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Author’s Note: The following is the text of a speech delivered on June 19, 2010 on the 145th anniversary of Juneteenth. This address is being republished in honor of the 155^th commemoration of Juneteenth in light of the resurgence of the anti-racist struggle in the United States and the international community. The event a decade ago was held at the offices of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition and the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI) located in the Midtown District in Detroit.

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Today is the 145th anniversary of Juneteenth, a national holiday for the African American people who spent nearly 250 years enslaved inside the British colonies of North America and the eventual United States of America. The holiday represents the struggle of African people to end slavery, legalized segregation, lynching, wage discrimination and all other forms of exploitation and national oppression.

In a declaration issued by the Union Army after the conclusion of the Civil War with specific reference to the state of Texas said that:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.” (U.S. Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, June 19, 1865, Source: Texas State Library)

Why was this statement so significant since President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation in August 1862 which became valid on January 1, 1863? (Celebrated as Emancipation Day)

The fact of the matter was that the ruling elites of the Confederacy were not about to abide by an executive order freeing their enslaved Africans from bondage. This was a proclamation that was imposed through the necessities of war in an effort to undermine the economic basis of Southern society and its way of life.

In 1860, Karl Marx wrote to Frederick Engels saying:

“In my opinion, the biggest things that are happening in the world today are on the one hand the movement of the slaves in America started by the death of John Brown, and on the other the movement of the serfs in Russia.” (Chronicles of Black Protest, Edited by Bradford Chambers, 1968, p. 107)

Even though the Abolitionist movement had been in existence for decades and the increasingly rebellious character of the slaves became a serious factor during the late 1850s, the ruling class in the North and the South were not prepared for the emancipation of four million Africans inside the United States. Although Lincoln had previously said that he was anti-slavery, his inaugural address in 1861 left much to be desired for the Abolitionists.

According to Bradford Chambers in his book “Chronicles of Black Protest”, Frederick Douglass, the anti-slavery agitator and journalist, believed strongly in the inevitable emancipation of African people in the United States. Douglass had freed himself from slavery and would eventually travel to Ireland during the 1840s where he would gain international support from the Irish national movement for the cause of emancipation within the United States.

However, in 1861, Chambers recounts that “Douglass’ confidence that emancipation would come about fell precipitously in the months following Lincoln’s election as President. Disenchantment began with the inaugural address. In that address Lincoln announced his intention to keep out of the affairs of states that permitted slavery, although he had previously opposed the extension of slavery in the new states being formed in the West.” (Chronicles of Black Protest, Chambers, p.108)

With further reference to Douglass’ attitude towards the Lincoln administration in early 1861, Chambers notes:

“In his disillusionment Douglass wrote in his Monthly that he planned to visit Haiti to consider it as a haven for black Americans. Haiti—the only place in the New World where black slaves had successfully revolted and formed their own country. Douglass was scheduled to sail on April 25, 1861. Then on April 12 Confederate guns fired on Fort Sumter, and the Civil War began.”

Chambers continues by pointing out that: “Douglass and other black leaders immediately began a campaign to convince Lincoln that, in Douglass’ words, ‘the Union could never prosper until the war assumed an antislavery attitude, and the Negro was enlisted on the loyal side.’ Nonetheless, Lincoln continued to avoid the Abolitionists’ demands to end slavery until the middle of 1862 when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a last ditch effort to coerce the South to surrender in light of the threat to free the enslaved Africans.

Nonetheless, it was the objective conditions on the battlefield, the pressure from Radical Republicans in Congress such as Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, who along with Douglass and other abolitionists demanded that Lincoln issue the order to end slavery, as well as the international shift in the balance of forces between Britain, France and Russia that led to a blockade of cotton exports to Europe, that eventually forced the Lincoln administration to declare an end to slavery and to enlist Africans in the Union Army.

