descendants were left,” said Zinn.

An estimated eight million people perished from overwork, neglect, and other forms of cruelty as slave labor.

Knowledge of what happened came Bartoleme de Las Casas, a “priest (involved) in the conquest of Cuba (transformed into) a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty.”

The Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades,” he wrote.

Indigenous people “suffered and died in the mines and other labors in desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could turn for help.”

“(M)ountains (were) stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times.”

“They d(ug), split rocks, move(d) stones, and carr(ied) dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash(ed) gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it br(oke) them.”

The women were “forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants,” Zinn explained.

Separated for months and worked to exhaustion led to their deaths.

From Columbus’ arrival to 1508, “over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines” — millions more in subsequent years.

“Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it,” said Las Casas.

Zinn: “What Columbus did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas, Cortes did to the Aztecs of Mexico, Pizarro to the Incas of Peru, and the English settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts to the Powhatans and the Pequots.”

“They used the same tactics, and for the same reasons — the frenzy in the early capitalist states of Europe for gold, for slaves, for products of the soil, to pay the bondholders and stockholders of the expeditions, to finance the monarchical bureaucracies rising in Western Europe, to spur the growth of the new money economy rising out of feudalism, to participate in what Karl Marx would later call ‘the primitive accumulation of capital.’ ”

It was the beginning of how the West and most other countries were run from the time of Columbus to today.

In his book titled “Columbus: His Enterprise,” Hans Koning said the following:

“For all the gold and silver stolen and shipped to Spain did not make the Spanish people richer.”

“It gave their kings an edge in the balance of power for a time, a chance to hire more mercenary soldiers for their wars.”

“They ended up losing those wars anyway, and all that was left was a deadly inflation, a starving population, the rich richer, the poor poorer, and a ruined peasant class.”

Zinn explained that “the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas (was the) beginning (of) conquest, slavery (and) death.”

No “heroic adventure” by Columbus occurred, just “bloodshed,” plunder, and human misery, the legacy of so-called Western civilization.

History is told “from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats (and) leaders.” No one speaks for victims.

Earlier belligerents had swords, then rifles and cannons.

Today they have WMDs and delivery systems able to end life on earth if used in enough numbers.

Humanity’s ability to kill and destroy has come a long way through the ages, scant attention paid to surviving the destructiveness of today’s super-weapons.

Nothing has been done to curb the rage of the powerful to dominate or to minimize mass slaughter, vast destruction, and human misery from their deadly pursuits.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Even two years ago, hypersonic weapons were barely an item of discussion among the US national security establishment. Today these weapons are all the rage. What accounts for that sudden emergence of US interest in this category of weapons, which has spurred research and development on several different weapon systems that are to enter service at some point in the upcoming decade? And what are the implications of their eventual likely entry into service?

The triggering reason is most likely the failure of US, French, and British stand-off weapons used against Syria, specifically against targets covered by modern air defenses. Russian and even Soviet-era surface-to-air gun and missile systems racked up an impressive tally of successful interceptions of Tomahawk cruise missiles that still represent the most important component of the US stand-off weapon arsenal. Even the supposedly stealthy cruise missiles like France’s SCALP-EG, Great Britain’s Storm Shadow, and the US JASSM-ER proved to have low survivability against modern defenses. Israel’s equivalent munitions were not an exception to that rule, as they too had to rely on saturation attacks or, more likely, striking targets that were outside the integrated air defense bubble. Compounding the problem was the absence of sub-strategic ballistic missiles, with the exception of the short-ranged US Army TACMS which, while a formidable weapon, is too slow to evade interception by tactical anti-ballistic systems.

Nor were “hard kill” defenses the only weapons that proved effective against the array of NATO’s air- and sea-launched cruise missiles. Though hard data is difficult to come by, there is evidence suggesting “soft kill” electronic warfare measures were quite effective at countering a wide variety of stand-off munitions as well.

Collectively, these experiences have shaken US and NATO confidence in their chosen technological approach that emphasized stealth for every aerial vehicle in their arsenals, including manned and unmanned platforms as well as missiles. Yet even though stealthy cruise missiles such as the JASSM and its anti-ship version, the LRASM, might be successful at avoiding targeting by long-range radar-guided weapons, the fact that they are jet-powered means they are detectable by infrared imaging sensors at closer ranges. The remarkable information campaign waged by NATO countries against the Pantsir-S short-range air defense system is a reflection of its effectiveness as a missile, bomb, and drone-killer.

Whereas the US military establishment embraced stealth as a “silver bullet” technological solution to all manner of tactical and even strategic problems, Russia’s approach was more measured. While the studies that have led to this conclusion probably will remain classified for a long period of time, the Russian military came to the reasonable conclusion that since avoiding detection cannot be guaranteed, the best way to deal with missile defenses is to decrease exposure time by making the missiles ever-faster. This trend was already evident during the Cold War, when NATO settled for subsonic anti-ship missiles such as the Exocet, Harpoon, Penguin, Otomat, and ultimately the Tomahawk which had both anti-ship and land-attack applications, which relied on stealth of sorts in the form of flying at extremely low altitudes. USSR, on the other hand, already by the late 1960s was making a major investment in highly supersonic air-, surface- and submarine-launched missiles. By 1980s, Soviet weapons were increasingly employing air-breathing ramjet propulsion which pushed their speeds ever-closer to the hypersonic realm. NATO’s use of ramjet propulsion during that time was limited to surface-to-air missiles such as the British Sea Dart and US Talos, while its cruise missiles were almost exclusively jet-powered.

Russia’s evolutionary development of these technologies has led both to systems already in service, such as the Oniks and Kalibr cruise missiles (with an anti-ship variant of the latter employing a highly supersonic terminal stage). These are be soon joined by the Tsirkon, a genuinely hypersonic cruise missile, the Avangard ICBM maneuvering re-entry vehicle and the Kinzhal aeroballistic missile derived from the Iskander INF-threshold 500km range ballistic missile.

US interest in conventional hypervelocity strike weapons is not exactly new. The George W. Bush administration initiated the Prompt Global Strike program which made its first appearance in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, shortly before the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. Nevertheless, in the post-9/11 wars the US has shifted attention and budgets away from strategic weapons and towards counterinsurgency, therefore while the interest in these weapons was never abandoned, it was nowhere near the top of US defense priorities. Not even the rapid deterioration of Russia-NATO relations in 2014 and later years led to visibly greater interest in these weapons. The Trump Administration’s two rounds of cruise missile strikes against Syria, however, appear to have had that effect. As a result, every service of the US military is interested in the development of at least one weapon system that would provide with hypervelocity strike capabilities. With the exception of Avangard, every Russian system mentioned has a similar US system under some stage of development.

The Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) is quite literally the US equivalent of the Iskander, possessed of similar range and capabilities. There are two versions of the weapon being developed, one by Lockheed-Martin which conducted the first test launch in 2019, and another by Raytheon which appears to be behind schedule. While the weapon is intended to be used from the same HIMARS launchers that Army TACMS uses, the missile itself has considerably greater range of just under 500km, though it is widely assumed it is going to be extended to 700km. The original official 500km range requirement was placed when the INF Treaty was still in force, but since that treaty’s demise was already being planned by the White House, it is rather likely the two competitors were informed that actual desired range was greater than the specified one.

The Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) picks up where the PrSM leaves of, and moreover is one of the missile designs using the Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) developed by Sandia National Laborary. C-HGB is an Avangard-like though smaller maneuvering hypersonic vehicle that has been tested at speeds of up to Mach 8 and ranges in excess of 6,000km as part of the Army Hypersonic Weapon program that has since been folded into this and other projects. Operational LRHW range will depend on the kinematics of the carrier. However, since the START I treaty defines an ICBM as a missile with a range exceeding 5,500km, if LRHW has performance comparable to the AHW, it would be a de-facto road-mobile ICBM. While it is planned as a delivery vehicle for conventional payloads, nothing prevents it from carrying nuclear warheads. LRHW and other long-range surface-launched hypersonic weapons may be the reason the United States has shown no interest in extending New START treaty which uses the same definitions and which is set to expire in 2021. The US Army hopes to have the first LRHW battery in service in 2023, though that date is likely to slip, if only because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Intermediate Range Conventional Prompt Global Strike (IRCPS) is the US Navy’s equivalent of the LRHW in the sense that it uses C-HGB. However, unlike the missiles mentioned earlier, it does not appear to have a custom-designed launch vehicle but will instead use repurposed Trident SLBMs, most likely the intermediate-range Trident I. One point which speaks in favor of Trident I is that its smaller size makes it compatible with the Virginia Block III attack submarines “Virginia Payload Tubes” which normally carry Tomahawk SLCM packs but which are large enough to accept a single Trident I-based IRCPS. So here too we see a deliberate blurring of the line separating strategic and non-strategic weapons. Since the C-HGB can be used as a nuclear delivery vehicle, it would transform the US Navy’s future attack submarines with suitable launch tubes into ballistic missile submarines.

Unlike LRHW and IRCPS, the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) does not use the C-HGB. That weapon was supposed to be the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW) which is still advertised on the Lockheed-Martin web site, alongside ARRW, IRCPS, and LRHW, but which was rejected in favor of ARRW, a smaller vehicle with a different, smaller glide body. The USAF chose ARRW over HCSW because the smaller size would enable B-52s and B-1s to carry larger numbers of these missiles, and even permit F-15 fighters to act as carriers.

Since all of these weapons have ranges bordering or possibly even exceeding the strategic armaments’ range threshold of 5,500km and moreover could have nuclear variants, they should properly be termed strategic weapons. With the exception of the PrSM, their capabilities go well beyond the need to launch battlefield strikes or to target key rear-area facilities. These missiles’ capabilities in some respects even exceed those of Cold War-era IRBMs like the Pershing II. Indeed, even when carrying conventional payloads, their high velocity turns them into very effective “bunker-busters” capable of threatening ICBM launch silos and underground command centers. This makes them ideal first-strike weapons, used against leadership and weapons sites, with the target country’s degraded nuclear response being restrained or limited by US anti-ballistic missile defenses which are being developed in parallel with hypersonic strike capabilities, and the still-untouched US nuclear arsenal.

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This article was originally published by Matthew Ehret on The Canadian Patriot in November 2018.

Canada’s struggle for existence as a sovereign nation has been caught between two opposing views of mankind represented by the British and American System of social organization. As the great economist Henry C. Carey laid out while he was advancing the policy of Abraham Lincoln, the American System was designed to become a global system operating amongst sovereign nations for the progress and mutual benefit of each and all. By the end of the 19^th century, American System thinking was resonating with statesmen and patriots in all corners of the globe who were fed up with the ancient imperial system of British Free Trade that had always strived to maintain a world divided and monopolized.

Although British propagandists had made every attempt to keep the illusion of the sacredness of the British System alive in the minds of its subjects, the undeniable increase of quality of life, and creative thought expressed by the American System everywhere it was applied become too strong to ignore… especially within colonies such as Canada that had long suffered a fragmented, and underdeveloped identity as the price paid for loyalty to the British Empire.

In Germany, the American System-inspired  Zollverein (custom’s union) had not only unified a divided nation, but elevated it  to a level of productive power and sovereignty which had outpaced the monopoly power of the British East India Company. In Japan, American engineers helped assemble trains funded by a national banking system, and protective tariff during the Meiji Restoration.

In Russia, American System follower Sergei Witte, Transport Minister and close advisor to Czar Alexander II, revolutionized the Russian economy with the American made trains that rolled across the Trans-Siberian Railway. Not even the Ottoman Empire remained untouched by the inspiration for progress, as the Berlin to Baghdad Railway was begun with the intention of unleashing a bold program of modernization of southwest Asia.

The American System Touches the Canadian Mind

In Canada, admirers of Lincoln and Henry C. Carey found their spokesman in the great American System statesman Isaac Buchanan (1). Buchanan rose to the highest position of (elected) political office in the Dominion of Canada when in April 1864, the new MacDonald-Taché Ministry appointed him the President of the Executive Council. This put him in firm opposition to the Imperial agenda of George Brown, and the later Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, of whom he and all patriotic co-thinkers counted as bitter enemies to Canada’s independence and progress. The policy which Buchanan advocated as he rose to higher prominence was outlined in his December 1863 speech:

“The adoption by England for herself of this transcendental principle [Free Trade] has all but lost the Colonies, and her madly attempting to make it the principle of the British Empire would entirely alienate the Colonies. Though pretending to unusual intelligence, the Manchester Schools are, as a class, as void of knowledge of the world as of patriotic principle… As a necessary consequence of the legislation of England, Canada will require England to assent to the establishment of two things: 1^st, an American Zollverein [aka: Customs Union]. 2^nd: Canada to be made neutral territory in time of any war between England and the United States”. (2)

While the customs union-modelled on the Zollverein program of American System economist Friedrich List in Germany laid out by Buchanan, was temporarily defeated during the operation known as the Articles of Confederation in 1867, the potential for its re-emergence would return in 1896 with the election of Wilfrid Laurier, Canada’s next Prime Minister. By 1911, the custom’s union policy advanced by Laurier, who was a devout admirer of Abraham Lincoln finally came to fruition. Laurier long recognized that Canada’s interests did not reside in the anti-American program of MacDonald which simply tied Canada into greater dependence towards the mother country, but rather with the interests of its southern neighbour. His Reciprocity program proposed to lower protective tariffs with the USA primarily on agriculture, but with the intention to electrify and industrialize Canada, a nation which Laurier saw as supporting 60 million people within two decades. With the collaboration of his close advisors, Adam Shortt, Oscar Skelton and later William Lyon Mackenzie King, Laurier navigated the mine field of his British enemies active throughout the Canadian landscape in the form of the Masonic “Orange Order” of Ontario, and later, the insidious Round Table movement.

While Laurier’s attempts to actualize a true Reciprocity Treaty of 1911 that involved free trade among North American economies united under a protective tariff against British dumping of cheap goods, it would not last, as every resource available to the British run Orange Order and Round Table were activated to ensure the Reciprocity’s final defeat and the downfall of Laurier’s Liberal government and its replacement by the Conservative government of Sir Robert Borden in its stead.(3) Laurier described the situation in Canada after this event:

“Canada is now governed by a junta sitting at London, known as “The Round Table”, with ramifications in Toronto, in Winnipeg, in Victoria, with Tories and Grits receiving their ideas from London and insidiously forcing them on their respective parties.” (4)

Two years before Laurier uttered this warning, the founder of the Round Table movement, Lord Milner wrote to one of his co-conspirators laying out the strategic danger faced by Buchanan and Laurier’s program with America:

“As between the three possibilities of the future: 1. Closer Imperial Union, 2. Union with the U.S. and 3. Independence, I believe definitely that No. 2 is the real danger. I do not think the Canadians themselves are aware of it… they are wonderfully immature in political reflection on the big issues, and hardly realise how powerful the influences are…” (5)

Without understanding either the existential struggle between the two opposing systems related above, or the creation of the Round Table movement by a new breed of British Imperialist as a response to Lincoln’s international victory in the face of the total bankruptcy of the British Empire at the turn of the last century, then no Canadian could honestly ever make sense of what has shaped his or her cultural and political landscape. It is the purpose of this present report to shed a clear light upon some of the principal actors on this stage of universal history with the hope that the reader’s powers of insight may be strengthened such that those necessary powers of judgement required to lead both Canada and the world out of our current plunge into a new dark age may yet occur.

The Round Table Movement: New Racist Breed, Same Racist Species

The Round Table movement served as the intellectual center of the international operations to regain control of the British Empire and took on several incarnations over the 20th century. It worked in tandem with the Coefficients Club, the Fabian Society, and the Rhodes Trust, all of whom witnessed members moving in and out of each others ranks. The historian Carrol Quigley, of Georgetown University wrote of this cabal in his posthumously published “Anglo-American Establishment” (6):

“This organization has been able to conceal its existence quite successfully, and many of its most influential members, satisfied to possess the reality rather than the appearance of power, are unknown even to close students of British history. This is the more surprising when we learn that one of the chief methods by which this Group works has been through propaganda.

It plotted the Jameson Raid of 1895; it caused the Boer War of 1899-1902; it set up and controls the Rhodes Trust; it created the Union of South Africa in 1906-1910; it established the South African periodical The State in 1908; it founded the British Empire periodical The Round Table in 1910, and this remains the mouthpiece of the Group; it has been the most powerful single influence in All Souls, Balliol, and New Colleges at Oxford for more than a generation; it has controlled The Times for more than fifty years, with the exception of the three years 1919-1922, it publicized the idea of and the name “British Commonwealth of Nations” in the period 1908-1918, it was the chief influence in Lloyd George’s war administration in 1917-1919 and dominated the British delegation to the Peace Conference of 1919; it had a great deal to do with the formation and management of the League of Nations and of the system of mandates; it founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919 and still controls it; it was one of the chief influences on British policy toward Ireland, Palestine, and India in the period 1917-1945; it was a very important influence on the policy of appeasement of Germany during the years 1920-1940; and it controlled and still controls, to a very considerable extent, the sources and the writing of the history of British Imperial and foreign policy since the Boer War.”  (7)

To understand the pedigree of the Round Table movement as it was “officially” unveiled in 1910 as the ideological shaper of the policies and paradigm of the new “managerial class” of international imperialists dedicated to the salvation of the British Empire under an “Imperial Federation”, it would be necessary to go back a few decades prior, to 1873-74. It was in this year that a young Canadian named George Parkin lectured at Oxford on the subject imperial union as the sacred duty of all Anglo Saxons to advance. Parkin is popularly heralded by Oxford historians as “the man who shifted the mind of England”.

1873-1902 Empire on the Verge of Collapse: Re-organize or Perish

During this same period, a grouping of Imperial intellectuals known as the “X Club” (f. 1865) centering on Thomas Huxley, Matthew Arnold, Herbert Spencer and Joseph Hooker were assigned the responsibility to overhaul the British Empire’s controlling ideological structures that had proven themselves worn out. Each would specialize on various branches of the sciences and would all promote gradualist interpretations of change to counteract explanations which required creative leaps. This program was applied with the intention of: 1) saving the collapsing empire and 2) establishing the foundation of a new scientific religion based upon Charles Darwin’s highly materialistic model of Natural Selection as the explanation for the evolution and differentiation of new species. As X Club co-founder Herbert Spencer went on to elaborate the system of “social darwinism” as the logical outgrowth of Darwin’s system into human affairs, the intention behind the propagation of the Darwinian program was never “the enlightenment liberalism in battle against the ignorant dogmas of religion”, as it is so often recounted by popular historians of science. Rather, the “revolution in science” initiated by the X Club was merely the re-packaging of an idea as old as Babylon: The control of the masses by a system of oligarchical rule, simply under a new type of “scientific dictatorship”.But how, when the demonstration of creative reason’s power to elevate humanity’s conditions of life by encouraging new discoveries and applied technologies, as promoted by the American System of Political Economy, would the world now accept the conditions of mental and political enslavement demanded by the imperialist in a fixed system struggle for diminishing returns?

This was the challenge upon which young Oxford men would set their creative energies using the “scientific” reasoning established by Thomas Huxley’s X Club and for the service of the ruling oligarchical families of Europe. George Parkin like all young Oxford men at this time, was highly influenced by this network’s ideas, and used them to justify the “natural scientific inevitability” of the hegemony of the strong over the weak. In this case, the Anglo Saxon master race dominating the inferior peoples of the earth. This message could be seen in his 1892 work Imperial Federation: “Nations take long to grow, but there are periods when, as in the long delayed flowering of certain plants, or in the crystallization of chemical solutions, new forms are taken with extreme rapidity. There are the strongest reasons for believing that the British nation has such a period immediately before it. The necessity for the creation of a body of sound public opinion upon the relations to each other of the various parts of the Empire is therefore urgent.” (8)

In elaborating upon the danger of the British System’s collapse in light of nationalist movements following the American System model, Parkin went on to ask:

“Has our capacity for political organization reached its utmost limit? For the British people this is the question of questions. In the whole range of possible political variations in the future there is no issue of such far reaching significance, not merely for our own people but for the world at large, as the question whether the British Empire shall remain a political unit… or yielding to disintegrating forces, shall allow the stream of the national life to be parted into many separate channels.” (9)

One of Parkin’s Oxford contemporaries was Alfred Milner, a character who plays a vicious role in our drama as the catalyzer behind the formation of the Round Table Movement. Milner credited Parkin with giving his life direction from that point on (10). It was during 1876 that another contemporary of Milner and Parkin, named Cecil Rhodes left Oxford in order to make a fortune on a cotton plantation in South Africa. All three characters were also highly influenced by John Ruskin, the leader of the “artistic” branch of British Intelligence led by the “Pre-Raphaelite Society”.

The proceeds of Rhodes’ cotton fortune were multiplied many times by ventures into the diamond industry of South Africa, allowing him to rise to gargantuan heights of political power and wealth, peaking with his appointment as Prime Minister of Cape Town and Founder of Rhodesia. The current London-centered mineral cartels Rio Tinto, De Beers, and Lonrho now pillaging Africa, as well as the legacy of Apartheid which has stained so much of South Africa’s history are among two aspects of the scarring legacy Rhodes has passed down to present times.

Between 1876 and his becoming High Commissioner to South Africa in 1897, Milner’s path slightly diverged from Rhodes. Milner was recruited by the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette William T. Stead and became associate editor soon thereafter. The Gazette’s function was set out in the Pall Mall Gospel, a short mission statement which Stead demanded all of his employees abide to: “The Federation of the British Empire is the condition of its survival… as an Empire we must federate or perish.” The gospel also propagandized for the “inevitable destiny” that the USA and Britain “coalesce” (11). The role which the Pall Mall played in coordinating a cohesive vision of empire was the model followed by Milner and his minions later as they ran the Round Table periodicals. Stead was officially recruited to the grand design in 1889 which was instigated by Rhodes and his sponsor Lord Rothschild. It was when Stead had been recently released for prison due to his Gazette’s promotion of “organized vice” only to find his paper in serious financial trouble, when he was first called upon by Cecil Rhodes, a long time follower of his journal in South Africa. After their first meeting, Stead ecstatically wrote to his wife:

“Mr. Rhodes is my man! I have just had three hours talk with him. He is full of a far more gorgeous idea in connection with the paper than even I have had. I cannot tell you his scheme because it is too secret. But it involves millions. He had no idea that it would cost £250,000 to start a paper. But he offered me down as a free gift £20,000 to buy a share in the P.M. Gazette as a beginning… His ideas are federation, expansion, and consolidation of the Empire…. He took to me. Told me some things he has told no other man—save Lord Rothschild— and pressed me to take the £20,000, not to have any return, to give no receipt, to simply take it and use it to give me a freer hand on the P.M.G. It seems all like a fairy dream….” (12)

Quigley demonstrates that both Milner and Stead had become active members of the agenda laid out by Cecil Rhodes. But what was this agenda? In a series of seven wills written between 1879 and 1901,” Rhodes, the unapologetic racist, laid out his designs for the re-conquering of the world and indoctrinating young elites into his design:

“Let us form the same kind of society, a Church for the extension of the British Empire. A society which should have its members in every part of the British Empire working with one object and one idea we should have its members placed at our universities and our schools and should watch the English youth passing through their hands just one perhaps in every thousand would have the mind and feelings for such an object, he should be tried in every way, he should be tested whether he is endurant, possessed of eloquence, disregardful of the petty details of life, and if found to be such, then elected and bound by oath to serve for the rest of his life in his Country. He should then be supported if without means by the Society and sent to that part of the Empire where it was felt he was needed.’

