Global Research

In 2012, a young man educated in the West took over the power in Pyongyang; he has decided to transform North Korea into an ordinary country where people can live decent life.

His name is Kim Jong-un. He has given everything to achieve his objectives. He met three times Moon Jae-in, president of South Korea and three times Donald Trump, president of the U.S.

He made a several-thousand-km train trip in February 2019 to Hanoi filled with the hope for peace; he was betrayed by Trump.

Yet, he has not given up the hope; he still trusted Moon Jae-in; he waited, he was disappointed.

Then, a group of North Korean refugees in South Korea has not stopped sending balloons of anti-Kim Jong-un propaganda leaflets insulting the dignity of the supreme leader.

Now he is angry. His sister, Kim Yo-jong has been making violent statements against Moon Jae-in and South Korea; she even promised to blow up the Joint Liaison Office Building in the city of Gaesung, the symbol of the North-South peace dialogue.

The Building was blown up at 14:49 on June 16.

And, the danger of military confrontation on the Korean peninsula is not impossible.

North Korea might send back some army units including long-distance artillery units to Gaesung city and Geumgan-san area thus threatening South Korea, in particular, the Seoul metropolitan area where 50% of South Koreans live.

This paper begins with the episode of propaganda leaflets followed by the analysis of the hidden reasons for violent reaction of North Korea through Kim Yo-jong. Then, it discusses the North-South economic cooperation which is the only way to overcome the present security crisis.

Propaganda Leaflets Incidence

In the period, from April 9 to May 31, 2020, a radical right-wing group of North Korean refugees sent by air and sea more than 10,000 propaganda leaflets with a bag of rice, one-dollar bill and a lot of dirty insulting words against Kim Jong-un and North Korea.

There are about 30,000 North Korean refugees most of whom are now South Korean citizens.

Some of them earn money by reporting to intelligence agencies in the U.S. and South Korea under conservative government fabricated stories of abuse of power and violation of human rights in the North.

A few radical group work for some American NGOs which fund the operation of sending the leaflets; this operation violates some existing South Korean laws and, in particular, the Panmunjom Declaration of April 2018 and the Joint Pyongyang Declaration of September, 2018.

Kim Yo-jong (image on the right; source is Reuters), vice-director of the United Front Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) who is now considered to be second in command in Pyongyang lashed out in public blaming South Korea for allowing the launching of leaflets of anti-Pyongyang propaganda.

However, her statements cover much more than her anger about the propaganda leaflets; they reflect cumulated frustration of North Korea about the inactions of Seoul and Washington.

Her accusation was unusual in several aspects.

First, the tone was very aggressive treating South Korea as enemy; she would cut all the direct communication channels including the military lines. In addition, she has asked the military to take appropriate actions against South Korea.

Second, her statements are reported for several days in Ro-Dong Sinmun, official paper of the Workers’ Party. This means that the whole population of North Korea is informed about the issues.

Third, there have been street demonstrations by citizens for days. Even the chef of the most famous restaurant in Pyongyang has made a harsh statement against South Korea.

This means that the whole population of North Korea is allowed to join the South Korea bashing campaign.

Some of Kim Yo-jong’s declarations show how the North Koreans feel about South Korea and the U.S.

“Getting stronger every day are unanimous voices of all our people demanding for surely settling account with the riff-raff who dare the absolute prestige of our Supreme leader representing our country and its great dignity and flied rubbish to inviolable territory of our side with those who connived at such hooliganism, whatever many happen” (see this)

What seem to have hurt the feeling of Kim Yo-jong is those expressions found in the leaflets which are hurting the dignity and prestige of Kim Jong-un, whose absolute authority is essential to rule the country. Moreover, these leaflets messages are also hurting the prestige of Kim’s family.

In the past, there were many anti-North Korea propaganda leaflets, but they have seldom attacked directly the leader and his family.

Kim Yo-jong is blaming Moon Jae-in for more serious reasons.

“If the South Korean authorities have now the capacity and courage to carry out at once the things they have failed to do for the last two years, why are the North-South relations still in stalemate like now?” (see this)

What she is saying here is that South Korea should have implemented what was promised in the Joint Pyongyang Declaration, in particular, North-South economic cooperation.

This statement shows how deeply North Korea has been relying on the courage of Moon Jae-in to materialize his promise despite the objection of Washington.

There was also a statement of North Korean Foreign Minister, Ri Son-gon.

“The question is whether there will be a need to keep holding hands shaken in Singapore as we see that there is nothing of factual improvement to be made in the DPRK-U.S. relations simply by maintaining personal relations between our supreme leadership and the U.S. president. Never again will we provide the U.S. chief executive with another package to be used for achievement without receiving any return.” (see this)

In this statement, we can see how much North Korea has been disappointed with the inactions of Washington despite sincere actions taken by Pyongyang. But at the same time, we see that Pyongyang is still ready to talk to Washington.

Real Reasons behind the violent Reaction of Kim Yo-jong

The incidence of leaflet launching is one reason. But, the more important reason behind the Kim Yo-jong’s lashing out is something deeper; the real reason is the cumulated frustration caused by the failure of the peace dialogue.

The last Kim-Trump meeting along with Moon took place on June 30, 2019 at DMZ. But no significant results come out of the meeting.

Seeing the lack of Washington’s willingness to continue the  peace dialogue, Kim Jong-un made it clear at the three day meeting of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), at the end of 2019, that North Korea should go its own way of securing peace and economic development without relying on the external help.

Kim Jong-un said this.

“We might even find ourselves in a situation where we have no choice but find our way for defending the sovereignty of the country and the supreme interests of the state and for achieving peace and stability of the Korean peninsula.” (see this)

In fact, since 2019, the main activities of Kim Jong-un have been the promotion of the production of goods and services with domestic inputs so that the North Korean economy be more self sufficient.

Actually, North Korea has been doing it best to be more autonomous; Kim Jong-un was relying on the development of the Wonsan-Kalma Tourist Development Zone in which Kim jong-un was pouring most of the available resources. Kim Jong-un spent a lot of time there to speed up the project.

But, the success of Kim Jung-un’s “My Way” depended much on the North-South economic cooperation as stipulated in the 9.19 Pyongyang Declaration signed by Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in on 19th of September, 2018

The 9.19 Pyongyang Declaration is the synthesis of three preceding declarations: the 6.15 Declaration (June 15, 2000), signed by Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il, the 10.4 Declaration (October 4, 2007) signed by Rho Moo-hyun and Kim Jong-il and the 4.27 Panmunjom Declaration (April 27, 2018) signed by Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-il.

The Pyongyang Declaration includes six sections.

• Cessation of hostile military activities in DMZ and constant high level-communication.
• Sustained economic cooperation, especially the re-opening of the Gaesung Industrial Complex (GIC), and the Geumgang Tourist Resort development (GTR). The agreement also includes the cooperation for epidemics and public health.
• Humanitarian cooperation including, in particular, the reunion of the separated families. It is interesting to notice that the agreement includes also internet facilities allowing video family reunion.
• Reconciliation and cooperation for the reunification of Koreas including cultural and sports exchanges
• Denuclearization of the peninsula including the dismantlement of the Dongchang-ri missile engine test sites and launch platform under the observation of foreign experts in addition to the permanent dismantlement of nuclear facilities in Yongbyon in exchange of corresponding U.S. actions.
• Seoul visit of Kim Jong-un

What Kim Jong-un was desperately hoping to get from Washington was the guarantee of the American non-aggression and the relief of sanctions.

But, since the betrayal of Trump in Hanoi, North Korea knows that it can no longer trust Washington.

However, Kim Jong-un thought that he could trust Mon Jae-in. After all, without such trust, the three Moon-Kim summits and the three Kim-Trump summits would not have taken place.

Besides, Kim Jong-un went to Singapore on June 12, 2018, because Mon Jae-in would have told him that it was worthwhile to meet Trump.

So, since the Hanoi deception, Kim Jong-un has been expecting that Moon would open the Gaesung Industrial Complex (GIC) and the Geumgang Tourist Resorts (GTR) along with the connection of railways.

In particular, the GIC and GTR are not subject to UN sanctions; they were closed by the conservative government of Lee Myong-bak and Park Geun-hye

Unfortunately, Moon has failed.

The question is then why Moon has failed to materialize these projects. To find the answer, we have to begin with identifying unseen forces which prevented Moon from doing so.

When Moon took over the government in 2017, he gave himself two missions. One was the establishment of peace on the Korean peninsula and the reunification of the country. The other was the purification of the 70-year old corruption culture created by the pro-Japan conservatives.

To do this, the progressive government had to keep power as long as possible, possibly 20 years. However, the conservative forces in South Korea are still active and they can take over the power, if the progressives take prematurely pro-North policies.

Before the election of April 15, 2020, the DP had no majority in the National Assembly and all efforts to promote North-South economic cooperation were blocked by the conservatives including the conservative civil servants.

Furthermore, the conservatives in South Korea have been supported by both Shinzo Abe of Japan and the deep-state force in Washington.

Under this situation, if Moon goes a little too far in the North-South dialogue, he would not be able to win the April election; his plan for peace and the fight against the conservatives’ corruption could have been compromised

Fortunately, Moon’s party, the DP, has won the April 15 election of 2020 and commands almost two-third of the seats in the National Assembly. Now, Moon can move to do what was promised.

North-South Cooperation as Means of Overcoming the Present Security Crisis 

The following is the North-South cooperation which has been planned by Moon Jae-in and which is now in doubt because of the current security and corona virus crisis.

What North Korea wants and what South Korea can do are the following.

• Law prohibiting the launching of anti-North Korea propaganda leaflets.
• Reopening of the Gaesung Industrial Complex (GIC)
• Reopening of the Geumgang Tourists Resorts (GTR)
• North-South Railway Connection
• Cooperation for the anti-corona-virus war.

Already, the Democratic Party has prepared a law prohibiting the launching of the anti-North Korea propaganda leaflets. The bill will be passed in a month.

The Gaesung industrial Complex has been the best model of North-South economic cooperation in which the South provides the capital and technology, while the North offers land and highly trained cheap labour.

More than 100 South Korea firms were making huge profit and a large sum of money went to the North Korean treasury. The GIC model will be the basic frame of future North-South economic cooperation.

The Geumgang Tourist Complex has been one of the important sources of income for North Korea. The Hyundai Asan is the key investor. It will be integrated into the new colossal Wonsan-Kalma Tourist Resort Zone which would become one of the major global tourist attractions. For this, Kim Jong-un needs South Korea money and technology.

The North-South railway connections on the west coast and east coast are of strategic importance, for it is beginning of the integration of the Korea peninsula into the China’s BRI (one-belt-one -road initiative) and cross-Siberia railways.

In other words, the project has the function of integrating the Korean economy into the Eurasia and EU economy.

One of the reasons for the unusually harsh reaction of North Korea is the corona virus crisis. In fact, North Korea has closed completely in January the cross-border traffic of people and goods, which led to the desperate economic situation. North Korea has no public health system to cope with the crisis. North Korea needs South Korea to fight the corona virus.

The corona virus crisis combined with the non-action on the part of Moon Jae-in and the stupid gesture of some North Korea refugees have led to the violent gesture of Kim Yo-jong.

President Moon Jae-in has reacted to North Korea’s unusually hostile behaviour. He made the following statement on 15th of June, which happened to be the 20th anniversary of the 6.15 Declaration signed, in 2000, by Kim Dae-jung, South Korean president and Kim Jong-il, North Korean supreme leader.

“The April 27 Panmunjom Declaration and the September 19 Joint Declaration in Pyongyang are solemn promise that both the South and the North must faithfully carry out. This is a firm principle that cannot be swayed by any change in circumstances.”

“Our government will make ceaseless efforts to implement the agreements we have made. We will keep up our hard-earned achievements. The North and the South should stop its attempt to cut off communication, raise tension and return to an era of confrontation. We hope that the uncomfortable and difficult problems facing two sides will be solved through communication and cooperation.” (see this)

These statements of President Moon make it clear that he will keep the agreements through communication and cooperation.

He has been trying to implement the agreement, but he has not been able to do so, partly because of the internal political constraints and partly due to Washington’s lack of cooperation.

Now, as we saw above, the internal political constraints are attenuated owing the crushing victory of his Democratic Party at the last April general election. Moon Jae-in will do what was promised.

But, it is not clear how far Washington would cooperate with Moon, given the confusing political and social disturbance in the U.S.

It may be difficult to have Trump’s support, but Moon should be able to convince Trump not to interfere in the North-South economic cooperation as long as such cooperation does not violate the sanctions.

It is time for South Korea to have more saying in North-South relations, which are much more important to Koreans than to Americans.

To sum up, I would like to add one word for Kim Jong-un and Kim Yo-jong.

Most of South Koreans understand North Korea’s frustration. But, let us not forget that owing to the peace dialogue initiated by Moon Jae-in and enforced by Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump, the international status of the Kim Jong-un has been assured and the image of North Korea has greatly been improved.

Moreover, the peace has been established since 2018 in the Korean peninsula.

As for the North-South economic cooperation, one can allow some optimism, given the firm determination of the Moon’s government to implement the Joint Pyongyang Declaration.

Moreover, the domination of the National Assembly by the progressive Democratic Party can facilitate Moon’s policy of inter-Korea cooperation.

Finally, North Korea should not forget that North Koreans and South Koreans are the same race which had been united for more than 4,000 years but separated for 75 years.

They have different flags, but the blood is the same. The only way to solve the problems is the united efforts of the North and the South with international cooperation.

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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics and co-director of the Observatoire de l’Asie de l’Est (OAE) of the Centre d’Études sur l’Intégration et la Mondialisation (CEIM), Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He is Research Associate of the Center of Research on Globalisation (CRG).

Featured image is from The Intercept

Millions of white people glorify mass murderers because their sense of identity and place in society is deeply tied to white supremacy.

“It is important to name and shame the mass murderers.”

The perpetrators of crimes against humanity are often elevated to positions of respect and admiration. It all depends on who did the killing, and who was killed. Now the murderers are being called to account. The new movement in the United States against police and other state violence has inspired this welcome change taking place all over the world. The criminals are being exposed decades and even centuries after their atrocities took place. There is no statute of limitations for murder nor should there be for calling out people who have the blood of millions on their hands.

Statues of Belgium’s King Leopold have been defaced and even removed. Leopold held the Congo as his personal fiefdom, the Congo Free State, where he killed as many as 15 million people who were forced to work on rubber plantations. The cruelty of murder and mutilation was exposed after a more than 20-year reign of terror. George Washington Williams, a black American journalist, played a key role in bringing the genocide to public attention.

Instead of Adolf Hitler being the only European who comes to mind when genocide is mentioned, the name Leopold ought to have the same effect. But Hitler killed Europeans and Leopold killed Africans. The crimes of one are widely known while the other escapes condemnation because his crimes were erased.

“King Leopold killed as many as 15 million people who were forced to work on rubber plantations.”

The same can be said of Winston Churchill. During World War II he presided over a famine  in colonial India caused by the theft of rice and wheat which supplied Britain’s armies. An estimated 3 million people died but starvation in Bengal province was not his first opportunity to commit mass murder. After World War I he advocated gassing Iraqis  who rebelled against British rule. “I am strongly in favor of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes.”  He had already ordered chemical weapons attacks against the Russian Bolsheviks in 1918.

Now Churchill’s statue in London’s parliament square is covered in a large box to protect it from protesters. A group scrawled graffiti which correctly labeled as a racist the man who said that his Indian victims “breed like rabbits.”

The taboos are falling just like the statues that honored slave traders and Indian killers in this country. Robert E. Lee’s monument in Richmond, Virginia is now covered in graffiti and a likeness of George Floyd, whose murder at the hands of police motivated people to denounce the killers whose crimes are covered up. Too many historians choose to affirm corrupt systems rather than tell the truth. But the people are ignoring entreaties from all the elites and are taking matters into their own hands.

“Churchill said that his Indian victims ‘breed like rabbits.’” 

Christopher Columbus is among those being exposed. His voyages on behalf of the Spanish crown were followed by other European invasions which brought disease and bloody conquest against indigenous populations from the tip of South America all the way to Alaska. This genocide was the precursor to the trans-Atlantic slave trade which brought Africans to suffer as chattel throughout North and South America..

But there is a reaction to every action and when the question of removing the Columbus statue in New York City was raised, governor Andrew Cuomo demurred, “But the statue has come to represent and signify appreciation for the Italian-American contribution to New York.” Columbus was born Cristoforo Colombo in Genoa. This need for Cuomo and others to hang on to the criminal is obvious. Columbus puts Italians at the center of the settler colonial state. They are not the southern European catholic immigrants who were often looked down upon when they first arrived. Columbus makes them white Americans and they cling to him lest they lose that imprimatur.

Everyone should work mightily to remove the stain of mass murderers who even define how we identify ourselves. The name Columbus came to mean America itself. We are left with a South American nation, Colombia, named after him. The U.S. capital is the District of Columbia, while Canada’s far western province is doubly colonized with the name British Columbia and cities like Columbus, Ohio and institutions like Columbia University abound. The indigenous who suffered because of his invasion now have their culture labeled pre and post Columbian. The crimes continue as millions of people are forcibly linked to the genocidaire.

“Columbus puts Italians at the center of the settler colonial state.”

New York’s governor is not alone in trying to stem the tide of truth telling. A group of white men armed with guns and other weapons felt the need to protect a statue of Columbus in Philadelphia. This intransigence tells us why it is so important to name and shame the mass murderers. Their credibility must be destroyed if white supremacy is ever to become a thing of the past. The statues must go and so must excuse making for atrocities if whites are the perpetrators and non-whites are the victims.

The hand wringing over monument removal is not just connected to reverence for these individuals. While millions of people want change, millions more do not and they hold on to Columbus or Leopold or Churchill or Robert E. Lee because their identity and place in society is firmly tied to white supremacy. If a Columbus statue comes down so might a small portion of white entitlement and its privileges.

The monuments to genocide must come down. The discomfort caused to the elites is of no concern to anyone who wants to strike at the heart of racism as practiced around the world. Good-bye and good riddance to Churchill, Columbus, Leopold and all of their ilk.

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Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well at patreon.com/margaretkimberley and she regularly posts on Twitter @freedomrideblog. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

Featured image is from BAR

Chinese media highlighted a recent plea by Beijing to the US to lift sanctions against Syria.

China’s CGTN in an article titled, “Chinese envoy asks U.S. to lift unilateral sanctions on Syria,” would report:

A Chinese envoy on Tuesday asked the United States to immediately lift unilateral sanctions against Syria.

Years of economic blockade have caused tremendous hardships to the Syrian people, in particular women and children. The sufferings caused by the devaluation of the Syrian currency and soaring commodities prices, including food prices, fall heavily on civilians across the country, said Zhang Jun, China’s permanent representative to the United Nations.

China’s attempts to aid Syria economically and challenge American sanctions aimed at Damascus follows Russia’s open opposition to the US-led proxy war against the Syrian government which included Moscow’s direct military involvement in the conflict and Russia’s leading role in liquidating US-armed militant groups across the country.

US sanctions against Syria have long since outlived the alleged motivation for America’s involvement in the conflict – claims of supporting the democratic aspirations of the Syrian people and opposing alleged human rights violations by the Syrian government.

It has been indisputably revealed that the US deliberately engineered the conflict – from organizing protests before 2011 to arming and deploying militants to the country to shift 2011 street protests into a destructive proxy war. It has also long been revealed that so-called “freedom fighters” were in fact extremists drawn from various terrorist organizations including Al Qaeda and its many franchises.

Since Syria’s security operations were in response to what is now revealed to have been US aggression-by-proxy and eventually direct US military aggression against the Syrian government – the sanctions themselves are revealed to be merely an economic component to US attempts to decimate the Syrian nation – not in any way aid or assist the Syrian people.

And of course US sanctions against Syria have complicated the lives of all Syrians – from the vast majority who remained in support of the Syrian government and lived in government-controlled areas of Syria throughout the conflict to even US-backed militants who eventually turn in their arms and surrender to government forces – they all collectively face economic hardship and a difficult road ahead in rebuilding their nation.

Thus the altruistic excuses the US used to first impose sanctions on Syria and its increasingly feeble excuses used to continue justifying them now are revealed as little more than propaganda and should be taken into consideration when questioning why the US has imposed sanctions on other nations.

The US engineered and executed what was a humanitarian catastrophe in Syria – one that it is still actively attempting to perpetuate for as long as possible and one now admittedly perpetuated to “make it a quagmire for the Russians.” Not only is Washington’s “humanitarian” justification for placing sanctions on Syria revealed as empty, but it is Washington itself who is guilty of trampling human rights in Syria.

China – and many others for that matter – have asked for these sanctions to be lifted. Washington – to no one’s surprise refuses – but the inability of so-called “international” institutions to hold Washington accountable or to alleviate Syria’s current crisis reveals that the “international order” these institutions serve is dysfunctional and that alternatives desperately need to be found.

China’s economic aid and efforts to reconstruct Syria will eventually be realized – it is only a matter of time and how China will get around US sanctions.

This will be done either by directly opposing them or creating global systems that are entirely independent of and insulated from American interference. Either way – if Washington insists on maintaining its current policies – a global system independent of and insulated from America is one in which America finds itself cutoff and withering – a prospect that benefits neither the American people nor even America’s ruling special interests.

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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.

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Relevant to the present crisis, this article was first published on GR on December 18, 2014

Can a person actually be “too smart” to be a cop in America?  “Considering all the police brutality and officer-involved shootings in the news these days, here’s a rhetorical question for you: how well does this hiring practice bode for cops actually being able to follow the Constitution or use proper discretion while “protecting and serving” America? A federal court’s decision back in 2000 suggests that, yes, you actually can be”. 

Robert Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, scored a 33 on an intelligence test he took as part of the application process to become a police officer in the town of New London, Connecticut. The score meant Jordan had an IQ of 125.

The average score for police officers was a 21-22, or an IQ of 104. New London would only interview candidates who scored between 20 and 27.

Jordan sued the city alleging discrimination, but the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld that it wasn’t discrimination. “Why?” you might ask. Because New London Police Department applied the same standard to everyone who applied to be a cop there.

And the theory behind it?

“Those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training,” ABC News reported back then. While at least acknowledging the basic fact that such a policy might be “unwise,” the court deemed it had a “rational basis” because it was put in place to lower cop turnover.

The police department went on to continue automatically disqualifying anyone whose IQ was “too high.” Jordan went on to become a prison guard instead.

And there you have it.

Considering all the police brutality and officer-involved shootings in the news these days, here’s a rhetorical question for you: how well does this hiring practice bode for cops actually being able to follow the Constitution or use proper discretion while “protecting and serving” America?

Does this snapshot from the past at least partially help explain how we got to where we are as a nation today — a total police state? Wow, and the Pentagon has been giving these guys tanksstraight off the battlefields in the Middle East to drive down American streets, too.

Recent public opinion polls, just by the way, show trust in police is pretty abysmal; 65% feel that our police departments do a poor job of holding officers accountable for misconduct.

Well America’s local law enforcement agencies — of which there are 18,000-plus, more than any other country in the world — aren’t exactly encouraging geniuses to apply to be officers here; in fact, geniuses don’t stand a chance even if they wanted to (which, I guess if they are geniuses, they probably don’t).

Melissa Melton is a writer, researcher, and analyst for The Daily Sheeple, where this first appeared, and a co-creator of Truthstream Media with Aaron Dykes, a site that offers teleprompter-free, unscripted analysis of The Matrix we find ourselves living in. Melissa also co-founded Nutritional Anarchy with Daisy Luther of The Organic Prepper, a site focused on resistance through food self-sufficiency. Wake the flock up!

This article was first published in The Ecologist in 2011

In the first of a major new series following on from the ground breaking Behind the Label, Peter Salisbury takes a look at one of the biggest brands in the world – McDonald’s – and asks: has the burger giant done enough to clean-up its act?

Chances are that you have had a McDonald’s meal in the past or if not, you certainly know a lot of people who have. It’s the biggest fast food chain in the world, with 32,000 outlets in 117 countries. The clown-fronted burger outfit employs a staggering 1.7 million people, and in the first three months of 2011 alone it made $1.2bn in profits on the back of revenues of $6.1bn. The company has come in for huge amounts of criticism over the past 20 years, for the impact it has on the diets of people worldwide, its labour practices and the impact its business has had on the environment. From Fast Food Nation to Supersize Me by the way of the McLibel trials of the 1990s, plenty has been written and broadcast to tarnish the golden arches’ shine.

Declining sales in the early 2000s, which saw franchises being shut for the first time in the company’s history, caused a major rethink of the way McDonald’s operates, and its recent rhetoric has been that of a firm with a newly discovered zeal for ethical end eco-friendly practices, garnering praise from champions as unlikely as Greenpeace and the Carbon Trust. But is this just marketing hype or has McDonald’s had a genuine change of heart?

The answer is yes and no. First of all, because of the way the company is run, it’s hard to generalise. Around 80 per cent of McDonald’s outlets are run by franchisees who have to meet standards set by the company, but who can – and do – go above and beyond them. Further, McDonald’s branches are run by country and regional offices, each of which are subject to domestic standards. The production of much of the raw products which go into McDonald’s meals, from burger patties to sauces, is subcontracted to different suppliers, making it impossible to assess the company in terms of a single golden standard. Its sole global supplier (for soft drinks) is Coca-Cola.

The UK branch of the company has certainly made great strides since the 1990s, when it became embroiled in the 1997 McLibel court case, in which McDonald’s Corporation and McDonald’s Restaurants Limited sued Helen Steel and Dave Morris, a former gardener and a postman, for libel after they published a series of leaflets denouncing the company.

Exploitation

The judge overseeing the case decided that, although the pair could not prove some of their accusations – that McDonald’s destroyed rainforests, caused starvation in the third world or disease and cancer in developed countries – it could be agreed that the company exploited children, falsely advertised their food as nutritious, indirectly sponsored cruelty to animals and paid their workers low wages: a major blow to the brand in an age of increasing consumer-consciousness.

Since then, the UK branch has committed to a number of initiatives to improve its image, running an aggressive marketing campaign at the same time to portray itself as an ethical employer which is both farmer and eco-friendly. It has also moved to become more transparent, putting ingredients lists for all of its products on its website and setting up another website, Make Up Your Own Mind, inviting customers to voice concerns and publishing accounts of critics’ visits to its production sites.

All of this should be taken with a grain of salt however. It’s not surprising that a multibillion-dollar corporation, which has been hurt in the past by concerns over its practices, will do its utmost to sell itself as a reformed character. And it’s suspicious that any web search of the company brings up a hit list of sites almost exclusively maintained by the company.

Yet research conducted by the Ecologist shows that in many areas the company has improved its record of ethical and environmental awareness over the last decade. The company’s burgers, for example, are now 100 per cent beef, and contain no preservatives or added flavours whatsoever. All of McDonald’s UK’s burgers are provided by Germany’s Esca Food Solutions, which claims to maintain rigorous standards at its abattoirs and production plants, and which works closely with 16,000 independent farmers in the UK and Ireland to maintain high standards.

‘No GM’

Since the early 2000s, McDonald’s UK has maintained that none of its beef, bacon or chicken is fed genetically modified grain. Farmers working for McDonald’s have independently confirmed to the Ecologist and Esca that they have a ‘decent’ working relationship with the company.

In 2007, Esca won the UK Food Manufacturing Excellence Awards for its burgers, and in 2010 McDonald’s announced that it was launching a three-year study into reducing the carbon emissions caused by the cattle used in its burgers (cattle account for four per cent of the UK’s emissions). Meanwhile, all of the fish used in Filet-O-Fish and Fish Finger meals in Europe are sourced from sustainable fisheries certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. Fries are largely sourced from McCain’s, the world’s biggest potato supplier, and McDonald’s claims that the vast majority are produced in the UK, again by independent farmers. The fries are prepared in-store and are cooked in vegetable oil containing no hydrogenated fats. At the beginning of the potato-growing season, dextrose – a form of glucose – is added as a sweetener, and salt is added after cooking (the company claims to have reduced the amount of salt used by 23 per cent since 2008).

The bread for McDonald’s buns and muffins is sourced from a single unnamed supplier based in Heywood, Manchester, and Banbury, Oxfordshire. McDonald’s would not comment on where it sources the grain for the bakeries but says once more that it does not buy genetically modified crops. Meanwhile, the company has been working with its suppliers and franchise-holders to make sure that they are as energy efficient as possible. In 2010, The Carbon Trust awarded McDonald’s its Carbon Trust Standard for reducing its overall carbon emissions by 4.5 per cent between 2007 and 2009. The company is currently experimenting with a series of energy initiatives based around turning its waste, from packaging – which is 80 per cent recycled – to vegetable oil into energy.

Certification

Since 2007, the company – which is one of the world’s biggest coffee retailers – has committed to selling only Rainforest Alliance certified coffee. Although the certification body has certainly been responsible for improving conditions and practices in many farming operations worldwide, it has been the subject of controversy – most recently after an undercover investigation by the Ecologist revealed allegations of sexual harassment and poor conditions for some workers at its certified Kericho tea plantation in Kenya which supplies the PG Tips brand.

Certification issues aside, McDonald’s has undoubtedly become considerably better at taking criticism. In 2006, Greenpeace activists stormed McDonald’s restaurants across the world dressed in chicken suits in protest at the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, which they attributed to greedy soy producers – who in turn were selling their produce to chicken farms, of whom McDonald’s was a major customer. They subsequently praised the fast food chain for leading a unified response among soy buyers, pressuring producers to adopt a ‘zero destruction’ approach to growing their crops. Despite praise from Greenpeace, the Carbon Trust and personalities such as Jamie Oliver who have praised the company for its ethical stance on meat and buying its produce locally, the firm is by no means perfect.