According to Chambers,

“Fully as important was the international objective. By adding as an aim of the Civil War the abolition of slavery, the Proclamation swung international opinion against the South and crushed its hope—a very real hope—that Great Britain and France would intervene on their behalf. Manufacturing interests in both these countries, deprived of cotton imports by the Union blockade of Southern ports, were urging their governments to declare in favor of the South. The Proclamation of Emancipation rallied the workers in Britain and France in defense of the North. Czar Alexander of Russia sent his fleet across the sea to anchor off the coast of New York, ready to do battle if England and France tried to break the blockade of the South.” (Chambers, p. 110)

The Thirteenth Amendment and the Status of African People

Despite the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery did not end until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. However, the Thirteenth Amendment would not resolve the national oppression of the African people in the United States. The question of the economic, social and political status of the former slaves and their free counterparts was not solved with the conclusion of the War.

African American photo and graphic commemorating Juneteenth

In many areas where slavery was the most profitable in the South, Africans constituted a majority or a substantial section of population groups in the counties and regions of various states. This was the situation in areas of Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana and other states, where as a result of the systems of cotton and other agricultural commodities production, Africans outnumbered whites both slave owners and non-slave owners.

However, in Texas, where Maj. Gen. Granger’s order was declared some 145 years ago today, the demographic situation was different than in many other areas of the South. W.E.B. DuBois, in his study entitled “Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward A History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880,” says that

“Texas had, in 1860, 182,921 Negroes and 420,891 whites, thus putting this state among those where the Negro population was a decided minority, and white immigration destined greatly to increase the preponderance of the whites.” (DuBois, p.552)

DuBois also notes that in Texas:

“The division of the planters and poor whites was less distinct in this state than in many others.” As a result of the Mexican-American War and the seizure of Texas by the white settlers and the United States Government there was much of what DuBois described as “plenty of rich land and the poorest white men could get a start; this increased demand for labor.” (DuBois, p.552)

The resistance to the emancipation of Africans was immediate and violent on the part of the Confederate soldiers and their supporters. DuBois recounts that:

“When the war neared its end, the Confederate troops in Texas got out of hand and began rebelling and looting. Towns like Houston were burned, and clothes and food of all sorts of goods stolen. The Texas Republican (newspaper) stressed ‘the ruinous effect of freeing four million ignorant and helpless blacks,’ and said that the people of the North would be glad to witness a return of slavery, because it would raise ‘larger crops and a richer market for Yankee manufacturers.’” (DuBois, p.553)

This pattern of destruction and looting was repeated in other cities in the South including Richmond, Virginia, where Confederate troops sought to burn down the city when the Union Troops arrived with a sizeable regiment of Black soldiers who liberated the city in April 1865.

The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment was significant because it included a provision in Section II which declared: “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” The Radicals in Congress like Charles Sumner believed that this granted the power to enfranchise Africans. It must be kept in mind that at the end of the Civil War many of the southern states were under minority control with appointed military governors. The planters and their allies were adamantly against the granting of suffrage to the former slaves.

This controversy surrounding the interpretation of the Thirteenth Amendment would continue with the adoption of both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. There have been recent statements from politicians within the so-called Tea Party movement that have questioned the constitutionality of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

DuBois in Black Reconstruction points to this important debate that took place within Congress in 1865. After the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, a Civil Rights Bill was introduced that was met with skepticism and opposition.

DuBois notes that:

“The Civil Rights Bill was taken up on December 13, but Sherman of Ohio reminded the Senate that there was scarcely a state in the Union that did not make distinctions on account of color, and wished, therefore, to postpone action until the Thirteenth Amendment had been adopted. Saulsbury of Maryland called it ‘an insane effort to elevate the African to the dignity of the white race’, and claimed that the Thirteenth Amendment would carry no such power as Sherman assumed.” (DuBois, p. 271)

U.S. History and the Right of Self-Determination of Oppressed Peoples

Two recent political acts that have gained widespread publicity in the corporate media were the proclamation of Southern Heritage Month in the state of Virginia by Gov. Robert McDonell in April 2010 and the subsequent opinion piece by Prof. Henry Louis Gates of Harvard who questioned the legitimacy of the demand for reparations among African Americans in the United States. In previous articles, “Confederate Heritage and Distortion of History” and The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Rise of World Capitalism,” examined issues related to the responsibility for and the continuing social impact of slavery. (See this)

These ideological attacks from the right to full democracy and self-determination for the African American people and other oppressed national groups in the United States are coming at a time of profound economic restructuring and imperialist military expansion around the world. The apartheid bills enacted in Arizona that legalized racial profiling and outlaws ethnic studies, much be viewed within the context of the rapidly shifting demographic composition of the U.S. and the need on the part of the capitalist class to maximize profits amid economic decline.