In another will, Rhodes described in more detail his intention: To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world. The colonization by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour, and enterprise and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, these aboard of China and Japan, [and]  the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire.” (13)

It was under this specific design to create an indoctrination system of talented young disciples that Rhodes’ dream of stealing the world and reconquering America that the Rhodes Trust was established upon his death in 1902. Some historians have maintained that since Rhodes doesn’t literally bring up his call for a secret society in his last two wills, he must have “matured” and left those notions behind him. Yet Professor Quigley points out, that the belief pushed by such “authoritative” historians is a farce, evidenced by George Parkin’s revealing observation taken from his book The Rhodes Scholarship, published in 1912:  “It is essential to remember that this final will is consistent with those which had preceded it, that it was no late atonement for errors, as some have supposed, but was the realization of life-long dreams persistently pursued.” (14)

Upon Rhodes’ death, George Parkin became the first head of the Rhodes Scholarship Trust in 1902 leaving his post as Principal of Upper Canada College (1895-1902) to fulfill his duty. It was under this post that Parkin recruited fellow Upper Canada College professor Edward Peacock, who joined him as a Rhodes trustee and promoter of what became the Canadian branches of the Round Table movement. While organizing for the ouster of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier and the defeat of the 1911 Reciprocity Treaty, this group recruited young talented disciples from their college connections along the way. The model of the Round Table involved a central coordinating body in London, with branches strategically placed throughout the Commonwealth in order to provide one vision and voice to the young and talented “upper managerial class” of the reformed British Empire. Parkin and Peacock were joined by Lord Alfred Milner, Sir Arthur Glazebrook, W.T. Stead, Arthur Balfour and Lord Nathan Rothschild as co-trustees.

Working in tandem with the eugenicists of the Fabian Society of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Balfour had founded the first International Eugenics Conference in 1912 alongside enthusiastic recruits such as young Roundtable member Winston Churchill. Charles Darwin’s cousin and founder of eugenics, Sir Francis Galton died mere weeks before being able to keynote the conference. The Fabian Society and its sister organization “The Co-efficients Club” featured such other prominent eugenicists as Bertrand Russell, Halford Mackinder, H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, and later Harold Laski and John Maynard Keynes [see accompanying article on the Eugenics bent of the Fabian Society]. Membership rosters of either organization frequently overlapped  (15)

Much of the dirty work conducted by the original Roundtable movement was run primarily by the group of young Oxford men who got their start managing imperial affairs under Milner during the Boer War suppression of the Transvaal (South African) uprising of 1899 to 1902.  Of this Kindergarden, Philip Kerr and Lionel Curtis were tasked with coordinating the Canadian branches from London (with Parkin and Peacock leading from Canada). While Oxford had long been the indoctrination center of young elites for centuries prior, now with the Rhodes Scholarship program in place, a new level of standardization had been initiated.  The new program provided scholarships to young talent primarily throughout the Anglo Saxon family of nations which Rhodes yearned to see re-absorbed under one Aryan umbrella. The Fabian Society had founded the London School of Economics (LSE) for similar purposes. Both the LSE and Oxford have worked hand in hand at crafting agents of imperial change throughout the entire 20^th century (16).

Each student, upon selection, would be provided a scholarship to Oxford University, a generous stipend, and red carpet treatment into the upper echelons of the ruling oligarchical social networks, if the student so willed. Each student was returned to their home country enflamed with a burning desire to fulfill the objectives of the British Empire and advance “the scientific management of society”. Their talents were expressed either in elected office, working in the civil service, media, law, the private sector or in academia. In most cases, these scholars acted upon the Fabian method of ‘permeation theory’… slowly permeating all levels of society’s controlling structures in order to shape perception and shift the invisible structures controlling mass behaviour away from a current of progress and love of truth and towards a materialistic struggle for survival. Each year, one scholarship was granted to each of the Canadian provinces  (with the exception of P.E.I) and 32 were granted to the United States. To the present date, approximately 7000 scholarships have been awarded with increasing openness to the non-Aryan countries to service the imperial agenda.

The Milnerite Vincent Massey and the Rebirth of Canadian Oligarchism

While the Canadian experiment has long been trapped by its loyalist (anti-republican) tendencies fueled by such oligarchical systems as the Family Compact (17), Canada has never had a self-contained ruling class as witnessed in the case of Britain. To this present day, the London centered oligarchy loyal to Babylonian traditions, is expressed by the imperial crown as the “fount of all honours” from which all legal and actual authority across the Commonwealth emanates. This has been the model upon which different generations of the Canadian oligarchy have been shaped. Similarly, the American oligarchy has tended to follow a similar model of organization with families recruited by the Crown’s agents such as the Rockefellers, Morgans, Harrimans and Duponts who have merely shaped their values and customs of behaviour around the system led by the British Crown, and represent nothing at all intrinsically “American”. All attempts to evaluate history from the bias of “an international bankers conspiracy” or even “American imperialism” without this higher understanding of the British Empire is thus doomed to failure.

One of the central figures in the Rhodes network in forming the character and structure of the Canadian oligarchy, as well as the general mass culture of Canada is a man named Vincent Massey. Massey is the son-in-law of George Parkin, who, following the Darwinian edict of “breeding with the best” married his four daughters to leading Round Table and Oxford men. Massey, born into the wealthy Hart-Massey family dynasty became an early recruit to the Round Table, working alongside Canadian Round Table co-founder Arthur Glazebrook in setting up a branch in Ontario in 1911. Glazebrook admired Parkin so much that he even named his son George Parkin de Twenebroker Glazebrook, himself a Rhodes Scholar of Balliol who went on to help run this group alongside Massey by the late 1930s and would head the Canadian secret service during World War II. Arthur Glazebrook wrote a shining letter of recommendation to Milner upon Massey’s departure for studies at Oxford’s Balliol College on Aug. 11, 1911:

“I have given a letter of introduction to you to a young man called Vincent Massey. He is about 23 or 24 years of age, very well off, and full of enthusiasm for the most invaluable assistance in the Roundtable and in connection with the junior groups… He is going home to Balliol, for a two year course in history, having already taken his degree at the Toronto University. At the end of his two years he expects to return to Canada and take up some kind of serious work, either as a professor at the university or at some other non-money making pursuit. I have become really very attached to him and I hope you will give him an occasional talk. I think it so important to get hold of these first rate young Canadians, and I know what a power you have over young men. I should like to feel that he could become definitely by knowledge a Milnerite” (18)

Upon his return to Canada, Massey quickly rose in the ranks of the Roundtable, becoming Crown Privy Councillor in 1925, then leading a delegation in 1926 at the Imperial Conference at which point his fellow Roundtabler Lord Balfour passed the Balfour Declaration as a means of appeasing the nationalist sentiment hot in many colonies striving for independence from the mother country. Massey then became Canada’s first Minister (aka: ambassador) to the United States (1926-1930), where he coordinated policy with controlling institutions around the intelligence institutions centered around the Council on Foreign Relations. During his time in Washington, Massey’s official biographer (and University of Toronto President from 1958-1971) Claude Bissel points out that he was a frequent guest in “The House of Truth”, a stronghold of Round Table ideas in the United States housing such luminaries as Walter Lipmann, Felix Frankfurter, Loring Christie, Eustace Percy, and featuring such frequent guests as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and McGeorge Bundy. Most of these characters were hardcore eugenicists affiliated with the Council on Foreign Relations (the American branch of the Royal Institute for International Affairs) advancing the program of a British-led “Anglo-American Empire”. Oxford men Loring Christie, and Hume Wrong were both recruited to Massey’s staff during this period and played important roles in the postwar takeover of Canadian foreign policy. Hume’s father George Wrong was also an influential executive member of the Canadian Round Table and Massey ally.

Massey’s Washington deployment was followed by a stint as President of the Liberal Federation of Canada (1932-1935), and then Canadian High Commissioner to London (1935-1946). It was soon after this experience that Massey was assigned to unleash the second of a series of Royal Commissions (1949-1951) dedicated to destroy any lingering sentiments of the American System within the hearts, minds, political-artistic-scientific structures or economic behaviour of Canada, and reconstruct the Canadian identity based on his own twisted image. This operation had the dual effect of relieving responsibility from the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations financial responsibility for crafting the Canadian identity (19). As a token for a job well done, Massey then became the first Canadian-born Governor General (1952-1959). During his career, Massey served as Governor for Upper Canada College, and the University of Toronto, as well as founder of a university modeled on All Souls, Oxford called Massey College (f.1962). Like All Souls, Massey College serves as a central coordinating node for various operations run through the major universities in Canada.

Through his various political positions, Massey pulled every string possible to recruit as many agents of the Roundtable Movement and Rhodes Trust networks into prominent positions within the Canadian civil service, cultural control, and academia. During this same period in the United States, Rhodes scholars had swarmed into various influential positions of authority, with a special focus on the State Department, in order to prepare to commandeer Roosevelt’s New Deal program and convert it into a Keynesian nightmare at the first available opportunity. These operations resulted in a third attempt by the British Empire to achieve an agenda that had largely failed in its first two attempts between 1902 and 1933 (20). It is proper to briefly go through the first two before continuing with our report.

The First Attempt Fails: Imperial Union 1911-1923

The First incarnation of the World Government agenda to supersede the principle of sovereignty as the basis for world affairs had been the Imperial Union thesis around which the Roundtable had first been created. This involved the creation of a Federation of nations united under one empire, in which representatives of various colonies could hold representatives within an Imperial Parliament, much like the European Union structure chaining nations under the Troika today. The obvious mission under this structure was the participation of the United States ruled by the “economic royalists” of whom Roosevelt said should have left the nation back in 1776. Under Parliamentary structures, little more than an illusion of democracy exists while its bureaucratic nature permits for optimal control by a ruling oligarchy.

By the end of World War I, forces within the Round Table were dreading the failure of this program, and had resolved to dedicate themselves instead to the League of Nations doctrine in its stead whereby essentially the same outcome could be achieved, but through different means. Under this changing of gears, it was arranged that the Round Table be phased out in place of something new. Two aging controllers of Milner’s Kindergarten writing to each other in 1931 laid this problem squarely on the table and even proposed a solution:

“As a brotherhood we have lost interest in the Empire and are no longer competent to deal with it. I think, therefore, that if The Round Table is to go on, it should quite definitely change its character, remove its subtitle, and become, what it is much more fitted to become at the present time, a publication connected with the Royal Institute of International Affairs… all the heart and soul of The Round Table movement is petering out and I really don’t know that we stand for anything in particular nowadays.” (21)

It was with this failure of its original blueprint in mind that the Roundtable Movement began a conversion into its new costume with the creation of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA) in 1919, followed immediately thereafter with branches in the United States under the heading of the Council on Foreign Relations and International Pacific Institute. Carrol Quigley demonstrates that the CFR and IPI featured crossovers of members from the RIIA, CIIA, while funding was provided through the Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Foundation and RIIA. While possessing nominally American names, these organizations and their members were fully British.

The Failure of the Second Attempt: The Round Table Transformed 1923-1930

Both the RIIA, CFR and IPI were financed through large grants by the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations which themselves were set up merely as financial instruments to further the British Imperial agenda at the same time the Round Table Movement was unveiled in 1910. These were two of the core foundations which had been used to finance eugenics laws and the statistics-based “scientific” premises justifying their political implementation. Quigley documents in his works the extensive array of financial support which these “philanthropic” organizations bestowed upon their London controllers.

Due to the regaining of power of the Liberal Party, now under the leadership of Mackenzie King, the Canadian infiltration was not happening at the pace which some RIIA operatives would have liked. In fact, due to the influence of key Laurier Liberals such as Oscar Skelton and King’s Justice Minister Ernest Lapointe in the famous Imperial Conference of 1923, the last attempt to impose the Round Table thesis for Imperial Union was defeated in that form. By 1925, Roundtable controller Philip Kerr (aka: Lord Lothian) wrote of the anti-British situation in Canada guided by Lapointe and Skelton in the following terms:

“I am afraid that things in Canada are not at present as satisfactory as they are in the United States… I even found in places a certain feeling that it was a mistake for returned scholars to avow themselves as Rhodes scholars and that the best would be that they should merge themselves in the population and forget their unhappy past!” (22)

In 1925, O.D. Skelton, Laurier’s friend and biographer, as well as long time friend and trusted collaborator of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, was made Undersecretary of External Affairs. It was also at this time that resistance to Rhodes Scholar penetration into guiding positions of national policy was obstinately begun.

Canadian cooperation with British foreign policy largely came undone beginning with the Canadian rejection of Britain’s demands that Canada commit its forces to Britain’s near-war with Turkey during the Chanak Crisis of 1922. In subsequent Imperial Conferences throughout the 1920s, the Laurier Liberals led by Skelton and Lapointe went on to flank and reject various attempts at binding foreign policy between Imperial Federation or the League of Nations. Collaboration with leaders of the Free Irish State against Imperial policy was key in the success of the Canadian patriots’ fending off the Round Table.

Mackenzie King’s Failed Personality

Massey’s biographers have commonly referenced his own frustration with Skelton whom he saw as a barrier between himself and the Prime Minister, a man who he could generally manipulate as long as no one with geostrategic insight was near him (23). King’s increasing lack of cooperation with British Foreign policy resulted in the following quote by Massey brother-in-law, and Round Table member William Grant in 1925:

“It is very difficult to make a permanent impression on him [King] for two reasons. 1) He is as selfish a man as I have ever known, the selfishness disguised by a thick smear of sentimentalism. He will, therefore, sacrifice anyone or anything to his ambition, and then sob about it. 2) He has a mind as lacking in edge as a jellyfish. Fortunately for you he has a real fund of dignified, though rather windy eloquence, and will do little harm if given plenty of speeches to make” (24)

The Grant quote is instructive as it provides the reader an insight into the singular character flaw of King which would taint him his entire life. That is, the pitiful fact of his “other-directedness”, such that his tendency to frustrate evil influences who wished to use him for their own nefarious ends was frequently balanced by the frustration of good influences who tried to influence him the other way. For good or for ill, King was never his own man but was, in the end, a mother-dominated mystic who could never sever his ideological affiliations with the Monarchy. He may have been a man of deep personal conviction in a higher cause… but like the poor Venetian Prince in Schiller’s “The Ghost Seer”, his convictions were never his own. After the death of Skelton in 1940, King’s neurotic insecurity would express itself in his relief to be liberated by Skelton’s domineering influence: “I have frequently been thrown off following my own judgement and wisdom in these matters by pressure from Skelton and the staff that I made up my mind I would not henceforth yield to anything of the kind” (25). In another diary entry a year later, King wrote: “One of the effects of Skelton’s passing will be to make me express my own views much more strongly”. (26)

King’s pro-monarchist inclinations permanently schismed his modus operandi from those influences who he otherwise respected, evidenced in the following diary recordings of Skelton and King during two Imperial Conferences: “I defend ultimate independence, which he [King] opposes”, while after another conference, King later wrote: “[Skelton] is at heart against the British Empire, which I am not. I believe in the larger whole, with complete independence of the parts united by cooperation in all common ends”. (27)

Chatham House Comes to Canada

The Canadian branch of the RIIA (aka:’ Chatham House’) was created only in 1928, (at the same time as its Australian counterpart) largely as a response to the anti-Round Table tendencies of the Laurier Liberals upon King. The CIIA’s first President was none other than former Canadian Prime Minister and Masonic Orangeman Sir Robert Borden. Its second president was Newton Rowell, who later became president of the Canadian Bar Association, and chaired the failed Rowell-Sirois Royal Commission of 1935-1937 (28). Sir Joseph Flavelle and Vincent Massey were Vice Presidents and George Parkin de T. Glazebrook was honorary secretary. Other founding members were financier and later Conservative Party Cabinet official J.M. Macdonnell, Carnegie Foundation Trustee N.A.M. Mackenzie, UCC President William Grant, Rhodes Scholar George Raleigh Parkin, financier Edgar Tarr, journalist J.W. Dafoe, and Henry Angus. Raleigh Parkin, Grant and Macdonnell also had the distinction of being brothers-in-law with Vincent Massey, and sons-in-law of George Parkin. In 1933, through a donation from the Massey Foundation (which served as a mini clone of the Rockefeller Foundation), the CIIA hired its first Permanent Secretary named Escott Reid. Reid was a Rhodes scholar fanatically governed by a commitment to world government through the League of Nations, expressed by his following remarks:

“It would be easier and more self respecting for Canada to give up to an international body on which it was represented, the decision on which it should go to war than to transfer the right to make that decision from the government in Ottawa to the government in Washington.. It would thus appear probable that effective military cooperation between Canada and the United States is possible only within the framework of an effective world order of which both Canada and the United States are loyal members.” (29)

The five years after the CIIA was established, an affiliate organization was founded called the Canadian Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA) by similar networks associated with the CIIA, in order to shape national internal policy while the CIIA focused upon Canada’s foreign policy. Original featured speakers were the CIIA’s Norman Mackenzie, and the eugenicist leader of the newly created CCF Party J.S. Woodsworth. It would be another 20 years before both organizations began to jointly host conferences together. Today, CIPA exists in the form of the Couchiching Conferences and their regular brainwashing seminars have been broadcast across the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for over 70 years.

The CIPA was affiliated with the YMCA, itself a major British-run indoctrination asset as it focused spreading its ideology on conferences, and workshops the world over. It was through this network that a young Maurice Strong was recruited and rose to the highest echelons of the management of the oligarchy’s affairs in later years.

1932-1935: America’s New Deal Crushes the League of Nations

Before FDR came to power in 1932, the United States was brought to its knees after four years of Great Depression itself induced by the blowout of a housing bubble built up artificially by British-Wall Street agents such as U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. It was during this time of fear and want that the American population was at its most gullible, largely accepting the propaganda that immigration and bad genes were the cause of the rampant criminality in these painful years. The vast majority of the sterilization laws passed and fascist sympathy cultivated occurred during this time of fear.

As Franklin Roosevelt rallied the population behind the battle cry “there is nothing to fear but fear itself, and kicked the money lenders out of the temple through the implementation of Glass-Steagall and the activation of public credit issued through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The RIIA running their networks in Canada and especially in the United States had to re-adjust their programs. The renewed faith in the powers of sovereign government in effecting progressive change by the activation of the American System principles were evaporating the belief that world government was the only option for peace to be ensured. However, change for an empire is not always easy, and after decades of investing energy into their reconquest of the United States, the British made a violent attempt to crush FDR.

A startling revelation swept through the press in 1933 with General Smedley Butler’s public unveiling of the Wall Street-backed attempt to run a coup d’état against Roosevelt using 500 000 legionnaires (30). General Butler’s unveiling of the plan to install himself as puppet dictator was recounted in Butler’s famous book “War is a Racket” (31). This attempted coup had occurred mere months after the thwarted Masonic-run assassination plot to kill FDR which resulted in the killing of Mayor Cermak of Chicago.

As Pierre Beaudry reported in his study on the Synarchy: “It was not a mere coincidence that, at the same time the British promoted the Nazis in Europe, in 1934, the synarchist Lazard Freres and J.P. Morgan financial interests in the United States were staging a similar fascist dictatorial coup against Franklin D. Roosevelt, using the same disgruntled Veterans of Foreign Wars groupings with operatives from the French Croix de Feu deployed to the United States. They ultimately failed to capture the leadership of General Smedley Butler, who ended the U.S. plot by publicly denouncing the conspiracy as the fascist coup that it was.”  (32)

After having failed miserably in applying aggressive fascism in America, as was being done in Europe as the “solution” to the economic woes of the depression orchestrated by agents of the British Empire on Wall Street, the Rhodes networks decided that the only chance to defeat FDR was through the old Fabian method of infiltration and co-option. Every attempt was made to infiltrate New Deal institutions at all costs such that their full co-opting could occur relatively seamlessly upon the first opportunity of Roosevelt’s fall from power. For this, leading Fabian Society eugenicist John Maynard Keynes’ theories were used to first mimic the outward form of Roosevelt’s program without any of the substance.

1932: The Rhodes Trust Hive in Canada Shifts Gears

Just as Roosevelt was coming to power in America in 1932, the Rhodes Trust networks of Canada centering on Escott Reid, Frank Underhill, Eugene Forsey, F.R. Scott, and David Lewis founded a self-described “Fabian modeled think tank” customized for Canada known as the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR). Reid, Forsey, Scott and Lewis were all Rhodes Scholars while Underhill was an Oxford trained Fabian who was tutored by Harold Laski and G.B. Shaw at Balliol College. The avowed intention of the group was to institute a system of “scientific management of society” under Fabian precepts and expressed itself in the group’s selecting of J.S. Woodsworth, another Oxford-trained Fabian, to head the new Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) as an outgrowth of the LSR. The CCF called for the complete destruction of capitalism in its Regina Manifesto of 1933. Woodsworth, an avowed eugenicist, vigorously endorsed the passage of Alberta’s 1927 sterilization laws to eliminate the unfit (32). Following the gospel of his Fabian mentors H.G. Wells and G.B. Shaw, Woodsworth even advocated the abolishment of personal property. At its heart the CCF was not your typical “socialism”, but merely fascism with a “scientific” socialist face.

Knowing that a fearful mob tends to fall into extremes, the CIIA’s creation of a new polarized left and right did not produce the result as it should have. Under the logic of empire, the abysmal failure of the “right” wing conservative party of Prime Minister R.B. Bennett (1930-1935), should have created the conditions for a radical left turn by the time the CCF had been formed. Unemployment was over 25%, money tightening policies were choking what little production still existed and Bennett’s typically anti-American Tory stance was blocking any potential for increasing trade with the United States.

But something wasn’t working for the Empire’s agenda. While the political seeds for a “scientific socialist” world government were being planted on pace in Canada, the cultural fear and despair necessary for such programs to take root willingly by the choice of the masses were no longer in place. Indeed, the Canadian population was so inspired by the weekly Roosevelt Fireside Chats broadcast across the border, scattered with newspaper reports of inspiring

New Deal projects, that hope for a better future and a national solution to the chaos of the Great Depression was close enough at hand such that no great polarization could occur. As such, the blind acceptance of a Woodsworth-CCF scientific dictatorship run by agents of Rhodes’s nightmare was avoided.

FDR’s power in the minds of the Canadian population forced even the radical anti-American blue-Tory Government of R.B. Bennett to eventually adapt to the language of the New Deal by trying to copy the U.S. program in a last ditch effort to save the 1935 election. This Delphic program was known as Bennett’s “New Deal for Canada” platform. The platform was a failure, as the program laid out by Bennett had two grave errors:

1) Promoting a vast array of social welfare proposals (ie: minimum wage, health insurance, unemployment insurance, expanded pension plan, minimum hours for the work week) but lacking any large scale nation building measures which defined the American success and gave meaning to the welfare measures, the Bennett knock-off simply copied the form without any of the substance of the true New Deal. The closest approximation to infrastructure programs involved slave labour driven “work camps” paying 25 cents per day which used and abused young desperate men so that piecemeal roads and patchwork building could occur devoid of any national mission (33).

2) The national credit system employed by Roosevelt through his understanding of American System thinkers as Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln was entirely absent from the mind of Bennett and his civil servants. While the creation of the Bank of Canada modeled on the privatized system of England’s Central Bank, was established in 1935 after an extensive Royal Commission run by Lord Macmillan (begun in 1933), its constitutional and structural mandate was designed to merely centralize control for the management of already existent wealth under the control of monetarist/accounting principles… not the creation of new wealth. This institution was designed as inherently monetarist/Keynesian, NOT Rooseveltian.  Without a proper American styled credit system in place which tied credit to the increase of the productive powers of labour, then any large investments, even the superficial ones proposed by Bennett’s New Deal were doomed to failure. After the Conservative Party’s 1935 decimation at the hands of the Liberals, Bennett soon retired permanently to Britain, accepting a title of nobility as Viscount.

With a revival of the American System under Roosevelt, we can see why the Canadian culture was not induced to fall into the spider web set by London. However we have yet to explain how the CIIA/Rhodes Trust networks were prevented from fully taking over control of Canada’s foreign policy during the remainder of the 1930s.

