Imagine living through 1945. As World War II ended 75 years ago, the UN was born and two nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan. To commemorate and reflect on these pivotal events, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) has created a timeline. Ever since 1945 people, their governments and civilization itself have been faced with a momentous dilemma: how to choose law and cooperation over power and domination. Check out the WILPF timeline, follow the history of that momentous year, and start local discussions of the events that changed our world. For example, release of The Franck Reporton June 11, 1945…
You might not recognize the name, since the report was kept secret at the time, one of many WWII documents whose un-censored versions only became public decades later. Signed by several prominent nuclear physicists who worked on development of an atomic bomb, the Franck Report recommended that the US not use the atomic bomb as a weapon to prompt the surrender of Japan. Here are some thoughts on a related topic:Can the UN be reformed? World Order and Cultivating Community
The liberal international order is currently being challenged by populism in nations that built and long supported it. It is also being tested by rising powers, particularly China, and other states that hope to restore their prominence. Some go so far as to say the old order is fractured at the core, which makes a major conflict more likely. At the same time, the world faces a growing number of global challenges that cannot be managed effectively by national governments alone.
The United Nations is still considered by many people as the key feature of this fragile World Order, and is certainly treated as one of its major institutions. When nations don’t abide by its resolutions, they are often accused of violating international norms or even law. In short, the UN is assumed to be a global democratic government. But this is at best aspirational, and, in some serious respects, misleading.
The UN Security Council certainly isn’t democratic or liberal. Veto power is held by the winners of World War II; large parts of the world have no say. A handful of nations can impose sanctions, with immunity from counterclaims. And even if all other nations acted together, they could not impose sanctions on the Big Five.
So isn’t calling the UN General Assembly “the most democratic and representative body” a bit misleading? Beyond the power imbalance already described, India (1.3 billion people) and Luxembourg (613,000) each have one vote! And although the General Assembly passes all manner of resolutions, its members know there is no credible way to enforce them. Is it democratic when most of the votes are cast by representatives of authoritarian regimes, with leaders who couldn’t care less what their people feel? Is it accurate to call the UN liberal when representatives of brazen human rights violators have for years led its human rights bodies?
Given all of this, do nationalists have a valid point when they charge that the UN violates national sovereignty? Shouldn’t it at least be more representative? And how about all the international governance carried out by other international organizations, and through informal bodies like the G7, G8, and G20? Their decisions aren’t binding on those who dissent, but at least they try to operate by consensus, Is this a more viable way to go?
The world obviously needs stronger, more effective forms of global governance. But it doesn’t look ready at the moment to be governed like a liberal democracy. Instead, premature attempts to overcome nationalism have fed populism.
One of the problems may be insufficient community building. People have a basic need for recognition and respect, and these are linked to a sense of identity and community. Since the 1980s the US has tilted too far toward individualism and lost a sense of communal values. If that is part of the problem, does it also point toward a solution?
At the same time we have lost a sense of shared values we have experienced rising alienation, resurgent populism, institutional breakdown, and Donald Trump. It is not a coincidence. But perhaps we can cultivate a greater shared sense of community, even in supranational forums, and eventually extend it to their governing bodies. The trick is how to do it without creating more alienation and pushback.
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It is imperative to realize that what is happening in Minneapolis and other cities throughout the U.S. is not only a revolt against the police brutality but also an indication of the potential uprising against an unbearable political and economical situation that the working people in the U.S. have been enduring for decades which has been intensified by the coronavirus crisis.
The fascistic minded President Trump (who has been inciting violence against his opponent throughout his presidency) did not waste time directing the “Officers of Law” with a simple tweet that
“These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd … when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”
So Mr. Trump is “thanking” law enforcement shooters in advance. He also threatens the protestors outside of the White House “with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons”. This ferocious perspective is the source of VIOLENCE in the U.S. today; which is proudly echoed by a fascistic minded President from the White House. Unleashing the “vicious dogs” against protestors; kneeling on the neck of already handcuffed people (the favorite practice of the Israeli police and military) is nothing new in the U.S. However, it is the first time in the history of this country that this type of savagery is encouraged outright by an American President.
Those so-called “Black leaders and preachers” who suggest that it is time to “come together in peace” and start a “dialogue” are nothing but opportunists who have lost their magic wands. The pitiful politicians like St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms are hiding behind the “teachings” of Jesus or Dr. King to only serve and protect the interest of the wealthy elite in their cities against the poor working people. They have become the new favorite Democrat stooges among many other Black Trump lovers at Fox News!
Photo by the author
The spontaneous demonstrations have shown that the Democratic Party has no control over these protests. The sad and boring message by Vice-President Biden in regard to the killing of George Floyd was another pathetic and failed attempt to win the Black community’s trust and vote for the coming Presidential Election. People still remember that Eric Garner was choked to death in 2004 by police when Mr. Biden was the Vice President of the first and only Black President in the White House. So in regard to the killing of George Floyd; Mr. Obama’s “we can and must be better” statement on May 29, 2020 at best is hypocritical.
Now that people in huge numbers are demonstrating their outrage in many forms and in many words, the clueless pundits (mostly in the comfort of their homes) have become the preachers for peace!
The corporate media suddenly forgot their constant gleeful reports from Hong Kong which showed the young demonstrators who threw bricks and petrol bombs at the police. They justified those actions in support of the pro-democracy movement against China! Now, that the same scenario is happening on streets of America, the Democratic Party politicians along with Trump’s loyal servants no longer think that the Hong Kong model is appropriate for showing outrage!
In any case, more than anything else, the corporate media is reflecting the fear of the American ruling elite of the genuine outrage of the poor working people in the U.S. which is growing like a wildfire.
The true peace and justice activists, the revolutionary socialists don’t see themselves as sideline critics but conscious participants. They suggest and advocate objective historical working people solutions and not the subjective “good versus evil” divine verses. They understand the main source of violence is the wealthy ruling class who has burned entire cities and people in Japan and Iraq. The true activists have no illusion that any revolt will sooner or later come to its conclusion. Therefore, the true activists advocate for the unity of the community organizations to rally around specific demands. Those diverse and vital demands must come from the heart of the community and independent of the influence of billionaires’ founded organizations and the Democratic Party.
The 1% is organized and equipped with the most brutal and destructive forces. They easily can sacrifice many of their servants like the killer Officer Derek Chauvin if they feel it would pacify the demonstrators. The true activists know that police brutality will not end with sentencing one or two killer police. More importantly, all true activists know wholeheartedly that a Death Penalty option which has been suggested by some will legitimize the death penalty against poor innocent victims of all races. The outstanding work of the great people of the Innocent Project shows that the victims of the U.S. unjust system who have been exonerated are the poor minorities.
Social science like any other field of science is the progress of a proven phenomenon in deed. Therefore, in different societies, the wealthy elite in power will try their own way to deal with their internal and “foreign” challenges. In the U.S., the “most powerful man in the world” actually is a simple bankrupt fascist armed with the most destructive arsenal in the world. So for a weak and frustrated leader like President Trump who is facing intense internal and international challenges, the best way out of this critical political and economical situation is igniting a war. Historically, WAR has been the best solution for the powerful but frustrated ruling classes. That is why President Trump and Mr. Pompeo continuously are propagating anti-China bizarre statements as the main enemy of the American people to prepare public opinion for outright war against that country.
Today (May 31st) is the 6th day that the American people have shown their outrage in different ways since Memorial Day when an innocent George Floyd was murdered in public by a coldblooded murder cop. The fact is that the Trump administration and Congress do not like to see the multiracial demonstrators protest peacefully or not. The 1% is in agreement to crush these demonstrations as soon as possible by any means necessary. Killing, injuring and arresting protestors or reporters are on their agenda. Police and politicians see the “looting” and “burning” as blessings. In most cases, they send their own provocative agents (as they have done this before through COINTELPRO Project by FBI since 1956) to excite protestors and create chaos.
True activists seek for POLITICAL solutions independent of the Democratic and Republican Parties and reject their agents among their ranks. What is needed is a list of demands which must come out of discussions among the activists and concerned working people of the different communities.
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Massoud Nayeri is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Although he did not use the word, he described an Apartheid regime in the Israeli-controlled Palestinian West Bank.
He openly referred to the stateless Palestinians as “subjects.”
Netanyahu will annex the Jordan Valley formally to Israel, where 60,000 Palestinians live and which is one of the areas Israel had pledged to relinquish to the Palestine Authority in the 1993 Oslo Accords. He will also annex the land on which Israeli squatters established settlements in Palestinian territory.
Israel ha-Yom asked, “Q: Nevertheless, several thousand Palestinians live in the Jordan Valley. Does that mean they will receive Israeli citizenship?”
Netanyahu replied:
“No. They will remain a Palestinian enclave. You’re not annexing Jericho. There’s a cluster or two. You don’t need to apply sovereignty over them, they will remain Palestinian subjects if you will. But security control also applies to these places.”
How about if we won’t?
I have long argued that the crux of the Israeli conflict with the Palestinians is the denial to Palestinians of citizenship in a state. In calling the Palestinians “subjects,” Netanyahu is acknowledging that they are not citizens. In Hannah Arendt’s phrase, citizenship is the right to have rights. Palestinians have no citizenship in a state. They do not have a right to have rights.
They are subjects, they way medieval people living under an absolute monarchy were subjects. Only democratic states really have citizens.
The Israeli right wing is afraid that Netanyahu, in leaving un-annexed the rest of the Palestinian West Bank, is acceding to the demand for a Palestinian state. These fears are exacerbated by Netanyahu’s championing of the Kushner plan for the Mideast, which does contain language about a Palestinian state, although as described it isn’t actually a state.
It is what was called in Apartheid South Africa a Bantustan.
Netanyahu admitted as much, saying of the Palestinian leadership:
“They need to acknowledge that we control security in all areas. If they consent to all this, then they will have an entity of their own that President Trump defines as a state. There are those who claim and – an American statesman told me: ‘But Bibi, it won’t be a state.’ I told him, call it what you want.”
I said at my Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture:
“Statelessness means the complete lack of citizenship in a recognized state. It means you don’t have a passport; you have a laissez-passé. That means a lot of countries won’t accept the laissez-passé. It means you can’t travel freely, you don’t have constitutional protections, you often can’t get a work permit, your property is not secure because people can take it away from you and you don’t have access to national courts that could adjudicate those disputes . . . what does a state do? It controls land, water, air. If a North Korean MiG flew over San Diego, all hell would break loose . . . If an Israeli plane flies over the West Bank, eh? Not a state. If substantial water resources, a river or something, were expropriated by Canada, there would be trouble because that’s America’s water, it’s owned by the federal government. But if 85 percent of the water on the West Bank is diverted to Israeli settlers, that’s all right because there is no Palestinian state. The water doesn’t belong to anybody. It’s a no-man’s land. States control immigration. But the Palestinians would deport somebody, how? There are lots of [Israeli] undocumented people on the West Bank, but their state is behind them.”
As for the notion of a “Bantustan,” here is what the Wikipedia article says:
“Under the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970, the Government stripped black South Africans of their citizenship, which deprived them of their few remaining political and civil rights in South Africa, and declared them to be citizens of these homelands . . . he process of creating the legal framework for this plan was completed by the Black Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970, which formally designated all black South Africans as citizens of the homelands, even if they lived in “white South Africa”, and cancelled their South African citizenship… Bantustans within the borders of South Africa were classified as “self-governing” or “independent”. In theory, self-governing Bantustans had control over many aspects of their internal functioning but were not yet sovereign nations. Independent Bantustans (Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei; also known as the TBVC states) were intended to be fully sovereign. In reality, they had little economic infrastructure worth mentioning and, with few exceptions, encompassed swaths of disconnected territory. This meant that the Bantustans were little more than puppet states controlled by South Africa. Throughout the existence of the “independent” Bantustans, South Africa remained the only country to recognise their independence.”
Palestinians in the Jordan Valley are about to be made like the Black South Africans who lived in South Africa but were declared aliens in their own country and assigned to a toothless, puppet-like “Bantustan” for their citizenship. That is what Netanyahu means when he calls them “Palestinian subjects.” Bantustan subjects.
In those areas that the Israelis are not (so far) annexing, Palestinians are still under the security control of the Occupying Israeli military. But, again, they have no citizenship in a state. Israel makes policies for them, but they cannot vote on those policies. They are stateless. As for the Palestine “Authority,” “call it what you will.” It is not a state. It will not be allowed to undertake the functions of a state.
I said in 2013 that you can’t keep 5 million people stateless forever, that this is monstrous. but apparently you can do so for many decades, maybe a century or more.
Shame.
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First published in April 2015. The H1N1 vaccine fiasco ordered by the (corrupt) WHO Director General is of relevance to the current debate on a COVID-19 vaccine.
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The 2009 swine flu vaccine caused severe brain damage in over 800 children across Europe, and the UK government has now agreed to pay $90 million in compensation to those victims as part of a vaccine injury settlement.
This is the same swine flu vaccine that the entire mainstream media ridiculously insists never causes any harm whatsoever. From the quack science section of the Washington Post to the big pharma sellout pages of the New York Times, every U.S. mainstream media outlet exists in a state of total vaccine injury denialism, pushing toxic vaccines that provably harm children.
“Across Europe, more than 800 children are so far known to have been made ill by the vaccine,” reports the International Business Times.
Narcolepsy affects a person’s sleeping cycle, leaving them unable to sleep for more than 90 minutes at a time, and causing them to fall unconscious during the day. The condition damages mental function and memory, and can lead to hallucinations and mental illness.
Cataplexy causes a person to lose consciousness when they are experiencing heightened emotion, including when they are laughing.
“Norway has seen more than 170 reported cases of children developing narcolepsy after receiving the Pandemrix vaccine,” reports the Global Post. “The government has so far paid $13 million to 86 victims, including 60 children…”
Just as in the USA and everywhere else, a contrived swine flu panic campaign was launched by the WHO and the CDC, creating widespread fear that would sell more vaccines. (Disneyland measles operation, anyone?)
As the Global Post write:
Back in 2009, the Norwegian health authorities urged everyone, not just at-risk groups, to receive vaccinations after the World Health Organization designated swine flu a pandemic.
More than 2 million Norwegians, or 45 percent of the country’s population, were given Pandemrix in an unprecedented drive. The vaccine is produced by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and was used to inoculate up to 30 million people in 47 other European countries.
Vaccine damage is Big Pharma’s route to selling more medications
Incredibly, even those children who are damaged by vaccines end up being big profit centers for the same pharmaceutical companies that damaged them in the first place.
In case after case being reported in the media, children who are damaged by defective vaccines are reported to be on multiple medications. For example, as the Global Post reports:
Tove Jensen, whose son developed severe narcolepsy after receiving the vaccine, also wants compensation from GSK.
“The situation is terrible,” she says. “He’s 100 percent disabled. We don’t know if it’s going to get better, he’s on so much medication. But we hope something will happen, that he will get his life back.”
Similarly, as the IB Times reports:
Peter Todd, a lawyer who represented many of the claimants, told the Sunday Times: “…The victims of this vaccine have an incurable and lifelong condition and will require extensive medication.”
In other words, children who are damaged by vaccines generate even more profits for Big Pharma by being damaged! It’s the perfect sinister revenue model for an industry run like a criminal mafia.
GlaxoSmithKline swine flu vaccine brain damaged medical staffers, too
“Among those affected are NHS medical staff, many of whom are now unable to do their jobs because of the symptoms brought on by the vaccine,” reports the IBTimes. “They will be suing the government for millions in lost earnings.”
The paper goes on to report:
Among [those damaged] is Josh Hadfield, 8, from Somerset, who is on anti-narcolepsy drugs costing [$20,000] a year to help him stay awake during the school day.
“If you make him laugh, he collapses. His memory is shot. There is no cure. He says he wishes he hadn’t been born. I feel incredibly guilty about letting him have the vaccine,” said his mother Caroline Hadfield, 43.
Despite a 2011 warning from the European Medicines Agency against using the vaccine on those under 20 and a study indicating a 13-fold heightened risk of narcolepsy in vaccinated children, GSK has refused to acknowledge a link.
Pharma-controlled U.S. media claims ZERO children were harmed in America
If 800 children were brain damaged by the swine flu vaccine in the UK and across Europe, how many children were damaged by the same vaccine — or other vaccines — in America?
According to the pharma-controlled lamestream media, that number is ZERO.
Vaccine Injury Denialism — a particularly dangerous form of delusional junk science — is the present-day mantra of the pharma-controlled press, which includes all the usual suspects such as the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and so on. They simply pretend no children are ever harmed by vaccines… and they hope the U.S. public is stupid enough to believe the lie that “all vaccines are safe.”
Right now, there are 800 children in the UK whose lives have been destroyed by the swine flu vaccine and who will never lead a normal life again. Every year, tens of thousands more children are diagnosed with autism. The vaccine industry is destroying a generation of children — committing what Robert Kennedy Jr. correctly compared to a “holocaust” — while the sellout media covers it up.
How is this not a crime against children?
Shame on all of those sellout editors and professional liars in the mainstream media who cover up the truth about an industry that’s maiming and killing our children by the thousands. Do you have no sense of humanity?
US Army Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander, US Africa Command, released a statement on May 26 accusing Russia of sending Russian military aircraft to Libya to support the Libyan National Army (LNA). The accusations are detailed and include photos and images, which are supposed to convince the reader that Russia sent planes to Syria, where they were repainted to disguise their source, and then flown on to Libya. However, the photos don’t provide evidence of the accusations. The US statement uses the word “assesses” five times, and also uses the phrase “are likely to”. Those are statements of opinion, and not based on facts or evidence, which could have been presented, had they existed.
Viktor Nikolaevich Bondarev is a Colonel General and former Commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces, and the former Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force branch of the Aerospace Forces, who now heads the defense committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament. Bondarev stated on May 27, “If the warplanes are in Libya, they are Soviet, not Russian,” and further characterized the US accusations as “stupidity.”
Repainting planes to disguise their source is antiquated, given the modern technology of advanced electronics and friend-foe detection (IFF), which can be used to easily identify any military object.
While the US accuses Russia of interfering in Libya, the US is interfering in many countries around the world, such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Hong Kong, and Libya. Russia, by contrast, is legally in Syria at the request of the Syrian government.
Not only Russia could have supplied these planes to Libya. MiG-29s of various modifications are in service with Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, North Korea, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Cuba, Peru, Algeria, Sudan, Egypt, the Republic of Chad, Eritrea, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bulgaria, Poland, and several other countries.
LNA spokesman Ahmed Mismari denied the US accusations. He referred to “media rumors and lies” that the US has spread, and explained that last week the LNA repaired four old Libyan jets for use and announced the start of a new series of airstrikes against the Muslim Brotherhood Government of National Accord (GNA) which was founded in 2015 under an UN-led political deal, and had a two-year mandate which expired in 2017.
Stefan Keuter, German politician for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a member of the Bundestag since 2017, urged caution when he told the media, “When it comes to violations of the international treaties and the arms embargo in Libya, the accusations of the United States African Command (AFRICOM) is not enough.”
Before the US-NATO attack to destroy Libya in 2011, the country was the most prosperous in all of Africa, and its leader Qaddafi was planning projects to allow Libya to be free of western domination and neo-colonialism.
Turkey has sent thousands of Syrian terrorists, including ex-ISIS fighters, to Libya to defend the Muslim Brotherhood government of Sarraj. Lindsey Snell, an American journalist, has created a video in which features Syrian terrorists that are fighting in Libya for the Sarraj militia, on the promise of being paid $2,000 to $2,500 per month by Turkey. In the video, one of the terrorists declares, “We have Turkey, Qatar, and the US with us. We are NATO, so every country is with us.” Snell had been kidnapped by Jibhat al Nusra, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria supported by Turkey. She managed to escape to Turkey only to be arrested by the Turkish military on the accusation of being a CIA operative.
Libyan National Army (LNA) has been led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar since April 2019 and is appointed by the Libyan parliament, which is the only legitimate body in Libya today.
Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) leader Fayez al-Sarraj appears to have his hands tied by the Muslim Brotherhood, who have dominated Libya’s Presidential Council. Sarraj has the direct backing of Turkey and support from many jihadist organizations in Libya. His private militia RAAD has kidnapped and held a Russian sociologist and his translator since May 2019 in a private prison near Tripoli airport.
Libyan National Army spokesman Ahmed al-Mismari had said in March, the Muslim Brotherhood had appointed members to high positions in the Tripoli-based Central Bank to “finance its groups and militias”.
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Of all the theaters of militarized international rivalry in the early 21st century, the Arctic promises to be the most complex and unpredictable. In terms of domain, military operations there would be conducted on land, in the air, on the sea surface, but also in the depths of the Arctic Ocean under ice cover. The geographic remoteness and climactic harshness of the climate and terrain mean any conflict there would be fought the gaze of international media or citizen reporters. Next to the Antarctic, the Arctic is one of the few areas of the global commons that has not yet been apportioned among the major and minor powers. And the stakes for all the players are quite high.
Military presence in the Arctic and extension of one’s national sovereignty over it promises to yield the interested states and alliances with several sets of benefits. The first and most obvious is the access to copious natural resources, starting with hydrocarbons, lurking under the still relatively unexplored continental shelf there. The second one is the surveillance and/or control over maritime shipping routes whose importance will only increase as polar ice cover retreats. Thirdly, the Arctic does include some militarily very valuable real estate, in the form of great many islands and archipelagoes that may be used for advanced military outposts and bases.
In all three cases, the United States is acting as the spoiler, unhappy with the current state of affairs. It aims to extend its control over natural resources in the region, establish permanent presence in other countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZ) through the use of the so-called “freedom of navigation operations” (FONOPs), and continue to encircle Russia with ballistic missile defense (BMD) sites and platforms.
In view of the urgent and evident US preparations to be able to fight and prevail in a war against a nuclear adversary, by defeating the adversary’s nuclear arsenal through the combination of precision non-nuclear strikes (including by the broad range of hypersonic missiles currently under development) and BMD systems, it would appear that third benefit is of the greatest importance to the United States, though certainly not the only one. The recent sortie by a force of US Navy BMD-capable AEGIS destroyers into the Barents Sea, the first such mission since the end of the Cold War over two decades ago, shows the interest United States has in projecting BMD capabilities into regions north of Russia’s coastline, where they might be able to effect boost-phase interceptions of Russian ballistic missiles that would be launched in retaliatory strikes against the United States.
US operational planning for the Arctic in all likelihood resembles that for the South China Sea, with only a few corrections for climate. The key similarity of both potential theaters of war is that the decisive fighting would be in the air or at or under the sea, culminating in comparatively small amphibious operations and battles for relatively small and/or isolated islands. Once one side prevails in the air and at sea, the outcome of these land battles would be all but foreordained. As the experience of World War 2 “island-hopping” campaigns in the Pacific shows, no isolated island fortress can survive for very long once it is isolated from own air and naval support. Every Japanese outpost targeted by the US eventually fell, and did not require masses of troops to overcome their resistance thanks to overwhelming naval and aerial firepower US forces brought to bear. Campaigns in the Arctic would follow a similar course, with US naval task forces pushing into the teeth of Russia’s submarines, land-based missile batteries, and land-based fighter and bomber squadrons. The recently announced plans to revamp the US Marine Corps that include doing away with its tank battalions and much of field artillery, while adding land-based anti-ship missile capabilities for the first time ever, suggest USMC is being tailored for such small-scale island-hopping operations in the Arctic, South China Sea, and other such theaters of war, to the detriment of its ability to conduct counter-insurgency or large-scale high-intensity combat operations.
The small size of forces used by both sides also means a premium will be placed on the element of surprise, since a small garrison on a remote Arctic island garrison could be overcome relatively quickly, in the manner similar to which the original Argentinian invasion of the Falklands succeeded in routing the Royal Marine garrison so quickly that no real fighting took place.
The remoteness of these islands, the small size of the military forces, and the practically non-existent potential for collateral damage due to absence of large civilian populations also mean that the use of low-yield nuclear weapons, against both land facilities and naval forces at sea, is far easier to contemplate than in any conflict in Europe or Asia. The remoteness of this theater of operations also means nuclear strikes would have a lower risk of strategic escalation, as long as all the nuclear adversaries refrained from targeting enemy mainland.
At the outset, however, the dominant weapon systems would be intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles, launched from land-based launchers as well as aerial and naval platforms. The US withdrawal from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty means the US Army will have a large number of ground-launched missiles with ranges exceeding 500km in service, such as the Precision Strike Missile. The US Marine Corps is planning to organize Littoral Regiments whose armament will include Naval Strike Missiles on unmanned truck-based launchers, and which are intended for such island campaigns in the South China Sea but also elsewhere. Moreover, US Navy and US Air Force plan to introduce hypersonic missiles into their arsenals by the end of the decade as well. The current US procurement plans mean that by 2030 the United States could expect to concentrate overwhelming intermediate-range missile firepower in any given single theater of operations, be it the Persian Gulf, the Pacific Rim, or the Arctic.
At the same time the United States will have to solve the problem of disunity within its own camp. United States covetous eye has been cast not only on those areas of the Arctic within Russia’s continental shelf, but also Canada’s Northwest Passage and even Denmark’s Greenland.
The US intent to procure a small fleet of icebreakers is intended to enable “Freedom of Navigation Operations” in what Canada views its territorial waters, and Donald Trump actually may have revealed a state secret when he spoke of the United States buying Greenland from Denmark and setting up a Trump Tower there. With the COVID-19 revealing America’s weakness for all the world to sea and the Europeans discovering an urgent need for unity and cooperation, United States might yet discover a unified European Union to be a formidable opponent when it comes to protecting its own interests.
The United States is slowly but steadily losing the geo-economic race in the Arctic with Russia and China.
In the situation when there is no chance to push forward own successful projects, Washington has opted the strategy of undermining efforts of other states. The fast development of Russia’s Northern Sea Route is the source of the especial concern of the US strategists. Therefore, the US diplomatic activity and the so-called “freedom of navigation operations” are now mostly focused on undermining and limiting the freedom of navigation in the way that would allow to contain the Chinese-Russian cooperation in the region. If Washington cannot catch-up Moscow and Beijing in the field, it will do all what it can to at least slow down the progress of their joint projects.
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From a recent report by the Insider publication: “George Floyd and Officer Derek Chauvin actually worked for the same Minneapolis night club- Chauvin as a security guard for many years, and Floyd as a bouncer during 2019.” It begsthe question of just how well these two may have known each other, or worse, if Chauvin had some sort of ‘racially prejudiced’ ulterior motive for doing this heinous deed. Thereport also states:
‘This was not the first time Chauvin had been involved in a violent incident during his 19 years in the Minneapolis Police Department. He was involved in violent incidents before, including three police shootings. And he has been the subject of 10 complaints filed to the city’s Civilian Review Authority and the Office of Police Conduct….
Two years later, just after 2 o’clock one morning in 2008, Chauvin responded to a 911 domestic-assault call in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, the Pioneer Press reported.
Chauvin and his partner entered the home, confronting Ira Latrell Toles, whose partner had made the 911 call. Toles ran from the pair, but ‘they caught and tried to subdue him,’ a police statement said. The statement said Toles ‘grabbed at one of the officer’s guns, and Chauvin shot him in the torso.’ ”
Is this not shades of the George Zimmerman case regarding his murder of Trayvon Martin?
More from the Insider piece:
“In 2011, Chauvin was involved in a third police shooting. He was among five officers to respond to reports of a shooting. Leroy Martinez, a 23-year-old Alaska Native, was spotted running from the scene, and the officers gave chase, local news reported. The police said Martinez brandished a pistol as he fled. Terry Nutter, one of the responding officers, shot Martinez. An eyewitness account, reported by the Star Tribune, challenged the police’s claim that Martinez was holding a pistol when he was shot.”
“‘He had no reason to shoot that little boy,’ Delora Iceman told the Star Tribune. She said Martinez had dropped the weapon and held his arms in the air before the police shot him.
During his nearly two decades with the Minneapolis Police Department, Chauvin has been the subject of several internal complaints… three separate reviews from the Civilian Review Authority found Chauvin to have used ‘demeaning tone, and’ ‘derogatory language.’ No other details were available. He has also been the subject of seven reviews by the local Office of Police Conduct. Each review concludes: ‘Closed – No discipline.’ No other details were available.”
Derek Chauvin should never have been in the Minneapolis Police Department for as long as 19 years. When one reviews the above news piece, isn’t it pretty plain that this dude should never have been in any position of control over anyone! He, and his fellow thugs are right out of the Pinkerton or Baldwin Felts school of law enforcement. Go and get the 1987 film classic Matawan, written and directed by John Sayles, based on the 1920 Matawan, West Virginia coal miners’ strike. See how those who ‘Own the Manor’ use their paid ‘Thugs with badges’ to keep the rabble in line. Similar to how Officer Chauvin and Co. protected the pure white world outside of the inner city from men like George Floyd. Imagine those neighbors of Floyd who had to stand behind the Blue Wall of Chauvin’s three partners (in crime?) and listen to a dying man gasp for help. Amazing what power those four had over the community because ‘They are the Law!!’
One thinks that maybe our local police should realize that the overwhelming majority of us are all Working Stiffs the same as them. The color of the person shouldn’t mean squat! We all need to go and punch out the hours for our survival the same as those four cops. I remember how my friend’s older sister (foolish white woman) pontificated at a Christmas party about the poor: “Let’s face it, most of them are either drug addicts or alcoholics”.
She failed to understand that, in most poor neighborhoods, the overwhelming majority of the residents have to get up early (sometimes earlier than folks from better neighborhoods) for shitty paying jobs, shit conditions with few or NO benefits. Yet, they do it. Yes, the study of Socialism teaches this writer that Capitalism as it exists today in Amerika has set up the deck their way. In poorer areas the liquor stores abound, along with Payday loans, food stores that overcharge and of course… the flow of illicit drugs goes unabated. The scene from Godfather 1 when the heads of five Mob families discuss the drug trade, one of the mobsters says “In my city we would keep the traffic in the dark areas for the colored people. They’re animals anyway so let them lose their souls.”
I have been on the soapbox for over 30 years saying that only four year college graduates with majors in either sociology or criminal justice should qualify to be police officers… period! Perhaps if we lived in a more equitable economic system, whereupon ALL who work for the owners get a bigger piece of the pie, the pay would be enough to attract new, more educated police officers. The higher one goes up on the ladder of intellect, I believe rational behavior can follow. The motto ‘Protect and Serve’ should resonate more than it does now. Too many who stand behind the Blue Wall keep the rest of us away from Truth. I remember speaking to my lawyer’s Criminal Defense partner. He had been an Assistant DA for years before jumping ship. “Here’s my experience”, he said,
“If they want to get someone real bad, they will plant a gun or plant drugs when they arrest. They also will, in more cases than not, LIE on the stand to help a fellow officer. I have seen it too many times.”
Who suffers from this ‘Perjury Mill’? Well, all those good officers who go by the book and treat everyone the same, regardless of color, creed, religion or sexual orientation. They need to speak up… loudly!
Perhaps it is time for all our governments, local, county, state or federal, to insist on a much higher standard for policing. Chauvin wouldn’t have his jackboot on Floyd’s vulnerable neck if he wasn’t a cop in the first place!
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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.
President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US intelligence community said Tuesday that he would focus on China as the country’s greatest threat, saying Beijing was determined to supplant the United States’ superpower position.
Were China doing this by using news agencies like AFP to lie to the public to justify invading Middle Eastern nations, killing tens of thousands of innocent people, installing client regimes worldwide, and using its growing power to coerce and control nations economically and politically when not outright militarily – US President Donald Trump’s “pick” – John Ratcliffe – might be justified in focusing on China and its “determination” to “supplant the United States’ superpower position.”
However, this is not what China is doing.
China Building Rather than Bombing
China is – instead – using economic progress to rise upon the global stage. It makes things. It builds things. It creates infrastructure to bring these things to others around the globe who need or want them, and enables other nations to make, build, and send things to China.
One example is China’s One Belt, One Road initiative (OBOR) also referred to as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This includes a series of railways, highways, ports, and other infrastructure projects to help improve the logistical connections between nations, accelerating economic development.
Only in the US could the notion of building railways connecting people within and between nations seem like a dangerous idea.
By building such networks, people are better empowered to trade what they are making and what they seek to buy and sell. China, which possesses the largest high-speed railway network on Earth carrying 2 billion passengers a year, is extending this network beyond its borders – deep into Southeast Asia and even across Eurasia via Russia and beyond. Alongside it are a raft of other projects ranging from ports to power plants, and more.
The political and economic power China is gaining by expanding real economic activity both within its borders and beyond them, and both for China itself as well as for its trading partners – represents a global pivot away from America’s century-long unipolar global order and closer toward a now emerging multipolar world order.
The US with a population of over 300 million and some of the best industrial potential in the world could easily pivot with this sea change – but entrenched special interests refuse to do so. Paying into a genuinely pragmatic method of generating wealth and stability exposes Washington and Wall Street’s various rackets, making them no longer tenable. So instead, US special interests are labeling China’s One Belt, One Road initiative a global threat and China itself as one of America’s chief adversaries.