One of the biggest incongruencies in its newly discovered zeal for ethical practices comes from its seemingly differing approaches to the conditions chickens live in depending on whether they produce eggs or are used as meat in Chicken McNuggets and similar meals. The firm proudly trumpets that its UK branch only buys eggs from Lion-certified free-range producers, a laudable effort from a huge buyer of eggs, and that the meat in each nugget is 100 per cent chicken breast (the final product is around 65:35 meat and batter).

Factory farming

Yet by the same token, the company buys most of its chicken from two suppliers, Sun Valley in the UK and Moy Park in Northern Ireland, who are in turn owned by the controversial American firm, Cargill, and Brazil’s Marfrig. Sun Valley has been accused of using intensive chicken farming methods to produce their meat, which campaigners say can typically involve birds being cooped up in giant warehouses for much of their natural lives with barely any space to move. Sun Valley was embroiled in a scandal in 2008 when the activist group Compassion in World Farming secretly filmed poor conditions at its supplier Uphampton Farm near Leominster.

Furthermore, although McDonald’s is happy to advertise the provenance of its beef, dairy products and eggs, it is more circumspect about chicken meat. This may be because up to 90 per cent of the meat it uses in the UK is sourced from Cargill and Marfrag facilities in Thailand and Brazil, where regulations in the farming sector are perhaps less stringent than in the UK.

Meanwhile, the fact remains that despite attempts in recent years to cultivate a more healthy image, McDonald’s primary sales come from fast food in a time when there is increasing recognition that obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the UK and the US. Although the European, and in particular the UK arm of the company, have become increasingly ethically aware, the same cannot be said for the US arm, which uses livestock farmed using intensive methods and fed in some cases on GM crops. And by buying McDonald’s in the UK, you are still buying from the same clown.

Useful links:

McDonalds: www.mcdonalds.co.uk

Greenpeace: www.greenpeace.org.uk

Compassion in World Farming: www.ciwf.org.uk

The Carbon Trust: www.carbontrust.co.uk

In 1877, while laying out his agenda for the formation of a secret society to recapture Britain’s lost colony of America and the submission of “inferior” races (ie. non anglo-saxon) under the control of a renewed British Empire, Cecil Rhodes, wrote his Confessions of Faith in which the following explicit mission statement can be read:

“I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings what an alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence, look again at the extra employment a new country added to our dominions gives. I contend that every acre added to our territory means in the future birth to some more of the English race who otherwise would not be brought into existence… I look into history and I read the story of the Jesuits I see what they were able to do in a bad cause and I might say under bad leaders.

Why should we not form a secret society with but one object the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule for the recovery of the United States for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire…

We know the size of the world we know the total extent. Africa is still lying ready for us it is our duty to take it.

It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race more of the best the most human, most honourable race the world possesses. To forward such a scheme what a splendid help a secret society would be a society not openly acknowledged but who would work in secret for such an object.”

Rhodes’ agenda had manifested itself upon his death in 1902 with the creation of the Rhodes Scholarship Trust whose trustees included Lord Rothschild, and Lord Alfred Milner.

The Canadian imperialist George Parkin had even left his post as headmaster of Upper Canada College in Toronto, in order to serve as the 1st head of the Scholarship Trust from 1902-1922. Both Parkin and Milner went on to mentor a young Vincent Massey.

俄罗斯离实现北极地区全年通航又近了一步。一艘可装载冰块的油轮最早通过北海航线向中国运送液化天然气。

在过去的几年里，一支由15艘Arc7专用破冰液化天然气（LNG）运输船组成的船队，将天然气从俄罗斯亚马尔半岛的一家大型LNG工厂经北极运往亚洲各国。即使在北极海冰迅速融化的情况下，这些航程通常只能在7月至11月之间进行。

现在，经营亚马尔液化天然气设施的俄罗斯最大的私营天然气公司诺瓦泰克公司利用其旗舰、世界上第一艘破冰液化天然气运输船 “克里斯托夫-德-玛格丽特 “号进行了一次航行，以考察在5月份期间，在北方海路（NSR）上进行东向航行的可行性，比以往的此类航行提前了近两个月。该舰在一艘核破冰船的护航下，仅用了12天时间就完成了约2500海里的冰雪覆盖部分的行程，预计下周中旬将抵达中国。

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The Arctic Northern Sea Route: Russia Conducts Record-Breaking Delivery of LNG to ChinaBy Malte Humpert, June 08, 2020

对于那些想知道在Covid19大流行病成功地使整个世界经济完全瘫痪，使1930年代以来最严重的萧条蔓延之后会发生什么的人，首要的全球化非政府组织达沃斯世界经济论坛的领导人刚刚公布了我们下一步可以期待的轮廓。这些人决定把这次危机当作一个机会。

6月3日通过他们的网站，达沃斯世界经济论坛（WEF）公布了他们即将于2021年1月举行的论坛的大纲。他们称之为 “大重置”。它需要利用冠状病毒的惊人影响来推进一个非常具体的议程。值得注意的是，这个议程与另一个具体议程，即2015年联合国2030年议程完美对接。世界上领先的大企业论坛，自20世纪90年代以来一直在推进企业全球化议程的论坛，现在却在接受他们所谓的可持续发展，这种讽刺意味是巨大的。这给了我们一个暗示，这个议程并不像世界经济论坛及其合作伙伴所声称的那样。

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Now Comes the Davos Global Economy “Great Reset”. What Happens After the Covid-19 Pandemic? By F. William Engdahl, June 10, 2020

North Korea is one of countless numbers of nations that have been grievously attacked and otherwise harmed by the US.

Throughout its post-WW II history, it never attacked another country preemptively — not South Korea or any others, threatening none now except in self-defense if attacked, its legitimate right under international law.

Reinvented history claiming otherwise, along with endless Big Lies and mass deception, got most Americans to falsely believe that the DPRK threatens US security.

It’s never been the case throughout its history, clearly not now.

Yet anti-North Korea propaganda rages, the way the US and establishment media operate against all sovereign independent nations.

None threaten the US — not China, Russia, Iran, North Korea or any others.

Not according to the Voice of American propaganda, VoA on Thursday, falsely claiming:

“…North Korea (is) ramp(ing) up military pressure on South Korea (sic).”

Cutting off official communication channels with Seoul, blowing up the inter-Korean liaison office in its own territory, and perhaps holding war games are because of frustration over its rebuffed good faith efforts for rapprochement with the US and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in.

Pompeo, Bolton while around, and other Trump regime hardliners undermined two Kim Jong-un/DJT summits — making unacceptable demands in return for empty promises.

VoA turned truth on its head like countless times before on all geopolitical issues, saying:

“North Korea has a long history of periodically ramping up tensions in order to extract economic and other concessions from the South (sic).”

The pro-war/anti-peace, stability, and cooperative relations among all countries NYT falsely accused Kim of “turn(ing) hostile to South Korea (sic),” adding:

He’s “threaten(ing) to extinguish the fragile detente with a new cycle of bellicose actions and military provocations (sic).”

No detente with the US, West or Seoul existed throughout North Korean history — just the occasional illusion of improved relations, never sustained because of US duplicity.

The fault lies with Washington, the West, and US pressured South Korean governments, not Pyongyang.

A hostile Washington Post article claims that “(m)ore than 2.6 million people live under slavery in (North Korea), the vast majority of them forced to work by the state,” citing a dubious 2018 Global Slavery Index.

It’s prepared by the so-called Minderoo Foundation — headed Australian mining industry tycoon Andrew Forrest and his wife Nicola.

She’s the daughter of Tony Maurice, a key figure involved in the white supremacist Australian League of Rights organization.

The Forrests’ interest in North Korea is exploitive, how they operate domestically.

The so-called Global Slavery Index ignored tens of millions of US and other Western wage slaves, workers receiving poverty or sub-poverty pay — mostly in rotten part-time or temp jobs with few or no benefits.

The Wall Street Journal called North Korea a “provocative northern neighbor” to Seoul (sic) — ignoring nearly 75 years of unacceptable US hostility toward a nation threatening no one.

Fox News headlined: “North Korea likely to attack US presidential election in November,” citing the usual dubious sources.

The so-called Kim Koo-Korea Foundation wants the DPRK transformed into a US vassal state.

Its North Korea specialist Sung Yoon-lee was quoted, claiming that he “fully expect(s) North Korea to test its own capabilities to see what it can get away with by hacking into the US election system (sic)” — citing no corroboration evidence because none exists, adding:

“North Korea increases its psychological pressure, political pressure on its main adversary, the United States (sic).”

It’s “part of the growing escalatory strategic playbook which will be punctuated by a more serious provocation, like an ICBM or even nuclear test (sic).”

The so-called Washington-based Issue One group “produced a report called ‘Don’t Mess With US,’ falsely claiming foreign interference ‘puts our election at risk (sic).’ ”

It never did before in US history — in sharp contrast to scores of US attempts to manipulate foreign elections to assure pro-Western regimes run things.

What possible benefit could North Korea gain by trying to interfere with US elections — the same true about all other countries.

North Korea’s pledge to “build up a more reliable force to cope with longterm military threats from the US” is all about legitimate self-defense, not intended belligerence the way Washington and the West operate.

The US is a one-party state with two right wings. Policies of both are much the same on virtually all major domestic and geopolitical issues.

They include perpetual hostility toward all nations not controlled by the US, including North Korea.

No foreign threats to US national security exist, just invented ones to unjustifiably justify spending countless trillions of dollars on militarism and endless preemptive wars.

It comes at the expense of governance the way it should be and cooperative relations with other countries.

The American way is all about wanting dominance over allies and adversaries alike — demanding the world community of nations bend to its will.

It’s a prescription for endless militarism and belligerence over badly needed peace, equity, justice, and adherence to the rule of law.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The Caesar Act comes at a time when the whole world is suffering not only in the health arena (Covid-19) but also in the financial one.

Syria specifically is suffering from great duress. Coming out of a ten year long war which has exhausted the country in all its sectors, Syria now faces more hardship.

Sanctions have long plagued Syria, European and American ones. Since the war started on Syria, the USA and the West have sanctioned Syria, starting with Syrian companies and Syrian individuals and ending with non Syrians that trade with Syria.

The transport of oil and gas to Syria’s ports was forbidden. This had adverse living conditions on the ordinary Syrian citizen. Many Syrians suffered from the cold due to lack of heating fuel and gas. Unable to even guarantee that they had enough gas to cook a simple meal, Syrians resorted to other alternatives like using wood or electricity when and if available.

Today Wednesday 17/6/2020 the Caesar Act comes into effect, punishing the Syrian civilian population in obtaining its most basic needs.

Syriatimes was lucky enough to exclusively interview Syria’s permanent representative to the UN and one of its most vociferous defenders Dr. Bashar Al-Ja’fari.

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Syriatimes: “What does the implementation of the Caesar Act mean to the ordinary Syrian?”

Ambassador Ja’afari: The unilateral coercive economic measures, mistakenly called sanctions, are based on a shared unethical principle by governments that impose such blockades, based on belief that whoever possesses economic, military and political influence is capable of imposing his own will, decisions and policies on any country in the world by just trapping them commercially, economically and impeding their banking system, while totally ignoring and condoning the fact that these measures are illegal according to international law and the Charter of the United Nations. With regard to the so-called “Caesar’s Act”, let me say that Syria has been subject to US sanctions for decades since 1979 under the pretext of supporting terrorism and threatening the security of Israel, but since the terrorist war on Syria began, the US government has issued eight executive orders to impose or tighten economic, commercial and banking unilateral measures on Syria. These punitive measures, which were accompanied by similar European ones, had and still have clear impact on the Syrian economy and on the Syrian citizen.

The main idea behind drafting “Caesar’s Act” is to exercise political pressure and psychological warfare on Syria, because measures contained in this act are already imposed on the Syrian Arab Republic. The main new factor in the act is the practice of economic and financial terrorism on any government or foreign party that might consider doing business with Syria or to contribute to the process of reconstruction. On the other hand, this act focuses more on the status of the Syrian Central Bank, as it is responsible for controlling the exchange rate of foreign currencies, by trying to accuse it of practicing money laundry.

Allow me to point out here an important fact, which is that the Western ambassadors in the Security Council have always said publicly in all meetings of the Council regarding the political and humanitarian situation in Syria, that their governments will not contribute and will not allow the reconstruction process to be launched in Syria unless the Syrian government and its allies accept political concessions that these Western governments want. Meaning, they are taking Syria and its people hostages of their own schizophrenic policies. Needless to say, that the required concessions from Syria and its allies are totally incompatible with the national and security interests of Syria, and that they target Syria’s political independent choices and ultimately aim at achieving the mere interests of Westerners and Israel. In conclusion, the practical application of the US economic blockade imposed on Syria and other countries is to prevent any country that is subject to Unilateral Coercive Economic Measures from free and sustainable access to the global banking system and free trade without restrictions or obstacles. This is exactly what the US government and the European Union are doing against the Syrian Arab Republic. When the Syrian government and private banks are prevented from accessing the global banking system and benefiting from its facilities and transfers, this inevitably means that the ability of Syrian commercial institutions and entities is very limited in concluding deals and commercial partnerships and in carrying out import and export operations in a free and stable manner. Consequently, the main victim is the Syrian citizen, because restricting the free movement of trade and import means higher prices, less materials, and weakening the purchasing power of the Syrian citizen.

Syriatimes: “Will this act not hurt the very citizen it claims it wants to protect?”

Ambassador Ja’afari: It is well known that successive American administrations rely in their foreign policy on specific tools, foremost of which are military power and aggression, economic blockade, and destabilization in order to change legitimate governments. The claims of Americans and Europeans that they impose Unilateral Sanctions in order to protect citizens in some countries are false, and facts on the ground expose that. The Americans and Europeans claim that the sanctions target Syrian government institutions exclusively! Any sane man will ask a question about the role of the government in any country of the world, and the answer is that the government is responsible for providing services to citizens in various fields starting with medicine and food to providing water, electric power and basic services and needs for citizens. Therefore, if the State institutions have been targeted with punitive measures that subsequently means that their capability to perform their primary services role is targeted.

On the other hand, the unilateral measures that target countries such as Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Syria, have been and will always be targeting citizens. These countries, among others such as Russia and China, are a target of these measures because of their political stances against the American and Western hegemony over the world. One of the biggest Western governments lies is that they are seeking to “protect democracy and human rights” in the world by imposing unilateral coercive measures. Everyone knows that the American government and the European Union are the allies of the most brutal dictatorial religious regimes in this world, just as they are the true allies of Israel, which occupies Arab lands to this day.

The Western political mindset knows well that economic embargoes are primarily harmful to citizens, but its political institutions continue to press ahead with punitive measures against people in order to create stifling social crises and push people to stand against their national governments and hold these governments accountable for their suffering.

Syriatimes: “The USA claims that the Caesar Act will not affect daily necessities like medicine-How true is that claim?”

Ambassador Ja’afari: Most of the illegal measures in the so-called “Caesar Act” are not new, and Syria has been subject to the last wave of unilateral US and European coercive measures since ten years ago until today, and they amount to war crimes and constitute economic and financial crimes of terrorism. These punitive measures cause great economic and social damages, and their profound impact is no less than the impact of the crimes committed by terrorist armed groups against Syria and its people during these years.

American and Western governments are so brazen. They openly declare that they will continue to impose an economic blockade on Syria until the Syrian state succumbs to their political, economic and military blackmail. They already know that this blockade directly affects health, banking and education sectors, as well as communications, transportation, electricity and basic services sectors, and every sector that relates directly to the daily details of the life of the Syrian citizen.

It is one of the ugliest forms of political hypocrisy embodiment in our world. The United Nations is subject to the pressure of these powers in order to limit the organization’s contribution in Syria to only providing humanitarian relief and refrains from launching projects to rehabilitate infrastructure and reconstruction. These Westerner governments do not find anything wrong with saying that they only allow the flow of humanitarian aid to Syria, but they will not allow the early recovery process that will directly affect the lives of Syrian citizens at home, and will provide the appropriate economic and social conditions for the return of Syrian refugees.

Syriatimes: “American and European sanctions have been implemented in Syria for some time now. How is this different?”

Ambassador Ja’afari: This new US Act seeks to impose a kind of territorial division on the Syrian state, by excluding the area controlled by the unpatriotic Kurdish separatist factions from the consequences of Caesar Act. The US administration wants to undermine the reconstruction efforts and seeks to deprive the Syrians of their natural resources, paralyze production mechanisms, close production gates, and stop import and export operations, in addition to impeding the normalization of relations with Syria and undermining the contribution of Syrian expatriates to reconstruction efforts.

The so-called “Caesar Act” seeks to stifle Syria politically and economically after Washington was unable to strangle it with terrorist war. What is new in this Act is that it extends to include Damascus’ main allies, such as Russia and Iran, which the Act mentions by name.

In order not to repeat myself, I would say that more than 95% of the punitive measures mentioned in this Act are already imposed on Syria, and what the Americans, along with the Europeans and the Turks want is to target public opinion in Syria, to create a state of uncertainty and weak confidence in the local currency and the ability to promote self-sufficiency and in the capability and credibility of Syria’s allies that fought terrorism with it over the past years and will not abandon it in the face of this economic blockade.

The most important element in this battle is to know the goals of your enemy. Today, we are fully aware that Americans and Europeans want to compensate for their defeat when they supported terrorism, by exerting economic and social pressure on the Syrian state and its allies and preventing them from proving their capability to recover damages caused to the Syrian economy and launch the reconstruction process. In sum, our battle with them is a battle of existence, settling old and new accounts, and targeting the Syrian nation and national identity. We have no option to retreat after we succeeded in our war on terrorism that was and still supported by same governments.

Syriatimes: “What can be done politically (in the UN arena) to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people?’

Ambassador Ja’afari: We used to say within the diplomatic community of the United Nations, that this Organization is not a charity, and that what ultimately prevails in it is the logic of political and financial polarization. Needless to say that this does not lead us to despair, as much as, it pushes us to be realistic and to strive with our allies to confront as much as possible the attempt of Western domination of the frameworks of the United Nations by adhering to the provisions of the Charter and international law.

The main dilemma while addressing Unilateral Coercive Measures is that the United Nations periodically rejects and condemns them, but due to Western domination of the United Nations, this Organization has not been able, to date, to adopt clear legal and practical mechanisms or instruments to end these punitive measures or to mitigate their impact on the peoples of the targeted countries. Nevertheless, during the last period, especially with the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, we were able to push the Secretary-General and relevant international organizations and bodies to issue statements and adopt positions that speak candidly about the profound inhumane impacts of this economic blockade on the peoples of the targeted countries and the ability of the United Nations to achieve global collective solidarity in confronting this health pandemic.

In recent years, the Syrian government has sent many letters and appeals to the Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council regarding the impact of Unilateral Coercive Economic Measures imposed on the Syrian people. We have succeeded during the past months in creating sufficient lobbying power within the United Nations that embarrassed and provoked the American and European representatives and their governments.

However, the final evaluation is that these Western governments will not abandon the policy of military intervention or the imposition of Unilateral Economic Measures on every country that politically disagrees with them, including friendly countries such as Russia, China and Iran.

Therefore, options and methods of addressing this challenge are mostly national, and should focus on developing economic and industrial strategies that deal with these punitive measures and provide local alternatives to meet basic needs, and build strong and sustainable economic, industrial and banking relationships with our real friends, especially in light of the fact that governments imposing the economic blockade also control international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank Group, in order to define the course of the global economy.

Once again, our battle requires complete awareness of the goals of our enemies in the region and the world, and a clear definition of the limits of their capabilities and wills, so that we can address the main goals for which these Unilateral Coercive Measures were imposed, namely economic and social pressure on citizens and limit the state’s ability to secure the basic requirements for life.

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Before proposing solutions to demilitarize the police, decrease abuses by law enforcement, and increase accountability for law enforcement, it is imperative to understand how US law enforcement became an extension of the military.

Two weeks ago a senior Trump Administration official revealed that the president had decided to withdraw 9,500 American soldiers from Germany and that the administration would also be capping total U.S. military presence in that country at 25,000, which might involve more cuts depending what is included in the numbers. The move was welcomed in some circles and strongly criticized in others, but many observers were also bemused by the announcement, noting that Donald Trump had previously ordered a reduction in force in Afghanistan and a complete withdrawal from Syria, neither of which has actually been achieved. In Syria, troops were only moved from the northern part of the country to the oil producing region in the south to protect the fields from seizure by ISIS, while in Afghanistan the nineteen-year-long training mission and infrastructure reconstruction continue.

In a somewhat related development, the Iraqi parliament has called for the removal of U.S. troops from the country, a demand that has been rejected by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Put it all together and it suggests that any announcement coming from the White House on ending America’s useless wars should be regarded with some skepticism.

The United States has its nearly 35,000 military personnel remaining in Germany as its contribution to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), founded in 1949 to counter Soviet forces in Eastern Europe in what was to become the Warsaw Pact. Both the Organization and Pact were ostensibly defensive alliances and the U.S. active participation was intended to demonstrate American resolve to come to the aid of Western Europe. Currently, 75 years after the end of World War II and thirty years after the fall of communist governments in Eastern Europe, NATO is an anachronism, kept going by the many statesmen and military establishments of the various countries that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Since the demise of the European communist regimes, NATO has found work in bombing Serbia, destroying Libya and in helping in the unending task to train an Afghan army.

In spite of the clearly diminished threat in Europe, NATO has expanded to 30 members, including most of the former communist states that made up the Warsaw Pact. The most recent acquisition was Montenegro in 2016, which contributed 2,400 soldiers to the NATO force. That expansion was carried out in spite of assurances given to the post-Soviet Russian government that military encroachment would not take place. Currently, NATO continues to focus on the threat from Moscow as its own viable raison d’être, with its deployments and training exercises often taking place right up against Russia’s borders.

Few really believe that the Russia, which has a GDP only the size of Italy’s, intends or is even capable of reestablishing anything like the old Soviet Union. But a vulnerable Russia is nevertheless interested in maintaining an old-fashioned sphere of influence around its borders, which explains the concern over developments in Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic States.

Given the diminished threat level in Europe, the withdrawal of 9,500 soldiers should be welcomed by all parties. Trump has been sending the not unreasonable message that if the Europeans want more defense, they should pay for it themselves, though he has wrapped his proposal in his usual insulting and derogatory language. A wealthy Germany currently spends 1.1% of GDP on its military, far less than the 2% that NATO has declared to be a target to meet alliance commitments. That compares with the nearly 5% that the U.S. has been spending globally, inclusive of intelligence and national security costs.

Fair enough for burden sharing, but the European concern is more focused on how Trump does what he does. For example, he announced the downsizing without informing America’s NATO partners. The Germans were surprised and pushed back immediately. Conservative politician Peter Beyer said “This is completely unacceptable, especially since nobody in Washington thought about informing its NATO ally Germany in advance,” and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas regretted the planned withdrawal, describing Berlin’s relationship with the Washington as “complicated.” Chancellor Angela Merkel was reportedly shocked.

The timing of the decision has also been questioned, with many observers believing that Trump deliberately staged the announcement to punish Merkel for refusing to attend a planned G-7 Summit in the U.S. that the president had been trying to arrange. Merkel argued that dealing with the consequences of the coronavirus made it difficult for her to leave home at the present time and the G-7 planning never got off the ground, which angered Trump, who wanted to demonstrate his global leadership in an election year.

Trump’s behavior has real world consequences. The Canadians and Europeans regard him as a joke, but a dangerous joke due to his impulsive decision making. He cannot be trusted and when he says something he often contradicts himself on the next day. Arguably Donald Trump was elected president on the margin of difference provided by an anti-war vote after many Americans took seriously his pledge to end the burgeoning overseas wars and bring the soldiers home. It all may have been a lie even as he was saying it, but it was convincing at the time and a welcome antidote to Hillary the Hawk.

There will be costs associated with removing or relocating the troops in Germany, to include constructing new bases somewhere else, hopefully in the United States, but the realization that the soldiers are not really needed could lead to the downsizing of the U.S. military across the board. That would be strongly resisted by the Pentagon, the defense industries and Congress.

If Trump is serious about downsizing America’s overseas commitments, the reduction in the German force is a good first step, even if it was done for the wrong reasons. It would be even better if he would force NATO into discussions about ending the alliance now that it is no longer needed, which would mean that the remaining American soldiers in Europe could come home.

The U.S. mission of global dominance has meant huge budget deficits and a national debt of $26 trillion, which is likely unsustainable. Germany and other European nations, by way of contrast, balance their government budgets every year. South Korea, which hosts 30,000 American soldiers, is wealthy and far more powerful than its northern neighbor. The continued occupation of Japan with 50,000 troops makes no sense even considering an increase in China’s regional power. Overall, the United States continues to have 170,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines based overseas in 150 countries and its military budget exceeds one trillion dollars when everything is considered. The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars may have cost as much as seven trillion dollars given the fact that much of the money was borrowed and will have to be repaid with interest.

It is past time for Donald Trump to make a bold move because the Democrats won’t have the backbone to rattle the status quo. End the foreign wars, shut down the overseas bases and bring the soldiers home. Spend tax dollars to improve the lives of Americans, not to fight wars for Saudis and Israelis. A simple formula for change, but sometimes simple is best.

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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.

Lebanon is the victim of its deeply entrenched political elite, which has refused to adopt and execute meaningful reforms since tens of thousands of Lebanese poured into the streets last October to demand an end to mismanagement, corruption and the country’s sectarian system of governance.

Instead of meeting protesters’ increasingly urgent demands, the politicians have stalled and squabbled among themselves while the poverty rate rose to the point that Lebanese families are facing hunger because they cannot afford rising cost of foodstuffs. Protests have become increasingly violent, particularly in the northern port city of Tripoli and its hinterland.

The current weak technocratic government has been negotiating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for $9 billion in financial support although the fund is infamous for reducing subsidies and programmes benefitting the poor as the price of aid. There is no safety net in Lebanon for people who lose their livelihoods. The Lebanese middle class is disappearing, either by slipping into poverty or emigrating.

Because of the politicians’ failure to develop and implement a comprehensive reform plan, international donors have refused to release $11 billion in loans and grants pledged at a meeting in Paris in 2018.

Last week, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group called for emergency aid and urgent reform to rescue hard-pressed Lebanese from catastrophe. “The economic crisis is without precedent in the country’s history,” the group said and urged Beirut to speed up negotiations with the IMF and international  donors in order to take delivery of funds to halt the precipitous downward slide. Until this happens, the think tank demanded humanitarian assistance to keep the wolf of hunger from the doors of Lebanese family homes.

Lebanon’s economy went into free fall last September, prompting the protests which paused for a few weeks during the country’s successful anti-coronavirus campaign involving strict lockdown, curfew and other restrictions. Lebanon had no choice but to clamp down hard as its health sector does not have the means to contain the virus with mass testing and tracing or to treat thousands of victims.

Meanwhile, the economic crisis continued. The country’s currency plunged in value from 1,507 to 4-5,000 the US dollar. Imports of food and other goods were cut, prices rose, businesses closed and tens of thousands had reductions in salaries or lost jobs. Lebanon defaulted for the first time ever a Eurobond loan payment.

Instead of using the brief respite from protests to cobble together a serious reform plan, the politicians bickered, procrastinated and prevaricated. An ex-minister told this correspondent that rather than Covid-19 they fear reform involving accountability for mismanagement and graft.

The Crisis Group argued there must be “structural change [that] will put an end to the political model in which corrupt and self-serving cliques appropriate and  redistribute state resources and public goods”. Rightly, the group questioned whether the politicians would “oversee a transition”, which would involve “‘pulling out the rug from their own feet’.” Indeed, this has been Lebanon’s problem all along.

Lebanon’s challenged Prime Minister Hassan Diab has announced the launch of a “war on corruption” in response to the demands of the street. He said the government would not be deterred by their “political, religious, sectarian, regional and familial covers”. But, few Lebanese believe the authorities can actually prosecute members of the elite and retrieve billions of dollars residing in foreign banks.

To make matters worse, largely peaceful protests which had involved Lebanese from all backgrounds and faiths have been increasingly disrupted by violent trouble makers defending the sectarian status quo which has inflicted two civil wars and continues to wreak so much damage on the country. Diab has accused these elements of mounting an “organised sabotage campaign”.

Lebanon’s crisis has spilled over into sanctioned and war-battered Syria. Last week, President Bashar Assad dismissed Prime Minister Imad Khamis after rare protests erupted in the government-controlled south. Water resources minister Hussein Arnous was appointed in his place to prepare for elections on July 19.

Ahead of fresh US sanctions targeting anyone dealing with Syria’s government, the Syrian pound plunged on the black market, trading at 3,000-5,000 to the US dollar rather than the official rate of 700. As in Lebanon, hunger has become a major issue for some 10 million Syrians.

The situation prompted the World Food Programme to send a convoy of 39 truckloads of food aid to Syria. Food has become more expensive than at any time during the country’s civil and proxy war.

Protests erupted in Sweida, the homeland of the traditionally loyal Druze minority, and spread to the neighbouring province of Deraa, where, in 2011, unrest launched nine years of strife. Both provinces are beset by lawlessness and attacks by Daesh and other takfiri factions as well as afflicted by economic melt-down.

While Damascus’ Druze supporters promptly retaliated by mounting their own rally, the potential defection of this minority would be a major blow to Damascus as Syria’s Druze, Alawite and Christian minorities have backed the  government from the outset of the troubles, while the Kurds have not joined its opponents. Residents of the Kurdish and takfiri controlled zones are also suffering from the currency’s collapse and high prices. In north-western Idlib province held by Al Qaeda-linked takfiris, the weak Turkish pound has replaced Syria’s currency.