The Laurier Liberals Rise again 1935-1940

On October 1935, the Liberals still under the leadership of Mackenzie King returned to power in Canadian politics attempting to gain a foothold amidst the two British controlled extremes of the left-wing CCF and right-wing Conservatives. At this point, Vincent Massey left his three year post as President of the Liberal Party to occupy his new position as the High Commissioner to Britain bringing into his staff such Oxford protégés as Lester B. Pearson as his personal secretary, as well as Rhodes Scholars George Ignatieff and Escott Reid. While most modern historians (often affiliated with the CIIA such as John English and Jack Granatstein (34) ) have held that the influx of Oxford men into the Department of External Affairs (DEA) was catalyzed by O.D. Skelton, the evidence demonstrates that none other than Vincent Massey himself and the CIIA networks were the true leaders  in this process against the better intention of O.D. Skelton. The popular thesis cooked up by Granastein and his ilk, has merely been a mythology maintained in order to hide Canada’s true nation building heritage from present generations, as the following evidence will demonstrate.

While the CIIA had built up a large array of high level intellectuals which had successfully installed themselves at controlling nodes of all major universities across Canada, unlike its counterparts in the United States or Britain, the CIIA had been unsuccessful at permeating the Department of External Affairs (DEA). This was caused in large measure by the return of Oscar Skelton as Undersecretary of the DEA working alongside the Minister of External Affairs Mackenzie King. King was the only Prime Minister to occupy both posts simultaneously in Canadian history. Historian Adam Chapnick describes the suspicions of King and Skelton to CIIA infiltration in the following terms:

“He shared his prime minister’s suspicions of Britain’s political leadership and had never forgotten that following the British blindly into battle in 1914 had nearly destroyed his country… Skelton became the leader of “the isolationist intelligentsia” in the East Block”(35). This distrust was demonstrated in the words of the Prime Minister, who spoke to the Canadian population after the Imperial Conference of 1937 saying: “Those who looked to the conference to devise and formulate a joint imperial policy on foreign affairs defense or trade will find nothing to fulfill their expectations” (36).

As chaos began to spread and the echos of war could be heard, cracks began to appear in Skelton’s policy of keeping the CIIA nest from taking over Canadian foreign policy. In a diary entry of May 20, 1938, Skelton wrote the following ominous words:

“The British are doing their best to have the Czechs sacrifice themselves on the alter of European peace… apparently the French are softening in resistance. The Prime Minister said in council there seemed almost unanimous recognition of (the) impossibility of our staying out if Britain goes in: my 14 years effort here wasted” (37).

Chapnick describes the irony of the RIIA’s success in coordinating post war planning through the British Foreign Office as early as 1939, yet was unable to make any headway for similar planning in their Canadian branch:

“While Mackenzie King was bracing his country for the possibility of war, the RIIA’s world-order preparatory group held its first meeting at Chatham House on 17 July 1939. The discussion emphasized the importance of maintaining the rule of law in international relations. Unlike the CIIA, which struggled to be heard in Ottawa through much of 1941, the RIIA had already established close links to the government in London. Its impact was evident in October 1939 when Lord Lothian [aka: Philip Kerr], the British ambassador in Washington, alluded publicly to a future global federation. His comments foresaw an international order in which regional organizations would police the world under the umbrella of a unifying executive body.“ (38)

Historian Denis Stairs relates Philip Kerr`s frustration with Skelton`s influence on Mackenzie King when he wrote that “Kerr once pointedly observed to Vincent Massey that it “would be better if Skelton did not regard co-operation with anyone as a confession of inferiority”. Massey reported later in his memoirs that he agreed with the assessment.“ (39) Massey, an enemy of Skelton since the 1923 Imperial Conference referred to Skelton in his diaries as “Herr Doktor Skelton”.

Upon the mysterious deaths of O.D. Skelton and Ernest Lapointe in 1941 (40), the gates holding back the CIIA’s hordes began to be lifted as Massey’s young recruit Norman Robertson (a Rhodes Scholar), was quickly installed as Skelton’s replacement as Undersecretary of External Affairs. With this veritable coup, things quickly changed for the CIIA’s role in shaping Canada’s foreign policy. Chapnick describes the situation in the following terms:

“Ironically, just as the CIIA abandoned its faith in the Canadian government, Norman Robertson finally began to mobilize the Department of External Affairs. Since wartime restrictions prevented him from hiring the additional staff necessary to pursue an internationalist agenda in the traditional way, he sought temporary help from his former academic colleagues. Himself a University of British Columbia graduate, Robertson first asked the professor of political science and economics Henry Angus to move to Ottawa and assume the position of departmental “special assistant.” Angus was a member of the CIIA and had studied the Versailles settlement in depth.

He was expected to contribute constructively to postwar discussions. George Glazebrook, known to Pearson from the History Department of the University of Toronto, soon joined him. Glazebrook had sat on the CIIA research committee that had been tasked with looking into the shape of the postwar world. In all, approximately twenty university professors eventually worked for External Affairs during the war, nearly all of whom had direct or at least indirect ties to the CIIA. The recruitment of these academics created a planning infrastructure within the Canadian civil service that was similar to those already established in Great Britain and the United States. Two years after the Anglo-American process of planning the postwar order had started, Canada was finally taking its first small step forward.” (41)

With the takeover of Canada’s foreign policy-making apparatus in the Department of External Affairs by the CIIA, Canada’s new program of the “Third Way” was set in place by the likes of Escott Reid, Lester Pearson, and later Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Under this program, Canada’s role in the post War world serve as a counterweight to the bipolar cold war dynamic of Mutually Assured Annihilation. Wherever possible Canada would disrupt America by befriending Communist Countries, while Britain’s Delphic foreign policy became one of closely mimicking USA. The Third Way was described later by Pierre Trudeau when asked of his foreign policy approach as “the creation of counter-weights”. All this was done not for interests of Canada, a nation whose birth had become tragically aborted but in the service of the British Empire.

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Matthew Ehret is the author of the Untold History of Canada series (untoldhistory.canadianpatriot.org), the founder of the Canadian Patriot Review (www.canadianpatriot.org), and the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation (www.risingtidefoundation.net). He can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

(1) Robert D. Ainsworth, The American System in Canada, The Canadian Patriot, Special Edition, 2012, p.32

(2) Isaac Buchanan, Relations of the Industry of Canada with the Mother Country and the United States, 1864, p.22

(3) Robert D. Ainsworth, The End of an Era: Laurier and the Election of 1911, University of Ottawa, 2009

(4) O.D. Skelton, The Life of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, p. 510

(5) Milner to J.S. Sanders, 2 Jan. 1909 cited in “The Round Table Movement and Imperial Union” by John Kendle, University of Toronto Press, 1975, p.55

(6) Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, New York, Books in Focus, 1981 www.archive.org/details/TheAnglo-americanEstablishment

(7) Carroll Quigley, The Anglo American Establishment, p. 5

(8) George Parkin, Imperial Federation: The Problem of National Unity, Macmillan and Co., London, 1892,  preface VIII

(9) Ibid, p.7

(10) After taking up his governorship of South Africa, Milner wrote to Parkin: “My life has been greatly influenced by your ideas and in my new post I shall feel more than ever the need of your enthusiasm and broad hopeful view of the Imperial future”, Milner to Parkin, 28 April, Headlam, The Milner Papers, I, 42,

(11) W.T.Stead by E.T Cook, The Contemporary Review, June 1912, reprinted in Frederick Whyte, The Life of W.T. Stead, London, 1925, vol. 2, p.353-356

(12) Quigley, Anglo American Establishment, p. 32

(13) Rotberg, The Founder, pp. 101, 102. & Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: The World’s Banker, 1848–1998, Penguin Books, 2000

(14) Quigley, ibid, p.31

(15) Notable Coefficients who were also be Fabians: Lord Alfred Milner, Sir Arthur Balfour, Lord Robert Cecil, Lord Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wells (protégé of Thomas Huxley), Leo .S Amery and Sir Edward Grey

(16) While Oxford and LSE have tended to produce the “doers”, the higher level “ideas” men of the Empire have tended to be conditioned at Cambridge

(17) The earliest incarnation of Canada’s “local oligarchy”, whose currents are still felt through the oligarchical structures of Canada, was named the “Family Compact”, formed officially during the War of 1812 by loyalist cliques who both left America, pre-existent loyalists from the War of 1776, and British aristocrats newly landed in Canada. Its legacy involved the creation of instruments for the imperial indoctrination of young elites such as King’s College (f.1827) and Upper Canada College (f.1829) along with the Bank of Upper Canada, all of which were run by the Compact’s leader, and Bishop for the Church of England in Canada, John Strachan. UCC was designed explicitly to be a ‘feeder school’ to King’s College (which was to take over full control of UCC in 1837 and later became re-named to “The University of Toronto”. The Compact would be forced to re-organize itself after the 1837 Rebellions of Upper and Lower Canada, led by William Lyon Mackenzie, and Louis-Joseph Papineau. Mackenzie’s grandson was Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. The re-organization of the Family Compact would result in the fraudulent Union of Upper and Lower Canada in 1840 and the promotion of the slavish belief in “Responsible Government” instead of true independence. It was from this current that George Parkin would arise.

(18) Carrol Quigley, Roundtable Group in Canada, Canadian Historical Review sept 1962, p.213

(19) Rockefeller, Carnegie and Canada: American Philanthropy and the Arts and Letters in Canada, 2005 by Jeffrey Brison demonstrates in detail the ironic role which “American” philanthropic foundations served in cultivating a largely anti-American identity for Canadians. The responsibility to fund the arts and humanities fell fully under the authority of the Canadian Government by 1957 with the creation of the Canada Council, a centralized cultural control center catalyzed by the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Science (1949-1951), chaired by Vincent Massey. The first CIIA run commission was the Newton-Sirois Royal Commission of 1935-1937, led by CIIA President Newton and was a complete failure.

(20) It is of note that this time frame is also bookended by the death of the last American System President and Lincoln follower William McKinley and the emergence into power of American System and Lincoln follower Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In the interim 3 decades, every single president, barring President Harding who died under a mysterious case of food poisoning in office, were demonstrated to have been anglophile puppets of the British Empire.

(21) Sir Edward Grigg to Hitchens, 15 December 1931, cited in The Round Table Movement and Imperial Union, by Kendle, p. 284

(22) Cited in Canada and the British World, by Philip Buckner, UBC Press, 2007, p.266

(23) William Mackenzie King himself has always been a paradoxical character in Canadian history. Living under the domineering shadow of his mother’s eye (even long after her death), King was literally possessed by a drive to bring honor back to his family after his grandfather William Lyon Mackenzie, had led the thwarted Upper Canada Rebellion of 1838. King had the admirable quality of being a man possessed of a principled will and sense of divine mission on earth, yet sadly an irrational tendency to speak to his friends and family long after they had died. It was this irrationally mystical profile that was capitalized on while King had lived in London, visiting the prolific parapsychology operations and affiliated mediums run by Roundtable leaders as W.T. Stead. King’s penchant for bad judgement was manifest throughout his life, especially seen as he was hired by the Rockefeller Foundation from 1914-1918 to help John D. Rockefeller Jr. resolve problems with striking miners in the USA. It was through King’s mediation that the farcical policy of the “Company Union” was created. Skelton’s particular frustration with King’s flaky character was evidenced in a letter to his wife during the 1926 Imperial Conference when Skelton wrote: “the fact that certain other people [King] give all their time to dining and talking with ‘Lord’ this or ‘Lady’ that and to diary writing and 5 minutes a day to prepare for conference matters makes everything pretty hard.”, [citation from Lapointe and Quebec’s Influence on Canada’s Foreign Policy, p. 57]

(24) W. Grant to Sir Maurice Hankey, Oct., 1925, W.L. Grant archives, vol.5, Citation from Claude Bissel’s, The Imperial Canadian vol 1. William Grant was also President of Upper Canada College, Director of the Massey Foundation.

(25) King Diary June 1940, cited in Ernest Lapointe and Quebec’s Influence on Canadian Foreign Policy by John MacFarlane, University of Toronto Press, 1999, p.124

(26) King Diary, Feb. 6, 1941 cited in Ernest Lapointe and Quebec’s Influence, p.124

(27) Skelton quote from Skelton papers, vol 11, file 1197, diary, 22 October 1923. King quote from King Diary Sept. 11, 1929. Both cited in Ernest Lapointe and Quebec’s Influence, p.55

(28) The Rowell-Sirois Commission attempted to centralize much of the fragmented Canadian system, modelled on effectively socialist terms. The federalizing of provincial debts and obligations was among the various proposals which attempted to mimic the outward form of FDR’s American System policies, but without any of the substance. Due in large measure to the resistance by Quebec, Alberta and B.C, this commission failed completely at achieving its agenda.

(29) Citation from Reid bio

(30) General Smedly Darlington Butler, War is a Racket, Roundtable Press Inc., 1935

(31) “I appeared before the Congressional Committee, the highest representation of the American people under subpoena to tell what I knew about activities which I believe might lead to an attempt to set up a fascist dictatorship… the upshot of the whole thing was that I was to pose to lead an organization of 500 000 men which would be able to take over the functions of government” -Gen. Smedley Butler, November 1933. Video extract is viewable on www.larouchepac.com/1932

(32) Pierre Beaudry, Synarchy Movement of Empire Book II, p.50

(33) Little known today, Alberta was the first Canadian province to pass sterilization laws in 1927 (the other being British Columbia which did the same in 1932). These provinces followed the 32 American States which had done the same beginning with Indiana in 1909.The promotion of their passage, the financing of the statistical based science promoting them was funded by the two biggest “philanthropic” organizations in the world: The Carnegie Foundation and the Rockefeller Corporation. Neither organization was truly American however, and were merely doing the bidding of their London masters. Later, another LSE trained Fabian named Tommy Douglas replaced Woodsworth as the leader of the CCF. Tommy Douglas, the father of Canadian universal healthcare, was a devout eugenicist, writing his 1933 masters thesis on “Problems of the Sub-Normal Family” while studying at the Fabian run London School of Economics. Most defenders of Douglas applaud him for having dropped his pro-eugenics philosophy after visiting Nazi Germany in 1936 and evidenced by the fact that Premier Douglas did not implement proposed 1944 sterilization laws in Saskatchewan when the opportunity arose.  This defense is ill-founded, as eugenics was already deemed too hot to push publicly, evidenced by the pro-eugenics blueprint which Julian Huxley’s 1946 founding document of UNESCO lays out [see pg. 39 for exerpt]. The Universal Healthcare reform carried out by Douglas has a much darker intention which must be re-evaluated under this new light. More on this subject can be found in A Race of our Own: Eugenics and Canada 1894-1946 and in the appendix to this report.

(34) See Rick Sander’s The Ugly Truth of General McNaughton for more on the Canadian  slave labour camps in The Canadian Patriot #5, 2013

(35) Jack Granatstein serves as Rowell Jackman Resident Fellow of the CIIA, while John English served as the CIIA Vice President from 1988-1990 and President from 1990-1992. W.L. Morton, another major authority on this segment of history is a Rhodes Scholar whose works have been published by the CIIA. Ironically (but lawfully) Anti-American Tory historian Donald Creighton’s career was largely funded directly by continuous grants from the Rockefeller Foundation until that burden was relieved by Vincent Massey’s British modelled Canada Council in 1957.

(36) Adam Chapnick, The Middle Power Project: Canada and the Founding of the United Nations, UBC Press, 2005, p.9

(37) Bruce Hutchison, The Incredible Canadian, Hunter Rose ltd., Toronto, 1959, pg.229

(38) O.D. Skelton Archive, Diary entry, Friday May 20, 1938, vol. 13, MG30D33

(39) Chapnick, Ibid. p.9

(40) Denis Stairs, The Menace of General Ideas in the Making and Conduct of Canadian Foreign Policy

(41) Skelton died in a car accident in January 1941 while Ernest Lapointe died in November 1941. Both men had a profound influence on King, and resisted Canada’s early involvement in the war, as it was understood by both to be another case of British intrigues gone awry.

(42) Chapnick, ibid. p. 19

US hostility toward North Korea has nothing to do with national security.

North Korea never posed a threat to the US or any other country since the peninsula was divided post-WW II — just an invented one throughout this period.

Yet the US waged preemptive war on the country based on Big Lies and deception, turning cities to rubble, massacring millions of its people.

An uneasy armistice to this day defines bilateral relations.

The US needs enemies to advance its imperium worldwide. Since none exist, they’re invented.

North Korea is Washington’s favorite Asian punching bag, China the main US adversary because of its growing prominence on the world stage — not for any belligerent threat posed by Beijing that doesn’t exist.

Since WW II ended, no nations anywhere threatened US security, none today —  just invented ones.

Decades of DPRK efforts to normalize relations with the US and West proved futile.

Harry Truman’s aggression was followed by endless US war on North Korea by other means.

Its nuclear and ballistic missile deterrents are solely for defense because of the real threat of US aggression 2.0.

Two summits between Trump and Kim Jong-un were doomed because longstanding US policy toward Pyongyang is unbendingly hostile, how it’s been for nearly 75 years — because the DPRK is independent from US control.

Trump, Pompeo, and Bolton when he was national security advisor bore full responsibility for no progress made in bilateral talks.

Notably, the Trump regime demanded that North Korea transfer its nuclear weapons and bomb fuel to the US, along with halting its ballistic missile development and testing, in return for empty US promises.

Time and again in dealings with North Korea and other sovereign independent countries, the US delivered only unacceptable demands, bad faith, broken promises, and imperial toughness.

It’s why diplomacy with its officials most often fails, notably post-9/11.

On June 12, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Son Gwon released the following statement:

The lesson learned from two Kim/Trump summits “is that the hope for improved DPRK-US relations — which was high in the air under the global spotlight two years ago — has now been shifted into despair characterized by spiraling deterioration and that even a slim ray of optimism for peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula has faded away into a dark nightmare,” adding:

No prospect for “a new cooperative era of peace” with the US exists, despite good faith efforts by the DPRK.

“The US professes to be an advocate for improved relations with the DPRK, but in fact, it is hell-bent on only exacerbating the situation.”

“The DPRK is still on the US list of targets for preemptive nuclear strike, and all kinds of nuclear strike tools held by the US are aimed directly at the DPRK. This is the stark reality of the present day.”

Hostile US war games, greater militarization of South Korea, and Washington’s rage to dominate the Indo/Pacific heightens the risk of conflict by accident or design.

The Trump regime showed “that its much-claimed ‘improvement of relations’ between the DPRK and US means nothing but a regime change, ‘security guarantee’ an all-out preemptive nuclear strike and ‘confidence building’ an invariable pursuit of isolation and suffocation of the DPRK.”

As long as the US remains hostile toward the country, it “will as ever remain to be a long-term threat to our state, our system and our people.”

“Never again will we provide (Trump) with another package to be used for achievements without receiving any returns.”

“Nothing is more hypocritical than an empty promise,” how both right wings of the US war party operates.

Because of US hostility and duplicity, Pyongyang’s only option is to enhance its defensive capabilities against the threat of  possible US aggression.

Days earlier, North Korea announced a cut-off of communications with Seoul, a statement saying:

“The direct communication line between the Central Committee headquarters building and the Blue House will be completely blocked and discarded” — in response to material critical of the DPRK sent cross-border on balloons and by other means.

Kim Jong-un’s sister Kim Yo-jong said Seoul would “pay a dear price” if the practice continues.

In response to continued hostile US actions, North Korea’s leader reportedly called for boosting the country’s “strategic forces,” and putting them on high alert because of “persistent military threats…of the hostile forces.”

US brinksmanship on the Korean peninsula risks possible nuclear war.

US rage for unchallenged dominance makes the unthinkable possible.

A Final Comment

Last October, US and North Korean officials met in Stockholm, Sweden, the first face-to-face contact between both countries in seven months.

In contrast to the State Department calling discussions “good,” Pyongyang’s chief negotiator Kim Myong-gil said they were “sickening,” adding:

The Trump regime offered “empty-handed” proposals that “greatly disappointed (the DPRK team) and sapped our appetite for negotiations.”

Talks showed continued US unwillingness to resolve core bilateral differences.

In April 2018, Kim Jong-un declared a moratorium on nuclear and long-range ballistic missile tests.

They’re likely to resume ahead because of no progress in bilateral talks to end the threat posed by the US to DPRK security.

*

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The German government officially scorned the 93 page report, claiming it was an unauthorized opinion of one government employee with possible involvement of  “third parties”  outside the government.

On May 11, 2020, the ten German scientists and physicians (undersigned) who were involved in the 93 page report published a press release in response to the government:

See text in German:

““Don’t ignore expertise”: [German] Scientists criticize [German Ministry of Interior] BMI for handling corona paper,” deutsch.rt.com, May 13, 2020

Joint Press Release by the external experts on the 93 page Corona study of the Federal Ministry of the Interior

English translation

May 11, 2020

“We, with astonishment, the doctors and scientists involved in the preparation of the aforementioned corona study take cognizance of the press release of the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) from May 10 [which states the following]:

“BMI employees disseminate private opinion on corona crisis management –elaboration was carried out outside of responsibility and without a mandate and authorization.”

 The Ministry writes in this press release:

“To the best of our knowledge, the drafting has also involved third parties outside the BMI.”

We assume that the third parties [mentioned by the BMI] are we, the undersigned [list of 10 undersigned below, who were hired by the BMI].

Our comments on this are as follows: 

We assume that the BMI has a great interest in ensuring that its specialists, who are entrusted with the extremely important task of recognizing critical developments and averting damage to Germany through timely warnings, act both on a specific order and on their own initiative. The relevant employee of the BMI contacted us when preparing the risk analysis to assess the medical collateral damage caused by the “corona measures.”

Supported by responsibility, we support the committed BMI staff in examining this essential question to the best of their knowledge and belief, in addition to our actual professional activity. Renowned colleagues, all of them excellent representatives of their field, gave factual statements on specific questions based on the expertise requested. This resulted in a first comprehensive assessment of the medical damage that has already occurred and the threat of it, including expected deaths.

The BMI employee made an assessment based on our work and forwarded the result to the responsible bodies. You can find the relevant document in the attachment to this press release. There is no question that this can only be the beginning of an even more extensive examination due to the short time.But in our opinion, our analysis offers a good starting point for the BMI and the interior ministries of the federal states to carefully weigh the possible benefits of the protective measures against the damage they cause. In our opinion, the addressed civil servants would have to initiate an immediate reassessment of the protective measures based on this paper, for which we also offer our advice.

The BMI clearly states in the press release that it will not take this [our] analysis into account.  It is incomprehensible to us that the responsible Federal Ministry would like to ignore such an important assessment based on extensive technical expertise. Due to the seriousness of the situation, it must be a matter of dealing with the existing factual arguments–regardless of the history of its origin.

Therefore we ask: 

Why did the BMI not support the employee’s request and why does the BMI not include the extensive analysis now available on the basis of high-quality external expertise in its assessment of the relationship between the benefits and harm of the corona protective measures?

The BMI continues in its press release:

“As a result of the risk of corona infection, the Federal Government has taken measures to protect the population. These are continuously weighed up within the Federal Government and coordinated regularly with the Prime Ministers of the federal states.”

We ask the BMI: 

to tell us in a timely manner how exactly this weighing up is taking place. We ask you to prove this on the basis of data, facts and sources. We would like to compare this with our analysis. In view of the currently sometimes catastrophic patient care, we would be reassured if this analysis leads to a different assessment than ours, which we currently find difficult to imagine.

The BMI also writes that: 

“The infection rate in Germany has so far been relatively low in international comparison. The measures taken are effective.”

In accordance with the international specialist literature, we [the undersigned] only partially share this statement regarding the effectiveness of the protective measures. We therefore ask the BMI for transparency: 

*to disclose the sources according to which this determination is made.