Fighting Fire with Fire or Pushing Rope Uphill?
To combat this adversary – the US is not building bigger and better global networks to facilitate economic progress – but is instead marshalling the summation of its “soft power” to hinder and sabotage it. It has ringed China with a series of sociopolitical conflicts, cultivating opposition groups in various nations aimed at destabilizing them and spoiling them as constructive economic and infrastructure partners for Beijing.
The US is leveraging its still massive media monopolies to portray these political conflicts as otherwise inexplicable opposition to closer ties with China and against infrastructure projects jointly developed with China.
In some nations – like Cambodia – this has all but failed with swift and definitive action taken by the Cambodian government against US proxies to clear them from Cambodia’s media, political, and public space. In nations like Thailand, the opposition has been left to linger – neutralized at the moment but ever threatening to overturn sociopolitical stability if given the opportunity.
Nations like Japan, South Korea, and even Australia – who are generally perceived as being staunch US allies – have even begun slowly but surely shifting their foreign policy to benefit from the economic rise of China.
Australia – for example – has even been recently threatened by the US after the state of Victoria signed a trade deal with China.
The US Secretary of State has said his nation could “simply disconnect” from Australia if Victoria’s trade deal with Beijing affects US telecommunications.
Mike Pompeo said while he was unaware of the detail of Victoria’s agreement, he warned it could impact the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partnership with Australia.
Of course, the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing partnership is an abusive combine of invasive surveillance used to enhance the power and profits of the special interests that created it – not to actually protect the people living in any of the “Five Eyes” partner nations.
While US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hints at possible security risks associated with doing business with China and its telecom giant Huawei – “Five Eyes” governments have regularly been exposed and confirmed to be partnering with Western tech giants to violate privacy and spy on innocent people.
It is just one example of how the US seeks to shape the world and bend nations into joining or doubling down on its abusive axis and steering them away from constructive partnerships.
Australia’s economic trade is mainly done within Asia – not with the West. As China continues to rise, common sense will compel Australia to continue building better and more constructive ties with Beijing and divesting from otherwise costly and unconstructive alliances with nations like the US built on military intervention, spying, and political subversion.
The US finds itself pushing the geopolitical rope of hegemony up hill – offering up unconvincing criticisms of China and its foreign policy while offering no viable alternative.
Delusion is the Worst Defense
Op-eds like Foreign Policy’s “One Belt, One Road, One Big Mistake,” help illustrate the West’s thinking regarding China’s rise and its OBOR project.
The article claims:
This might not matter if BRI projects were driving favorable political outcomes. They aren’t. Prolonged exposure to the BRI process has driven opposition to Chinese investment and geopolitical influence across the region.
FP can make this claim because it entirely omits any mention of the vast sums of money and effort the US has spent to create this opposition. The example FP uses is the Maldives – never mentioning that the pro-Beijing government there was overturned by a convicted criminal literally hiding in Western Europe and fully supported by the US State Department in his bid to return to power.
Thus – this isn’t an example of OBOR failing to create a favorable political outcome for Beijing – it is an example of US soft power overturning these favorable political outcomes nonexistent American alternatives to OBOR are incapable of doing. How durable these US successes are is a matter of debate.
The article also claims:
Far from being a strategic masterstroke, the BRI is a sign of strategic dysfunction. There is no evidence that it has reshaped Asia’s geopolitical realities. The countries that have benefited most from it are those that already had strong geopolitical reasons for aligning themselves with Chinese power, such as Cambodia and Pakistan.
Here again – FP depends on omitting facts including the fact that many nations previously bent to US foreign policy are exiting out from under it via China’s One Belt, One Road.
Thailand is a perfect example of this – having recently replaced much of its US military hardware with Chinese alternatives including tanks, armored personnel carriers, ships, and even submarines. Thailand is also in the process of building a joint high-speed railway with China that will connect it to China via Laos to the north and with Malaysia to the south.
It’s not that the Western media doesn’t know this – they choose simply to ignore this reality and shield its readership from it – a bit of delusion in hopes its soft-power methods can continue gaining them victories and reversing China’s gains faster than China can make and cement them.
As to what the US is doing to counter OBOR, Foreign Policy and many others populating the West’s echo chambers feel criticism – however baseless – as well as brushing off the sea change OBOR is slowly creating – is good enough.
Of course it is not. In an international order where might makes right, the US finds itself with diminishing might and a growing inability to convince the world it is “right.” Luckily for the US and much of Western Europe strong-armed into following Washington’s cues, the rest of the world still seeks to constructively work with the West and inevitably will do so.
It will just be a matter of weathering the damage being done by the current circle of special interests still dominating Western foreign policy, waiting for them to wane and disappear from positions of power and authority and be replaced by leadership willing and able to move the West into a constructive role amid a multipolar world.
Either way, OBOR will connect the rest of the world together leaving the West just beyond its terminus. It will be up to Western leaders – particularly in Washington – whether or not they choose to benefit from the wealth left just beyond their doorstep or not.
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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Sawing off the branch you sit on can hardly be the best of policies. But that all depends on the nature of the branch. US President Donald Trump has huffed himself into another small historical moment, going on the offensive against social media companies using the very language his faux progressive opponents use against them. All seem to be in agreement on one point: the Silicon Valley giants have become too powerful, runaway monsters in the stakes of high influence. But sharp divergences and attitudes exist on how such companies are to be controlled, let alone disciplined.
The view on how best to chastise such companies come from opposite ends of the information spectrum. For the enraged and the offended, these internet giants should be punished for distributing content created by users who might, for instance, be seen to be glorifying violence or giving truck to the unsavoury. Their view seems to be that humanity cannot be trusted with viewing matter that might, on the off chance, prove dangerously galvanic.
This is the view taken, for instance, by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.
“One thing is pretty clear to me,” he scoldingly told his audience at last year’s Never Is Now Summit hosted by the Anti-Defamation League. “All this hate and violence [in the world] is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.”
For Baron Cohen and travellers of like mind, the problem in all of this is the protection provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The provision confers immunity on internet companies for the use-generated content they host.
For Trump, such companies should be punished for misusing their immunity from prosecution for actually banning or flagging undesirable content or opinions. In short, there should be no limits on the quality or nature of user-content used or posted. For the first Twitter President in history, it was all too bruising to be “flagged” for content posted on Twitter taking issue with the response to Monday’s lethal arrest of George Floyd in Minneapolis. On Friday, Trump tweeted the line, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts”. It was a phrase Miami’s police chief Walter Headley used in 1967 in response to, as reported at the time, a “crackdown on … slum hoodlums”. He spoke with reassurance for the head-kicking enthusiasts. “We don’t mind being accused of police brutality.”
Trump spruced up that version – slightly. “Looting leads to shooting, and that’s why a man was shot and killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday night – or look at what just happened in Louisville with 7 people shot. I don’t want this to happen, and that’s what the expression put out last night means.”
Looting leads to shooting, and that’s why a man was shot and killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday night – or look at what just happened in Louisville with 7 people shot. I don’t want this to happen, and that’s what the expression put out last night means….
Twitter has shown interest in the US president of late. Flagging and hiding Tweets, it also added a fact-check link to one of Trump’s messages. All this was simply too much, a lingering, cyber stain. The Executive Order that followed was cranky and a bit confused, taking issue with the wielding of power by internet companies “over a vital means of communication to engage in deceptive or pretextual actions stifling free and open debate by censoring certain viewpoints.” Accordingly, “Section 230 was not intended to allow a handful of companies to grow into titans controlling vital avenues for our national discourse under the guise of promoting open forums for debate, and then to provide those behemoths blanket immunity when they use their power to censor content and silence viewpoints that they dislike.” In removing or restricting access to content, such companies were “engaged in editorial conduct” and would, for that reason, have she shield of immunity removed.
Twitter is doing nothing about all of the lies & propaganda being put out by China or the Radical Left Democrat Party. They have targeted Republicans, Conservatives & the President of the United States. Section 230 should be revoked by Congress. Until then, it will be regulated!
The order is not likely to have much effect. The legal cognoscenti see it has having little bearing, a wasteful act of sinister flatulence. Former Justice Department inspector general Michael Bromwichconsidered it “a hoot. Unlawful and unenforceable.” According to Joshua Geltzer, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, it would be hard to make a case that Twitter’s labels on Trump’s tweets fell outside the immunity of section 230. Nor could Trump sue for defamation, given that Trump, not Twitter, added the element of falsity to the affair.
Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University sees the birth of the order as “unconstitutional because it was issued in retaliation for Twitter’s fact-checking of President Trump’s tweets.” The concern for Jaffer is that the order entails the possibility of intimidation and investigation of internet companies. “There may well be regulation, and legislation worth considering in this sphere, but whatever else this order may be, it is not a good faith effort to protect speech online.”
What the latest moves have done is precipitate something of a conflict within the usually amoral social media sphere. The titans seem to be in disagreement on how to approach the demagogue in the White House. Do we let him bark and bellow without inhibition, or should some health warning label be attached? Mark Zuckerberg makes Facebook’s position disingenuously clear: such companies should not be arbiters of truth. (Unfortunately for the CEO, he expressed that view on a news outlet that often prefers the fictional narrative to the sturdy truthfulness.) “Private companies probably shouldn’t be, especially these platform companies, shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.”
“Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves. More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions.”
Neither CEO should be taken too seriously. Twitter will make its policies as it sees fit (consider, for instance, its righteous civic integrity policy); ditto Facebook. Neither – and here Zuckerberg is right – should be arbiters, but they are. They have shaped, directed, cajoled, mocked and massaged the gullible, the idiotic and the deluded. And for all the fuss being caused by this Order, Facebook it is not considered a serious target. As Ian Bogost and Alex Madrigal insist, the Trump campaign effectively ceded“control to Facebook’ ad-buying machinery” in 2016, as it is doing now. Internet boffin Zeynep Tufekci can only agree: the relationship between the president and the Facebook CEO “is so smooth that Trump said Zuckerberg congratulated the president for being ‘No.1 on Facebook’ at a private dinner with him.” Time to break bread again.
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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 extrajudicial murders of African/Black people, such as Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, by agents of the U.S. government and armed civilians have sparked urban rebellions in cities across the United States. Such murderous acts cannot be understood outside of the context of the U.S. state’s ongoing assault on the human rights of African/Black people.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s tweet—“…when the looting starts, the shooting starts…”—demanding lethal violence requires the United Nations to intervene.
Trump’s threat comes as the U.S. state has tragically failed during the COVID-19 pandemic to recognize and protect the human right to health of poor and working-class people, including Africans and undocumented migrants.
African/Black people comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population, yet represent one-third of COVID-19 related deaths. In some areas, the death rate has been as high as 70 percent.
Yet, the Trump administration, the U.S. Congress and state governments have responded by driving African/Black workers—who occupy the lowest rungs of the U.S. labor force—back to work with little or no protection. An inadequate for-profit healthcare system that discriminates against the poor ensures disproportionate death rates for African/Black people will continue.
Police authorities have been documented for abusing their power while enforcing COVID-19 mitigation efforts such as social distancing, which has been impossible for overcrowded African/Black communities and households to maintain.
Despite various United Nations bodies—such as the Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the Human Rights Committee (HRC), the Universal Periodic Review Process (UPR), and various special human-rights rapporteurs and special representatives—calling several times on the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations to protect the human rights of African/Black people, what remains is a precarious situation that borders on genocide.
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On May 28, an intense fighting erupted between Turkish-backed militant groups in the Turkish-occupied city of Afrin. The clashes started after Hamza Division militants shot and killed a child and an owner of a shop that had refused to loan goods to them. The killed persons appeared to be affiliated with Jaish al-Islam. In response, fighters of the group attacked Hamza Division positions in the city center forcing them to flee Afrin. 3 Hamza Division members, a Jaish al-Islam member and 3 civilians were killed in the clashes. At least 6 civilians were also injured.
The situation de-escalated by the end of the day after the Hamza Division released a statement promising to launch investigating into the incident and hold the fighters involved in the attack on the shop accountable. Early on May 29, Hamza Division fighters reportedly started returning to the Afrin city center.
Looting, street firefights and extortion racket are an ordinary part of the daily life in the Turkish-controlled part of northern Syria. On May 25, two units of the Murad Division clashed with each other in al-Bab and south of the town, near the Abu Zindin crossing with the government-held area. At least one militant and several civilians were injured in the incident that was caused by the struggle for the smuggling route among local commanders.
Turkish-backed militant groups do not care about possible civilian casualties as a result of their criminal activity. The only difference of the Afrin case is that the civilian killed by the Hamza Division appeared to be affiliated with a rival militant group.
A one more security problem for Turkish-led forces is regular attacks by Kurdish rebels. At least nine militants were killed and two others were injured in IED explosions, sniper attacks and ambushed carried out by the Kurdish-led Afrin Liberation Forces in the Afrin region on May 17, May 18, May 19, May 23 and May 25.
On May 28, the Turkish Army and the Russian Military Police held a 13th joint patrol along the M4 highway in southern Idlib. This time the patrol reached the eastern entrance of Kafr Shalaya, which is located a half way from the government-controlled town of Saraqib and the city of Jisr al-Shughur, which is in the hands of al-Qaeda-linked militants.
The expanded length of the joint patrols is a positive signal showing some progress in the Russian-Turkish cooperation to create a security zone along the M4 highway. However, the presence of radicals near Jisr al-Shughur and the recent attack on a Turkish military patrol there demonstrate that the full implementation of the de-escalation deal is still far away.
The Syrian Army and pro-government locals blocked a US military convoy near the town of Tell Tamr and forced it to retreat back to the al-Hasakah countryside on May 27. Over the past months, US forces have been fully squeezed from the territory west of Tell Tamr and now government forces are working to limit their movement even further. In response, the US-led coalition is trying to implement a similar approach towards the Russian Military Police near al-Hasakah.
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The totalitarian drift suffered by the United States during the mandate of George W. Bush caused that in the name of the holy-holy security of the State, in practice, the principle of inviolability (habeas corpus) of people was annulled, de facto establishing the principle of “presumption of guilt” instead of the original “presumption of innocence”, which would have remained an indelible stigma in the US security forces.
This would be reflected in the arrogance, brutality and racial contempt that police interventions exude in the great cities of the United States, constituent elements of the so-called “negative perfection”, a term used by the novelist Martín Amis to designate “the obscene justification of use of extreme, massive and premeditated cruelty by a supposed ideal state ”.
However, the rise of the “Black Lives Matter” movement and the explosion of urban violence in the city of Minneapolis after the brutal death by asphyxiation of a defenseless George Floyd in a new out-of-control performance with clear racist overtones. law enforcement, could cause metropolitan areas with high rates of African-American populations (New York, New Orleans, Washington, St-Louis, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Cleveland, and Chicago) to erupt into violent street riots where they intermingle social demands with those of racial segregation, forgetting the teachings of Martin Luther King: “Violence creates more social problems than it solves.”
Donald Trump, the supremacists and the return of the “White Power”
According to an NBC poll, 54% of the white population would be “angry with the system”, which would have led white voters to support politically incorrect positions and refractory to the dictates of Donald Trump’s traditional republican establishment, symbolized in support of outraged whites over 45 to Trump and of neo-Nazi and white supremacist parties that continue to control the “deep America” spheres of power. The firm support for Trump’s candidacy by David Duke, ex-KKK leader and the subsequent appointments of Sebastian Gorka, (a member of the Hungarian far-right organization Vitézi Rand) as a counterterrorism adviser and Stephen Bannon, of populist ideology and far-right as Head of Strategy symbolized the arrival of white supremacists to the White House with the unequivocal objective of establishing “White Power” in a society in which demographic evolution will cause the white population to be a minority in the 2,043 scenario. Thus, according to the US Census Bureau, by 2043 whites will cease to be the majority of the American population and will be displaced by the sum of the Hispanic population that would increase from 53.3 million today to 128.8 million in 2060 and African-American, which would go from the current 41.2 million to the 61.8 million forecast by the projections.
African American dystopia
A dystopia would be “a negative utopia where reality takes place in terms antagonistic to those of an ideal society” and are located in closed or claustrophobic environments whose paradigm would be the city of Detroit, a dystopian scenario of real (non-fictional) nature and the paradigm of greatest mass exodus of population suffered by a modern city in the last 70 years. This exodus was motivated by the conjunction of economic reasons (the widespread corruption of the municipal authorities and the fact that the high taxes for living within the metropolitan area were drastically reduced in the suburbs) and racial ones. Thus, Detroit would have gone from having in the metropolitan area 1.8 million inhabitants in 1960 (90% white) to 700,000 in 2012 (84% African-American), a centrifugal migratory movement known colloquially as “white fligt” ( white flight) since the majority of the population that emigrated to the suburbs was white and middle and upper class, leaving the population of color confined to the east of the city in an area ironically called “Paradise Valley”. .
The X-ray of the pre-VID African-American population would outline a dystopian scenario, where 40% of the African-American population would live below the poverty line, with stratospheric unemployment rates above 17%, a figure that would triple as regards the population. young black woman (51%), with the consequent side effects of marginality, shadow economy and increased crime rates, favored by the lacerating lack of investment in public services and the existence of thousands of vacant lots and abandoned homes that should be destroyed by the City Council. In addition, the drastic collection of taxes forces to further cut social assistance programs, raise taxes and privatize most public services due to the accumulated deficit and the level of the bonds issued since they cannot print money to finance their deficits such as The nation does it, a situation that can be extrapolated to many other African-American cities.
The validity of Rev. Wright’s ideas
Reverend Wright in a 2001 sermon at the United Church of Christ parish in Chicago expressed the need for a collective metanoia of American society “that transforms imperial military wars into internal political wars against racism and the injustices of class ”, for which he proposed a fundamental redistribution of wealth through the reallocation of the public budget. Citing the “gift from the George W. Bush Administration of $ 1.3 trillion in tax exemptions for the wealthy,” he retorted with a proposal for public funding of universal health care and rebuilding the education system to put it at the service of the poor. .
Likewise, in a conference delivered at Howard University (Washington) in 2006, he stated: “This country was founded and is run according to a racist principle (…) We believe in white superiority and black inferiority (…) more than in God himself, “according to an excerpt published by The Wall Street Journal. Likewise, ex-President Obama, spiritual son of Reverend Wright and debtor to the title of his book “The Audacity of Hope,” in his book “My Father’s Dreams” talks about the vital attitude of the African American population, marked by the generational stigma of “a racial segregation that has characterized the American future” according to his words, an unhealed wound that will inevitably flare up again during the 2020 Presidential campaign.
Reissue of the March on Washington?
The persistence of police violence against the African American population and the practical impunity of the police, combined with the media visibility of the white supremacists who would count on “the fraternal understanding” of Donald Trump, could swing the once monolithic attitude of the Black fraternities to stay out of violent protests by confirming the certainty of the words of the visionary Martin Luther King, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate: “We have learned to fly like birds, to swim like fish, but we have not learned the simple the art of living as brothers ”) Thus, we could attend the media gathering of another black pacifist leader and a new great peaceful march on Washington (Martin Luther King, 1963), a subsequent reissue of the violent racial riots of the summer of 1963 not being ruled out. , leaving in passing the phrase of Luther King “I have a dream” (I have a dream), as an unreachable utopia.
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What happens when the Covid-19 state of emergency ends for the time being? Well, the likelihood of a world war seems more absolute by the day.
The US and its allies including Israel have been increasing tensions in the Middle East while the Covid-19 hysteria has taken over the headlines across the mainstream media in the West and around the world. Washington has increased its hostility against numerous countries under the Trump regime as they have imposed severe economic sanctions, regime change operations and assassinations against China, Russia, Iran, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Syria, the Palestinians, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela. All of these countries are allies with each other one way or another, and they all have one thing in common, they are on Washington’s hit list for not following the dictates of the empire. Although the focus is on China at the moment, Iran is still the major target of Washington and Tel Aviv. Iran has increased its military capabilities by receiving 110 new combat vessels according to a Saudi based news website Arabnews.com,
‘Iran Guards Threaten US Over Gulf Presence After Receiving New Combat Vessels’ said that “Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Thursday warned the United States against its naval presence in the Gulf as they received 110 new combat vessels.”
The new assets “included Ashura-class speedboats, Zolfagher coastal patrol boats and Taregh submarines.” Iran and its allies all agree on one goal, and that is to remove U.S. military presence out of the Middle East permanently. In a ceremony in southern Iran, Iranian Guard Naval Chief Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri said that “We announce today that wherever the Americans are, we are right next to them, and they will feel our presence even more in the near future” meaning more tensions will increase between the U.S. and Iran. Washington has been extremely aggressive towards Iran since Trump was elected to office. It began on May 8th, 2018 when the Trump regime decided to pull out of the Iran Nuclear Deal further escalating tensions. Then last January, the U.S. conducted an airstrike that killed one of Iran’s top military generals, Commander Major General Qasem Soleimani of the Quds force with an airstrike outside of Bagdad International Airport. Iran does not trust nor want any U.S. military presence close to its territory or anywhere in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Israel is set to annex the West Bank setting off another Israel-Palestinian conflict while Hezbollah is gearing up for another repeat of the 2006 Lebanon War or the Israel–Hezbollah War, but this time will be far worse because of what’s at stake in terms of the global economy. As we know, the U.S. economy is in shambles, in fact its collapsing as the US dollar is losing its dominant role as the world’s reserve currency and Israel knows this. They want a war between the US and Iran now more than ever before while the US dollar still has some value. When the US dollar collapses, so does Israel’s economy and without a strong economy, Israel won’t be able to sustain a multi-front war with its Arab neighbors. Business Insider published an article in 2011 titled ‘Here Are The 5 Worst Places to be When the Dollar Collapses’ and Israel was ranked first on the list:
This Anglo-American beach head into the Middle East was first conceived by the most powerful family in the world, the Rothschilds, in 1917. The Balfour Declaration said that there will be a Zionist Israel years before World War two and the eventual establishment of Israel. Israel has not been a good neighbor to its Muslim nations and has always had the two biggest bullies on the block at its back. When the dollar collapses, the United States will have too much on its plate both domestically and internationally to worry about such a non-strategic piece of land. This will leave Israel very weak at a time when tensions will be high. This very thin strip of desert land will not be able to with stand the economic reality of importing its food and fuel or the political reality of being surrounded by Muslims
China is not Washington’s priority at the moment because China does not have oil. It’s mostly in the Middle East and in Venezuela. Oil is the deciding factor because it is crucial for the U.S. military that uses an enormous amount of oil for its armored tanks, naval ships, hummers and combat aircraft. The ‘Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment’s’ home page explains how many barrels of oil does it take to sustain its military power around the world:
Energy is an essential enabler of military capability, and the Department depends on energy-resilient forces and facilities to achieve its mission. In FY 2018, the Department consumed over 85 million barrels of fuel to power ships, aircraft, combat vehicles, and contingency bases at a cost of nearly $9.2 billion. At over 500 worldwide military installations, the Department spent $3.4 billion in FY 2018 on energy to power over 585,000 facilities and 160,000 non-tactical vehicles
Oil is of strategic importance for U.S. forces in order to sustain its extended wars that will eventually reach other nations who have oil including Venezuela, if of course they get desperate enough for more oil from the South American nation to maintain its war machine. Oil is still the game, it’s always about the natural resources and it’s in the Middle East, not in China. A war with China will be in the long-term, for now the U.S. will try to destabilize China by supporting protesters in Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere while continuing its trade war policies. To launch a war against China will require an abundant amount of oil. An example of how much oil is needed in any type of global conflict for the US was detailed in a report by the Rand Corporation in 1994 following the illegal invasion of Iraq in the early 90′s published by James P. Stucker, John F. Schank and Bonnie. Dombey-Moore titled ‘Assessment of DoD Fuel Standardisation Policies‘ stated that “1.88 billion gallons of fuel were consumed within the U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (ODS/S), between August 10, 1990 and May 31, 1991,” which is estimated to be around 44.8 million barrels, or about 150,000 barrels a day. Both Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm lasted about 295 days.
It will take twice of the amount of oil if the US is foolish enough to launch airstrikes and missiles into mainland China from its surrounding military bases and naval ships who are all in close proximity. For that to happen, they need to defeat Iran, Syria and Hezbollah and take control of the Middle East oil reserves and start their war in the far east. The U.S. Military-Industrial Complex needs the oil before they declare war on China and other countries around the world who don’t obey Washington. Natural resources is the key to maintain the US war machine, so the next hot war will not take place in the Far East, at least for now, it will be in the Middle East.
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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
A cell phone videotaped deadly encounter between African American George Floyd and several Minneapolis law-enforcement officers resulting in a brutal strangulation has proven to be a turning point in the long saga of systematic racist violence in the United States.
For four straight days and nights, militant demonstrations have occurred in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and a growing number of municipalities around the country.
Reaching an intense level on the evening of May 28, demonstrators surrounded the Third Precinct police station pelting the structure with missiles. Later the building was evacuated by the city administration while soon afterwards people entered the station and set multiple fires.
Mayor Jacob Frey took full responsibility for the retreat from the Third Precinct noting that the situation was too dangerous for personnel inside and outside the building. Television coverage of the arson attacks on the police station was broadcast live throughout the world.
Minneapolis Third Precinct attacked by demonstrators protesting the police killing of George Floyd
Frey defended the lack of arrests for property damage and arson over the course of May 27 and 28 saying that his aim was to not further inflame the situation. With deployment of the Minnesota National Guard and State Troopers it appears as if they have taken charge of law-enforcement responsibility in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
By midday on May 29, there was an announcement that Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis officer shown in the video with his knee on the neck of George Floyd resulting in his death, had been taken into custody. The Hennepin County District Attorney Michael Freeman later announced that Chauvin was being charged with third degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.
Immediately, local and national activists said that the arrest of one officer was not enough to satisfy their demands for justice. The African American communities in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area are constantly reminding the public of the decades-long history of police brutality.
Within the charging document there is much to be concerned about as it relates to the potential case being brought to court against former police officer Chauvin by the prosecutors. The indictment alleges that Floyd did not die from suffocation. It claims that the victim had other health problems while having being intoxicated. These assertions are problematic because similar efforts are often carried out in other police killings in order to provide a legal angle for acquittal. (See this)
Many former and current law-enforcement officials in numerous interviews over various television networks have condemned the use of such a method of restraint seen in the video which immediately went viral. Nonetheless, there are thousands of African Americans and others who are victimized by police violence every year. In most situations, the police are not held accountable and remain employed in the public service.
Meanwhile property destruction and arson attacks spread to neighboring St. Paul on May 28 where at least 200 businesses were impacted. Some of the same chain stores attacked in Minneapolis suffered an identical fate in the other twin city.
A report on the situation published by CBS Minnesota said of events that:
“St. Paul was spared from the chaos Wednesday night (May 27), but that all changed Thursday. The St. Paul Police Department said more than 170 businesses were looted or damaged Thursday, and dozens of fires were set. But there were no serious injuries reported in the city. Fires continued to burn in the city early Friday morning, with the largest one at Big Top Liquor near Snelling and University avenues, nearby Allianz Field.”
Demonstrations Spread Across the U.S.
Protests soon erupted in many other cities where thousands have taken to the streets demanding an end to police violence against African Americans. In Louisville, Kentucky, 7 people were shot during the evening on May 28.
Minneapolis Rebellion after George Floyd police killing
The following night there were additional demonstrations taking place in the city. People are angered by the failure of the authorities in Louisville to file charges against the police officers that killed emergency medical technician Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African American woman, sleeping in her bed during a purportedly mistaken location raid in search of illegal drugs. There were no drugs in the apartment yet Taylor is dead at the hands of police.
According to a news report on events in Louisville there are:
“Groups of protesters demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, who was an African American woman killed in her apartment by police officers on March 13, are gathered on Jefferson and Sixth Street. Around 9 p.m., protesters pulled down the American and Kentucky flags in front of the Hall of Justice and set them ablaze. Moments later, some protesters threw objects at the building’s glass doors, more items were lit on fire and there were three loud bangs which went off. A group of more than 1,000 people were estimated to be gathering around the Hall of Justice where everything seems to be focused.”
Louisville demonstration demanding justice for Breonna Taylor
Demonstrations occurred in dozens of municipalities including Phoenix, New York City, Denver, Chicago, Memphis, Washington, D.C., Dallas and Detroit. In the city of Detroit thousands gathered at public safety headquarters downtown on the afternoon of Friday May 29. After listening to several speakers including City Council President Pro term Mary Sheffield, Charter Revision Commission member Joanna Underwood, Board of Police Commissioners Member Willie Burton, among others, the crowd began to march through downtown into the Midtown and Woodbridge District, chanting anti-racist and anti-police brutality slogans.
In Atlanta fires were set during demonstrations in the downtown area where police presence was extremely heavy. Later a small group gathered at the CNN Center where several people threw missiles and incendiary devices which broke windows. The police in riot gear launched teargas in an attempt to disperse the crowd.
The White House has largely been circumspect in regard to the nationwide unrest which has grown exponentially since May 26. President Donald Trump sent out a tweeted message during the early morning hours of May 29 suggesting that “looters” should be shot on sight. He later attempted to clean up the statement. However, the damage had already been done politically.
Trump is quite concerned with the deteriorating economic and social situation in the U.S. where 41 million people have applied for unemployment benefits since mid-March directly stemming from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the explosion in anti-racist protests where some are becoming more violent, the administration can only stoke fear and bigotry in an effort to build upon its existing base within the capitalist ruling class as well as significant sections of the white population which mistakenly view the nationally oppressed, immigrants and those harboring opinions differing from the president as their central enemies and adversaries.
Possible Outcome in the Present Conjuncture
The unrest in the U.S. has drawn the attention of the international community. Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile and the current chair of the United Nations Human Commission for Human Rights (UNCHR) made a statement on May 28 criticizing the police killing of George Floyd and other African Americans.
Bachelet said in a statement issued from the UNCHR offices that:
“This is the latest in a long line of killings of unarmed African Americans by U.S. police officers and members of the public. I am dismayed to have to add George Floyd’s name to that of Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and many other unarmed African Americans who have died over the years at the hands of the police — as well as people such as Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin who were killed by armed members of the public. The US authorities must take serious action to stop such killings, and to ensure justice is done when they do occur. Procedures must change, prevention systems must be put in place, and above all police officers who resort to excessive use of force should be charged and convicted for the crimes committed.”
In addition to the UNCHR, the African Union (AU), representing 55 member-states on the continent and its 1.2 billion people, weighed in as well with a statement which read:
“The Chairperson of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat strongly condemns the murder of George Floyd that occurred in the United States of America at the hands of law enforcement officers, and wishes to extend his deepest condolences to his family and loved ones. Recalling the historic Organization of Africa Unity (OAU) Resolution on Racial Discrimination in the United States of America made by African Heads of State and Government, at the OAU’s First Assembly Meeting held in Cairo, Egypt from 17 to 24 July 1964, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission firmly reaffirms and reiterates the African Union’s rejection of the continuing discriminatory practices against Black citizens of the United States of America. He further urges the authorities in the United States of America to intensify their efforts to ensure the total elimination of all forms of discrimination based on race or ethnic origin.”
These statements from both the UN and the AU reaffirm the legitimacy of the African American struggle for self-determination and full equality. Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik Shabazz) was present at the 1964 OAU Summit in July 1964 to lobby on behalf of the people of African descent in the U.S. His work in winning this resolution 56 years ago is a clear indication of the correctness of his position during the period.
National and international coordination of political forces is required in order to elevate the African American liberation movement in its efforts to secure the right to security and development unhindered by a racist system which is in rapid decline. As the economic crisis in the U.S. worsens the level of conflict and disorder will intensify requiring broader unity and solidarity aimed at ending national oppression and economic exploitation.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated
But my heart broke in a new way while watching the slow, agonized death of George Floyd, as for nine minutes a police officer kneeled on his neck, crushing his face into the pavement. (1)
I did not sleep that night. And as with so many others, it’s still there when I awake each morning.
Men being led to execution often call out for their mothers. Millions watching this video heard Floyd’s desperate cries for his mother.
The human heart has no defence against such cold-blooded injustice. Hearts around the planet are breaking for George Floyd.
Justice is a core value in the fabric of life: Even domestic animals treated unjustly will look at us in bewilderment.
Trappist monk Thomas Merton coined the phrase, “the unspeakable”. It is a void in the human heart. Empty of compassion, the vacuum fills with violence. It is what we saw in the officers who killed Floyd. (2)
It is also what we saw in the murder of JFK, orchestrated by the CIA. (3)
We cannot unsee what we witnessed in the Floyd video. This unspeakable murder is the only story that has broken through the Covid-19 headlines – showing that justice is as important as life itself.
Officials need to understand that the protests across America represent a core value of humanity: The need for justice that is embedded in the human heart.
The riots will continue until this understanding of our humanity is declared – and acted upon in an unprecedented and powerfully open way.
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Since the outbreak of COVID 19 criticism of China, by both Western political elites in the U.S. and U.K., has seen an upsurge. This intensification of rhetoric is reflected in the simplistic cold war hyperbole spun in the right-wing Western media. Here a simple dualistic script is presented where the forces of good do battle against evil.