The Tea Party movement represents such an ideological offensive aimed at dividing and weakening the struggle of the nationally oppressed and the working class as a whole. Yet the mass outpouring on May Day of over one million people who said no to anti-immigrant bigotry and yes to jobs, full-employment and legalizations for all, far outweighs the efforts of racists and chauvinists elements backed by the capitalist class. The burgeoning unity of African Americans, Latino/as, Arab Americans, Asians and other oppressed groups will be a key element in building the people’s movement that is needed to abolish capitalism and imperialism.

Major historical events of the 19th century: the large-scale removal of the Native people, the Mexican-American War and the Civil War that abolished African slavery, still remain unresolved today. The Native people of Arizona have spoken out forcefully against the apartheid laws now being imposed that target the Mexican people whose land was stolen at the same time that Africans were being enslaved inside the United States.

In 2010, the current economic crisis has most profoundly affected the African American and Latino/as people. A recent study conducted by the Center for Responsible Lending indicates that Latino/as and African Americans have the highest foreclosure rates in the country. Both groups also have the highest unemployment rates in the U.S. labor market.

Compounding these economic realities, African American and Latino/as are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system with incarceration rates that far outstrip their numbers within the general population. These rates of imprisonment are directly linked to racial profiling by law-enforcement and homeland security, which the passage of SB 1070 only reinforces. This is why efforts to pass such legislation in Michigan should be opposed by African Americans, Latino/as and all people of goodwill.

The struggle for genuine democracy and the right of self-determination for oppressed nations are principled questions within the socialist movement. V. I. Lenin, the leader and chief theoretician of the Russian Revolution, wrote his theses on “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination” in early 1916 during World War I. Although the Bolshevik Party would not seize power until the following year in 1917, Lenin was adamant that both the struggle for full democracy and self-determination for oppressed nations were equally indispensable in the program of the revolutionary vanguard party.

Lenin said during this period:

“The socialist revolution is not a single act, it is not one battle on one front, but a whole epoch of acute class conflicts, a long series of battles on all fronts, i.e., on all questions of economics and politics, battles that can only end in the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. It would be a radical mistake to think that the struggle for democracy was capable of diverting the proletariat from the socialist revolution or of hiding, overshadowing it, etc. On the contrary, in the same way as there can be no victorious socialism that does not practice full democracy, so the proletariat cannot prepare for its victory over the bourgeoisie without an all-around, consistent and revolutionary struggle for democracy.” (Lenin, Selected Writings on National Liberation, Socialism and Imperialism, p. 111)

Lenin then goes on to state as well:

“It would be no less a mistake to remove one of the points of the democratic program, for example, the point on the self-determination of nations, on the grounds of it being ‘impracticable’ or ‘illusory’ under imperialism…. (Lenin, p. 111) Increased national oppression under imperialism does not mean that Social-Democracy should reject what the bourgeoisie call the ‘utopian’ struggle for the freedom of nations to secede but, on the contrary, it should make greater use of the conflicts that arise in this sphere, too, as grounds for mass action and for revolutionary attacks on the bourgeoisie.” (Lenin, p. 113)

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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

Since 2011, the US and allies have promoted, trained and supplied militants trying to bring about “regime change” in Damascus. Having failed in that effort, they have tried to strangle Syria economically. The goal has always been the same: to force Syria to change politically. This month, June 2020, the aggression reaches a new level with extreme sanctions known as the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act.

The new law is fraudulent on two counts. It is called “Caesar” in reference to a 2014 propaganda stunt involving an anonymous Syrian who was alleged to be a military photographer. He claimed to have 55,000 photos showing about eleven thousand victims of Syrian government torture. As the Christian Science Monitor said at the time, the “Caesar” report was “A well-timed propaganda exercise funded by Qatar.”  A 30 page analysis later confirmed that the “Caesar” report was a fraud with nearly half the photos showing the OPPOSITE of what was claimed: they documented dead Syrian soldiers and civilian victims of “rebel” car bombs and attacks.

The Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act is also fraudulent by claiming to “protect civilians”. In reality, it is punishes and hurts the vast majority of  17 million persons living in Syria. It will result in thousands of civilians suffering and dying needlessly.