Conclusion: 

Overall, at the request of a courageous BMI employee, we have shown the varied and serious undesirable effects of corona protective measures in the medical field, and these are serious. The entire process gives us the impression that, after a certain difficult initial phase of the epidemic, the risks [of government mandates] have not been considered to the necessary extent and, in particular, not in a comprehensive risk assessment. With regard to the reporting on this process, we ask that you place the value of our analysis at the center and report appropriately on us, in office and in person, to the serious situation.

The disease COVID-19 triggered by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is serious for many people in the known risk groups. As with any serious infectious disease, it is important to find the best treatment for the patient and prevent infection routes. But therapeutic and preventive measures must never be more harmful than the disease itself. The aim must be to protect the risk groups without endangering medical care and the health of the general population, as is unfortunately the case right now. We in science and practice as well as many colleagues experience the consequential damage of the corona protective measures to our patients every day. We therefore ask the Federal Ministry of the Interior to comment on our press release and hope for a relevant discussion that will lead to the best possible solution for the entire population with regard to the measures.

by:

Prof. Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, University Professor of Medical Microbiology (retired), University of Mainz

Dr. med. Gunter Frank, general practitioner, member of the permanent guidelines commission of the German Society for Family Medicine and General Medicine (DEGAM), Heidelberg

Prof. Dr. phil. Dr. rer. pole. Dipl.-Soz. Dr. Gunnar Heinsohn, Emeritus of Social Sciences at the University of Bremen

Prof. Dr. Stefan W. Hockertz, tpi consult GmbH, former director of the Institute for Experimental Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Hospital Eppendorf

Prof. Dr. Dr. rer. nat. (USA) Andreas S. Lübbe, Medical Director of the MZG-Westphalia, chief physician at the Cecilien-Klinik

Prof. Dr. Karina Reiss, Department of Dermatology and Allergology University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein

Prof. Dr. Peter Schirmacher, professor of pathology, Heidelberg, member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina

Prof. Dr. Andreas Sönnichsen, Deputy Curriculum Director of the Medical University of Vienna, Department of General Medicine and Family Medicine.

Dr. med. Til Uebel, resident general practitioner, specialist in general medicine, diabetology, emergency medicine, teaching physician at the Institute of General Medicine at the University of Würzburg, academic teaching practice at the University of Heidelberg

Prof. Dr. Dr. phil. Harald Walach, Prof. Medical University of Poznan, Dept. Pediatric Gastroenterology, visiting professor. University of Witten-Herdecke, Dept. Psychology- 4

As the influence of the US and Europe wanes in the face of a new geopolitical reality, their Cold War progeny, NATO, seeks to redefine itself as a global player. The problem is NATO is not capable of even stepping onto the field.

It’s being prepared for release in the coming days. More on it below.

In early February 2017, days after his inauguration, Trump signed what the White House called “pro-law and anti-crime executive orders (to) support the dedicated men and women of law enforcement.”

Ignoring police violence that’s part of the US landscape, including over 1,000 killings by cops in the country annually, Black youths a primary target, Trump said police “on the front lines…protect Americans…”

They serve and protect privileged ones at the expense of beneficial social change. 

Last October by executive order, he established a “Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice (Commission).”

Its purpose is to address issues related to “law enforcement and the administration of justice…to prevent, reduce, and control crime.”

The EO had nothing to do with crimes in high places by public, military, or private officials — everything to do with being tough on ordinary Americans, especially the most disadvantaged.

It’s how US law enforcement always operates — unfair and unjust by design.

Police brutality in the US in longstanding and excessive, including a systematic pattern of abuses nationwide.

Little is done to monitor or constrain it. Driving while Black is criminalized all too often.

Racial profiling stops and searches for suspected possession of illicit drugs or other reasons largely target people of color.

The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, including its police accountability section, failed to criminalize its use of violence, excessive force, or other human and civil rights violations.

The late Rep. John Conyers denounced a US “policy of institutionalized racial and ethnic profiling” that’s gone on for generations.

The ACLU stressed how millions of “African American, Asian, Latino, South Asian, and” Muslims from the wrong countries are grievously harmed in America, adding:

A “major impediment to (stopping it) remains the continued unwillingness…of the US government to pass federal legislation (prohibiting all forms of police brutality) with binding effect on federal, state or local law enforcement.”

US ruling authorities repeatedly and consistently breach international and constitutional law, including the 1994 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

A Trump regime statement on “law & justice” said it took steps “to restore the rule of law, forge new partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies, encourage respect for officers nationwide, and adopt aggressive strategies” against challenges to the US system.

On June 8, Trump praised US police. Ignoring hundreds of complaints about police violence and other forms of abuse against peaceful protesters nationwide, he claimed “(t)hey’ve done a fantastic job (sic).”

“I’m very proud of them. There won’t be defunding. There won’t be dismantling of our police.”

“(T)here’s not going to be any disbanding of our police. Our police have been letting us live in peace (sic).”

“They’re “99.9 percent…great, great people (sic).”

On US city streets in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing by 4 Minneapolis cops (and at all times in defending privilege over social justice nationwide), police use battlefield weapons designed for combat against unarmed people protesting against longstanding grievances.

On Thursday, Trump said his regime is preparing an executive order “that will encourage police departments nationwide to meet the most current professional standards for the use of force, including tactics for de-escalation,” adding:

He supports use of law enforcement to “dominate the streets. And that means force, but force with compassion” — ignoring that they’re incompatible.

Calling for “real strength, real power” on US streets shows where he stands, a prescription for continued law and order toughness unrestrained the way things have always been in the US.

In response to the establishment of an autonomous zone in Seattle by city residents, a six-square block area with no police, Trump threatened to send National Guard or Pentagon forces to disband the zone if state and city authorities don’t do it on their own.

Calling individuals involved “ugly anarchists,” Washington Governor Jay Inslee slammed Trump’s threat, tweeting:

“What we will not allow are threats of military violence against Washingtonians coming from the White House.”

“The US military serves to protect Americans, not the fragility of an insecure president.”

“The Trump (regime)  knows what Washington needs right now – the resources to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“If the president wants to show leadership, and that he cares about the people in this state, he should send us the PPE we’ve needed for months” — but haven’t gotten.

Nor have other US states gotten federal aid to contain COVID-19 outbreaks, including supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE).

The Seattle autonomous zone reflects justifiable anger against festering injustice in the US.

Perhaps similar actions will happen elsewhere nationwide.

As long as longstanding grievances go unaddressed, the only recourse for ill-served people is taking to the streets against what’s unacceptable.

Protests nationwide are the largest since the 1960s, aside from the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in September 2011 with considerable energy that waned and accomplished nothing.

Will this time be different? Will public anger on US streets against state-sponsored injustice have staying power?

Will they accomplish what earlier activism failed to achieve?

It’s only possible by sustaining activism for social justice longterm.

With tens of millions of Americans out of work at a time of economic collapse, it’s an ideal environment for taking to the streets and staying there until demands for social and economic justice are met legislatively.

Power yields nothing unless pushed nonviolently. Positive change never comes any other way.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

 

It is fairly well established that Afghanistan, the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11 — the mother of all state-sponsored false flags, a pretext for the US to smash one nation after another.

US new millennium forever wars rage against invented enemies with no prospect for resolution because Republicans and Dems reject world peace and the rule of law.

It’s unclear what will come out of the International Criminal Court’s probe of indisputable US war crimes in Afghanistan.

Since established by the Rome Statute in 2002, the ICC never held the US, other Western nations, or Israel accountable for high crimes of war and against humanity.

Only their victims were prosecuted, falsely blamed for the highest of high crimes committed against them by the US, NATO, Israel, and their imperial partners.

For nearly two decades, the ICC operated solely as imperial tool — continuing the same agenda today unless chooses an unprecedented new course for justice.

Though mandated to prosecute individuals (not nations) for crimes of war, against humanity, genocide and aggression, the court never targeted the main offenders of these crimes.

Given its disturbing history, it requires a giant leap of faith to believe it will go where it never went before.

It’s got a lot of proving to do to convince skeptics of its intention to go another way.

In early March, ICC judges authorized an investigation into accusations of war crimes by US military and intelligence personnel, Afghan forces, and the Taliban in the country.

According to Judge Piotr Hofmanski, chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda “is authorized to commence investigation in relation to alleged crimes committed on the territory of Afghanistan in the period since 1 May 2003.”

The probe may also include the period since July 1, 2002. Why not from day one of US aggression (10/7/01) wasn’t explained.

US war on the country was planned six months or longer before 9/11.

On the shelf ready to go, it was launched less than 5 weeks after that fateful day.

Many months of planning precede all US wars, nothing impromptu about them.

At the time of the ICC’s March announcement, Pompeo called it “breathtaking (and) reckless,” threatening reprisals against court officials if they investigate US actions in Afghanistan or anywhere else.

Bensouda said the ICC determined that a reasonable basis exists to probe war crimes by US military forces and intelligence operatives in Afghanistan.

She should have said just cause exists to investigate all US wars of aggression against nations threatening no one — including US state terror, illegal sanctions, and other hostile actions against peace, constituting war by other means.

All of the above falls within the ICC’s mandate.

US new millennium direct, proxy, and other types of warmaking alone have been responsible for countless millions of lost lives, vast destruction, and human misery in numerous countries.

They also inflicted enormous harm on ordinary Americans by using US discretionary income to feed the nation’s military, industrial, security complex at the expense of vital homeland needs gone begging.

WikiLeaks’ Afghan war diaries documented the highest of US high crimes against the nation and its people.

They represent the most comprehensive documentation of US aggression against a nation threatening no one since the Pentagon Papers.

Data came mainly from soldiers and intelligence officers, also from US embassies and other sources.

They revealed US criminality in Afghanistan, including coverups, collusion, distortion, and duplicity.

All wars are based on misinformation, disinformation, Big Lies and deception. Truth-telling would destroy pretexts for waging them.

The UN Charter explicitly states under what circumstances war by one nation against another is permitted.

Articles 2(3) and 33(1) require peaceful settlement of international disputes.

Article 2(4) prohibits force or its threatened use.

Article 51 allows the “right of self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member…until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security.”

Justifiable self-defense is permitted, never preemptive wars for any reasons with no exceptions.

The Security Council alone is authorized to decide under what circumstances warmaking is permitted — not heads of state, legislators, or the courts anywhere.

In 1974, the UN General Assembly defined aggression to mean “the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations.”

Throughout the post-WW II period, the US has been indisputably guilty time and again — today in multiple theaters.

What’s going on unaccountably is what chief Nuremberg Tribunal’s Justice Robert Jackson called “the supreme international crime against peace.”

Time and again, the US breached the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the US War Crimes Act, the UN Torture Convention, the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Genocide Convention, the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles, US Army Field Manual 27-10, and other US and international laws.

If all of the above doesn’t demand accountability in an international tribunal, what does!

WikiLeaks lifted the fog of war by documenting US atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning were arrested, imprisoned, and brutalized for releasing the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, collateral murder video, and related US diplomatic cables.

They both should have been honored instead of demonized, imprisoned, and brutally mistreated — for the “crime” of truth-telling about what everyone has a right to know.

In response to the ICC’s announced intention to probe US war crimes in Afghanistan, Trump declared a national emergency for what he called a “threat” to the US by the ICC.

He issued an executive order, authorizing (illegal) sanctions and visa restrictions against ICC officials and their family members.

Pompeo lashed out at the court, saying the Trump regime is “determined to prevent having Americans and our friends and allies in Israel and elsewhere hauled in” for ICC prosecution.”

In response to Trump regime actions, a statement by the Court said the following:

“(T)hreats and coercive actions cannot be allowed to hinder the rule of law.”

“These attacks (by the Trump regime) constitute an escalation and an unacceptable attempt to interfere with the rule of law and the Court’s judicial proceedings.”

“An attack on the ICC also represents an attack against the interests of victims of atrocity crimes, for many of whom the Court represents the last hope for justice.”

In 2002, the American Service Members’ Protection Act (ASPA, aka Hague Invasion Act) was enacted to prevent US “military personnel and other (US) elected and appointed officials (from) criminal prosecution by an international court to which the United States is not party.”

The measure authorizes the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any US or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.”

The US is not a state party to the Rome Statute or ICC.

The principle of universal jurisdiction principle (UJ) holds that certain crimes are too grave to ignore, including genocide, crimes of war and against humanity.

Under UJ, nations may investigate and prosecute foreign nationals when their country of residence or origin won’t, can’t, or hasn’t for any reason.

US Nuremberg-level high crimes of war and against humanity in Afghanistan and numerous other countries are far too grave to ignore.

It’s long past time for unaccountability of its officials to end.

Holding them responsible may be the best chance to pursue world peace and stability over permanent US wars on humanity that one day may kill us all if not stopped.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The recent wave of riots and looting has been the worst our country has seen in two generations, but some of the crucial underlying factors have been avoided by nearly our entire mainstream media, as well as by most conservative outlets. Republishing this article from a few years ago may help to shed light on these important matters.

The noted science fiction writer Philip K. Dick once declared that “Reality is what continues to exist whether you believe in it or not.” Such an observation should be kept in mind when we consider some of the touchier aspects of American society.

Recall the notorious case of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose 1965 report on the terrible deterioration in the condition of the black American family aroused such a firestorm of denunciation and outrage in liberal circles that the topic was rendered totally radioactive for the better part of a generation. Eventually the continuing deterioration reached such massive proportions that the subject was taken up again by prominent liberals in the 1980s, who then declared Moynihan a prophetic voice, unjustly condemned.

This contentious history of racially-charged social analysis was certainly in the back of my mind when I began my quantitative research into Hispanic crime rates in late 2009. One traditional difficulty in producing such estimates had been the problematical nature of the data. Although the FBI Uniform Crime Reports readily show the annual totals of black and Asian criminal perpetrators, Hispanics are generally grouped together with whites and no separate figures are provided, thereby allowing all sorts of extreme speculation by those so inclined.

In order to distinguish reality from vivid imagination, a major section of my analysis focused on the data from America’s larger cities, exploring the correlations between their FBI-reported crime rates and their Census-reported ethnic proportions. If urban crime rates had little relation to the relative size of the local Hispanic population, this would indicate that Hispanics did not have unusually high rates of criminality. Furthermore, densely populated urban centers have almost always had far more crime than rural areas or suburbs, so restricting the analysis to cities would reduce the impact of that extraneous variable, which might otherwise artificially inflate the national crime statistics for a heavily urbanized population group such as Hispanics.

My expectations proved entirely correct, and the correlations between Hispanic percentages and local crime rates were usually quite close to the same figures for whites, strongly supporting my hypothesis that the two groups had fairly similar rates of urban criminality despite their huge differences in socio-economic status. But that same simple calculation yielded a remarkably strong correlation between black numbers and crime, fully confirming the implications of the FBI racial data on perpetrators.

This presented me with an obvious quandary. The topic of my article was “Hispanic crime” and my research findings were original and potentially an important addition to the public policy debate. Yet the black crime figures in my charts and graphs were so striking that I realized they might easily overshadow my other results, becoming the focus of an explosive debate that would inevitably deflect attention away from my central conclusion. Therefore, I chose to excise the black results, perhaps improperly elevating political prudence over intellectual candor.

I further justified this decision by noting that black crime in America had been an important topic of public discussion for at least the last half-century. I reasoned that my findings must surely have been quietly known for decades to most social scientists in the relevant fields, and hence would add little to existing knowledge. However, since that time a few private discussions have led me to seriously question that assumption, as has the emotion-laden but vacuous media firestorm surrounding the George Zimmerman trial. I have therefore now decided to publish an expanded and unexpurgated version of my analysis, which I believe may have important explanatory value as well as some interesting policy implications.

The Pattern of Urban Crime in America

My central methodology is simple. I obtained the crime rates and ethnic percentages of America’s larger cities from official government data sources and calculated the population-weighted cross-correlations. In order to minimize the impact of statistical outliers, I applied this same approach to hundreds of different datasets: each of the years 1985 through 2011; homicide rates, robbery rates, and violent crime overall; all large cities of 250,000 and above and also restricted only to major cities of at least 500,000. I obtained these urban crime correlations with respect to the percentages of local whites, blacks, and Hispanics, but excluded Asians since their numbers were quite insignificant until recently (here and throughout this article, “white” shall refer to non-Hispanic whites).

I also attempted to estimate these same results for the overall immigrant population. The overwhelming majority of immigrants since 1965 have been Hispanic or Asian while conversely the overwhelming majority of those two population groups have a relatively recent immigrant family background. So the combined population of Hispanics and Asians constitutes a good proxy for the immigrant community, and allows us to determine the immigrant relationship to crime rates.

Presented graphically, these various urban crime correlations are as follows:

These charts demonstrate that over the last twenty-five years the weighted correlations for each of the crime categories against the percentages of whites, Hispanics, and “immigrants” (i.e. Hispanics-plus-Asians) have fluctuated in the general range of -0.20 to -0.60. Interestingly enough, for most of the last decade the presence of Hispanics and immigrants has become noticeably less associated with crime than the presence of whites, although that latter category obviously exhibits large regional heterogeneity. Meanwhile, in the case of blacks, the weighted crime correlations have steadily risen from 0.60 to around 0.80 or above, almost always now falling within between 0.75 and 0.85.

These particular calculations do rely upon several minor methodological choices. For example, I have used the 2000 Census population thresholds for selecting the sixty-odd large cities in my dataset, while I could have chosen some other year instead. The substantial annual fluctuations in the urban ethnic percentages provided by the Census-ACS estimates led me to instead use the interpolated Census figures for all years. The annual urban population totals used by the FBI sometimes differ slightly from the Census numbers, and I used the former for population-weighting purposes. However, all my results were quite robust with respect to these particular decisions, and modifying them would produce results largely indistinguishable from those presented above.

On a more difficult matter, there is always the possibility of local bias in FBI crime statistics, with the data for some cities possibly being more reliable or comprehensive than for others. But the reporting rate for homicides is widely accepted as close to 100 percent, and the close correspondence between the results for this “gold standard” crime category and those for the robbery and violent crime rates tends to confirm the validity of the latter. In any event, we would expect the highest-crime areas to be those most likely to suffer from under-reporting problems, so we would expect our figures to somewhat underestimate the true size of the correlations.

It is important to recognize that within the world of academic sociology discovering an important correlation in the range of 0.80 or above is quite remarkable, almost extraordinary. And even these correlations between black population prevalence and urban crime rates may actually tend to significantly understate the reality. All these correlations were performed on a city-wide aggregate basis. The New York City numbers include both the Upper East Side and Brownsville, Los Angeles both Bel Air and Watts, Chicago the Gold Coast and Englewood, with each city’s totals averaging those of both the wealthiest and the most dangerous districts. This crude methodology tends to obscure the local pattern of crime, which usually varies tremendously between different areas, often roughly corresponding to the lines of racial segregation. It is hardly a secret that impoverished black areas do have far higher crime rates than affluent white ones.

If instead we relied upon smaller geographical units such as neighborhoods, our results would be much more precise, but ethnicity data is provided by zip code while crime data is reported by precinct, so a major research undertaking would be required to match these dissimilar aggregational units for calculation purposes. However, the apparent geographical pattern of crime in these cities and most others might lead us to suspect that our national racial correlations would become substantially greater under such a more accurate approach, perhaps often reaching or even exceeding the 0.90 level. The inescapable conclusion is that local urban crime rates in America seem to be almost entirely explained by the local racial distribution.

But could such a strikingly simple sociological truth possibly be correct? After all, academic scholars have long advanced a wide variety of different socio-economic explanations for crime, and these have often been heavily promoted by pundits and the media. Commonly cited factors have been urban density, especially in the case of high-rise housing projects, and local poverty. There is also the relative number of police officers to consider. We should certainly compare the possible influence of these factors with the ethnic ones examined above.

Since the geographical borders of a city are generally fixed, average population densities are easy to calculate and in recent years their apparent impact upon crime rates has been negligible, whether for homicide, robbery, or violent crime in general. For the last dozen years, the density/crime correlations have always ranged between 0.20 and -0.20 and were usually close to zero. Perhaps many of us have an intuitive mental image of densely populated East Coast cities being natural hotbeds of crime. But this appears incorrect: crime rates and urban density seem to have little connection.

What about the sizes of the various urban police departments? Although precise comparisons are sometimes difficult, the Bureau of Justice Statistics periodically publishes official reports on the subject, and the latest 2007 study lists the numerical totals of America’s fifty largest urban police forces, allowing us to calculate the weighted correlations between these per capita policing levels and the corresponding crime rates of the years 2007-2011. We discover that there actually exists a moderately strong positive correlation, generally falling in the range 0.30-0.60: the more police, the more crime. Although this might seem counterintuitive, the explanation becomes obvious once we reverse the direction of causation. Higher crime rates usually persuade local authorities to hire additional police officers.

Finally, although urban crime rates do track local economic conditions, the relationship is far from tight. For the years 2006-2011, the Census-ACS provides estimates of the Mean Income, Median Income, and Poverty Rates for each urban center, and we can easily perform the same calculations we did in the racial case. The correlations between the Mean Income and Median Income levels and the various crime categories generally fall in the range of -0.40 to -0.60, being moderately rather than strongly negative. Even the correlation between Poverty Rate and crime—supported by the obvious truism that most street criminals are poor—is hardly enormous, falling between 0.50 and 0.70, and usually well below our racial figures.

The relative strength of these different correlations may be seen by a chart superimposing the economic and ethnic results for the last dozen years of robbery rate correlations for our major cities. Although the hard economic times since 2008 have considerably increased the influence of the poverty correlate, that factor is still considerably less significant than the racial one.

Indeed, the race/crime correlation so substantially exceeds the poverty/crime relationship that much of the latter may simply be a statistical artifact due to most urban blacks being poor. Consider that both blacks and Hispanics currently have similar national poverty rates in the one-third range, more than double the white figure, and each constitutes well over 20% of our urban population. However, major cities with substantial poverty but few blacks usually tend to have far lower levels of crime. For example, El Paso and Atlanta are comparable in size and have similar poverty rates, but the latter has eight times the robbery rate and over ten times the homicide rate. Within California, Oakland approximately matches Santa Ana in size and poverty, but has several times the rate of crime. Thus, it seems plausible that removing the black population from our calculation might actually reduce the residual poverty/crime correlation for non-blacks to a moderate or even a low figure.

To some extent, this surprising possibility is merely a statistical syllogism. Whenever the correlation to a single factor approaches unity, no other non-equivalent item may have a large, independent impact. And failing to recognize the existence of such a single, overwhelming factor might lead us to misidentify numerous other spurious influences, whose apparent causal importance actually derives from their own correlations with the primary item. For many years, the black connection to local crime has been so strong as to almost eliminate the possible role of any other variable.

We must obviously be cautious in interpreting the meaning of these statistical findings since correlation does not necessarily imply causation. Over the last few years the crime correlation for Hispanic or Hispanic-plus-Asian numbers has been substantially more negative than the same figure for whites, but this does not necessarily prove that whites are much more likely to commit urban crime, though it would tend to rule out the contrary possibility that Hispanics or immigrants have far higher rates of criminality.

However, if we examine the official FBI arrest statistics, we find that these seem to support the most straightforward interpretation of our racial crime correlations. For example, blacks in America were over six times as likely to be arrested for homicide in 2011 as non-blacks and over eight times as likely to be arrested for robbery; the factors for previous years were usually in a similar range. The accuracy of this racial pattern of arrests is generally confirmed by the corresponding racial pattern of victim-identification statements, also aggregated by the FBI. Indeed, several years ago the liberal Sentencing Project organization estimated that some one-third of all American black men are already convicted criminals by their 20s, and the fraction would surely be far higher for those living in urban areas.

A sense of the real world impact of these grim statistics may be found in the stratified 2011 Census-ACS data for major American cities. The three urban centers with the largest black populations are New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia, and together they contain over one-third more adult black women than black men. The corresponding national shortfall of black males runs well into the millions, partly accounting for the notorious “marriage gap” problems faced by women of their background. Those millions of missing black men are generally dead or in prison.