This penmanship fails to comprehend that China has its own interests and fears. In a West where bashing China accumulates political virtue points, voices who do not follow this line are castigated as either nefarious or indoctrinated. In contrast, the Western audience is portrayed as an enlightened individual whose perspective on the world is untainted by mediated interests. As such, what is good for Western elites becomes transposed as a moral good for the rest of the world too.
The denial that China has a legitimate voice, with its own sense of justice vis-à-vis the Western ‘enlightened-mind’ lays the foundation for a rise in tensions and righteous indignation. As the moral basis is set hostility can be justified and supported by Western audiences. This Western civilization ‘jihad’ is nothing new. The ‘white man’s burden’ and the spreading of Christianity justified the horrors of colonialism while the doctrine of liberal human rights was used as a cloak for the looting of Iraq.
In the context of the current wave of anti-Chinese sentiment foreign contributors to CGTN (China Global Television Network) have, come under attack. I was recently mentioned in an article in the Daily Express that was following up on allegations by the British communications regulator Ofcom and questions raised by British MPs that CGTN was using ‘fake experts’ and propagandists to attack critics of the Chinese government.
Having first gone to China in 2004 I quickly became aware of a disconnect between China as it is versus its Western portrayal. For example, in the summer of 2007 before the Olympic games, I wondered a hutong in the center of Beijing. I saw with my own eyes’ squalid ramshackle huts and barefoot muddy faced children bereft of clean clothes. These areas were regenerated and this poverty has vanished from Chinese cities. Nevertheless, the response from the Western press was one of blanket condemnation that emphasized cultural destruction.
Likewise, the unprecedented speed and efficiency of the lockdown achieved in China was also gnarled into a tale of repression and incompetence. Yet, my participation of lockdown, in China, was one characterized by unity, compassion, and, as demonstrated by the waves of COVID 19 memes, humor in the face of adversity. Of course, these characteristics are also present in the West now. However, the difference is that the united front and banter of Westerners is not being branded as a consequence of propaganda as it was in China.
China is evidently not a paradise it has much to improve on. However, there is no lack of reporting on China’s negative side in the ‘Anglosphere’ press. What is missing is China’s point of view and how it justifies its actions from its own historical and civilizational vista. Addressing, these issues require brave introspection into our own civilizational contradictions which opens up painful cognitive dissonance on our part.
From the Chinese perspective the cry for human rights and democracy are disingenuous. They see a manifold of discrepancies where democracy works at the expense of national interests and where the levers of power are all too easily captured by U.S. and transnational capital. Dov Levin Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong has identified 62 American interventions in foreign elections between 1946 and 1989. Overall America’s favored candidates were simply those friendlier to U.S. interests. Bill Clinton’s funneling of money in support of Yeltsin and the chaos that saw living standards and life expectancy plummet is a poignant lesson to Chinese citizens.
When socialist governments have been elected CIA coups such as those which brought Chile’s Pinochet to power in 1973 have been employed. Worse is the use of war justified through spreading democracy and human rights. The contradiction of the Western ‘force of the willing’ illegally invading Iraq from autocratic Saudi Arabia is obvious. As conspicuous as it was our electorates proved impotent in preventing one of the worst human rights disasters of this century. These historical geopolitical facts are also glaringly unmistakable to Chinese citizens who in light of this reality combined with the tremendous progress made in development, largely accept their political-economic system.
One could argue that the closed nature of the Chinese media precludes Chinese citizens from understanding the full picture. However, to assume that the West knows more about China than the Chinese people themselves is not only belittling, it’s factually wrong too. Strikingly, the Chinese understand vastly more about the occident than the Westerner knows about the orient. In China, lessons in English and Western culture are compulsory even at universities; Western media is avidly consumed and international Chinese tourists are now ubiquitous.
We in the West must be humble enough to question the limits of our world-view that is mediated largely through a mass media predominantly in the hands of a small business oligarchy.
I have had articles published by both the Western and Chinese media but only contributions to Chinese media have ever produced claims of ‘fake expert’ and ‘propagandist’. While I’m a keen Sinologist the vastness of the subject leads me to reject the label expert. Nevertheless, I humbly offer my writing with sincerity from a position forged from direct experience combined with academic study. Therefore, I oppose the crude propagandist label which conjures up outdated images of McCarthyism.
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Trump’s anti-Beijing reelection strategy turned most Americans into China haters by the power of propaganda, along with greatly damaging the bilateral relationship.
His unacceptable China bashing risks rupturing relations if his regime continues its present path — policies hostile to world peace, stability, and cooperative relations with other countries, greatly influenced by hardliners surrounding him.
Worst still, his anti-China agenda risks direct confrontation by accident or design, a clash between two nuclear powers if he pushes things too far.
His latest blow to bilateral relations came Friday afternoon, saying:
“I am directing my (regime) begin the process of eliminating policy exemptions that give Hong Kong different and special treatment,” adding:
“My announcement today will affect the full range of agreements that we have with Hong Kong, from our extradition treaty, to our export controls and technologies.”
“We will take action to revoke Hong Kong’s preferential treatment as a separate customs and travel territory from the rest of China.”
He intends to unilaterally impose illegal sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials “directly or indirectly involved in eroding Hong Kong’s autonom (sic)” — ignoring that the city is sovereign Chinese, not US, territory.
He stopped short of explaining specific steps to be taken. When asked, a White House spokesperson declined to provide information on what may be planned.
Trump did say that he’d instruct his “presidential working group on financial markets to study the different practices of Chinese companies listed on the US financial markets” — on the phony pretext of protecting American investors.
He also barred Chinese scientists and researchers allegedly connected to what he called Beijing’s “military-civil fusion strategy” from entering the US.
Henceforth, his regime’s hostile policies toward China will apply to Hong Kong — details to follow at a later time.
His Friday remarks included nothing about the Sino/US trade deal, weakened by his regime’s war by other means on China.
Notably in recent weeks, Beijing has been buying Brazilian soybeans, lower amounts from the US.
Its authorities have lots of ways to retaliate against unacceptable US actions.
In the last 48 hours, Trump’s tweet-storm included nothing about US/China relations.
Responding to his remarks, China’s Global Times said the following:
His “press conference was full of lies. (He) arbitrarily fabricated the imaginary changes that the national security legislation for Hong Kong might bring about to the city,” adding:
“He peddled nonsense, saying that China will only have ‘one country, one system,’ while ignoring the huge differences in political systems, governance models, and social customs between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong.”
In terminating his regime’s relationship with the WHO, he falsely claimed it’s because “China has total control,” a baseless accusation.
There’s plenty about the organization to criticize, ignored in his remarks.
According to the US Chamber of Commerce, over 1,200 US companies, including major Wall Street banks, operate in Hong Kong or do business with the city.
“(O)ver 800 (have) either regional offices or headquarters” there.
They contribute tens of billions of dollars to the US economy annually.
The Trump regime is unlikely to institute policies that negatively affect their interests — other than designated high-tech firms, part of its policy to try undermining Beijing’s technological development.
China is the leading US export market, other than Canada and Mexico combined under the USMCA (new NAFTA) trade deal.
US exports to China support around 1.1 million American jobs, according to the US-China Business Council (USCBC).
Bilateral trade is key for both countries. Disrupting it would worsen current economic collapse conditions.
According to USCBC, US exports to China increased by 73% in the last decade — compared to a 57% increase with the rest of the world community.
Growing bilateral friction will disrupt bilateral trade if things are pushed too far.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhou Lijian said Beijing will “take all necessary measures to hit back if US insists on harming (its) interests, adding:
“The US trade surplus with Hong Kong has accumulated to 297 billion US dollars in the past decade.”
“A safe, stable and prosperous Hong Kong is in the interests of the United States.”
Separately, Zhao slammed the Trump regime’s” demand for a Security Council video conference on China’s new national security law, saying:
“This is utter nonsense and making trouble out of nothing,” adding:
The Trump regime must “immediately stop (its) meaningless political maneuvers” going nowhere.
“The US side blatantly interfered in China’s internal affairs and wantonly undermined the basic norms of international relations by requesting a meeting on a Hong Kong-related issue at the UN Security Council.”
“China has all the reasons to firmly oppose it and their attempts are doomed to fail.”
The US is an unparalleled global menace, an aggressor state, a rogue state, a fantasy democracy state, a human and civil rights abusing state.
America is its own worst enemy, a nation in decline because of its war on humanity at home and abroad and unwillingness to change.
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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.”
Listening to Mr. Wang was therefore a refreshing reminder that everything really isn’t as bad as Trump says that it is.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held an impressive press conference on Sunday where he answered questions about a wide variety of topics from the dozens of journalists that were present. The insight that he shared was a reassuring reminder that there exists an alternative to the US’ gloomy predictions about the future. American officials and opinion makers have painted a bleak picture of the post-coronavirus world, pushing the narrative that globalization is doomed and everything is in chaos.
That’s not an accurate depiction of reality, however, as Mr. Wang proved during his press conference. There are no credible reasons for doubting the viability of one of the key drivers of contemporary globalization processes, the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), seeing as how this worldwide series of projects is still active, even if recent developments had a temporary but limited impact on some of them. To the contrary, globalization processes will likely accelerate as the world emerges victorious over the virus, not recede into the dustbin of history.
For instance, China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea are gradually reopening their economies, both in general and with one another, which creates a firm foundation upon which to restore globalization once the crisis finally ends. Should these three be successful in concluding the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with ASEAN, Australia, and New Zealand by the end of the year like Mr. Wang plans, then a significant share of the global economy will be back in operation and arguably stronger than even before the pandemic.
The American-propagated notion that chaos is inevitable was also debunked the Chinese Foreign Minister. It’s the US’ false claims about China’s alleged responsibility for the pandemic and its meddling in China’s internal affairs in Hong Kong and Taiwan that are responsible for pushing the two countries to the brink of a NewColdWar. If it wasn’t for this opportunistic hybrid campaign against the People’s Republic, there wouldn’t be any grounds for even countenancing global chaos during the moment when the world needs to stick together most.
China’s top diplomat listed off numerous examples of the counter-coronavirus cooperation that his country has engaged in with its counterparts. These facts disprove the US’ manufactured narrative that International Relations are presently in a state of uncertainty. It’s true that there have been some interruptions, but what Mr. Wang described as China’s “cloud diplomacy” of videoconferences and the like have kept relations stable with the rest of the world except for the US, which isn’t receptive to China’s friendly outreaches for political reasons.
To obtain a deeper appreciation for the significance of Sunday’s press conference, it’s important to compare it to Trump’s typical interactions with the media. The American President is prone to wildly gesticulating, raising his voice, insulting his interlocutors, and spreading fear about a totally false Chinese conspiracy. Mr. Wang, meanwhile, was exceptionally calm at all times, maintained his professional composure, respected the journalists who were present, and imbued the world with optimism for the future.
These differences aren’t just stylistic and attributable to each respective individual, but characteristic of the states that they represent. America has a reputation for aggression and diplomatic rudeness, which are perfectly embodied by Trump, whereas China’s reputation is of the peace and politeness associated with Mr. Wang. In addition, the US is always looking for an external enemy to compete with, ergo its fake news information warfare campaign against China, while China only seeks win-win engagements, hence its optimism.
Listening to Mr. Wang was therefore a refreshing reminder that everything really isn’t as bad as Trump says that it is. It’s heartbreaking that people have died from COVID-19, but it’s nevertheless reassuring to know that the world is slowly but surely going to emerge from this unprecedented crisis stronger than ever, unlike what Trump has fearmongered about. What the world needs right now is a positive vision of the future, not a negative one, which is why it’s so important to listen to what China has to say instead of falling for the US’ scary narratives.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
On May 6th, President Trump vetoed a war powers bill specifying that he must ask Congress for authorization to use military force against Iran. Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign of deadly sanctions and threats of war against Iran has seen no let-up, even as the U.S., Iran and the whole world desperately need to set aside our conflicts to face down the common danger of the Covid-19 pandemic.
So what is it about Iran that makes it such a target of hostility for Trump and the neocons? There are many repressive regimes in the world, and many of them are close U.S. allies, so this policy is clearly not based on an objective assessment that Iran is more repressive than Egypt, Saudi Arabia or other monarchies in the Persian Gulf.
The Trump administration claims that its “maximum pressure” sanctions and threats of war against Iran are based on the danger that Iran will develop nuclear weapons. But after decades of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and despite the U.S.’s politicization of the IAEA, the Agency has repeatedly confirmed that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
If Iran ever did any preliminary research on nuclear weapons, it was probably during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when the U.S. and its allies helped Iraq to make and use chemical weapons that killed up to 100,000 Iranians. A 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, the IAEA’s 2015 “Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues” and decades of IAEA inspections have examined and resolved every scrap of false evidence of a nuclear weapons program presented or fabricated by the CIA and its allies.
If, despite all the evidence, U.S. policymakers still fear that Iran could develop nuclear weapons, then adhering to the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA), keeping Iran inside the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and ensuring ongoing access by IAEA inspectors would provide greater security than abandoning the deal.
As with Bush’s false WMD claims about Iraq in 2003, Trump’s real goal is not nuclear non-proliferation but regime change. After 40 years of failed sanctions and hostility, Trump and a cabal of U.S. warhawks still cling to the vain hope that a tanking economy and widespread suffering in Iran will lead to a popular uprising or make it vulnerable to another U.S.-backed coup or invasion.
United Against a Nuclear Iran and the Counter Extremism Project
One of the key organizations promoting and pushing hostility towards Iran is a shadowy group called United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI). Founded in 2008, it was expanded and reorganized in 2014 under the umbrella of the Counter Extremism Project United (CEPU) to broaden its attacks on Iran and divert U.S. policymakers’ attention away from the role of Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other U.S. allies in spreading violence, extremism and chaos in the greater Middle East.
UANI acts as a private enforcer of U.S. sanctions by keeping a “business registry” of hundreds of companies all over the world—from Adidas to Zurich Financial Services—that trade with or are considering trading with Iran. UANI hounds these companies by naming and shaming them, issuing reports for the media, and urging the Office of Foreign Assets Control to impose fines and sanctions. It also keeps a checklist of companies that have signed a declaration certifying they do not conduct business in or with Iran.
Proving how little they care about the Iranian people, UANI even targets pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical-device corporations—includingBayer, Merck, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Abbott Laboratories—that have been granted special U.S. humanitarian aid licenses.
Where does UANI get its funds?
UANI was founded by three former U.S. officials, Dennis Ross, Richard Holbrooke and Mark Wallace. In 2013, it still had a modest budget of $1.7 million, nearly 80% coming from two American billionaires with strong ties to Israel and the Republican Party: $843,000 from precious metals investorThomas Kaplanand $500,000 from casino owner Sheldon Adelson. Wallace and other UANI staff have also worked for Kaplan’s investment firms, and he remains a key funder and advocate for UANI and its affiliated groups.
In 2014, UANI split into two entities: the original UANI and the Green Light Project, which does business as the Counter Extremism Project. Both entities are under the umbrella of and funded by a third, Counter Extremism Project United (CEPU). This permits the organization to brand its fundraising as being for the Counter Extremism Project, even though it still regrants a third of its funds to UANI.
CEO Mark Wallace, Executive Director David Ibsen and other staff work for all three groups in their shared offices in Grand Central Tower in New York. In 2018, Wallace drew a combined salary of $750,000 from all three entities, while Ibsen’s combined salary was $512,126.
In recent years, the revenues for the umbrella group, CEPU, have mushroomed, reaching $22 million in 2017. CEPU is secretive about the sources of this money. But investigative journalist Eli Clifton, who starting looking into UANI in 2014 when it was sued for defamation by a Greek ship owner it accused of violating sanctions on Iran, has found evidence suggesting financial ties with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
That is certainly what hacked emails between CEPU staff, an Emirati official and a Saudi lobbyist imply. In September 2014, CEPU’s president Frances Townsend emailed the UAE Ambassador to the U.S. to solicit the UAE’s support and propose that it host and fund a CEPU forum in Abu Dhabi.
Four months later, Townsend emailed again to thank him, writing, “And many thanks for your and Richard Mintz’ (UAE lobbyist) ongoing support of the CEP effort!” UANI fundraiser Thomas Kaplan has formed a close relationship with Emirati ruler Bin Zayed, and visited the UAE at least 24 times. In 2019, he gushed to an interviewer that the UAE and its despotic rulers “are my closest partners in more parts of my life than anyone else other than my wife.”
Another email from Saudi lobbyist and former Senator Norm Coleman to the Emirati Ambassador about CEPU’s tax status implied that the Saudis and Emiratis were both involved in its funding, which would mean that CEPU may be violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act by failing to register as a Saudi or Emirati agent in the U.S.
Ben Freeman of the Center for International Policy has documented the dangerously unaccountable and covert expansion of the influence of foreign governments and military-industrial interests over U.S. foreign policy in recent years, in which registered lobbyists are only the “tip of the iceberg” when it comes to foreign influence. Eli Clifton calls UANI, “a fantastic case study and maybe a microcosm of the ways in which American foreign policy is actually influenced and implemented.”
CEPU and UANI’s staff and advisory boards are stocked with Republicans, neoconservatives and warhawks, many of whom earn lavish salaries and consulting fees. In the two years before President Trump appointed John Bolton as his National Security Advisor, CEPU paid Bolton $240,000 in consulting fees. Bolton, who openly advocates war with Iran, was instrumental in getting the Trump administration to withdraw from the nuclear deal.
UANI also enlists Democrats to try to give the group broader, bipartisan credibility. The chair of UANI’s board is former Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, who was known as the most pro-Zionist member of the Senate. A more moderate Democrat on UANI’s board is former New Mexico governor and UN ambassador Bill Richardson.
Norman Roule, a CIA veteran who was the National Intelligence Manager for Iran throughout the Obama administration was paid $366,000 in consulting fees by CEPU in 2018. Soon after the brutal Saudi assassination of journalist Jamal Khassoghi, Roule and UANI fundraiser Thomas Kaplan met with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, and Roule then played a leading role in articles and on the talk-show circuit whitewashing Bin Salman’s repression and talking up his superficial “reforms” of Saudi society.
More recently, amid a growing outcry from Congress, the UN and the European Union to ease U.S. sanctions on Iran during the pandemic, UANI chairman Joe Lieberman, CEPU president Frances Townsend and CEO Mark Wallace signed a letter to Trump that falsely claimed, “U.S. sanctions neither prevent nor target the supply of food, medicine or medical devices to Iran,” and begged him not to relax his murderous sanctions because of COVID-19. This was too much for Norman Roule, who tossed out his UANI script and told the Nation, “the international community should do everything it can to enable the Iranian people to obtain access to medical supplies and equipment.”
Two Israeli shell companies to whom CEPU and UANI have paid millions of dollars in “consulting fees” raise even more troubling questions. CEPU has paid over $500,000 to Darlink, located near Tel Aviv, while UANI paid at least $1.5 million to Grove Business Consulting in Hod Hasharon, about 10% of its revenues from 2016 to 2018. Neither firm seems to really exist, but Grove’s address on UANI’s IRS filings appears in the Panama Papers as that of Dr. Gideon Ginossar, an officer of an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands that defaulted on its creditors in 2010.
Selling a Corrupted Picture to U.S. Policymakers
UANI’s parent group, Counter Extremism Project United, presents itself as dedicated to countering all forms of extremism. But in practice, it is predictably selective in its targets, demonizing Iran and its allies while turning a blind eye to other countries with more credible links to extremism and terrorism.
UANI supports accusations by Trump and U.S. warhawks that Iran is “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism,” based mainly on its support for the Lebanese Shiite political party Hezbollah, whose militia defends southern Lebanon against Israel and fights in Syria as an ally of the government.
But Iran placed UANI on its own list of terrorist groups in 2019 after Mark Wallace and UANI hosted a meeting at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York that was mainly attended by supporters of the Mujahedin-e-Kalqh (MEK). The MEK is a group that the U.S. government itself listed as a terrorist organization until 2012 and which is still committed to the violent overthrow of the government in Iran – preferably by persuading the U.S. and its allies to do it for them. UANI tried to distance itself from the meeting after the fact, but the published program listed UANI as the event organizer.
On the other hand, there are two countries where CEPU and UANI seem strangely unable to find any links to extremism or terrorism at all, and they are the very countries that appear to be funding their operations, lavish salaries and shadowy “consulting fees”: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Many Americans are still demanding a public investigation into Saudi Arabia’s role in the crimes of September 11th. In a court case against Saudi Arabia brought by 9/11 victims’ families, the FBI recently revealed that a Saudi Embassy official, Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, provided crucial support to two of the hijackers. Brett Eagleson, a spokesman for the families whose father was killed on September 11th, told Yahoo News, “(This) demonstrates there was a hierarchy of command that’s coming from the Saudi Embassy to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs [in Los Angeles] to the hijackers.”
The global spread of the Wahhabi version of Islam that unleashed and fueled Al Qaeda, ISIS and other violent Muslim extremist groups has been driven primarily by Saudi Arabia, which has built and funded Wahhabi schools and mosques all over the world. That includes the King Fahd Mosque in Los Angeles that the two 9/11 hijackers attended.
It is also well documented that Saudi Arabia has been the largest funder and arms supplier for the Al Qaeda-led forces that have destroyed Syria since 2011, including CIA-brokered shipments of thousands of tons of weapons from Benghazi in Libya and at least eight countries in Eastern Europe. The UAE also supplied arms funding to Al Qaeda-allied rebels in Syria between 2012 and 2016, and the Saudi and UAE roles have now been reversed in Libya, where the UAE is the main supplier of thousands of tons of weapons to General Haftar’s rebel forces. In Yemen, both the Saudis and Emiratis have committed war crimes. The Saudi and Emirati air forces have bombed schools, clinics, weddings and school buses, while the Emiratis tortured detainees in 18 secret prisons in Yemen.
But United Against a Nuclear Iran and Counter Extremism Project have redacted all of this from the one-sided worldview they offer to U.S. policymakers and the American corporate media. While they demonize Iran, Qatar, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood as extremists and terrorists, they depict Saudi Arabia and the UAE exclusively as victims of terrorism and allies in U.S.-led “counterterrorism” campaigns, never as sponsors of extremism and terrorism or perpetrators of war crimes.
The message of these groups dedicated to “countering extremism” is clear and none too subtle: Saudi Arabia and the UAE are always U.S. allies and victims of extremism, never a problem or a source of danger, violence or chaos. The country we should all be worrying about is – you guessed it – Iran. You couldn’t pay for propaganda like this! But on the other hand, if you’re Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates and you have greedy, corrupt Americans knocking on your door eager to sell their loyalty, maybe you can.
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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.
“This was the first man to break a window at autozone.
A move that started the string of looting and damage to businesses. He is seen wearing all black and carrying an umbrella to conceal the hammer he is holding in the same hand.
No one knew this man, he didn’t protest, when confronted he ran the other way.
And by the looks of it- his boots- are military grade. Meaning this man is either in some form or militia or he is WITH THE POLICE.”
The issue of Police Provocateurs is currently in the news following the police murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd.
This video was first produced in 2007
Today are thoughts are with the family and friends of George Floyd.
Michel Chossudovsky. May 28, 2020
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Peaceful protesters stop police provocateurs from starting a riot at the Stop the SPP protests in Montebello Quebec in 2007.
“About 1,200 protesters were in the small resort town near Ottawa as Prime Minister Stephen Harper met with U.S. President George W. Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon at a two-day summit to discuss issues under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America pact (SPP).
The police admitted they were their officers.”
CEP President Dave Coles confronts men with rocks and sticks.
In the footage, three burly men with bandanas and other covers over their faces push through protesters toward a line of riot police.
One of the men has a rock in his hand.
As they move forward, Coles and other union leaders dressed in suits order the men to put the rock down and leave, accuse them of being police agents provocateurs, and try unsuccessfully to unmask them.
About 1,200 protesters were in the small resort town near Ottawa as Prime Minister Stephen Harper met with U.S. President George W. Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon at a two-day summit to discuss issues under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America pact.
The video titled Stop SPP Protest— Union Leader stops provocateurs, posted on YouTube Tuesday,was shown at a news conference held Wednesday in Ottawa by protest organizers, including Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, who appears in the video.
In the footage filmed Monday afternoon, three burly men with bandanas and other covers over their faces push through protesters toward a line of riot police. One of the men has a rock in his hand.
As they move forward, Coles and other union leaders dressed in suits order the men to put the rock down and leave, accuse them of being police agents provocateurs, and try unsuccessfully to unmask them.
In the end, they squeeze behind the police line, where they are calmly handcuffed.
“The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union believes that the security force at Montebello were ordered to infiltrate our peaceful assembly and to provoke incidents,” Coles told reporters. “I think the evidence that we’ve shown you today reinforces the view.”
Colesshowed photographs of themasked men’sand police officers’boots taken during the handcuffing, in which they appear to have identical tread patterns on their soles.
He also questioned whyother activistshave been unable to identify the three men whose images have been broadcast worldwide and demanded to know who the masked men were.
“Do they have any connection to the Quebec police force or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or are they part of some other security force that was at Montebello?”Coles asked, adding that he wants to know how the Prime Minister’s Office was involved in security during the protests.
He suggested that the government might want to provoke violence in order justify its security budget for the summit and discredit protesters.
“They want to defuse our questions … by trying to make it look like some radical group trying to create a confrontation,” he said.
The RCMP has refused to comment, while Quebec’s provincial force has flatly denied that its officers were involved in the incident.
It said it is not releasing any names as no charges were laid.
Retired police officer believes masked men were cops
Meanwhile, a retired Ottawa police officer who was formerly in charge of overseeing demonstrations for the force said he questions who the masked men really are, after viewing the video.
“Were they legitimate protesters? I don’t think so,” said Doug Kirkland.
“Well, if they weren’t police, I think they might well have been working in the best interests of police.”
He added that if the situation was as it appeared, he did not approve of the tactic. “It’s pretty close to baiting,” he said.
On Wednesday, the mayor of Montebello thanked police and protesters, praising the fact that there wasn’t a single report of damage during the two-day summit.
The Security and Prosperity Partnership pact, signed in 2005,is intended to forge closer trade and security links between the countries.
Opponents say negotiations about the agreement are secretive and undemocratic, and the treaty itself erodes Canada’s control over its natural resources, security and defence.
U.S. President Donald Trump is losing interest in the trade deal he made with China, according to his economic adviser, and the reason could be that as we progress further into the election season, fixing relations with China is less important than distracting the population from his failure to handle and contain the coronavirus pandemic. The trade deal between the U.S. and China is not that important anymore for Trump, according to Larry Kudlow, director of the U.S. National Economic Council and assistant to the president for economic affairs, who also said the trade agreement reached in January remains unchanged for the time being, but Trump would observe the degree of compliance by Beijing with its obligations.
Previously, the Trump administration did not hide that the trade agreement with China plays a crucial political role for Trump’s re-election. Efforts made by the U.S. President in 2019 to get the best deal for the U.S. led to the signing of “Phase 1” of the agreement in January, in which China pledged to increase U.S. goods imports by $200 billion in two years, compared to the 2017 level, and the U.S., in turn, abolished a series of tariff duties.
Under the terms of the agreement, negotiations on Phase 2 should proceed depending on how Phase 1 of the agreement is implemented. Many U.S. experts feared that due to the coronavirus pandemic, China would not be able to fulfill its obligations to purchase American products. The U.S. Department of Agriculture released data that revealed the sales of corn and pork to China increased eight times compared to the 2017 level, cotton increased three times over the same year, and the supply of soy to China increased by a third.
Data from S&P Global Market Intelligence indicated that U.S. exports to China were $21.2 billion lower in the first quarter than previously planned, with the statistics being mainly hampered by sources of energy, especially liquefied natural gas. In order to strictly fulfil all conditions in terms of price volume, and taking into account the fall in oil prices, China would have to buy around three million barrels of oil per day from the U.S., which would be equal to the entire volume of daily U.S. oil exports, a task that seems impossible even under normal conditions, let alone during a sharp drop in economic activity.
Despite the continuing deterioration in relations between the two countries, China still emphasizes its commitment in fulfilling its obligations. Even in Li Keqiang’s annual report, number two in the country’s Communist Party Politburo, it states that China will do its best to consistently implement Phase 1 of the agreement. The Chinese official’s report calls for private business structures to also be guided by his indications. Keeping in mind that this year some of the most important targets, including GDP growth, were not mentioned in the report, it did however detail that the trade agreement between China and the U.S. can send a clear signal about the great importance that the Chinese authorities attach to the fulfilment of their obligations.
Still, Trump’s economic adviser said the deal is no longer of great importance to the U.S. president as he is reportedly very angry with China over the coronavirus pandemic and other problems. Everyone remembers the importance of the trade agreement for Trump and some American experts have even feared that the president would make a deal that would be unfavorable to the U.S. just for the sake of formally signing an agreement with China.
However, it is likely that Trump’s inconsistent attitude is only during this re-election cycle and that relations could be more normalized if Trump is re-elected. This does not discount though that this makes Trump very volatile and unpredictable. Trump’s shift in position is now linked to domestic economic and health problems. At the same time, the trade war with China has failed to achieve Trump’s goals to return production and industry to the U.S. and reduce trade imbalances.
The coronavirus pandemic also further exacerbated existing problems and, as a result, the U.S. economy is in recession. China remains committed to strict implementation of the First Phase of the agreement and is ready to take practical steps to increase the acquisition of relevant assets in the U.S., even with the difficult epidemiological situation. The trade deficit with China continues to widen and Trump’s popularity is beginning to fall, even if only slightly, which makes the U.S. president want to shift the blame to others to save his popularity and create new topics of discussion away from his own failure of containing the pandemic.
The economic situation in the U.S. and the significant changes in the world have made Washington very nervous, especially as the U.S. is the most affected country by the coronavirus with more than 1.7 million infected and 100,000 dead, according to Johns Hopkins University. This is also devastating as unemployment in the U.S. this year can reach a peak of 25%, according to the head of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. For this reason, Trump must focus attention towards China’s alleged responsibility for the pandemic instead of amending trade relations.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
The coup d’état carried out in Bolivia was the starting point for a major wave of social, political and economic setbacks in the country. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, with very high poverty rates, however, during the years of Evo Morales, the country’s growth was enormous, reaching the point of being the South American country with the greatest economic growth. The seizure of power by the coup d’état represented the return of the worst growth rates, in addition to a huge escalation of violence against indigenous populations – extremely respected previously by Evo Morales – and gigantic corruption scandals.
Bolivia’s interim president, Jeanine Añez, recently proved the nature behind the new government by being indicted in a lawsuit. Añez and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Karen Longaric, were the first people summoned to provide information for a current investigation. The charge against both is of involvement in corruption networks during the purchase of ventilators and other medical supplies to – supposedly – fight the pandemic.
The corruption scandal in Bolivia started a few weeks ago, when health professionals reported that the Spanish ventilators acquired by the Bolivian State were of low quality and unfit for hospital use with the purpose of facing a pandemic. According to official sources, the Bolivian government has spent more than $ 27,000 on each device (about 170 devices), while domestic producers (Bolivians) charge about $ 1,000.
“This investigation will summon Jeanine Áñez, Longaric and other officials involved in this purchase that has become theft of the pockets of the entire Bolivian people,” lawmaker Édgar Montaño told reporters.
According to the parliamentarian, Áñez must acknowledge that she knew all the details of the agreement, which she herself had ordered, while Longaric must explain why no action was taken after the Bolivian consul in Barcelona sent a report with the details of the contract. It is also worth remembering that, on Wednesday (May 20), Bolivia’s Minister of Health, Marcelo Navajas, was arrested and dismissed from office on suspicion of involvement in the corruption scandal.
As investigations progress, the situation becomes increasingly serious for Bolivian domestic politics, as major corruption schemes and illicit deals are discovered, revealed, and meticulously used as political weapons in party disputes within the country. Some people and groups that support the legitimate Bolivian president, Evo Morales, are innocently celebrating the performance of the Bolivian Parliament “against the coup”, but, in fact, there is no reason to celebrate so far.
If, on the one hand, there is something positive in the fact that the illicit activities of the coup government are being exposed, on the other, the central objective of the coup is being accomplished: the intention of the groups that financed and supported the overthrow of Morales was never to put Jeanine Añez (or any other politician) in power, but to completely destabilize the Bolivian State, creating a scenario of absolute political chaos, with total institutional bankruptcy, thus facilitating the transformation of Bolivia into a land of foreign interference.
In fact, we can predict that from now on it is likely that the next presidents of Bolivia, be they left or right (terms absolutely outdated and geopolitically irrelevant), will fall in succession, without completing their mandates and the country’s command will remain, thus, vulnerable and without a central guardian of law and order. Within the chaotic scenario, the irregular action of external agents and foreign meddling in Bolivia will be simpler and, in addition to structural problems such as poverty and hunger, Bolivians would have to deal with a situation of total subordination to foreign powers – which it did not exist in the time of Morales, when the country tried to chart a sovereign and independent way, besides achieving diverse progress in many social indices.