Pre-Existing Sanctions

The US has been hostile to Syria for many decades. Unlike Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Syria under Hafez al Assad refused to make a peace treaty with Israel.  Syria was designated a “state sponsor of terrorism” and first sanctioned by the U.S. in 1979.

After the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, Syria accepted about one million Iraqi refugees and supported the Iraqi resistance in various ways.  In retaliation, the US escalated punishing sanctions in 2004.

In 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressured Syria to change their foreign policy and be more friendly to Israel. Syrian President Bashar al Assad pointedly declined.  Twelve months later, when protests and violence began in Syria in 2011, the US,  Europe and Gulf monarchies (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates) quickly supported the opposition and imposed more sanctions.

In 2016, after five years of crisis and war, a report on the humanitarian impact of sanctions on Syria was prepared for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. It noted that “U.S. and E.U. sanctions on Syria are some of the most complicated and far-reaching sanctions regimes ever imposed.” The 30 page report went on document with case studies how humanitarian aid which is supposed to be permitted is effectively stopped. The sanction regulations, licenses, and penalties  make it so difficult and risky that humanitarian aid is effectively prevented. The report concluded with thirteen specific recommendations to allow humanitarian and development aid.

But there was not relaxation or changes in the maze of rules and sanctions to allow humanitarian relief.  On the contrary,  as the Syrian government was expelling terrorists from east Aleppo, southern  Damascus, and Deir Ezzor,  the US and EU  blocked all aid for reconstruction.  The US and allies were intent to NOT allow Syria to rebuild and reconstruct.

In 2018, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Idriss Jazairy, prepared a report on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on human rights in Syria. He noted,

“Unilateral  coercive measures on agricultural inputs and outputs, medicines, on many dual use items related to water and sanitation, public electricity and transportation, and eventually on rebuilding schools, hospitals and other public buildings and services, are increasingly difficult to justify, if they ever were justifiable.” 

Before 2011, 90% of pharmaceutical needs were filled by Syrian factories.  Those factories which remain have trouble getting raw materials and cannot get replacement parts for equipment. For example an expensive dialysis machine or MRI machine from Siemens or General Electric is rendered useless because Syria cannot import the spare part of software. On paper, they can purchase this but in reality they cannot.

Over 500,000 civilians returned to Aleppo after the terrorists were expelled at end of 2016. But reconstruction aid is prohibited by US sanctions and UN rules.  They can receive “shelter kits” with plastic but rebuilding with glass and cement walls is not allowed because “reconstruction” is prohibited. This article describes numerous case examples from war torn Aleppo.

The author had a personal experience with the impact of sanctions. A Syrian friend could not get hearing aid batteries for a youth who was hard of hearing. Sanctions prevented him from being able to order the item because financial transactions and delivery is prohibited without a special license. A stockpile of the specialized batteries was easy to purchase in the USA but took almost a year to get to the destination in Syria.

US Economic Bullying and Terrorism

The Caesar Act extends the sanctions from applying to US nationals and companies to any individuals and corporations. It claims the supra-national prerogative to apply US laws to anyone. “Sanctions with respect to foreign persons” include blocking and seizing the property and assets of a person or company deemed to have violated the US law. This is compounded by a fiscal penalty which can be huge. In 2014, one of the largest international banks, BNP Paribas, was fined $9 Billion for violating US sanctions against Cuba, Iran and Sudan.

The Caesar Act claims the Syria Central Bank is a “primary money laundering” institution and thus in a special category. It aims to make it impossible for Syrian companies to export and import from Lebanon. It will make it extremely difficult or impossible for Syrians abroad to transfer money to support family members in Syria.

In addition to these extraordinary attacks, the US is undermining and destabilizing the Syrian currency.  In October 2019, the Syrian currency was trading at about 650 Syrian pounds to one US dollar. Now, just 8 months later, the rate is 2600 to the US dollar.  Part of the reason is because of the threat of Caesar sanctions.

Another reason is because of US pressure on the main trading partner,  Lebanon.  Traditionally, Lebanon is the main partner for both imports and exports. In spring 2019 US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, threatened Lebanon if they did not change their policies. It was blatant interference in Lebanese internal affairs. In Fall 2019 street protests began, and the Lebanese and Syrian banking crisis also began.