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Since 1945, when the United States bombed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons, Japan has entered an era of total submission to Washington, demilitarizing and abdicating its own real sovereignty. Tokyo came under the umbrella of American military protection. For a long time, defense and security were not priority issues for the Japanese government, which relied on cooperation with the United States as a way of dealing with all its international problems and regional tensions. Likewise, in the last few decades, the US has achieved a status of global hegemony and has become the current world police, which allowed the American government to act freely on their military affairs in any of their allied countries on all continents.

As part of this great cooperation between Japan and the US, recently, both countries started a new project, consisting of the acquisition of the American missile systems Aegis Ashore and their installation on a Japanese platform. The aim of the project was to strengthen Japanese defense to face the tensions with North Korea and China. The project was approved by the Japanese government in December 2017 and forecasts were that by 2023 the systems would be fully operational in Japan, at the disposal of its armed forces. However, the development of the project was not so simple.

The installation of the missiles required complex work. The project intended to cover the entire Japanese territory under the Aegis Ashore systems, maintaining terrestrial protection for the entire country, in aid with the SM-3 System missiles, which provide naval security on board of several Japanese destroyers. The number of American troops in Japan increased significantly with the project, raising an atmosphere of concern on the part of Moscow, which, knowing Washington’s hostile policy towards Russia, came to see Japan as a potential regional threat. In addition, the project costs were estimated at more than 2 billion dollars.

High prices, the intensification of US military presence of Japanese soil, slowness in the development of the project and the increase of regional tensions – instead of more security – were factors that contributed to a marked decision by the Japanese government which chose to cancel the cooperation. According to the Japanese defense minister, Taro Kono, the project would be irrational with so many costs and with so much waiting time. Kono pointed out: “Due to considerations of cost and timing, we have stopped the process of introducing the Aegis Ashore system (…) For the time being, Japan will continue to counter (missile threats) with Aegis-equipped ships.” In the same vein, Toshimitsu Motegi, Japan’s foreign affairs minister, stressed the strategic and rational character of the decision and stated that it does not imply other military cooperation projects with the United States. These are his words: “My opinion is that this decision will not influence various forms of cooperation with the United States, a bell that we will maintain a strict cooperation with and will continue to enhance the allied capacities of response and dissuasion”.

It is understandable that members of the Japanese government try to reduce the causes of the project’s cancellation, claiming that it is only a “rational calculation” of time and money, but obviously, it is not just that. In fact, Japan realized that currently there is nothing strategic about filling its territory with hundreds of American soldiers and submitting the country even more to Washington’s might, hoping, in return, for “protection” against its regional rivals. With the increase of the American presence in Japan, regional rivalries will increase and, consequently, the country’s security will be more threatened, not guaranteed.

On the other hand, it is noteworthy how the decrease in American power is already being noticed in all parts of the world. Not only does Japan no longer trust the blind protection of Americans, it can also unilaterally halt the program and decide the direction of its defense projects – something that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago, where Washington’s imposing relationship with Tokyo was much clearer and more violent.

In fact, as American dominance gradually crumbles, its main allies are step by step moving away. Currently, we can see Europe becoming increasingly critical of NATO, Germany opting for alternative defense strategies instead of aligning completely with Washington as well as many other signs that, currently, American influence on global governance is diminishing. The cancellation of the Aegis Ashore project is the proof that it is not currently the United States that unilaterally decides where to deploy its missiles.

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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.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

A General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon at Hill Air Force Base, located in northern Utah, recently had an exterior makeover paint scheme that mimics the Russian Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighter, reported Defense Blog.

The 576th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron painted the fighter jet a “ghost” paint scheme at the request of the 64th Aggressor Squadron at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, that is responsible for holding Red Flag exercises, an aerial combat training drill held several times a year by the Air Force to prepare pilots for aerial combat.

The new paint scheme suggests American pilots will soon simulate dogfighting drills with mock Russian stealth jets.

 “The paint scheme is intended to replicate an adversary’s fighter jet. The United States, allied, and partner-nation aircrews routinely train against accurate and realistic threats including aircraft painted to replicate those pilots might see in aerial combat,” Defense Blog said.

Already, US and Russian warplanes have intercepted one another — indicating tensions are building.

“The paint shop at Nellis did one of these planes last year and asked us to paint this one,” said Jim Gill 576th AMXS production flight chief. “They sent us pictures and gave us the pattern, but there were no instructions. We had to put it together ourselves.”

Here’s the video showing how the process was done last year.

Photos emerged on a Turkish website last year of a McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet belonging to Fighter Squadron Composite Twelve (VFC-12), a US Navy Reserve fighter squadron based in Virginia Beach, sporting the same Russian Su-57 color scheme.

Tensions are rising between the US and Russia, the Air Force painting fighter jets similar to Russian ones suggests pilots are being trained to identify and engage enemy fifth-generation fighters ahead of the next conflict.

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On June 16, a joint convoy of the Turkish Army and the Russian Military Police became the target of a new IED attack during a patrol along the M4 highway in southern Idlib. The explosion damaged a BTR-82A armored personnel carrier of the Russian Military Police, but led to no casualties. The incident happened near the village of al-Qiyasat, about half way down the patrol route covering the area between Tarnbah and Furaykah.

Idlib militants and their radical supporters regularly stage provocations aimed at sabotaging the implementation of the Turkish-Russian de-escalation agreement on southern Idlib. These provocations, including IED attacks, have already led to casualties among Turkish military personnel. Despite this, Ankara continues to protect Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other terrorist groups claiming that they are a kind of “moderate opposition”. This behaviour encourages militant groups to go for more aggressive actions.

However, as practice demonstrates, when these attacks lead to real casualties or equipment losses, Russia, contrary to Turkey, is not prepared to tolerate the situation and will resume full-scale operations against these groups even in the face of “moderate opposition” mantras from Ankara.

Turkish-backed militant groups announced that they had conducted an operation against cells of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which had been involved in 11 bombing attacks in the Turkish-occupied Syrian region of Afrin. As of June 17, at least 7 supposed YPG members had been detained. Turkish-backed groups lay the blame for any terrorist attacks or explosions that happen there on the YPG. Whereas the YPG and affiliated groups regularly announce attacks on Turkish proxies in the Afrin area, they have never claimed responsibility for any bombing in civilian areas.

On the evening of June 16, Turkey launched an active phase of its Operation Claw-Tiger in Iraq’s Haftanin region. According to the Turkish military, the Turkish Armed Forces’ artillery hit at least 150 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) targets, while commandos supported by attack helicopters conducted raids on the ground.

The Operation Claw-Tiger covers the Iraqi areas of Sinjar, Qandil, Karacak, Zap, Avasin-Basyan and Hakurk and is aimed at neutralizing PKK bases, weapon depots and training camps. Turkish forces regularly conduct anti-PKK operations in northern Iraq, but they have still not been able to fully neutralize the armed group there.

At the same time, pro-Turkish sources are speculating that Ankara will soon resume military action in northeastern Syria against the YPG, which it considers a PKK affiliate. Right now, Turkish-backed forces are building up their presence near Ayn Issa. The formal pretext for this military effort will be the unwillingness of Kurdish fighters to withdraw from the 30km deep border area as it was agreed in the framework of the US-Russia-Turkey de-escalation agreement on the region.

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Why would perhaps a majority of the US ruling class want Trump defeated in November?

Even though he’s far from a prototypical Western leader — a businessman/reality TV personality turned politician — he aided and abetted the greatest wealth transfer in US history.

It hugely benefitted Wall Street, corporate America overall, and high-net worth individuals.

He serves the military, industrial, security, media complex by maintaining a permanent state of war in multiple theaters.

He’s waging war by other means  on China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, and other sovereign independent nations that powerful US interests want transformed into vassal states.

Throughout his tenure, his populist red meat rhetoric aimed at supporters concealed his one-sided service to the nation’s ruling class at the expense of ordinary Americans.

His surprise November 2016 triumph over Hillary was likely because most US power brokers decided she was damaged goods, too contentious to lead.

They likely cut a deal with Trump to assure no change in longstanding US dirty business as usual.

He won by fair or foul means. She lost, but now the tables may be turned.

Is he now viewed as too contentious to lead, longtime establishment figure Biden considered a safe alternative?

He alienated US allies, former Obama regime envoy to Bulgaria Nancy McEldowney, saying the following:

“I have either been a student of or a practitioner of American diplomacy and foreign policy for over 35 years, and in the course of that time I have witnessed time of extreme tension between the United States and some of its allies over policy positions, over personal approaches of the president at the time,” adding:

“But never over my entire career have I seen a US president who was not only completely willing, but seemed to take great glee, in public insults, in obviously and intentionally demeaning ways of trying to tear down other heads of democratic (sic) states.”

Other Trump critics made similar comments, including world leaders.

Before elected in 2016, then-Argentinian President Macri called him a “crackpot presidential candidate.”

Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau indirectly criticized his travel ban that affects targeted countries, saying: “Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith.”

China’s Xi Jinping said “bilateral relations (with the US) have been affected by some negative factors.”

Former European Council president Donald Tusk complained about “a difficult situation” in dealing with Trump’s White House, adding:

It “put(s) into question the last 70 years of American foreign policy.”

Former EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said

“Trump doesn’t get close enough to dossiers to fully understand them.”

“(A)ttempts (to explain) failed.”

Trump criticized how former UK PM Theresa May handled Brexit, saying:

“What a mess she and her representatives have created. I told her how it should be done, but she decided to go another way.”

Current UK PM Boris Johnson accused Trump of “failing to lead (and) letting the air out of the tires of the world economy.”

Germany’s Angela Merkel said

“(t)he times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I’ve experienced that in the last few days” in dealing with Trump.

Among other issues was his demand for German auto companies to produce them for the US market in America, threatening tariffs otherwise.

Threatened sanctions on German and other companies involved in Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline notably riled Berlin — wanting the project completed with no foreign attempts to undermine it.

France’s Macron complained that Trump “turn(ed) (his) back on us.”

In response to a French digital tax on US tech companies, Trump said

“(w)e will announce a substantial reciprocal action on Macron’s foolishness shortly.”

Imposing tariffs on allied nations soured relations. The same goes for lashing out at critics, including calling Canada’s Trudeau “very dishonest and weak.”

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called Trump’s suggested purchase of Greenland “absurd.”

DJT slammed her response, calling it “nasty and inappropriate.”

DJT infuriated Mexico by saying its government “will pay for the (border) wall” between both countries.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin hoped for improved relations with the US under Trump. Instead, they “deteriorated” further, he explained.

New Pew Research data show 60% of “US adults” surveyed believe Trump is mostly or completely wrong in his response to nationwide protests — only 37% say he’s mostly or completely right.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll has Biden leading Trump by 13 points — 48% of registered voters expressing support for the presumptive Dem nominee, only 35% for Trump.

A 57% majority disapproved of Trump’s performance, just 38% expressing approval.

According to an average of polls conducted in June show Biden with an 8.5 point lead over Trump — 50.2% – 41.7%, according to Real Clear Politics.

Biden is leading in key battleground states, including Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

If the presidential election was held today, he’d triumph over Trump by a landslide margin.

Clearly he’s aided by economic crisis conditions that produced record-high unemployment — a greater main street Depression than during the 1930s that’s likely to be protracted.

Except at times of real public emergency threatening public safety, Americans vote with their pocketbooks.

With little being done by the White House and Congress to stimulate economic recovery and jobs creation, an agenda prioritizing neoliberal harshness, Dems may be poised to keep control of the House, gain it over the Senate, and make Trump a one-term president.

GOP power brokers fear losing out in November. A new Marist poll showed 43% of registered Republicans want a standard bearer other than Trump, only 46% against the idea.

There’s no prospect of a second Dem impeachment attempt, wanting him forced from office this way — not with Biden well ahead in polls and November a few months away.

Is John Bolton part of an anti-Trump conspiracy?

Aside from likely wanting to cash in from a tell-all book at an opportune time, greatly aided by anti-Trump media publicity, his so-called memoir will be available for purchase next week — despite a Trump Justice Department lawsuit attempt to block its publication on grounds of it containing classified information.

Advance copies were sent to media, including the Washington Post, saying:

Trump sought help from China’s Xi Jinping to aid his reelection campaign — despite his regime calling Beijing Washington’s public enemy No. One.

WaPo quoted Bolton saying he wanted “print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”

Did he record them by concealed wire to have plenty of red meat for a book planned after becoming Trump’s national security advisor?

He claimed key regime officials, including Pompeo, threatened to resign over holding up military aid to Ukraine last year by Trump.

It says AG Barr expressed concerns about Trump’s behavior, damaging his image and the office he holds.

Hardline Bolton, a figure who never met a country not controlled by the US he didn’t want raped and destroyed, clearly has a cross to bear over his dismissal as national security advisor.

On Thursday, Trump slammed him via Twitter, saying:

“Wacko John Bolton’s ‘exceedingly tedious’ (New York Times) book is made up of lies & fake stories.”

“Said all good about me, in print, until the day I fired him.”

“A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war.”

“Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope!”

Are establishment long knives out to dump Trump by preventing his November reelection?

Are things being manipulated to assure it?

While the jury is still out, all of the above suggests things are moving in this direction.

Will a Biden presidency make a positive difference?

For nearly half a century as US senator and vice president, he fully supported dirty domestic and geopolitical business continuity.

His record in office is proof positive of opposition to world peace and governance serving all Americans equitably — notions he and the vast majority of Dems abhor and won’t tolerate.

Both right wings of the US one-party state operate the same way on major domestic and geopolitical issues.

The only differences between Trump and Biden are party label and style — virtually nothing else on what’s most important to most people.

It’s why Dem party bosses want him as standard bearer in November. The same goes for anti-Trump establishment media.

No matter how US November elections turn out, continuity will be assured like always before.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from FAIR

During the early days of the coronavirus lockdowns, in some quarters there was a certain degree of optimism around. Although millions of people were suffering, the hope was that the Covid-19 crisis would shine light on societal and economic systems across the world, exposing some of the deep-rooted flaws of capitalism. There was a belief that people working together with their respective governments could start building a fairer capitalism and more sustainable economies.

However, we see exactly the opposite taking place. In the UK, we now witness a post-Brexit trade deal being negotiated behind closed doors with the US that could see a lowering of food and environment standards, despite the Conservative government pledge that it would not compromise on standards in these areas. The government now proposes that chlorine-washed chicken, beef treated with growth hormones, pork from ractopamine-injected animals and many other toxic foods produced in the US will be allowed into the UK. Sanctioning the entry of (chemical-resistant) GM crops and GM food are also likely to be part of any deal.

It would effectively mean sacrificing UK farmers’ livelihoods, the environment and the nation’s health to suit the bottom line of US agribusiness corporations.

The UK isn’t the only country that US agribusiness has set its sights on. World Bank Group President David Malpass has stated that poorer countries will be ‘helped’ to get back on their feet after the various coronavirus lockdowns. This ‘help’ will be on condition that neoliberal reforms are implemented and become further embedded. Ranil Salgado, mission chief for India at the IMF, says that when the economic shock passes, it’s important that India returns to its path of undertaking such long-term reforms.

But haven’t ordinary Indians already had enough of these ‘structural adjustments’ and their impacts? Rural affairs commentator P Sainath has highlighted the desperate plight of migrant workers in India. He notes that millions of rural livelihoods have been deliberately snuffed out over a period of many years, sparking an agrarian crisis. As a result of lockdown, tens of millions went back to their villages but there is no work there because rural jobs have been extinguished – the reason for urban migration in the first place.

The US has been pushing to bring Indian agriculture under corporate control for a long time. Further ‘reforms’ would serve to accelerate this process. US agribusiness wants to force GMO food crops into the country, further displace peasant farmers thereby driving even more people to cities and ensure corporate consolidation and commercialisation of the sector based on industrial-scale monocrop farms incorporated into global supply chains dominated by transnational agribusiness and retail giants.

Like the UK, India is also involved in trade talks with the US. If this deal goes through and India capitulates to US demands, it could devastate the dairy, poultry, soybean, maize and other sectors and severely deepen the crisis in the countryside. India could also see GMO food flooding the country and the further corporate consolidation of the seed sector. The article ‘Perils of the US-India free trade agreement for Indian farmers’ published on the grain.org website highlights what could be in store.

In the wake of India deciding to not participate in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, another trade deal that would have had devastating consequences for farmers and the food system. the article concludes:

“It would be inconsistent, and a slap in the face, to now start US-India trade talks that will pose much bigger challenges for India’s rural communities and agriculture sector. Such a deal would greatly compromise India’s huge diversity of local seeds and plants which are conserved and reused by millions of Indian farmers year after year. It will also destroy India’s hope for food sovereignty.”

Any such trade deal will be for the benefit of powerful agribusiness giants and will reinforce the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of these corporations. It would also send millions more to the cities in search of jobs that are just not there. This will be the result of the ‘reforms’ demanded by the World Bank and IMF.

If lockdown has shown anything, it is that many of those who sought better lives in the cities have failed to establish a firm foothold. They are marginalised and employed in the worst jobs working long hours for minimal wages. The fragility of their position is demonstrated by the reverse migrations we have witnessed and the callous treatment they are used to was demonstrated by the government’s attitude to their plight under lockdown.

The various lockdowns around the globe have also exposed the fragility of the global food system, dominated by long-line supply chains and global conglomerates – which effectively suck food and wealth from the Global South to the richer nations.

What we have seen underscores the need for a radical transformation of the prevailing globalised food regime based on a system of agroecology which reduces dependency on external proprietary inputs, distant volatile commodity markets and patented technologies. It would help to shorten chains, increase crop diversity, improve diets, regenerate soils, support food sovereignty, re-localise production and consumption and boost local economies, which in India would stem the flow of people moving to the cities and would even create livelihoods for those who have returned to the countryside.

It is the type of system that Prof Michel Pimbert and Colin Anderson of Coventry University in the UK advocate. In contrast to corporate-driven trade deals, centrally controlled hi-tech innovations, people-free farming, drones replacing bees, genetically engineered crops and a future of synthetic lab-based food, the two academics argue:

“Agroecological innovations… are being driven largely from the bottom up by civil society, social movements and allied researchers. In this context, priorities for innovations are ones that increase citizen control for food sovereignty and decentralise power.”

Instead of trade deals hammered out behind closed doors above the heads of ordinary people by elite interests, the authors state that deliberative, inclusive processes like citizens’ juries, peoples’ assemblies and community-led participatory actions are urgently needed.

It is these types of processes that should guide all economic sectors, not just agriculture. Processes underpinned by a vision for a better, more just world that can only be delivered by challenging capitalism’s dispossessive strategies which fuel India’s agrarian crisis and the types of human and environmental degradation and exploitation we see across the globe.

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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

Plastic pollution has now been found in Antarctic sea ice, which has far-reaching consequences for the health of the planet and underlines the need for a global treaty the tackle it.

When we hear about plastic pollution, it’s normally the cigarette butts and drinks containers littering beaches, turtles suffocating on plastic bags and whales’ stomachs chock-full of discarded plastic which steal the proverbial limelight.

But while these images are worrisome, there’s a much more subtle and insidious form of plastic pollution that is still poorly understood – that of microplastics.

Plastics don’t break down in the same way as an apple core or banana skin; they simply fragment into smaller and smaller pieces. These microplastics are smaller than 5mm in size and have either broken down from macro (large) pieces of plastic or were manufactured that way, such as plastic pellets or microbeads in cosmetics.

An estimated 51 trillion particles exist in the ocean today – which is almost 7,500 particles for every human alive on Earth. Unlike the highly visible impacts of large plastics such as those inflicted on charismatic marine species, microplastics carry with them an entirely different but equally alarming set of impacts.

Over the years, microplastic pollution has been found almost everywhere in the world, from the high seas and the deepest depths of the ocean to blistering deserts and humid rainforests. However, there is one place no-one had ever looked for microplastic before – Antarctic sea ice – at least, not until very recently. Microplastics have already been discovered in Antarctica’s surface waters, sediment and snow but never in the sea ice itself – and this is significant for several reasons.

Researchers from the University of Tasmania melted down an ice core (a long chunk of ice drilled out) from Antarctica, to find and analyse any potential microplastic particles. Amazingly, they found 14 different types of microplastic and an average of 12 particles for every litre of water. They also found that the microplastics were surrounded by an abundance of algae that was growing in the ice.

This kind of algae is normal in sea ice; about 80 per cent of Antarctic sea ice melts and reforms every year and these algae feed Antarctic krill – tiny shrimp-like animals which in turn feed whales and fish. Everything in the food chain is defined by krill and they are essential to the functioning of the whole ocean.

It is alarming, then, that these algae are growing directly on microplastics, because it means that some of the toxic chemicals found in plastic are likely making their way into krill.

As krill form the foundation of the marine food chain, these chemicals are therefore likely to accumulate in all animals in the food chain, including fish, whales and sharks, causing unknown damage to already threatened species and further contaminating the fish destined for human consumption.

The study really does highlight just how pervasive plastic pollution is on our planet, which has now infiltrated the most remote corners of the world. What’s more, rather than sinking to the bottom of the sea, it’s being trapped in surface waters where it does the most damage, for long periods of time.

What’s worse is that the ice core the researchers studied was more than 10 years old. Plastic production and use have only increased since then, which begs the question: if it was that bad 10 years ago, what is it like now?

These findings confirm what has already been discovered by other scientists. In the Arctic (northern hemisphere), microplastics have already been found in surface waters and sea ice in even higher concentrations.

The remoteness of the polar regions is not enough to shield them from our throwaway society of never-ending production and disposal and this understanding has far-reaching political implications.

Far from being protected from plastic pollution, the polar countries of the world have just as much a reason to join the fight against plastic pollution as any other.

Plastic pollution is transboundary by its very nature and the impacts are felt far beyond the source locations, which emphasises an urgent need for global cooperation and action to tackle the problem.

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Tom Gammage is an Ocean Campaigner.

Featured image: Microplastic beach litter (c) NOAA PIFSC, CREP; all images in this article are from EIA

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and this calls to question why NATO still exists today. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has militarily intervened in many sovereign countries such as Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, while also expanding membership to the very borders of Russia. Although NATO was once united with the purpose of opposing the Soviet Union, there is no unifying purpose for NATO today, and it is for this reason that we are beginning to see major rifts in the Alliance.

Although Greece and Turkey are so-called NATO allies, both countries have been on the brink of war several times. The last major flare up was in 1996 over the Imia islets in the Aegean Sea because Ankara began claiming they belonged to Turkey. This was despite the fact that historical Turkish maps acknowledge that the islets belong to Greece. This time with Turkey signing an illegal memorandum with Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood Government of National Accords to split Greece’s maritime zone between themselves, it forced Athens to involve itself in Libya’s civil war.

This was the beginning of a new rift in NATO as Greece recognized and began backing Libya’s House of Representatives based in the eastern city of Tobruk. Although Italy, the U.S. and NATO head Jens Stoltenberg have all openly supported the Turkish-backed Muslim Brotherhood Government of National Accords, which is based in the capital city of Tripoli, France has come out to strongly oppose Turkish actions in Libya and backs the Libyan National Army that is mandated by the House of Representatives.

The European Union launched Operation IRINI on March 31, 2020 to enforce the United Nations arms embargo to Libya, but has utterly failed in stopping Turkish armaments from reaching Libya, prompting UN deputy special envoy for Libya, Stephanie Williams, to describe the operation as a joke.

Only last week a frigate for the IRINI Operation attempted to inspect a Tanzanian-flagged cargo vessel that was being escorted by Turkish frigates and was suspected of carrying arms to Libya. The IRINI Operation frigate was ordered to retreat by the Italian Rear Admiral after receiving a warning from the Turkish warships. Although this is a European Union operation, Turkey’s audacity has infuriated France, a fellow NATO member.

Turkey’s actions also come as a French navy vessel participating in a NATO mission in the Mediterranean was harassed by Turkish frigates. France’s defence ministry denounced the actions as “extremely aggressive.”

“This is an extremely aggressive act that is unacceptable by an ally against a NATO ship. We consider this an extremely grave matter. We cannot accept that an ally behaves this way, that it does this against a NATO ship, under NATO command, carrying out a NATO mission,” the official said.

The most stunning statement from the unnamed official was “we have known complicated moments in the alliance, but we can’t be an ostrich and can’t pretend there isn’t a Turkey problem at NATO. We have to see it, say it and handle it.”

On Wednesday, French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Agnès von der Mühll said that Turkey’s actions in preventing NATO allies from enforcing the UN arms embargo on Libya was “hostile and aggressive,” adding that Ankara was the reason peace and stability could not be achieved in the North African nation.

NATO destroyed Libya in 2011 to oust long time ruler Muammar Gaddafi. It is now apparent that the Alliance’s short sightedness has not only created a permanent state of war in the North African country, but it is now becoming a major reason for a split in NATO, with Greece and France on one side, and Turkey and the U.S. on the other.

As Turkey occupies one of the most geostrategic locations in the world, one that connects Europe with Asia, close to Russia via the Caucasus and Black Sea, and controls the Bosporus and Dardanelle Straits, its constant aggression against Greece was not only tolerated by NATO for many decades, but ignored. However, as Turkey is now in direct opposition to French energy interests in the Eastern Mediterranean and competes for influence over France’s former colonies in the Middle East and Africa, Paris is set to become a major voice to oppose Turkey’s ever-increasing hostility.

Most importantly, the French comments on Tuesday came as Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias met with his French counterpart Jean-Yves le Drian in Paris on Monday. It must be remembered that on May 11 the Foreign Ministers of Greece, Egypt, Cyprus, France and the United Arab Emirates made a joint declaration that “denounced the ongoing Turkish illegal activities in the Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zone and its territorial waters, as they represent a clear violation of international law as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.”

While NATO continues to ignore Turkish aggression, even against fellow member states, so that they do not lose an ally that has a crucial geopolitical location against Russia, France has become the first major power to break from this tradition. But by doing so, France has the potential to create a major split in NATO, especially as it seeks to normalize relations with Moscow and create a European Army in defiance of NATO.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Mark Taliano, author and activist, says the US troops’ deployment to the oil fields areas in Eastern Syria is an act of reoccupation, indicating the futility of US President’s order to withdraw its forces from the Arab country.

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Speaking in an exclusive interview with FNA, Mark Taliano said the US is committing “Supreme International Crimes” in Syria, and added, “The West, including Canada, supports all of the terrorists in Syria, directly, and indirectly. The West supports al-Qaeda and ISIS… Criminal US occupiers are plundering Syrian oil resources and burning wheat crops.  These are war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Taliano is an independent investigative reporter who travelled to Syria with the Third International Tour of Peace to Syria, where he authored his book “Voices from Syria” in which he combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present well-documented analysis of the Arab country.

Below is the full text of the interview:

FarsNews Agency: Since late October 2019, the US has been redeploying troops to Syrian oil fields in the Eastern part of the country. Is it in contradiction with President Trump’s earlier order to withdraw all US troops from Syria?

Mark Taliano: The “Caliphate Project” is a CIA Project.  Washington-led NATO and its allies have been waging a “Regime Change” war against Syria for about nine years now, using terrorists as proxies and strategic assets.  The West, including Canada, supports all of the terrorists in Syria, directly, and indirectly. The West supports al-Qaeda and ISIS. The so-called “Kurdish” forces are commanded and controlled by the West as are all of the terrorists. Western-supported terrorists – “moderates” never existed—have been targeting and mass murdering Syrian civilians throughout the war. Beneath the smokescreen of “Coronavirus” they have reoccupied areas which they previously abandoned, proving President Trump’s earlier order to withdraw troops from Syria is meaningless.

FNA: Damascus has never authorized the presence of the US military in Syria. Even local residents have blocked US military convoys which were entering villages in Hasakah. Why does the US keep its forces in Syria?

MT: Regime Change wars have no basis in International Law; they are Supreme International Crimes. No greater crimes exist. The West has been looting and pillaging Syria throughout the war. Western supported terrorists steal industrial equipment and ship it to Turkey. What they can not steal they destroy. Currently criminal US Occupiers are plundering Syrian oil resources and burning wheat crops. These are war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Local residents in Hasakah, to their credit, have been blocking US military convoys. Syrians understand that the West are criminal invaders and occupiers.  They understand that there is nothing “humanitarian” about Western warfare.

FNA: The current US Syria policy can be identified by only the two words of Occupation, and Sanctions. What is the US future plan for Syria?

MT: An important part of Western warfare includes criminal and unilateral economic embargos. As the West falsely condemns Syria for the crimes that the West itself commits, it collectively punishes and attempts to starve all Syrians. So, in addition to destroying and robbing its industrial base, in addition to looting and plundering its resources, the West is trying to prevent other nations from trading with Syria. It is trying to prevent Syria from rebuilding. This has been fully documented.