What now happens in Bolivia can also be seen when we analyze several previous experiences. Countries victimized by the so-called “colorful revolutions” – hybrid wars disguised under the mask of democratic revolutions – tend to be characterized after the outcome of such “revolutions” by the establishment of true “zombie states”, which consist of nothing more than innocuous institutions and without any strength to deal with the real problems of their countries.
With the presidential election situation still uncertain in the midst of the pandemic – the Executive Branch and the Judiciary made different decisions and, amid institutional chaos, nothing is yet fully defined – the future of the Bolivian government is really unknown, but the scenario is very pessimistic, with few expectations of overcoming the crisis. The tendency is for Jeanine to fall and, after her, the next president will also not fulfill his mandate completely. In contemporary hybrid warfare, attacks are continuous and “colorful revolutions” tend to be permanent.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
On May 28th 2018, the organizers of that year’s violent failed coup attempt executed a carefully planned, well coordinated attack to destroy the pro-government Sandinista radio station Nueva Radio Ya. During the attack, opposition gunmen fired on firefighters and police officers trying to reach the scene of the fire, wounding five police officers and killing police officer Douglas José Mendiolas Viales.
The attack involved inflammatory false reports broadcast by the opposition propaganda outlet 100% Noticias, under that television channel’s director Miguel Mora. It also involved coordinated roadblocks aimed both at preventing the Nueva Radio Ya personnel from escaping and at preventing help from the authorities reaching the radio.
The testimonies of the Nueva Radio Ya journalists who survived the attack categorically expose the falsity and cynicism of Western media coverage of the events during the violent opposition attempt to overthrow Nicaragua’s sandinista government in 2018.
In particular, their testimony:
exposes the lie that the opposition protests during the crisis in 2018 were peaceful, when the evidence is incontestable that groups of protesters consistently inflicted deliberate lethal violence from the outset;
categorically confirms that the protests were not spontaneous but in fact part of a carefully planned and well financed strategy of violent disruption and attrition to forces the government of President Ortega to resign;
constitutes yet another case confirming that all the international human rights organizations, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Inter American Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International, among others, negligently failed to interview victims of opposition violence, but still falsely and cynically reported that the opposition organized protests in 2018 were peaceful;
demonstrates the hypocrisy of Western organizations advocating freedom of speech who either failed to condemn the attack intended to destroy a popular radio station or else, defended opposition media that helped provoke and the violence as well as seeking mendaciously to attribute it all to the police and sandinista supporters, some, like the US Committee for the Protection of Journalists, cynically awarding a prize to the opposition coup supporters who incited the attack on Nueva Radio Ya.
The interviews with journalists of Nueva Radio Ya who experienced the attack on May 28th 2018 are available here:
“Why did they burn us down? Because we are a radio with Sandinista principles and a vocation to serve the people. We address everyone’s priorities and needs.
“…it took eight months for them to create the conditions they needed to burn down the radio, by repeatedly saying we were the official voice of the Sandinista Front, that we made fun of ordinary people, that we attacked sexual diversity a lot, which is not true at all.
And they created this huge snowball of fake opinion to justify what they had planned in advance on May 28, 2018, to burn us down. They created so much “fake news”, so many lies around our operation and all they wanted was to justify the burning of the radio…
“We are going through a difficult situation right now again with another economic blockade because now the Nicaraguan Organization of Advertising Agencies, ONAP, has directly told its advertising agencies not to advertise on our radio because they say we are a government radio station, so many lies like that are told about us and this has affected us…”
“They attacked us five times. The cruelest attacks were on April 20th, May 28th and May 30th…
“About twenty-one of us were there on the morning of May 28, 2018. The smoke was advancing inside. It was becoming very difficult to breathe in the whole reception area and along the corridor and the broadcasting area, our cabin, our controller was using a wet T-shirt to be able to breathe because the smoke was so harmful.
“In any case, here, we continue to work with our sights set on the future and also to support the Christian Socialist and Solidarity model developed by the Government of Reconciliation and National Unity presided over by Comandante Daniel Ortega and Compañera Rosario Murillo…
“All those hospitals that were burned down and set on fire and looted, all the Casas Maternas that were damaged and stripped of everything, all that has already been rebuilt because it is easy to destroy, but only people with consciousness of love and service to others can rebuild as the Sandinista government has done after the failed coup attempt in Nicaragua.”
“Tu Nueva Radio Ya, since its inception, has always represented the interests of our people. It has always been on the side of our people in difficult moments and also in happy moments. But even more so when a response is required. That’s why Tu Nueva Radio Ya, since its creation in 1990, has always held the first place in audience approval and that’s why big business has blocked us financially because even though their advertising may be successful on Tu Nueva Radio Ya, they simply don’t give it to us because we represent the Nicaraguan people and because we are Sandinista…
“…they set out to burn all of us to death, more than twenty-two workers who were there, unarmed, and we were going to burn to death. That was the intention. And beyond that, also to silence the voice of the people. Because Tu Nueva Radio Ya always had its microphones open to everyone in difficult political, economic, and social situations of all kinds, Tu Nueva Radio Ya has always been present, including all through 1990 to 2006t, when the People’s conquests were reversed and the neoliberal model came with its fiercest claws, privatizing education and health.
“…they were trying to kill off the collective of Tu Nueva Radio Ya, to destroy both the people who were inside the radio and the infrastructure with the intention of silencing the truth because that is how it is. The truth is on our side and we are not going to stop telling it.”
“The first attack against the radio happened on April 21st. From that first attack until May 28th, the situation was very difficult for us. There was quite a lot of pressure. Day by day there was a worry about what would happen to us inside the radio and if there was a positive experience in the midst of the negative ones, it was that after April 21st when we were first attacked, all the radio personnel came together more, became more united. We saw the radio as a family so that all of us should feel more together.
On May 28th in the morning as always we were under siege. There was the usual tension, mortar bombs, Molotov cocktails, but it was around the morning that the strong attack on Tu Nueva Radio Ya really began. We agreed to lock up, the lights were put out in the radio lobby, all the lights were out. Only the cabin lights were on so we could do our job and broadcast what was happening.
They came at us throwing the Molotov cocktails, firing a lot of mortar rounds. They attacked us from the front and from the east side of the radio, and it was an incredible shock. Among the radio workers quite a few women workers were crying, and I remember that during the time of the attack it was difficult to move or even to be able to breathe because there was a fire inside the radio offices.”
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This article was originally published in Spanish on Tortilla con Sal.
All images in this article are from TCS unless otherwise stated
In less than three-and-a-half years in office, Trump oversaw the Great GOP 2017 tax cut heist.
It handed corporate America and high-net-worth individuals a multi-billion dollar bonanza of enhanced wealth — followed this year by what I call 9/11 2.0, economic collapse triggered by COVID-19 lockdowns.
Along with letting dominant US corporate giants consolidate to greater size and market power, it includes an escalated great wealth transfer from ordinary Americans to privileged ones.
The scheme has been ongoing in the US (and West) for decades, notably since the neoliberal 90s — war on social justice, a plot to eliminate it altogether over time.
It aims to free up US wealth for escalated militarism, endless wars, corporate handouts, and greater enrichment of America’s super-rich.
The grand scheme is transforming the US (and other Western states) into ruler-serf societies — thirdworldized and controlled by police state power, unsafe and unfit to live in, privileged interests served exclusively at the expense of ordinary people.
Since US economic collapse began in February, millions of Americans applied for unemployment benefits — ongoing for 12 consecutive weeks in unprecedented numbers, greater than during the Great Depression, US unemployment today much higher than then.
Overall conditions today for ordinary Americans are far worse than in the 1930s.
Following Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 election, New Deal programs put millions of people back to work.
Virtually nothing is being done to create jobs today, Dems as culpable as Republicans.
Both right wings of the one-party state are indifferent toward public health and welfare, and it shows by their policies.
Official unemployment numbers way understate reality, the true number around 40% of working-age Americans.
Most US workers with jobs have part-time or temp employment for poverty-level wages with few or no benefits.
Countless numbers of US workers had their hours and pay cut. Growing millions have no health insurance.
Americans can have anything they want — depending on their ability to pay.
They’re increasingly on their own otherwise, notably at a time of unprecedented economic collapse that’s far more serious than COVID-19 outbreaks.
They’ll pass in time, even if increase substantially in the months ahead.
The wreckage from economic collapse will be long-lasting, millions of jobs permanently lost, the lives and welfare of countless numbers of Americans devastated — way too little help from Washington forthcoming.
A new Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) report discussed a bonanza for US billionaires at a time of unprecedented job losses — “pandemic profiteers” benefitting from human misery.
Super-wealth of America’s billionaire class increased by around “half a trillion” dollars this year, according to IPS, an unprecedented heist over a short period of time.
According to Forbes magazine, the US has 614 billionaires, along with nine others, foreign nationals living in America.
IPS reported that the super-wealth of America’s billionaire class increased by 16.5% from March 18 to May 28 — while countless millions in the country “face suffering, hardship and loss of life.”
The US billionaire class added 14 more to its total in the last 10 weeks, 628 up from 614, IPS explained.
Two super-billionaires — Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg — increased their wealth by “over $63 billion since March 18.”
IPS called today’s state of America “a grotesque indicator of the deep inequalities in US society.”
Before economic collapse began in February, over 20% of working-age Americans were unemployed, based on the pre-1990 calculation model.
They’re omitted from official Labor Department numbers, nonpersons according to Republicans and Dems.
In the past three months, around 41 million more Americans sought unemployment benefits.
Millions more haven’t had their applications processed, along with millions of out-of-work self-employed Americans — many, maybe most, not getting unemployment benefits.
Because health insurance is linked to employment, tens of millions of Americans lost coverage.
IPS: “While millions risk their lives and livelihoods as first responders and front line workers, these billionaires benefit from an economy and tax system that is wired to funnel wealth to the top.”
“Low-wage workers, people of color, and women have suffered disproportionately in the combined medical and economic crises.”
“Billionaires are overwhelmingly white men.”
As of mid-May, the combined super-wealth of the US billionaire class exceeded $3.3 trillion.
Two Americas exist — one for the vast majority of its people, ordinary ones struggling to get by, including unprecedented numbers out-of-work.
The other is for the nation’s super-rich and privileged class overall. Its members never had things better — their gain at the expense of most others.
Looking ahead, things most likely will worsen for ordinary Americans, the trend for decades.
They’re exploited by the nation’s privileged class in cahoots with Republicans, Dems, and the Wall Street owned Fed.
Together they comprise a conspiracy against peace, equity, justice, the rule of law, and government serving all its people.
The American way is polar opposite, the privileged few benefitting hugely at the expense of most others in a nation where democracy is pure fantasy, not real.
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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.”
This article is of relevance to the ongoing debate on vaccines.
It was first published in February 2015
According to LifeSiteNews, a Catholic publication, the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association is charging UNICEF and WHO with sterilizing millions of girls and women under cover of an anti-tetanus vaccination program sponsored by the Kenyan government.
The Kenyan government denies there is anything wrong with the vaccine, and says it is perfectly safe.
The Kenya Catholic Doctors Association, however, saw evidence to the contrary, and had six different samples of the tetanus vaccine from various locations around Kenya sent to an independent laboratory in South Africa for testing.
The results confirmed their worst fears: all six samples tested positive for the HCG antigen. The HCG antigen is used in anti-fertility vaccines, but was found present in tetanus vaccines targeted to young girls and women of childbearing age. Dr. Ngare, spokesman for the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association, stated in a bulletin released November 4:
“This proved right our worst fears; that this WHO campaign is not about eradicating neonatal tetanus but a well-coordinated forceful population control mass sterilization exercise using a proven fertility regulating vaccine. This evidence was presented to the Ministry of Health before the third round of immunization but was ignored.” (Source.)
Dr. Ngare brought up several points about the mass tetanus vaccination program in Kenya that caused the Catholic doctors to become suspicious:
Dr. Ngare told LifeSiteNews that several things alerted doctors in the Church’s far-flung medical system of 54 hospitals, 83 health centres, and 17 medical and nursing schools to the possibility the anti-tetanus campaign was secretly an anti-fertility campaign.
Why, they ask does it involve an unprecedented five shots (or “jabs” as they are known, in Kenya) over more than two years and why is it applied only to women of childbearing years, and why is it being conducted without the usual fanfare of government publicity?
“Usually we give a series three shots over two to three years, we give it anyone who comes into the clinic with an open wound, men, women or children.” said Dr. Ngare.
But it is the five vaccination regime that is most alarming. “The only time tetanus vaccine has been given in five doses is when it is used as a carrier in fertility regulating vaccines laced with the pregnancy hormone, Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) developed by WHO in 1992.” (Source.)
UNICEF: A History of Taking Advantage of Disasters to Mass Vaccinate
It should be noted that UNICEF and WHO distribute these vaccines for free, and that there are financial incentives for the Kenyan government to participate in these programs. When funds from the UN are not enough to purchase yearly allotments of vaccines, an organization started and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI, provides extra funding for many of these vaccination programs in poor countries. (See: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Vaccine Empire on Trial in India.)
Also, there was no outbreak of tetanus in Kenya, only the perceived “threat” of tetanus due to local flood conditions.
These local disasters are a common reason UNICEF goes into poorer countries with free vaccines to begin mass vaccination programs.
Health Impact News reported last year that UNICEF began a similar mass vaccination program with 500,000 doses of live oral polio vaccine in the Philippines after a Super Typhoon devastated Tacolban and surrounding areas. This was in spite of the fact there were no reported cases of polio in the Philippines since 1993, and people who have had the live polio vaccine can “shed” the virus into sewage systems, thereby causing the actual disease it is supposed to be preventing. (See: No Polio in the Philippines Since 1993, But Mass Polio Vaccination Program Targeted for 500,000 Typhoon Victims Under Age 5.)
A very similar mass vaccination with the live oral polio vaccine occurred among Syrian refugees in 2013, when 1.7 million doses of polio vaccine were purchased by UNICEF, in spite of the fact that no cases of polio had been seen since 1999. After the mass vaccination program started, cases of polio began to reappear in Syria. (See: Are UNICEF Live Polio Vaccines Causing Polio Among Syrians? 1.7 Billion Polio Vaccines Purchased by UNICEF.)
It seems quite apparent that UNICEF and WHO use these local disasters to mass vaccinate people, mainly children and young women. Massive education and propaganda efforts are also necessary to convince the local populations that they need these vaccines.
Here is a video UNICEF produced for the tetanus vaccine in Kenya.
Notice how they use school teachers and local doctors to do the educating, even though the vaccines are produced by western countries.
At least in Kenya, Catholic doctors are acting and taking a stand against what they see as an involuntary mass sterilization campaign designed to control the population of Africans.
PRESS STATEMENT BY THE CATHOLIC HEALTH COMMISSION OF KENYA – KENYA CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS ON THE NATIONAL TETANUS VACCINATION CAMPAIGN SCHEDULED FOR 13TH – 19THOCTOBER 2014
Health service delivery forms an integral part of evangelization for the Catholic Church. As such, the role played through the Church’s health Apostolate in Kenya cannot be understated.
The Church has an extensive network of health facilities that include 58 hospitals, 83 health centers, 311 dispensaries and 17 medical training institutions. Our health facilities offer a wide range preventive and curative health services, including vaccination. The Catholic Church coordinates these services through the Catholic Health Commission of Kenya – Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB).
The Catholic Health Commission of Kenya, currently meeting at St Patrick’s Pastoral Center Kabula in Bungoma, with health facility managers from 24 Catholic Dioceses are deeply concerned about the following issues regarding the Tetanus vaccination campaign scheduled for of 13th – 19th October 2014:
There has not been adequate stakeholder engagement for consultation both in the preparation for the campaign. The Catholic Church has not been engaged as members and participants of the Health Sector Coordinating Committee and in the respective Technical Working Group. This is despite previous promises by the Ministry of Health to be engaged as a key stakeholder.
There has been limited public awareness unlike other related campaigns like Polio vaccination.
There has been limited public information on the rationale with a background that has informed the initiative since we raised an issue in March 2014.
We are still keen on having the Ministry of Health give Kenyans adequate responses to the following key pertinent questions:
Is there a tetanus crisis in Kenya? If this is so, why has it not been declared?
Why does the campaign target women of 14 – 49years?
Why has the campaign left out young girls, boys and men even if they are all prone to tetanus?
In the midst of so many life threatening diseases in Kenya, why has tetanus been prioritized?
We are not convinced that the government has taken adequate responsibility to ensure that Tetanus Toxoid vaccine (TT) laced with Beta human chorionic gonadotropin (b-HCG) sub unit is not being used by the sponsoring development partners. This has previously been used by the same partners in Philippines, Nicaragua and Mexico to vaccinate women against future pregnancy. Beta HCG sub unit is a hormone necessary for pregnancy.
When injected as a vaccine to a non-pregnant woman, this Beta HCG sub unit combined with tetanus toxoid develops antibodies against tetanus and HCG so that if a woman’s egg becomes fertilized, her own natural HCG will be destroyed rendering her permanently infertile. In this situation tetanus vaccination has been used as a birth control method.
We retain that the tetanus vaccination campaign bears the hallmarks of the programmes that were carried out in Philippines, Mexico and Nicaragua. We would want to participate in ensuring that the vaccines to be administered are free of this hormone.
The Catholic Church acknowledges that maternal and neonatal care is imperative in prevention of death; the Church therefore maintains that adequate and clear information is provided to the general public to avoid misinformation and propaganda in regard to the vaccine.
The sanctity of Life and the dignity of the human person must always be priorities in health care and the Catholic Church, in the absence of proper and adequate information will not shy away from raising moral questions on matters affecting human life.
Rt. Rev. Paul Kariuki Njiru
Chairman, Catholic Health Commission of Kenya – KCCB
Rt. Rev. Joseph Mbatia
Vice Chairman, Catholic Health Commission of Kenya – KCCB
The US is waging undeclared war on China by other means.
Trump and congressional hardliners escalated things beyond where their predecessors went.
What’s going on is all about aiming to undermine China’s growing political, economic, financial, industrial, technological, and military development and prominence on the world stage.
It has nothing to do with a PRC military or other security threat. China is at peace with its neighbors and other nations.
On Thursday, Pompeo continued his war of words on China.
Falsely accusing Beijing of eroding Hong Kong’s liberties — a US specialty at home and abroad — he urged “decertification” of the city, saying:
“I can no longer certify that Hong Kong continues to warrant…deferential treatment under US law.”
He falsely claimed that China’s new national security law “contradicts the spirit (of) the one country, two systems framework.”
He ignored months of made-in-the-USA Hong Kong protests for months last year, featuring violence and vandalism.
Orchestrated by US dark forces, they began again, interfering in China’s internal affairs, a major breach of the UN Charter and other international law — how the US operates globally, by its own imperial rules.
Hours before a Friday news conference by Trump on China, it’s unclear if he’ll announce decertification.
Days earlier, he promised a strong response to China’s national security law, saying only that he’d talk “about it over the next couple of days.”
Separately, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Trump finds it “hard to see how Hong Kong can remain a financial hub if China takes over.”
She ignored the fact that the city is to China, its sovereign territory, what New York, New Haven, New Orleans, Newark, Newport, Newton, and other US cities are to America.
Trump’s national security advisor Robert O’Brien suggested new US sanctions on China may be imposed — a UN Charter breach when unilaterally by one nation on others, he failed to explain.
On Friday, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) quoted retired PLA military strategist/General Qiao Liang’s geopolitical advice.
Focus on Beijing’s main adversary (USA), he urged. All else externally is minor by comparison.
“When you are facing off a gang in a fight, you must first bring down the biggest guy and other opponents will be intimidated,” he stressed,” adding:
“We need to prioritize in the face of this formidable opponent. We should not distract ourselves by tackling weaker opponents for self-consolation.”
“Arm-wrestling with the US is the least wanted but most urgent business we have to do now.”
Both hawkish wings of its war party go all-out to control other countries by whatever it takes to achieve their objectives.
Qiao believes the US is heading for direct confrontation with China.
Actions already taken include trade and tariffs war, shutting tech giant Huawei out of the US market, banning tech sales to the company, wanting its CFO prosecuted in the US for doing her job, pushing to decouple both economies, falsely blaming China for COVID-19 outbreaks, demanding compensation, orchestrating Hong Kong violence, supporting separatists in Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong — along with wanting China’s development undermined.
Qiao urged Beijing to neutralize the US by becoming more self-reliant through further development of its domestic market, and reducing its reliance on raw material imports, especially from the US and West.
He called China’s national security law “inevitable and necessary.”
“It’s not just a local issue of Hong Kong but is also tied to the contest between China and the US.”
“Hong Kong is now the frontier of the contest…and a key battlefield for China to fend off US suppression,” he explained.
Separately, China’s Defense Minister Wei Fenghe stressed that “the Sino-US strategic confrontation has entered a period of high risk.”
According to US media reports, the Trump regime intends to expel up to 5,000 Chinese graduate students and researchers from the US.
Proposed congressional legislation calls for prohibiting issuance of visas to Chinese nationals wanting to study science and math in the US.
Cold War between both countries is escalating. If Trump, the GOP, and Dems push things too far, it could boil over into something hot.
What’s going on is one of many reasons why today is the most perilous time in US history.
Instead of stepping back from the brink, imperial policies of dominant hardliners in Washington risk global war by accident or design.
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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.”
The drug war did not create institutional racism or disregard for Black life in the US. However, it feeds and bolsters the racist structures that snuff out Black life daily. This tragic case is no different. Officer Thao invoking drug use as a warning to bystanders and later as pretext for Mr. Floyd’s death is unconscionable, but the real cause of his death was his brutal mistreatment at the hands of police who repeatedly ignored not only his desperate pleas for mercy but also those of bystanders. The real danger we should be drawing awareness to is not drugs, but the ways in which the color of one’s skin, one’s perceived gender—as our trans siblings know all too well—or one’s socio-economic status make them a target for harassment and, far too often, death.
During the encounter that was filmed by community member Darnella Frazier, Chauvin is seen pushing his knee into the handcuffed man’s neck as he was on the pavement of Chicago Avenue near 38th Street in front of Cup Foods. On the video, bystanders can be heard questioning why Chauvin continued to dig his knee in the man’s neck for so long.
Four Minneapolis police officers have been terminated from their jobs in the aftermath of the videotaped exposure of the blatant killing of George Floyd. This act of police violence which has no justification is by no means an isolated incident.
Minneapolis May 2020. Toronto June 2010. This article was published ten years ago. Toronto is right now in the midst of a massive government / media propaganda fraud. As events unfold, it is becoming increasingly clear that the ‘Black Bloc’ are undercover police operatives engaged in purposeful provocations to eclipse and invalidate legitimate G20 citizen protest by starting a riot. Government agents have been caught doing this before in Canada.
Let us consider why the Donald Trump White House is currently considering detonating a nuclear weapon. It would be the first “test” of a nuke since 1992 and is clearly intended to send a message that those weapons sitting around in storage will be available for use. The testing is in response to alleged development of low-yield tactical nuclear devices by Beijing and Moscow, a claim that is unsupported by any evidence and which is likely a contrivance designed to suggest that there is strong leadership coming out of Washington at a time when the Administration has been faulted for its multiple failures in combatting the coronavirus.
A strategic information campaign against a particular state usually involves a number of elements and layers. While officials and diplomats gradually increase the aggressiveness of their rhetoric, “independent” media outlets publish a range of articles from life stories to special investigations. They may differ in tone and subject matter, but they all have the same goal. Campaigns like these are of particular importance to the US, where there is a tradition of enlisting the support of public opinion. Therefore, to ensure the success of foreign policy actions, the public must be prepared.
The world’s largest airline trade group has called for immunity passports, thermal screening, masks, and physical distancing to be a part of the industry’s strategy for returning to “normal” operations.
Under a section titled, “The passenger experience” and “Temporary biosecurity measures,” the IATA describes their vision of post-COVID-19 flights. The organization calls for contact tracing, a controversial method of tracking the civilian population to track the spread of COVID-19.
“We foresee the need to collect more detailed passenger contact information which can be used for tracing purposes,” the report states. “Where possible, the data should be collected in electronic form, and in advance of the passenger arriving at the airport including through eVisa and electronic travel authorization platforms.”
Interestingly, this call for pre-boarding check-in using “electronic travel authorization platforms” coincides with the recent announcement of the Covi-Pass and the Health Pass from Clear, both of which call for a digital ID system using biometrics and storing travel, health, and identification data.
Alexandre de Juniac, IATA’s CEO, told Arabian Industry that “a layered approach” combining multiple measures which are “globally implemented and mutually recognized by governments” are “the way forward for biosecurity.”
The IATA also calls for temperature screening at entry points to airport terminals. They envision the airline experience involving physical distancing of 3-6 feet throughout the airport. The group believes changes to the airport buildings to allow for physical distancing may be necessary. The IATA also recommended “face coverings” for passengers and protective equipment for airline and airport staff.
Although the organization acknowledged that there is not currently a fast reliable test for COVID-19, they believe that once an effective test is developed it could be applied on entry to the terminal. They call for this measure to be “incorporated into the passenger process as soon as an effective test, validated by the medical community, has been developed.”
On the topic of immunity passports — an idea discussed by Anthony Fauci, the World Health Organization, and Bill Gates — the IATA states that “immunity passports could play an important role in further facilitating the restart of air travel.” The organization believes that if a person is shown to have recovered from COVID-19 and developed immunity they will not need protective measures. Once medical evidence supports the possibility of immunity to COVID-19, IATA believes “it is essential that a recognized global standard be introduced, and that corresponding documents be made available electronically.”
Finally, the IATA believes a “general move towards greater use of touchless technology and biometrics should also be pursued.” Biometrics would include facial recognition, retina scanning, and/or thumbprints.
This vision painted by the IATA is one where those who choose to fly are faced with invasive security measures, surveillance, biometric tracking, immunity passports, temperature screenings, and generally, less human contact due to physical distancing and less communication with actual people. Of course, this push towards a digital ID which contains an individual’s personal identifying information, health records, and other personal data is part of an agenda which predates COVID-19. The “powers that wish they were” are taking every opportunity to expand their technocratic control grid and the panic caused by COVID-19 allows them to accelerate their plans at a rate not seen since the days after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The only thing stopping the roll out of this Technocratic State is the people of the world coming together, informing those who are in the dark, and unplugging from this control grid.
Question Everything, Come To Your Own Conclusions.
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As an NHS doctor, I’ve seen people die and be listed as a victim of coronavirus without ever being tested for it. But unless we have accurate data, we won’t know which has killed more: the disease or the lockdown?
I suppose most people would be somewhat surprised to know that the cause of death, as written on death certificates, is often little more than an educated guess. Most people die when they are old, often over eighty. There is very rarely going to be a post-mortem carried out, which means that, as a doctor, you have a think about the patient’s symptoms in the last two weeks of life or so. You go back over the notes to look for existing medical conditions.
Previous stroke, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, angina, dementia and suchlike. Then you talk to the relatives and carers and try to find out what they saw. Did they struggle for breath, were they gradually going downhill, not eating or drinking?
If I saw them in the last two weeks of life, what do I think was the most likely cause of death? There are, of course, other factors. Did they fall, did they break a leg and have an operation – in which case a post-mortem would more likely be carried out to find out if the operation was a cause.
Mostly, however, out in the community, death certification is certainly not an exact science. Never was, never will be. It’s true that things are somewhat more accurate in hospitals, where there are more tests and scans, and suchlike.
Then, along comes Covid-19, and many of the rules – such as they were – went straight out the window. At one point, it was even suggested that relatives could fill in death certificates, if no-one else was available. Though I am not sure this ever happened.
What were we now supposed to do? If an elderly person died in a care home, or at home, did they die of Covid-19? Well, frankly, who knows? Especially if they didn’t have a test for Covid-19 – which for several weeks was not even allowed. Only patients entering hospital were deemed worthy of a test. No-one else.
What advice was given? It varied throughout the country, and from coroner to coroner – and from day to day. Was every person in a care home now to be diagnosed as dying of the coronavirus ? Well, that was certainly the advice given in several parts of the UK.
Where I work, things were left more open. I discussed things with colleagues and there was very little consensus. I put Covid-19 on a couple of certificates, and not on a couple of others. Based on how the person seemed to die.
I do know that other doctors put down Covid-19 on anyone who died from early March onwards. I didn’t. What can be made of the statistics created from data like these? And does it matter?
It matters greatly for two main reasons. First, if we vastly overestimate deaths from Covid-19, we will greatly underestimate the harm caused by the lockdown. This issue was looked at in a recent article published in the BMJ, The British Medical Journal. It stated:
“Only a third of the excess deaths seen in the community in England and Wales can be explained by Covid-19.
…David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, said that Covid-19 did not explain the high number of deaths taking place in the community.”
“At a briefing hosted by the Science Media Centre on May 12 he explained that, over the past five weeks, care homes and other community settings had had to deal with a ‘staggering burden’ of 30,000 more deaths than would normally be expected, as patients were moved out of hospitals that were anticipating high demand for beds.
Of those 30,000, only 10 000 have had Covid-19 specified on the death certificate. While Spiegelhalter acknowledged that some of these ‘excess deaths’ might be the result of underdiagnosis, ‘the huge number of unexplained extra deaths in homes and care homes is extraordinary. When we look back . . . this rise in non-covid extra deaths outside the hospital is something I hope will be given really severe attention.’ He added that many of these deaths would be among people ‘who may well have lived longer if they had managed to get to hospital.’”
What Speigelhalter is saying here is that people may well be dying ‘because of’ Covid, or rather, because of the lockdown. Because they are not going to hospital to be treated for conditions other than Covid. We know that A&E attendances have fallen by over fifty percent since lockdown. Admissions with chest pain have dropped by over fifty percent. Did these people just die at home?
From my own perspective, I have certainly found it extremely difficult to get elderly patients admitted to hospital. I recently managed with one old chap who was found to have sepsis, not Covid-19. Had he died in the care home; he would almost certainly have been diagnosed as “dying of Covid.”
The bottom line here is that, if we do not diagnose deaths accurately, we will never know how many died of Covid-19, or ‘because of’ the lockdown. Those supporting lockdown, and advising governments, can point to how deadly Covid was, and say we were right to do what we did. When it may have been that lockdown itself was just as deadly. Directing care away from everything else, to deal with a single condition. Keeping sick, ill, vulnerable people away from hospitals.
The other reason why having accurate statistics is vitally important is in planning for the future. We have to accurately know what happened this time, in order to plan for the next pandemic, which seems almost inevitable as the world grows more crowded. What are the benefits of lockdown, what are the harms? What should we do next time a deadly virus strikes?
If Covid-19 killed 30,000, and lockdown killed the other 30,000, then the lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time. And should never happen again. The great fear is that this would be a message this government does not want to hear – so they will do everything possible not to hear it.
It will be decreed that all the excess deaths we have seen this year were due to Covid-19. That escape route will be made far easier if no-one has any real idea who actually died of the coronavirus disease, and who did not. Yes, the data on Covid-19 deaths really matters.
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Malcolm Kendrick, doctor and author who works as a GP in the National Health Service in England. His blog can be read here and his book, ‘Doctoring Data – How to Sort Out Medical Advice from Medical Nonsense,’ is available here.
A strategic information campaign against a particular state usually involves a number of elements and layers. While officials and diplomats gradually increase the aggressiveness of their rhetoric, “independent” media outlets publish a range of articles from life stories to special investigations. They may differ in tone and subject matter, but they all have the same goal. Campaigns like these are of particular importance to the US, where there is a tradition of enlisting the support of public opinion. Therefore, to ensure the success of foreign policy actions, the public must be prepared.
Stories about bad guys tend to be the most effective. In general, the idea of the villain is used in the methodology of the political frame – the technique is always used in US elections, but it is also widely used in foreign policy. A test tube filled with washing powder can be waved around and Saddam Hussein can be accused of having chemical weapons. That was a story that did its job perfectly. Accusing Iran of preparing to develop nuclear weapons proved to be more complicated. Now, the volleys of an information war against China can be heard. While America’s top officials and bureaucrats do their thing, the country’s corporate media outlets are developing other avenues.
At the end of April, the Los Angeles Timespublished an article on the impact of the coronavirus on money laundering, especially in California, which is a hub of international drug trafficking. Quoting a special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Los Angeles field division, the newspaper talks about a new sophisticated scheme involving Chinese citizens. Apparently, due to the restrictions on the amount of money that Chinese citizens can move overseas, drug traffickers and money brokers have set up the following system: a Chinese citizen wishing to convert yuan to dollars and stash it in the United States makes contact with a broker. The broker will tell this person to pay a factory that produces chemicals used in the manufacture of methamphetamine or fentanyl.
The factory then sends the precursors to Mexico, where they are converted into drugs, smuggled into the United States and sold for dollars. The broker tells the group in charge of the drug trafficking to deliver cash to a relative or an associate of the Chinese citizen whose money triggered the whole process. The money thus ends up in the United States in dollars, but it hasn’t entered the global financial system. “The more money that wants to leave China, the more chemicals go to Mexico and the more synthetic drugs end up in L.A.,” said the special agent. It is a bit like the hawala system that the US cracked down on in the early 2000s in connection with the possible financing of terrorism. The new scheme is more complicated, however, because the elements of the crime are much broader.