Over the last few years, the official publications of the Bureau of Justice Statistics have made it increasingly difficult to determine the racial totals of inmates in state prisons and local jails but the figures from the mid-2000s probably still provide a reasonable estimate, and I had used these in my 2010 article. Since crime is overwhelmingly committed by young males, for comparative purposes we should normalize all these incarceration totals against the base population of adult males in their prime-crime years, and the results are summarized in my previously published chart, reprinted here.

Since the mid-1990s, the issue of street crime has mostly dropped off the front pages of our national newspapers and disappeared from the public debate. Meanwhile, black Americans have gained much greater visibility in the upper reaches of our national elites, while Barack Obama has been elected and reelected as our first black president. This might seem to indicate that traditional racial cleavages in our society have become less substantial. Furthermore, with such enormous numbers of young black men now in prison, we might naturally expect that the racial character of American urban crime rates has sharply declined over the last couple of decades. However, the quantitative evidence demonstrates the exact opposite situation, as may be seen by examining the combined twenty-five year trajectories of our various racial crime correlations, which have steadily grown more extreme. The images shown on our film screens or television sets may portray one America, but the actual data reveals a very different country.

Once we accept the reality of these stark racial facts, we must naturally wonder about the causes, and also why the historical trends seem to have been moving in exactly the wrong direction over most of the last quarter-century. Certainly many theoretical explanations have been advanced, both from the Left and the Right, and whole library shelves have been filled with books on the subject since the urban violence of the 1960s. A short article is no place for me to summarize such a vast literature on a contentious topic, especially when I can provide no original insights of my own. But good theoretical analysis requires a solid factual grounding, and my main purpose here is to establish those facts, which others may then choose to interpret howsoever they wish. Absent such information, any national dialogue becomes an exercise in empty ideological posturing.

The Racial Subtext of American Electoral Politics

Racial issues have traditionally been among the most highly charged in American public life, and the nexus of crime and race has been exceptionally contentious for many decades. Under these circumstances respectable scholars tend to be cautious in discussing or merely investigating this topic, and the mainstream media is usually even more gun-shy. The striking racial findings presented above require only trivial statistical calculations and may be glimpsed in any casual inspection of the crime rankings of our major cities. But I remain uncertain to what extent they are already recognized by our experts in social policy.

For example, when I presented my correlation results to one very prominent conservative social scientist, he found them shocking and remarkable, and said he had never imagined that the statistical relationship between race and crime was so extremely strong. But when I showed the same data to an equally prominent liberal academic, he took the information in stride and said he assumed that almost all experts were already quietly aware of the general facts. The reactions of other knowledgeable individuals fell all along this spectrum ranging from surprise to familiarity. Knowledge so explosive that it is usually unspoken and unreported may easily remain unknown even to many of our foremost intellectuals.

But whether or not most of our ruling elites explicitly recognize the stark racial character of American crime, the reality still exists, and we should consider exploring whether these unpublicized facts may have had broader influences in our society, possibly in seemingly unrelated areas. After all, urban crime has frequently been a leading issue in American public life, during some periods ranking as one of the most important. Certain matters may not be easily discussed in polite company these days, but if even just a portion of the citizenry is intuitively aware of the situation, their attitudes might have broader ripple effects throughout the entire population. Is there any substantial evidence for this?

Consider the electoral behavior of American whites, and especially their inclination to support either Democratic or Republican candidates. Because of gerrymandering, most individual congressional districts are overwhelmingly aligned with one party or another, and general elections are a mere formality; this is often also true of statewide races for senator or governor. However, in presidential elections both parties almost always field viable national candidates with a reasonable chance of winning, so these provide the best means of gauging white political alignment. And for these campaigns, the racial lines are clearly established, with the modern Republicans being the “white party,” drawing over 90% of their support from that demographic group, while over 90% of blacks regularly vote the Democratic ticket, which also usually attracts the overwhelming majority of other non-white voters.

As I pointed out in a 2011 article, there has been a striking statewide pattern to white voting behavior over the last couple of decades. Many conservative activists and media pundits have spent years attacking immigrants, illegal or otherwise, and have regularly denounced the cultural threat posed by the growing population of non-English-speakers or non-white foreigners. Nevertheless, the empirical fact is that presence or absence of large numbers of Hispanics or Asians in a given state seems to have virtually no impact upon white voting patterns. Meanwhile, there exists a strong relationship between the size of a state’s black population and the likelihood that local whites will favor the Republicans. The weighted-average correlations between the racial compositions of the fifty states and the degree to which their white voters favor Republican presidential candidates is summarized in the following chart.

GOP leaders are always fearful of being denounced as “racist” by the major media, and often seek to camouflage the underlying source of their electoral support by adopting the most extreme forms of tokenism, promoting black party leaders and spokesmen while heavily recruiting black candidates and focusing almost entirely upon non-racial issues. Conservative activists often rhetorically identify themselves as heirs to the “party of Lincoln” and may even accuse their Democratic opponents of seeking to keep blacks in Welfare State bondage. But the actual data tells a very different story about the likely sources of Republican support.

The strength of this pattern may be seen at its extremes. Mississippi is the state with the highest black percentage and across all six elections its white population was the most likely to vote Republican, with the figures recently running at nearly the 90% level. Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina are generally clustered together as the next blackest in population, and in most elections their white populations were the next most likely to support the Republican ticket, although being sometimes exceeded by the whites of Alabama, the fifth or sixth blackest state during those decades.

By contrast, consider the three states with the largest non-white percentages: Hawaii, California, and New Mexico. The whites of the first two have actually been far less likely to vote Republican than whites nationwide, while those in New Mexico fall close to the national average. This tends to confirm the national statistical results that the widespread presence of non-whites, even in overwhelming numbers, seems to have little impact upon white voting behavior.

While I would not argue that black crime is the sole determining factor behind the racial polarization in white voting behavior, I do suspect it is one of the largest contributors. Empirically, the presence of blacks causes whites to vote the “law-and-order” Republican ticket, while the presence of Hispanics or Asians seems to have negligible political impact.

Nevertheless, we should remain cautious in interpreting these results. For example, although these national correlations are certainly substantial, they are almost entirely due to the weighting of the Southern states, in which blacks are almost 20% of the total population and racial tensions have traditionally been the strongest. In non-Southern states, the correlations are nil, perhaps partly because blacks are found in far smaller numbers, being less than 9% of the total.

The Hidden Motive for Heavy Immigration?

Consider also the highly contentious issue of immigration. Obviously, much of the underlying conflict is purely economic in character, with workers aware that restricting the supply of available labor will protect their bargaining power over wages, while businesses seek to maximize their profits by expanding the pool of potential employees, whether low-skilled or high-tech.

But all involved participants quickly discover that despite endless protestations to the contrary there is also a clear racial subtext, usually accounting for the emotionality of the debate. For the last half-century, the overwhelming majority of immigrants, especially illegal ones, have been non-white, and the resulting racial fears have been a central motivating force driving many of the most zealous restrictionists, who fear being swamped by a tidal wave of “the Other.” However, I believe that racial considerations, whether fully conscious or not, might also be found on the other side of the issue, helping to explain why our national leadership today so uniformly endorses very heavy foreign immigration.

America’s ruling financial, media, and political elites are largely concentrated in three major urban centers—New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.—and all three have contained large black populations, including a violent underclass. During the early 1990s, many observers feared New York City was headed for urban collapse due to its enormously high crime rates, Los Angeles experienced the massive and deadly Rodney King Riots, and Washington often vied for the title of American homicide capital. In each city, the violence and crime were overwhelmingly committed by black males, and although white elites were rarely the victims, their fears were quite palpable.

One obvious reaction to these concerns was strong political support for a massive national crackdown on crime, and the prison incarceration of black men increased by almost 500% during the two decades after 1980. But even after such enormous rates of imprisonment, official FBI statistics indicate that blacks today are still over 600% as likely to commit homicide than non-blacks and their robbery rate is over 700% larger; these disparities seem just as high with respect to Hispanic or Asian immigrants as they are for whites. Thus, replacing a city’s blacks with immigrants would tend to lower local crime rates by as much as 90%, and during the 1990s American elites may have become increasingly aware of this important fact, together with the obvious implications for their quality of urban life and housing values.

According to Census data, between 1990 and 2010 the number of Hispanics and Asians increased by one-third in Los Angeles, by nearly 50% in New York City, and by over 70% in Washington, D.C. The inevitable result was to squeeze out much of the local black population, which declined, often substantially, in each location. And all three cities experienced enormous drops in local crime, with homicide rates falling by 73%, 79%, and 72% respectively, perhaps partly as a result of these underlying demographic changes. Meanwhile, the white population increasingly shifted toward the affluent, who were best able to afford the sharp rise in housing prices. It is an undeniable fact that American elites, conservative and liberal alike, are today almost universally in favor of very high levels of immigration, and their possible recognition of the direct demographic impact upon their own urban circumstances may be an important but unspoken factor in shaping their views.

As an anecdotal example, consider the case of Matthew Yglesias, a prominent young liberal blogger living in Washington, DC. A couple of years ago he recounted on his blogsite how he was suddenly attacked from behind and seriously beaten by two young men while walking home one evening from a dinner party. At first he was quite cagey about identifying his attackers, but he eventually admitted they were blacks, possibly engaged in the growing racial practice of urban “polar bear hunting” so widely publicized by the Drudge Report and other rightwing websites.

Few matters are more likely to trouble the minds of our Harvard-educated intellectual elite than fear of suffering random violent assaults while they walk the streets of their own city. Yet no respectable progressive would possibly focus on the racial character of such an attack, let alone advocate the removal of local blacks as a precautionary measure. Instead Yglesias suggested that housing-density issues might have been responsible and that better urban planning would reduce crime.

But consider that support for very high levels of foreign immigration is an impeccably liberal cause, and such policies inevitably displace and remove huge numbers of urban blacks; it is easy to imagine that Yglesias quietly redoubled his pro-immigration zeal in the wake of the incident. Multiply this personal example a thousand-fold, and perhaps an important strand of the tremendous pro-immigration ideological framework of American elites becomes apparent. The more conspiratorially-minded racialists, bitterly hostile to immigration, sometimes speculate that there is a diabolical plot by our ruling power structure to “race-replace” America’s traditional white population. Perhaps a hidden motive along these lines does indeed help explain some support for heavy immigration, but I suspect that the race being targeted for replacement is not the white one.

Such factors may also play a role outside the major urban centers discussed above and even where least suspected. Among all American businessmen, Silicon Valley executives are probably strongest in their pro-immigration advocacy, as indicated by the major political advertising campaign recently launched by top technology CEOs, organized together as “FWD.us.” Obviously, their own cosmopolitan background and desire for an unlimited supply of inexpensive, high-quality engineers is their primary motive. However, widespread sentiments in favor of lesser-educated immigrant groups such as undocumented Latin Americans also seem quite strong, and we find Steve Jobs’ wealthy widow Laurene Powell Jobs focusing her efforts almost exclusively on that particular aspect of the legislation, with her sentiments hardly being discordant with those of her wealthy peer group. Could hidden racial factors be part of the explanation? That might seem quite unlikely since Silicon Valley’s black population has been very low for decades, running in the 3 or 4 percent range.

However, a closer examination reveals a very different situation. The small city of Palo Alto is one of the most desirable local residential areas, home to the late Steve Jobs, as well as the current CEOs of Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and a host of other companies; by some estimates, it may contain the world’s highest per capita concentration of billionaires. On three sides, Palo Alto abuts communities of a similar character: Mountain View, containing Google; the Stanford University campus; and Menlo Park, the center of America’s venture capital industry. But on the fourth side, mostly separated by Highway 101, lies East Palo Alto, which for decades was a dangerous ghetto, overwhelmingly black.

I moved back to Palo Alto from New York City in 1992, and that year East Palo Alto recorded America’s highest per capita murder rate; although relatively few of the homicides, robberies, and rapes spilled across the border, enough did to leave many people uneasy. Gated communities and even street fences are quite uncommon in the region, and for years anyone who wished could go to the home of Steve Jobs and walk around his yard or even peer into his windows. Meanwhile, the sort of harsh racial profiling widely practiced in some large cities was completely abhorrent to the socially liberal citizenry. One may easily imagine a scenario in which escalating street crime from the ghetto next door might have produced a collapse in high housing prices and sparked a massive flight of the wealthy.

One reason this did not occur was the vast influx of impoverished immigrants from south of the border that swept into the less affluent communities of the region during those same years and rapidly transformed the local demographics. Between 1980 and 2010 the combined Hispanic population of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties nearly tripled. A city offering cheap housing such as East Palo Alto saw far greater relative increases, reversing its demographics during that period from 60% black and 14% Hispanic to 16% black and 65% Hispanic. Over the last twenty years, the homicide rate in that small city dropped by 85%, with similar huge declines in other crime categories as well, thereby transforming a miserable ghetto into a pleasant working-class community, now featuring new office complexes, luxury hotels, and large regional shopping centers. Multi-billionaire Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife recently purchased a large $9 million home just a few hundred feet from the East Palo Alto border, a decision that would have been unthinkable during the early 1990s. Technology executives are highly quantitative individuals, skilled in pattern recognition, and I find it difficult to believe that they have all remained completely oblivious to these local racial factors.

However the powerful role of immigration in transforming the crime rates of important urban centers probably had a much smaller impact on the national totals. The combined black populations of New York City, Washington, and Los Angeles may have dropped by half a million over the last two decades, but the individuals pushed out did not disappear from the world; they merely moved to Atlanta or Baltimore or Riverside. But from the personal perspective of America’s ruling elite, they did indeed disappear.

For over thirty years, local black activists in Washington, D.C. have accused the ruling white power structure of promoting “The Plan,” a deliberate strategy of removing most of the black population from our national capital and replacing them with whites; and this “conspiracy theory” has been endlessly ridiculed as absurdly paranoid nonsense by our elite Washington media. Meanwhile, during this same thirty year period, Washington’s black population dropped from over 70% to less than half and will probably fall below the white total within the next few years.

Indeed, the strong support of our political elites for Section 8 housing vouchers may be less connected with any alleged social benefits these provide than with their important role in moving large numbers of impoverished urban residents away from the near vicinity of wealthy neighborhoods out into the remote suburbs of the middle class. Several years ago the Atlantic published a major article by Hanna Rosin on the rapid changes in the geographical pattern of crime induced by these demographic shifts, and the piece provoked much discussion even though the author avoided unduly emphasizing the troubling racial aspects. Elite selfishness is hardly surprising and a policy of exporting those populations with a strong link to crime into other localities seems a natural strategy, especially if this can be accomplished under the altruistic guise of socially-uplifting anti-poverty programs.

Finally, it is important to emphasize that this clear political interplay between heavy levels of immigration and black urban displacement is a relatively recent development and certainly was not anticipated by the original promoters of the 1965 Immigration Act. Indeed, although restrictionists routinely denounce that legislation for having flooded America with Hispanic immigrants, the facts are precisely the opposite. While the 1924 Immigration Act had drastically curtailed immigration from Europe (and Asia), the entire Western Hemisphere was totally exempted, and the U.S. retained its previous “open borders” policy for Mexico and the rest of Latin America until strict quotas were finally introduced as part of the 1965 law. Although these 1965 changes were expected to enable renewed European immigration, no one anticipated the vast inflow of Hispanic and Asian immigrants in the decades that followed, nor the resulting impact upon the racial composition of our major cities. But today these continuing urban demographic changes may have now become a significant motive in the minds of the elites advocating increased immigration under the legislation being considered by Congress.

During the 1960s black author James Baldwin coined the widely-quoted phrase “Urban renewal means Negro removal.” I suspect that a somewhat similar semi-intentional national policy is today transforming America’s leading urban centers, although it remains almost entirely unreported by our mainstream media.

On rare occasions, the mask slips and the underlying mental workings of our national elites are momentarily revealed. Consider New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of our most vocal pro-immigration voices on the national stage and a man whose vast wealth and influence often allow him to be far more candid on controversial topics than most other public figures. In May 2011 Bloomberg was interviewed on Meet the Press, and explained that if he had full authority, he could easily fix the seemingly insoluble problems of a city like Detroit at no cost to the taxpayer. He proposed opening wide the floodgates to unlimited foreign immigration on the condition that all the additional immigrants moved to Detroit and lived there for a decade or so, thereby transforming the city. I suspect this provides an important insight into how he and his friends discuss certain racial issues in private.

The Remarkable New York City Exception

Powerful quantitative evidence for social determinism may be dispiriting, and when the main determinant seems to be race, many Americans will choose to throw up their hands and ignore the statistical facts, simply hoping that these might somehow be proven incorrect. That is certainly their privilege, but for those individuals who prefer to grit their teeth and mine the data for contrary indications, there do exist a few interesting nuggets.

Weighted average correlations are a very useful summary statistic, but they neither tell the whole story nor do they preclude the existence of outlying cases, which might provide some insights on ameliorating the grim situation we have described. And it so happens that among our many dozens of major urban centers one of the most extreme race/crime outliers is neither small nor obscure: New York City. Our largest metropolis often has crime rates that deviate sharply from the usual urban pattern observed almost everywhere else.

Recall our earlier mention of the surprising absence of any correlation between urban population density and crime rates. Those summary statistics were correct, but they also hid some important variations and the null overall result was almost entirely due to the extremely high density and low crime rates in America’s largest city, combined with its huge population-weighting. If we excluded New York City from our calculations, the remainder of America’s major urban centers would demonstrate some moderately strong and fairly stable correlations between density and crime over the last dozen years; for example, density has generally had a positive correlation of around 0.35 with robbery rates.

Similar anomalies appear in the racial crime calculations that have been the central focus of our analysis. Based on its racial composition, we would expect New York City’s homicide rate to be some 70% higher than it actually is, with robbery and violent crime also being far more widespread. Cities like San Jose and San Diego may have homicide and violent crime rates only half that of New York City, but given the stark differences in their underlying demographics, it is New York City’s Finest who deserves praise for their remarkable effectiveness in crime prevention. Evaluating the apparent success or failure of urban law enforcement policies without candidly considering a city’s demographic challenges may lead to incorrect policy judgments.

Little of New York City’s success in crime prevention seems due to the relative size of its police force, which is roughly similar to those of Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston on a per capita basis, and far below that of Washington, D.C., all cities whose crime rates reflect their demographics. So it appears that New York City’s crime-fighting methods rather than merely the number of its officers has been the crucial factor.

Ideas have consequences, as do attempts to avoid them. For most of the last twenty years, the policing methods implemented under mayors Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg won enormous national praise as they so dramatically cut New York crime rates: murders dropped by over three-quarters. But during the last few years, some of these same policies have begun receiving widespread criticism among those pundits who may have forgotten just how bad things were two decades ago.

Our simple statistical analysis obviously does not allow us to disentangle the relative importance of the different factors behind New York City’s success. Since the early 1990s, the city implemented a “community policing” model as well as pioneering the rapid use of local crime data to pinpoint dangerous hotspots and allocate resources more accurately. But other elements of the package have included strict, even harsh policing methods, such as the widespread use of “stop-and-frisk” to reduce gun violence. Denouncing these techniques as unconstitutional or racially discriminatory may be perfectly justified, but those who do so must consider the trade-offs involved, including the very real possibility of a 70% rise in homicides if local policing effectiveness declined to levels found in the rest of the country.

Let us compare the demographic and crime trends of New York City and Washington, twin abodes of our East Coast urban elite. Between 1985 and 2011, Washington’s homicide rate dropped by 26%, robbery fell 27%, and violent crime in general was cut by 30%; but the city’s black population also dropped by 27% during this same period. Meanwhile, New York City’s corresponding declines in crime were far greater, 67%, 78%, and 67% respectively, but were accompanied by only a small 7% decline in black numbers. For all these serious crime rates to decline at nearly ten times the rate of their primary racial determinant is absolutely remarkable, a combination that left the city an exceptional outlier among America’s major urban centers.

Put another way, if America’s other cities with large black populations had somehow managed to achieve the same surprisingly low crime rates as New York City then most of the high racial crime correlations that have been the central findings of this article would disappear. Conversely, if New York City were excluded from our current national statistics, many of the existing racial crime correlations would exceed 0.90. These are objective facts and well-intentioned analysts who sharply criticize New York City policing methods should recognize that they may face some unpalatable choices.

Perhaps further research would establish that the widely-lauded elements of local police practice are the ones primarily responsible for such results, and the more controversial methods may safely be eliminated without negative consequences. But for whatever combination of reasons, the overall results achieved by New York City have been quite remarkable and caution should be exercised before drastic changes are made in such a successful model.

Obviously New York City is not the sole positive outlier on these crime statistics, though it is by far the most significant, both because of its size and the magnitude of its deviation from the predicted results. If we examine the 2011 homicide rates for our set of sixty-six large cities, seventeen of these were at least 30% below the projected trendline, with four cities—Charlotte, Raleigh, St. Paul, and Virginia Beach—achieving even better results than New York City. But many of these successful cities have numerically small black populations, and the total for all seventeen combined is not much larger that of New York City alone. One intriguing fact is that although fewer than one-third of the all our large cities lie in the South, these Southern cities account for over two-thirds of those particularly successful examples, and a roughly similar pattern applies both for other crime rates and for other recent years. The exact mix of cultural, socio-economic, or demographic factors responsible for such notable Southern success in achieving relatively low urban crime rates is unclear, but might warrant further investigation.

Over the last decade or two, liberal intellectuals have regularly denounced their conservative opponents for allowing ideological considerations to trump objective facts, sometimes styling themselves the “Reality-Based Community” as an ironic riposte to the foolish criticism of a top Bush Administration official. Many of these liberal accusations have considerable merit. But individuals who claim to accept reality undercut their credibility if they pick and choose which portions of reality they acknowledge and which portions they carefully ignore. Our academic and media elites should not avoid factual evidence that they dislike.

Consider that over one-quarter of all the urban black males in America have vanished from our society, a loss-ratio approaching that experienced by Europeans during the Black Death of the Middle Ages. Yet these astonishing statistics have largely remained unreported by our major media and hence unrecognized by the general American public. Should the medieval scribes of the Fourteenth Century have ignored the annihilating impact of the bubonic plague all around them and merely confined their writings to more pleasant news?

It is said that very young children sometimes believe they can hide themselves by covering their eyes, and that seems to be the general approach taken by our major media to the unpleasantly grim racial crime statistics analyzed in this article. But the reality continues to exist whether or not we ignore it.

*

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First published by GR on April 16, 2020

There is a serious health crisis which must be duly resolved. And this is a number one priority.

But there is another important dimension which has to be addressed. 

Millions of people have lost their jobs, and their lifelong savings. In developing countries, poverty and despair prevail. 

While the lockdown is presented to public opinion as  the sole means to resolving a global public health crisis,  its devastating economic and social impacts are casually ignored.  

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of  mass unemployment, bankruptcy and extreme poverty. 

This is the true picture of what is happening.  Poverty is Worldwide. While famines are erupting in Third World countries, closer to home,  in the richest country on earth,

“millions of desperate Americans wait in long crowded lines for handouts”

“Miles-long lines formed at food banks and unemployment offices across the US over the past week”   

In India:

“food is disappearing, ….  in shanty towns, too scared to go out, walking home or trapped in the street crackdowns,

In India there have been 106 coronavirus deaths as of today, to put things in perspective 3,000 Indian children starve to death each day” 

From Mumbai to New York City. It’s the “Globalization of Poverty”.

Production is at a standstill. 

Starvation in Asia and Africa. Famine in the U.S. 

All countries are now Third World countries. It’s the “Thirdworldisation” of the so-called high income “developed countries”.  

And what is happening in Italy?