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Featured image is from TruePublica

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. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

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The great British rock group The Kinks, stars of the 60s ‘British Invasion’, outdid themselves in 1979 with ‘Low Budget’. Check out these lyrics:

Cheap is small and not too steep
But best of all cheap is cheap
Circumstance has forced my hand
To be a cut price person in a low budget land
Times are hard but we’ll all survive
I just got to learn to economize

I’m on a low budget
I’m on a low budget
I’m not cheap, you understand
I’m just a cut price person in a low budget land
Excuse my shoes they don’t quite fit
They’re a special offer and they hurt me a bit
Even my trousers are giving me pain
They were reduced in a sale so I shouldn’t complain
They squeeze me so tight so I can’t take no more
They’re size 28 but I take 34

I’m shopping at Woolworth and low discount stores
I’m dropping my standards so that I can buy more

(Quality costs, but quality wastes,
So I’m giving up all of my expensive tastes.
Caviar and champagne are definite no’s,
I’m acquiring a taste for brown ale and cod roes )

Low budget sure keeps me on my toes
I count every penny and I watch where it goes
We’re all on our uppers we’re all going skint
I used to smoke cigars but now I suck polo mints

Art takes time, time is money
Money’s scarce and that ain’t funny
Millionaires are things of the past
We’re in a low budget film where nothing can last
Money’s rare there’s none to be found
So don’t think I’m tight if I don’t buy a round

(I look like a tramp, but don’t write me off,
I’ll have you all know, I was once a toff
At least my hair is all mine, my teeth are my own,
But everything else is on permanent loan.
Once all my clothes were made by hand,
Now I’m a cut price person in a low budget land.
I’m on a low budget
I’ll have you all know
We’re on a low budget
I’m on a low budget)

We are living in the very beginning of a ‘New Normal’ for this entire planet. Sadly, this writer prays that this pandemic is what many on the right and many on the left believe it to be: Just another shot of the flu virus, like we contend with each year. However, what if the rest of us out there are correct, and this is a very serious pandemic, and highly contagious? Well, then all this rhetoric of opening up the economy along with our society in general will start to come back to haunt us all. If that is the case, then as the numbers (not the inflated ones that the naysayers believe) keep getting higher, there will be another round of shutdowns. Of course, if the geniuses in the entire Trump gang would have done the correct thing in early January, an ‘army’ of NP 95 facemasks in conjunction with ventilators and sanitizers could have cut down on the number of cases and of course deaths.  In addition to comprehensive ‘Social Distancing’ and Uncle Sam sending to the state governments the funds needed to improve our hospitals and their staffing, we all would feel much safer this summer and fall. We know what did happen: Nothing but hoax talk and ‘It’s being contained’ propaganda by this gang of assxxles! Now, we will all be suffering until those needs are met!

So, when the **** hits the proverbial fan, our economy will be slowed down to a crawl again. That means many of our low and middle income working stiffs will better understand the Kinks’ message. For many out there NOW, the noose gets tighter as they begin to fear that THEY  may very shortly be nearer to the street! All that easy money being thrown at the businesses (with the large corporations getting the lion’s share) will never ease the burdens of us working stiffs. Anyone not earning well over $100k a year will be up the creek.. Period! Is there a ‘light’ at the end of this pandemic tunnel? Yes there is: A Tax free UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME STIPEND OF ANYWHERE FROM $1000 TO $ 2000 A MONTH PER CITIZEN. Without that extra income many of us will never be able to survive this Economic Pandemic!! You want to see this economy stimulated? The UBI will do that… and well informed advocates like public banking expert Ellen Brown inform us that a UBI is NOT INFLATIONARY! So, all that BS from both sides of this Two Party/One Party ‘Embedded in Empire’ system is just that: Propaganda to secure our masters of having total control.

Imagine, if you will, a society whereupon each citizen receives such a stipend, tax free each month, in addition to whatever else they have coming in. For low and even middle class working stiffs, this could mean the ability to pay one’s mortgage or rent, or afford a car, or fix up one’s abode. The options are limitless!! So, get on the horn and phone the offices of your three Congressional Reps. Leave the message that if you do NOT hear about them getting before the cameras (as they surely do and can) and pushing for UBI… they will NEVER  get your vote when they run for re-election. . which is all they care about anyway.

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

Continuing problems with voter suppression and the brutal execution of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta highlights racism and national oppression in the contemporary South

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“This is why I say it’s the ballot or the bullet. It’s liberty or it’s death. It’s freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody. America today finds herself in a unique situation. Historically, revolutions are bloody. Oh, yes, they are. There has not ever been a blood-less revolution, or a non-violent revolution. That don’t happen even in Hollywood. You don’t have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don’t have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems.” (Malcolm X, El Hajj Malik Shabazz at the King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit on April 12, 1964)

Atlanta, Georgia, often referred to in recent decades as a “mecca” for African Americans in the southern United States, has become a focal point in the movement to end police brutality.

Outside a Wendy’s fast food restaurant on June 12, a 27-year-old Black man was reported to police for sleeping in his vehicle.

Once two white police officers arrived on the scene the entire atmosphere shifted to one of suspicion, questioning, interrogation, breathalyzer testing, attempted arrest, confrontation and execution by law-enforcement. The entire episode was captured from various angles on video as was the case in regard to the recent murder of George Floyd, 46, in Minneapolis.

Since the brutal killing of Floyd on May 25, the U.S. has been alight with mass demonstrations, urban rebellions along with a fierce political debate over the current status and future of policing. More than twenty people have been killed and in excess of 10,000 arrested as the municipalities, state governments and the White House deploy security forces in an effort to halt, contain and misdirect the antiracist movement.

Atlanta Wendy’s turned into memorial for Rayshard Brooks gunned down by white cop

In the immediate aftermath of the killing of Brooks, people in Atlanta took to the streets picketing the restaurant and shutting it down. The Wendy’s restaurant where the killing took place was later burned down the following evening. Hundreds of people blocked the expressway near the location while Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced the dismissal of the police officers involved in the incident.

By June 17, the two officers, Garett Rolf and Devin Brosnan, were facing criminal charges. Rolf, who was seen in the video firing the fatal shots which hit Brooks twice in his back, was indicted on 11 criminal counts including felony murder. Brosnan, who was placed on administrative leave, is also said to be awaiting charges for aggravated assault. Although Brosnan did not discharge his weapon, he was videotaped sitting on the back of Brooks prior to his being shot to death.

Image on the right: Atlanta police interrogate Rayshard Brooks prior to shooting him death

The police action against Brooks prompted the resignation of Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields which was announced by Mayor Bottom on June 13. The mayor said the shooting death of Brooks was unjustified and the police chief had decided to allow for new leadership in the department.

A lawyer for the Brooks family, L. Chris Stewart, said to the media that the homicide was completely unjustified. Brooks had asked the police officers if he could walk home after the questioning and alcohol testing. Instead he was placed under arrest prompting a confrontation with Brooks. The African American man later attempted to flee the police effort to put him in handcuffs and was shot to death.

According to Attorney Stewart,

“It didn’t have to go to that level. And that’s what we’re saying in America with policing, is this type of empathy is gone. … Where is the empathy in just letting him walk home?” (See this)

The widow of Brooks, Tomika Miller, said:

“I can never get my husband back. I can never get my best friend. … It’s just going to be a long time before I heal.”

Brooks was a father and was well-loved by his relatives who spoke passionately about the struggle to win justice in the case.

Georgia Primary Reveals Further Voter Suppression

Although the Democratic race for the presidential nominee appears to be sealed in favor of former vice-president and Senator Joe Biden, there were enormous problems reported in the recently-held elections on June 9. On election day people waited for hours before being able to cast their ballots.

Problems included the refusal of machines to accept ballots and the purging of people from the rolls of qualified voters. Many of these difficulties occurred in predominantly African American neighborhoods.

Others complaints included the failure of the election officials to mail absentee ballots to voters requesting them. Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, is the former Secretary of State. Kemp held that position when he ran against former State Democratic Legislative minority leader Stacey Abrams. The gubernatorial election was held in November 2018 and was marred by accusations of voter suppression as well.

Despite a legal and political challenge by the Abrams campaign, Kemp prevailed and has served as governor since the calamitous events of 2018. Georgia is one of the states impacted severely by the COVID-19 pandemic. Transmissions of COVID-19 cases are accelerating in Georgia while Kemp has been an advocate, like Trump, of “reopening” the national economy.

Georgia voters faced enormous problems in Democratic primary on June 9, 2020

The state is a center for the food production industry which has been devastated by the pandemic. Many plants were closed during April and May while workers contracted the virus in great numbers. Kemp seems to be oblivious to the spread of COVID-19 in Georgia. As the public health situation worsened in the U.S. after mid-to-late March, the governor said that he was not aware that asymptomatic carriers of the virus could infect others.

A report in the New Yorker magazine said of the situation that:

“In Georgia, state and local officials are currently blaming each other. State officials are trying to emphasize that the problems took place in only a few of the state’s numerous counties—as if that weren’t exactly the issue. But, as election experts, and Democrats in Congress, have been saying for weeks, safeguarding our elections this year, even more than most years, is a job bigger than any one precinct or state.”

The Need for Independent Political Action

Events in the U.S. since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the subsequent economic downturn and the rise in the mass struggle against racism, illustrates the necessity for a fundamental break between the African American people, their allies and other oppressed communities, with the Democratic Party. Malcolm X emphasized the importance of this challenge as being essential in the strategic objectives of African Americans. This position was articulated in the same above-quoted passage from the speech “Ballots or Bullets” delivered in April 1964, another election year.

Malcolm X believed that a programmatic approach was important if the institutional racism in the U.S. was to be effectively eradicated. Of course the President Donald Trump’s White House has been a perpetuator of bigotry and prejudice against African Americans and other racially oppressed groups. Immigrants, people of Latin American, Asian and Middle Eastern descents are routinely targeted for racial profiling and selective prosecution.

The Democratic Party has authored, shepherded and implemented draconian legislation which resulted in the further mass incarceration of millions. The Crime Bill, Effective Death Penalty Act, unprecedented levels of deportations and the militarization of the police has occurred under the leadership of both ruling class dominated parties.

There are still no plans for the adoption of a national health insurance scheme which could guarantee everyone in the U.S. medical care. Since the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted Black and Brown communities, it is unconscionable that the Democratic Party leadership and the Biden campaign is offering no concrete policy reforms to address the present healthcare crisis.

Whether African Americans pursue nonviolent direct action, marches, violence through property destruction or electoral politics, they are being attacked by the repressive apparatus of the state on behalf of the ruling class. Consequently, a unified program of action which would seek to form alliances based on ending the system of oppression and exploitation provides the only hope for structural change in the U.S.

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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

“Symbols are what unite and divide people. Symbols give us our identity, our self-image,our way of explaining ourselves to others. Symbols in turn determine the kinds of stories we tell; and the stories we tell determine the kind of history we make and remake.” – Mary Robinson, Inauguration speech as President of Ireland, December 3, 1990

Introduction

On the night of the 8 March 1966 a massive explosion was heard in the centre of Dublin and Nelson’s Pillar came crashing to the ground in hundreds of tons of rubble. No one  was hurt and a stump was all that could be seen of the 157 year old monument. It was not the first time that monuments had been attacked in Ireland and certainly not the last, at least figuratively, with a series of later monuments accruing many derogatory nicknames from the Dublin people.

The recent spate of attacks on monuments in the US and the Uk has opened up the debate on the cultural issues they provoke, ranging from those who can’t believe the attacks hadn’t happened sooner to those who see their destruction as mob vandalism.

Here, as everywhere, the public sphere is a highly contested one and not just culturally. For example, when the Irish Republic unilaterally declared independence in 1919, the Dáil Courts (Republican Courts) were set up, creating for the time being, a parallel (and popular) judicial system that frustrated the colonial power by undermining British rule in Ireland, and continued until independence.

Similarly the imposition of British cultural history in Ireland, through its monuments, was resented and these monuments became the focal point for the beginnings of a new public cultural space after independence. By wiping the slate clean, presumably it was thought, it would be possible to create a new progressive space based on Irish revolutionary figures. However, it did not quite work out like that. As in the political sphere, the public sphere remained a highly contested arena with successive conservative governments using different tactics to defer, reject or hinder progressive sculpture in Dublin.

I will look at the fate of some of these British historical monuments and the possibilities for future monuments that would more accurately reflect Irish peoples’ historical struggles for freedom and independence.

‘Removing’ colonial history

William of Orange (1928)

In 1928 the statue of William of Orange (1701–1928) at College Green (in front of Trinity College) was damaged after an explosion on the anniversary of Armistice Day in 1928 and subsequently removed.

Donal Fallon quotes from the brief commentary on the statue that comes from a book, ‘Ireland In Pictures’, dating from 1898: “This equestrian statue of William II stands in College Green, and has stood there, more or less, since A.D 1701. We say “more or less” because no statue in the world, perhaps, has been subject to so many vicissitudes. It has been insulted, mutilated and blown up so many times, that the original figure, never particularly graceful, is now a battered wreck, pieced and patched together, like an old, worn out garment.”

As historian Fin Dwyer writes:

“If there was one statue that was not going to survive Irish independence this was it. William of Orange defeated James II at the battle of the Boyne in 1690 and ever since William and his victory has been twisted to suit political circumstances of the day. His victory had been celebrated by Unionists in the provactive 12th of July Parades in Ireland through the 19th century and he became a despised figure for Irish catholics and nationalists who saw William as a symbol of repression and discrimination. In 1929, the inevitable happened and the statue was blown up. Needless to say it wasn’t rebuilt.”

‘Young’ Queen Victoria (1934)

Image on the right: Victoria statue

According to Professor John A Murphy, UCC:

“In August 1849, Queen Victoria witnessed her statue being hoisted on the highest gable of the new Queen’s College, now University College Cork. There it remained until 1934 when it was taken down and replaced by Finbarr, Cork’s patron saint. The Victoria statue was put in storage for some years and then bizarrely buried in what was admittedly UCC’s classiest location, the President’s Garden.”

King George II (1937)

This equestrian monument of King George II in St Stephen’s Green (1758–1937) was blown up on 13 May 1937, the day after the coronation of George VI. It was unveiled in 1758 and depicted George II in Roman attire. It was placed on a tall pedestal but still ‘the victim of many attacks’.

‘Old’ Queen Victoria (1948)

The statue of Queen Victoria at Leinster House, Kildare Street (1904–1948) was removed in 1948 as part of moves by the Irish State towards declaring a Republic, and eventually shipped to Sydney, Australia in 1987 where it is now on display on the corner of Druitt and George Street in front of the Queen Victoria Building.

Image below: Statue of Queen Victoria

The anger towards British colonialism in Ireland could be seen in newspaper reports of the time, for example:

“In 1895, The Nation newspaper noted that Irish migrants in New York had celebrated Victoria’s Jubilee with “the most appropriate celebration”, staging demonstrations and distributing political literature to highlight their view that: “some of the benefits conferred upon Ireland during Victoria’s murderous reign: Died of famine 1,500,000; evicted 3,668,000; expatriated 4,200,000; emigrants who died of ship fever, 57,000; imprisoned under the Coercion Acts, over 3,000; butchered in suppressed public meetings, 300; Coercion Acts, 53; executed for resisting tyranny, 95; died in English dungeons, 270; newspapers suppressed, 12.”

George Howard (1956)

The statue of George Howard (Earl of Carlisle) in the Phoenix Park (1870–1956) was blown off its plinth in an explosion in 1956 and moved to Castle Howard in Yorkshire. The pedestal remains in place as a memorial. George Howard (1802–1864), the 7th Earl of Carlisle, served under Lord Melbourne as Chief Secretary for Ireland between 1835 and 1841.

Carlisle statue

Gough Monument (1957)

The Gough Monument in the Phoenix Park (1880–1957) was blown up in 1957, it was later restored and re-erected in the grounds of Chillingham Castle, England, in 1990. Field Marshal Hugh Gough, 1st Viscount Gough (1779–1869) was a British Army officer born at Woodstown, Annacotty, Ireland. Gough’s colonial credentials are impeccable, serving British forces in China, India and South Africa where he “commanded the 2nd Battalion of the 87th (Royal Irish Fusiliers) Regiment of Foot during the Peninsular War. After serving as commander-in-chief of the British forces in China during the First Opium War, he became Commander-in-Chief, India and led the British forces in action against the Marathas defeating them decisively at the conclusion of the Gwalior Campaign and then commanded the troops that defeated the Sikhs during both the First Anglo-Sikh War and the Second Anglo-Sikh War.”

Gough Monument

The attack on the Gough Monument demonstrated that being Irish-born was no guarantee of immunity from denunciation and execration. Indeed, the assaults on colonial monuments also became a subject for Irish writers over subsequent decades too. The well-known Irish writer, Myles na gCopaleen, commented on a previous attack on the Gough monument when it was beheaded on Christmas Eve 1944. Writing in his column, Cruiskeen Lawn in The Irish Times in January 1945, he commented:

“Few people will sympathise with this activity; some think it is simply wrong, others do not understand how anybody could think of getting up in the middle of a frosty night in order to saw the head of a metal statue. […] The Gough statue in question was a monstrosity, famous only for the disproportion of the horse’s legs, its present headlessness gives it a grim humour and even if the head is recovered, I urge strongly that no attempt should be made to solder it on.”

The head was eventually found in the River Liffey, the main river running through the centre of Dublin. The fate of the Gough statue is also known because of a poem believed to have been written by another Irish writer, Brendan Behan (though some attribute it to poet Vincent Caprani):

“Neath the horse’s prick, a dynamite stick
Some Gallant hero did place
For the cause of our land, with a light in his hand
Bravely the foe he did face.
Then without showing fear, he kept himself clear
Excepting to blow up the pair
But he nearly went crackers, all he got was the knackers
And made the poor stallion a mare.”

Nelson’s Pillar (1966)

Tor short-range surface-to-air missile systems have downed more than 45 unmanned aerial vehicles launched by Syrian militants, according to the chief of the Russian Air Defense Forces Lieutenant General Alexander Leonov.

“Since the start of combat duty, the calculations of the Tor combat vehicles targeted over 45 UAVs crafted by militants”, Leonov said in an interview with the National Defense magazine.

Tor missile systems, alongside with short range Pantisr-S and long rage S-400 systems are the core of the air defense capabilities of the Russian military group deployed in Syria. In 2019 alone, Russian forces intercepted 53 UAVs and 27 rockets fired towards the Hmeimim airbase.

In 2020, the intensity of UAV and rocket attacks on Russian military facilities in western Syria decreased. The main reason is the successful counter-terrorism operations in the southern part of the Idlib de-escalation zones in previous years that allowed for the destruction of infrastructure used by militants for such attacks.

Meanwhile, the militant-held part of Greater Idlib remains in a state of constant chaos even without any large-scale clashes involving the Syrian Army.

On June 15, the head of Jaish al-Suqour, Abu Husain, was assassinated south of the village of Ariha. Another militant commander, Abu Usama, was injured in the incident. Usama is a member of Liwa al-Hansa. Both Jaish al-Suqour and Liwa al-Hansa are a part of the coalition of Turkish-backed militant groups known as the National Front for Liberation. Pro-government sources say that the assassination indicates the ongoing undercover conflict between militant groups directly controlled by Turkey and their more independent counterparts.

Turkey and its proxies seek to expand their influence and gain additional leverage to put pressure on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Turkistan Islamic Party, Horas al-Din and other militarally capable organizations. On the other hand, these groups resisting Turkish attempts to do so are simultaneously continuing to receive financial and military support from Ankara.

On June 16, the Syrian Army sent reinforcements to the contact line with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other militants south of the M4 highway in the Idlib de-escalation zone. Damascus is deeply concerned by the growing Turkish military presence in the area and reasonably expects that radical militants may use it as a cover for attacks on the government-controlled territory.

On June 15, locals from the villages of Jamalu and Merikiz in the Syrian province of al-Hasakah blocked a Turkish military patrol and prevented it from passing the area. Such protests in northeastern Syria are a rare development. Turkish forces do not shy away from using force against Kurdish protesters if they pose even the slightest threat to their interests. The Turkish military regularly claims that Kurdish armed groups, which it considers to be terrorist organizations, prepare attacks on Turkish positions in the area of Operation Peace Spring. By such claims, Ankara justifies the use of force there.

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The deep and insolvable differences among the wealthy elite indicate that the next U.S. President will be in the office by use of force, not through election and votes. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are preparing the American people in advance that the result of the presidential election will be controversial. “

This president is going to steal this election” said Mr. Biden during an interview on “The Daily Show.” On the other hand, President Trump for many years had been undermining the legitimacy of elections in general by emphasizing “voter fraud”; and recently claiming that the “vote-by-mail” due to the pandemic is a Democrats’ scheme to “steal” the election. The fact is both Democrats and Republicans are fearful of a genuine people’s uprising which is angry and demands change.

Both parties believe during this charged political atmosphere a “normal” presidential election is not feasible and a clear victory will not be certain. Mr. Trump as the self proclaimed “Law and Order” President, has already tried to convince the military to carry a soft coup to establish his position as the Authoritarian President, but failed. However, the Trump Administration saw this first attempt as a rehearsal that needed some corrections and adjustments. The Administration has concluded that more provocation is needed to divide the nation into two clear camps, that of pro-Trump and anti-Trump.

Considering these alarming facts, the question remains should working people and youth direct their energy and hope toward a Biden victory in the presidential election for fundamental changes? The answer is NO. As a matter of fact, the massive and spontaneous demonstrations in the U.S. suggest that the illusion of having a “democratic” election is fading. However, the current movement is not clear on how to move forward due to lack of a conscious leadership. The ambiguous “Defund the Police” demand which has been introduced by some leaders of the “Black Lives Matter” and the middle class reformists in the Democratic Party raises more questions than solutions.

The reality is that the massive and spontaneous demonstrations in the U.S. and around the world are shaking the foundation of the 1%. The powerful and colorful people’s marches for justice in honor of George Floyd who was murder by coldblooded police has already surpassed the question of race and police brutality. Today, the old and new problems are being discussed among all layers of society. People around the world have already witnessed that the immediate response by the authorities in the U.S. and different countries in Europe has been more police brutality! The senseless killing of Rayshard Brooks, a young Black father, after 19 days of daily demonstrations against police brutality once again proved that the role of the police is not to protect and serve ordinary people but to maintain order in the interest of the wealthy elite in power; through intimidations, threats and shoot to kill – as if they are soldiers in the territory of a hostile enemy.

The use of teargas, pepper spray, shootings, beatings and arrests (by all types of Police in riot gears, unidentified policing forces, use of active-duty troops and National Guard to confront the peaceful demonstrations); not only did not demoralize the determined youth, but on the contrary, these measures energized more people with diverse backgrounds to join the movement. Now the parents of the young people who have been marching day after day are supporting their children. At the same time, the working people – who had to endure the mismanaged and chaotic lockdown for weeks due to the coronavirus are fighting in their own workplaces along with the demonstrators in the movement for justice. The cry of the meatpacking workers, the strike by Amazon workers and the workers of many other factories are demanding safe workplaces that can only be heard through those independent journalists and organizations that are loyal to the voiceless people.

This unique political situation has drawn people with different backgrounds to a live discussion to change the current dysfunctional system. Some young activists based on the occupy movement experience have, as an experiment declared a few blocks of the city of Seattle as a “Free Cop Zone”. Although the atmosphere is festive and participants are peaceful, they have not presented a clear short or long term plan. The working people, in general, are watching these events sympathetically from the sideline. The Trump Administration is calling these young people “ugly domestic terrorists” while Democrats are buying time to intervene forcefully at a later time and end this saga as they did with the occupy movement.

It is evident that the Democratic Party leadership is in disarray.

While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have embarrassed themselves and endured a painful kneeling for a photo-op to show that they are sympathetic to the cause of “Black Lives Matter”; at the same time, Ambassador Susan Rice, the National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama, a Black woman claims that “Foreign Actors” and Russians are stirring up the recent demonstrations!

The intellectuals, community leaders/organizers, old-timer activists and well-known Liberal figures are doing their best to analyze these situations and suggest the next steps.

However, some of these suggestions which are not based on the revolutionary heritage of working people actually are misguided and are potentially harmful to a young movement.

Bernie Sanders, Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis are propagating an unsubstantiated narrative that if Joe Biden became the next occupant of the White House, people would have a better chance to fight for their demands. The so-called Progressives and Liberals have lost their confidence in the power of the actual producers in the U.S., and have capitulated to a section of capitalists in order to defeat Trump.

They are asking everyone that vote for Joe Biden is the “only alternative” against President Trump. These intellectuals have closed their eyes to the undeniable reality that today both Democratic and Republican corrupt parties have no credibility among the majority of people. Mr. Biden’s record as a senator and as Vice-President is as reactionary as any GOP leader. The truth is that he became the nominee of the Democratic Party through disgraceful and undemocratic DNC manipulation against the will of the Democratic Party membership. Also, it must be noted that Democrats might disapprove and criticize President Trump’s behavior in front of the TV cameras; but since 2016 in the House of Representatives, they have had no problem giving President Trump everything he asked for and sometimes even more!

Working people and youth must lead the mass movement to force Trump out of office now! President Trump has shown in many ways that he does not believe in the will of people or even the Constitution of the United States. He does not need an election to stay in power. He already has consolidated a group of loyal wealthy elite, politicians, military figures and functionaries in the police departments and different security agencies as well as servants in the judicial system to stay in power.

Meanwhile, through his rallies and deceitful tweets and provocative executive orders and inciting messages, President Trump has gathered the most rightwing elements, anti-immigrants and immoral evangelists among people throughout the country as his admiring followers (following the footsteps of Benito Mussolini in Italy). He is also dangerously moving this country toward a military confrontation with China. HE MUST RESIGN! This should be a rallying demand that challenges President Trump today before he actually succeeds in becoming the first U.S. Authoritarian President.

A call for President Trump’s resignation does not mean to replace Donald Trump with Mike Pence or Joe Biden. In a charged political situation, the dynamic of mass movement and uprising does not follow the constitutional laws. Having a liberal exception that the November Election will stop the fascistic minded President Trump is a utopian idea.

A call for his resignation with uncompromising stand against Democratic nominee, Joe Biden is a unifying demand. This demand allows the revolutionary-minded youth in the movement for justice to focus on the immediate danger that President Trump is posing rather get distracted by ambiguous demands like “Defund the Police”. The current movement for justice must unite with the hard-working people, independent of the billionaires’ political influence and their intellectual apologists.

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In Iraq, a seldom mentioned and noteworthy oil cooperation is carried out between Baghdad and Moscow. Russian companies, namely Rosneft and Lukoil have developed new oil fields in Iraq.

A notable project is Lukoil’s West Qurna-2.

West Qurna-2 field is located in the southern part of Iraq, 65 kilometers north-west of Basra, a major seaport city, and is one of the world’s largest fields. The field’s initial recoverable reserves come to around 14 billion barrels. Its total geological reserves sit at 35 billion barrels of oil.

On December 12, 2009 the consortium of PJSC LUKOIL and Statoil, a Norwegian company, was awarded a contract for the development of West Qurna-2 field, one of the world’s largest fields. On January 31, 2010, a services contract was signed for the development and production at West Qurna-2. The contract was ratified by the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Iraq.

A supplement agreement to the contract was signed in January 2013 that outlined the target contractual production (1.2 million barrels of oil per day) for the target production period of 19.5 years, and a 25-year extension of the contract term.

It has been producing oil since March 29^th, 2014.

This was a result of short-term and large-scale field development. This included mine clearance, drilling of 48 production wells, preparation of 5 well sites and construction of large production facilities: oil treatment plants with a capacity of more than 400 thousand barrels per day, a gas turbine power plant with a capacity of 126 MW , water intake on the Euphrates River, an export pipeline of 102 km in length, additional reservoirs at the oil terminal with a total volume of about 200 thousand cubic meters, as well as numerous infrastructure facilities, including a shift camp for 1000 people, access roads, infield pipelines, a security perimeter and more.

In total for 2014-2020. More than 120 million tons of oil were produced. 120 production wells and 48 injection wells were drilled. The current production level is 400 thousand barrels per day from the Mishrif reservoir.

The current level of production is 400 thousand barrels per day from the Mishrif formation, which is almost 10% of Iraqi oil exports.

Since the start of the Service contract, LUKOIL has invested about $ 9 billion in the project.

In 2019, LUKOIL commenced drilling of new production wells as part of the second development phase. The Сompany concluded contracts to drill 57 production wells, including 54 wells at Mishrif formation and 3 wells at Yamama formation. The drilling campaign will ramp up production at West Qurna-2 from the current level of 400 thousand barrels per day to 480 thousand barrels per day in 2020.

75% of the project is under Lukoil’s ownership. The other 25% are owned by the North Oil Company (NOC), a state-owned company being a part of the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Notably, NOC does not incur any costs receiving only its share (25%) in the remuneration.

Another notable oil field developed and discovered by Russia is the Salman oilfield in Block 12 in Iraq.

This happened in May 2018.

Bashneft International B.V., a Rosneft subsidiary, has discovered a new oil field named Salman, following the drilling of the first exploration well in Block 12 in the Republic of Iraq.

The exploration well was successfully drilled to the depth of 4,277 meters resulting in an oil flow that allows counting on discovering commercial reserves.

The Company considers this discovery an important landmark in upstream projects abroad.

Block 12 is located in the southwest Iraq, in an unexplored area of the Arabian Plate, approximately 80 km to the south of the city of As-Samawah and 130 km to the west of the city of Nasiriyah. It has an area of 7,680 sq km. Bashneft International B.V. is an operator of the project.

Bashneft International B.V.  owns 70% of the project. Premier Oil (30%) and South Oil Company also participate in the project.

A contract for exploration, development and production at Block 12 was signed in November 2012.

The compulsory geological exploration program at Block 12 included 2D seismic surveys in the amount of 2,000 km and drilling 1 exploration well.

Upon confirmation of commercial stocks, the contract will be valid for 20 years. The premium for produced oil will be $5 per barrel.

The interest Russian companies have in working in Iraq dates even before the Saddam Hussein era.

The first company to return to post-Saddam Iraq was LUKOIL, which did not lose interest in projects in this country both during the Iraqi sanction period (1990-2003) and after the overthrow of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The biggest project it involved itself in was the above-described West Qurna-2.

Obviously, despite the risks remaining in Iraq, LUKOIL’s strategy was designed for the long term. This is due to the expansion of LUKOIL’s activities when, in 2012, the company, together with the Japanese INPEX CORPORATION, acquired the right to exploration and subsequent development of Block 10.

In 2017, LUKOIL and INPEX successfully completed the tests of the first exploratory well, Erisu 1 at Block 10.

The company is now striving to increase production at West Qurna-2 from the current 400,000 to 480,000 barrels per day in 2020. The contractual framework for LUKOIL’s work in Iraq is being updated on a mutually beneficial basis between the government and the company. So, in 2013, the contract was extended until 2035.