With the devaluation of their currency, prices of many items has risen dramatically. Agricultural, medical, industrial and other raw materials and finished goods are almost impossible to acquire.

The shortage of  food is compounded because wheat fields in North East Syria, the bread basket of Syria, have been intentionally set on fire.  In the past week, sectarian groups in Lebanon have blocked World Food Program trucks carrying food aid to Syria. Meanwhile, in eastern Syria,  the US and its proxy militia control and profit from the oil fields while the Syrian government and civilians struggle with a severe shortage oil and gas.

James Jeffrey and US Policy

In a June 7 webinar, the Special Representative for Syria Engagement, Ambassador James Jeffrey, brazenly stated the US policy.  The US seeks to prevent Syria from rebuilding. He said “We threw everything but the kitchen sink …. into the Caesar Act.”

The exception to punishing sanctions are 1) Idlib province in the North West, controlled by Al Qaeda extremists and Turkish invading forces and 2) north east Syria controlled by US troops and the proxy separatists known as the “Syrian Democratic Forces”. The US has designated $50 million to support “humanitarian aid” to these areas. Other US allies will pump in hundreds of millions more in aid and “investments”.  US dollars and Turkish lira are being pumped into these areas in another tactic to undermine the Syrian currency and sovereignty.

In contrast, the vast majority of Syrians – about 17 million – are being suffocated and hurt by the extreme sanctions.

The US has multiple goals. One goal is to prevent Syria from recovering. Another goal is to prolong the conflict and damage those countries who have assisted Syria.  With consummate cynicism and amorality, the US Envoy for Syria James Jeffrey described his task: “My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.” Evidently  there has been no significant change in foreign policy assumptions and goals since the US and Saudi Arabia began interfering in Afghanistan in 1979.

In his 2018 “End of Mission” statement, the United Nations Special Rapporteur was diplomatic but clear about the use of unilateral coercive sanctions against Syria:  “the use of such measures may be contrary to international law, international humanitarian law, the UN Charter and the norms and principles governing peaceful relations among States.”

Caesar and the Democrats

The economic and other attacks on Syria have been promoted by right wing hawks, especially fervent supporters of Israel. Eliot Engel, chairman of the Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee, pushed to get the Caesar Act into law for years. This was finally done by embedding it in the humongous 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.

In a hopeful sign that times may be changing,  a progressive candidate named Jamaal Bowman  may unseat Engel as the Democratic candidate in the upcoming election. Eliot Engel is supported by Hillary Clinton and other foreign policy hawks.  Jamaal Bowman is supported by Bernie Sanders.

While this may offer hope for the future, the vast majority of Syrians continue as victims of US foreign policy delusions, hypocrisy, cynicism and cruelty.

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Rick Sterling is a journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be reached at [email protected]

A devastating trend of soaring inequality in the U.S. continues.

In their weekly analysis of wealth data Thursday, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) found that billionaires have seen their combined net worth grow by $584 billion in the three months since the Covid-19 pandemic shuttered much of the U.S. economy and threw more than 45 million people out of work.

Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, and Larry Ellison—the five wealthiest billionaires in the U.S.—saw their collective riches grow by $101.7 billion between March 18 and June 17, according to the new report. A dozen other American billionaires saw their wealth more than double during that same period.

Frank Clemente, ATF executive director, said in a statement that over the past three months, “about 600 billionaires increased their wealth by far more than the nation’s governors say their states need in fiscal assistance to keep delivering services to 330 million residents.”

“Their wealth increased twice as much as the federal government paid out in one-time checks to more than 150 million Americans,” said Clemente. “This orgy of wealth shows how fundamentally flawed our economic system is.”

“If this pandemic reveals anything,” Clemente added, “it’s how unequal our society has become and how drastically it must change.”

NEW FINDINGS from our @inequalityorg + @4TaxFairness:

In 3 months, the U.S. added 29 more billionaires while 45.5 million filed for unemployment.

Billionaires have seen their net worth skyrocket $584 billion, or 20%, since the beginning of the pandemic. pic.twitter.com/lXsZ9MTuwQ

— Institute for Policy Studies (@IPS_DC) June 18, 2020

IPS, a progressive think-tank, has been publishing annual analyses of billionaire wealth increases since 2015. But in May, IPS began releasing weekly reports documenting the steady surge in billionaire wealth amid the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic collapse—a phenomenon the group dubbed “pandemic profiteering.”