As the Los Angeles Times writes, most of the precursors for drugs are produced in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the same city where the global coronavirus pandemic began. Since some of these factories are not operating at present, this has had a knock-on effect on the illegal flow of money within the US.
US law enforcement officers are attributing this to the fact that “[w]hen chemicals aren’t flowing from China, there’s no churn in the money laundering system”. The article does not mention any specific methods for controlling illicit flows.
Another indirect factor is the soaring price of methamphetamine in Los Angeles. At the end of last year, the price was around $900 a pound, but it is now more than double that.
Weapons, ammunition, alongside bags of crystal methamphetamine and meth-laced yaba pills seized by Myanmar police and military are seen in this undated photo near Loikan village in Shan State, between February and April 2020 in what the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime described as Asia’s biggest-ever drug bust.
The next article was published by the Reuters news agency on 18 May. It describes a successful operation by the Myanmar police to seize 3,700 litres of liquid fentanyl in Shan State on the Chinese border. After a lot of big talk about what the UN is doing to combat drug trafficking and the high numbers of overdose deaths in the US and Canada, the agency provides some rather sensitive details. One of the meth producers in the region is the Sam Gor syndicate. The head of law enforcement for Myanmar’s counter-narcotics agency, Colonel Zaw Lin, said that the methylfentanyl had come from a neighbouring country, but he does not specify which one. Myanmar police documents seen by Reuters say that the majority of the seized drugs, precursors and equipment had come from China. The article then goes on to talk about Mexico and China’s role in supplying drugs to the US.
As a junior partner of the US propaganda machine, British newspaper The Telegraph highlighted the Asian roots of America’s narcotics problem by providing a detailed description of the police operation in Myanmar, adding that it was the first time such a large consignment had been seized. The article also stressed that the drugs were destined for North America rather than Asia or Europe.
Precursor chemicals used to make illicit drugs were seized by Myanmar police
The newspaper had already paid attention to the problem in a previous article, although, geographically, the only country mentioned is Mexico, from where synthetic opioids began entering the US in 2013.
It should be added that the subject of synthetic opioids is also being covered by the RAND corporation, whose employees are preparing similar reports. In one of these, published towards the end of 2019, China features as a manufacturer of drug precursors and a primary source of the drugs circulating in Europe and the US.
This story does not end with the accusation that Chinese citizens are involved in the manufacture of narcotics and their distribution in the US and Canada, however.
The fact is that the border between Shan State and China is controlled by rebel groups – the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), which includes ethnic Chinese fighters, and the 20,000-strong United Wa State Army (UWSA). There is also the opinion that the UWSA receives direct support from the People’s Republic of China. In turn, the UWSA provides arms, ammunition and fighters to another rebel group – the ethnic Palaung Ta’ang National Liberation Army, which controls the area west of the main Mandalay–Lashio highway extending north towards the border with China.
This pattern of information allows a narrative to be created that China not only manufactures narcotics, but essentially created a combat-ready international criminal gang able to compete with the Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. And that is a matter of international security. Although the US has no evidence of China’s involvement in the process besides references in the media, RAND reports and their own intelligence agencies, an information campaign is a clear indication that the corresponding fabrication of facts has begun.
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Leonid Savin is a Geopolitical analyst, Chief editor of Geopolitica.ru, founder and chief editor of Journal of Eurasian Affairs; head of the administration of International Eurasian Movement.
All images in this article are from Oriental Review; featured image: The Drug Enforcement Administration is seizing bulk cash amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has hobbled money laundering schemes and created a backlog of drug proceeds in Los Angeles.
While celebrating the Africa Day, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reaffirmed Russia’s commitment to offer support and participate in the sustainable development processes in Africa. In a videoconference held May 28 with local and foreign media, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, highlighted the history leading to the establishment of the Africa Day, which is observed as an annual holiday symbolizing the desire of the peoples of the African continent to peace, independence and unity.
According to her,
“the close nature of friendly ties with African countries, the significant experience of mutually beneficial cooperation dates back to the early 1960s, when the Soviet Union unconditionally supported the desire of Africans to free themselves from colonial oppression. It provided them with substantial practical assistance in shaping the foundations of statehood, establishing national economies, and preparing civilian and military personnel.”
In recent years, however, African countries have been actively gaining weight and influence in international affairs, are increasingly participating in solving pressing issues of modern world politics and economics, she said.
The creation of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum was one of the appreciable results of the first Russia-Africa Summit held last year, Zakharova noted, and expressed hope that “the mechanism of partnership between Russia and the African continent created during the summit will allow to establish and broaden cooperation.”
Looking Back
Under the current circumstances, African leaders and business elites try, most importantly, to reflect on how far Africa has gone in building a unified identity and strides made in socio-economic development. These socio-economic developments in some individual countries were achieved by harnessing internal resources and through bilateral and multilateral relations with external countries and cooperation with development partners.
For example, Soviet Union and Africa had very close and, in many respects, allied relations with most of the African countries during the decolonization of Africa. For obvious reasons, the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991.
As a result, Russia has to struggle through many internal and external difficulties. The past few years, it is still struggling to survive both the United States and European sanctions. Moscow still has a long way to catch-up with many other foreign players there.
Currently, Russia seems to have attained relative political and economic stability.
“As we regained our statehood and control over the country, and the economy and the social sphere began to develop, Russian businesses began to look at promising projects abroad, and we began to return to Africa,” noted Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov early September during his interaction with students and staff of Moscow State Institute for International Relations.
Emphasizing that the process of returning to Africa has been ongoing for the past 15 years, he further explained:
“the return is now taking the form of resuming a very close political dialogue, which has always been at a strategic and friendly level, and now moving to a vigorous economic cooperation. But economic cooperation is not as far advanced as our political ties.”
Dmitry Medvedev, while addressing the Russia-Africa Economic forum in July, also added his voice about strengthening cooperation in all fronts.
“We must take advantage of all things without fail. It is also important that we implement as many projects as possible, that encompass new venues and, of course, new countries,” he said.
In addition, Medvedev stressed:
“It is important to have a sincere desire. Russia and African countries now have this sincere desire. We simply need to know each other better and be more open to one another. I am sure all of us will succeed if we work this way. Even if some things seem impossible, this situation persists only until it is accomplished. It was Nelson Mandela who made this absolutely true statement.”
Acknowledging undoubtedly that Africa has become a new world center for global development, Russian legislators at the State Duma (the lower chamber) have advocated for supporting business and economic cooperation with Africa.
State Duma has established relations with African parliaments. During an instant meeting held with the Ambassadors of African countries in the Russian Federation, Viacheslav Volodin, the Chairman of the State Duma, remarked:
“We propose to move from intentions to concrete steps. Our people will better understand each other through parliamentary relations.”
The full transcript is available at the official website.
Moving Forward
On April 29, Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), a powerful Russian NGO that focuses on foreign policy, held an online conference with participation of experts on Africa. Chairing the online discussion, Igor Ivanov, former Foreign Affairs Minister and now RIAC President, made an opening speech. He pointed out that Russia’s task in Africa is to present a strategy and define priorities with the countries of the continent, build on the decisions of the first Russia-Africa Summit.
On the development of cooperation between Russia and African countries, Igor Ivanov pointed out a few steps here:
“Russia’s task is to prevent a rollback in relations with African countries. It is necessary to use the momentum set by the first Russia-Africa Summit. First of all, it is necessary for Russia to define explicitly its priorities: why are we returning to Africa? Just to make money, strengthen our international presence, help African countries or to participate in the formation of the new world order together with the African countries? Some general statements of a fundamental nature were made at the first Summit, now it is necessary to move from general statements to specificity.”
Sergey Lavrov, long ago, asked for more substantive dialogue on Russia-Africa issues, charting ways for effective cooperation. In an interview with the Hommes d’Afrique, he stressed “time is needed to solve all those issues, but it could start with experts’ meetings, say, within the framework of the St Petersburg Economic Forum or the Valdai forum, and other events where business leaders of both countries participate.”
Experts from the think-tank Valdai Discussion Club, academic researchers from the Institute for African Studies and independent policy observers have noted Russia’s policy, its current achievements and emerging economic opportunities and possibilities for partnerships in Africa. Quite interestingly, majority of them acknowledged the need for Russia to be more prominent as it should be and work more consistently to achieve its strategic goals, – comparing and citing largely unfulfilled pledges over the years.
Established in 2004, it’s (the club) primary goal is to promote dialogue between Russian and the rest of the world. It hosted an expert discussion titled “Russia’s Return to Africa: Interests, Challenges, Prospects” with participation of experts on Africa. Officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Africa Department were present.
“I would like to begin my speech with the words of Foreign Minister (Sergey Lavrov), who said, referring to the current situation: ‘No more fairy tales,’” joked Oleg Ozerov from the Africa Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. “For us, Africa is not a terra incognita: the USSR actively worked there, having diplomatic relations with 35 countries. In general, there are no turns, reversals or zigzags in our policy. There is consistent development of relations with Africa. ”
Over the past few years, contacts between Russia and Africa have expanded, and at the same time, this was also due to the African countries’ interest in Russia, he added. Nevertheless, Oleg Ozerov is now Ambassador-at-Large with the key responsibility for expediting the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum created at the initiative of African participants during Sochi summit.
As Head of the Secretariat, the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum, his task is to prepare for the second Russia-Africa summit in 2022 in pursuance of the agreements, achieved during the first Russia-Africa summit held on October 23-24 in Sochi. The Secretariat of the Forum will also organize annual political consultations of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and the troika of the African Union.
In 2010-2017, Ozerov served as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation to Saudi Arabia, concurrently from 2011-2017, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
The symbolic Russia-Africa Summit was the result of President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin authorities’ progressive steps taken to move toward a new phase in consolidating political and economic ties broadly at the state levels with Africa. The final declaration, joint declaration, seeks to consolidate the results of the summit. It has undoubtedly reaffirmed the goals of Agenda 2063 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
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Kester Kenn Klomegah writes frequently about Russia, Africa and the BRICS.
Boris has a new slogan, “Move on”, which he deployed repeatedly today in his appearance before the House of Commons Liaison Committee. Remembering short slogans is fairly well the extent of his political skills, and he contrived to look pleased with hmself for remembering this one. The public, he solemnly informed those watching, now wanted the narrative to “Move on” from the Dominic Cummings debacle.
The problem with this slogan is it does not have a good history. The aged among us will remember that after the disaster of the Iraq war, it was constantly repeated by Tony Blair. OK, millions of people were dead. But it was time to “move on” from that. Only he could not. The dead of Iraq have haunted him ever since, they enabled Brown to depose him and Blair has the look of a man who believes the dead will be waiting to speak against him in the next life. No matter how much the Guardian still tries constantly to rehabilitate him, he will always have to be protected from the British public, a stinking rich, morally bankrupt pariah.
One of the first articles published in this blog spoke of Blair and his “Move on” mantra. On 21 April 2005 I published from the Blackburn parliamentary election:
Two months ago I arrived here alone, standing forlornly with my rucksack on Blackburn railway station, in the midnight snow. I wanted to make a stand on principle against illegal war, and against Jack Straw’s decision that we should use intelligence obtained under torture. I wanted to get some national publicity for these issues during the campaign, to counter Tony Blair’s mantra: “Let’s move on” from the war.
(Am I the only one to find this mantra insulting? I think I’ll rob a bank to get some campaign funds. When the police come to take me away, I’ll say, “Hey, let’s move on. OK, so I robbed a bank. Whatever the rights and wrongs, that phase is over. What is important is that we all come together now and get behind the really great things I’m going to do with the money.”)
When a politician is desperate enough to use the “move on” slogan, you know they have done something very wrong indeed and are in big trouble.
“And now we must move on from Watergate to the business of the people”
Like Johnson, Nixon made the claim it was “the people” who want to move on. This is the standard mantra for politicians who have done something very illegal: the public do not care, are not interested in justice being visited on politicians. It is always the public who are urging the guilty politicians to “move on” and ignore the trivial detail of their own guilt.
“No decision I have ever made in politics has been as divisive as the decision to go to war to in Iraq. It remains deeply divisive today. I know a large part of the public want to move on.”
“Our country has been distracted by this matter for too long and I take my responsibility for my part in all of this,” he said. “That is all I can do. Now is the time — in fact, it is past time — to move on. . . . And so tonight I ask you to turn away from the spectacle of the past seven months, to repair the fabric of our national discourse, and to return our attention to all the challenges and all the promise of the next American century.”
We now know it would have been a good deal better if America had not “moved on” but had taken a much deeper interest in Clinton’s appalling history of predatory sexual behaviour.
I presume you see the pattern here. If a politician tells you to “move on” from a subject, it is a gigantic red flag that you should do precisely the opposite. I tried to discover some examples of politicians telling us to “move on” from an issue, where hindsight does not show the politician to have been a massive crook. No examples were readily apparent.
Ladies and gentlemen, I add to this list of shame:
“It is now time to move on… the country wants to move on.”
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The Spanish State establishment would be made up of the financial-business, political, military, Catholic hierarchy, university and mass media sub-elites of the Spanish State, natural heirs to the legacy of General Franco who would have engulfed all decision-making spheres (according to the reading the book “Financial oligarchy and political power in Spain” written by ex-banker Manuel Puerto Ducet). However, these sub-elites would only be satellites orbiting in the gravity sphere of Opus Dei, the Alpha elite that would have engulfed all the establishment’s sub-elites and also initiated a strategy of harassment and demolition of the Sánchez government.
The first phase of this operation would include a media offensive to make the central government the only culprit for “the lousy management in the face of the health crisis.” The second phase would consist of the refusal of the PP and Vox to implement new extensions of the State of Alarm for being “a constitutional dictatorship that restricts individual liberties”, an attempt that failed due to the change in attitude of Citizens by supporting the Sánchez Government in the two latest extensions. The third phase of the operation “Harassment and Demolition” will try to take advantage of the discomfort of broad sectors of the citizenry for the duration of the confinement as well as the ruin of the self-employed and small businessmen to start “a Patriotic or Rojigualda Revolution” that through “casseroles and escraches ”Will challenge the Government by failing to comply with the restrictions included in the current State of Alarm.
Currently, we are witnessing the start of the fourth phase consisting of the “judicialization of politics or lawfare”. With this term we refer to the “abuse of legal and international procedures to provoke a popular repudiation against an opponent while maintaining an appearance of legality” that would have their expression in the trial opened by the new media star of the judicial firmament, Judge Carmen Rodríquez- Medel against the Government delegate in Madrid, José Manuel Franco, a legal offensive that would continue with the filing of a criminal complaint for reckless manslaughter against the director of the Center for Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies, Fernando Simón, but who will have little experience.
In case the previous phases fail, the establishment would keep in its chamber the fifth phase known as “Ave Fénix” that will try to reissue the Tejerazo of 1981, in which the political leaders confined in Congress were “invited” to accept a tacit agreement by that the dominant status quo (establishment) associated with the monarchical system (Felipismo), the bipartisan political system, Eurocentrism and the defense of the “indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation” were declared untouchable. Thus, after the “soft coup” and the dissolution of the Sánchez Government, we will attend the call for new elections from which a Salvation Government will emerge that will proceed to adopt austericidal measures following the dictates of the European Troika. These measures will translate into a dramatic reduction in social benefits that will affect the duration and amount of unemployment benefits, retirement pensions and widowhood, as well as a severe reduction in the salaries of civil servants, which will de facto mean a return to economic scenarios. post-war.
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“George Floyd should be alive today. Instead, he drew his last breath after one police officer knelt on his neck for nine minutes and another taunted ‘don’t do drugs, kids’ to the gathered crowd. With George Floyd most recently, Breonna Taylor earlier this month, and countless others before them, perceived drug possession and drug use served as a justification by law enforcement to dehumanize, strip dignity from, and ultimately kill people of color.
Image: Massoud
The drug war did not create institutional racism or disregard for Black life in the US. However, it feeds and bolsters the racist structures that snuff out Black life daily. This tragic case is no different. Officer Thao invoking drug use as a warning to bystanders and later as pretext for Mr. Floyd’s death is unconscionable, but the real cause of his death was his brutal mistreatment at the hands of police who repeatedly ignored not only his desperate pleas for mercy but also those of bystanders. The real danger we should be drawing awareness to is not drugs, but the ways in which the color of one’s skin, one’s perceived gender—as our trans siblings know all too well—or one’s socio-economic status make them a target for harassment and, far too often, death.
Drug involvement–whether perceived or real–has provided a convenient excuse for these violent and too often fatal law enforcement interactions. DPA will continue fighting to remove drug involvement as a cover for disregarding the dignity and sanctity of human life. And we will challenge and hold these institutions accountable. We refuse to stand by while another person cries out, as Eric Garner and George Floyd did, “I can’t breathe,” as law enforcement ends their life.
Ending the failed war on drugs will not legalize Black people, but it will disrupt a system that chips away daily at the very core of our humanity. We don’t need symbolic gestures, we need to strategize, organize, and build campaigns to ensure this doesn’t happen again. We stand ready to work with our allies to do our part.”
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President Donald Trump‘s National Park Service plans to finalize rules this week that will allow hunters in Alaska to kill bear cubs and wolf pups while they are in their dens, reversing Obama-era regulations meant to prevent destabilization of the state’s biodiversity.
The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) accused the administration of taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to push through a rule change against the advice of dozens of natural resource experts and lawmakers.
“Amid the global pandemic, the Trump administration is declaring open season on bears and wolves through its sport hunting rule on national parklands in Alaska,” said NPCA President Theresa Pierno.
Under the new rules, hunters in Alaska will be permitted to:
use bait including donuts and grease-soaked bread to draw in and kill brown bears;
use artificial lights to enter dens and kill black bears, including females and their cubs;
shoot caribou while they are swimming; and
trap and kill wolves and their pups during denning season.
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, claimed Thursday that the new rules are a matter of “principle” and protecting states’ rights. Conservation groups expressed outrage.
“Killing has no place in our National Wildlife Refuges,” tweeted the Wolf Conservation Center.
BREAKING The Feds approved a rule that allows these atrocities in federal preserves in Alaska:
▪️ trapping/killing wolves, pups ▪️ entering dens to kill bears, cubs ▪️ baiting, snaring, aerial gunning
— Wolf Conservation Center (@nywolforg) May 21, 2020
Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke drafted the rule before resigning in 2018 in the face of 17 federal ethics investigations, and the proposal promptly drew condemnation.
Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) led more than 70 of her colleagues in demanding the rule be withdrawn.
“The proposed rule would roll back critical protections for America’s beloved, rare and iconic native carnivores, including brown bears, black bears and wolves on the approximately 20 million acres of national preserves in Alaska—land that belongs to all Americans,” wrote the lawmakers. “The rule would effectively endorse the state of Alaska’s efforts to use extreme practices to reduce bear and wolf populations in order to artificially inflate populations of prey species for sport hunting.”
More than 100 scientists, former National Park Service employees, and academics also denounced the rule, saying “extremely limited scientific evidence” was being used to justify making it easier for hunters to kill bear cubs and wolf pups.
“Interior Secretary David Bernhardt had the opportunity to halt this rule that includes baiting park bears but chose instead to ignore commonsense and opposition by members of Congress, scientists, and tens of thousands of Americans,” said Pierno. “Shooting hibernating mama and baby bears is not the conservation legacy that our national parks are meant to preserve and no way to treat or manage park wildlife.”
From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
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Featured image: A bear and her cubs in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. (Photo: Rich Miller/Flickr/cc)
Fabricated shocks open the window to Emergency laws and emergency guidelines that would otherwise require more transparency.
The shock surrounding Covid-19 — a virus with Low Infection Fatality rates — precipitated changes to procedures and guidelines concerning the diagnosis of patients and the documentation of deaths. The changes were in large part a result of World Health Organization diktats.
Definitions were broadened. They became less “specific”. Rosemary Frei reports, for example, that,
“there are enormous implications to having overly broad definitions of symptoms and outbreaks, particularly in combination with other rules put in place at the beginning of the epidemic.” (1)
Normally, diagnoses would be more specific, and considerations given to underlying issues, but as per WHO diktats, probable Covid-19, or presumed Covid-19, or WITH Covid-19 are now recorded as (death) BY Covid-19. Furthermore, deaths are deemed “natural”, as per new rules issued by Ontario’s Chief Coroner, and so they are exempt from further investigations and post-mortems.
Additionally, Frei reports that until April 9, 2020, Death Certificates were filled out by physicians or nurse practitioners who cared for patients before they died. After April 9, that duty was delegated to the Chief Coroner.
“Covid-19” deaths in New York State are treated in much the same way — as per WHO and CDC guidelines — but apparently such deaths are not deemed “natural” because New York State performed autopsies on all “Covid-19” deaths.
Not surprisingly, as reported by Dr. John Lott, one third of those deaths classified as “Corona deaths” tested negative for Coronavirus. This, in addition to the fact that the CDC double-counted many cases, and the fact that there are financial incentives on (U.S) hospitals to inflate numbers, suggests, according to Dr. Lott, that the death toll might well be half what is recorded. (2)
If the Covid-19 epidemic had been treated appropriately, by, for example, quarantining vulnerable people and not entire populations, and by evidence-based rules and guidelines as opposed to “Emergency”-based diktats, then much harm would have been prevented.
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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.
Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes the mainstream media narratives on Syria.
“I can’t breathe” were some of the last words of the latest victim to police terror.
Memorial Day in Minneapolis saw the echoing of the same words as Eric Garner before he was killed by police six years earlier.
For over eight minutes Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of an unarmed and handcuffed man on Monday night, killing him.
This is at least the second person Chauvin has killed behind the badge. The incident was recorded by a bystander and posted to Facebook.
Minneapolis Responds To Police Murder of George Floyd
Unicorn Riot has been covering the street protest that rallied the afternoon of May 26. Tune in:
The FBI has been called in to assist the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (MN-BCA) in the investigation of the incident.
Neither the victim, who’s said to be in his 40s, nor the multiple police responsible have been officially identified. However, after reviewing the video, seeing the officer’s name tag and cross-checking it with what a bystander said was the officer’s badge number, 1087, the officer is found to be Derek Chauvin. The victim is said to be George Floyd, from Houston, TX.
Officer Derek Chauvin, who’s been on the force for nearly two decades, has at least 10 complaints that have been filed against him. He has shot and killed at least one person and shot and wounded at least one other, in that person’s own bathroom.
During the encounter that was filmed by community member Darnella Frazier, Chauvin is seen pushing his knee into the handcuffed man’s neck as he was on the pavement of Chicago Avenue near 38th Street in front of Cup Foods. On the video, bystanders can be heard questioning why Chauvin continued to dig his knee in the man’s neck for so long.
At one point Chauvin reached for his mace to threaten the bystanders while continuing to kneel on the man. Chauvin’s partner, Tou Thao, can be heard repeatedly telling people “don’t do drugs” in response to concerns Chauvin was physically injuring the man.
The police said the man was a suspect in an alleged forgery attempt and that he resisted arrest.
In a midnight presser in front of Minneapolis Police Headquarters, Public Information Officer Jon Elder said that officers at the scene called in an ambulance when they “realized that the suspect was suffering a medical distress.” PIO Elder seems to have disregarded the video showing the man being kneeled on by his distresser.
Elder also stated the officers had body cameras on and activated, but the bystander video clearly shows Chauvin without a body camera.
Officer Chauvin shown not wearing a body camera (screenshot from bystander video)
The President of Communities United Against Police Brutality (CUAPB), Michelle Gross, said this video makes it “clear this was an outright murder“.
“The MPD has an appalling record of killing people of color and covering it up. This time, though, witnesses and video will make it a lot harder.
It’s clear this was an outright murder.
We demand an independent investigation—not the usual BCA cover up—and we demand these cops be prosecuted for murder.” — Michelle Gross, CUAPB
“He should not have died“, said an emotional Jacob Frey, the Mayor of Minneapolis, during a morning press conference with Minneapolis Police Chief Arradondo. Frey said “he was a human being and his life mattered.” Frey condemned Chauvin’s actions, saying he was “wrong at every level” and that Chauvin “failed in the most human sense.”
“Being Black in America should not be a death sentence” — Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey
Mayor Frey and Chief Arradondo said the racial aspect of the incident is why the FBI was called in, to investigate civil rights violations.
A protest is planned for 5 p.m. tonight at 38th St. and Chicago Ave. in South Minneapolis. Follow Unicorn Riot for more updates.
UPDATE: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey announced Tuesday afternoon that four officers involved in this incident had their employment terminated.
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Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center has said the recorded coronavirus death toll may be a dramatically overstated.
One America’s John Hines sat down with him to learn more.
You have looked at the Numbers.
There is a dramatic over-count. The CDC is double counting. The numbers are more than twice what they should be.
There has also been an inflation of coronavirus deaths.
Additional funds are allocated to hospitals for COVID-19 patients.
There are pressures on hospitals to categorize deaths as coronavirus. There is a substantial amount of money for the hospitals.
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Let us consider why the Donald Trump White House is currently considering detonating a nuclear weapon. It would be the first “test” of a nuke since 1992 and is clearly intended to send a message that those weapons sitting around in storage will be available for use. The testing is in response to alleged development of low-yield tactical nuclear devices by Beijing and Moscow, a claim that is unsupported by any evidence and which is likely a contrivance designed to suggest that there is strong leadership coming out of Washington at a time when the Administration has been faulted for its multiple failures in combatting the coronavirus.
The Pentagon and national security agencies directed by the White House have also been discussing the viability of engaging in war with those same two global competitors Russia and China, either individually or even simultaneously. Yes, it is true that many countries wargame certain scenarios that are unlikely ever to occur, but there is nevertheless a certain consistency in the bellicosity that comes like an endless stream out of the Trump White House.
Relations with both Moscow and Beijing are the worst they have been since the end of the Cold War. A recent interview with U.S. Special Representative for Syria James Jeffreyrevealed that American troops are staying in Syria not to confront ISIS but rather in hopes that Russia will be drawn into a “quagmire.” Meanwhile the U.S. government’s repeated attempts to demonize China for the coronavirus suggest that tension with that country will increase considerably as U.S. elections draw nearer. Both China and Russia have already been accused of planning to interfere in November’s presidential polling.
The Administration policy of intimidation and threats directed against foreign nations over their domestic and international policies has borne bitter fruit, but no one seems capable of halting the slide led by Secretary of State Pompeo and the president into an autocracy that depends on expressions and demonstrations of military power for its survival. Washington recently rejected global calls to suspend all sanctions and aggressive actions while the world struggles with coronavirus. It was the only country to do so, leading to derision from friend and foe alike and emphasizing the isolation of the Trump leadership on the world stage.
Recently the United States was threatening to intercept four Iranian flagged oil tankers that were making their way to Venezuela. The U.S., which has waged economic warfare against both countries by sanctioning oil exports and seriously degrading the standards of living of ordinary citizens, is now seeking to use military resources to enforce its completely illegal rules globally. If Trump wants to light a fire, attacking Iranian ships in international waters to enforce U.S. unilaterally imposed sanctions is a sure way to go about it. Starving Iranians and Venezuelans is in no one’s interest, not even the poohbahs who are in charge in Washington, but they seem to be oblivious to the fact that taking “action” has consequences.
The irony is, of course, that Donald Trump was elected president on a “peace candidate” margin of difference after he pledged that he would be ending “stupid” wars in Asia. Unfortunately, his assurances were little more than copies of the similar pledges made by his two predecessors, both of whom embraced business as usual for America the Exceptional early in their terms of office. Electing three faux peace candidates in a row also revealed that while you cannot fool all the people all the time you can fool most of them frequently enough to wind up in Washington.
And there is other cleverness afoot in an effort to make COVID-19 go away. Pompeo has just announced that the United States will unilaterally withdraw from the so-called Open Skies Treaty which was signed in 1992. Thirty-two signatories were, by its terms, allowed to conduct unarmed confidence building surveillance flights over each others’ territories to ensure that no one was planning a military offensive.
It is the third international security arrangement that Trump has discarded since he took office and the pretext, as in the previous cases, is that the other side is “cheating,” that Russia in particular has blocked overflights of strategic regions and military exercises while also using its flights to collect sensitive information on the United States to plan potential attacks.
America’s NATO allies, also signatories on the treaty, were not informed in advance regarding the White House’s intentions and are reported to be angry because they have found the Treaty a useful tool in maintaining mutually beneficial relations with Russia. Some Democrats and former intelligence official in the U.S. have declared the decision “insane”, both because it ignores the interests of America’s closest allies and because it further damages the prospect for establishing a reasonable modus vivendi with Moscow.
Previously Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) shortly after taking office in 2018 under pressure from his principal donor Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who is a persistent advocate for Israel. His wife Miriam has declared that there should be a new entry to the Hebrew Bible entitled the “Book of Trump.” Iran was in compliance with the agreement and it was beneficial for the United States as it would have denied Tehran the infrastructure needed to produce a nuclear weapon, but Adelson was in favor of attacking Iran, going so far as to recommend that nuclear weapons be used against it.
Trump also subsequently left the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, using the same unsubstantiated argument being put forward by Administration hawks currently that Russia was not fully compliant with its terms.
This latest withdrawal suggests that there will be another departure if Trump is reelected. The New START Treaty, the only remaining nuclear-arms-control agreement between the United States and Russia, is set to expire in February 2021. New START was negotiated by the Obama administration, which would render it a prime target for rejection by Trump. It sets a cap on the number of nuclear missile warheads deployed by the United States and Russia, which is certainly to everyone’s benefit, but apparently the White House does not agree.
The trend is clear. Trump and his advisers, most notably Pompeo, are opposed to any international bodies on principle, most particularly if they are not completely supportive of U.S. policies and positions or are able to limit the White House’s freedom of action, up to an including the use of nuclear weapons. Recently Trump has cut off all funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) in spite of the globally significant coronavirus crisis. Last year, Trump cut off funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) refugee program to punish the Palestinians and express his support for the Israelis. Now, the president is clearly opposed to any attempts at arms control and is seeking to dismantle the existing international framework.
“Trump hasn’t started any new wars” say the more cogent of his supporters. That may be true, but he has attacked Syria twice based on phony intelligence and has committed a war crime by assassinating a senior Iranian government official. And he sure has worked hard to elevate constant insults and threats into a major component of U.S. foreign policy while also taking away the international instruments set up to minimize the risks of war. And it will only get worse over the next five months as the White House works desperately to shift the focus away from the fallout from the mishandled coronavirus and towards foreign enemies who will be blamed for everything going wrong in America.
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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.
Comments Off on Trump the “Peace Candidate”: Contemplating War During Pandemic against Two Global Competitors. Nuclear Weapons “Tests” against China and Russia
One Turkish soldier died and another was injured in an IED attack in Syria’s southern Idlib, the Turkish Defense Ministry reported late on May 27. The incident happened while units of the Turkish Army and the Turkish-backed militant group Sham Legion were passing near Jisr al-Shughur. The killed soldier was identified as lieutenant Canbert Tatar. He become the second Turkish soldier killed in the M4 highway area since the signing of the March 5 de-escalation agreement in Moscow.
Earlier on May 27, a large explosion erupted near an HQ and a weapon depot of the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) in the town of al-Gassaneyah. At least 6 members of the terrorist group died. Some pro-militant sources claimed that the explosion was caused by an airstrike by the Russian Aerospace Forces. Other sources say that the incident happened due to poor safety measures at the weapon depot.
The attack on the Turkish patrol was likely conducted by the TIP or its allies. The TIP’s main stronghold, Jisr al-Shughur, is located just inside the security zone that should be cleared from radicals under the de-escalation agreement. So, the al-Qaeda-linked group and its local allies are doing all they can to sabotage the deal.
On May 28, Idlib militant groups and pro-Turkish sources immediately blamed Russia for the casualties among the Turkish Army. According to them, the ‘aggressive actions’ of Moscow and the ‘bloody Assad regime’ are the source of the tensions. So, Turkey should continue defending al-Qaeda in southern Idlib at any cost.
The Syrian Army, the National Defense Forces, and Liwa al-Quds continue their operation against ISIS along the Palmyra-Deir Ezzor highway and in southern Raqqa. So far, they have neutralized over 20 militants, seized over a dozen vehicles and destroyed several ISIS hideouts. On May 27 and May 28, Russian airstrikes on ISIS positions were also reported.
Syrian government forces are using the Idlib ceasefire to deal with the ISIS threat in the desert. However, if the situation in Idlib escalates, the army and its allies will be forced to redeploy at least a part of their forces involved in the anti-ISIS operation to the frontline. This will give additional opportunities to any ISIS cells still hiding in the desert.
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Minneapolis May 2020. Toronto June 2010. This article was published ten years ago.
Toronto is right now in the midst of a massive government / media propaganda fraud. As events unfold, it is becoming increasingly clear that the ‘Black Bloc’ are undercover police operatives engaged in purposeful provocations to eclipse and invalidate legitimate G20 citizen protest by starting a riot. Government agents have been caught doing this before in Canada.