In January 2010, the Russian company Gazprom Neft received the status of the operator of a large Badra field, winning a tender in a consortium with Kogas (Korea), Petronas (Malaysia), and TRAO (Turkey).

However, in addition to this, Gazprom Neft has fields and in Iraqi Kurdistan the company acts as the operator of two projects in Iraqi Kurdistan – Jackal and Garmian. The Garmian block also includes the development of the Sarkal field, in which Gazprom Neft plans to increase oil production.

As described above, Bashneft developed Block 12 in the provinces of Musanna and Najaf. Nevertheless, with the growing political interest of Russia in the region, the positions of Russian energy companies, including Rosneft, were strengthened. In this context, in 2017, within the framework of the 21st St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Rosneft entered into an Investment Agreement with the Government of Iraqi Kurdistan (according to open sources, the deal amounted to $4 billion).

In addition to the fields in the oil-bearing Kirkuk, which at that time were controlled by the Kurds, Rosneft also switched over the significant oil infrastructure of Iraqi Kurdistan.

The key was the acquisition by Rosneft of the status of operator and ownership of 60% of the Kirkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which had already been modernized and increased throughput from 700 thousand to 950 thousand barrels per day.

In 2018, exploration was announced and Rosneft began operations in Iraqi Kurdistan at the Batil, Zawita, Qasrok, Harir-Bejil and Darato fields, each of which is 80% owned by a Russian company.

The visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in October 2019 to Iraq was the first in 5 years. Together with Lavrov, the head of Soyuzneftegaz Yuri Shafranik, the director of Gazprom Neft Alexander Dyukov, representatives of Rosneft and Technopromexport went to Baghdad and Erbil.

However, no major transactions were announced.

This appeared as a slowdown in Russia-Iraqi relations. Despite this, during Sergey Lavrov’s visit, a number of memorandums of cooperation were signed, which could become the basis for further building up the Russian presence in Iraq.

Reportedly, according to Russian officials, Russian companies could potentially invest up to $45 billion in Iraq by 2035.

The key Russian private companies and state corporations, whose leaders are members of the Russian ruling elite, are represented in Iraq.

These same elites determine the importance of projects in this country for the Russian decision makers.

At the same time, in Iraq itself, Russia interacts with both Erbil and Baghdad. In the event of a conflict, Russian companies demonstrate flexibility and manage to maintain their position.

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The US hopes that making Syrians even more desperate than they already are could catalyze another Color Revolution at one of the country’s most critical moments in its history, which could then be exploited for regime change purposes.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical.” – Fredrick Douglass

“A single spark can start a prarie fire”

“Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun:”  Mao Tse Tung

In August, 1997, Abner Louima, an unarmed, defenseless Haitian security guard, with no criminal record whatsoever,  was falsely arrested by Brooklyn police officers, who tortured and horiffically raped him, forced him into a bathroom stall where the police officers sodomized him, forcing a broom handle up Louima’s rectum, near- fatally rupturing his bladder and colon, among other near-fatal injuries necessitating three major surgeries and a three month hospitalization.  The officer who committed this atrocity is currently free, and holding a government job.  One would have expected sustained massive civil protest against this police barbarism.  This sustained protest did not occur.  In November, 1999, Amidou Diallo, an unarmed and defenseless black man was shot to death just outside his home with 21 gun bullets fired at him by police officers.

The police murderers received a slap on the wrist, despite significant public outrage.  Subsequently a seemingly endless series of murders in following years ensued, during which police tortured and murdered the unarmed and defensless Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Botham Jean, Pamela Turner, Ahmaud Arbery, Derrick Scott, and innumerable others.  The police guilty of these atrocities acted with impunity, and were never held accountable for their murderous conduct.  Though there were sporadic protests, and outrage against these murders was expressed, as well as outrage against the impunity with which the police committed these murders, nothing significant happened, nothing improved, and, though the brutal police beating of unarmed and defenseless Rodney King in 1962 sparked riots in California, nothing changed since that time, quite the opposite.  Recently, on the evening before his wedding, the unarmed and innocent Sean Bell was shot and killed by the police with 50 bullets.    The innocent and defenseless Freddy Gray died after his spine was crushed and severed in a police van.  On the night of March 13, 2020, three police officers battered open the door of the home of Breanna Taylor, an emergency medical technican.  Police fraudulently claimed a drug investigation.  Ms. Taylor was in her bed, unarmed and defenseless. The police shot at her at least eight times, killing her.  The police officers who murdered Ms. Taylor have not been charged.

This time it is revealing that outrage against the torture-murder of George Floyd is shared by people of all  races and nationalities: African-American, Asian, European, Latin American – a multi-racial identification with Floyd’s crucifixion, and a global outrage expressed against the gargantuan hypocrisy of the United States’ claim to defend human rights and press freedom, as on camera, working members of even CNN, covering peaceful protests in Minnesota,  are arrested and their work destroyed.  According to The New York Times, June 5, 2020, “A police officer near the White House slams a riot shield into a cameraman’s chest.  The authorities in Minneapolis fire projectiles at a TV crew, prompting a reporter to cry, ‘stop shooting at us.’  A black journalist is encircled by riot police and arrested live on the air.  Attacks against journalists covering demonstrations against racial injustice have prompted foreign governments to call on American authorities to respect press freedom and protect reporters, both local and foreign.”

Image on the right is by Lorie Shaull from St Paul, United States/Wikimedia Commons

Simultaneously with these state terrorist murders of innocent, unarmed black people, the economic inequality within the USA and globally has worsened exponentially with the spread of neoliberal capitalism. Homelessness and starvation is shamelessly evident in the most public areas of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and every major city within the United States;  throughout Western Europe, the majority of citizens’ lives have been devalued and destroyed by “austerity measures” which, according to Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty, has resulted in twenty percent of the British population living below the poverty line.   Since 2010 large riots erupted, driven by dispossessed students and large sections of society in Spain, Italy, Greece, the UK, and last year the mass protest of the “Yellow Vests” began in France.

And simultaneously a massive increase of terrorism has been resorted to by destitute, desperate victims of the colossal global economic inequality which has now reached the obscene proportion at which the 0.01 percent, and eight men control more wealth than more than half the citizens of this planet:  even a casual student of history could have recognized that these economic and social conditions are identical with the conditions preceding and sparking the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution.  It does not require rocket science to expect that this grossly unjust world verges on a volcanic eruption, culminating in a bloody civil war, or a global burst of rage capable of shattering the neoliberal economic order which has led to such despair, frustration, humiliation and dehumanization that the majority of humanity has nothing to lose and everything to gain in a global revolt to restructure the present criminally unjust social and economic architecture which dominates huge areas of the world.

However, in classic Marxist theory, the highest stage of monopoly capitalism is fascism.  And the question now is, who will ultimately prevail, the majority of dispossessed citizens of this planet, or the police state imposed to crush the majority of humanity and protect the property of that one percent who control more wealth than most citizens on this earth.  Although we cited conditions in the “North,” the USA and Western Europe, the so-called “developed world,” people of color are starving and homeless throughout Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.  This is a powderkeg which can suddenly explode.

This may explain how, with one horrific video of the bestial, perverted murder of George Floyd, the powderkeg may be finally exploding as the truth of the smashing of democracy and human rights in the United States is finally enraging people throughout the world.

The reality of totalitarianism in the United States, concealed, but covertly pervasive until now,  has been finally exposed overtly with the graphic video revealing the sadistic murder of George Perry Floyd, an unarmed man who threatened no one. This is finally leading to the revulsion and revolt of massive peaceful demonstrators in Tokyo, Germany, Australia, Belgium, France, and elsewhere throughout the world.  The militarized police in the United States operate as a death squad, and the ultimate questions will be whether this finally massive eruption of rage at the gruesome injustice which defines capitalist society can be sustained against the holocaust of police and military force unleashed against civilian resistance, so sudden, so spontaneous, so global.

On June 13, The New York Times headline read: “It’s ‘Nonlethal,’ But It Maims And Also Kills.” “As protesters filled the streets of downtown San Jose, California, recently, the police fired munitions known as rubber bullets into the crowd….. Breanna Contrera’s head jerked back from the impact as a black projectile ‘roughly the size of an extra-jumbo marshmallow’ struck her temple, near her eye.  ‘I instantly felt my head just starting to throb, blood poured down my face,’ Ms. Contreras, a 21 year old student said.  A bystander who used her face mask to help stop the bleeding was also struck.  ‘There were so many rubber bullets being fired, I wanted to think how to protect my eyes,’ said Peter di Donato, 75, a veteran of anti-Vietnam War protests, who was hit in the leg.  Derrick Sanderlin, 29, a community organizer, approached a line of police officers to ask them to stop.  But he got hit too – in the groin – and had to have emergency surgery.

He said his doctors have told him he may not be able to have children as a result of the injury.  Eleven people were taken to the hospital over a four day period after being struck with police-fired beanbag rounds – small fabric pillows filled with lead and fired from shotguns – including Justin Howell, 20 a college student who sustained a skull fracture and brain damage.  Brad Levi Ayala 16, a student who stopped to watch a peaceful protest as he was headed home from his job at a sandwich shop, was shot in the forehead with a beanbag round, an incident that was captured on video and spread widely online.  He was rushed to the hospital where he underwent seven hours of surgery…Doctors told the family the lead filled bag had dented the skull into the brain, damaging the pre-frontal cortex, according to Edwin Sanchez, his brother….  Adam Keup said an officer, without warning, shot him in the eye with a paintball gun loaded with a ball of pepper spray at a protest in Omaha in late May.  Mr. Keup, 23, said doctors told him he would have permanent eye damage and might never be able to see again…In recent years, police have stocked up on more than just paintball guns:  They have added more firepower and military gear, especially in larger cities, where they use federal grant money to buy armored cars and other tactical gear.”

On June 7, the Sunday Review of The New York Times published a major article written by Jamelle Bouie: “Rioting police officers have driven vehicles into crowds, reproducing the assault that killed Heather Heyer in Charlottsville, Va., in 2017.  They have surrounded a car, smashed the windows, tazed the occupants and dragged them out onto the ground.  Clad in paramilitary gear, they have attacked elderly bystanders, pepper-sprayed cooperative protesters and shot ‘nonlethal’ rounds directly at reporters, causing serious injuries.  In Austin, Texas a 20 year old man is in critical condition after being shot in the head with a ‘less-lethal’ round.  Across the country, rioting police officers are using tear gas in quantities that threaten the health and safety of demonstrators, especially in the midst of a respiratory disease pandemic.  None of this quells disorder.  Everything from the militaristic posture to the attacks themselves does more to inflame and agitate protesters than it does to calm the situation and bring order to the streets.  In effect, rioting police officers have done as much to stoke unrest and destabilize the situation as those responsible for damaged buildings and burning cars.  But where rioting protesters can be held to account for destruction and violence, rioting officers have the imprimatur of the state.  What we’ve seen from rioting police officers, in other words is an assertion of power and impunity.  In the face of mass anger over police brutality, they’ve effectively said ‘So What?’”

Although even some among the peaceful protesters deplored the “looting and burning” that sometimes followed the massive peaceful protests, it is probable that without that emphatic expression of rage which culminated in the firebombing of the empty police station in Minneapolis which employed the police murderer of George Floyd, no real impact would be made on the established order and vested interests it represents, and the point may have been reached where people recognize that peaceful protest cannot change the violence of PoliceState USA, and that an actual state of war exists, or is inescapably imminent.  It is also possible that some of the “looting and burning” may have been incited by “agents provocateurs,” intent on discrediting the protesters, and alarming the “establishment.”  Finally, it may have been precisely those chaotic expressions of rage driven to violence that alerted the “established order” that its interests might be threatened, and possibly, ultimately, even their lives.  The more intelligent of the one percent may have recognized the actual threat of revolution.

The savage murder of George Floyd exposes the United States’ brazen violation of the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, every Resolution defending human dignity that has been adopted by the United Nations throughout its 75 years of existence, the United States Constitution and The Bill of Rights.  On Sunday, June 7, The New York Times,  page 21 headlined:  “In Turmoil at Home, U.S. Loses Moral Authority Overseas”:  “Chinese officials are using the crises in the United States as ammunition in their rhetorical battles against American diplomats.  After Morgan Ortagus, the State Department spokeswoman, expressed concern over Hong Kong, writing on Twitter that “freedom loving people must stand with the rule of law and hold to account the Chinese Communist Party,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Beijing taunted her with Mr. Floyd’s final words:  ‘I can’t breathe’”

As the heinous murder of George Floyd violates everything the United Nations theoretically represents and defends, and the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet has condemned the monstrous cruelty of Floyd’s death, it will be interesting and instructive to see how the United Nations responds to Floyd’s family and legal team’s urgent request for its intervention.

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Carla Stea is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and Global Research’s Correspondent at UN headquarters, New York. 

Many industries and service companies are failing or shrinking due to the lockdown and subsequent crisis. Instead, there are those who have gained from all this. Facebook, Google (YouTube owner), Microsoft, Apple and Amazon – writes The New York Times – “are aggressively placing new bets, as the coronavirus pandemic has made them nearessential services.” All these “Tech Giants” are from the United States.

Facebook – no longer called social network but “ecosystem”, which also includes WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger – has exceeded 3 billion monthly users. It is therefore no wonder that, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, Facebook launches the project of one of the largest submarine cable networks, 2Africa: 37,000 km long (almost the maximum circumference of the Earth), it will surround the entire African continent, linking it north to Europe and east to the Middle East.

There will initially be 23 interconnected countries. Starting from Great Britain, the network will connect Portugal before starting its circle around Africa through Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, Sudan, Egypt. In the latter section, the network will be connected to Oman and Saudi Arabia. Then, across the Mediterranean, it will arrive in Italy and from here to France and Spain.

Source: the author

This large-capacity network – explains Facebook – will be “the pillar of a huge expansion of the Internet in Africa: eco-nomies flourish when there is an Internet widely accessible for businesses. The network will allow hundreds of millions of people to access broadband up to 5G. ” This, in summary, the official motivation of the project. One fact is enough to cast doubt on it: in sub-Saharan Africa about 600 million people, equivalent to more than half the population, do not have access to electricity.

What will the broadband network be used for? African elites, who represent the interests of multinationals in the continent, will be more closely connected to their parent companies.

The network will also serve other purposes. Two years ago, in May 2018, Facebook established a partnership with the Atlantic Council, an influential Washington-based “non-partisan organization” that “galvanizes US leadership and engagement in the world. together with allies”. The specific purpose of the partnership is to guarantee “the correct use of Facebook in elections around the world, monitoring disinformation and foreign interference, helping to educate citizens and civil society”.

What is the reliability of the Atlantic Council, particularly active in Africa, can be deduced from the official list of donors that finance it: the Pentagon and NATO, Lockheed Martin and other war industries (including the Italian Leonardo), ExxonMobil and other multinationals, the Bank of America and other financial groups, the Rockefeller and Soros foundations.

The network, which will connect 16 African countries to 5 European NATO allies under US command and to 2 US allies in the Middle East, can play a role not only in economic terms, but also in political and strategic ones. The “Digital Forensic Research Lab” of the Atlantic Council will be able to communicate every day to African media and politicians which news is “fake” and which “true”. Facebook’s personal information and tracking systems can be used to control and target opposition movements. Broadband, even in 5G, can be used by US and other special forces in their operations in Africa.

In announcing the project, Facebook stresses that Africa is “the least connected continent” and that the problem will be solved by its 37,000 km of cables. They can be used, however, as a modern version of the old colonial chains.

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This article was originally published on Il Manifesto. Translated from Italian.

Manlio Dinucci is an award-winning author and Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

It turns out that the BBC really does believe that God is an Englishman. When the simple impossibility of the official story on the Skripals finally overwhelmed the dramatists, they resorted to Divine Intervention for an explanation – as propagandists have done for millennia.

This particular piece of script from Episode 2 of The Salisbury Poisonings deserves an induction in the Propaganda Hall of Fame:

Porton Down Man: I’ve got the reports from the Bailey house

Public Health Woman: Tell me, how many hits?

Porton Down Man: It was found in almost every room of the house. Kitchen, bathroom, living room, bedrooms. It was even on the light switches. We found it in the family car too. But his wife and children haven’t been affected. I like to think of myself as a man of science, but the only word for that is a miracle.

Well, it certainly would be a miracle that the family lived for a week in the house without touching a light switch. But miracle is not really the “only word for that”. Nonsense is a good word. Bullshit is a ruder version. Lie is entirely appropriate in these circumstances.

Because that was not the only miracle on display. We were told specifically that the Skripals had trailed novichok all over Zizzis and the Bishops Mill pub, leaving multiple deadly deposits, dozens of them in total, which miraculously nobody had touched. We were told that Detective Bailey was found to have left multiple deadly deposits of novichok on everything he touched in a busy police station, but over several days before it was closed down nobody had touched any of them, which must be an even bigger miracle than the Baileys’ home.

Perhaps even more amazingly, as the Skripals spread novichok all over the restaurant and the pub, nobody who served them had been harmed, nobody who took their payment. The man who went through Sergei’s wallet to learn his identity from his credit cards was not poisoned. The people giving first aid were not poisoned. The ducks Sergei fed were not poisoned. The little boy he fed the ducks with was not poisoned. So many miracles. If God were not an Englishman, Salisbury would have been in real trouble, evidently.

The conclusion of episode two showed Charlie Rowley fishing out the perfume bottle from the charity bin at least two months in the timeline before this really happened, thus neatly sidestepping one of the most glaring impossibilities in the entire official story. I think we can forgive the BBC that lie – there are only so many instances of divine intervention in the story the public can be expected to buy in one episode.

It is fascinating to see that the construction of this edifice of lies was a joint venture between the BBC and the security services’ house journal, the Guardian. Not only is all round pro-war propagandist “Colonel” Hamish De Bretton Gordon credited as Military Advisor, but Guardian journalists Caroline Bannock and Steven Morris are credited as Script Consultants, which I presume means they fed in the raw lies for the scriptwriters to shape into miracles.

Now here is an interesting ethical point for readers of the Guardian. The Guardian published in the last fortnight two articles by Morris and Bannock that purported to be reporting on the production of the drama and its authenticity, without revealing to the readers that these full time Guardian journalists were in fact a part of the BBC project. That is unethical and unprofessional in a number of quite startling ways. But then it is the Guardian.

[Full disclosure. I shared a flat with Caroline at university. She was an honest person in those days.]

Again, rather than pepper this article with links, I urge you to read this comprehensive article, which contains plenty of links and remains entirely unanswered.

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America’s Own Color Revolution

By F. William Engdahl, June 17, 2020

Color Revolution is the term used to describe a series of remarkably effective CIA-led regime change operations using techniques developed by the RAND Corporation, “democracy” NGOs and other groups since the 1980’s. They were used in crude form to bring down the Polish communist regime in the late 1980s. From there the techniques were refined and used, along with heavy bribes, to topple the Gorbachev regime in the Soviet Union. For anyone who has studied those models closely, it is clear that the protests against police violence led by amorphous organizations with names like Black Lives Matter or Antifa are more than purely spontaneous moral outrage. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans are being used as a battering ram to not only topple a US President, but in the process, the very structures of the US Constitutional order.

Trump Hammers Cuba While Cuba Cures the Sick

By Medea Benjamin, June 17, 2020

A team of 85 Cuban doctors and nurses arrived in Peru on June 3 to help the Andean nation tackle the coronavirus pandemic. That same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced another tightening of the sanctions screws. This time he targeted seven Cuban entities, including Fincimex, one of the principal financial institutions handling remittances to the country. Also targeted was Marriott International, which was ordered to cease operations in Cuba, and other companies in the tourism sector, an industry that constitutes 10 percent of Cuba’s GDP and has been devastated globally by the pandemic.

Imperialism, Diamonds and Power: The Plan of Cecil Rhodes Secret Society for Global Control

By Steven MacMillan, June 17, 2020

The question of whether a statue of Cecil Rhodes should be taken down has been raging in Britain in recent weeks, fuelled by the George Floyd protests that have swept the world.  Personally, I am not a fan of people pulling down statues of historical figures, not because I necessarily like these figures, but because destroying a statue doesn’t change history, and people should not forget history. Living in a world where anything that outrages a minority of people is destroyed, or memory-holed as Orwell would put it, is a world where people soon forget the lessons of history. Furthermore, where do you draw the line? What historical figures pass the outrage test, and who fails? Who decides who passes or fails – an angry mob? The whole business of destroying historical statues and removing TV shows that were made decades ago quickly becomes an inconsistent mess. In my opinion, what is more important is to learn the lessons of history, and take this knowledge to inform our actions in the future.

America: An Empire Eating Itself

By Tony Cartalucci, June 17, 2020

The United States finds itself in a less-than-unique position of an empire in terminal decline. With nations around the globe standing up economically, militarily, and politically – closing off once lucrative avenues of exploitation – the US finds itself turning more and more inwardly upon its allies and even its own population – either to wring from it whatever wealth it can or at the very least – to prevent the displacement of America’s current ruling special interests by any sort of alternative.

The System Is Rigged: Qualified Immunity Is How the Police State Stays in Power

By John W. Whitehead, June 17, 2020

Because the system is rigged and the U.S. Supreme Court—the so-called “people’s court”—has exchanged its appointed role as a gatekeeper of justice for its new role as maintainer of the status quo, there will be little if no consequences for the cops who brutalize and no justice for the victims of police brutality.

Controversy over History of World War II. Russia Marks 75 Years, Military Parade

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, June 17, 2020

The world celebrates the year 2020 to mark the 75th anniversary of the Victory over Nazism during the World War II. For the first time in history, Russia postponed its military parade traditionally held on Moscow’s Red Square on May 9 due to the coronavirus pandemic. As the pandemic subsides, Russia will now mark this historical event on June 24 as decreed by President Vladimir Putin.

Israel Increases Secretive Nuclear Stockpile to 90 Warheads: Report

By Middle East Eye, June 17, 2020

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) said in its annual report on Monday that Israel, one of the world’s nine nuclear powers, could be in possession of up to 90 nuclear warheads.

The watchdog said that the true number could be higher as Israel does not officially comment on its nuclear capabilities.

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Yesterday my wife, a native of Korea, made the arduous trip to her homeland from Toronto in order to help her mother, who had been diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, with the protocols of High-Dose Vitamin C and a natural eating regimen. This hopefully will be an inspiring story in itself as things continue to progress along.

However, the reason I bring it up is because of the difficulties my wife experienced in getting to Korea as a result of COVID-19 regulations, and how this has gotten me thinking even more deeply about the nature of this pandemic.

In order to go to Korea to assist her mother, my wife had to go to the Korean Consulate in Toronto, provide proof that she was not suffering from the Coronavirus, (with the documentation having a 48-hour expiry date), proof that her mother had been diagnosed with cancer, proof that she had enough money to sustain herself while in Korea, and proof that she would have a place to stay in Korea. Eventually satisfying all these conditions, she was given a visitor’s visa and set out to fly to Korea through Vancouver. Before boarding the flight to Korea, she was given a document in which she was asked to agree to finance her own quarantine in a special hotel for 14 days (about $1600) if deemed necessary and agree to abide unconditionally to all government measures including departure from Korea orders if the authorities deemed it appropriate.

Arriving in Korea, she told me she literally had to go through hoops from one counter to the next and get documents sent from her mother’s house certifying her family identity, then agree to pay a taxi over $100 in order to be ushered directly to her mother’s house, where she had to sign off on a strict 14-day quarantine in the house that would be monitored by the government and law enforcement on a daily basis.

What strikes me as odd, from this one experience that is absolutely factual and affects my family personally, is the amount of care, attention, precision, and gravity that was given in the case of a person (my wife) who had no signs of illness and furthermore had a doctor-certified test document saying that she did not have COVID-19. Measures like this worldwide would purport to solely be motivated by the prevention the death of world citizens, would they not? I would argue that, even based on mainstream-accepted ‘dangers’ about COVID-19 (themselves dubious at best), all these measures were useless, a complete waste of time, money, and valuable human resources.

For Saving Human Lives?

This all got me thinking. If that attention and the human and financial resources that have been spent on this ‘pandemic’ had been given to end world hunger, do any of you doubt that world hunger would have been eradicated by now?

The ‘official’ numbers of COVID-19 deaths worldwide, according to the website Worldometers.info, as of May 4th, is 251,421. I will not contest this figure for the moment, but later on will give evidence that this number is inflated. But let’s use this number for now.

Let’s compare it to the number of deaths worldwide from starvation since January 1st, according to the website theworldcounts.com: 3,073,421. Even as I type in this number it has already changed, as it does continuously every two seconds or so. My question is, if our world leaders are so concerned about human mortality, should they not be devoting at least 10 times the amount of financial and human resources that they are giving to this pandemic to ending world hunger? Should they not have come together and done this decades ago?

This is just one example. There are countless, which show us time and again that the true agenda of our political leaders is almost completely antithetical to the actual health and safety of the people of the world. And it should have all of us suspecting that the coordinated worldwide efforts to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on the global population is not really about public health and safety but rather part of a different agenda.

Inflating Numbers, Maximizing Fear

Now as to that staunch figure of worldwide deaths from COVID-19, which tells us that over a quarter of a million people have died from the virus–not an insignificant number, when it gets stand-alone framing in big bold print on mainstream media 24/7. That, in combination with the ongoing ticker of new cases cropping up, is used strategically to maximize fear, thereby maximizing public compliance.

Evidence is coming out every day that these numbers and the way they are presented are not truthful and are conflating the level of danger (and thus the need for a lockdown).

For example, many of the deaths that are in the official number of COVID-19 deaths are actually co-morbidities, meaning that the person who died had other pre-existing health conditions that contributed to their death. There is no evidence of the extent of the impact, if any, of COVID-19 in the case of these co-morbidities. In fact, in some cases, even where an alternative cause is determined, it is still registered as a COVID-19 death.

This chart below of weekly pneumonia deaths reported shows a precipitous decline in the number of pneumonia deaths in the US which coincides with, you guessed it, the beginning of the reporting of COVID-19 deaths.

In other words, deaths that would have been determined to be caused by pneumonia in previous years are being called COVID-19 deaths, in some cases without that person even being tested for COVID-19! In effect, more and more evidence is pointing to the idea that there is nothing really happening in the world any different from any other year in terms of deaths from infectious flu-like diseases. Yet my wife has to go through all sorts of machinations in order to be permitted to visit her mother?

So much more can be said about particular ways that figures and projections are manipulated to create a perception of fear and danger for this pandemic, but for now let’s look at the larger mechanism at play here.

The Script Followed By Our Leaders

In the interests of having an informed and capable public, are our leaders keeping us updated on these inconsistencies, and helping us get an accurate picture of the true extent of the dangers involved with this particular disease? For the most part, no. Politicians of all stripes come onto the airwaves to make the same announcements everywhere: “Because you have been good boys and girls, we, your authority, has been able to start getting this crisis under control,” combined with “you are warned that you must continue to obey us to prevent a rebound in the number of infections.” Then they might criticize examples of “bad” citizens not complying.

Again, I simply need to reflect on my personal experience here in Ontario, Canada, to reinforce my theory. Most readers could do the same within their locality. With just a cursory glance at the official briefings here, I heard Ontario Premier Doug Ford try to convince viewers how deeply concerned he was about the safety and health of Ontarions. He was quick to rebuke those who protested in front of parliament in Toronto calling for an end to the lockdown as ‘a bunch of Yahoos.’

And on the subject of something that affects me personally with a 6-year old at home, namely the opening of schools, he has done his best to bring  gravitas to his proclamation that schools will continue to stay closed for the forseeable future, citing that ‘my No. 1 concern is protecting our kids out there.’ From stories I’ve heard about Doug Ford, he may be one of the last people I would trust to protect my child. And the notion that keeping kids cooped up at home and not in contact with their friends is keeping them safe ignores the known statistics about COVID-19, where children are in the lowest risk-class for infection and morbidity.

Social Engineering

Many theories floating around out there as to the true origins and purpose of COVID-19, based on evidence that it was man-made and the possibility that it was released intentionally, are certainly worth investigating. However, none of those have to be proven for us to be able to see that the pandemic is being used as a social engineering experiment. Now this is nothing new, as basically everything our leaders do is grounded in their attempts to see how much more power they can amass and how much more of our freedoms can be taken away. “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” as Churchill said.

In the case of COVID-19, we are dealing with a worldwide event, and perhaps the biggest social engineering experiment ever attempted. Those who have the ultimate power in the world, those who control our political leaders, are trying to determine how much the public will comply under the circumstances of a pandemic. You can see everything being said by our leaders is based on affirming that they are in control, that we must follow. When attempts to control things in Ontario went too far and the people pushed back, as when an Aurora mom was fined $880 for standing too long in a park with her baby, Doug Ford said bylaw officers “could have used a little bit different judgment.”

Without ceding his own power, he yielded some ground in order to reinforce his own legitimacy, using a famous Machiavellian political strategy. This type of push and pull has been happening all around the world as this pandemic continues to be employed to erode our freedoms. It is part of a bigger war that is being fought between forces with a dark agenda of control and those who are working to bring out the truth. The sooner we all start to see what is going with this pandemic in this larger context, the sooner the truth will shine for everyone to see, and empower us to restore our freedom.

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Featured image is from Collective Evolution

Police aren’t the problem in the US. They operate as trained and ordered by higher authorities.

They serve and protect privileged interests at the expense of beneficial social change — the real systemic issue vital to address getting no attention, including by establishment media.

Institutionalized racism, inequality, and injustice reflect what America has been all about from inception — ordinary people abused and otherwise exploited to benefit the nation’s wealthy and powerful.

Legislation, Supreme Court rulings, and presidential executive orders are meaningless without transforming today’s unacceptable system into governance of, by, and for everyone equitably.