Since March 18, when social distancing measures and economic shutdowns were in place across the U.S., the combined wealth of America’s billionaires has grown from $2.948 trillion to $3.531 trillion, the latest report by IPS and ATF found.

“During the same approximate three-month period, nearly 2.1 million Americans fell ill with the virus and about 118,000 died from it,” the report notes. “Among other pandemic victims are 27 million Americans who may lose their employer-provided healthcare coverage. Low-wage workers, people of color, and women have suffered disproportionately in the combined medical and economic crises.”

Chuck Collins, executive director of the IPS Program on Inequality, said in a statement that “the last thing U.S. society needs is more economic and racial polarization.”

“The surge in billionaire wealth and pandemic profiteering undermines the unity and solidarity that the American people will require to recover and grow together, not pull further apart,” said Collins.

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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A newly-released 2017 internal review of security practices at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) confirms that the top secret agency had developed an arsenal of cyber espionage tools and would not have known about the massive “Vault 7” data hack of them had WikiLeaks not made it public.

Vault 7 is the name given to a trove of hacked documents from the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI) that were anonymously shared with WikiLeaks, which the online site began publishing information about on March 7, 2017. The hack obtained nearly the entire arsenal of espionage tools and the methods by which the CIA was conducting illegal electronic surveillance and cyber warfare around the world.

The internal report says that the CIA could not determine the precise scope of the data breach, “We assess that in spring 2016 a CIA employee stole at least 180 gigabytes to as much as 34 terabytes of information. This is roughly equivalent to 11.6 million to 2.2 billion pages in Microsoft Word.” It was the largest unauthorized disclosure of classified information in the history of the CIA.

Significantly, the heavily redacted and partially released, “WikiLeaks Task Force Final Report” from October 17, 2017 says, “Because the stolen data resided on a mission system that lacked user activity monitoring and a robust server audit capability, we did not realize the loss had occurred until a year later, when WikiLeaks publicly announced it in March 2017. Had the data been stolen for the benefit of a state adversary and not published, we might still be unaware of the loss—as would be true for the vast majority of data on Agency mission systems.”

The CIA report also says that WikiLeaks published primarily “user and training guides” from a collaboration and communication platform called Confluence along with “limited source code” from a repository called DevLan: Stash and that “All of the documents reveal, to varying degrees, CIA’s tradecraft in cyber operations.”

The task force report was initially provided to the Washington Post on Tuesday by the office of Democratic Party Senator from Oregon Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who obtained the incomplete document—pages 15 through 44 have been removed—from the Justice Department.

The same limited version of the report had been introduced as evidence in the trial of Joshua Schulte, a former CIA employee who worked at CCI and has been accused of stealing the Vault 7 documents and handing them over to WikiLeaks. Schulte pled not guilty to eleven charges covered by the US Espionage Act and went to trial in early February.

The federal case ended in a hung jury in early March on the most serious eight charges against Schulte and convicted him only on the lesser charges of contempt of court and making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As the World Socialist Web Site explained at the time, the failure to convict Schulte of leaking the Vault 7 trove created a stumbling block for the US government in its attempt to extradite WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange, who is currently being held in London’s Belmarsh Prison in violation of his rights.

The mistrial in the case of Schulte has so far prevented the US from adding anything about the Vault 7 breach into the already trumped up US charges against Assange. However, Assistant US Attorney David Denton told a judge in the Southern District of New York on May 18 that the Department of Justice “does intend to retry Mr. Schulte on the espionage charges.”

The Vault 7 release by WikiLeaks exposed the CIA’s use of special software to take control of cars, smart TVs, web browsers, smartphones and personal computers for the purpose of spying on individuals and organizations. The exposure of the CIA’s cyber espionage and warfare repository yielded extensive information about these programs by their code names and what function they perform.

An example is a malware tool called Athena which was developed in conjunction with the release of Microsoft Windows operating system 10 in 2015. The Athena malware, which was jointly developed by the CIA and a New Hampshire software company called Siege Technologies, hijacks the Windows Remote Access services utility on Windows 10 computers, enabling an unauthorized user to gain access to the PC and steal and delete private data or install additional malicious software.