People are running out of food. Reports confirm that the Mafia rather than the government “is gaining local support by distributing free food to poor families in quarantine who have run out of cash”. (The Guardian)

This crisis combines fear and panic concerning the COVID-19 together with a sophisticated process of economic manipulation.

Let us first examine the impacts pertaining to the developing countries.

Developing Countries. The IMF’s “Economic Medicine” and the Globalization of Poverty

Is the coronavirus crisis part of a broader macro-economic agenda?

First some historical background.

I spent more than ten years undertaking field research on the impacts of IMF-World Bank economic reforms in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

Since the early 1980s, “strong economic medicine” was imposed on indebted developing countries under what was called the “structural adjustment program” (SAP).

From 1992 to 1995, I undertook field research in India, Bangladesh and Vietnam and returned to Latin America to complete my study on Brazil. In all the countries I visited, including Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco and The Philippines, I observed the same pattern of economic manipulation and political interference by the Washington-based institutions. In India, directly resulting from the IMF reforms, millions of people had been driven into starvation. In Vietnam – which constitutes among the world’s most prosperous rice producing economies – local-level famines had erupted resulting directly from the lifting of price controls and the deregulation of the grain market. (Preface to the Second Edition of the Globalization of Poverty, 2003)

 The hegemony of the dollar was imposed. With mounting dollar denominated debt, eventually in most developing countries the entire national monetary system was “dollarized”.

Massive austerity measures were conducive to the collapse in real wages. Sweeping privatization programs were imposed. These deadly economic reforms -applied on behalf the creditors- invariably triggered economic collapse, poverty and mass unemployment.

In Nigeria starting in the 1980s, the entire public health system had been dismantled. Public hospitals were driven into bankruptcy. The medical doctors with whom I spoke described the infamous structural adjustment program (SAP) with a touch of humor:

“we’ve been sapped by the SAP”, they said, our hospitals have literally been destroyed courtesy of the IMF-World Bank.

From Structural Adjustment to Global Adjustment

Today, the mechanism for triggering poverty and economic collapse is fundamentally different and increasingly sophisticated.

The ongoing 2020 Economic Crisis is tied into the logic of the COVID-19 pandemic: No need for the IMF-World Bank to negotiate a structural adjustment loan with national governments.

What has occurred under the COVID-19 crisis is a “Global Adjustment” in the structure of the World economy. In one fell swoop this Global Adjustment (GA) triggers a Worldwide process of bankruptcy, unemployment, poverty and total despair.

How is it implemented? The lockdown is presented to national governments as the sole solution to resolve the COVID-19 pandemic. It becomes a political consensus, irrespective of the devastating economic and social consequences.

No need to reflect or analyze the likely impacts. Corrupt national governments are pressured to comply.

The partial or complete closing down of a national economy is triggered through the enforcement of  so-called “WHO guidelines” pertaining to the lockdown, as well as to trade, immigration and transportation restrictions, etc.

Powerful financial institutions and lobby groups including Wall Street, Big Pharma, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were involved in shaping the actions of the WHO pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lockdown together with the curtailment of trade and air travel had set the stage. This closing down of national economies was undertaken Worldwide starting in the month of  March,  affecting simultaneously a large of number of countries in all major regions of the World.  It is unprecedented in World history.

Why did leaders in high office let it happen? The consequences were obvious.

This closing down operation affects production and supply lines of goods and services, investment activities, exports and imports, wholesale and retail trade, consumer spending, the closing down of schools, colleges and universities, research institutions, etc.

In turn it leads almost immediately to mass unemployment, bankruptcies of small and medium sized enterprises, a collapse in purchasing power, widespread poverty and famine.

What is the underlying objective of this restructuring of the global economy?  What are the consequences? Cui Bono? 

• A massive concentration of wealth and corporate capital,,
• the destabilization of small and middle sized enterprises in all major areas of economic activity including the services economy, agriculture and manufacturing.
• facilitates the subsequent corporate acquisition of bankrupt enterprises
• It derogates the rights of workers. It destabilizes labor markets.
• It creates mass unemployment
• It compresses wages (and labor costs) in the so-called high income “developed countries” as well as in the impoverished developing countries.
• It leads to an escalation of the external debt
• It facilitates subsequent privatization

Needless to say this Global Adjustment (GA) operation is far more detrimental than the country-level IMF-WB structural adjustment program (SAP).

It is neoliberalism to the nth degree.

In one fell swoop (in the course of the last months) the COVID-19 crisis has contributed to impoverishing a large sector of the World population.

And Guess who comes to the rescue? The IMF and the World Bank:

The IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has casually acknowledged that the World economy has come to a standstill, without addressing the causes of economic collapse.

“The WHO is there to protect the Health of the People, The IMF is there to protect the health of the World economy” says Georgieva.

 How does she intend to “protect the World economy”?

At the expense of the national economy?

What’s her “magic solution”?

 “We rely on $1 trillion in overall lending capacity.” (IMF M-D Georgieva, Press Conference in early March)

At first sight this appears to be “generous”, a lot money. But ultimately it’s what we might call “fictitious money”, what it means is:

“We will lend you the money and with the money we lend you, you will pay us back”.(paraphrase).

 

The ultimate objective is to make the external (dollar denominated) debt go fly high.

The IMF is explicit. In one of its lending windows, the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust, which applies to pandemics, generously,

“provides grants for debt relief to our poorest and most vulnerable members.”

Nonsensical statement: it is there to replenish the coffers of the creditors, the money is allocated to debt servicing.

“For low-income countries and for emerging middle-income countries we have … up to $50 billion that does not require a full-fledged IMF program.”

No conditions on how you spend the money. But this money increases the debt stock and requires reimbursement.

The countries are already in a straight-jacket. And the objective is that they comply with the demands of the creditors.

That’s the neoliberal solution applied at a global level: No real economic recovery, more poverty and unemployment Worldwide. The “solution” becomes the “cause”. It initiates a new process of indebtedness. It contributes to an escalation of the debt.

The more you lend, the more you squeeze the developing countries into political compliance. And ultimately that is the objective of the failing American Empire.

The unspoken truth is that this one trillion dollars ++ of the Bretton Woods institutions is intended to drive up the external debt.

In recent developments, the G20 Finance ministers decided to “put on hold”,  the repayment of debt servicing obligations of the World’s poorest countries.

The cancellation of debt has not been envisaged. Quite the opposite. The strategy consists in building up the debt.

It is important that the governments of developing countries take a firm stance against the IMF-World Bank “rescue operation”. 

The Global Debt Crisis in the Developed Countries

An unprecedented fiscal crisis is unfolding at all levels of government. With high levels of unemployment, incoming tax revenues in developed countries are almost at a standstill.  In the course of the last 2 months, national governments have become increasingly indebted.

In turn, Western governments as well as political parties are increasingly under the control of  the creditors, who ultimately call the shots.

All levels of governments have been precipitated into a debt stranglehold. The debt cannot be repaid. In the US, the federal deficit “has increased by 26% to $984 billion for fiscal 2019, highest in 7 years”.  And that is just the beginning.

In Western countries, a colossal expansion of the public debt has occurred. It is being used to finance the “bailouts”, the “handouts” to corporations as well as “the social safety nets” to the unemployed.

The logic of the bailouts is in some regards similar to that of the 2008 economic crisis, but on a much larger scale. Ironically, in 2008, US banks were both the creditors of the US federal government as well as the lucky recipients: the rescue operation was funded by the banks with a view to  “bailing out the banks”. Sounds contradictory?

The Privatization of the State

This crisis will  eventually precipitate the privatization of the state. Increasingly, national governments will be under the stranglehold of Big Money.

Crippled by mounting debts, what is at stake is the eventual de facto privatization of the entire state structure, in different countries, at all levels of government, under the surveillance of powerful financial interests. The fiction of  “sovereign governments” serving the interests of the electors will nonetheless be maintained.

The first level of government up for privatization will be the municipalities (many of which are already partially or fully privatized, e.g. Detroit in 2013). America’s billionaires will be enticed to buy up an entire city.

Several major cities are already on the verge of bankruptcy. (This is nothing new).

Is the city of Vancouver up for privatization?: “the mayor of Vancouver has already indicated that he feared the bankruptcy of his city.” (Le Devoir, April 15, 2020)

In America’s largest cities, people are simply unable to pay their taxes: The debt of New York City for fiscal 2019 is a staggering $91.56 billion (FY 2019) an increase of 132% since FY 2000. In turn personal debts across America have skyrocketed.

“U.S. households collectively carry about $1 trillion in credit card debt”. No measures are being taken in the US to reduce the interest rates on credit card debt.

The New World Order?

The lockdown impoverishes both the developed and developing countries and literally destroys national economies.

It destabilizes the entire economic landscape. It undermines social institutions including schools and universities. It spearheads small and medium sized enterprises into bankruptcy.

What kind of World awaits us?

A diabolical “New World Order” in the making as suggested by Henry Kissinger? (WSJ Opinion, April 3, 2020):

“The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order”

Recall Kissinger’s historic 1974 statement: “Depopulation should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards the Third World.” (1974 National Security Council Memorandum)

The political implications are far-reaching.

 What kind of government will we have in the wake of the crisis?

Concluding Remarks

There is a lot of misunderstanding regarding the nature of this crisis.

Several progressive intellectuals are now saying that this crisis constitutues a defeat of neoliberalism. “It opens up a new beginning”.

Some people see it as a “potential turning point”, which opens up an opportunity to “build socialism” or “restore social democracy” in the wake of the lockdown.

The evidence amply confirms that neoliberalism has not been defeated. Quite the opposite.

Global capitalism has consolidated its clutch. Fear and panic prevail. The State is being privatized. The tendency is towards authoritarian forms of government.

These are the issues which we must address.

That historical opportunity to confront the power structures of global capitalism, –including the US-NATO military apparatus– remains to be firmly established in wake of the lockdown.

 

---

 

The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order

In this expanded edition of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky’s international best-seller, the author outlines the contours of a New World Order which feeds on human poverty and the destruction of the environment, generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife and undermines the rights of women. The result as his detailed examples from all parts of the world show so convincingly, is a globalization of poverty.

This book is a skillful combination of lucid explanation and cogently argued critique of the fundamental directions in which our world is moving financially and economically.

In this updated and enlarged edition – which includes ten additional chapters and a new introduction – the author reviews the causes and consequences of famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, the dramatic meltdown of financial markets, the demise of State social programs and the devastation resulting from corporate downsizing and trade liberalization.

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– Choice, American Library Association (ALA)

“The current system, Chossudovsky argues, is one of capital creation through destruction. The author confronts head on the links between civil violence, social and environmental stress, with the modalities of market expansion.”
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On Wikipedia, a small group of regime-change advocates and right-wing Venezuelan opposition supporters have blacklisted independent media outlets like The Grayzone on explicitly political grounds, violating the encyclopedia’s guidelines.

This is part 1 in a series of investigative reports on the systemic problems with Wikipedia. Read part 2 here: “Meet Wikipedia’s Ayn Rand-loving founder and Wikimedia Foundation’s regime-change operative CEO“.

***

Internet encyclopedia giant Wikipedia is censoring independent news websites by adding them to an official blacklist of taboo “deprecated” media outlets.

The Grayzone is among the news websites targeted by the censorship campaign. Others include leftist and anti-imperialist outlets like MintPress News and the Latin American news broadcaster Telesur, along with several prominent right-wing political sites, including the Daily Caller.

The campaign to blacklist The Grayzone was initiated by Wikipedia editors who identify as Venezuelans and openly support the country’s right-wing, US-backed opposition. These users obsessively monitor Venezuela-related articles, aggressively pushing a regime-change line and working to excise any piece of information or opinion that interferes with their agenda.

This online cabal of Venezuelan opposition supporters has been joined by an assortment of neoconservatives who spend countless hours per day, every day of the week, inundating Wikipedia articles with talking points defending Western intervention and demonizing NATO’s Official Enemies.

Together, this tiny handful of editors has successfully banned Wikipedia from citing The Grayzone, falsely claiming that the website publishes unreliable, false, or fabricated information. In fact, in its more than four years of existence, including its first two years hosted at the website AlterNet (whose use is not forbidden on Wikipedia), The Grayzone has never had to issue a major correction or retract a story.

Even more absurdly, the editors behind the campaign to blacklist The Grayzone made it clear in their public discussions that they were motivated to censor The Grayzone’s reporting based on the political perspective of its writers – not on the basis of any falsehoods or distortions that appeared on its website.

The Wikipedia editor who presided over the official “survey” to censor The Grayzone is a hyper-partisan supporter of the Venezuelan opposition. This figure also initiated and moderated the surveys to successfully blacklist TeleSUR and Venezuelanalysis, among the few news sources that challenge the hegemonic anti-Chavista perspective furthered by Western mainstream media.

Wikipedia has imposed numerous “guidelines” against this kind of advocacy editing, which blatantly violates the platform’s founding principle mandating a “neutral point of view.”

But the website, and the Wikimedia Foundation that runs it, has taken no action against the gang of politically motivated editors that targeted The Grayzone. Instead, it has given them free rein to flagrantly sabotage the encyclopedia’s ostensible commitment to neutrality, and shield the public from critical reporting that conflicts with Washington’s agenda.

The cast of editors seeking to censor The Grayzone runs the gamut from Russiagate conspiracy theorists to anarcho-neocons to regime-change lobbyists to elite Venezuelan opposition members – basically anyone threatened by journalism that challenges the Washington consensus. Their ability to dominate Wikipedia is symptomatic of a much larger crisis that has fundamentally corrupted the website and torn its stated principles to shreds.

The internet encyclopedia has become a deeply undemocratic platform, dominated by Western state-backed actors and corporate public relations flacks, easily manipulated by powerful forces. And it is run by figures who often represent these same elite interests, or align with their regime-change politics.

Only around 3,000 editors are very active on English-language Wikipedia

Wikipedia is dominated by state-sponsored propaganda and corporate PR

Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites on Earth, with more traffic than the mega-corporation Amazon. It is far and away the top source of information for people all across the planet. (Wikipedia publishes in several different languages. This article focuses on the English-language version of Wikipedia, which is by far the largest.)

Yet while the website markets itself as an open-source encyclopedia that anyone in the world can edit, the reality is the platform is tightly controlled by a small group of administrators and editors – and heavily dominated by powerful institutions that have the resources to mobilize users to advance their interests.

An academic study found that, from 2001 to 2010, a staggering 80 percent of edits on Wikipedia were made by just 1 percent of users.

In fact, statistics provided by Wikipedia shows that just over 3,000 editors are “very active” on the website, meaning they contribute more than 100 edits per month.

In other words, a tiny handful of editors have disproportionate control of what people across the world read when they research something online.

And retention rates for new editors have plummeted over the years.

A graph showing very low rates of editor retention rates on Wikipedia from 2004 to 2009

So Wikipedia is anything but the democratic and decentralized marketplace of ideas and information it advertises itself as.

Even more troubling is the fact that governments, intelligence agencies, and large corporations maintain significant influence over Wikipedia, editing the encyclopedia to push their agendas, while carefully monitoring articles and policing new edits.

The CIA, FBI, New York Police Department, Vatican, and fossil fuel colossus BP, to name just a few, have all been caught directly editing Wikipedia articles.

But the rot goes much deeper. Powerful interests, from states to companies, hire Wikipedia editors to sanitize entries about themselves. Past clients for these services have included social media giant Facebook itself, along with corporate media juggernauts like NBC and the Koch Brothers oligarchs.

Wikipedia is the most perfectly corrupt neoliberal encyclopedia imaginable. There are countless examples like this, but it’ll be many more years before the culture manages a u-turn. The idea that “we” are in charge of wikipedia is seared into our minds https://t.co/VfrLvvsS6E

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) March 15, 2019

Indeed, there is an entire cottage industry of willing propagandists, public relations flacks, and digital mercenaries who will eagerly manipulate the global population’s easy access to information if you pay them enough.

Similarly, far-right Israeli politician Naftali Bennett has organized training sessions to help new Wikipedia editors spread hasbara propaganda on Wikipedia. The Guardian newspaper noted that Israeli groups planned “a competition to find the ‘Best Zionist editor‘, with a prize of a hot-air balloon trip over Israel.”

Numerous other governments and state-backed institutions have been caught carefully crafting their image on Wikipedia as well.

These astroturfing efforts have been known for a long time. The New York Times published an article on “corporate editing of Wikipedia” back in 2007. And the problem has only gotten worse since.

Wikipedia is essentially a bulletin board for powerful interests. And the group that runs it, the Wikimedia Foundation, has expressed little interest in combating this corruption. In the 2007 Times report, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said that, while they discouraged conflicts of interests, “We don’t make it an absolute rule”; it is just a “guideline.”

These Wikipedia guidelines do technically forbid conflict-of-interest editing, but virtually nothing is done to stop it. And Wikipedia has no substantial mechanisms to monitor and root it out.

In fact Wikipedia also simultaneously tells editors they can simply “ignore all rules,” assuring them there are “no firm rules.” This contradiction shows how the encyclopedia can have its cake and eat it too, claiming to be decentralized, democratic, and opposed to political bias and special interests, while at the same time being utterly overwhelmed by these problems.

Politically motivated editing by small groups

The fact that the vast majority of edits on Wikipedia are performed by a tiny fraction of users makes it easy for small groups with time and resources to push political bias on the website.

Wikipedia has one of the highest search engine presences on all of the internet, so whatever appears on the website is virtually impossible to hide. Wikipedia is typically the top result for a topic, often above even the homepage of a website, in a search engine like Google.

In this way, a few elite editors have a massively outsize influence on the global population, manipulating public opinion to push their political line. And few people even know they exist.

Wikipedia is a scam. It's a propaganda vehicle for intelligence agencies, govts, corporations, and PR flacks

This extremely shady "user" Philip Cross edits all day every day, 7 am to 11 pm, posting nonstop pro-war propaganda — including almost every edit on @MaxBlumenthal's page pic.twitter.com/9ZOof5GxwC

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 12, 2020

There has been some coverage in alternative media, for instance, of the mysterious editor Philip Cross. This lone user spends hours per day, virtually every of the week, obsessively monitoring and editing articles to smear anti-war journalists and politicians.

Since @RaniaKhalek's @Wikipedia
page has been locked, Philip Cross is now turning his attention to @MaxBlumenthal. Now removing references to Mr Blumenthal's book "The Management of Savagery" on the grounds that it is "unreliable" and "much criticized".https://t.co/aw5GPBEM4y pic.twitter.com/UpSSVAOBKT

— leftworks (@leftworks1) January 12, 2020

But the problem is much larger than Philip Cross. A bigger group of pro-intervention editors who support Western regime-change operations spend huge amounts of time on Wikipedia censoring and distorting content to push their political agenda.

These editors not only manipulate and monopolize the globe’s easy access to information; they have even led campaigns to delete the Wikipedia articles of numerous left-wing journalists and media figures.

Popular YouTube host Kyle Kulinski had his page erased following a campaign by the coterie of regime change extremists. This author, Ben Norton, also had his Wikipedia article removed by this cabal.

Neoliberal trolls successfully got my Wikipedia page deleted. That's both hilarious and sad. If you're not part of the club they do everything they can to erase you, quite literally.

— Secular Talk (@KyleKulinski) February 26, 2020

Politicized editing technically violates the second of Wikipedia’s five pillars, which requires editors to uphold a “neutral point of view.”

“All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic,” the principle states.

Wikipedia has similarly adopted a guideline against advocacy: “the use of Wikipedia to promote personal beliefs or agendas at the expense of Wikipedia’s goals and core content policies, including verifiability and neutral point of view.”

Moreover, Wikipedia claims to take issue with what is calls “single-purpose accounts,” or users “whose editing is limited to one very narrow area or set of articles, or whose edits to many articles appear to be for a common purpose.”

But in reality, the guidelines are hollow ideals that are scarcely, if ever, enforced – particularly when leftist and anti-imperialist media figures are under attack. Indeed, Wikipedia is dominated by editors that show a clear bias, and that use edits to push their ideology and political interests.

The platform has no mechanisms to hold these editors accountable and prevent this from happening. These users are responsible for the majority of edits on entire topics, especially controversial political issues. And Wikipedia has no teeth to reinforce the guidelines.

In the very rare cases that an editor is banned, they can simply create a new account; if their IP address is blocked, they can use a new device to edit.

This system makes it easy for a few users to coordinate together to not only write and edit articles to suit their interests, but even to blacklist entire news sources that expose their misdeeds.

The campaign to censor The Grayzone and other independent media outlets is a case study of this problem, and a clear reflection of the rampant bias that contradicts one of the core pillars of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia’s blacklist of independent media outlets

Wikipedia maintains an official list of reliable sources. These are the news outlets that editors are allowed to cite in an article.

Prominent editors and admins, who have special privileges not afforded to average users, debate what sources are considered legitimate on the encyclopedia. There is no independent oversight of this process. And it is for the most part monopolized by a small group, which has repeatedly shown a blatant political bias.

In its list of reliable sources, Wikipedia maintains a hierarchy of classifications to measure how accurate a media outlet is. These designations have a color and a name.

Mainstream corporate media outlets are green, deemed “generally reliable.” The Associated Press (AP), Reuters, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, CNN, BBC, The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, BuzzFeed, and The Intercept all get the green light of approval.

Examples of sources considered “generally reliable” by Wikipedia, highlighted in green

For some sources, there is not an editorial consensus on their reliability, so they fall into the yellow category. Examples of are more Gonzo-style outlets like VICE, tabloids such as Cosmopolitan and the Daily Mirror, some think tanks like the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and a few left-leaning websites like Democracy Now and CounterPunch.

However most independent news websites are considered by Wikipedia to be “generally unreliable,” and are hit with the red light of rejection. AlterNet, The Canary, and Electronic Intifada, for example, are considered “partisan sources,” and Wikipedia editors can only credit them if they attribute their statements to the website in the text of the article.

Sources that Wikipedia considers “generally unreliable” (light red), and those that have no consensus (yellow)

Some right-wing websites, such as The Blaze, the Daily Wire, and Quillette have been hit by this designation as well, along with the libertarian website Zero Hedge.

But the censorship targeting The Grayzone represents an entirely different level of suppression: The Grayzone is part of a small handful of publications that have been totally blacklisted on Wikipedia. It is considered a “deprecated source,” and is listed in dark red. This is the worst possible designation on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is censoring The Grayzone by listing it as “deprecated,” in dark red

This censorship is the product of a politicized pressure campaign by centrist, pro-war editors, who have sought to silence The Grayzone solely because they detest its reporting and editorial line. They have proven wholly unable to provide any concrete examples of inaccuracy or fabrication.

The hyper-partisan editors who led the censorious campaign (named and detailed below in this article) justified the blacklisting by claiming, “There is consensus that The Grayzone publishes false or fabricated information. Some editors describe The Grayzone as Max Blumenthal’s blog, and question the website’s editorial oversight.”

Once again, The Grayzone has never been forced to issue a major correction or retract a false story. The smear is absurd, and there is no evidence provided to back it up.

Joining The Grayzone on the Wikipedia blacklist is MintPress News, an independent left-leaning anti-war news website also based in the United States.

This group of centrist Wikipedia editors also deprecated The Daily Caller, a right-wing website that the editors claimed publishes “false or fabricated information.”

The Daily Caller, which was founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, certainly has published questionable material and editorials that any progressive would find deeply objectionable. Yet Wikipedia strangely places it on the same level as deranged far-right websites like The Epoch Times, a propaganda network run by the Chinese cult Falun Gong; the aggregation blog Gateway Pundit; Breitbart; and the white supremacist website VDARE.

According to Wikipedia, The Grayzone, an investigative journalism website founded by an award-winning journalist, is as unreliable as these other extremist media outlets.

At the same time, Wikipedia has given the interventionist pro-NATO blog Bellingcat a green light as a credible source on par with the AP.