At the ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership’ meeting protests at Montebello Quebec on August 20, 2007, a Quebec union leader caught and outed three masked undercover Quebec Provincial Police operatives dressed as ‘black bloc’ protestors about to start a riot by throwing rocks at the security police. See the following videos documenting this event.
Stop SPP Protest – Union Leader stops provocateurs
The operation was exposed by the following picture of the undercover police wearing combat boots identical to those of the security police arresting them.
(Provocateurs in Montebello wear the same shoes as the Quebec policemen who arrest them!)
See the distinctive yellow dots on the thick corrugated soles of the boots which are the giveaway.
The Quebec Provincial Police were then forced after three days of public outrage to admit that these three men were indeed their officers operating undercover.
Fast Forward to the Toronto 2010 G20 Protest Riot
On Saturday June 26, 2010, the Globe and Mail published on their website a number of photographs taken at the afternoon riot in downtown Toronto precipitated by the ‘black bloc.’
Using these photos, I am going to show you that once again, the ‘black bloc’ provocateurs and the armoured police are wearing the exact same shoes.
Thanks to the Globe and Mail for these very helpful photos.
Starbucks Vandalised
Here an operative throws a metal chair through a Starbucks window. This man’s physique doesn’t look like a seedy ‘anarchist’ to me. Rather, this is the fit strong body of a trained soldier – somebody who puts in a lot of regular gym time. He is also wearing what is really a uniform and rather specialized equipment on his forearm and possibly his hip. Unfortunately in this picture we cannot see the shoes being worn. But we certainly can in the picture that follows, and this is where it gets interesting.
The Provocateurs’ Combat Boots
Below another operative throws what appears to be a rock at another Starbucks window.
Take a close look at the upturned boot.
This is a brand new (? recently issued) very distinctive deep black colour combat boot. Note as at Montebello, the special thick heavy corrugated soles plus what appears to be some reinforcement of the upper forefoot area. Also note the mismatched black and white socks. Is this a recognition code to their uniformed colleagues? The nice heavy shiny new belt also appears to be part of a uniform.
Here is another ‘black bloc’ operative stomping on the roof of a Toronto Police car. Where are the police? He is obviously being “allowed” to trash the vehicle to create what will become the signature media images of the event – burning police cars in Toronto. But stamping on shattered glass and plastic is pretty hard on your shoes.
But his shoes can obviously take it because he is wearing the same brand new distinctive black combat boots as the Starbucks rock throwing provocateur above (go to the Globe and Mail url to see the higher resolution original photo). Note the same thick soles with the deep corrugations visible in an enlargement as a scalloping of the front bottom outer edge of the uplifted left shoe.
The Armoured Police Boots – They Are The Same Shoes!
Now check the uniformed armoured police boots. Note once again the thick heavy corrugated soles and deep black colour.
Here is one in close-up. It is clearly the same boot as the ‘black bloc’ provocateurs are wearing. It too is brand new and shiny as in recently issued for today’s duty.
Here are more of the armoured police boots.
Below is yet a closer view of the armoured police boots. This picture shows the upper part of the shoes more clearly. The police are also wearing what appears to be an additional protective spat module which is strapped on over the shoe’s upper front forefoot area. This looks like an extra equipment add-on to, and not an integral part of, the ‘civilian’ version of the shoe, which is otherwise identical to the police shoes in design, features and colour.
And in close-up
Canadian “Bureaucratic Economizing” Exposes The Fraud
That the ‘black bloc’ provocateurs and the uniformed armoured police are wearing in Toronto (as at Montebello) the identical government issued combat boots, has at least one positive aspect. It looks as if someone in the procurement bureaucracy was at least trying to do some economizing in the spending of the one billion dollars that this G20 fiasco has wrested from the taxpayers. Very sensibly, these bureaucrats wanted to provide the same sturdy combat boots for both the uniformed police officers as well as the undercover ones. How wonderfully Canadian.
But this endearing Hobbit-like practicality has also given the game away. The ‘black bloc,’ if they ever existed as an independent entity, have clearly been thoroughly infiltrated by undercover government agents. In classic covert counterinsurgency strategy these agents manipulate the group to commit violent acts which play directly into hidden government controllers’ hands. These controllers manipulate public opinion from behind the scenes through the commission of false flag acts of violence (these are acts falsely blamed on scapegoats other than those concealed perpetrators who are actually responsible.) The psychological operation (psyop) is then accomplished through the propaganda fulminations of the completely controlled and complicit mass media. As in so many similar situations in so many other countries in the past, the goal of this combination of violent acts and lying media propaganda is to invalidate any legitimate citizen protest of the many immoral acts being wreaked upon the peoples of the world by our governments. The techniques of imperial control which have been used so successfully overseas are now being fully deployed against the people at home. Deployed against us. As far as our war-addicted governments are concerned, we are all insurgents now.
But We Canadians Can Stop the G20 Fraud in Its Tracks
As this G20 protest riot fraud continues to unfold, please use your eyes and your cameras to pay attention to small details, like everybody’s shoes! As more and more people wake up from the deceptions being perpetrated upon them, more inconsistencies in the official propaganda story will be noticed.
Evidence will tumble forward to expose the whole malignant enterprise even more. We should stop this Riot Fraud in its tracks and demand an immediate investigation.
Please forward this article as widely as you can and collectively send it to all our politicians and media to put them on notice that we will no longer allow them to participate in the Toronto G20 riot fraud of 2010.
For Canada and for what is good and right and true.
A few years ago the British medical journal, The Lancet, published a paper touting the safety of HCQ.But this was before HCQ with zinc was found effective if used earlier enough against Covid-19.Covid-19 turned HCQ’s effectiveness into a big problem for Big Pharma’s big profits.
The solution was another study by medical professionals some of whom have ties to Big Pharma and none of whom, apparently, are involved in the treatment of Covid patients.The study lumps together people in different stages of the disease and undergoing different treatments. It touts its large sample, but many of the patients in the sample received treatment too late after the virus had reached their heart and other vital organs.Most likely the people who died from heart failure died as a result of the virus, not from HCQ.
To be effective treatment has to stop the virus early. Waiting until the patient must be hospitalized has given the virus too much of a head start. Every doctor, and there are many, who reports success with the HCQ treatment stresses early treatment.President Trump used a two-week treatment with HCQ as a prophylactic as he was constantly coming into contact with people who tested positive for the virus.Many medical professionals who are treating Covid patients also use HCQ as a prophylactic.
The Lancet study was a rush job as it was essential for Big Pharma to prevent the spread of the HCQ treatment and awareness of its safety and effectiveness.The study’s authors completed the data collection around the middle of April and the study was published on May 22.As soon as it appeared, it was used to close down the World Health Organization’s clinical trial of hydoxychloroquine in coronavirus patients citing safety concerns. Most likely, the trial was aborted in order toprevent an official agency from finding out that HCQ worked.
The media, of course, used the suspended trial to cast more doubt on Trump’s judgment for recommending and using the treatment, the implication being that Trump had put himself at more risk from a heart attack than from the virus itself.
The Daily Mail, which is often somewhat skeptical of official reports, even misreported French virologist Didier Raoult’s report (see this) of his success with treating 1,061 patients with HCQ/AZ as consisting of only a small sample of 30 patients (see this). A small sample is considered to be inconclusive. Thus 1,061 people became 30.
The Lancet study claims a high mortality from HCQ treatment, reporting a death rate ranging from 5.1% to 13.8%.In response to a journalist when asked about this claim, Didier Raoult said that he and has colleagues have followed 4,000 of their patients so far.They have had 36 deaths and none from heart problems for a death rate of 0.009%.According to The Lancet study, he should have between 204 and 552patients dead from heart problems.He has zero.Raoult had more than 10,000 cardiograms analysed by rythmologists (a special kind of cardiologist) searching for any sign of heart problems.
NIH’s Dr. Fauci denies that Raoult’s hard evidence is evidence. On May 27 Fauci said, without showing shame of his ignorance or his lie, that there’s no evidence that shows the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is effective at treating COVID-19. (see this)
Perhaps what Fauci means is that no study undertaken by NIH or another Big Pharma friendly official body has been done and that only such studies constitute evidence.
When hard evidence such as Raoult’s is suppressed and misreported while “studies” doctored to produce a predetermined conclusion that serves Big Pharma profits are rushed into publication, we know that money has pushed ethics out of medical research.A number of concerned people have been telling us this for some time.We are past due to listen to them.
Private medicine is profit driven, which makes it susceptible to fraud.In long ago days fraud was restrained by the moral character of doctors and the respect for truth of researchers.These restraints, never perfect, have eroded as greed turned everything, integrity itself, into a commodity that is bought and sold.
The intent is to bury HCQ as a low cost effective treatment and to put in its place a high cost alternative whether effective or not, and to supplement this enhancement of profits with mass vaccination which might do us more harm than the virus itself.Big Pharma could care less.The only value it knows is profit.
This intent has garnered the support of the French, Belgium and Italian governments. Using The Lancet study and WHO’s termination of its HCQ trial as the excuse, the French government revoked its decree authorizing HCQ treatment. Belgium’s health ministry issued a warning against the use of HCQ except in registered clinical trials. Italy’s health agency wants HCQ’s use banned outside of clinical trials and suspended authorization to use HCQ as a Covid-19 treatment. See this.
Does this mean that Raoult and his team who by treating Covid patients with HCQ have achieved the remarkable low death rate of 0.009% are prohibited from using the proven cure to save lives? Will Raoult and his team be imprisoned if they continue to save lives? What about the people who will die from the three government’s prevention of a safe and effective treatment? Will France, Belgium, and Italy accept responsibility for these lost lives?
I can’t avoid wondering if the revolving door between Big Pharma and the NIH and CDC which corrupts US public health decisions also operates in France, Belgium and Italy. Are European health officials elevating themselves by climbing over the dead bodies of their victims?
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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The US has finally discovered whom to blame for the ongoing escalation of the conflict in Libya.
On May 26, the US African Command (AFRICOM) claimed that Russia had deployed warplanes to Libya to support the Libyan National Army of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. It said that Russia is expanding its “military footprint in Africa using government-supported mercenary groups like Wagner”.
According to the US military, “If Russia seizes basing on Libya’s coast, the next logical step is they deploy permanent long-range anti-access area denial (A2AD) capabilities.” This, AFRICOM warned, “will create very real security concerns on Europe’s southern flank”. On top of this, it declared, as might be expected, that it is the Russians who are destabilizing the situation in the country; like there was no 2011 NATO invasion that destroyed Libyan statehood and threw the country into a state of permanent chaos.
To make the fearmongering more successful, the Pentagon released shady undated photos of Russian MiG-29, Su-24, Su-34, and Su-35s flying at undisclosed locations and an image of the Al-Jufra air field in Libya with a single MiG-29.
Earlier in May, sources loyal to the Turkish-backed Government of National Accord reported that the Libyan National Army received 8 fighter jets restored thanks to Russian assistance: six MiG-29s and two Sukhoi 24s. Then, pro-Turkish sources also shared an image of the Al-Jufra air field with a single MiG-29 fighter jet to confirm their claims. Where the rest of the air fleet supposedly supplied by Moscow to Haftar forces might be remains unclear. Another interesting question is where are those hordes of Russian private military contractors that US and Turkish officials like to mention in their reports. While the presence of some Russian PMCs in the country is an open secret, photo and video evidence on the ground demonstrate that the scale of their presence is highly overestimated by mainstream media and Western diplomats. Additionally, Moscow’s actions demonstrate that it prefers to avoid a direct involvement in the conflict.
However, if Turkey and NATO member states continue sending their own military specialists, weapons and military equipment to radical, al-Qaeda-like militant groups operating under the brand of the Government of National Accord, Russia really could consider joining more directly the efforts of the UAE and Egypt, who back the Libyan National Army. Until now, Moscow has been mostly focused on providing a distant diplomatic support to them.
Meanwhile, the number of militants deployed by Turkey from Syria’s northwest to Libya to fight on the side of the Government of National Accord reportedly reached 8,000. A large part of them either sympathizes with al-Qaeda ideology or has been directly involved in cooperation with the former official branch of al-Qaeda in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Over the past years, the Libyan National Army has broken the backs of al-Qaeda-linked groups and cleared them from most of the country. The local branch of ISIS also lost its positions in northern Libya due to its inability to come to an understanding with pro-GNA forces and their foreign backers. But now, the growing terrorist threat is once again becoming an important factor of the conflict.
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With the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s passage of the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2020 last week, the current Congress is now poised to enact with little transparency its most far-reaching bill related to Israel at the height of a national public health emergency.
According to Lara Friedman, President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP), the committee vote took place “without even bothering with a pretense of public discussion” and was especially egregious because the committee voted on a wholly new version of the bill which “was not made public until long after the hearing ended.”
The opacity of the committee’s vote on the bill was even more shocking considering its importance.
Ostensibly the main purpose of the bill, S.3176, is to codify in law the levels of military aid and funding for missile defense agreed to by the United States and Israel in a 2016 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
This MOU, pledging a record-breaking $38 billion for Israel between 2019 and 2028, solidified President Obama’s legacy as the president most munificent to Israel.
However, a presidential pledge of weapons to Israel does not automatically result in their delivery. According to the constitution, Congress passes spending bills, and funds first need to be authorized and then appropriated before they can be obligated and expended by the president.
If passed, S.3176 would authorize Congress to appropriate funds for the remaining budgetary years of the MOU. However, if that were the sole purpose of the bill, it merely would be an inconsequential act of grandstanding since it is inconceivable that Congress would fail to appropriate the funds as scheduled every year.
Instead, the real purpose of the bill is to potentially boost military aid to Israel even higher and further enmesh the US-Israeli relationship in various military and economic fields.
According to the MOU, $3.3 billion per year in foreign military financing (FMF) and $500 million in missile defense was supposed to have served as a very generous ceiling for US aid. Both sides committed to “respect the FMF levels specified in this MOU, and not to seek changes to the FMF levels for the duration of this understanding.”
S.3176 would authorize $3.3 billion annually in FMF not as a ceiling, as negotiated by the Obama administration, but as a floor. The bill seeks to do so surreptitiously by amending existing statutory authorization for military aid to Israel by replacing an amount “equal to” with “not less than” $3.3 billion annually.
In other words, if this bill were to become law, then Israel could receive even more weapons at US taxpayer expense than envisaged under Obama’s MOU.
This is far from the only problematic aspect of the bill, however. It also includes a long Israeli and AIPAC wish list of other perks from the United States. Crucially, the bill would extend for five years congressional permission for the Pentagon to stockpile US weapons in Israel.
Theoretically, these US weapons are prepositioned in Israel for use in a rapid US deployment in the region. In reality, this often overlooked authority allows Israel to access certain US weapons on an emergency basis with no congressional oversight, as Israel did in its 2014 attack on the Gaza Strip and its 2006 war on Lebanon, making the United States further complicit in Israeli war crimes.
David Schenker, who serves as the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs in the Trump administration, and who previously worked for AIPAC-affiliated think tank Washington Institute for Near East Policy, stressed the importance of this stockpile in a Politico Op-Ed.
The stockpile of weapons is a “strategic boon to Israel. The process is streamlined: No 60-day congressional notification is required, and there’s no waiting on delivery,” Schenker wrote. It “is intended to meet primarily Israeli, not American, military contingencies.”
The bill would also authorize Israel to access precision guided munitions from US reserves, and also expresses a vague, non-binding sense of Congress that the United States should “assist” allies such as Israel that are “subject to direct missile threat.”
In the economic sphere, the bill would also authorize expenditures on a hodgepodge of goodies and bilateral projects designed to strengthen US-Israeli ties. These include a two-year extension of authorization for Israel to access US loan guarantees, an indirect form of aid which allows Israel to borrow money internationally at a lower interest rate than would be the case without the United States serving as a guarantor on the loans.
The bill would also authorize $2 million annually for five years for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Israel to “advance common development goals in third countries across a wide variety of sectors, including energy, agriculture, food security, democracy, human rights, governance, economic growth, trade, education, environment, global health, water, and sanitation.”
The notion that USAID and Israel would team up to export their knowledge of these issues is farcical in the extreme, as Israel’s separate-and-unequal rule over the Palestinians disqualifies it from modeling democracy, human rights, or governance, and its deliberate de-development of the Palestinian economy, including through its illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip, has pushed Palestinians to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe by making many food insecure and severely constricting Palestinian access to health, water, and sanitation.
The bill also authorizes USAID to set up programs to normalize Israel’s economic relations in the Middle East in the fields mentioned above, although no specific dollar amount is authorized for these projects. This normalization would occur through US funding for joint projects between at least one entity in Israel and at least one unspecified “regional partner.”
Finally, the bill would either encourage or authorize ten additional collaborative projects between Executive Branch agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Energy, and NASA, and Israel. For an overview of these projects, see Lara Friedman’s excellent explainer in FMEP’s legislative round-up.
The bill is now ready to go to the Senate for a vote, which is sure to happen in plenty of time for Senators to crow about it in their reelection campaigns. If passed, the Senate would then need to reconcile its version of the bill with a similar, but even more extreme, version passed by the House in July 2019 by voice vote.
The House bill, championed by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), would create a loophole in the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) that would enable Israel to break free from the congressional oversight and limitations on the usage of US weapons stipulated in this law.
According to the text of this version, if “Israel is under an existing or imminent threat of military attack”, then the president could waive the AECA and “direct the immediate transfer to Israel of such defense articles or services the President determines to be necessary to assist Israel” in an unlimited amount.
The final version of the bill, which is sure to pass with overwhelming bipartisan support, will therefore either give Israel and AIPAC everything they want, or give them everything they want with no strings attached.
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Within a month, the U.S. oil benchmark West Texas Intermediate recorded two first-of-a-kind events. First, it fell below zero on April 20. Then, it soared up so high it is about to book its best month ever, CNBC’s Pippa Stevens noted in a recent commentary. Still, many analysts and other observers remain wary of any premature optimism.
They have a good reason to be.
WTI is now trading at close to $35 a barrel. That’s up from less than $13 a barrel a month ago. Marked improvement is one way you could frame this–an incredible rally is another. And yet this rally did not happen on its own. It followed a fast reduction in production and the gradual lifting of lockdowns across the States and elsewhere as many parts of the world concluded that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic is over.
With such a significant cut in oil production and improving oil demand, it should be only a matter of time before prices rebound to pre-crisis levels of over $50 a barrel.
Or it would have been, had the situation been ordinary, which it isn’t. Demand may be improving, but it is not improving as fast as oil bulls would have liked. In fact, as Forbes’ Gaurav Sharma forecast in a recent analysis of the market, the best that the bulls can hope for in the near term is $40 a barrel, and not before the third quarter. Expectations of WTI back to $50 or $60 are currently unrealistic, therefore, but not unrealistic over the longer term. Granted, times right now are volatile. Nobody can say whether there would be a second wave of Covid-19 infections on a wider-than-regional-China scale. That’s one great uncertainty that is pressuring prices. Then, nobody can say whether there would not be a second price war within OPEC+ or between OPEC+ and other producers, notably the United States. According to energy journalist Frank Kane, another price war is just a few dollars per barrel away.
With so much uncertainty around, it is no wonder the rebound in WTI—or Brent crude, for that matter—has not been greater. Even good news on the demand side, including an increase in Chinese oil imports and plans for expanding oil storage capacity, has not been enough to push prices much higher than $30 a barrel. In fact, even a statement from the International Energy Agency’s head saying that oil demand has yet to peak has not been able to do that.
“In the absence of strong government policies, a sustained economic recovery and low oil prices are likely to take global oil demand back to where it was, and beyond,” Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the IEA, told Bloomberg earlier this week.
However, not all from the industry agree with this. BP’s chief executive, Bernard Looney, for instance, told the Financial Times this month that we may be nearing peak oil.
“I don’t think we know how this is going to play out. I certainly don’t know,” Looney said. “Could it be peak oil? Possibly. Possibly. I would not write that off.”
Uncertainty, in other words, is the strongest feature in today’s oil markets and likely to remain their strongest feature for a while. Meanwhile, the supply of oil may be shrinking more permanently than previously believed. If so, this would contribute to the upside potential of oil prices.
Bankruptcies in the U.S. shale patch are rising. Seventeen companies have already filed for Chapter 11 protection since the start of the year, the FT reported. Still, many more bankruptcies are on the way, with Rystad Energy estimating that as many as 73 shale drillers could be forced into bankruptcy by the end of the year.
This will limit production for longer, or until these companies’ fellow drillers become profitable again, which is when production will start to rise. If this happens before demand has firmly come back, there will be another price slump. The problem is that no one knows if or when demand will firmly come back.
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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.
A spectre is haunting the United States—the spectre of a “China-centric world”. By voicing this concern President Trump pledges to “Keep America Great”. Some of the European allies echo this concern. Others remain conspicuously silent. But what exactly is this concern about?
The United States has enjoyed the status of a sole superpower for three decades. The Soviet Union, whose military parity Washington had reluctantly respected, no longer exists. After the first decade of docility, post-Soviet Russia has assumed a more independent position but faces serious economic challenges. China is a much bigger player, politically disciplined, industrially powerful, and technologically advanced.
But, in spite of often voiced fears, China does not threaten liberal democracies or a “liberal rule-based world”. Unlike Western nations with their long history of military and political intervention around the world, China has shown little interest in how other countries are governed and is not in the habit of imposing regime change. Moreover, it has learnt to benefit from peaceful conditions of free trade and globalization, both of which were promoted by the United States and the institutions it helped to create. China’s Belt and Road initiative is meant to capitalize on this success by improving inter-regional connectivity and logistics.
The reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States has exposed serious vulnerabilities of the country. But long before this public health crisis, the Americans feared China might beat them at their own economic game. This is why the U.S. government has come to resort to a variety of political measures to counter China’s industrial and technological ascendance. It has also increased military presence in China’s perimeter.
However, China will not respond symmetrically. It will not seek military bases in Canada and Mexico in order to match the presence of U.S. forces in Japan and South Korea. Rather, it is building up credible deterrence. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is regional in scope and consists of seven full members, four of them nuclear powers (China, India, Pakistan and Russia).
The spectre of a China-centric world, just as “the Red Menace” and “the War on Terror” in the past, serves the useful purpose of increasing U.S. military expenditures. Empires in decline tend to be violent. The actions of Britain in East Africa and of France in Algeria in the 1950s embody this tendency. The prospect of a military conflict with China may enthuse some people (it was the Second World War that pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depression) but remains dubious because of nuclear weapons.
In February 2020 the Munich Security Conference came up with the concept of “Westlessness”. i.e. a growing inability of the West to shape the international order in line with its values. It refers to a divided and in some parts increasingly illiberal West that seems to be retreating from the global stage. But this does not mean that “East” is about to take its place. Admittedly successful in peacetime competition, China has neither rational need nor cultural predisposition to imitate the imperialist experience of Western powers. To secure peace that has benefited it, China may use its weight to strengthen international organizations, such as the United Nations, and enhance a multi-polar world. This may be seen as a threat, but only a threat to the American ambition to dominate, often mistaken for “American leadership”. The current anti-China tantrum in Washington further undermines America’s credibility and encourages European politicians and investors alike to eye China as a more reliable partner.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought in vain to escape his mandatory appearance in court Sunday in his trial for fraud, bribery and breach of trust. At the insistence of the bench, he turned up surrounded by loyalists from his Likud bloc, adopted a defiant stance, and threatened to purge the country’s judiciary. He donned a mask before standing before the defendants bench for the 50 minute hearing, during which he announced he understood the charges he faces, plead not guilty and the schedule was fixed for he testimony of witnesses. It is unlikely that he will attend every session of the trial.
The first serving Israeli prime minister to be indicted, Netanyahu stands accused of accepting presents worth $250,000 in Cuban cigars, pink champagne and jewelry from wealthy supporters, and conspiring with media moguls to secure positive coverage of himself and his family from newspaper and television outlets. If convicted and the conviction stands up to lengthy appeals, he could face 10 years in prison.
He was indicted more than a year ago and the trial, delayed for two months due to Covid-19, could continue well after he concludes his current premiership. His is the first incumbent to go on trial although every other prime minister has been investigated for corruption over the past 20 years. Ehud Olmert, another Likudnik, resigned before indictment for bribery before he had the top job. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.
It must be remembered that Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, also stood trial. She eventually reached a plea deal in a case involving charges of illegally charging to the government $100,000 worth of meals ordered from up-market restaurants for the prime minister’s table at a time she had a full time cook. She got off lightly by paying a fine of $15,200. She has also been accused of misusing security personnel and mistreating household staff.
The ongoing trial has more than ever divided an already divided Israel between Netanyahu’s supporters, who exonerate him, and his opponents who convict him and want him out of office. On the political stage, the trial closely resembles the impeachment of Donald Trump, the current occupant of the White House who is a close ally of Netanyahu. Both men accused those investigating them of conspiring in a “witch hunt” and claimed they were innocent of charges raised against them. Both men are pugnacious, determined to remain in power, and prepared to lie and fabricate to do so. Both rely on a right-wing base of backers constituting about 30 per cent of voters. Both cultivate “culture wars” between less well-educated, rightist followers and liberal, leftist detractors.
Netanyahu promotes the Zionist agenda of Ze’ev Jabotinsky who sought to impose Israeli rule on all of Palestine at the expense of the Palestinians. Trump touts “America First” domestically by creating a “great economy” and abroad by reducing US commitments to international treaties and regulations, which he deems harmful to the country’s interests. For ideological and electoral purposes, Netanyahu pledges to annex the West Bank/Jordan Valley despite opposition from the international community. To appeal to white evangelical Christians as well as powerful-right wing members of the US Jewish community, Trump has given full support to Netanyahu’s ambitions.
Ahead of Israel’s elections, Trump gifted Netanyahu by granting US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, the shift of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, defunding of the UN agency caring for Palestinian refugees and all US aid to Palestinians, and incorporating US acceptance of Netanyahu’s annexation of the West Bank/Jordan Valley in the “Deal of the Century” peace plan of the administration. Trump’s aim was to see Netanyahu’s Likud secure a strong showing enabling him to serve a fifth term. Trump failed to boost the Likud. Netanyahu has a truncated 18-month term as premier coalition with the Benny Gantz, head of Blue and White, who takes over and serves tor the final 18 months while Netanyahu becomes his deputy.
Netanyahu is motivated by ideology as well as self-interest. His father Benzion Netanyahu served as secretary to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a Russian Jewish scholar who was a founder of the “Revisionist” Zionist movement, which initially advocated the creation of a Jewish state on both banks of the Jordan River. He differed from his current followers, including Netanyahu, by calling for a state dominated by a Jewish majority but granting rights to Palestinians who refused to emigrate. Many Likudniks and their extreme-right wing allies seek the expulsion of the Palestinians. They already form the majority in the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.
Netanyahu swears fealty to most of Jabotinsky’s ideological agenda, as he was brought up with it and it appeals to both religious and “nationalist” Israelis on the right of the political spectrum. Trump has no ideology. His agenda has been set by the right-wing “Tea Party” which has taken over the Republican Party and has been intimidated into backing every move Trump makes however destructive or absurd.
Both want to divert public attention from current challenges. Netanyahu is keen to play down his trial and less than perfect handling of the coronavirus outbreak in Israel, which has infected more than 18,000 cases and killed 280. Trump has failed to deliver on promises he made to the electorate when standing in 2016 and seeks to contain negative fall out over his failure to halt the spread of the deadly coronavirus across the US and preserve its economy. At present the US has more than 1.7 million cases and 100,000 deaths. On the corona-issue, both can command the full backing of right-wing media, which does not hesitate to demonise opponents and critics and issue false reports about their successes. However, even successful populist politicians in top positions cannot fool all the people all the time.
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The geostrategic state of Nepal is in a conundrum over whether to respect the previous government’s agreement to accept a $500 million “grant” from the US’ “Millennium Challenge Corporation” despite concerns that it could permanently undermine the country’s sovereignty, but backing out of the deal several years after it was first made and especially in the context of American-backed India’s Hybrid War on Nepal would put a bullseye on its back for years to come.
Nepal In The News
Nepal’s been in the news quite a lot ever since India’s five-year-long Hybrid War on it dramatically backfired earlier this month after Kathmandu released a map claiming the entirety of the disputed Kalapani territory in response to New Delhi doing the same last November. India is rapidly merging the resultant geostrategic standoff with the one that it’s also presently engaged in with China to establish a northern front of expansionism in pursuit of its Hindu “nationalist” leadership’s plans to carve out a “Hindu Rashtra” (fundamentalist Hindu state). The situation in both Indian-provoked Hybrid Wars is very fluid and could accordingly change at any time, which is why it’s important to analyze one of the least-discussed but immensely-influential variables that could radically reshape the situation in India’s favor, Nepal’s conundrum with the US’ “Millennium Challenge Corporation” (MCC).
The MCC: Mutually Beneficial Investment Or Mischievous Puppet Plot?
The MCC is one of the US’ foreign policy agencies and is separate from its much better-known counterpart USAID even though it essentially aims to promote the same agenda of expanding American influence abroad through “soft power” means such as “economic aid”. The previous Nepalese government agreed to accept a $500 million “grant” from the MCC in 2017, which has since become one of the most controversial domestic political topics in its post-monarchical history. Proponents are pushing the narrative that the impoverished landlocked country requires these investments in energy and roadways in order to improve its people’s standard of living, whereas critics claim that the clause stipulating that the agreement takes precedence over national legislation will permanently undermine the country’s sovereignty. There are also serious concerns about being drawn into the New Cold War after a government task force concluded that the deal is part of the US’ “Indo-Pacific Strategy” which unofficially aims to “contain” China.
Seemingly Strange Bedfellows
This controversy has led to some seemingly strange bedfellows. Prime Minister Oli of the country’s communist-led government is vehemently in support of the MCC’s “grant” on the grounds that “our diplomacy will be questioned if [it] is not implemented” since “it carries the legacy of the preceding governments” and therefore wants a parliamentary vote on it as soon as possible. Even Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Hou Yanqideclared at the start of the year that “We welcome any international assistance to Nepal if it is for economic cooperation. We would like to see the ratification process of the MCC and the Nepal government take a positive decision for its interest.” One of Oli’s fellow communists, however, explained Beijing’s interesting stance by noting that “When the government has taken a position, a diplomat cannot publicly counter it. It’s a matter of decorum which the Chinese strictly follow. So diplomats won’t object openly. Her [Hou’s] statement appears conditional— ‘if Nepal agrees’.”
American Meddling
Both sides of the debate have valid points. Oli knows that backing out of the deal several years after it was first made and especially in the context of American-backed India’s Hybrid War on Nepal would put a bullseye on his country’s back for years to come. His opponents, however, don’t feel comfortable having the terms of a US-written agreement prevail over domestic law. As for China, it strictly abides by its policy of not interfering in its partners’ internal affairs except in the rare instance that it expresses concern whenever it sincerely believes that something that they’re doing might cause national security problems for the People’s Republic. Nevertheless, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Alice Wells (the same official who recently once again criticized CPEC) strongly insinuated that the deal’s communist critics are “taking diction from China”, which further confirms that the US is politicizing this supposedly apolitical initiative as part of its “Indo-Pacific” agenda to expand American influence in the region through “soft power” means such as economic “aid”.
The False Choice
In all actuality, the US is hypocritically doing the exact same thing that it always accuses China of doing. American “perception managers”, including both media representatives and government officials, have claimed that Chinese economic assistance is part of a secret plot by the People’s Republic to infringe on its partners’ sovereignty and subsequently force them to take its side in the New Cold War. That, however, is exactly what the MCC aims to do. Wells is trying to impale Nepal on the horns of a geostrategic dilemma whereby it’s forced to choose between becoming an American puppet by accepting the MCC without any amendments to protect its sovereignty or turning into the object of its Hybrid War wrath by rejecting the agreement. The former scenario would prospectively see the US manipulating Nepal to distance itself from China while the latter would likely result in full American backing of India’s unstated desire to carry out regime change in the country so that its Nepali Congress opposition proxy there could return the state to its former status as New Delhi’s historic puppet.
Escaping The Dilemma
Nepal is therefore pressed to choose between the peaceful and forceful methods of becoming an American-Indian puppet state against China (and likely also surrendering the entirety of its claims to the disputed Kalapani region to New Delhi if the latter’s proxy comes to power), but that is actually a false choice since such an outcome is by no means inevitable. Following the recommendation of the earlier mentioned government task force to amend 11 points of the agreement in order to protect the country’s sovereignty could provide the best possible escape from this dilemma, but only in the event that the US doesn’t then withdraw the agreement in protest. Should that happen, then China could very easily replace the envisaged American economic role by investing in those same types of energy and road projects, albeit in a manner which protects and actually strengthens Nepal’s independence by not demanding that the terms of its prospective agreement take precedence over its partner’s domestic legislation. In that case, however, the US and India would almost certainly intensify their increasingly joint Hybrid War on Nepal by continuing with the trend of subsuming it into their larger Hybrid War on China after falsely claiming that the landlocked state has thus become a “puppet of the People’s Republic”.