Another tool developed by the CIA called Scribbles is designed to track whistleblowers and journalists by embedding “web beacon” tags into classified documents in order to trace who leaked them. This tool was designed to interact with Microsoft Office documents whereby when any CIA watermarked document is opened, an invisible document hosted on the agency’s server is loaded into it, generating an HTTP request that gathers information about who is opening the file and where it is being opened.

It has been estimated that training and user information as well as the source code for as many as 91 such CIA tools were released in the Vault 7 breach.

The majority of corporate media coverage of the newly released document has focused on the vulnerability of the CIA servers and what the agency intends to do about it, the purpose of the Senate Intelligence Committee attempt to make the report public in the first place, to the exclusion of any mention of the tools that were being developed and the blatantly criminal activity of the CIA associated with them.

They have also not drawn attention to the fact that the CIA had, until the Schulte trial and release of the redacted review document, refused to officially acknowledge the existence of the cyber espionage and warfare tools. At the time of the WikiLeaks Vault 7 revelations, when asked about the authenticity of the trove, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Hayden, replied that the organization does “not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents.”

The only other government official to mention the enormous hack of the CIA was President Donald Trump, who, on March 15, 2017, stated during an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson that “the CIA was hacked, and a lot of things taken.” In typical fashion, Democratic Representative Adam Schiff of California, then the Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, issued a news release the next day that said, “In his effort to once again blame Obama, the President appeared to have discussed something that, if true and accurate, would otherwise be considered classified information.”

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Rosemary Frei has an MSc in molecular biology. She has been a freelance medical writer and journalist for twenty-two years, and is now an independent investigative journalist.

In the following interview with James Corbett, she explains that at the beginning of the declared pandemic in the UK, the “sniffles” were deemed sufficient to warrant a Covid diagnosis.

In Canada, the “sniffles and a cough” were sufficient.

Furthermore, if one person with one symptom was deemed to have Covid in a Long Term Care facility, then everyone in the facility (with similar symptomatology) was deemed to have it as well. These “broadened definitions” she argues, necessarily inflated “Covid” numbers.

Triage guidelines also changed. People in Long Term Care are not sent to the hospitals, which, presumably, are better equipped to deal with emergencies. This, too, would likely inflate “Covid” numbers, by reducing patient longevity.

Governing agencies also changed rules regarding Death Certificates and the removal and disposition of bodies.

Bodies are removed quickly, and this narrows the window for performing post mortems, since post mortems should be performed “in situ”. Death Certificates are now signed by Ontario’s Chief Coroner, Dr. Huyer, and not by an attending doctor or nurse practitioner familiar with the patient, which would normally be the case. Significantly, Dr. Dirk Huyer is now in charge of the expanding Covid-testing program in Ontario.

Frei suggests that drivers behind “pandemic guidelines”, and subsequent “excess deaths” include financial considerations. Older people are “expensive” and they contribute less to the tax base.

Corbett sees something else. Inflated Covid numbers “magnify the crisis” he says, and create a reservoir of people who will “line up” more readily for a vaccine.

This writer sees a governmental crime that needs to be investigated.

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A group of muscular cops carrying semi-automatic pistols and batons slowly move through the crowd at the end of an outdoor salsa concert. My friends and I have a bottle of rum, and I think for sure the cops will confiscate it, and maybe even arrest us.

Instead, the cops motion for us to drink up, and we quickly comply. They confiscate the glass bottle so it can’t be broken and used as a weapon.

This incident took place in Havana some years ago, and it tells a lot about what constitutes good policing. The cops were interested in preventing crime, not compounding it.

Contrary to the image of brutal and “repressive communists”, police in Cuba offer an instructive example for activists in the United States.

Police live in the cities they patrol. They generally treat citizens with respect. As I documented in my book Dateline Havana, police beatings of criminals are rare and police murders are nonexistent. Cuba has one of the lowest crime rates in Latin America.

The ongoing protests for Black lives in the United States have forced an unprecedented national debate about the role of policing. Should police departments be defunded and that money be diverted to help poor communities? Should the police be abolished altogether?