Wikipedia considers regime-change website Bellingcat, which is funded by the US government’s NED, a reliable source

As The Grayzone has previously reported, Bellingcat is funded by the US government’s regime-change arm the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA cutout created by Ronald Reagan, and is host to a crew of regime-change advocates who work with Western government-backed organizations like the Atlantic Council.

Bellingcat’s founder and editor, video game-obsessed college dropout Eliot Higgins, has no professional journalistic experience or specialized knowledge. When the New York Times lightly criticized his lack of expertise, Higgins insisted he was qualified because “of the hours he had spent playing video games, which, he said, gave him the idea that any mystery can be cracked.”

But this centrist gang of Wikipedia editors has designated Bellingcat a reliable source on par with the most prestigious of newspapers, while simultaneously blacklisting and censoring the investigative journalism of The Grayzone, a news website founded and edited by Max Blumenthal, who – unlike Higgins – is an award-winning journalist who has published investigative scoops in many mainstream publications and authored four acclaimed books over the course of the past two decades.

Wikipedia editors have also determined that the now-defunct neoconservative, staunchly pro-war website The Weekly Standard is a “generally reliable” source, on the same level as the AFP.

The Weekly Standard, which was run by Bill Kristol, the godfather of American neoconservatism, printed numerous lies and demonstrably false stories in the lead-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, trying to make the case for the war on behalf of the George W. Bush administration.

Wikipedia considers neoconservative website The Weekly Standard to be a reliable source

Thus Wikipedia considers neoconservative websites that printed conspiratorial lies about non-existent “WMDs” to be reliable sources, while blacklisting The Grayzone apparently because it publishes factual reporting that undermines these regime-change deceptions.

Wikipedia’s standards also show a clear double standard for state-backed media networks. Those that are run by Western governments such as the BBC, or which are friendly to Western government interests like Qatar’s Al Jazeera, receive the green stamp of approval as “generally reliable,” considered on par with Reuters.

Wikipedia gives Qatar state-backed Al Jazeera its green stamp of “generally reliable” approval

But news outlets backed by governments targeted by the US for regime change, such as TeleSUR, RT, HispanTV, and Press TV, are all considered deprecated sources by Wikipedia, and bear the dark red color signifying unreliability.

Wikipedia blacklists TeleSUR as a “deprecated” source

Wikipedia has also demonized the transparency publishing organization WikiLeaks, officially classifying it “generally unreliable,” branding it with the feared red color, and banning use of its documents as sources on articles.

Wikipedia claims that “there are concerns regarding whether the documents are genuine or tampered.” In fact, WikiLeaks has a 100 percent track record for publishing accurate documents. This is not disputed by any reliable source.

Wikipedia does not consider WikiLeaks to be reliable source, despite its track record of 100 percent accuracy

Campaign to blacklist The Grayzone initiated by right-wing Venezuelan opposition supporter

All edits made on Wikipedia are publicly listed. Every article includes an accessible “revision history” page, which shows all materials that were added or removed, at what time, and by what users — although the vast majority of editors are anonymous.

This makes it easy to track down who exactly is pushing a political line on the platform, and how they are abusing the encyclopedia to advance their partisan agenda, blatantly violating Wikipedia’s guidelines mandating a neutral point of view and rejecting advocacy and single-purpose accounts.

An investigation of the editors behind the campaign to blacklist The Grayzone clearly shows that the majority are politically motivated users who exploit Wikipedia to push their sectarian agenda.

In fact, the Wikipedia editor who initiated the official survey to censor The Grayzone is a right-wing Venezuelan opposition supporter who makes no effort to conceal their desire to target outlets with which they politically disagree.

In August 2019, an editor who used the username MaoGo, which was later changed to ReyHahn, initiated a discussion among Wikipedia editors “On the reliability of The Grayzone.”

On their profile, MaoGo/ReyHahn states openly that they are Venezuelan, and the user’s edits make it clear that the editor is strongly supportive of the country’s right-wing opposition and deeply opposed to the leftist Chavista movement and government of President Nicolás Maduro.

A glance at ReyHahn’s edits showed the user obsessively editing Venezuela-related pages on Wikipedia nearly every single day, for hours per day.

Dozens of Venezuela-related edits by Wikipedia user ReyHahn in just two days

Whether or not this user is being compensated for this editing – which given the hours of work required per day amounts to a job, not just a hobby – is not disclosed, because Wikipedia has no mechanism for enforcing action against conflicts of interest. But it is clear that ReyHahn’s campaign against The Grayzone was at the very least motivated by their political support for the Venezuelan opposition.

Even more troubling, when MaoGo/ReyHahn initiated the complaint, the user did not cite a single example of supposedly unreliable information by The Grayzone. Instead the user cited the participation of Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, and Anya Parampil in the Sao Paulo Forum, an annual gathering of Latin American leftists, as well as individual comments Norton made outside of his reporting at The Grayzone.

Joining the Venezuelan opposition supporter in the campaign to blacklist The Grayzone was another user, Rosguill. Past edits of this user’s profile make it clear that they identified as a socialist with an obsessive anti-communist axe to grind. In 2018, Rosguill publicly listed their involvement in WikiProject Socialism and Wikipedia’s Jewish Labour Bund Task Force, the latter referring to an anti-communist group of the early 20th century that opposed the Bolshevik Revolution.

This is yet another example of how editors with a clear political bias are censoring a media outlet because they believe its reporting upsets their sectarian ideology. It is a clear form of behavior that violates Wikipedia’s fundamental principle mandating a neutral point of view.

Rosguill stated outright that The Grayzone is “less than reliable.” Why? As supposed evidence, the politically motivated editor cited The Grayzone’s factual reporting stating that the US government funded the Serbian activist group Otpor. In fact, the New York Times admitted in 2000 that the US Agency for International Development (USAID), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and International Republican Institute all poured millions of dollars into support for Otpor – an undeniable fact that is ironically also noted on Wikipedia’s own article on Otpor.

However, this bad-faith discussion got the ball rolling for an official editors’ debate to censor The Grayzone on Wikipedia.

Regime-change advocates dominate debate to successfully blacklist The Grayzone

In December 2019, another staunch supporter of the right-wing Venezuelan opposition initiated and moderated an official “survey” that led to the blacklisting of The Grayzone.

This Venezuelan opposition advocate had also previously led the successful campaigns to blacklist the news outlets TeleSUR and Venezuelanalysis on Wikipedia.

The user’s post kicked off a fiery debate, with dozens of comments from a Who’s Who of Venezuelan opposition supporters and pro-Western government interventionists. They displayed a transparent political bias and attacked The Grayzone not for its reporting, which is factual, but rather because of the personal views of its journalists.

This survey was closely overseen by the Wikipedia editor ZiaLater, who in the past revealed on their user page that they are Venezuelan. This editor also previously listed the name Zfigueroa, before later deleting it.

ZiaLater is one of the most active editors policing Venezuela-related content on Wikipedia. A look at the user’s contributions shows that ZiaLater clearly, strongly supports Venezuela’s opposition. They edit very frequently, sometimes for hours per day. The vast majority of ZiaLater’s edits are on articles concerning Venezuela, and the editor almost always pushes the line of the country’s right-wing opposition.

On just one day, May 22, 2020, for instance, ZiaLater made more than 30 edits, over a period of many hours. Almost all of the edits were on Venezuela-related topics, including US-backed coup leader Juan Guaidó and the opposition’s botched invasion of the country, Operation Gideon.

Wikipedia edits made by Venezuelan opposition supporter ZiaLater in just one day, on May 22, 2020

ZiaLater’s right-wing bias against the left-wing Chavista movement is so clear that the editor even has a disclaimer on their user page: “Please do not accuse me of being biased! It will just make me provide more sources. I only edit information that I find from sources.”

In fact, not only did this Venezuelan opposition supporter initiate the debate to blacklist The Grayzone, ZiaLater also wrote to other sympathetic Wikipedia editors to encourage them to help with the proceedings.

The result was a firestorm of ad hominem attacks and bad-faith smears from advocates of Western intervention.

The majority of the debate consisted of criticism of editor Max Blumenthal, his personal views and statements, and his past work, not the factual journalism published at The Grayzone.

ZiaLater contributed the most to the discussion. And instead of providing evidence of supposedly “false of fabricated information,” which The Grayzone was ostensibly blacklisted for, ZiaLater stated openly, “The main issue that Grayzone has with its editorial policy is its political ties.”

This Venezuelan opposition supporter argued The Grayzone should be blacklisted on Wikipedia because editor Max Blumenthal has appeared on Russian media outlets like RT and criticized the Western regime-change war on Syria, as well groups like the White Helmets, which have been funded with tens of millions of dollars from the US and several European governments.

ZiaLater also cited the Ukrainian website StopFake, an anti-Russian advocacy group that is financed by the UK government’s Foreign Office and Czech Foreign Ministry.

Relying on StopFake, the editor claimed that “Russia often utilizes Grayzone editors and its founder Max Blumenthal to disseminating Russian propaganda,” falsely and baselessly suggesting a connection between The Grayzone that does not and has never existed.

An editor who opposed the deprecation campaign noted that The Grayzone’s factual reporting has been cited by mainstream media outlets that are considered reliable by Wikipedia. The user pointed to Glenn Greenwald’s article at The Intercept crediting Max Blumenthal’s report debunking false accusations that the Venezuelan government had set the Trump administration’s so-called humanitarian aid convoy on fire during a coup attempt in February 2019. The New York Times, which had originally spread these false claims, later acknowledged that its past reporting had been wrong, and it was the right-wing Venezuelan opposition that was in fact responsible for the fire, confirming what The Grayzone had initially reported. But ZiaLater downplayed the importance of this point and quickly changed the subject.

With such a blatantly biased moderator, it was clear that the survey was initiated in bad faith from the beginning.

Another editor cited op-eds criticizing The Grayzone by unhinged pro-war activists and regime-change lobbyists, some of whom have personally threatened The Grayzone’s reporters. User DreamLinker cited a political opinion piece at the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) website, written by an anti-China activist; another op-ed at the pro-regime change blog Pulse Media; and an opionated screed by anti-Nicaragua activist Dan La Botz at the Cold War-era Trotskyite magazine New Politics.

This Wikipedia editor, DreamLinker, also insisted The Grayzone should be blacklisted because of an op-ed by notorious pro-war activist Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, published at Al Jazeera Opinion. Idrees Ahmad, an academic with negligible journalistic experience who has openly lobbied for and defended Western military interventions, has personally sent The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal threatening phone calls to intimidate him against publishing factual investigative articles about the White Helmets.

These Wikipedia editors did not provide any supposed examples of false information spread by The Grayzone; instead they relied on op-eds by regime-change activists who were politically motivated to blacklist and censor the website for its muckraking reporting.

Who’s Who of pro-interventionist editors join blacklist campaign

The vast majority of the users who chimed in in the official Wikipedia survey and argued in support of blacklisting The Grayzone have shown clear political bias in their editing.

Joining the campaign was Jamez42, another explicit advocate for Venezuela’s right-wing opposition. Jamez42 states clearly on their profile that they are Venezuelan, and, once again, the user edits Wikipedia for hours per day, every day, always pushing the line of US-backed, anti-Chavista politicians.

SandyGeorgia, a user that also constantly edits Venezuela-related articles, always pushing the line of the opposition, jumped in, echoing the smears of the other politically motivated editors.

Similarly, the vociferously pro-Israel Wikipedia editor BobfromBrockley enthusiastically backed the drive to blacklist The Grayzone. BobfromBrockley has been identified as Ben Gidley, a British academic who openly supports NATO and pushes an liberal Zionist ideology, smearing leftist anti-imperialists, including many supporters of former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, as anti-Semites.

Gidley produced a report in 2015 for the UK “Parliamentary Inquiry Into Antisemitism,” in which he portrayed activists protesting Israel’s 2014 massacre in Gaza as Jew haters.

Under the alias BobfromBrockley, Gidley maintains a blog in which he advances an anarcho-neoconservative ideology, obsessively attacking left-wing anti-war journalists and scholars as “Stalinists” while aggressively supporting Western regime-change efforts in China, Russia, Syria, Libya, and beyond. BobfromBrockley even defends US-backed Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó, while echoing right-wing propaganda demonizing elected President Nicolás Maduro.

BobfromBrockley is especially active on Wikipedia. He has made many thousands of edits, and obsessively monitors the website, making multiple changes on an almost daily basis. The vast majority of his edits relate to articles on left-wing outlets, and he spends significant time smearing anti-war journalists like Rania Khalek.

Edits by Wikipedia user BobFromBrockley, who pushes an aggressive sectarian political agenda

In the Wikipedia pile-on, BobfromBrockley claimed there were “several factual errors” on The Grayzone, but he did not cite a single example. Instead, Ben Gidley insisted the website should be blacklisted because “its agenda seems to converge 100% with the agenda of Russian state media,” and because “Most of its contributors are also regulars with Russian state media.”

In fact Gidley himself shared demonstrably false information in his bad-faith attack on The Grayzone. Reporter Anya Parampil was not an RT America presenter when he made this claim in December 2019. She had left the network nearly a year before. The Grayzone is an entirely independent website that does not work with any state media outlet and does not receive funding from any government institutions.

Wikipedia user BobFromBrockley / Ben Gidley smears The Grayzone by trying to link it to Russia

Yet Gidley’s neo-McCarthyite smears are further confirmation that the Wikipedia censorship campaign had little to do with false accusations of inaccuracy in The Grayzone’s reporting, but rather because of the political orientation of the website, which exposes the crimes and lies of Western interventionists.

While these Wikipedia editors claimed to be concerned about “false or fabricated information” – the stated reason for blacklisting The Grayzone – they were actually censoring the website because it told too many inconvenient truths.

Another prominent editor Snooganssnoogans, whose notorious political bias has been the subject of numerous mainstream media reports, also helped to blacklist The Grayzone based on the usual calumnies. Snooganssnoogans is infamous for editing Wikipedia for several hours per day, virtually every single day, always pushing a centrist, neoliberal perspective.

On Snooganssnoogans’ own user page, they make their political bias clear, smearing the popular Jimmy Dore Show as a “far-left conspiracy theory show.”

Another Wikipedia editor operating under the name “Neutrality” contributed to the campaign to blacklist The Grayzone. Neutrality is an administrator on the English Wikipedia, giving them special powers.

And a glance at Neutrality’s edits shows the user is an avid centrist that closely monitors articles related to US politics. They have strongly promoted the Russiagate conspiracy, posting extensive edits to suggest that the Kremlin meddled in the 2016 US election to get President Donald Trump elected, while closely monitoring edits on the articles of RT and skeptical politicians like Tulsi Gabbard. “Neutrality” also has shown a disproportionate fixation on demonizing the Venezuelan and Russian governments, writing large parts of Wikipedia’s article on “democratic backsliding” to demonize Presidents Maduro and Vladimir Putin specifically.

On the admin’s Wikipedia profile, “Neutrality” has two quotes. One is from Thomas Jefferson, but the other is ironically from Wikipedia itself: “If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.”

This contradictory guideline, “ignore all rules,” is indeed an official policy included on the website — further exposing the structural issues with the online encyclopedia, which claims to oppose advocacy editing and conflicts of interest, but reassures editors that they can just ignore those guidelines anyway.

The same politically motivated editors blacklisted TeleSUR and Venezuela Analysis

These are some of the main names in a clique of politically motivated Wikipedia editors who conspire together to censor alternative media outlets that challenge Western interventionism.

But The Grayzone is not the only independent news website that has been censored by this gang of regime-change enthusiasts.

In fact ZiaLater, the Venezuelan opposition-advocating editor who launched the successful censorship efforts against The Grayzone, did the same just a few months earlier against media outlets that operate under a leftist, pro-Chavista editorial line.

On February 1, 2019, ZiaLater initiated the Wikipedia survey to officially blacklist TeleSUR, the pan-Latin American left-wing news network.

Like The Grayzone, TeleSUR was censored following a debate that was full of blatantly right-wing, biased rhetoric focused not on TeleSUR’s factual reporting, but rather on the government of Venezuela, which editors referred to as a “regime” and “dictatorship.”

In fact the survey’s own moderator, ZiaLater, reluctantly admitted their political bias in the comments. “I would also want to apologize if this RfC entry does not seem neutral,” the Venezuelan opposition supporter wrote, using an acronym for the Wikipedia “Requests for comment” process.

Wikipedia editor ZiaLater, a strong supporter of Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, moderating the campaign to blacklist TeleSUR

ZiaLater tried to chalk up their flagrant political bias to mere ignorance of Wikipedia’s guidelines. But it follows in a long pattern of clear prejudice, which always points in the same direction: support for Venezuela’s right-wing opposition.

But by launching the official Wikipedia survey, moderating it, and kicking it off with comments about how TeleSUR is supposedly so untrustworthy, ZiaLater carefully constructed a scheme to blacklist the news network.

The survey was dominated by many of the same politically biased editors that blacklisted The Grayzone, including other staunch supporters of the Venezuelan opposition such as Jamez42 and SandyGeorgia.

Some of these anti-Chavista advocates, such as Jamez42 and ReyHahn, even openly discuss their Venezuela edits on Wikipedia talk pages.

The Russiagate-promoting administrator “Neutrality,” who helped blacklist The Grayzone, also participated in the campaign to censor TeleSUR, as did Rosguill, the sectarian left-wing editor from before.

Then just over a week later, on February 11, ZiaLater launched another survey to blacklist Venezuelanalysis, an independent website run mostly by non-Venezuelans who provide a pro-Chavista perspective on news and political issues.

Wikipedia editor ZiaLater, a right-wing Venezuelan opposition advocate, oversaw the official surveys to blacklist Venezuelanalysis, as well as The Grayzone and TeleSUR

Predictably, the discussion was more of the same, overwhelmed by right-wing Venezuelan opposition advocates who use Wikipedia to push their political line.

Many of the same pro-interventionist editors who blacklisted The Grayzone and TeleSUR joined in the campaign against Venezuelanalysis, including Jamez42, SandyGeorgia, and BobFromBrockley.

Venezuelanalysis was ultimately deemed “generally unreliable for factual reporting.”

The striking similarities of all three of these targeted campaigns illustrate how this blacklisting strategy works. A minuscule but tight-knit group of politically motivated Wikipedia editors censor news outlets that report facts that contradict their ideology, deploying any falsehood they can slip past the website’s guidelines.

These schemes tear to shreds Wikipedia’s stated principles upholding a neutral point of view and opposing advocacy and single-purpose accounts.

Wikipedia is corrupted on a fundamental level. It has been purged of any sense of internal democracy, and a fanatical gang of obsessive, politically motivated editors control its content, effectively monopolizing the entire world’s easy access to information.

Revealingly, Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation that runs it have expressed little interest in trying to solve this fundamental problem. With their silent commission, they have given approval to a global censorship machine that aims to scrub the internet of any reporting or viewpoints that run counter to the prevailing official perspective in Washington.

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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

PBS affiliates across the country today will begin airing a five-minute version of the new documentary SEVEN directed by Loose Change creator Dylan Avery about the explosive findings of the recently completed University of Alaska Fairbanks study on the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7.

The short film, titled Spotlight On: SEVEN, will run for a minimum of three months on up to 200 local PBS stations, reaching at least three million viewers.

For those wanting to watch the short film on television, “Spotlight On” programs do not air at scheduled times because they run as needed in between longer shows. To have a good chance of catching it, you’ll need to be tuned in to PBS often. But rest assured that Spotlight On: SEVENwill be seen by at least three million people, most of whom will never have heard of or seen the collapse of Building 7.

We at Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth are grateful to the hundreds of supporters who donated so that SEVEN could air on PBS.

The impending release of SEVEN on PBS has been attracting media coverage all week, including this report on nationally broadcast Fox News Radio:

Clip from Film: “You didn’t hear anything about World Trade Center 7, not for a long time.”

Reporter: “A film dedicated to the controversy surrounding the collapse of World Trade Center Building #7 will air on PBS starting Thursday. The film is a project of the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Together, they dispute the original findings from the National Institute of Standards of Technology that say it’s the first tall building to fall due to fire.”

Clip from Film: “They [federal investigators] ignored evidence. And it wasn’t because they didn’t know about it.”

Reporter: “Following the release of their own study and joining together with the families of those that lost loved ones, they submitted a request for correction so that a new theory that is physically possible and consistent with the evidence emerges. Michelle Pollino, Fox News.”

The landmark study, led by Professor Leroy Hulsey, and the request for correction, spearheaded by AE911Truth, were also covered favorably recently in Daily Commercial News, one of Canada’s top construction news publications.

The feature-length version of SEVEN is being targeted for release in September to coincide with this year’s 9/11 anniversary. Stay tuned for updates!

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University Study Finds Fire Did Not Cause Building 7’s Collapse on 9/11

On March 25, 2020, researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks issued the final report of a four-year computer modeling study on the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7.

The 47-story WTC 7 was the third skyscraper to be completely destroyed on September 11, 2001, collapsing rapidly and symmetrically into its footprint at 5:20 PM. Seven years later, investigators at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) concluded that WTC 7 was the first steel-framed high-rise ever to have collapsed solely as a result of normal office fires.

Contrary to the conclusions of NIST, the UAF research team finds that the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11 was caused not by fires but by the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.

Following the release of this report, AE911Truth and 10 family members of 9/11 victims submitted a formal request for correction to NIST’s report on WTC 7 based partially on the UAF findings. The request is currently pending.

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Along with 102 of my fellow public international law scholars, I have signed the following open letter condemning Israel’s plan to illegally annex large swathes of the West Bank. If you are interested in joining the list, please send an email with your name and affiliation to [email protected] before July 1. I will update this post with new names every few days. (And please note: I did not write the letter.)

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June 10, 2020

MK Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister

MK Benny Gantz, Alternate Prime Minister and Minister of Defense

MK Gabi Ashkenazi, Minister of Foreign Relations

MK Avi Nissenkorn, Minister of Justice

Dr. Avichai Mandelblit, Attorney General

State of Israel

Dear Sirs,

We, the undersigned, scholars of public international law, are writing to express our grave concern regarding the intention of the State of Israel, as expressed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to move towards the unilateral annexation of areas in the West Bank on or after 1 July 2020.

Such an action would constitute a flagrant violation of bedrock rules of international law, and would also pose a serious threat to international stability in a volatile region.

The norm prohibiting unilateral annexation of territory acquired by force has come to be universally recognized as a basic rule of international law. All international courts (including the International Court of Justice) and all international institutions (including the UN General Assembly and Security Council) who have considered this matter, as well as the overwhelming majority of international jurists, affirm this rule unequivocally. This prohibition applies equally to territories belonging to other states, as well as to non-self-governing territories in which peoples are entitled to determine their political fate in accordance with the right to self-determination. Furthermore, this prohibition applies to all territories occupied by force, even if it is claimed that force was initially used in an act of self-defense.

The West Bank was taken by force in 1967. It has been consistently recognized by the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council, and the International Court of Justice as an occupied territory, in which the Palestinian people is entitled to fulfill its right to self-determination. This remains so even if bilateral negotiations could determine the details of security arrangements and final borders. Furthermore, the Israeli government as well as the Israeli Supreme Court have for decades applied the law of belligerent occupation to the West Bank. This is demonstrated in dozens of decisions by the Supreme Court of Israel, as well as in Israel’s positions before international treaty bodies, where it argues that the West Bank is not under Israeli jurisdiction for the purpose of application of human rights treaties.

It follows that unilateral annexation of any part of this territory would violate the fundamental norm prohibiting annexation as well as the right to self-determination. As such, it would be null and void, entail consequences of international wrongfulness, and – under certain circumstances –  lead to individual international criminal liability. In this context, it matters not whether such actions would be effected through “extension of sovereignty,” “extension of law, jurisdiction, and administration,” or explicit annexation. De facto annexation entails the same legal consequences as de jure annexation. Additionally, in no case can such an act lawfully bring about or justify discriminatory results, inter alia in relation to citizenship or property rights.