South Asia As The Central Battleground In The 21st Century’s New Cold War
This prediction changes the nature of Nepal’s dilemma from choosing between peacefully and forcefully becoming an American-Indian puppet to deciding whether it even wants either of those two scenarios or would instead prefer to defend its independence with Chinese support. It’s likely that it’ll choose the latter, which will turn it into a flashpoint in the increasingly complex New Cold War that the US and India are jointly waging against China in the midst of WorldWarC. That outcome would entail a drastic increase in HybridWar threats to Nepal and a corresponding multifaceted increase in the level of support that China provides to its partner in response. It’s uncertain whether the US-Indian alliance will seek to provoke a second civil war in the country, but in the event that it does, then Nepal could very well turn into the first “hot” proxy war between them and China that other regional “cold” ones such as their heated competition in Myanmar and Sri Lanka might soon become. The larger pattern at play is that all of South Asia is being dragged into the New Cold War as American attention shifts from the Mideast to East Asia and thus naturally transits through the South Asian space between them that’s pivotally located in the geostrategic center of the Eastern Hemisphere.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
A couple of days ago, I heard from Fort Russ News, that the US Surgeon General (equivalent of the British Chief Medical Officer) Jerome Adams is to officially dump the Bill Gates-CDC-Fauci nonsense predictions and start moving forward with… wait for it: FACTS! Real data, instead of propaganda.1
This will annoy (I hope) Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci, who have made a media tour, threatening the public that businesses may not re-open for six months to a year, or until and unless governments purchase their conveniently patented, Big-Pharma vaccines.
Doctor (actually, college drop-out) Bill Gates is now President of Planet Earth, did you notice the switch. No election. He just is. Laying the down law and telling us what to do, from the heart of arrogance and the depth of ignorance, but bolstered by a degree of self-belief that only a psychotic would demonstrate.
Gates screwed up the computing world and saddled us all with Microsoft mush. Taxed everyone with a computer (in effect), to make himself obscene billions. Now he wants to do the same with health, politics and autonomy. Microsoft grabbed your rights, freedom and intellectual property. Now he wants you, a slave to his megalomania. He’s not a doctor. He doesn’t even have a first-aid certificate!
But there are sane voices out there too:
Professor John Ioannidis is Professor of Medicine, of Health Research and Policy and of Biomedical Data Science, at Stanford University School of Medicine; and a Professor of Statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences; director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center; and co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS).
He is also the editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Clinical Investigation. He was chairman at the Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, University of Ioannina School of Medicine as well as adjunct professor at Tufts University School of Medicine.
In other words, this guy is no lightweight.
Ioannidis states baldly that we are getting a very distorted picture, because patients who have been tested up to now are mainly those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes.
The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher.
Among normal, healthy people, the death rate is gradually falling to become about 0.1%, which is average for flu EVERY YEAR. We never locked down in the past!
There are deniers, of course, industry shills, who are paid to keep the fear-mongering going. They quote the distorted statistics for older people and try to pretend that the virus is the total cause of death, not the other 2, 3 or more pathologies which exist at the same time.
However, even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses that have been known for decades can have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect elderly people in nursing homes.
In fact, as Ioannidis says:
“If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of total deaths due to “influenza-like illness” would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average.”2
This wise interpretation is backed up by one of the only proper investigative studies, carried out in Santa Clara County, California, in which the authors estimated that the true infection fatality rate is somewhere in the range of 0.12% to 0.2%—far closer to seasonal influenza than to the original, case-based estimates.3
Michael T. Osterholm, a regents professor and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, is another voice of reason in the jungle of frenzy and fear:
Consider the effect of shutting down offices, schools, transportation systems, restaurants, hotels, stores, theaters, concert halls, sporting events and other venues indefinitely and leaving all of their workers unemployed and on the public dole. The likely result would be not just a depression but a complete economic breakdown, with countless permanently lost jobs, long before a vaccine is ready or natural immunity takes hold.
The best alternative will probably entail letting those at low risk for serious disease continue to work, keep business and manufacturing operating, and “run” society, while at the same time advising higher-risk individuals to protect themselves through physical distancing and ramping up our health-care capacity as aggressively as possible. With this battle plan, we could gradually build up immunity without destroying the financial structure on which our lives are based.4
Previously, the task force was working with predictive models, frequently criticized because of their tendency to exaggerate the possible effect of the virus on the United States. Models predicting the deaths of millions and hundreds of thousands in America appear to be overblown, as the real-time data is showing the death count much lower.
Adams said that the models usually took data from different cultures and places around the globe, but they were able to track more accurately what could happen in the United States based on real data gathered in places such as California and New York.
“We’re following this data every single day, and we’re giving that data to communities so that they can make informed and intelligent decisions about when and where to reopen,” he said.
A significant indicator for communities being allowed to reopen, Adams said, was actual testing data, not a predictive model.
“I feel confident that some places will start to reopen in May and June. Other places won’t; it will be piece by piece, bit by bit, but will be data-driven,” he said.
Real data? What’s he playing at? Oh, science, I guess, not propaganda!
I hope so…
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This year marks 250 years since the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel was born in 1770 in Stuttgart, Germany. In light of this anniversary I reassess what Hegel’s philosophy of nature can contribute to our contemporary understanding – what it has to say to us as we face a time of unprecedented environmental degradation.
We are in the midst of a mass extinction; losing species – plants and animals – somewhere between 100 and 1,000 times the naturally occurring background rate of extinction. Clearly, estimates vary widely – but there is a general consensus that anthropogenic climate change “at least ranks alongside other recognized threats to global biodiversity,” and is in all likelihood the “greatest threat in many if not most regions.”
What can Hegel’s philosophy teach us given this unfolding catastrophe? For most philosophers and scholars (not to mention scientists), if there is any area of Hegel’s thought that is antiquated and irrelevant it is his Naturphilosophie. Indeed, even in Hegel’s own day this part of his philosophy was ridiculed if not ignored, mainly because of his reliance upon a priori (as opposed to empirical) reasoning in constructing an account of the natural world. Consequently, it receives relatively little scholarly attention compared to his other monumental contributions to modern thought. This is unfortunate; for Hegel’s approach to nature is anything but a mere curiosity in the museum of ideas, even if parts of it seem dated or worse. Rather, what he has to say is centrally relevant to environmental concerns today.
The root causes of anthropogenic climate change – which has led to the endangering of countless species across the globe – cannot be adequately grasped in isolation from the technological application of modern science. While Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was certainly justified in calling upon American legislators to “unite behind the science,” neither can we overlook the culpability of science in bringing about the environmental crisis.
Alison Stone’s Petrified Intelligence (2004) offers one of the few sustained and sympathetic studies of Hegel’s philosophy of nature. She points out that the problem with the scientific approach is that it rests on inadequate metaphysical assumptions: “Empirical scientists work from a metaphysical assumption according to which natural forms cannot in any sense be considered agents whose behavior has meaning, but rather are bare things whose behavior makes up a mass of intrinsically meaningless events.”
In the Introduction to the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel writes that “The wealth of natural forms, in all their infinitely manifold configuration, is impoverished by the all-pervading power of thought, their vernal life and glowing colours die and fade away.”
This draining of nature of its inherent richness, its intrinsic qualities occurs paradigmatically in René Descartes’ famous analysis of the piece of wax in his Mediations on First Philosophy. Descartes effectively dissolves the “sensuously resplendent piece of wax into properties (extension and malleability) graspable by the mind’s eye alone.” Qualitative distinctions are replaced by quantitative ones; so that what we witness is indeed nothing less than the dematerialization of nature and its reduction to a mechanical system which can be fully articulated through the immaterial forms of theoretical mathematics.
Scientific and classical enlightenment views of nature represent it as lacking the qualities – including value qualities – which we generally understand to be present within it. Sensibility embodies a basic understanding of nature as intrinsically valuable, as having its own right and its own voice. The metaphysics of empirical science, by contrast, assumes that the behavior of natural forms is inherently meaningless and exhaustively explained by external causal factors.
Hegel wants to reenchant nature, but not by retrieving an outdated and unacceptable medievalism – rather, the approach that he favors is distinctly modern; and involves reasserting nature’s interiority or inwardness: “Matter interiorizes itself to become life,” as Hegel puts it. In terms of ethics Hegel’s conception of nature is preferable to the rival scientific metaphysics because he recognizes and insists upon the intrinsic value of every natural form. Nature’s forms and entities are intrinsically good – which is to say, they are good regardless of any human interests in or feelings regarding them. Indeed, Hegel postulates goodness everywhere in nature – not only in sounds and colors, but in chemical and electrical processes, elemental qualities, and even the passage of time and the immensity of space.
While individual natural forms have intrinsic value, they do so to varying degrees: nature is structured hierarchically, according to Hegel – and the organic is privileged over the non-organic. Hegel is also prepared to say that this hierarchy culminates in the appearance of human beings; so that one criticism of Hegel that environmental thinkers are likely to make is that he adopts a narrowly anthropocentric viewpoint. What this charge fails to appreciate however is that while humanity may represent the highest realization of Spirit (Geist), spirit is already there implicitly in the animal organism.
Animal life is, for Hegel, the truth of the organic sphere: the plant is a subordinate organism whose destiny is to sacrifice itself to the higher organisms and be consumed by them. The animal organism is the microcosm which has achieved an existence for itself, and in which the whole of inorganic nature is ‘recapitulated and idealized.’ What distinguishes the animal organism is its subjectivity – the animal is ensouled, “having a feeling of itself, whereby it acquires enjoyment of itself as an individual.” The plant lacks precisely this feeling of itself, this soulfulness.
To consider this more concretely, look at what Hegel has to say about voice, which he describes as “a high privilege of the animal which can appear wonderful… The animal makes manifest that it is inwardly for-itself, and this manifestation is voice.” Hegel draws special attention, in fact, to birdsong – for “the voice of the bird when it launches forth in song is of a higher kind; and this must be reckoned as a special manifestation in birds over and above that of voice generally in animals… birds utter their self-feeling in their own particular element… Voice is the spiritualized mechanism which thus utters itself.”
It is noteworthy that what Hegel has to say about birdsong has in fact been reiterated by more recent ornitho-musicology. Charles Hartshorne – one of the twentieth century’s great philosopher-theologians – was also an expert in birdsong. In his book, Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Birdsong, he observes that the song “conveys no single crude emotion but something like what life is to that bird at that season.” In fact, birdsong expresses feeling, “according to principles partly common to the higher animals… That a bird sings because it is happy is not entirely foolish.”
As our knowledge of living Nature grows, we will likely find that those aspects of ourselves which we take to be most distinctly human – such as aesthetic appreciation – may be regarded as an extension and refinement of abilities already present among nonhuman animals. Hegel’s philosophy of nature may provide the basis for a more environmentally sustainable way of life, in part by helping us to see how it is our intellectual duty to view living things “within the widest of intellectual and spiritual horizons,” as the great Swiss zoologist Adolf Portmann put it.
To treat the natural world – and especially living beings – as a mere aggregate of things to be ruthlessly exploited according to our narrow interests cannot but entirely miss the deeper, genuine and philosophical comprehension which views Nature as “in itself, a living Whole.” This implies that we must view and treat the animal organism as an irreducible way of being in the world, which cannot be understood solely through the physio-chemical or molecular analysis of life.
The loss of biodiversity is not only an environmental crisis, but an ontological crisis as well – for with the extinction of a species the very interiority of Nature has been diminished, as the world is no longer experienced in the way specific to the life form in question. To avoid this catastrophe we must be prepared to draw on all the resources at our disposal, and that may well include the philosophy of nature.
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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City.
Venezuela’s Central Bank (BCV) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) agreed to use part of the gold deposited in the Bank of England to acquire food and medicine to face the Covid-19 pandemic, BCV President Calixto Ortega declared on Wednesday.
On May 28, Venezuelan authorities will appear in a London court to defend the mechanism established with the UNDP in March. As Ortega said, they will claim that the Bank of England refuses to follow the instructions to sell part of the gold held by the BCV in that institution.
“The Bank of England is not complying with the contract signed with the Central Bank and is risking its prestige,” he denounced. The British entity’s only task is the custody of the gold.
#AHORA| Vicepresidenta Ejecutiva de #Venezuela@drodriven2 denuncia el robo del oro #venezolano por parte del Banco de Inglaterra "este jueves habrá una audiencia en los tribunales ingleses, nosotros esperamos que se respeten las leyes financieras mundiales"
“Executive Vice President of Venezuela denounced the theft of Venezuelan gold by the Bank of England “this Thursday, there will be a hearing in the English courts, we hope that global financial laws will be respected.”
“We agreed with the UNDP that they would receive the funds directly,” Ortega explained. “It’s not my word; it’s not that I’m saying I’m going to buy food, medicine, and medical equipment. It is the United Nations that is saying it, and they are not going to lend themselves to anything shady, anything that is not neutral, independent,” he pointed.
According to a complaint made by Executive Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, since March the Bank of England has frozen 31 tons of gold belonging to Venezuela, due to the British government’s position of not recognizing President Nicolas Maduro’s administration. She added that opposition lawmaker Juan Guaido is behind this maneuver to strip Venezuela of its assets and thus try to oust Maduro from the presidency.
Amid Covid-19 pandemic, Venezuela will also file a complaint with the International Criminal Court, for extermination and crimes against humanity. The gold retained by the British bank would be used to fight the disease, at a time when the blockade imposed by the US on the South American nation is increasing in strength.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, people in care homes have been dying in droves.
Why is this happening? Is it simply because older adults are very vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 and therefore it’s not unexpected that many would succumb?
Or do care homes deserve the lion’s share of the blame, such as by paying so poorly that many workers have to split their time between several facilities, spreading the virus in the process?
Alternatively, could medical experts and government bureaucrats, with the full knowledge of at least the top tier of government officials, have created conditions shortly after the pandemic struck that contribute to the high death tolls while engendering virtually no public backlash against themselves?
This article shows that the third hypothesis is highly plausible. The people who created the conditions may be unaware of, or oblivious to, their implications. But it’s also possible that at least some of them know exactly what they’re doing.
After all – seeing it from an amoral government’s point of view – the growing numbers of elderly are a big burden on today’s fiscally strained governments, because in aggregate they’re paying much less into the tax base than younger people while causing the costs of healthcare and retirement programs to skyrocket.
Here are three sets of conditions that collectively create a framework for enabling significantly boosted care-home deaths – and doing so with impunity – even while most of each set of conditions in isolation may appear to be purely for the benefit of everyone in society:
One. Bureaucrats develop extremely broad definitions of novel-coronavirus infections and outbreaks. This is coupled with the continuing presence, in a number of care homes scattered across each jurisdiction, of at least one nurse or physician who follows every letter of all definitions and rules. (Such individuals are always present in every discipline, but in the medical milieu their actions can be deliberate, deadly and very hard to detect.)
Two. Influential organizations and individuals produce hospital-care-rationing guidelines that recommend younger people receive higher priority than the elderly during the pandemic, by giving significant weight to how many years of life patients would have ahead of them if treatment is successful. Also, some guidelines bar care-home residents from being transferred to hospital.
Three. The chief coroner and leaders of the funeral, cremation and burial industries craft procedures that fundamentally change the way care-home deaths are documented and bodies dealt with. Their stated goal is to prevent overburdening of medical staff and body-storage areas during a surge in COVID-19 deaths.
They also put them into effect very quickly with no notice to the public; this gives those directly affected very limited opportunity for input or push-back.
Among the many radical changes is death certificates are no longer completed by people who care for care-home residents; instead, they are filled in by the chief coroner’s office.
Also, examination of the undisturbed death scene is prevented, as are all but a very few post-mortems and other sober second looks at the cause and mode of death.
In the background are the complicit ranks of public-health organizations, politicians, media and many other influential individuals. When the pandemic first strikes they focus on how new, dangerous and poorly understood the virus is. As one side effect, this scares many care-home staff so much they flee in fear, leaving their overwhelmed colleagues to cope.
After a short time, they also start to distract the public and victims’ loved ones from uncovering the three sets of conditions by focusing on other factors in the rash of deaths among institutionalized elderly – and by insisting the solution to everything is more testing and contact tracing, along with accelerated vaccine and anti-viral development.
This article shows how the three sets of conditions were put in place in Ontario, Canada.
Variations on these conditions very likely have been crafted in other jurisdictions in North America, Europe and elsewhere. An exclusive interview with the daughter of one of the dozens of people who died during an outbreak at an Ontario care home illustrates how the three sets of conditions work in practice.
Condition set one: Broad definitions of novel-coronavirus infections and outbreaks
At the start of the novel-coronavirus epidemic in Ontario, formal definitions of infections and care-home-outbreaks weren’t issued, at least not publicly.
Rather, in late March Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario, Dr. David Williams, and the Associate Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Barbara Yaffe, described the criteria verbally during their daily press briefings.
An outbreak should be declared when two or three people show symptoms of infection with the novel coronavirus, they said.
Also, polymerase chain reaction testing for viral RNA wasn’t required for confirmation.
This is a loosened version of criteria used in the province prior to the novel-coronavirus epidemic. These previous criteria defined an outbreak as either: two people in the same area of a facility developing symptoms within two days of each other (making their infections ‘epidemiologically linked’) and at least one of them testing positive for viral RNA; or three people in the same area developing symptoms within two days of each other.
On March 30 the Ontario health ministry released new rules for defining and managing care-home outbreaks (with the document confusingly dated April 1). Staff at all Ontario care nursing homes were trained on the new rules via webinars two days later, on April 1.
The new rules included an even broader outbreak definition: the presence of only one person with just one symptom of a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Outbreaks were deemed confirmed when just one resident or staff member tested positive; subsequently, every resident in the care home showing any coronavirus-infection symptoms is deemed to have COVID-19.
Notably, however, there wasn’t a symptom list in the document. Dr. Williams said on April 1 during that day’s press briefing they deliberately did not include a list of infection.
This is because:
“to look for those symptoms [in the rest of the care-home residents after the initial case is identified] is a challenge, particularly in seniors,” […] “They may not mount a fever, they may have a lot of other symptoms and they may not have obvious symptoms. [Rather,] any change in their health condition really [can be considered a symptom].”
A few minutes later Dr. Williams added:
I don’t mind false alarms. [As a result of the looser outbreak criteria] the numbers [of outbreaks that] we see might be[come] quite [a bit] larger …. [But that’s because w]e want to ramp up the sensitivity. [That] means the number of outbreaks will go up, because we’ve widened the definition.”
One week later, April 8, a Provincial Testing Guidance Update was issued. It included the following list of symptoms (most of which are highly non-specific): fever, any new or worsening acute respiratory illness symptom – for example cough, shortness of breath, sore throat, runny nose or sneezing, nasal congestion, hoarse voice, difficulty swallowing – and pneumonia.
The document also listed several symptoms that are “atypical” but “should be considered, particularly in people over 65” [italics added]: unexplained fatigue/malaise, acutely altered mental status and inattention (i.e., delirium), falls, acute functional decline, worsening of chronic conditions, digestive symptoms (e.g., nausea/vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain), chills, headaches, croup, unexplained tachycardia, decreased blood pressure, unexplained hypoxia (even if mild) and lethargy.
Then on April 22 the province produced the first COVID-19-screening guidelines for care homes. It’s broadly similar to the April 8 document, except that two or more of some of the symptoms – for example sore throat, runny nose and sneezing, stuffed-up nose, diarrhea – need to be present for a person to be deemed positive.
On May 2 a new testing guidance and a new screening guide were released. Both documents concede that if a person has only a runny or stuffed-up nose, “consideration should be given to other underlying reasons for these symptoms such as seasonal allergies and post-nasal drip.”
They also narrow the definition of falls considered diagnostic of a novel-coronavirus infection in people over 65, to falls that are unexplained or increasing in number.
However, they add to the symptom list another three that are very non-specific: a decrease in sense of taste, abdominal pain and pink eye.
There are enormous implications to having overly broad definitions of symptoms and outbreaks, particularly in combination with other rules put in place at the beginning of the epidemic.
Broad definitions very likely are used in many other jurisdictions around the world, albeit perhaps masked by the use of somewhat different terms.
First, in Ontario, in every facility with an outbreak, every resident with even just one symptom is defined as being a ‘probable’ COVID-19 case. This applies whether these residents had an inconclusive or negative viral-RNA test result – or even weren’t tested at all.
Second, the cause of death of everyone who had been diagnosed with a SARS-CoV-2 infection is recorded as being COVID-19. This is a dictate of the World Health Organization and is followed throughout North America, Europe and elsewhere.
Third, COVID-19-attributed deaths are deemed ‘natural’ by new rules released by the chief coroner on April 9 (see ‘Condition Set Three,’ below). In all but an extremely small number of cases, natural deaths are exempt from any further investigations or post-mortems. (Over the last 30 years post-mortems have become rare, but to almost completely remove the possibility is another matter.)
Taken together, this may explain what the daughter of a woman who died along with dozens of others, during a COVID-19 outbreak at an Ontario care home experienced. The daughter granted the author an exclusive interview on May 13. (Under a pseudonym to shield her from possible repercussions.)
Diane Plaxton said in the interview that on April 1 she received a shocking and unexpected phone call from her mother’s care home.
“Your mother’s declining. She’s been having loose bowels and lots of diarrhea. There’s a DNR on her chart. And we’re not sending anyone to the hospital. [Likely because of ‘Condition Set Two,’ below] We’re going to have to put her on palliative care,” Plaxton recalls the head nurse telling her in a cold, uncaring voice.
Plaxton was stunned. She knew about her mother’s diarrhea: it was from bowel-cleansing meds she’d been on for about nine days, after being diagnosed with a clogged bowel. Plaxton told the nurse that if her mother seemed to be declining it probably was from the diarrhea and resultant dehydration.
She suggested to the head nurse that she give mother IV rehydration. The nurse refused, saying it would “just prolong the inevitable.”
The head nurse didn’t say the word COVID-19, nor tell Plaxton the home had been declared to have an outbreak that day.
She also didn’t mention that on March 30 the province had issued new rules on novel-coronavirus infections and outbreaks, then trained all of Ontario’s care-home staff on them via webinar April 1. As described above, the rules included very broad definitions of SARS-CoV-2 infections and outbreaks.
Therefore the nurse could well have been complying fully with the new rules by diagnosing Plaxton’s mother with a novel-coronavirus infection based on her having diarrhea alone (and without telling Plaxton any of this).
Furthermore, since transfer to a hospital was not an option (as per ‘Condition Set Two’) and since COVID-19 is deemed to be very frequently fatal in the elderly, this may be why the head nurse pushed Plaxton so hard to consent to palliative care for her mother.
Shaken but unbowed, Plaxton asked the head nurse to let her speak to the nurse who had been directly caring for her mother.
Fortunately, that second nurse was kind, and agreed that palliative care was not appropriate for Plaxton’s mother. She agreed instead to allow her to not take the bowel-cleaning meds, and to coax her to eat and drink to recover her fluids and strength. She also said she’d keep an eye on the slight fever Plaxton’s mother had.
Over the next few days this plan worked, and the nurse told Plaxton she needn’t worry.
That’s why it hit Plaxton like a gut punch when on April 10 she got a call from another nurse, who was panicking. She told Plaxton her mom was struggling to breathe and “going fast.”
The nurse said the care home couldn’t transfer her to the hospital. She asked Plaxton’s permission for the doctor to give her mother “a shot to ease her passing.”
(The nurse didn’t tell Plaxton what ‘the shot’ was. But it very likely was morphine, which is routinely used to relieve severe pain. A high enough dose of morphine slows people’s breathing and hastens their death.)
Plaxton was reeling. She immediately consulted with her sister; together they decided to give consent for the shot. Three hours later their mother was dead.
Condition set two: Hospital-care-rationing guidelines
In mid-March, not long before Plaxton’s mother died, treatment-rationing guidelines for during the pandemic started to proliferate.
For example, on March 21 the UK’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence produced its guidelines.
They’re based on a frailty score and on mortality probabilities across different age groups for pneumonia and underlying cardiovascular or respiratory diseases.
maximizing the number of patients that survive treatment with a reasonable life expectancy.”
(Interestingly, the paper’s lead author, Ezekiel Emmanuel, MD, PhD, is an oncologist, bioethicist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. The centre is secretive about its funders but according to a 2011 investigation in The Nation its supporters included dozens of giant corporations ranging from Boeing to Walmart. Today, retired general Wesley Clark and executive VP of global investment firm Blackstone Henry James are among the organization’s trustee advisory board members.)
On March 27, the equally influential Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published “A framework for rationing ventilators and critical-care beds during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The paper’s authors assert that:
[y]ounger individuals should receive priority, not because of any claims about social worth or utility, but because they are the worst off, in the sense that they have had the least opportunity to live through life’s stages.”
Ontario Health published guidelines for hospital-treatment rationing on March 28, albeit not publicly. (To this day the government hasn’t made the protocol public, nor disclosed whether or when they implemented it.)
At that time a crush of COVID-19 patients crowding Ontario hospitals wasn’t a realistic possibility for at least the short or medium terms (contrary to the pandemic-curve theoretical modelling), because all elective hospital procedures and surgeries had been cancelled or indefinitely postponed.
Toronto Star reporter Jennifer Yan obtained a copy of the Ontario treatment-triaging document and wrote in a March 29 article that:
[u]nder the triage protocol, long-term-care patients who meet specific criteria will also no longer be transferred to hospitals.”
Then on April 10, the Canadian Medical Association adopted all the recommendations by Dr. Ezekiel and his co-authors in their New England Journal of Medicine paper, and advised Canadian physicians to follow them.
The Canadian Medical Association statement (whose authors were not listed) asserted that “the current situation, unfortunately, does not allow for” the time for Canadian experts to create their own recommendations.
This is tendentious. Canadian healthcare providers and researchers have access to as much information about COVID-19 as do others around the world. In addition, many had direct clinical experience with a close cousin of the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV, in 2003.
Indeed four Canadians co-authored an ethical framework for guiding decision-making during a pandemic that was based on their experience with SARS and published in 2006. They made no mention of age as a criterion for treatment triaging in that framework.
On April 17 the Canadian federal government released information to guide clinicians in rationing healthcare resources during the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic. Unlike at least some other COVID-19-related guidelines issued in the same period, it was not accompanied by a press release; therefore it has flown under the public radar.
The document includes an emphasis on age-based rationing. It also explicitly discourages transfer of care-home residents to hospitals:
Long term care (LTC)[care-home] facilities and home care services will be encouraged to care for COVID-19 patients in place and may be asked to take on additional non-COVID-19 patients/clients to help relieve pressure on hospitals”
This is underlined in another place in the document:
If COVID-19 does develop in LTC facility residents, they should be cared for within the facility if at all possible, to preserve hospital capacity.”
Prohibiting transfer to hospital drastically narrows the treatment options available to care-home residents.
There have been transfers of care-home residents to hospitals in Canada during the COVID-19 crisis, but until very recently they have been by far the exception.
(Instead, starting in mid-March as part of the clearing out of hospitals to make room for a putative surge in COVID-19 patients, thousands of elderly people were transferred from hospitals to care homes. This likely also contributed to the care-home death toll. More than one journalist has compared care homes to the Diamond Princess cruise ship: virus incubators with people trapped inside.)
All of this may well be why Plaxton was told by nurses at the care home that her mother couldn’t be transferred to hospital.
This also has played out at other care homes.
The medical director of the Pinecrest nursing home in Bobcaygeon, two hours’ drive northeast of Toronto, strongly advised residents’ family members against considering hospital transfer.
The Globe and Mail reported on March 29 that Dr. Michelle Snarr wrote families on March 21 (which was the day after three of the home’s residents tested positive for SARS-CoV-2) and raised the spectre of significant suffering and possible death if the elderly people were put on ventilators.
Once we heard it was COVID, we all knew it was going to run like wildfire through the facility […] The reason I sent the email was to give them a heads-up that this is not normal times. Under normal times, we would send people to the hospital if that was the family’s wishes, but we knew that was not going to be possible, knowing that so many people were going to all get sick at once and also knowing the only way to save a life from COVID is with a ventilator. And to put a frail, elderly person on a ventilator, that’s cruel.
[In another interview Dr. Snarr said they weren’t outright refusing hospital transfers.]
The last death attributed to COVID-19 at Pinecrest occurred on April 8; by then, 29 of the home’s 65 residents had perished.
“I’ve never had four deaths in a day at any nursing home I’ve worked at,” Dr. Stephen Oldridge, one of the physicians working at the home, was quoted as saying in the March 29 Globe and Mail article. “You feel helpless. Because there’s nothing you can do other than support them, give them morphine and make them comfortable.”
Dr. Oldridge told CBC a similar narrative on April 1:
“There is no vaccine, we have no effective treatment other than supportive care for these folks, and obviously there’s no cure. So when the infection takes hold in their lungs, in this elderly population we can just make them comfortable.”
Still other media reports indicate that care-home residents’ families in Canada have denied the option of transfer to hospital during the pandemic even if the residents are relatively young, do not have a DNR, and both they and their families want the option of a transfer. Instead, they are pressured to put DNRs in place. This also is happening elsewhere, such as in the UK.
Hugh Scher, a Toronto lawyer who’s been involved in some of Canada’s highest-profile end-of-life cases, strongly opposes this. He told the author in a telephone interview:
The notion that long-term-care-home or nursing-home medical directors can tell residents and their families that they can’t or shouldn’t be transferred to hospital if they need treatment for COVID or anything else – I don’t agree with that.
[…]
[But unfortunately] there’s now an aggressive push to say, ‘Granny’s already ninety-five … and sending her to hospital for a cough or a runny nose isn’t going to improve her underlying condition. And so she should be made comfortable and left to die.’
Condition set three: New rules surrounding death certificates and removal and disposition of bodies
On April 9 the Chief Coroner for Ontario, Dr. Dirk Huyer, released rules for an ‘expedited death response’ in handling and disposition of bodies of people who die in care homes and hospitals.
The stated goal was to prevent infection spread, overburdening of medical staff, and overfilling of hospital morgues and body-storage areas in care homes in the event of a surge in deaths during the pandemic.
The new procedures were created jointly by Dr. Huyer’s office, the Ontario Ministry of Government and Consumer Services and the Bereavement Authority of Ontario (the province’s funeral-home, cremation-services and cemetery self-regulatory body).
They are a drastic sea change in the way deaths are handled in the province. Yet they were launched extremely rapidly with the only “surge” in sight one in mathematical models, and a significant body-storage-space problem based on hard data nowhere on the horizon (and still a low probability).
The new procedures went into effect immediately on April 9. Then over the next three days (the Easter long weekend), Dr. Huyer and the registrar of the Bereavement Authority of Ontario led webinars on them for staff of hospitals and care homes across the province.
“We pushed it [writing and releasing the new rules] a little more quickly than maybe was necessary because it’s a brand-new process and there’s thousands of people involved,”Dr. Huyer toldToronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno in explaining the haste.
As part of the new rules, the chief coroner’s office now completes the death certificates of every person who dies in long-term-care homes. The office also completes some death certificates of people who die in hospitals. Up until April 9, and for good reason, death certificates in Ontario were filled in by the physicians or nurse practitioners who cared for the people before they died.
In addition, as also noted in ‘Condition Set One’ above, COVID-19-attributed deaths are deemed ‘natural’ by the new rules. And all “natural” deaths are virtually exempt from any further investigations and post-mortems.
(Dr. Huyer was quoted in a May 18 Globe and Mail article as saying “a number” of COVID-19-attributed death investigations have been started – including that of a man whose daughter believes he died because of neglect at a care home and who asked the coroner’s office to investigate – but that he doesn’t know what that number is.)
Dr. Huyer said, in a phone interview:
“All of these things were added during this period of time to allow not only a timely approach but also an efficient approach to be able to ensure that people proceed to burial or cremation in a timely way without requiring extra storage space,”
Yet it was only 10 months ago that the official report on the high-profile Wettlaufer inquiry was released. It calls for many more checks and balances surrounding care – and more rather than less time and transparency in determining and documenting the causes of death.
Just 18 of the report’s 91 recommendations have been implemented. (The inquiry probed the killing in southwestern Ontario by nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer of eight people, attempted murder of several others and aggravated assault of two more. All but two of the victims were LTCH residents.)
Moreover, the April 2020 rules also dictate that families must contact a funeral home within one hour of a hospital death and within three hours of a care-home death. The bodies are to be taken to the funeral home extremely rapidly, and from there to cremation and burial as quickly as possible.
This journalist wrote about the rules in a May 11 article.
Diane Plaxton found and read online the May 11 article. She suddenly understood more of what took place before and after her mother’s April 10 death.
She and this journalist connected, and the May 13 interview ensued.
Plaxton related, in that interview, that three hours after she got off the phone with her dying mother on April 10, a nurse called and matter-of-factly said her mother was dead. She asked Plaxton to call a funeral home.
And about an hour later, while Plaxton was still reeling, another nurse called and again told her to contact a funeral home.
“I got off the phone. That’s when I flew off the handle,” she told the author in the May 13 interview. “It’s like they’re treating her [body] like a piece of garbage: ‘Get her out of here! Ger her out of here!’”