It won’t come from elections that assure continuity when held — nor from promises by the nation’s executive and congressional leadership.

It’s only possible by grassroots revolutionary activism that requires longterm struggle, staying the course, not quitting until peace, equity and justice are achieved.

On Tuesday, Trump signed a so-called Executive Order on Safe Policing for Safe Communities that amounted to much ado about nothing, a symbolic gesture, nothing more.

Flanked by cops and others for the occasion, the EO made no mention of systemic inequity, injustice, police violence, or enforcement of the rule of law to serve and protect everyone, especially society’s most vulnerable.

The EO is a smokescreen for continuity, ignoring vitally needed systemic change — what Trump, the vast majority in Congress, the courts, and monied interests abhor and won’t tolerate unless pushed by sustained longterm activism nationwide.

What Trump called “the brave men and women in blue who police our streets and keep us safe” exclusively serve as a praetorian guard for the nation’s privileged class at the expense of most others.

While most cops aren’t responsible for violence and other forms of brutality against the nation’s most vulnerable, far more than “tiny” numbers claimed by Trump are involved — tough tactics used, including use of weapons, chokeholds, and other forms of brutality taught during training.

Trump’s EO and whatever congressional legislation that emerges, if any, will amount to no more than tinkering around the edges cosmetic changes — leaving structural racism, inequity and injustice in place.

From inception, the US has been and remains a culture of violence — notably throughout the post-WW II period by waging wars on humanity at home and abroad without letup.

Legislation, EOs, judicial rulings, and other actions at the federal, state, and local levels did nothing to transform the US into a just society.

Police violence and other forms of brutality reflect fundamental US societal inequities that need addressing and correcting.

There’s nothing in prospect legislatively or otherwise for systemic change.

Without it, dirty business as usual will continue as always — no matter which right wing of the one-party state is in power, no matter what laws are enacted or EO’s ceremonially signed.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Implementation of the so-called Caesar Syria Civilian Protection legislation (Caesar Act) is the latest shoe to drop in Washington’s long war of aggression on the country, its legitimate leadership, and 17 million people.

Signed into law by Trump last December, the draconian measure that breaches international law became effective on June 17.

It has nothing to do with protecting Syrian civilians, everything to do with starving and otherwise immiserating them into submission to Washington’s imperial boot.

The measure threatens sanctions on nations, entities and individuals that maintain legitimate economic, financial, military, and intelligence relations with Damascus — their legal right under international law.

Syrian envoy to Russia Riyad Haddad explained that threatened US sanctions under the measure “not only target Syria, they directly or indirectly jeopard(e) all its allies and are also aimed against Persian Gulf countries, so that none of these countries dares to invest in” the Syrian Arab Republic.

“And each party that will say it wants to invest, must get permission from the US.”

Syria’s Foreign Ministry slammed the measure, stressing that it’s “based on false evidence, trumped up by hostile to the Syrian people parties.”

The Caesar Act adds to already imposed “economic blockade and terror” on Syria by the US.

It “imposes new sanctions against any (nation), individual or party that cooperates with the Syrian government or offers financing to it in any sector.”

“Thus, the US undermines three economic sectors, threatening with sanctions, namely foreign trade, local and joint investment supporting the Syrian government, and the financing sector — loans, money transfers.”

The measure “excludes the areas under the control of Kurdish self-administration.”

It’s similar to US state terror and illegal sanctions war on Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and other countries, intending mainly to inflict enormous harm on their people.

A strategy that virtually never works when used by the US, it aims to turn the population of these countries against their governments.

It’s also about wanting their ruling authorities isolated on the world stage, applying maximum pressure to weaken them in flagrant violation of international and US constitutional law under its Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2).

Unilaterally imposed sanctions by nations on others breach the UN Charter.

Security Council members alone may impose them if warranted.

All US sanctions imposed on Syria, Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and other nations by Congress or White House executive order have no legal standing.

Governments observing them are complicit by breaching international law.

Both right wings of the US war party use this weapon as part of their war by other means on nations unwilling to subordinate their sovereign rights to US interests — part of what the scourge of imperialism is all about.

Throughout US hot war on Syria in its 9th year with no resolution in prospect — launched by Obama, escalated by Trump — multiple rounds of illegal sanctions were imposed on the country and its people by Washington.

Their aim is wanting Syria transformed into a US vassal state, legitimate President Assad replaced by puppet leadership subservient to US and Israeli interests.

Syria’s UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafari condemned the Caesar Act and other illegal US sanctions on the country, notably its economic blockade and other coercive measures that constitute state terror on the sovereign state and its people.

The US under Obama and now Trump bear “direct responsibility for the suffering of the Syrians,” he stressed.

On Tuesday in Moscow, Russian and Iranian Foreign Ministers Lavrov and Zarif respectively signed a joint declaration of support for upholding international law in the region and worldwide, stating the following:

“1. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation reaffirm their full commitment to the principles of international law codified in the ‘Charter of the United Nations’ and in the ‘Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations’ adopted in 1970.”

“The principles of international law that form the basis of fair and equal international relations contribute to realization of win-win cooperation and create common space for equal and inseparable security and economic cooperation.”

“2. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation share the view that the principle of sovereign equality of states is vital for stability in the international relations.”

“The states enjoy their rights based on independence and equality, and make commitments and take responsibilities on the basis of mutual respect.”

“The states have the right to take part equally in creating and enforcing the international law.”

“They are also committed to observing the international law with goodwill in a consistent and constant manner.”

“3. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation affirm the principle that all states should refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any other state inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations.”

“Accordingly, they condemn the unilateral acts of military intervention.”

“4. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation fully support the principle of non-intervention in the domestic or foreign affairs of the other states, and condemn any intervention by the states in the domestic or foreign affairs of the other states with the purpose of a fake change of legitimate governments that would violate that principle.”

“5. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation consider any measure or effort to undermine or destabilize the states or their institutions in any shape or under any pretext as a violation of the aforementioned principle.”

“6. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation condemn the extraterritorial imposition of national laws of states in contravention of the international law as another example of violation of the principle of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of states.”

“7. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation assert the sovereign and inviolable right of states, as part of principle of non-intervention in the domestic or foreign affairs of the other states, to define their own political, economic, cultural and social systems to promote international relations and exercise permanent sovereignty over their natural resources, in accordance with the will of their people and without foreign interference, intervention, subversion, coercion or threat in any shape.”

“8. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation underline the principle of peaceful settlement of the conflicts and firmly believe that the states must resolve their differences with the means and mechanisms on which they have agreed.”

“Such process contributes to the peaceful settlement of differences according to the imposable international law and, accordingly, could result in the reduction of tensions and enhancement of peaceful cooperation.”

“Obviously, in order to maintain the international legal order, it is essential that all means and mechanism for the settlement of disputes are based upon consent and are employed with goodwill and the spirit of cooperation. The aforementioned purposes must not be undermined with abuse in practice.”

“9. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation share the view that implementation of the general principles and rules recognized by the international law with goodwill will prevent the process of adoption of double standards or the imposition of will of some states on some others.”

“They consider the imposition of unilateral forceful measures – also known as the ‘unilateral sanctions’ — as an example of such approach.”

“The unilateral forceful measures, particularly in the form of economic coercive measures, target the groups in the most vulnerable economic and social conditions.”

“Therefore, all countries must refrain from declaring and imposing any unilateral forceful measure; because such measures prevent the full realization of economic and social development and have negative impacts on the enjoyment of all human rights, including the right to development, trade and investment.”

“10. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation condemn terrorism in any shape and form as a global threat to international peace and security and consider that it undermines the international order based upon international law.”

“They emphasize that terrorism must not be attributed to a specific faith, nationality, and ethnic or civilizational group.”

“The terrorist acts are criminal and unjustifiable measures, irrespective of the motive, the time and the place and no matter who commits them.”

“They also emphasize the need for joint efforts and comprehensive approaches to prevent and fight against terrorism, in accordance with the international law, including the Charter of the United Nations. Moreover, they emphasize that unfounded accusations against the official institutions of other states, which could challenge the international efforts at the fight against terrorism, are unacceptable.”

“Furthermore, they support the uniform and balanced implementation of the United Nations’ strategy for fighting against terrorism.”

“11. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation declare that the international commitments regarding the impunity of states, their assets and their officials must be always respected by the countries.”

“The violation of those commitments run counter to the principle of sovereign equality of states and could escalate tensions.”

“12. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation are determined to counter the unilateral illegal approaches to the settlement of global crises and actively promote the collective and multilateral just approaches based upon the general principles and rules recognized by the international law to resolve the urgent and essential regional and global problems.”

“The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation reject the concepts that seek to undermine the international order based upon international law.”

“13. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation decide to expand their cooperation, in line with the relations based on strategic partnership between the two sides, in order to observe and promote the international law and establish a just international order on the basis of international law.”

Russia and Iran support world peace, stability, the rule of law, and mutual cooperation among nations.

They oppose what the scourge of US imperialism is all about, its rage for unchallenged dominance by brute force, and enormous harm on ordinary people everywhere.

The US is an outlaw state, operating extrajudicially by its own rules exclusively.

Its endless wars on humanity at home and abroad pose the greatest threat to everyone everywhere.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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. 

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Author: Mark Taliano

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It came as a shock to everyone when it was announced yesterday that discussions and negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo will take place at the White House in Washington on June 27. This came as a surprise as it was widely believed that President Donald Trump had no interest in the Kosovo issue and was satisfied to allow the Europeans to mediate it.

Richard Grenell, the U.S. president’s special envoy for Kosovo, believes there is a possibility to reach at least an agreement on economic cooperation. He said on Twitter that he “received the commitment from” both governments to attend the June 27 Washington talks and to “temporarily pause the derecognition campaign and the seeking of international memberships.”

If either side is unsatisfied with the June 27 discussions then they will go back to the status quo after they leave Washington.
As we have consistently said, we must first make progress on growing the economies. This is the focus. I look forward to these discussions. (2/2) https://t.co/r5QLDuC1XI

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) June 15, 2020

Although Kosovo illegally broke off from Serbia in February 2008 and received recognition from a majority of countries around the world, Belgrade has pursued a successful diplomatic push to have states derecognize Kosovo, with the most recent being the West African country of Sierra Leone on March 2 of this year. To date, 15 countries have withdrawn their recognition of an independent Kosovo, making the split between international recognition and non-recognition at about 50% each. Belgrade’s campaigning has also hindered Kosovo’s efforts for membership in international organizations like Interpol and UNESCO.

With a temporary truce in place, Washington is hoping to establish trade relations between Serbia and Kosovo, with Grenell saying “if either side is unsatisfied with the June 27 discussions then they will go back to the status quo after they leave Washington. As we have consistently said, we must first make progress on growing the economies.”

If we look at what Grenell has already said publicly, it appears that he is confident that an agreement can be reached regarding open economic cooperation between Belgrade and Pristina. Such an agreement would help create some momentum before the next round of negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina on finalizing the status of Kosovo.

With the U.S. inundated with domestic issues, like the out of control coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, foreign policy issues, with the exception of perhaps China, will not play a major role in the upcoming presidential election, giving Trump more freedom to pursue certain issues. This is in addition to a mainstream media that are oriented against Trump and will not emphasize any of his successes in the foreign policy field.

This announced meeting comes as only a few days ago Trump said that he would no longer engage in experiments to create new states that are not capable of surviving on their own, such as Kosovo. It is for this reason that we can interpret Grenell’s statement that things will return to the status quo if parties are not satisfied with the results of the upcoming talks as a demonstration of Trump’s loose support for Kosovo’s Albanians as Washington will not put demands against Serbia. This statement is a result of the growing frustration that the White House, the State Department, and even Grenell himself has because of the unstable political situation in Pristina.

Albanian influence in Washington is losing ground, with only minimal support in Congress, especially in the House of Commons, where one of their key allies, Eliot Engel, is also the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He tried to impose the views of previous administrations through testimonies, writing letters and public appearances, criticizing the Trump administration’s policy regarding negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina. However, he has been mostly ignored by the president.

There has been no progress in the negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina in finalizing Kosovo’s status and the U.S. has virtually no trust in Kosovo leader Hashim Thaçi and the entire political elite in Pristina. However, Grenell would not have organized a meeting in the White House if he was not confident that some kind of economic agreement could be reached between the Serbs and Kosovo Albanians.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić emphasized yesterday that Serbia will certainly not agree to the recognition of Kosovo’s independence while in Washington. Similar statements also came from Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić, who is wary of Pristina’s consent to suspend the campaign for admission to international institutions.

“The problem is, however, that we do not trust the Albanians in Pristina, because they have always lied and made unilateral moves,” Dačić said.

He added that if what Grenell announced on Twitter was true, Belgrade expects Pristina to immediately withdraw the requests for membership that it submitted to international organizations.

It is likely that for Trump it is unimportant whether Serbia continues its campaign to have countries withdraw recognition of an independent Kosovo, but for the Albanians it would be critical as Belgrade has been highly successful. It is for this reason that Kosovo’s biggest opposition party, Vetëvendosje, accused Thaçi of going against Kosovo’s interests by suspending the membership process to join international organizations, especially at a time when more and more countries are withdrawing their recognition of an independent Kosovo.

Even though Vučić has suspicions about the sincerity of Kosovo’s halt on joining international organizations, demonstrating that Serbia does not trust Washington’s assurances, Belgrade is fully prepared to continue its successful campaign of derecognition in the event of Pristina withdrawing on their word.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Incongruous, deadly, bizarre. Two nuclear powers engaging in a fatal skirmish over a piece of territory with no economic resources, using rocks and clubs with protruding nails. A stone-age fight in the nuclear era.

Einstein said he did not know what exact weapons would be used in a war with nuclear powers. But he knew the weapons of mass destruction that would be used in the one after that. Sticks and stones. Few envisioned nuclear-weapon states using such primitive weapons before launching Armageddon.

India and China dispute the world’s longest unmarked border. There has been conflict. War in 1962, easily won by China, skirmishes since then, no bullets fired since a deadly clash in 1975 when an unofficial agreement not to use firearms in the border area was reached.  It was considered that no large-scale conflict could emerge from a stone-age fight. Scrap that.

The Sino-Indian border is a hotbed of tension. According to the Indian government, the Chinese military went into Indian territory 1,025 times between 2016 and 2018. Trouble is this is easily disputed as the area is not officially marked. So what is India’s or China’s territory?

Most of these clashes apparently emerge from differing assessments of the location of the so-called Line of Actual Control — the de facto international border.

The military superpowers have been arguing, and fighting, for decades over territory in the high-altitude, largely uninhabited region.

Facing off at 4,600 meters high along a 3,440km border could be described as the height of folly.

It comes at a price. On Monday at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in the Galwan Valley in the disputed Ladakh region.

The loss of life, believed to be the first in 45 years at the border, raises the stakes considerably.

Indian officials spoke of fighting with bare hands, clubs and stones. There were reports of Chinese casualties, but no official confirmation. Both countries accuse the other of building up infrastructure and stoking tension.

There have been agreements. But times have changed.

In 1988 the two countries were roughly equal on the economic stage. According to the World Bank, India’s gross domestic product was about $300 billion compared with China’s $312 billion that year. New Delhi’s defense budget was $10.6 billion. Beijing’s official budget was in the region of $11 billion.

A state of parity. That was then. Now China has risen, so has India, but China to greater heights. China’s GDP, north of $13 trillion, dwarfs India’s $2.7 trillion. Same story on defense spending. Beijing, again according to its official budget, splashed out $261 billion on defense expenditure in 2019. India spent about $71 billion. India has risen as an economy and a global power in the past three decades, but shrunk markedly relative to China.

China has also become more belligerent. Hide your light under a bushel, Deng Xiaoping’s mantra, has been superseded by Xi Jinping’s more aggressive foreign policy.

From island-building in the South China Sea to its shriek post-Covid-19 outbreak diplomacy, Beijing is clearly adopting a different approach.

But that is not the only difference. The Unites States under Trump is shedding its authority. Neither China or India expects or even wants US involvement and the US clearly does not want to be involved. A fatal clash between two nuclear powers and Washington does nothing. No envoys dispatched. No sense of urgency from the White House.  No demand for a cooling-down period. No leadership. Europe too seems to have lost its voice. From the East, the West looks shallow, a busted flush.

It may be that both India and China will settle their dispute amicably and quickly cool tensions. But it would be foolhardy, and dangerous, to dismiss any other alternative as unthinkable.

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Tom Clifford is a renowned journalist currently based in Beijing.

Color Revolution is the term used to describe a series of remarkably effective CIA-led regime change operations using techniques developed by the RAND Corporation, “democracy” NGOs and other groups since the 1980’s. They were used in crude form to bring down the Polish communist regime in the late 1980s. From there the techniques were refined and used, along with heavy bribes, to topple the Gorbachev regime in the Soviet Union. For anyone who has studied those models closely, it is clear that the protests against police violence led by amorphous organizations with names like Black Lives Matter or Antifa are more than purely spontaneous moral outrage. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans are being used as a battering ram to not only topple a US President, but in the process, the very structures of the US Constitutional order.

If we step back from the immediate issue of videos showing a white Minneapolis policeman pressing his knee on the neck of a black man, George Floyd, and look at what has taken place across the nation since then, it is clear that certain organizations or groups were well-prepared to instrumentalize the horrific event for their own agenda.

The protests since May 25 have often begun peacefully only to be taken over by well-trained violent actors. Two organizations have appeared regularly in connection with the violent protests—Black Lives Matter and Antifa (USA). Videos show well-equipped protesters dressed uniformly in black and masked (not for coronavirus to be sure), vandalizing police cars, burning police stations, smashing store windows with pipes or baseball bats. Use of Twitter and other social media to coordinate “hit-and-run” swarming strikes of protest mobs is evident.

What has unfolded since the Minneapolis trigger event has been compared to the wave of primarily black ghetto protest riots in 1968. I lived through those events in 1968 and what is unfolding today is far different. It is better likened to the Yugoslav color revolution that toppled Milosevic in 2000.

Gene Sharp: Template for Regime Overthrow

In the year 2000 the US State Department, aided by its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and select CIA operatives, began secretly training a group of Belgrade university students led by a student group that was called Otpor! (Resistance!). The NED and its various offshoots was created in the 1980’s by CIA head Bill Casey as a covert CIA tool to overthrow specific regimes around the world under the cover of a human rights NGO. In fact, they get their money from Congress and from USAID.

In the Serb Otpor! destabilization of 2000, the NED and US Ambassador Richard Miles in Belgrade selected and trained a group of several dozen students, led by Srđa Popović, using the handbook, From Dictatorship to Democracy, translated to Serbian, of the late Gene Sharp and his Albert Einstein Institution. In a post mortem on the Serb events, the Washington Post wrote, “US-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-drive, running tracking polls, training thousands of opposition activists and helping to organize a vitally important parallel vote count. US taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milošević graffiti on walls across Serbia.”

Trained squads of activists were deployed in protests to take over city blocks with the aid of ‘intelligence helmet’ video screens that give them an instantaneous overview of their environment. Bands of youth converging on targeted intersections in constant dialogue on cell phones, would then overwhelm police. The US government spent some $41 million on the operation. Student groups were secretly trained in the Sharp handbook techniques of staging protests that mocked the authority of the ruling police, showing them to be clumsy and impotent against the youthful protesters. Professionals from the CIA and US State Department guided them behind the scenes.

The Color Revolution Otpor! model was refined and deployed in 2004 as the Ukraine Orange Revolution with logo and color theme scarves, and in 2003 in Georgia as the Rose Revolution. Later Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the template to launch the Arab Spring. In all cases the NED was involved with other NGOs including the Soros Foundations.

After defeating Milosevic, Popovic went on to establish a global color revolution training center, CANVAS, a kind of for-profit business consultancy for revolution, and was personally present in New York working reportedly with Antifa during the Occupy Wall Street where also Soros money was reported.

Antifa and BLM

The protests, riots, violent and non-violent actions sweeping across the United States since May 25, including an assault on the gates of the White House, begin to make sense when we understand the CIA’s Color Revolution playbook.

The impact of the protests would not be possible were it not for a network of local and state political officials inside the Democratic Party lending support to the protesters, even to the point the Democrat Mayor of Seattle ordered police to abandon several blocks in the heart of downtown to occupation by protesters.

In recent years major portions of the Democratic Party across the US have been quietly taken over by what one could call radical left candidates. Often they win with active backing of organizations such as Democratic Socialists of America or Freedom Road Socialist Organizations. In the US House of Representatives the vocal quarter of new representatives around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib and Minneapolis Representative Ilhan Omar are all members or close to Democratic Socialists of America. Clearly without sympathetic Democrat local officials in key cities, the street protests of organizations such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa would not have such a dramatic impact.

To get a better grasp how serious the present protest movement is we should look at who has been pouring millions into BLM. The Antifa is more difficult owing to its explicit anonymous organization form. However, their online Handbook openly recommends that local Antifa “cells” join up with BLM chapters.

FRSO: Follow the Money

BLM began in 2013 when three activist friends created the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag to protest the allegations of shooting of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin by a white Hispanic block watchman, George Zimmermann. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi were all were connected with and financed by front groups tied to something called Freedom Road Socialist Organization, one of the four largest radical left organizations in the United States formed out of something called New Communist Movement that dissolved in the 1980s.

On June 12, 2020 the Freedom Road Socialist Organization webpage states, “The time is now to join a revolutionary organization! Join Freedom Road Socialist Organization…If you have been out in the streets this past few weeks, the odds are good that you’ve been thinking about the difference between the kind of change this system has to offer, and the kind of change this country needs. Capitalism is a failed system that thrives on exploitation, inequality and oppression. The reactionary and racist Trump administration has made the pandemic worse. The unfolding economic crisis we are experiencing is the worst since the 1930s. Monopoly capitalism is a dying system and we need to help finish it off. And that is exactly what Freedom Road Socialist Organization is working for.”

In short the protests over the alleged police killing of a black man in Minnesota are now being used to call for a revolution against capitalism. FRSO is an umbrella for dozens of amorphous groups including Black Lives Matter or BLM. What is interesting about the self-described Marxist-Leninist roots of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is not so much their left politics as much as their very establishment funding by a group of well-endowed tax-exempt foundations.

Alicia Garza of BLM is also a board member or executive of five different Freedom Road front groups including 2011 Board chair of Right to the City Alliance, Board member of School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL), of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), Forward Together and Special Projects director of National Domestic Workers Alliance.

The Right to the City Alliance got $6.5 million between 2011 and 2014 from a number of very established tax-exempt foundations including the Ford Foundation ($1.9 million), from both of George Soros’s major tax-exempts–Open Society Foundations, and the Foundation to Promote Open Society for $1.3 million. Also the cornflake-tied Kellogg Foundation $250,000, and curiously, Ben & Jerry’s Foundation (ice cream) for $30,000.

Garza also got major foundation money as Executive Director of the FRSO front, POWER, where Obama former “green jobs czar” Van Jones, a self-described “communist” and “rowdy black nationalist,” now with CNN, was on the board. Alicia Garza also chaired the Right to the City Alliance, a network of activist groups opposing urban gentrification. That front since 2009 received $1.3 million from the Ford Foundation, as well as $600,000 from the Soros foundations and again, Ben & Jerry’s ($50,000). And Garza’s SOUL, which claimed to have trained 712 “organizers” in 2014, when she co-founded Black Lives Matter, got $210,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation and another $255,000 from the Heinz Foundation (ketchup and John Kerry family) among others. With the Forward Together of FRSO, Garza sat on the board of a “multi-racial organization that works with community leaders and organizations to transform culture and policy to catalyze social change.” It officially got $4 million in 2014 revenues and from 2012 and 2014, the organization received a total of $2.9 million from Ford Foundation ($655,000) and other major foundations.

Nigeria-born BLM co-founder Opal Tometi likewise comes from the network of FRSO. Tometi headed the FRSO’s Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Curiously with a “staff” of two it got money from major foundations including the Kellogg Foundation for $75,000 and Soros foundations for $100,000, and, again, Ben & Jerry’s ($10,000). Tometi got $60,000 in 2014 to direct the group.

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization that is now openly calling for a revolution against capitalism in the wake of the Floyd George killing has another arm, The Advancement Project, which describes itself as “a next generation, multi-racial civil rights organization.” Its board includes a former Obama US Department of Education Director of Community Outreach and a former Bill Clinton Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. The FRSO Advancement Project in 2013 got millions from major US tax-exempt foundations including Ford ($8.5 million), Kellogg ($3 million), Hewlett Foundation of HP defense industry founder ($2.5 million), Rockefeller Foundation ($2.5 million), and Soros foundations ($8.6 million).

Major Money and ActBlue

By 2016, the presidential election year where Hillary Clinton was challenging Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter had established itself as a well-organized network. That year the Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy announced the formation of the Black-Led Movement Fund (BLMF), “a six-year pooled donor campaign aimed at raising $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives coalition” in which BLM was a central part. By then Soros foundations had already given some $33 million in grants to the Black Lives Matter movement. This was serious foundation money.

The BLMF identified itself as being created by top foundations including in addition to the Ford Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation and the Soros Open Society Foundations. They described their role: “The BLMF provides grants, movement building resources, and technical assistance to organizations working advance the leadership and vision of young, Black, queer, feminists and immigrant leaders who are shaping and leading a national conversation about criminalization, policing and race in America.”

The Movement for Black Lives Coalition (M4BL) which includes Black Lives Matter, already in 2016 called for “defunding police departments, race-based reparations, voting rights for illegal immigrants, fossil-fuel divestment, an end to private education and charter schools, a universal basic income, and free college for blacks.”

Notably, when we click on the website of M4BL, under their donate button we learn that the donations will go to something called ActBlue Charities. ActBlue facilitates donations to “democrats and progressives.” As of May 21, ActBlue had given $119 million to the campaign of Joe Biden.

That was before the May 25 BLM worldwide protests. Now major corporations such as Apple, Disney, Nike and hundreds others may be pouring untold and unaccounted millions into ActBlue under the name of Black Lives Matter, funds that in fact can go to fund the election of a Democrat President Biden. Perhaps this is the real reason the Biden campaign has been so confident of support from black voters. What is clear from only this account of the crucial role of big money foundations behind protest groups such as Black lives Matter is that there is a far more complex agenda driving the protests now destabilizing cities across America. The role of tax-exempt foundations tied to the fortunes of the greatest industrial and financial companies such as Rockefeller, Ford, Kellogg, Hewlett and Soros says that there is a far deeper and far more sinister agenda to current disturbances than spontaneous outrage would suggest.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from NEO

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

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Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

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This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

The world celebrates the year 2020 to mark the 75th anniversary of the Victory over Nazism during the World War II. For the first time in history, Russia postponed its military parade traditionally held on Moscow’s Red Square on May 9 due to the coronavirus pandemic. As the pandemic subsides, Russia will now mark this historical event on June 24 as decreed by President Vladimir Putin.

For Russia, the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War is unique and has its historical importance and therefore must necessarily to commemorated.

The Head of State explained he had chosen this date because June 24 was the day when in 1945 the legendary historic parade of victors took place, when soldiers, who fought for Moscow and defended Leningrad, who stood their ground for Stalingrad, liberated Europe and stormed Berlin, marched on Red Square, and provincial cities throughout the Russian Federation.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told President Putin’s meeting with permanent members of the National Security Council that 12 leaders had confirmed they would attend the event in Moscow.

“We confirmed that all invitations are still active for all those invited to the parade [initially] planned for May 9. We already received confirmations from 12 heads of state, most of whom are [heads] from the Commonwealth of Independent States [CIS],” Lavrov informed during the video link.

While contributing to the discussion, Putin further noted that the pandemic had made substantial adjustments to preparations for that event, including the work with foreign colleagues.

“We certainly need to ensure the full safety of our guests,” Putin said.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu assured the meeting with the permanent members of the National Security Council: “Everything is definitely ready for the parade.” During preparations ahead of the parade, “all people were tested and all medical measures taken,” he added.

The Victory Parade on Moscow’s Red Square on June 24 will bring Russian troops for the parade, a mechanized column and flyover of military jet fighters and host military demonstrations of its strength and artillery firework displays. The same form of activities are expected in the regions throughout the Russian Federation.

For the Moscow parade, only part of the details were made public by the Defense Ministry.

“The mechanized column comprised 232 modern and advanced weapon systems, including 20 items of military hardware will take part in the military parade for the first time,” the Defense Ministry said on its website.

Over the years, there has been some controversy about the war history. The evolutionary and development processes of the war are in public reference libraries, and are available for any analytical research. According to Russian officials, Europe and the United States have, in the past, attempted to erase or distort the history of the World War. Understanding the evolution, the concepts and consequences, prompted Putin to pen an article that aims at straightening the historical records.

Russian news agencies reported that President Putin has written an article about World War II, could be published before the Victory Parade on June 24. He first revealed his plans to write this article about the developments of the war during his annual end-of-year news conference in December 2019. His article is based on archive materials. The president has been mentioning these developments, including the so-called Munich Betrayal, or Munich Agreement, and the role of individual European states, Poland in particular, in many of his speeches. Putin has repeatedly stressed the inadmissibility to falsify the history of WW II.

Quite recently, Russia’s State Duma Chairman, Viacheslav Volodin, also noted that denying the role of the USSR in the common Victory in some states is inappropriate and it is important to transfer historical memory and truth to children and grandchildren.

“We should do everything to protect those who are no longer able to protect themselves, but they gave us the opportunity to live,” said the Chairman at the meeting of the CSTO PA Council and added “we should do everything to ensure that the attitude to Victory, to World War II, is based on the principles of honesty and objectivity.”

“We should not stand to see defamation of memory of the victorious soldiers,” said Volodin and stressed that it is necessary to protect those who are no longer able to protect themselves – 27 million people who died: our grandfathers, great-grandfathers, relatives.