We would like to remind you that in a recent memo by Israel’s Attorney General, it was argued explicitly that all territorial aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be resolved through bilateral negotiations.[1] Moves to annex parts of the territory would run counter to this pledge. Furthermore, in accordance with its longstanding position that the West Bank is held under belligerent occupation, Israel consistently argued that its actions in the territory are justified by the temporary nature of the situation, and motivated by security concerns alone.[2] Any move to annex territories will put in question past and future arguments by Israel that its actions are indeed concerned only with legitimate security needs.

We therefore urge you to reconsider this path, which is clearly unlawful and will most likely have adverse consequences, including non-recognition and other consequences of an internationally wrongful act. This is in addition to the harm to the legitimacy and foreign relations of the State of Israel, and to a high likelihood of violent escalation.

[1] State of Israel, Office of the Attorney General, The International Criminal Court’s Lack of Jurisdiction over the So-Called “Situation in Palestine” §49 (Dec. 20, 2019).

[2] For instance, concerning the legality of the West Bank Wall/Security Barrier, Israel claimed –indirectly before the International Court of Justice and directly in its own Supreme Court – that the route of the Wall is strictly based on security considerations, and is not designed to determine borders. Indeed, as ruled by the Israeli Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, “the military commander is not authorized to order the construction of a separation fence, if the reason behind the fence is a political goal of ‘annexing’ territories of the area to the State of Israel and to determine Israel’s political border.” See HCJ 7957/04 Mara’abe v. The Prime Minister of Israel §15 (2005).

Signatories (affiliations are for identification purposes):

Mads Andenas, Professor, Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo

Kyo Arai, Professor of International Law, Doshisha University, Kyoto

Yutaka Arai, Professor in International Human Rights Law, Brussels School of International Studies, University of Kent, Brussels

Cecilia M. Bailliet, Professor of International Law, University of Oslo, Norway

Orna Ben-Naftali, Emile Zola Chair for Human Rights, Shtricks Scool of Law, The College of Management

Daniel Benoliel, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa

Eyal Benvenisti, Whewell Professor of International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge

Nathaniel A. Berman, Rahel Varnhagen Professor, Brown University

Nehal Bhuta, Professor of Public International Law, University of Edinburgh

Eirik Bjorge, Professor of Law, University of Bristol Law School

Ziv Bohrer, Senior Lecturer, Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law

Bill Bowring, Professor of Law, School of Law, Birkbeck University of London

Tomer Broude, Bessie & Michael Greenblatt, Q.C., Chair in Public and International Law, Faculty of Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Jutta Brunnée, University Professor, Metcalf Chair in Environmental Law, University of Toronto Faculty of Law

Gráinne de Búrca, Florence Ellinwood Allen Professor of Law, NYU School of Law

Sarah H. Cleveland, Louis Henkin Professor of Human and Constitutional Rights, Columbia Law School

Geoff S. Corn, Vinson & Elkins Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law Houston

Harlan G. Cohen, Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law, University of Georgia

Olivier Corten, Professor of International Law, Université libre de Bruxelles

Matthew Craven, Professor of International Law, SOAS, University of London

Omar M. Dajani, Professor of Law, McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific

Tom Dannenbaum, Assistant Professor of International Law, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University

Natalie Davidson, Lecturer, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University

Janina Dill, Associate Professor, University of Oxford Department of Politics and International Relations

Catriona Drew, Lecturer in International Law, School of Law, SOAS University of London

Dieter Fleck, Honorary President, International Society for Military Law and the Law of War

Gregory Fox, Professor of Law, Wayne State University Law School

Tarcisio Gazzini, Professor of International Law, University of East Anglia

Robin Geiss, Chair of International Law and Security, University of Glasgow; Swiss Chair of International Humanitarian Law, The Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights

Rotem Giladi, Teaching Fellow in International Law, University of Edinburgh Law School

Christine D. Gray, Emerita Professor of International Law, University of Cambridge Faculty of Law

James A. Green, Professor of Public International Law, University of Reading

Aeyal Gross, Professor of Law, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University

Francoise Hampson, Emerita Professor of Law, University of Essex

Matthew Happold, Professor of Public International Law, Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance, University of Luxembourg

Guy Harpaz, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law and Department of International Relations, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Adil Haque, Professor of Law and Judge Jon O. Newman Scholar, Rutgers Law School

Kevin Jon Heller, Associate Professor of International Law, University of Amsterdam, Professor of Law, Australian National University

Christian Henderson, Professor of International Law, University of Sussex

Larissa van den Herik, Professor of Public International Law, Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University

Moshe Hirsch, Maria Von Hofmannsthal Chair in International Law, Faculty of Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Tamar Hostovsky Brandes, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Ono Academic College

Robert Howse, Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law, NYU School of Law

Ardi Imseis, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen’s University

Ioannis Kalpouzos, Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School; Lecturer in Law, City University of London

Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar, Associate Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa.

Jan Klabbers, Professor, University of Helsinki Faculty of Law

Jann K. Kleffner, Professor of International Law, Swedish Defence University

Robert Kolb, Professor of Public International Law, Law Faculty, University of Geneva

Martti Koskenniemi, Professor of International Law, University of Helsinki Faculty of Law

Shiri Krebs, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Deakin University

David Kretzmer, Professor Emeritus of International Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Nico Krisch, Professor of International Law, Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies, Geneva

Nicolas Levrat, Professor of European and International Law, Global studies Institute, University of Geneva

Eliav Lieblich, Senior Lecturer, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University

Karin Loevy, JSD Program Manager and IILJ Research Scholar, NYU Law School of Law

Marco Longobardo, Lecturer in International Law, University of Westminster

David Luban, University Professor and Professor of Law and Philosophy, Georgetown University Law Center

Noam Lubell, Professor of International Law, School of Law, University of Essex

Doreen Lustig, Senior Lecturer, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University

Itamar Mann, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Haifa University

Susan Marks, Professor of International Law, London School of Economics

Tamar Megiddo, Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa

Marko Milanovic, Professor of Public International Law, University of Nottingham School of Law

Makane Moïse Mbengue, Professor of International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Geneva

Kirsten McConnachie, Associate Professor in Law, University of East Anglia

Samuel Moyn, Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence and Professor of History, Yale University

Stefan Oeter, Professor of Public International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Hamburg

Phoebe Okowa, Professor of Public International Law, Queen Mary, University of London

Anne Orford, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, Michael D Kirby Chair of International Law, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

Dianne Otto, Francine V. McNiff Chair in Human Rights Law, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

Paolo Palchetti, Professor of International Law, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Anne Peters, Managing Director, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg

Frances Raday, Elias Lieberman Chair in Labour Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Faculty of Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Director of Concord Research Institute for Integration of International Law in Israel, Shtricks School of Law, The College of Management

Surabhi Ranganathan, University Senior Lecturer, University of Cambridge Faculty of Law

Steven R. Ratner, Bruno Simma Collegiate Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School

Yaël Ronen, Professor of Law at the Academic Center for Science and Law at Hod Hasharon; Minerva Center for Human Rights, Hebrew University in Jerusalem

Brad R. Roth, Professor of Political Science and Law, Wayne State University

Tom Ruys, Professor of International Law, Ghent University

Michal Saliternik, Lecturer, Netanya Academic College School of Law

Marco Sassòli, Professor of International Law, University of Geneva

Ben Saul, Challis Chair of International Law, University of Sydney

Michael N. Schmitt, Professor of International Law, University of Reading

Andrew I. Schoenholtz, Professor from Practice and Director, Human Rights Institute and Center for Applied Legal Studies, Georgetown University Law Center

Yuval Shany, Hersch Lauterpacht Chair in Public International Law, Faculty of Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Scott J. Shapiro, Southmayd Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, Yale University

Sivan Shlomo-Agon, Lecturer, Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law

Stefan Talmon, Professor of Public Law, Public International Law and European Union Law, University of Bonn

Christian J. Tams, Professor of International Law, University of Glasgow

Attila M. Tanzi, Chair of International Law, School of Law, University of Bologna

Ruti Teitel, Ernst C.Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law, New York Law School

Dire Tladi, Professor of International Law, University of Pretoria

Antonios Tzanakopoulos, Associate Professor of Public International Law, University of Oxford Faculty of Law

Maria Varaki, Lecturer in International Law, War Studies Department, King’s College London

Carlos M. Vázquez, Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

Yael Vias Gvirsman, Lecturer in International Law; Director, International Criminal and Humanitarian Law Clinic, Harry Radzyner Law School, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya

Michael Waibel, Professor, Department of European, International and Comparative Law, University of Vienna

Ralph Wilde, Associate Professor, Faculty of Laws, University College London

Siobhán Wills, Professor of Law, Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University

Ariel Zemach, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Ono Academic College

Andreas Zimmermann, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Potsdam

Gentian Zyberi, Professor of International Law and Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo

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Kevin Jon Heller is Associate Professor of Public International Law at the University of Amsterdam and Professor of Law at the Australian National University.

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Last night, two rockets struck the Green Zone in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The heavily fortified area houses some of the main Iraqi government offices and the US embassy. There were no immediate reports about casualties. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Earlier, Saraya Thorat Al-Ashrin Al-Thani, one of Iraq’s many anti-US groups, which have surfaced since the start of the year, released two videos claiming that these show attacks on convoys carried out using US equipment. According to the group, the attacks took place on May 20 and June 6. The impact of the attacks remains unclear.

Military bases housing US troops across Iraq and the U.S. embassy have frequently been targeted by mortar and rocket attacks over the post months. According to US officials, most of these have been carried out by Iranian-backed forces.

Iraqi-U.S. relations have been witnessing tensions since January 3 when a US drone struck a convoy at Baghdad airport, killing Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces. This attack escalated tensions in the region and led to a large-scale Iranian missile attack on US military bases in Iraq. The Iraqi Parliament also demanded that the US withdraw its troops from the country. Washington rejected the demand and threatened Iraq with sanctions if it is forced to withdraw its forces.

On June 11, US and Iraqi officials will be holding another meeting to discuss the current state of  Iraqi-US relations and the issue of US troop withdrawal from the country. However, it remains highly unlikely that Washington will back down from its de-facto occupation of the country.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces continue their anti-ISIS raids in eastern Homs and southern Raqqah in central Syria. According to pro-government sources, over 10 ISIS members have been neutralized in the framework of these efforts since the start of the month.

On June 10, a unit of the Syrian Army and pro-government locals blocked a US military convoy and forced it to retreat near the village of Dardara in the province of Hasakah. Separately, a US military patrol was blocked by the Russian Military Police near Qamishli. At least one US vehicle broke down when it went off road to bypass the Russians.

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Malcolm X made some comments on December 1 1963, less than two weeks after the murder of JFK. It was instantly misrepresented by the mainstream media (as they always seem to do, when dealing with any sort of perceived radical thinking) and he was terribly vilified. In a subsequent one on one interview, Malcolm  explained his statement this way:

MALCOLM X: Yes, but let’s clear up what I said, I did not say that Kennedy’s death was a reason for rejoicing. That is not what I meant at all. Rather I meant that the death of Kennedy was the result of a long line of violent acts, the culmination of hate and suspicion and doubt in this country. You see, Lomax, this country has allowed white people to kill and brutalize those they don’t like. The assassination of Kennedy is a result of that way of life and thinking. The chickens came home to roost; that’s all there is to it. America-at the death of the President-just reaped what it had been sowing.

Midyear 2020 and our nation is deep within the confines of times perhaps even more turbulent than 1963. We are in the midst of a worldwide pandemic that dwarfs that of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic. Added into that mix of 1930s like economic depression, we see the nationwide, even worldwide backlash at the use of police brutality upon unarmed and highly vulnerable black citizens… on our streets. One could easily translate all this into a sole rebellion against Killer Cops. Yet, it is much more than that… IF the general working stiff majority of us will remember Malcolm X’s intent in his JFK statements. When Malcolm spoke of this empire’s intent for white people to ‘Kill and brutalize those they don’t like’ he was creating a teachable moment that few at that time dared to grasp. George Floyd was just the proverbial ‘Icing on the cake’ for what so many who are supposed to ‘ Serve and Protect’ have done in the name of Policing the Empire. How many gooks and rag heads did we murder and brutalize in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya all to serve this empire’s handlers?

Does anyone out there care for the fact that less than 1/4 of 1% of us earn mega millions (many in the category of hundreds of millions, even billions) of dollars a year while so many cannot even afford to pay for their shelter?

Even when this economy is supposedly doing so well, millions of us working stiffs and unemployed working stiffs are a few hundred bucks away from the street. This is just part of the plan to keep most of us as drones to work and die for the Queen Bees of empire. All the police have always traditionally represented is protecting the property and assets of the rich and not the general public. Watch films like Martin Ritt’s 1970 The Molly Maguires to see the epitome of who owned the police and how they were used to operate as occupiers of coal mining towns. For, when you peel away that onion you can understand how most working stiffs are but serfs or indentured servants.

When millions of good, decent folks from all colors and creeds march against police brutality, if only they would see that cutting off the stem of the weed does not stop the root from continuing its mission. When will many of those cops, throughout Amerika, finally realize that they are also working stiffs like those protestors, and have much more in common with them than they have with the super rich who rely on their servitude? Malcolm X understood what real Karma is, as those chickens came home to roost.

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Countercurrents.org, and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].

If one ventures into the vast wasteland of American television it is possible to miss the truly ridiculous content that is promoted as news by the major networks. One particular feature of media-speak in the United States is the tendency of the professional reporting punditry to go seeking for someone to blame every time some development rattles the National Security plus Wall Street bubble that we all unfortunately live in. The talking heads have to such an extent sold the conclusion that China deliberately released a lethal virus to destroy western democracies that no one objects when Beijing is elevated from being a commercial competitor and political adversary to an enemy of the United States. One sometimes even sees that it is all a communist plot. Likewise, the riots taking place all across the U.S. are being milked for what it’s worth by the predominantly liberal media, both to influence this year’s election and to demonstrate how much the news oligarchs really love black people.

As is often the case, there are a number of inconsistencies in the narrative. If one looks at the numerous photos of the protests in many parts of the country, it is clear that most of the demonstrators are white, not black, which might suggest that even if there are significant pockets of racism in the United States there is also a strong condemnation of that fact by many white people. And this in a country that elected a black man president not once, but twice, and that black president had a cabinet that included a large number of African-Americans.

Also, to further obfuscate any understanding of what might be taking place, the media and chattering class is obsessed with finding white supremacists as instigators of at least some of the actual violence. It would be a convenient explanation for the Social Justice Warriors that proliferate in the media, though it is supported currently by little actual evidence that anyone is exploiting right-wing groups.

Simultaneously, some on the right, to include the president, are blaming legitimately dubbed domestic terrorist group Antifa, which is perhaps more plausible, though again evidence of organized instigation appears to be on the thin side. Still another source of the mayhem apparently consists of some folks getting all excited by the turmoil and breaking windows and tossing Molotov cocktails, as did two upper middle class attorneys in Brooklyn last week.

Nevertheless, the search goes on for a guilty party. Explaining the demonstrations and riots as the result of the horrible killing of a black man by police which has revulsed both black and white Americans would be too simple to satisfy the convoluted yearnings of the likes of Wolf Blitzer and Rachel Maddow.

Which brings us to Russia. How convenient is it to fall back on Russia which, together with the Chinese, is reputedly already reported to be working hard to subvert the November U.S. election. And what better way to do just that than to call on one of the empty-heads of the Barack Obama administration, whose foreign policy achievements included the destruction of a prosperous Libya and the killing of four American diplomats in Benghazi, the initiation of kinetic hostilities with Syria, the failure to achieve a reset with Russia and the assassinations of American citizens overseas without any due process. But Obama sure did talk nice and seem pleasant unlike the current occupant of the White House.

The predictable Wolf Blitzer had a recent interview with perhaps the emptiest head of all the empowered women who virtually ran the Obama White House. Susan Rice was U.N. Ambassador and later National Security Advisor under Barack Obama. Before that she was a Clinton appointee who served as Undersecretary of State for African Affairs. She is reportedly is currently being considered as a possible running mate for Joe Biden as she has all the necessary qualifications being a woman and black.

While Ambassador and National Security Advisor, Rice had the reputation of being extremely abrasive. She ran into trouble when she failed to be convincing in support of the Obama administration exculpatory narrative regarding what went wrong in Benghazi when the four Americans, to include the U.S. Ambassador, were killed.

In her interview with Blitzer, Rice said:

“We have peaceful protesters focused on the very real pain and disparities that we’re all wrestling with that have to be addressed, and then we have extremists who’ve come to try to hijack those protests and turn them into something very different. And they’re probably also, I would bet based on my experience, I’m not reading the intelligence these days, but based on my experience this is right out of the Russian playbook as well. I would not be surprised to learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form.”

It should be noted that Rice, a devout Democrat apparatchik, produced no evidence whatsoever that the Russians were or have been involved in “fomenting” the reactions to the George Floyd demonstrations and riots beyond the fact that Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden all believe that Moscow is responsible for everything. Clinton in particular hopes that some day someone will actually believe her when she claims that she lost to Trump in 2016 due to Russia. Even Robert Mueller, he of the Russiagate Inquiry, could not come up with any real evidence suggesting that the relatively low intensity meddling in the election by the Kremlin had any real impact. Nor was there any suggestion that Moscow was actually colluding with the Trump campaign, nor with its appointees, to include National Security Advisor designate Michael Flynn.

Fortunately, no one took much notice of Rice based on her “experience,” or her judgement insofar as she possesses that quality. Glenn Greenwald responded “This is fuxxing lunacy — conspiratorial madness of the worst kind — but it’s delivered by a Serious Obama Official and a Respected Mainstream Newscaster so it’s all fine… This is Infowars-level junk. Should Twitter put a ‘False’ label on this? Or maybe a hammer and sickle emoji?”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova accurately described the Rice performance as a “perfect example of barefaced propaganda.” She wrote on her Facebook page “Are you trying to play the Russia card again? You’ve been playing too long – come back to reality” instead of using “dirty methods of information manipulation” despite “having absolutely no facts to prove [the] allegations… go out and face your people, look them in the eye and try telling them that they are being controlled by the Russians through YouTube and Facebook. And I will sit back and watch ‘American exceptionalism’ in action.”

It should be assumed that the Republicans will be coming up with their own candidate for “fomenting” the riots and demonstrations. It already includes Antifa, of course, but is likely to somehow also involve the Chinese, who will undoubtedly be seen as destroying American democracy through the double whammy of a plague and race riots. Speaking at the White House, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien warned about foreign incitement, including not only the Chinese, but also Iran and even Zimbabwe. And, oh yes, Russia. One thing is for sure, no matter who is ultimately held accountable, no one in the Congress or White House will be taking the blame for anything.

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org,address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Flickr

United States Special Envoy to Syria, James Jeffrey, announced on Sunday that Washington had offered Syria a proposal to end the US sanctions. The Foreign and Expatriates Ministry in Damascus said that the statements by James Jeffrey constitute a clear admission by the Trump administration of it being directly responsible for the suffering of Syrians. The Syrians see the increasing sanctions as economic-warfare after the US failure to bring about ‘regime change’, by using terrorists supported by the CIA. Damascus declares the sanctions violate human rights and international law as they affect the Syrian population.

President Trump inherited the Syrian war from its creator, former President Obama.  In 2016, Trump campaigned with a promise to stop US support of the war in Syria; however, he has since invaded and occupied several areas in Syria and has declared he is there to keep the oil from being used by Syria.  Russia entered Syria in 2015 at the request of Damascus to assist in the fight against Al Qaeda and ISIS terrorists.

The newest sanctions have a 5-year life-span, and can be dismissed if seven criteria are met; however, the first two points are designed specifically to prevent fighting the Al Qaeda terrorists who control Idlib and are holding about 3 million persons as human shields.  Both Syria and Russia, its ally in Syria, have said defeating terrorism are strategic goals.

American sanctions on Syria have piled up in layers since 1979, and increased during the 2011-2020 period, culminating in the newest sanctions this month. Some representatives of the UN and Western NGOs have denounced sanctions as ineffective and inhumane.

A Damascus businessman said,

“Sanctions will help prevent Syria from achieving any form of recovery,” while adding, “Wealthy ex-pats won’t come back as long as sanctions are there.”

Friar Firas Lutfi, of the Franciscan order with the Custody of the Holy Land, gave a video interview to ‘Rome Reports’, in which he gave his first-hand testimony about Syria before, during and after the war.  He recalled his former life in Aleppo and explained the plight of persecuted Christians, who had enjoyed full freedom of religion in Syria until the Al Qaeda terrorists arrived at the behest of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed attack which began in 2011.

The terrorists have been defeated, except for Idlib; however, a new form of terror arrived in the form of the COVID-19 virus.  Although the number of cases is low in Syria, the effect of the lockdown has led to poverty, as income was halted.

Friar Lutfi phoned a friend in Syria, and the friend said,

“I prefer to die of coronavirus and not by hunger. I cannot afford to see my children dying in front of my eyes, without being able to do anything.”

The price of staple food items in Syria increased 111 percent in a year. The cost of food, medicine, and other basics are skyrocketing in Syrian markets as the Syrian Lira collapses in value. The value of the Syrian Lira on the informal market has plunged from about 940 to the US dollar in January to a rate of about 4,000 recently.  From 1992 to 2011 the rate was steady at 50 Syrian Lira to 1 US dollar.  The years of war and US sanctions have devalued the Syrian currency, and have plunged the middle-class Syrians into poverty.

Recently, some shops and pharmacies are keeping their doors shut because the value of the currency is dropping too fast.  Price rises of essentials including cooking gas and bread are causing suffering.  Even in areas which were not under attack by terrorists, and have passed the war in relative calm, are feeling the effects of the sanctions, which have translated into economic-warfare.

The UN World Food Program reported a survey in April that about a third of the population was not getting enough to eat, while 87 percent had run out of savings after 9 years of war.

The Al Qaeda controlled area in Idlib uses the US dollar and the Turkish Lira and has been spared the currency crisis.  The same can be said of parts of the Northeast under Kurdish control, which is allied with the US.  They also use US dollars to a large extent, and both of the areas are outside of Damascus control, and thus receive substantial aid from both the UN and international charities, which do not provide food and aid in the rest of Syria.  The US and EU have not provided any food or aid to any location in Syria which is under Syrian control.

The US sanctions have been unsuccessful in their goal of ‘regime change’ in Damascus, but have been hugely successful in making the Syrian people suffer, even though they have survived 9 years of terrorist attacks, occupations, deaths, injuries, and destruction they continue to suffer from economic-warfare.

A school teacher in Latakia, said,

“We thought if we resisted the terrorists, and defeated them, we would rebuild the lost homes, schools, hospitals and farms and start a new post-war-life.  Now, the war is over, and we can’t rebuild anything and our life is even worse now that we are in peace-time.  Where is our victory over terrorism?  Why is America punishing us for defeating the terrorists?”

The latest US sanctions are designed to prevent any reconstruction of infrastructure damaged in the war, which includes homes, shops, businesses, factories, and infrastructures such as schools and hospitals.

US sanctions have exemptions for ‘humanitarian aid’, which include food, supplies, and bank transfers for humanitarian purposes.  However, those exemptions are in theory only and have never been applied, as the paperwork and time to secure a waiver from the US government makes the exemption useless.

The Trump administration, US Congress, and many Syrian-American groups have praised the new extreme sanctions against Syria.  While the people living today in Syria suffer under the sanctions, those Syrians living inside the US and Europe are prospering and unaffected by the sanctions.

Azhdar Kurtov, of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, explained in an interview with RT,

“Syria has become an unpleasant ‘splinter’ in American politics in the Middle East. Moreover, this is not only a local defeat; it is evidence of the collapse of, above all, the global ambitions of the United States. “

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist.

Featured image is from MD