As if that wasn’t enough trauma, at the funeral home four days later she saw COVID-19 listed as the cause of her mother’s death. Plaxton believes what really killed her mother was the combination of dehydration and chronic diseases including asthma; her shortness of breath on April 10 may have been an asthma attack, Plaxton surmises.
Making matters even worse, the funeral director told her she couldn’t take a copy or photo of the ‘Cause of Death’ form. He said she’d have to request a copy from the government and it could take months to arrive.
But the funeral director also commiserated with Plaxton. He was incredulous that her mother had gone from dehydrated to dead so fast. He also was bewildered by the requirements such as bodies having to be picked up in haste and arrangements for cremation and burial also having to be made extremely quickly.
“I’m just taking orders from the top down,” Plaxton recalls the funeral director telling her.
That’s the third of the three sets of conditions that can enable high death rates in care homes.
The three sets are the work of officials, experts and bureaucrats who – while being seen to serve the public interest and who could be unaware of, or oblivious to, the implications of the conditions – may in fact have hidden intentions.
Even if the latter is true, there’s little chance the perpetrators will be caught or punished.
On May 19 the Ontario premier announced that an independent commission will probe why so many people have died in the province’s care homes. This journalist believes it’s very unlikely the commission’s mandate will include scrutinizing the sets of conditions described in this article.
Perhaps the most elegant element of all is that just one or two people working at any given care home can suffice to translate the sets of conditions into actions – or inaction – that can be deadly for residents. And they’d probably be the only ones held responsible in the unlikely event any of this ever comes to light.
It’s all as simple as one, two, three.
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The coronavirus pandemic has not only created contradictory information on the best ways to deal with it, on whether there are cures and vaccinations, or whether there will be a second wave, but they are also contradictory on how the world will look after we overcome the pandemic. Two supranational ideological tendencies have emerged – those who support globalization and think it will continue to function as if the pandemic never occurred, and those who think it is inevitable that coronavirus has sped up the inevitable end of a U.S.-led globalized world.
It was only on Monday that European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrelltold a gathering of German ambassadors on Monday that “analysts have long talked about the end of an American-led system and the arrival of an Asian century. This is now happening in front of our eyes.” Although the EU supports a globalized world, it predicts that with the end of the coronavirus, the power centers of the world will shift from the West to the East.
The new head of the World Bank, Carmen Rainhart, had a slightly differing position to Borrel and told Bloomberg in an interview that:
“Without being melodramatic, Covid-19 is like the last nail in the coffin of globalization. The 2008-2009 crisis gave globalization a big hit, as did Brexit, as did the U.S.-China trade war, but Covid is taking it to a new level.”
Every economist, think-tank and journalist are coming to their own conclusions, usually not based on facts and data, but rather based on their own political-economic ideology of how they believe the world should be, and not how it actually is. The governments of each country, whether they are major powers or small states, must decide what to prepare for and what future they want in the post-coronavirus world. The colossal differences between globalist and anti-globalist rhetoric are evident and emerging.
The World Economic Forum is one such example and has aggressively defended the U.S.-led globalized order. Only days ago went with the headline “Coronavirus won’t spell the end for globalization – but change is unavoidable,” where they argued “Nobody can predict the next crisis. But the most reliable and efficient insurance by far is to build a strong international cooperation network.”
Supporters of globalization argue that blocking people at borders can deprive society of talented and needed workers and that there is a better chance of responding to the challenges and threats of globalization if with collective action we can address the risk of disease and climate change, cyber-attacks, nuclear proliferation, terrorism and other problems.
In another article by the World Economic Forum from earlier this year before the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic, they argued that “Discontent with globalization is a key factor behind the temptation to advance policy goals through unilateral actions rather than by working together.” The article continues their argument by saying that “although improving international cooperation is an urgent task, it is equally important to acknowledge that there are always trade-offs between qualities such as national sovereignty, democratic legitimacy, effectiveness and speed of decision-making.”
The coronavirus pandemic has shown that in times of crisis, even the most ardent backers of globalization, like the U.S. and the EU, contract to protect their own interests first. Although the EU now regrets this course of action and is attempting to amend it, it has only confirmed in the minds of potential new EU members that multilateralism is a mythology that only serves the interests of powerful states who are not willing to reciprocate the trust in times of crisis.
So American unilateralism, that is, the use of maximum geopolitical egocentrism, as well as economic and military violence against countries that do not want to submit to Washington’s demands any way, is part of today’s global reconfiguration. However, deglobalization will be a difficult task as countries will have to reindustrialize and reconfigure their economies and work forces.
Interestingly, even within the ranks of globalists, there are those who are arguing the end of globalization is near. This was especially galvanized after a Foreign Policy column argued on March 9 that “Globalization is headed to the ICU,” while The Economist’s May 14 issue asked whether COVID-19 had killed globalization. Time magazine hit back arguing that “Globalization is here to stay. It’s a horse that left the barn 30 years ago, when the Soviet Union fell.”
However, this is an admission from Time magazine that it does not believe that a multipolar world is emerging in the aftermath of the failed U.S.-led unipolar system that came into existence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This is devoid of all reality as China continues to expand its economic and transportation network across the world and major regional powers have appeared around the world, such as Russia, who can defend their interests in their own neighbourhood. There is little doubt that the U.S. was on a global hegemonic decline before the emergence of the coronavirus, but the pandemic has only accelerated this inevitability, and no amount of debates by think tanks and media publications can change this fact.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
African Americans continue to be systematically profiled and executed by law-enforcement agencies and bigoted whites creating a volatile situation across the United States
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Four Minneapolis police officers have been terminated from their jobs in the aftermath of the videotaped exposure of the blatant killing of George Floyd.
This act of police violence which has no justification is by no means an isolated incident.
A white officer was seen in the video taken on a cell phone applying pressure from his knee on the neck of Floyd. The victim said repeatedly that he could not breathe yet the policeman continued to carry out the behavior while another officer was captured looking on and taking no action to restrain the one doing the choking.
The killing of Floyd marks a continued program of intimidation, violence and execution levelled against African Americans for centuries. The government in Washington, D.C. has given state approval to target, seize and liquidate anyone deemed a threat to the status quo of racism and national oppression.
During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and prior to the outbreak during early and mid-March, African Americans have been systematically targeted by law-enforcement agencies as well as racist armed individuals and organizations for harassment, arrest, prosecution, imprisonment, serious injury and death. The pandemic which has disproportionately impacted the African American people in urban, suburban and rural areas has not lessened the lethal force policies of the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state.
Immediate denunciations of the police killing of Floyd took place around the U.S. and internationally. In Minneapolis itself, large crowds gathered outside the police station to protest the death of Floyd along with demanding the detention and prosecution of the police officers involved. (See this)
On the evening of May 26, police wearing riot gear launched tear gas against the demonstration which had surrounded the public safety headquarters. Activists angered by the Floyd killing blocked traffic to bring attention to the plight of African Americans subjected to the deadly force that is routinely justified by the legal system.
During the course of the confrontation several police cars were damaged by angry demonstrators from the community. Although Mayor Jacob Frey and police chief Medaria Arradondo have attempted to distance themselves from the killing of Floyd, their statements do not convince a significant element within the city which has witnessed such extra-judicial executions for decades.
Minneapolis police have been the focus of mass demonstrations for many years due to brutality and deadly force utilized against African Americans and even one Australian woman. The police throughout the U.S. are given wide discretion in exercising the use of weapons and tactics which often result in death.
One of the first executive orders issued by the administration of President Donald Trump was to nullify all of the consent decrees instituted by the Justice Department related to police misconduct. These federally-supervised consent judgements and decrees grew out of similar incidents which resulted in the unjustified killings of African Americans, people of Latin American descent and other oppressed communities in the U.S.
Despite the weaknesses of the consent decrees, the administration sought to send a signal to law-enforcement that excessive and lethal force was endorsed at the highest levels of the federal government. In this election year, where the Trump regime is desperate for its very own political survival, the administration is fostering racism and other forms of intolerance to shore up its own base.
Vigilante Racism in Georgia: The Brutal Death of Ahmaud Arbery
Prior to the police killing of George Floyd, the case of Ahmaud Arbery drew the attention of the public when a video of his brutal killing was finally released on social media. Arbery had been jogging in the vicinity of his neighborhood when he was pursued by two white men and shot to death. Two white men, a father and son, were arrested in May and charged with felony murder in the case.
The third person in the vehicle videotaping the incident has now been arrested and charged with murder as well. Although the third person says that he had no role in the shooting death of Floyd, this individual did absolutely nothing to restrain the father and son carrying out the killing.
It would take several weeks for the fate of Arbery to receive national and world attention as a direct result of the failure to disclose details of the actual incident by the local authorities. Since the revelation about the unjustified shooting death large demonstrations have occurred demanding justice for Floyd.
A hearing for the three white men is scheduled for next month. A report published by ABC News says:
“The three Georgia men charged in connection with the killing of Ahmaud Arbery have been scheduled for a preliminary hearing on June 4. Arbery, 25, was shot and killed Feb. 23 as he was jogging through the Satilla Shores, Georgia, neighborhood, but charges weren’t filed until last month. Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34, were charged with the felony murder of Arbery on May 7, and William Bryan, 50, was charged May 21.”
Georgia was the center of national attention in 2018 when charges of voter suppression were made during the gubernatorial election involving Democratic candidate and former Minority Leader in the State House of Representatives Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp, who was serving as Secretary of State at the time. Even though there was clear evidence of deliberate disenfranchisement of African Americans in Georgia, the courts refused to declare Abrams the winner.
Kemp was recorded earlier in the year saying he was not aware that asymptomatic COVID-19 patients could transmit the virus to others. The Georgia governor has attempted to maintain his alliance with the Trump administration by neglecting many of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and White House Task Force guidelines related to containing the pandemic.
No Knock Raid on Wrong Address in Louisville Results in African American Woman’s Shooting Death
It has been more than fifty years since the police raid on the Chicago residence of Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969. Hampton and his comrade Mark Clark of Peoria, Illinois, were murdered by several police officers assigned to the raid by the-then Illinois State’s Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan.
Several other members and supporters of the BPP were wounded, arrested and falsely charged on felony counts. The police were never held accountable in the assassinations of Hampton and Clark. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had planted an informant in the Chicago Chapter of the BPP whose job was to provide detailed information to the government and to discredit the organization. The informant turned over the floor plan to the Panther apartment and later on the night of the raid, drugged the occupants of the residence so they would be incapable of defending themselves against the police.
On March 13, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, was asleep in her bed when a “No Knock” drug raid was carried out by Louisville, Kentucky police. The police had conducted the operation at the wrong address. Taylor died after being shot eight times. Her partner, Kenneth Walker, discharged his firearm during the raid and was arrested by police. Charges against him have subsequently been dropped. (See this)
The family of Taylor is demanding justice in the horrendous law-enforcement action. The police chief has since announced his retirement yet none of the officers have been terminated or charged with murder. A reef laying at Taylor’s home and a rally to demand justice for the slain woman were held on May 25-26. (See this)
Repression Will Escalate During the Current Period
The magnitude of police brutality including beatings, false arrests and killings appear to be increasing over the last few years. Statistics on the number of people killed by the police indicate that law-enforcement agents took the lives of more than 1,000 people in 2019. African Americans were 24% of those killed despite being only 13% of the population. (See this)
Another source which monitors lethal force by police noted that: “Sadly, the trend of fatal police shootings in the United States seems to only be increasing, with a total 228 civilians having been shot, 31 of whom were Black, as of March 30, 2020. In 2018, there were 996 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 this figure increased to 1,004.” (See this)
Irrespective of whether there is a Democratic or Republican administration in Washington, the relationship between African Americans and the police remains unchanged. The principal role of law-enforcement within a racist capitalist society is to protect private property and the state. Since Black, Brown and other oppressed communities are the most exploited under the existing system, they often suffer the brute force of the repressive apparatus.
Demonstrations and all forms of resistance against police misconduct require greater coordination on a national and international scale. In the final analysis it will take a movement of millions to effectively end police violence against the people along with many other forms of state repression.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: George Floyd killed by Minneapolis police; all images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated
Netanyahu’s impending annexation of the Judaized parts of the West Bank (he says July 1st) is a transformative event for Palestinian politics, and the Palestinian people, who have long been reined in by impositions that accept Zionist myths and outright falsehoods and pay only lip-service to the clear historic record of the Nakba — the unconscionable story of how the Jewish state of Israel was created in Palestine by Zionist Jews and their Western allies.
The transformative nature of this most recent outrage on Israel’s part is evident in the tenor of the commemorations on social media of the 72nd anniversary of the Nakba — in the newly-exposed and disseminated historic images and the strength and directness of the message. So much so, in fact, that Facebook has just hired the former director-general of Israel’s justice ministry as a member of its new oversight board!
To observers like Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian American writer and political activist, this move is “in preparation for Israel’s planned theft of a massive swath of more Palestinian land, they’re making sure we’re duly muzzled.”
The social-media discourse on Palestine during the commemoration of the Nakba this year has emphasized to the world three basic truths:
Justice and peace in Palestine are predicated on the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
Jews worldwide must refrain from emigrating to Israel from their countries of origin and Palestinian refugees/exiles must return to their homeland and property there.
Palestine, from the river to the sea, belongs to its original inhabitants of all religions, not to Jews worldwide.
More clearly and boldly than ever before, the record of what really happened in Palestine in 1947–48 is being restored, as in this exchange on Facebook:
Roshan Hill:The issue is Jews who have left don’t get to come back by throwing out people who live there and have since time in memorial.
Rima Najjar: Roshan, the issue is not “Jews who have left”. Rather, the issue is Jews who were never there to begin with — colonizers from Eastern Europe who would have been happy to colonize and make a “homeland” out of anybody else’s homeland if they could.
Netanyahu’s impending annexation signals, as many people have long been saying, the official death of the two-state proposal — i.e. the partition of historic Palestine into two states, a Jewish state and a Palestinian state for non-Jews — and moves inexorably toward a unitary political construct, as envisaged in the political program of the Campaign for One Democratic State in Historic Palestine, whose first tenet is:
A Single Constitutional Democracy. One Democratic State shall be established between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River as a state belonging to all its citizens, including the Palestinian refugees. All citizens will enjoy equal rights, freedom and security. The State shall be a constitutional democracy, the authority to govern and make laws emanating from the will of the people. All its citizens shall enjoy equal rights to vote, nominate candidates for any post and take part in the country’s governance.
What Netanyahu’s impending annexation has done is open up an opportunity to widen the support for one state among Israelis and Palestinians alike, an opportunity that involves revolutionary resistance, both in Israel and among the Palestinian populations outside Israel. It is no longer tenable to maintain the kind of muddled attitude that one Israeli activist and BDS supporter, Tom Pessah, recently expressed on Facebook as a “pet peeve”:
Pet peeve: today Netanyahu declared there is a date for his annexation plan (July 1). I don’t exactly know how we can resist this, but at least it would be helpful if people stopped spreading misinformation. There is *no* plan for annexing the entire West Bank or of extending direct Israeli rule to millions of Palestinians. The plan is to annex rural areas near settlements, rather than the densely populated cities. What this means is that the value of land in these areas will now increase, creating an even bigger financial incentive to drive these Palestinians off of their land. Israel already has the infrastructure and plenty of experience to do this. The villagers will be encouraged to move to the cities, or face violence. It’s almost certain that this would lead to an increase of violence that they’ll face … Being for a future one state isn’t an excuse to disregard the situation of regular people in the West Bank in the present, and this situation is about to get dramatically worse after July 1. When people spread a false dramatic scenario of full annexation, anything else that will happen will pale in comparison. If Hebron or Nablus aren’t annexed, the fate of villagers near Ariel will seem relatively insignificant. And that is exactly what Netanyahu would want us to think.
I don’t know a single person who believes “the fantasy” that one state is “around the corner” or is happy to disregard the “fate of villagers” living near Jewish colonies. Visualizing one state, however, and acting to widen the support for this proposition is, in fact, the resistance activists should be adopting, because there is no averting what Netanyahu is about to do. The one-state campaign is just beginning to get off the ground and it behooves all of us to support it in the ways open to us — through disseminating the information that the “fantasy” can and will be turned into reality.
In ‘Using Trump’s “Vision” to Break Free of Past Frameworks’, Yara Hawari, Senior Palestine Policy Fellow of Al-Shabaka, writes:
Many mainstream political ideas about the future of Palestine are primarily concerned with the containment of indigenous Palestinians and security for the Israeli settler state … Trump’s vision — effectively dictated by the Israeli right — does not radically break from what has previously been presented to Palestinians as possible futures … The Palestinian leadership has responded weakly, continuing to adhere to a political line that has led the Palestinian people to their most vulnerable point in history since 1948.
Resetting the Palestinian political agenda and strategy is imperative, and, for all we know, it is happening as we speak. As the following Al Jazeera report says, Palestinians have been trying to regain Palestine since the thieving bastards forced us out, and we are not likely to give up now.
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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.
Prior to and since the June 2016 referendum, the politics of Brexit has been accompanied by two recurrent (and seemingly contradictory) narratives: first, the narrative of Brexit as ‘taking back control’ for those voters ‘left behind’ by the twin forces of globalisation and multiculturalism; and second, the narrative of ‘Global Britain’ – that is, Brexit as an opportunity for the UK to reclaim its historical role as a champion of global free trade, unencumbered by the EU’s supposedly inward-looking, protectionist leanings. In this blog, Tony Heron explores some of the tensions and contradictions between these two themes through the prism of food and agriculture – arguably the sector most defined by EU membership – in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Simply put, what impact, if any, will the current crisis have on the political choices the government will be forced to confront in its trade negotiations with the EU and US.
COVID-19 and the resilience of the UK food system
In 2008, the sight of Northern Rock customers queuing to withdraw their savings from the stricken high street bank became one of the first and – most enduring – images of the global financial crisis. Today, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the analogous imagery is provided not by banks but supermarkets with incidents of panic buying and hoarding by consumers worried about impending food shortages. Yet, unlike in 2008 with the banks, the food retail sector has shown itself to be surprisingly resilient in the face of the COVID-19 shock with supermarket shelves, for the most part, remaining well-stocked.
Parallels are often made between Brexit and two other seismic episodes in British political history: the repeal of the Corn Laws (1846) and the Tariff Reform debate (1903-6). Like Brexit, these prior episodes are noted for the ways in which they divided the ruling Conservative Party between its nationalist-protectionist and metropolitan-liberal wings, ultimately leading to a formal rupture of the party in the first case and landslide electoral defeat in the second. These historical comparisons are also relevant for the ways in which each episode involved the politicisation of food. In an election poster from 1905, for instance, the strapline read: ‘we plead for the women and children, which will you have? Free trade or protection?’ The two choices were represented in the poster as two loaves of bread, a large ‘free trade’ loaf and a considerably smaller ‘protection’ loaf. In other words, the humble loaf was designed to cut through the technical details of trade and comparative advantage to appeal directly to working-class voters as ‘citizen-consumers’.
In the present setting, the idea of a ‘Brexit dividend’ in the form of cheap food has been a constant theme of the pro-leave prospectus. It is notable, however, that relatively few in government have been willing to make the case for ‘cheap food’ explicitly. The possible exception to this is Liam Fox during his time at the Department for International Trade (DIT), though his pronouncements were usually oblique and highly coded. For instance, when in government, Fox was fond of saying that ‘there will be no lowering of UK food standards’, while also remarking that US food standards are not ‘lower’ than those of the EU, just ‘different’.
Outside of government, the case for cheap food has largely fallen to right-wing think tanks like the Legatum Institute. Other voices, such as Tim Wetherspoon, the maverick chairman of the Wetherspoons pub chain, MP Jacob Rees Mogg and John Longworth, the former head of the British Chambers of Commerce and director of the Leave Means Leave lobby group, have reiterated the same message: that ‘Brexit means cheaper food’.
Although few of these voices have made the point explicit (though see Bottle et al. 2018), the implication of the ‘cheap food’ policy, if implemented, is that it would have hugely disruptive effects on British farming, which currently meet around half of the country’s food needs. As noted by Michael Gove while he was Environment Secretary, British farming is noted, not primarily for its international competitiveness but for its high standards and commitments to animal welfare. Pointedly, the speeches and pronouncements which Gove made during his tenure at DEFRA rarely, if ever, mentioned ‘cheap food’.
In a speech to the National Farmers Union (NFU) in November 2018, Gove spoke positively of increasing public scrutiny of the circumstances in which food is produced and the need to make healthy food choices. ‘This scrutiny’, Gove said, ‘only strengthens the hand of British farmers. A demand for higher standards, for more sustainable production, for high standards in animal welfare and more nutritious choices can only mean a demand for more high-quality British produce rather than the alternative’. Although Gove did not go on to elaborate on what the ‘alternative’ referred to precisely, we can infer he meant cheaper imported food, presumably produced to lower standards and with less concern for animal welfare or the environment.
What’s on the menu?
The government’s steadfast refusal to countenance an extension to the Brexit transition period, coupled with the relaunch of free trade talks with the US, is fueling speculation that Boris Johnson’s government is intent on radically transforming the UK’s model of political economy. Applying this logic to food and agriculture, Brexit provides an opportunity to leave the EU’s regulatory orbit, including the Common Agricultural Policy, so as to reclaim and re-design a UK food policy from scratch. Yet, COVID-19 is a stark reminder of just how deeply the nation’s food security is dependent on the EU.
More significantly than this, Boris Johnson’s government seems reluctant to actually make the argument explicitly for the radical shake-up of the agricultural sector, even though this implicit in the ‘Global Britain’ prospectus. Indeed, if anything, protecting the UK’s farmers seems to be hardening into something close to a negotiating ‘red line’ – to the obvious disappointment of some Brexiteers. Of course, a more tumultuous outcome cannot be ruled out, especially given the (quite high) prospects of a disorderly Brexit in which the UK’s relatively weak bargaining position vis-a-vis the US and other potential trade partners would be further exposed. But, for now, it is perhaps best to follow the old adage: never order the cheapest dish on the menu.
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Tony Heron is Professor of International Political Economy, Department of Politics, University of York.
The US under both right wings of its war party represents an unparalleled threat to world peace, stability, democratic values, and the rule of law.
As long as the world community fails to uphold UN Charter principles and other core international law, global war 3.0 might be just a matter of time.
In the thermonuclear age, the threat of potential armageddon looms large.
On Wednesday, Pompeo lashed out against Iran and China, his latest outburst against both countries.
When the Trump regime abandoned the JCPOA two years ago, breaching international law, the US unilaterally reimposed illegal sanctions on Iran — ignoring the unanimous International Court of Justice (ICJ) order against reimposition.
At the same time, the Trump regime granted waivers to several countries, including Iraq to import gas, electricity, and food products from Iran — as long as not bought with US dollars.
On Wednesday, Pompeo announced “the end of the sanctions waiver covering all remaining JCPOA-originating nuclear projects in Iran (sic).”
Iran’s “nuclear projects” have no military component, a reality well known to the world community, including the US.
Countries involved with Iran commercially have 60 days to wind down their activities, according to Pompeo.
He announced sanctions on two Iranian officials connected to its legitimate nuclear program, falsely accusing them of “engaging or attempting to engage in activities that have materially contributed to, or pose a risk of materially contributing to, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (sic).”
No such activities exist. In its annual assessment of potential global threats, the US intelligence community refutes the notion of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Often it uses language to the effect that it doesn’t know for sure that one doesn’t exist, while stating that no evidence suggests it.
Without credible proof, claims otherwise are groundless. Virtually all Trump regime accusations against Iran and other nations on the US target list for regime change have no basis in fact.
Charges against them are invented, not real.
Pompeo also announced a separate 90-day waiver for Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant “to ensure safety of (its) operations.”
His latest outburst is all about wanting a stake driven through the JCPOA’s heart by the Trump regime, wanting the landmark agreement eliminated — pre-JCPOA sanctions reimposed by the Security Council, an arms embargo on Iran maintained.
Russia and China strongly oppose the diabolical Trump regime aim.
Separately, Pompeo escalated Trump regime war on China by other means.
He told Congress that “Hong Kong does not continue to warrant treatment under United States laws in the same manner as US laws were applied to Hong Kong before July 1997,” adding:
The Trump regime “stands with the people of Hong Kong (sic) as they struggle against (Beijing’s) denial of the autonomy that they were promise (sic).”
Under the 1992 US-Hong Kong Policy Act, the city is treated separately from mainland China on matters relating to trade — its status likely to be revoked by the Trump regime on the phony pretext of Beijing’s new national security law.
Heading for enactment in June, the measure is all about protecting China against threats to its national security that include secession, sedition, treason, and other subversive activities, as well as foreign interference and terrorism.
The measure’s purpose is similar to legislation enacted by other countries, including the US.
Under the House and Senate unanimously adopted 2019 Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act (sic), signed into law by Trump, the US breached the UN Charter by illegally meddling in China’s internal affairs.
At the time, China’s Global Times called the measure the “Support KH Violence Act,” siding with thuggish rioters against the rule of law and rights of all city residents, opposing efforts by Hong Kong authorities to restore order, adding:
The bill “trampl(es) (on) the basic norms of international law and international relations,” escalating US “cold war with China,” what Beijing won’t tolerate.
Its authorities may respond to the measure by “sanction(ing) (US officials who proposed the bill), restrict their entry into China, and investigate their interests in China.”
Beijing may also “enact a ‘blocking statute,’ warning US authorities not to abuse or enforce the bill.”
According to the measure, the White House must decide annually whether Hong Kong deserves special status separate from mainland China.
Pompeo’s Wednesday announcement suggests likely harsh Trump regime actions ahead against Hong Kong, similar to its war on mainland China by other means.
The country’s GDP today is around 40-fold greater than Hong Kong’s, the city far less important economically than when returned to Beijing control in 1997 as a special administrative region under a one-country, two systems arrangement.
China’s new national security law leaves its local autonomy unchanged, the measure aimed at protecting the entire country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity from internal and external jeopardizing actions — the latter notably by the US.
China’s Washington embassy issued a statement, saying the following:
The new national security law “targets a very narrow category of acts.”
It will have “no impact on Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong residents, or the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors.”
“Hong Kong affairs are China’s internal affairs and allow no external interference.”
“As for foreign meddling in Hong Kong affairs, we will take necessary countermeasures in response.”
Illegal Trump regime sanctions on Hong Kong and its authorities are likely coming, along with the threat of secondary sanctions against nations, entities, and individuals not abiding by what no one should accept.
If Trump regime war on Hong Kong by other means occurs in response to China’s national security law, Beijing will likely shift city financial operations to Shanghai and encourage enterprises operating in the city to follow suit.
On Wednesday, China’s official People’s Daily broadsheet stressed that new national security legislation is “a matter of national sovereignty that allows no external interference.”
The principle is supported by the UN Charter and other international law — what the US throughout the post-WW II period breached time and again.
Note: On Thursday, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) adopted the new national security law.
The measure heads to a Standing Committee to prepare its actual details, a process likely to be completed in June.
A Final Comment
Far and away, the US is the world’s leading human rights abuser at home and abroad — by its preemptive hot wars, illegal sanctions wars, state terrorism, homeland police state laws, its world’s largest global gulag prison system, along with killings and brutality against Black youths and other people of color by militarized state and local cops.
Yet on Wednesday, based on the phony US concern for human rights, congressionally approved legislation that calls for (unilaterally imposed illegal) US sanctions on China was sent to the White House for enactment into law.
The so-called Uighur Human Rights Act by a nation at war on Islam in multiple theaters, as well as immigrants of the wrong color or nationality, passed the House Wednesday with one dissenting vote.
In mid-May, it passed the Senate unanimously without a roll-call vote.
China’s People’s Daily slammed the measure, saying it “exposed the evil intention of the US…by distorting the facts (to contain) the development of China under the disguise of religion and human rights protection” the US doesn’t give a hoot about.
“Such malicious attack on Chinese government’s Xinjiang policies and the unethical practices of distorting facts seriously violates international law and basic norms governing international relations, and grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs.”
“Xinjiang-related issues are not about human rights, ethnicity or religion, but about fighting violence, terrorism and separatism.”
The US invents pretexts to target nations it doesn’t control, China clearly in the eye of its generated storm.
Bilateral relations are likely to worsen ahead, increasing the possibility of confrontation between two nuclear powers.
Canada is a virtual appendage of US foreign policy. On Wednesday, a Canadian judge ruled in favor of extraditing Chinese tech giant Huawei’s chief financial officer Sabrina Meng Wanzhou to the US — despite baseless Trump regime charges against her and the company.
Bowing to its pressure, Canadian authorities unlawfully arrested and detained her in December 2018 on phony charges.
After release from detention, she’s been confined under house arrest, pending whether Canada would or would not extradite her to stand kangaroo court trial in the US — a guilt by accusation system against targeted individuals
The action against her and Huawei is all about wanting China’s technological development undermined by the US, Canada allying with its agenda.
If Meng is unlawfully extradited to the US and prosecuted for the crime of successfully competing with US firms, China will no doubt retaliate in its own way at a time of its choosing.
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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.”
“We have informed both India and China that the United States is ready, willing and able to mediate or arbitrate their now raging border dispute.”
He ignored longstanding US efforts to drive a stake through China/India relations, aiming to transform both countries into mortal enemies.
The US is no mediator. Hegemons seek conflicts and instability to advance their agenda.
Peace, stability, and cooperative relations among nations defeat their imperial agenda.
Since the US recognized Israel in May 1948, established on stolen Palestinian land, it’s involvement in “mediating” the conflict between them one-sidedly supported Jewish state interests at the expense of fundamental Palestinian rights.
To this day, notably under Trump, the US winks, nods or approves of continued Israeli land theft.
It’s in DJT’s no-peace/peace plan, showing his disdain for long-suffering Palestinians, the same true for his predecessors.
The US and Israel partner in each other’s wars of aggression against non-threatening states, including three wars on Gaza since December 2008.
Whenever undertaken, so-called US “mediation” is all about serving its imperial interests at the expense of victimized nations, their people, democratic values, and the rule of law.
For decades, China and India disagreed about a line of control that separates one country from the other.
In 1962, both countries fought a month-long war over the border dispute, what neither one wants repeated.
The earlier conflict followed border incidents in the wake of the CIA backed Tibetan uprising after which India granted asylum to the Dalai Lama.
China and India share one of the world’s longest borders (2,167 miles), referred to as the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Parts of it are disputed, notably at Aksai Chin and India’s Arunachal Pradesh state.
In 2013, a three-week standoff between forces of both countries ended when they signed a border defense cooperation agreement.
In 2016, Obama regime consul general in Kolkata (Calcutta) Craig Hall supported India’s claim for territory China claims as its own.
At the time, Hall called for US/India joint infrastructure development, along with increased bilateral trade at China’s expense.
His remarks supported Obama’s Asia pivot, a diabolical scheme to advance Washington’s military footprint in a part of the world not its own — part of US policy to weaken, contain and isolate China in the Indo/Pacific and worldwide.
Supporting India’s territorial claim in its dispute with China is part of the US plot, wanting the Indo/US relationship strengthened as a counterweight to Beijing’s growing political, economic, industrial, technological, and military prominence on the world stage — a major challenge to US hegemonic aims.
At the time, Beijing slammed US interference in its dispute with India, a Foreign Ministry statement saying:
“The boundary question between China and India bears on China’s territorial sovereignty and Chinese people’s sentiment.”
“All third parties must respect the history and reality concerning the boundary question, respect efforts by China and India to solve territorial disputes through negotiations, not get involved in the disputes or take sides on issues relating to the ownership of disputed territory.”
“Sound negotiations between China and India on the boundary question as well as peace and tranquility in the border areas over recent years have created favorable conditions for the growth of bilateral relations and their respective development.”
The US under Trump has gone all-out to undermine China’s development.
A new Cold War threatens to rupture relations. It risks direct confrontation between two nuclear powers if Washington pushes things too far.
Last July, Indian President Narendra Modi dismissed Trump’s offer to mediate on the Kashmir issue, saying he never asked the US president for help.
India rejects third-party involvement in one of the world’s most intractable issues.
On Wednesday, China’s envoy to India Sun Weidong said that the situation along the disputed border with India is “stable and controllable,” adding:
“China and India pose no threats to each other. We need to see each other’s developments in a correct way and enhance strategic mutual trusts.”
“We need to correctly view our differences and never let differences shadow overall situation of bilateral cooperation.”
Both countries “should be good neighbors of harmonious coexistence and good partners to move forward hand in hand.”
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said
“(w)e have been following the important consensus reached by the two leaders (about) strictly observing the agreements between the two countries.”
His remark referred to two President Xi Jinping/Modi discussions, both leaders agreeing to pursue more confidence building measures to maintain peace and stability along their border.
At the same time, both countries reinforced their military positions along the LAC.
Despite their longstanding border dispute, neither nation seeks military confrontation with the other.
The US is hostile toward all countries it doesn’t control, notably China because of its growing prominence on the world stage.
Confrontation between Beijing and New Delhi would serve its interests.
Trump’s mediation offer is a smokescreen fooling no one, notably not China.
It rejects unacceptable US interference in its internal affairs, what Trump’s so-called offer is all about.
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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.”