“We should ensure that no one undermines the contribution of the Soviet Union to the Great Victory, a country with many nationalities, a country that had united all of us. We should do everything possible to prevent such war, but at the same time to respect history and not let anyone rewrite it,” he concluded.

Deputy Foreign Minister and Special Presidential Representative for the Middle East and Africa, Mikhail Bogdanov, gave an interview to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, published on June 9. In this interview, Bogdanov explicitly noted that the current tendencies to revise history are alarming.

“We have been seeing this cynical historical aggression for years, unleashed by certain groups abroad. Undoubtedly, this is done for political and opportunistic purposes – they are launching campaigns to rewrite history and demonize the Soviet Union’s and the Red Army’s actions before World War II, during the war and after it ended. Certain countries’ attacks on the monuments and memorials erected earlier as a tribute to those who fought against Nazism and fascism look especially cynical,” he told the Al-Ahram.

He further said that Russia is confident that all countries, as heirs of the Great Victory, have a duty to preserve the truth about the events of that period of time that happened in the European, Asian and African theatres of war, paying tribute to those who sacrificed their lives for the triumph of the ideals of humanity.

In line with efforts at the United Nations to combat the glorification of Nazism and the distortion of history, Russia annually submits to the UN General Assembly the resolution on combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

An official statement by the Foreign Ministers of the Member States of the Collective Security Treaty Organization on the 75th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War also condemned various attempts to the distortion of history.

“It is with deepest gratitude that we remember the courage and valiance of all those who gave their lives for the freedom of future generations. Any distortion of the historical truth about those events demeans the memory of those who had suffered the cruelty of the war. Any attempts to rewrite history and misinterpretation of the events that had led to the world war are hindering the awareness of and response to the challenges and threats facing all of us and are fraught with a repetition of the tragic mistakes made in the past,” according to a document released on May 26.

The document was signed by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Russia and Tajikistan.

For the CSTO member states, this is a special commemorative date of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War of the peoples of the Soviet Union, whose contribution became decisive in the outcome of the entire World War II. The deed in a war that claimed the lives of more than twenty-seven million will forever remain in memory. Diminishing the significance of their deed is unacceptable.

Being conscious of the enormous debt owed to the fallen in the fight against Nazism and its victims, following on the principles of protecting historical truth, the provisions of international legal acts adopted after World War II, and urged the parliaments of the member states of the Council of Europe to take following measures at the legislative level:

• to counteract the revival and encouragement of Nazism and its manifestations in modern Europe;
• to protect the historical truth about World War II, to combat attempts to revise its results, to diminish the decisive role of the peoples of the Soviet Union in the Victory;
• to prevent the desecration of graves of participants in the fight against Nazism and military burial places, vandalism against monuments to Soviet soldiers-liberators, harassing of veterans, trampling the honor of those who died and were tortured to death in extermination camps;
• to stop any attempt to justify the Nazis and their accomplices who committed the most serious crimes during World War II, the actions of their followers, the denial or distortion of the decisions of the International Military Tribunal in relation to the prosecution and punishment of the main war criminals of the European Axis Alliance.

The consolidation of the entire international community is crucial for counteracting the resurgence of Nazism. It is the common duty to preserve the memory of the Great Victory, that unites all people who defeated Nazism together. It is important to honor the memory of those without whom the Victory would have been impossible, who gave their lives in the name of the freedom of people and for the sake of the future.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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A team of 85 Cuban doctors and nurses arrived in Peru on June 3 to help the Andean nation tackle the coronavirus pandemic. That same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced another tightening of the sanctions screws. This time he targeted seven Cuban entities, including Fincimex, one of the principal financial institutions handling remittances to the country. Also targeted was Marriott International, which was ordered to cease operations in Cuba, and other companies in the tourism sector, an industry that constitutes 10 percent of Cuba’s GDP and has been devastated globally by the pandemic.

It seems that the more Cuba helps the world, the more it gets hammered by the Trump administration. While Cuba has endured a U.S. embargo for nearly 60 years, Trump has revved up the stakes with a “maximum pressure” strategy that includes more than 90 economic measures placed against the nation since January 2019. Josefina Vidal, Cuba’s ambassador to Canada, called the measures “unprecedented in their level of aggression and scope” and designed to “deprive the country of income for the development of the economy.” Since its inception, the embargo has cost Cuba well over $130 billion dollars, according to a 2018 estimate. In 2018-2019 alone, the economic impact was $4 billion, a figure that does not include the impact of a June 2019 Trump administration travel ban aimed at harming the tourist industry.

While the embargo is supposed to have humanitarian exemptions, the health sector has not been spared. Cuba is known worldwide for its universal public healthcare system, but the embargo has led to shortages of medicines and medical supplies, particularly for patients with AIDS and cancer. Doctors at Cuba’s National Institute of Oncology have had to amputate the lower limbs of children with cancer because the American companies that have a monopoly on the technology can’t sell it to Cuba. In the midst of the pandemic, the U.S. blocked a donation of facemasks and COVID-19 diagnostic kits from Chinese billionaire Jack Ma.

Not content to sabotage Cuba’s domestic health sector, the Trump administration has been attacking Cuba’s international medical assistance, from the teams fighting coronavirus today to those who have travelled all over the world since the 1960’s providing services to underserved communities in 164 countries. The U.S. goal is to cut the island’s income now that the provision of these services has surpassed tourism as Cuba’s number one source of revenue. Labeling these volunteer medical teams “victims of human trafficking” because part of their salaries goes to pay for Cuba’s healthcare system, the Trump administration convinced Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil to end their cooperation agreements with Cuban doctors. Pompeo then applauded the leaders of these countries for refusing “to turn a blind eye” to Cuba’s alleged abuses. The triumphalism was short lived: a month after that quote, the Bolsonaro government in Brazil begged Cuba to resend its doctors amid the pandemic. U.S. allies all over the world, including in Qatar, Kuwait, South Africa, Italy, Honduras and Peru have gratefully accepted this Cuban aid. So great is the admiration for Cuban doctors that a global campaign has sprung up toaward them the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Trump administration is not just libelling doctors, but the whole country.  In May, the State Departmentnamed Cuba as one of five countries “not cooperating fully” in U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The main pretext was the nation’s hosting of members of Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN). Yet even the State Department’s own press release notes that ELN members are in Cuba as a result of “peace negotiation protocols.”Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez called the charges dishonest and “facilitated by the ungrateful attitude of the Colombian government” that broke off talks with the ELN in 2019. It should also be noted that Ecuador was the original host of the ELN-Colombia talks, but Cuba was asked to step in after the Moreno government abdicated its responsibilities in 2018.

The classification of Cuba as “not cooperating” with counterterrorism could lead to Cuba being placed on the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list, which carries tougher penalties. This idea was floated by a senior Trump administration official to Reuters last month. Cuba had been on this list from 1982 to 2015, despite that fact that,according to former State Department official Jason Blazakis, “it was legally determined that Cuba was not actively engaged in violence that could be defined as terrorism under any credible definition of the word.”

Of course, the United States is in no position to claim that other countries do not cooperate in counterterrorism. For years, the U.S. harbored Luis Posada Carriles, mastermind of the bombing of a Cuban civilian airplane in 1976 that killed 73 people. More recently, the U.S. has yet to even comment on the April 30 attack on the Cuban Embassy in Washington D.C., when a man fired on the building with an automatic rifle.

While there are certainly right-wing ideologues like Secretary Pompeo and Senator Rubio orchestrating Trump’s maximum pressure campaign, for Trump himself, Cuba is all about the U.S. elections. His hard line against the tiny island nation may have helped swing the Florida gubernatorial campaign during the midterm elections, yet it’s not clear that this will serve him well in a presidential year. According to conventional wisdom and polls, younger Cuban-Americans – who like most young people, don’t tend to vote in midterms – are increasingly skeptical of the U.S. embargo, and overall, Cuba isn’t the overriding issue for Cuban-Americans. Trump won the Cuban-American vote in 2016, but Hillary Clinton took between 41 and 47% percent of that electorate,significantly higher than any Democrat in decades.

As an electoral strategy, these are signs that Trump’s aggression towards Cuba may not pay off. Of course, the strategy might not be just about votes but also about financing and ensuring that the Cuban-American political machinery is firmly behind Trump.

The strategy has certainly not paid off when it comes to achieving the goal of regime change. The Trump administration is arguably farther from achieving regime change in Cuba now than the U.S. has ever been in over 60 years of intervention. During Trump’s tenure, Cuba calmly transitioned from the presidency of Raul Castro to that of Miguel Díaz-Canel. In 2019, Cuban voters overwhelmingly ratified a new constitution. These aren’t signs of a country on the brink of collapse.

All Trump has achieved is making life more difficult for the island’s 11 million inhabitants, who, like people all over the world, have been battered by the economic impact from coronavirus. Tourism has collapsed. Income from remittances has tanked (both because of new U.S. restrictions and less income in the hands of the Cuban diaspora). Venezuela, once a major benefactor, is mired in its own crisis. But Cuba’s economy, which was forecast to contract by 3.7% before the pandemic hit, has been through worse, particularly during the 1991 to 2000 economic crisis known as the “special period” after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A change in the White House would bring some relief, although Joe Biden has staked a rather ambivalent position, saying he would restore relations as President Obama did, but adding that he was open to using sanctions as punishment for Cuba’s support to the Venezuelan government.

It’s clear that from now until November, and perhaps for four more years, the Trump administration will pummel its island neighbor. Cuba will continue to seek global condemnation on the blockade (the 2019 UN vote was 187 against vs 3 in favor—the U.S., Brazil and Israel) and continue to show what a good neighbor looks like. It responded to these latest provocations in the way that only Cuba does: with more global solidarity, sending Covid-19 healing brigades to Guinea and Kuwait a day after the June 3 round of sanctions. A total of 26 countries now have Cuban medical personnel caring for their sick.

That is the kind of goodwill that money just can’t buy and it greatly presents a stark contrast to the Trump administration’s shameful behavior during the pandemic. Back in March, as Cuban doctors arrived in Italy, former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa tweeted:

“One day we will tell our children that, after decades of movies and propaganda, at the moment of truth, when humanity needed help at a time when the great powers were in hiding, Cuban doctors began to arrive, without asking anything in return.”

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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of the peace group CodePink. Her latest book is Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection (OR Books, September 2016).

The question of whether a statue of Cecil Rhodes should be taken down has been raging in Britain in recent weeks, fuelled by the George Floyd protests that have swept the world.  Personally, I am not a fan of people pulling down statues of historical figures, not because I necessarily like these figures, but because destroying a statue doesn’t change history, and people should not forget history. Living in a world where anything that outrages a minority of people is destroyed, or memory-holed as Orwell would put it, is a world where people soon forget the lessons of history. Furthermore, where do you draw the line? What historical figures pass the outrage test, and who fails? Who decides who passes or fails – an angry mob? The whole business of destroying historical statues and removing TV shows that were made decades ago quickly becomes an inconsistent mess. In my opinion, what is more important is to learn the lessons of history, and take this knowledge to inform our actions in the future.

In saying all this, I am by no means making a case for why Rhodes was great. The exact opposite is true, yet there are two sides of Rhodes, both of them imperialist, but both of them not widely understood. One side of Rhodes is relatively well known: he was an imperialist who was heavily involved in Southern Africa, including serving as the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony between 1890-96; he believed that English people were the master race; he was a diamond magnate who founded the company De Beers, where labourers were racially segregated during his time;  various Rhodesian Africans colonies were named after him; he set-up a Rhodes Scholarship program at Oxford University that the likes of Bill Clinton went through; and Hitler reportedly admired him.

The Cecil Rhodes Secret Society 

Yet, there is another side to Rhodes. This, more esoteric side, is unfortunately not so well understood, yet equally important to understand. Firstly however, it is important to establish that Rhodes had a long-term vision of creating a global system under British rule. In his first will written in 1877, when he was only in his mid-20s, Rhodes stated that he desired:

“The extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting … of colonization by British subjects of all lands wherein the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise … the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the consolidation of the whole Empire … and finally, the foundation of so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity” (Quigley 1981: 33).

In other words, Rhodes wanted to create a global system so great, and control world affairs so perfectly, that no country or people could escape its domain. In order to achieve these aims, Rhodes, during a meeting on a cold February afternoon in London in 1891, founded a secret society that became known as Cecil Rhodes’ Secret Society (Quigley 1981: 33-34). The secret society was to serve as a form of religious brotherhood based on the Jesuit model, and was to be devoted to the extension of the British Empire across the globe (Quigley 1981: 33-34). Rhodes had long-wanted to create such a society (Shore 1979: 253). He served as the leader of the group, with the two other founding members being the journalist and newspaper editor, William Stead, and the trusted adviser to Queen Victoria and King George V, Reginald Balliol Brett (Quigley 1981: 3). Alfred Milner, an influential British official and banker, who, for the record, was originally born in Germany, was accepted into the group shortly after the meeting (Quigley 1981: 3). Interestingly, the organization of the society was divided into an inner circle, called “The Society of the Elect,” and at least one outer circle, called “The Association of Helpers,” with this organizational structure designed to conceal the workings of the inner circle (Quigley 1981: 3).

Milner Takes Charge 

When Rhodes died in 1902, the leadership of the society passed largely to Milner, who shared the same goal as Rhodes of creating a truly global empire, which would be brought about by “secret political and economic influence behind the scenes and by control of journalistic, educational and propaganda agencies” (Quigley 1981: 49). Until his death in 1925, Milner greatly expanded the influence and aims of this society, in part through the creation of another group, which was known as the Milner Group, or Milner’s Kindergarten. This group was created during Milner’s extensive time in South Africa where he held numerous positions, including serving as the High Commissioner for Southern Africa between 1897 and 1901, with the group comprised of capable officers who served as assistants and colleagues during this period. In fact, Milner played a core role in South Africa for years, including being one of the British officials who tried to cover-up the horrors of concentration camps used by the British during the Second Boer War. Between June 1901 and May 1902, approximately 28,000 people died, 22,000 of which were children, in British concentration camps in Southern Africa, and Milner was brought in to try and clean the mess up, resulting in him trying to find ways to spin the disaster to make it more palatable to the British public back home.

The Round Table Network 

The creation of the Milner group was informed by three older groups that represented some of the most powerful networks at the heart of the British Empire (Quigley 1981: 6). The first was known as the Toynbee Group, which was formed in 1873 at Balliol College and dominated by Milner and the notable historian, Arnold Toynbee. The second group was known as the Cecil Bloc, created by the three-time British Prime Minister, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, which represented political and social power (Quigley 1981: 6, 15). The third was the Rhodes secret society (Quigley 1981: 6). Over the coming years, prominent members of the Milner group created a network of “semi-secret discussion and lobbying groups” in various countries around the world, known as the Round Table Groups (Quigley 1966: 950). By 1915, there were Round Table Groups in seven countries, including in England, Canada, India, South Africa and New Zealand (Quigley 1966: 950). One of the most notable members of the Round Table network was Lionel Curtis (image on the right), an influential British official and author. Curtis was one of the strongest advocates of the British Empire morphing into a Commonwealth of Nations, and he supported the unification of Europe and the eventual establishment of a form of world government. During this period, the idea of a British-centric Empire ruling the world morphed into the idea of a multinational federation controlling the world. Importantly, Curtis also understood that “bankers and men who trade with countries abroad” have tremendous political value.

Chatham House Founded 

Then, in a May 1919 meeting at the Hotel Majestic during Paris Peace Conference following the First World War, the members of the British delegation – who were largely members of the Milner Group (including Curtis) and the Cecil Bloc – agreed to form the British Institute of International Affairs, also referred to as Chatham House, which laterbecome the Royal Institute of International Affairs, after the Institute was given a Royal Charter by King George V in 1926 (Quigley 1981: 182-184). A few years later, a parallel organization to Chatham House was founded in New York,known as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR grew out of the think tank called ‘The Inquiry’ that prepared President Woodrow Wilson for the Paris Peace Conference, with the CFR having close ties to the banking powerhouse, J.P. Morgan and Company (Quigley 1981: 190-191). In the years after their formations, both organizations went on to attract many more prominent people, including national leaders, with members of Chatham House also being key architects and supporters of the League of Nations and the United Nations (UN), two of the most prominent internationalist organizations ever founded. Additionally, Chatham House received financial support from notable American businessmen and corporations, including the oil magnate, John D. Rockefeller, and the Ford Motor Company (Quigley 1981: 190).

Image below: Chatham House over the Jubilee weekend (Source: Flickr)

Importantly, one of the reasons why we know so much about the workings of this network that created both Chatham House and the CFR, is because Dr Carroll Quigley, a Professor of History at Georgetown University until his death in 1977, who also taught at Harvard and Princeton, “was permitted for two years, in the early 1960’s, to examine its papers and secret records” (Quigley 1966: 950). Quigley went on to state that he had very little aversion to the aims of this network, with the main issue he had being that they wished to “remain unknown,” as Quigley believed that  the role of this network in history was “significant enough to be known” (Quigley 1966: 950).

Fast forward to the present day, and we still find these organizations inspired by Rhodes operating today. Chatham House positions itself as Britain’s premier think-tank, and it is clear that it still holds tremendous power. The currentcorporate membership of Chatham House is truly staggering. Members include: the European Commission, BP, the British Ministry of Defence, Apple, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Royal Dutch Shell, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Barclays, the Bank of England, Lockheed Martin, the BBC, Vodaphone, the Guardian, the Telegraph Media Group, CBS News, the Open Society Foundations and many more. Chatham House also has over 550 donors, with donors from 2018-19 including: the World Health Organization; the Rockefeller Foundation;  Bayer AG; De Beers Group Services UK Ltf; GlaxoSmithKline Services Unlimited; the European Climate Foundation; the Kuwait Petroleum Foundation; Microsoft Limited; NATO Defense College; Rolls-Royce plc; the UK Labour Party; Google; the Economist; the Scottish Government; and UNICEF.

Furthermore, Chatham House has many academic members, including the University of Notre Dame, the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics, and the United Nations University MERIT, which is a joint research and training centre of the United Nations University and Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Numerous prominent figures in UK and world politics have given speeches at the Institute, including former British Prime Ministers, Sir John Major and Tony Blair, the famous British media presenter, Jon Snow, and the current British Prime Minister, Boris Johnston, who gave a speech in 2016 when he was Britain’s Foreign Secretary.

What is clear from these exhaustive lists is that Chatham House represents a synergy of power that far exceeds what Rhodes even envisaged. One of the saddest parts of this whole epic story, however, is that many of the people who are campaigning to remove Rhodes’ statue from an Oxford College, have never heard of Chatham House, and certainly do not understand its history.

The United States finds itself in a less-than-unique position of an empire in terminal decline. With nations around the globe standing up economically, militarily, and politically – closing off once lucrative avenues of exploitation – the US finds itself turning more and more inwardly upon its allies and even its own population – either to wring from it whatever wealth it can or at the very least – to prevent the displacement of America’s current ruling special interests by any sort of alternative.

Geopolitical expert and analyst F. William Engdahl did an impressive job pointing out how current turmoil in the United States is being driven not by grassroots efforts to confront these special interests but by these special interests themselves.

No matter what people thought they were going into the streets for – for a nation adept at engineering revolutions abroad – there is no way it won’t turn those same tools and techniques inward on unrest at home – ensuring it is channeled in the safest and most profitable way possible.

Cancel Culture’s Deliberate Futility: A Tale of Two Chain-Restaurants 

To point out just how absurd America’s “woke revolution” and its opponents are, consider Domino’s Pizza and Shake Shack. Both find themselves the targets of opposite ends of America’s current turmoil. Domino’s for at one point in the distant past supporting people who now find themselves among US President Donald Trump’s administration, and Shake Shack for its anemic response to allegations its employees poisoned New York City police officers.

Those promising to boycott one and patronize the other to spite their political opponents never bothered to check who actually owns these two large food and beverage businesses. If they did – they’d see that the exact same handful of investment firms own both.

Investors at Blackrock, Vanguard, or State Street Global Advisors – who own significant shares and profit from both Shake Shack and Domino’s – don’t care which restaurant you boycott so long as you patronize another in their portfolio to spite your superficial political opponents. They are deliberately funding both sides of the turmoil to ensure that this is precisely how America’s “woke revolution” plays out.

Notice no one in the spotlight is saying “Wall Street.” Or saying “boycott them all.” Or pointing out that while poisoning cops or supporting President Trump seems “bad,” it pales vastly in the face of the injustice many of these corporations are guilty of.

It is classic divide and conquer – with Americans at each other’s throats – oblivious to the common threat to their peace and prosperity literally right in front of them, consuming their paychecks every month, funneling it from mainstreet and into gargantuan concentrations of wealth and power on Wall Street.

When rebuilding begins – if it begins – it will be Americans paying through taxes, not Blackrock and others on Wall Street.

Despite the apparent chaos in America’s streets, these companies will continue to profit and their investors will continue accumulating wealth and power. America’s political landscape will continue to burn ensuring nothing of any significance can ever be built to change this basic fact.

How the Rest of the World Escaped American Hegemony 

If you watch movies or listen to activists running wild in America’s streets – you’d probably be inclined to believe burning down your own community and endlessly complaining is how to throw off oppression – real or imagined.

In reality, the rest of the world has begun to move out from under the shadow of America’s global-spanning hegemony. They did it not by burning down their own nations or complaining endlessly to the United Nations – they did it by building superior alternatives to what the US offered the world.

China is a perfect example of a nation that offers industry and infrastructure as an alternative to America’s “investments,” overpriced weapons, and political meddling. China builds dams, railways, factories, and affordable weapons with no political strings attached.

Russia has provided nations around the globe with alternatives for everything from weapons and energy to political and economic alliances.

Individually, nations have begun creating alternatives to once unrivaled American monopolies. Huawei’s rise – first out from under Apple – than far above it – is a perfect example. Russia positioning itself as a key partner for Middle Eastern nations exhausted from America’s “stewardship” of the region is another.

Even in smaller nations the idea of creating alternatives to things like social media platforms monopolized by the US is taking hold – empowering these nations, keeping income local, and displacing America’s unwarranted influence within their borders.

America’s problem is that it has long since abandoned building and making things and instead has focused on coercion, exploitation, thievery, schemes, and moving numbers around on ledgers. This only works as long as no one else starts building and making things and as long as no one attempts to insulate themselves from financial trickery by creating alternative systems for investing in tangible progress.

This process – in fact – of doing just that has dominated the topic of geopolitics for years as America declines and lashes out and as nations patiently and systematically create these very sort of alternatives. Collectively it is called the “multipolar world order” and is one built on physical infrastructure like factories and railways – not spreadsheets and ticker symbols.

At Home: Build the Community You Want to Live in

Wall Street has no problem with “woke” activist burning down businesses across the country – even ones they own. They know whatever investments they have that are found to be “offensive” – they have 10 more that the “woke” community will continue paying into.

What Wall Street doesn’t want is for communities to boycott all of the businesses they own and creating local alternatives that keep wealth inside communities. The concentration of wealth on Wall Street and all the power and influence it buys would thus be spread more evenly across the country.

Fake socialism is offered as a solution – something Wall Street can keep in Washington close by and under their control – rather than any genuine distribution of wealth the people themselves control by actually owning businesses, land, and the means of production by building and operating local factories.

If money is power – asking or even demanding it from those who have it to give it back is not the answer. By no longer giving it to them willingly and instead keeping it in communities is the only way to redirect that money and its power to work for the people rather than Wall Street.

If Americans want a better society to live in – they are going to have to build it – not ask for it from those who have nothing to gain by giving it to them. Those who are burning instead of building, complaining instead of collaborating – are either deliberately attempting to obstruct real reform and progress in the US, or have fallen into traps laid by those who are.

Protesting has its place – particularly when used to protect what is being built. But as far as a medium for change in and of itself – history is devoid of a single example where blind violence and loud complaining alone changed anything of significance.

The “woke revolution” will most certainly not be any sort of exception. With many protesters citing things like the “French Revolution” – this is painfully clear. The French Revolution of course ended with one monarchy overthrown, and another – much larger one headed by Napoleon Bonaparte – taking its place.

To this day France remains controlled by immense corporate-financier interests which exist far above the superficial “democracy” and “protests” of the French people. The French military remains deployed in numerous “former” colonies in Africa where it seeks to reassert itself and the wider West alongside its allies on Wall Street and in Washington.

Clearly something of more substance needs to be done than committing to mindless mayhem in the streets and endless complaining across the media. If people want power, they need to possess the means to acquire it – money. To do so they need to stop handing their paychecks over to Wall Street and keep it in their communities. That is how China and Russia and the rest of the multipolar world has changed things globally and it is the only way things will change for Americans domestically.

Abroad: Now is the time to Judo-Throw America’s Hypocrisy 

In Judo, the energy of an attacking enemy is turned against them – generally in the form of a spectacular throw.

For the rest of the world – now is a perfect time to capitalize on the wall-to-wall hypocrisy of a nation that has for decades lectured the world regarding “democracy,” “human rights,” and “free speech” while it now openly crushes all of the above at home.

Fronts funded by the US State Department via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) operating overseas find themselves in the very unenviable position of taking money from a nation being exposed as chronically ill, systemically racist, divided, and increasingly violent.

How are these NED-funded fronts going to claim they are advancing “democracy” or “human rights” abroad for the US and thanks to generous US funding when democracy and human rights in the US is exposed as dysfunctional at best and nonexistent at worst?

Nations plagued by US meddling could easily make a case to sweep from within its borders fronts funded by a divided, racist, violent, and increasingly hypocritical US – that is – if foreign-funded subversion isn’t already a good enough reason to do so.

With US tech-firms hand-in-glove with the government purging thousands of accounts from platforms like Facebook and Twitter for allegedly being involved in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” it is an easy case to make that NED is the king of coordinated inauthentic behavior and should likewise be “purged.”

With all the energy the US has invested in meddling abroad – that energy has never been more vulnerable and likely to be thrown back against the US.

Empire’s End is Inevitable 

But nations could just as easily patiently wait.

The US is an empire eating itself.

As long as the rest of the world remains determined to continue building better alternatives to America’s “international order” it will continue to displace American hegemony around the globe. Most nations desire greatly to work with the American people themselves – 99.999% of whom are likewise victims of Wall Street and Washington – whether they realize it or not. This helps explain the almost endless patience of nations like Russia and China in the face of daily provocations by the West.

For Americans, it is up to them regarding what kind of nation they will live in once the dust settles.

One where power and wealth is still very-much concentrated on Wall Street and the violence sown helps justify an even bigger police state than ever before? Or one in which Americans learn that no one in Washington, on TV, or with blue check marks next to their names on Twitter are on their side and start thinking and acting for themselves?

Only time will tell.

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This article was originally published on Land Destroyer Report.

“What’s been most striking to me is just how one-sided the rules are when Americans take on their own government…. It has been dismaying to learn the extent to which rules and laws shield the government from accountability for its abuses—or even lawbreaking…. It’s been a long and frightening lesson…. The rules seem rigged to protect government lawlessness, and the playing field is uneven. Too many processes favor the government. The deck is still stacked.” —  Journalist Sharyl Attkisson

The system is rigged.

The system is rigged, the government is corrupt, and “we the people” continue to waste our strength by fighting each other rather than standing against the tyrant in our midst.

Because the system is rigged, because the government is corrupt, and because “we the people” remain polarized and divided, the police state will keep winning and “we the people” will keep losing.

Because the system is rigged and the U.S. Supreme Court—the so-called “people’s court”—has exchanged its appointed role as a gatekeeper of justice for its new role as maintainer of the status quo, there will be little if no consequences for the cops who brutalize and no justice for the victims of police brutality.

Because the system is rigged, there will be no consequences for police who destroyed a private home by bombarding it with tear gas grenades during a SWAT team raid gone awry, or for the cop who mistakenly shot a 10-year-old boy after aiming for and missing the non-threatening family dog, or for the arresting officer who sicced a police dog on a suspect who had already surrendered.

This is how unarmed Americans keep dying at the hands of militarized police.

By refusing to accept any of the eight or so qualified immunity cases before it this term that strove to hold police accountable for official misconduct, the Supreme Court delivered a chilling reminder that in the American police state, ‘we the people’ are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect.”

This is how qualified immunity keeps the police state in power.

Lawyers tend to offer a lot of complicated, convoluted explanations for the doctrine of qualified immunity, which was intended to insulate government officials from frivolous lawsuits, but the real purpose of qualified immunity is to rig the system, ensuring that abusive agents of the government almost always win and the victims of government abuse almost always lose.

How else do you explain a doctrine that requires victims of police violence to prove that their abusers knew their behavior was illegal because it had been deemed so in a nearly identical case at some prior time: it’s a setup for failure.

Do you know how many different ways a cop can kill, maim, torture and abuse someone without being held liable?

The cops know: in large part due to training classes that drill them on the art of sidestepping the Fourth Amendment, which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten, broken and spied on by government agents.

This is how “we the people” keep losing.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982) that suing government officials for monetary damages is “the only realistic avenue” of holding them accountable for abusing their offices and violating the Constitution, it has ostensibly given the police and other government agents a green light to shoot first and ask questions later, as well as to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts.

Whether it’s police officers breaking through people’s front doors and shooting them dead in their homes or strip searching motorists on the side of the road, these instances of abuse are continually validated by a judicial system that kowtows to virtually every police demand, no matter how unjust, no matter how in opposition to the Constitution.

Make no mistake about it: this is what constitutes “law and order” in the American police state.

These are the hallmarks of a police state: where police officers, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, are part of an elite ruling class dependent on keeping the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.

Unfortunately, we’ve been traveling this dangerous road for a long time now.

A review of critical court rulings over the past several decades, including rulings affirming qualified immunity protections for government agents by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order, protecting the ruling class, and insulating government agents from charges of wrongdoing than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

Indeed, as Reuters reports, qualified immunity “has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights.” Worse, as Reuters concluded, “the Supreme Court has built qualified immunity into an often insurmountable police defense by intervening in cases mostly to favor the police.”

The system is rigged.

Police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless searches. In Anderson v. Creighton, the Supreme Court ruled that FBI and state law enforcement agents were entitled to qualified immunity protections after they were sued for raiding a private home without a warrant and holding family members at gunpoint, all in a search for a suspected bank robber who was not in the house.

Police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless arrests based on mere suspicion. In Hunter v. Bryant, the Court ruled that police acted reasonably in arresting James Bryant without a warrant in order to protect the president. Bryant had allegedly written a letter that referenced a third-party plot to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, but police had no proof that he intended to harm Reagan beyond a mere suspicion. The charges against Bryant were eventually dropped.

Police can claim qualified immunity for using excessive force against protesters. In Saucier v. Katz, the Court ruled in favor of federal law enforcement agents who forcefully tackled a protester as he attempted to unfurl a banner at Vice President Gore’s political rally. The Court reasoned that the officers acted reasonably given the urgency of protecting the vice president.

Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a fleeing suspect in the back. In Brosseau v. Haugen, the Court dismissed a lawsuit against a police officer who shot Kenneth Haugen in the back as he entered his car in order to flee from police. The Court ruled that in light of existing case law, the cop’s conduct fell in the “hazy border between excessive and acceptable force” and so she did not violate clearly established law.

Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a mentally impaired person. In City of San Francisco v. Sheehan, the Court ruled in favor of police who repeatedly shot Teresa Sheehan during the course of a mental health welfare check. The Court ruled that it was not unreasonable for police to pepper spray and shoot Sheehan multiple times after entering her room without a warrant and encountering her holding a knife.

Police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits. In Plumhoff v. Rickard, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that police officers who used deadly force to terminate a car chase were immune from a lawsuit. The officers were accused of needlessly resorting to deadly force by shooting multiple times at a man and his passenger in a stopped car, killing both individuals.

Police can stop, arrest and search citizens without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. In a 5-3 ruling in Utah v. Strieff, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively gave police the go-ahead to embark on a fishing expedition of one’s person and property, rendering Americans completely vulnerable to the whims of any cop on the beat.

Police officers can stop cars based on “anonymous” tips or for “suspicious” behavior such as having a reclined car seat or driving too carefully. In a 5-4 ruling in Navarette v. California, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that police officers, under the guise of “reasonable suspicion,” can stop cars and question drivers based solely on anonymous tips, no matter how dubious, and whether or not they themselves witnessed any troubling behavior. Then in State v. Howard, the Kansas Supreme Court declared that motorists who recline their car seats are guilty of suspicious behavior and can be subject to warrantless searches by police. That ruling, coupled with other court rulings upholding warrantless searches and seizures by police renders one’s car a Constitution-free zone.

Americans have no protection against mandatory breathalyzer tests at a police checkpoint, although mandatory blood draws violate the Fourth Amendment (Birchfield v. North Dakota). Police can also conduct sobriety and “information-seeking” checkpoints (Illinois v. Lidster and Mich. Dep’t of State Police v. Sitz).

Police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime. In Maryland v. King, a divided U.S. Supreme Court determined that a person arrested for a crime who is supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty must submit to forcible extraction of their DNA. Once again the Court sided with the guardians of the police state over the defenders of individual liberty in determining that DNA samples may be extracted from people arrested for “serious” offenses. The end result of the ruling paves the way for a nationwide dragnet of suspects targeted via DNA sampling.

Police can use the “fear for my life” rationale as an excuse for shooting unarmed individuals. Upon arriving on the scene of a nighttime traffic accident, an Alabama police officer shot a driver exiting his car, mistakenly believing the wallet in his hand to be a gun. A report by the Justice Department found that half of the unarmed people shot by one police department over a seven-year span were “shot because the officer saw something (like a cellphone) or some action (like a person pulling at the waist of their pants) and misidentified it as a threat.”

Police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes.” In Florida v. Harris, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court determined that police officers may use highly unreliable drug-sniffing dogs to conduct warrantless searches of cars during routine traffic stops. The ruling turns man’s best friend into an extension of the police state, provided the use of a K-9 unit takes place within a reasonable amount of time (Rodriguez v. United States).

Not only are police largely protected by qualified immunity, but police dogs are also off the hook for wrongdoing. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a police officer who allowed a police dog to maul a homeless man innocent of any wrongdoing.

Police can subject Americans to strip searches, no matter the “offense.” A divided U.S. Supreme Court actually prioritized making life easier for overworked jail officials over the basic right of Americans to be free from debasing strip searches. In its 5-4 ruling in Florence v. Burlington, the Court declared that any person who is arrested and processed at a jail house, regardless of the severity of his or her offense (i.e., they can be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense), can be subjected to a strip search by police or jail officials, which involves exposing the genitals and the buttocks. This “license to probe” is now being extended to roadside stops, as police officers throughout the country have begun performing roadside strip searches—some involving anal and vaginal probes—without any evidence of wrongdoing and without a warrant.

Police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home. In an 8-1 ruling in Kentucky v. King, the U.S. Supreme Court placed their trust in the discretion of police officers, rather than in the dictates of the Constitution, when they gave police greater leeway to break into homes or apartments without a warrant. Despite the fact that the police in question ended up pursuing the wrong suspect, invaded the wrong apartment and violated just about every tenet that stands between us and a police state, the Court sanctioned the warrantless raid, leaving Americans with little real protection in the face of all manner of abuses by police.

Police can use knock-and-talk tactics as a means of sidestepping the Fourth Amendment. Aggressive “knock and talk” practices have become thinly veiled, warrantless exercises by which citizens are coerced and intimidated into “talking” with heavily armed police who “knock” on their doors in the middle of the night. Andrew Scott didn’t even get a chance to say no to such a heavy-handed request before he was gunned down by police who pounded aggressively on the wrong door at 1:30 a.m., failed to identify themselves as police, and then repeatedly shot and killed the man when he answered the door while holding a gun in self-defense.

Police can carry out no-knock raids if they believe announcing themselves would be dangerous.Police can perform a “no-knock” raid as long as they have a reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence, under the particular circumstances, would be dangerous or futile or give occupants a chance to destroy evidence of a crime (Richards v. Wisconsin). Legal ownership of a firearm is also enough to justify a no-knock raid by police (Quinn v. Texas). For instance, a Texas man had his home subject to a no-knock, SWAT-team style forceful entry and raid based solely on the suspicion that there were legally-owned firearms in his household. The homeowner was actually shot by police through his closed bedroom door.

Police can recklessly open fire on anyone that might be “armed.” Philando Castile was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop allegedly over a broken tail light merely for telling police he had a conceal-and-carry permit. That’s all it took for police to shoot Castile four times in the presence of his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter. A unanimous Supreme Court declared in County of Los Angeles vs. Mendez that police should not be held liable for recklessly firing 15 times into a shack where a homeless couple had been sleeping because the grabbed his BB gun in defense, fearing they were being attacked.

Police can destroy a home during a SWAT raid, even if the owner gives their consent to enter and search it. In West v. Winfield, the Supreme Court provided cover to police after they smashed the windows of Shaniz West’s home, punched holes in her walls and ceilings, and bombed the house with so much tear gas that it was uninhabitable for two months. All of this despite the fact that the suspect they were pursuing was not in the house and West, the homeowner, agreed to allow police to search the home to confirm that.

Police can suffocate someone, deliberately or inadvertently, in the process of subduing them. “I can’t breathe” has become a rallying cry following the deaths of Eric Garner and George Floyd, both of whom died after being placed in a chokehold by police. Dozens more have died in similar circumstances at the hands of police who have faced little repercussions for these deaths.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are dealing with a nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out with impunity against individuals posing little or no real threat.

So what’s the answer to reforming a system that is clearly self-serving and corrupt?

Abolishing the police is not the answer: that will inevitably lead to outright anarchy, which will give the police state and those law-and-order zealots all the incentive it needs to declare martial law.

Looting and violence are not the answer: As Martin Luther King Jr. recognized, “A riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt.” Using the looting and riots as justification for supporting police brutality is also not the answer:  As King recognized,

“It is not enough … to condemn riots… without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”

Police reform is necessary and unavoidable if we are to have any hope of living in an America in which freedom means something more than the right to stay alive, but how we reform the system is just as important as getting it done.

We don’t need to wait for nine members of a ruling aristocracy who primarily come from privileged backgrounds and who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo to fix what’s broken in America.

Nor do we need to wait for 535 highly paid politicians to do something about these injustices only when it suits their political ambitions

And we certainly don’t need to wait for a president with a taste for totalitarian tactics to throw a few crumbs our way.

This is as much a local problem as it is a national one.

Be fair. Be nonviolent. Be relentless in your pursuit of justice for all.

Let’s get it done.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

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

This article was first crossposted in 2018.

George W. Bush installed a bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office at the White House. When Barack Obama came to power he had the bust returned to Britain.

Obama’s Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was imprisoned in one of the concentration camps Churchill and his imperialists had invented.

Churchill was born in 1874 into a Britain that was painting huge areas of the world map bloody red.

Just three years later Victoria crowned herself Empress of India, and the rape and pillage that would mark Britain’s advance across Africa and much more of the globe moved up a gear.

At Harrow School and then Sandhurst the young Winston learnt the simple message: the superior white man was conquering the primitive, dark-skinned natives, and bringing them the benefits of Christian civilisation.

Kenyan leader Jomo Kenyatta and later Archbishop Desmond Tutu would sum it up in a beautiful single paragraph.

“When the British missionaries arrived, we Africans had the land and the minerals and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.”

As soon as he could, Churchill charged off to take his part in these various barbarous and criminal adventures. He described them as “a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples.”

First came the Swat Valley, now part of Pakistan. Here he judged his enemy were merely “deranged jihadists” whose violence was explained by a “strong aboriginal propensity to kill.”

He gladly took part in raids that laid waste to whole valleys, destroying houses and burning crops.

Next he popped up in Sudan, where he boasted that he personally shot at least three “savages.”

The young Churchill played his part enthusiastically in all kinds of imperial atrocities. When concentration camps were built in South Africa, for white Boers, he said they produced “the minimum of suffering.” The Boer death toll was in fact almost 28,000.

At least 115,000 black Africans were swept into British camps, where 14,000 died. Churchill wrote of his “irritation that kaffirs should be allowed to fire on white men.” By now he was an MP and demanding a rolling programme of more imperialist conquests.

“The Aryan stock is bound to triumph,” was his battle cry.

As home secretary in 1911 he brought the artillery on to the streets of east London in a heavy-handed battle to flush out Latvian anarchists in the siege of Sydney Street. Welsh miners have never forgotten his outrages against the Tonypandy miners.

As colonial secretary in the 1920s, he unleashed the notorious Black and Tan thugs on Ireland’s Catholic civilians. The Irish have never forgotten this cruelty.

When the Iraqis rebelled against British rule, Churchill said:

“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.”

Churchill, as we can see, was happy to be spokesman for brutal and brutish British imperialism. It seems Churchill was driven by a deep loathing of democracy for anyone other than God’s chosen race — the British.

This was clearest in his attitude to India. When Mahatma Gandhi launched his campaign of peaceful resistance, Churchill raged that

he “ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new viceroy seated on its back.”

Churchill further announced:

“I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”

In 1943, a famine broke out in Bengal and up to three million people starved to death. He bluntly refused any aid, raging that it was the Indians’ own fault for “breeding like rabbits.”

In Kenya Churchill believed that the fertile highlands should be the exclusive preserve of the white settlers and approved the clearing out of the local “blackamoors.”

He saw the local Kikuyu as “brutish children.” When they rebelled under Churchill’s post-war premiership, some 150,000 of them were forced at gunpoint into detention camps.

He approved various kinds of torture, including electric shocks. whipping and shootings. Mau Mau suspects were burned and mutilated. Hussein Onyango Obama was just one who never truly recovered from the torture he endured.

As colonial secretary Churchill offered what he called the Holy Land to both the Jews and the Arabs — although he had racist contempt for both.

He jeered at the Palestinians as “barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung,” while he was appalled that the Israelis “take it for granted that the local population will be cleared out to suit their convenience.”

After the war he was quick to invent the iron curtain as he started the cold war against his hated Bolsheviks despite the fact that they had been his greatest ally in defeating Hitler and his nazis.

When he was re-elected prime minister in the 1951 election he rapidly restarted various imperialist adventures. There was the so-called Malayan Emergency, Kenya and of course the Korean war.

Churchill hated communism at home and abroad. He was always a supporter of British intervention in the young Soviet state, declaring that Bolshevism must be “strangled in its cradle.”

He convinced his divided and loosely organised Cabinet to intervene despite strong opposition from Labour.

In the 1926 General Strike Churchill edited the government’s newspaper, the British Gazette, and used it to put forward his anti-union, anti-Labour, anti-socialist rantings.

He even recommended that the food convoys from the docks should be guarded by tanks, armoured cars and hidden machine guns.

There are far too many other reasons why this champion of all things reactionary simply doesn’t deserve the paeans of praise being heaped on him at the moment.

I’m sure our letters page would welcome your own particular favourites, but let me finish with one that really makes me smile.

Even his reputation as an outstanding orator was, it seems, based on a lie. We now know that many of Churchill’s most famous radio speeches of the war were delivered by an actor, Norman Shelley.

Shelley went on to be a big star on BBC Children’s Radio and as Colonel Danby in the Archers.

Israel may have increased its nuclear stockpile from 80 warheads in 2019 to 90 in 2020, according to a new report by a leading global arms watchdog. 

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) said in its annual report on Monday that Israel, one of the world’s nine nuclear powers, could be in possession of up to 90 nuclear warheads.

The watchdog said that the true number could be higher as Israel does not officially comment on its nuclear capabilities.

“There is significant uncertainty about the size of Israel’s nuclear arsenal and its warhead capabilities,” it said.

“Israel continues to maintain its long-standing policy of nuclear opacity: it neither officially confirms nor denies that it possesses nuclear weapons.”

Israel is one of only three countries, along with India and Pakistan, not to sign the 1968 non-proliferation treaty (NPT), and is widely assumed to have the Middle East’s only atomic arsenal.

Sipri said that it believes Israel has around 30 gravity bombs that can be delivered by F-16I aircraft, and up to 50 warheads that can be delivered by land-based ballistic missiles such as the Jericho III – which, according to foreign reports, has a range of 5,500 km.

“It is possible that some of Israel’s F-15 aircraft may also serve a nuclear strike role, but this is unconfirmed,” Sipri said.

The report also said that the locations of the storage sites for Israel’s warheads, “which are thought to be stored partially unassembled,” are also unknown.

Declassified government documents from both Israel and the United States indicate that Israel began building a stockpile of nuclear weapons in the early 1960s, likely with the assistance of the US, Sipri said.

Some groups have estimated that Israel has a higher amount of warheads. In 2015, the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said that Israel had produced at least 115 nuclear warheads.

More than 13,000 nukes worldwide

Sipri’s latest report documented that the UK, China, India and Pakistan had also increased their nuclear arsenals in the last year, by between 10 and 30 warheads each.

Still, the watchdog noted that there were around 465 less nuclear weapons globally in 2020 when compared to 2019.

“The decrease in the overall number of nuclear weapons in the world in 2019 was largely due to the dismantlement of retired nuclear weapons by Russia and the USA – which together still possess over 90 percent of global nuclear weapons,” the report said.

At the start of 2020, the 9 nuclear-armed states possessed an estimated 13 400 #nuclear weapons:

Russia🇷🇺 6 375
USA🇺🇸 5 800
China🇨🇳 320
France🇫🇷 290
UK🇬🇧 215
Pakistan🇵🇰 160
India🇮🇳 150
Israel🇮🇱 90
North Korea🇰🇵 30–40

Read more in #SIPRIYearbook 2020 ➡️ https://t.co/nSYOHeZpkt pic.twitter.com/5uQ0N6ylRI

— SIPRI (@SIPRIorg) June 15, 2020

Currently, Sipri estimates that the nine nuclear-armed states – the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea – together possessed an estimated 13,400 nuclear weapons.

“Around 3,720 of the nuclear weapons are currently deployed with operational forces and nearly 1,800 of these are kept in a state of high operational alert,” the group said.

The other 9,680 nuclear warheads in the world are believed to be undeployed.

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Featured image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on Iran’s nuclear programme at the defence ministry in Tel Aviv on 30 April 2018 (Source: MEE)

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On Monday, a Moscow court sentenced US spy Paul Whelan to 16 years imprisonment.

Charged with espionage, he was caught red-handed in December 2018 and arrested after accepting a flash drive with sensitive information from an undercover Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) official.

Former US marine Whelan holds citizenship in four countries — Britain, Ireland, Canada and the US.

He was a BorgWarner security chief for its Michigan-based auto components company.

Russia’s FSB accused him of spying on the country, his main reason for being there.

On May 14, Moscow’s First Court of Appeals dismissed his complaint, claiming the case against him was fabricated.

A criminal case against him was opened under Article 276 of Russia’s Criminal Code. He faced  potential imprisonment of up to 20 years.

Russian prosecutors sought an 18-year sentence. The Moscow court ordered him imprisoned for 16 years.

Former FSB official Jan Neumann, now living in the US, said the agency “never busts anyone on espionage charges if there’s no espionage case, especially not foreign citizens,” adding:

Whelan’s arrest means FSB operatives “followed (him) and saw every step of the way and had enough evidence.”

“Each espionage case is a very high-profile investigation. Every step is under control of top-level officials, and everyone is very sensitive about every detail and aspect of such an operation.”

As for the timing of Whelan’s arrest, the FSB “wait(ed) for a perfect moment…something an alleged spy can’t deny.”

A BorgWarner statement said he “oversee(s) security at our facilities in Auburn Hills, Michigan and at other company locations around the world.”

Company spokeswoman Kathy Graham said BW has no facilities in Russia, so Whelan’s trip to the country and earlier ones had nothing to do with his employer.

In 2019, Vladimir Putin said Russian security services discovered and shut down espionage by 53 Russian nationals and 386 foreign agents in 2016,” perhaps similar numbers in other years.

Putin stressed that arrests aren’t made “to exchange them for someone else later on.”

Ignoring wrongfully imprisoned and harshly mistreated Russian political prisoners in the US, Pompeo demanded Whelan’s immediate release earlier, again following his 16-year sentence.

On Monday, Pompeo accused Russia of trying him in secret “with secret evidence, and without appropriate allowances for defense witnesses (sic),” adding:

“(D)uring his detention…his life (was) at risk by ignoring his long-standing medical condition and ke(eping) him isolated from family and friends (sic).”

Last year, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow offered to arrange for representatives of nations he has citizenship in to visit him if he wishes, adding:

“(O)nly representatives from the United States have visited (him) upon a request. The US side has not contacted the Russian side on that matter any more.”

“Other countries (he) has been confirmed to be a citizen of have asked for a permission to visit him.”

“If (he) says that he has no objections against such visits, that he needs them, that he wants them, they will be organized when convenient for all the sides.”

Sputnik International reported that Whelan visited Russia “regularly since 2007…(a)ccording to information provided to the Russian court.”

Zakharova noted that his “spying activities have been properly documented, and, remarkably, (they’ve) never been refuted by US officials during our working contacts.”

Unlike Russian political prisoners in the US, Whelan has been properly treated according to international law, including medical care when needed.

Trump regime envoy to Russia John Sullivan, formerly its deputy secretary of state, warned that Whelan’s arrest, conviction and sentencing will affect bilateral relations.

They can’t get much worse than already short of preemptive US war on its heartland and/or other targets.

On the issue of a possible prisoner exchange, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said “we have offered options many times.”

“We have said which US citizens serving a sentence in the Russian Federation could be exchanged for Russian citizens” unjustly behind bars in the US and mistreated as political prisoners.

Maria Butina (image on the right) was the most recent example. In July 2918, she was arrested and falsely charged with acting as a Russian foreign agent.

She was a student in the US unconnected to Russia’s government, no evidence suggesting otherwise, accusations against her fabricated.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry slammed what it called a US campaign to “stoke Russophobic hysteria.”

During detention from July 2018 – October 2019, she endured brutalizing physical and emotional mistreatment, amounting to torture.

Under a plea bargain deal despite guilty of no wrongdoing, she was released and allowed to return to Russia.

Home and safe, she was able to speak freely about her ordeal for the first time. Other Russian nationals mistreated in similar ways were and remain less fortunate.

Imprisoned by the Obama regime, Russian national Konstantin Yaroshenko remains incarcerated on false charges.

A commercial pilot and businessman, he endured “extreme government misconduct,” he said, including “torture, brutal and inhumane treatment in detention.”

Russian national Viktor Bout was and remains victimized like Yaroshenko, arrested and imprisoned on false charges.

Unjustly called a “merchant of death,” he ran a legitimate air cargo business. Yet he’s wrongfully imprisoned and mistreated, including by denial of proper medical care.

Russia’s embassy in Washington complained about the “endemic” mistreatment of Russian nationals in US prisons – for political reasons, for the “crime” of being a national of country America considers an adversary.

Moscow should demand release of them all in return for convicted spy Whelan and perhaps other legitimate US criminals in Russian prisons.

A Final Comment

Sergey Lavrov stressed that Whelan was caught “red-handed.”

His arrest, prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment had nothing to do with swapping him for Russian nationals behind bars in the US.

Claims otherwise are “completely untrue,” Lavrov stressed.

“We never do things like that. I’ll say it again. He was caught red-handed.”

Unlike harshly treated Russian political prisoners in the US, Whelan and other foreign nationals incarcerated in Russia are treated fairly.

In response to UK officials expressing concern about Whelan’s well-being, Lavrov said no consular requests to see him were received.

He recalled multiple denied requests by Moscow to visit Russian nationals Sergey and Yulia Skripal in Britain, adding:

If its foreign office or consular officials ask to meet with Whelan, Russia “will act in accordance the obligations enshrined in the Convention (on Consular Relations) and diplomatic courtesy.”

Russia will fulfill its obligations in dealings with all other countries — polar opposite how the US, Britain, and their imperial allies operate.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

There may be irony in Morocco now reconsidering and revamping its development model, which is its national guiding frameworks for social and environmental fulfillment. I have long been and remain a believer in Morocco’s existing frameworks for the people’s development. There is, after all, a lot to like. Municipalities are to create development plans made from the participation of all communities and groups. Environmental management is understood to integrate the local people. Agricultural programs seek to achieve the value-chain with communities of small landholders. Morocco is committed to the goals of decentralization, renewable energy, liberation of women and youth from social and economic hindrances, and well-established southern unity. Multicultural preservation is a non-equivocal national choice.

Furthermore, there are a lot more to these initiatives when we consider the innovation within each, and the extra value that can be accomplished when these frameworks operate well in tandem. For example, the Decentralization Roadmap designates the local communities as planners and implementors of development projects, to be buttressed by national level, private, and public support. Decentralization is made even more viable because also part of the Morocco model is its national Municipal Charter, which requires locally elected officials and civil society to plan alongside all community members in the creation of their human development plans. In the model design, this means that the participatory community work of municipalities and their forming of partnerships toward creating projects managed by and for the benefit of the people, contribute to the emergence of a decentralized system. This would have public administrations considerably more aware and directly supportive of the people’s priorities.

For Morocco, these and the other existing frameworks – call them together, model one – are intent upon and could set forward sustainable development initiatives across the countryside. Yet, it is honestly the rare exception when a rural municipality creates development plans genuinely reflective of collective community identification of the needed projects in their area. Rural women and girls are not, for the most part, aware of the Moroccan family code and the human rights that are theirs. Morocco’s unity with its multicultural identity is beautiful and real, but its translation into the critical growth for the populace is insufficient.

This search since 2019 to redefine Morocco’s model was made possible by the poverty-related frustrations at all levels and sectors of Moroccan society. It is commendable that the national dissatisfaction has brought on this reevaluation, with now six months remaining before the anticipated completion by the appointed commission. I hope that the framers of a new Moroccan approach – model two – fully appreciate the good afforded by model one. I would go further and suggest that model two would be visionary and bold by offering programmatic actions to successfully implement model one.

Morocco’s development frustrations stem from insufficient training in participatory development among those responsible for facilitating community dialogue and actions. Achieving success within Morocco’s current model depends on communities being integral to planning and management, and that condition can only be achieved when there are trained facilitators of participatory planning. Members of local councils typically have not experienced capacity-building programs that enhance these necessary applied skills. We cannot forge decentralization from beneficiary-determined community projects when the people in these jurisdictions have never gained the opportunity to learn how.

The projects people most need and want require funding, even when beneficiaries provide some in-kind labor. Therefore, the National Initiative for Human Development, Morocco’s flagship development program for people’s projects, should increase its support of municipal council initiatives once people’s participation in the design has genuinely occurred.

Morocco’s model today, in a nutshell, is to implement community development ideas for change along with public and private partners. A new model cannot escape implementation of the first one. Therefore, I will certainly take more comfort if the basis of model two were to emerge from almond growers in Taroudant, nomadic communities in the south, cumin harvesters in the east, women and girls of mountain communities, artisanal food processors in Azilal, recent high school graduates in Driouch, and youth living in potentially-limiting remote places. I hope it is a model composed by the people for whom it is intended.

Then, we will learn the composite of ways we can align resources with community actions for empowerment, decision-making, implementation, and transformation. After all, worthwhile models are those that reveal the means of securing support for communities to gain control over their livelihoods and future.

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This article was originally published on High Atlas Foundation.

Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir is a sociologist living in Marrakech, and president of the High Atlas Foundation, a non-for-profit organization dedicated to sustainable development in Morocco.

Featured image: The Aboghlou women’s cooperative meets outside in Ourika Valley, Morocco.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has achieved a position of global hegemony, acting as a kind of world police. Washington has constructed a new world order and its militaries travel the world in wars and operations to inspect the “correct” functioning of this order and its conformity with American interests. This has been, for decades, the basic guideline of American foreign policy, which has generated constant conflicts involving the US armed forces, with great financial costs and great material wear and tear of the troops, in addition to several constant social damages, mainly of psychological order, with thousands of American families affected by the wars around the world where Washington interferes.

Recently, in a speech at the West Point Military Academy officers’ graduation ceremony, U.S. President Donald Trump stated that the era of endless wars is over and that the American armed forces will no longer be the police of the world. According to Trump, the US is at a crucial moment in its history, after which the government’s attitude must change drastically, no longer adopting the global interventionist policy previously implemented, but avoiding participation in continuous wars and building a new path for the country’s foreign policy.

Trump’s words are truly impressive and reveal both a strategic and humanitarian side of the American president. This same speech had already been part of his several election promises during his campaign for president in 2016. Many critics of the president therefore claim that the Republican is only trying to recover his broken promises to secure a re-election, which is likely. However, the decision to impose a definitive end to American interventionist policy is also quite strategic at the present time, since these guidelines are no longer adequate to the dynamics of the contemporary world, with a strong rise of emerging powers and geopolitical multipolarization.

However, even though Trump, international society and the American people want the end of the interventions, this is not the interest of an even deeper group of American politics: the Deep State. The secret networks of businessmen, bankers, military and intelligence agents, who really govern the U.S., will not allow Trump, in his last months in office, to make such bold decisions and will certainly act strongly to contain him. The American Deep State has an interest in maintaining operations because it is the members of these groups who are the real economically benefited by these interventions, unlike the American people.

In fact, we can even speculate whether Donald Trump’s intentions were not already known to the Deep State before they went public in his address to the military, given that in recent weeks the country has sunk into a wave of violent protests and rebellions, which, while apparently fighting against racism and discrimination, in practice promote widespread attacks against the people and the Trump administration, generating suspicions of being organized demonstrations with much deeper purposes than fighting racism and remembering the memory of George Floyd.

If Trump continues with his plan to end interventionism, the next country to undergo intervention will be the United States, where the “riots” will reach ever greater levels of violence and the country will be on the verge of a racial war. The U.S. will then undergo a colorful internal revolution, organized by the Deep State. Day after day, anti-Trump discourse is gaining more and more aggressive tone by the opposition. Last week, the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, considered the possibility of military intervention against the American president.

On the other hand, if Trump renounces his goals and capitulates to the power of the Deep State, his image will be discredited and the victory of his enemies will be an even closer scenario. Indeed, tensions only tend to increase in the United States, which, amid more than 100,000 killed by the new coronavirus pandemic, has to deal with a major political disruption, causing even more instability, chaos and fear about the uncertain future.

Several points have yet to be verified. What will be, from now on, Trump’s stance on the issue of Venezuela and the legitimate government and Nicolás Maduro? What will Trump do to withdraw his troops from across the Middle East? What will he do to Iran? What will he do to China? Perhaps not even Trump is sure what to do, but just because he proposes to think of something to ease world tensions, the president is already worthy of attention.

Yet, is this also Biden’s wish? The presidential candidate and opponent of Trump seems, on the contrary, much more willing to maintain the interventionism and practice of the world police, which will cause much more world wars and tensions. Perhaps, for the first time in recent history, an American president and Deep State are really facing off.

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Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As WikiLeaks announced at the time,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Its that last sentence, you see.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Rima Najjar, June 16, 2020

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

Israel’s Illegal Annexation of Palestine

By James J. Zogby, June 16, 2020

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

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

By Max Blumenthal, June 16, 2020

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

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

By Paul Antonopoulos, June 16, 2020

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

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

By Global Research News, June 15, 2020

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

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

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

America’s Supernational Sovereignty

By Philip Giraldi, June 15, 2020

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

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

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, June 15, 2020

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

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