Cuba has wrestled with policing issues since the 1959 revolution. The government, while certainly having its share of failures, has created a system of community-police interaction that reduces crime without reliance on brute force.

Crime fighting in Cuba begins with a social safety net, which provides every Cuban with free education, free health care, and subsidized cultural events. Cuba doesn’t suffer from the scourges of homelessness and cartel-instigated drug addiction, despite traffickers’ regular attempts to smuggle drugs into Cuba from Florida.

The socialist economy means Cuba doesn’t have extremes of wealth and poverty. I’ve visited the homes of high-ranking government officials who live in middle-income neighborhoods. I have met police officers who lived in a modest apartment complex in the same neighborhood they patrolled.

Cuba uses community pressure to discourage crime. The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) were originally set up in the early 1960s to root out U.S.-backed counter revolutionaries. Nowadays, the CDRs promote public health and act as neighborhood watch groups.

Humberto Carillo Ramirez, a national CDR leader, told me in a radio documentary that local residents often know who the criminals are.

“If a family isn’t sending their kids to school or if a young person isn’t working and is getting into trouble . . . we meet with them,” he says. “We live on [their] block . . . We explain why it’s bad for the country and we also explain the severe legal consequences for them.”

When residents are convicted of crimes, CDR members visit them in jail.

“We want to . . . reincorporate them in society after they get out,” Carillo says.

In the early 1990s. Cuba faced a massive economic crisis brought on by the collapse of the Soviet Union and intensified by U.S. efforts to overthrow the government. Cubans faced severe shortages of gasoline, food, and electricity. Starting in 1996, the nation saw a sharp increase in home burglaries and street assaults; there was even an attempted armored car robbery.

By U.S. standards, crime in Cuba remained light, but it was more than Cubans were willing to accept. In 1999, the government passed a law that doubled some prison sentences. Judges also allowed fewer prisoners out on parole. Police were stationed on every corner in the tourist areas. The crackdown resulted in a 20 percent drop in crime, Supreme Court Justice Jorge Bodes Torres told me in an interview at the time.

He attributes the success to “law and order” measures and community organizing. “The majority of people are involved in fighting crime,” he says. “That’s the most important factor.”

Cuban political dissidents sharply disagree. They claim that police routinely beat and imprison government opponents. However, as I’ve documented, many of these dissidents are funded by Washington and regularly spread fake news, so their claims of systematic brutality lack credibility.

Some Cubans do have legitimate complaints. I’ve interviewed dozens of young Afro-Cuban men who have been stopped and questioned by police because they are Black.

Pablo Michel, a young Afro Cuban, tells me he was detained by police several times in the tourist areas of Havana. On one occasion, he drove two white women tourists to the Havana airport. Police stopped and questioned Michel, suspecting he was running an illegal taxi service. He says white Cubans taking foreigners to the airport “don’t have the same problems.”

Michel and others I interviewed say that police don’t conduct violent searches, and they don’t beat or shoot suspects. Nevertheless, too many police stereotype dark-skinned Cubans as thieves and hustlers, he says.

Late last year, the Cuban government announced a major anti-racism campaign. Officials plan to identify specific areas of discrimination, initiate a public debate, and educate the public.

“This is a real step forward, after we have fought for so many years,” Deyni Terri, founder of the Racial Unity Alliance in Havana, told Reuters last November. “It’s a good start.”

Obviously, institutions developed in Cuba can’t simply be transferred wholesale to the United States. But we can learn from the concept of community involvement, says Max Rameau, an organizer with the Washington, D.C.-based grassroots group Pan-African Community Action, who has studied Cuban police practices.

“We need different community entities for different tasks that are responsible for safety and wellbeing of the neighborhood,” he tells me in a phone interview. For instance, U.S. community groups can resolve mental health issues and family disputes without involving police.

But Rameau does not support getting rid of police altogether.

If a white supremacist attacks a Black church, as happened in South Carolina in 2015, he says,

“We want to make sure our community safety team can respond. In any society with different classes, you will have police. But we should have control over them.”

The U.S. debate about policing has shifted distinctly leftward. After the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, politicians called for police to wear body cameras. Today, after the murder of George Floyd, the Minneapolis City Council has voted to dismantle the police force, although it’s still hashing out the specifics.

Anti-police-brutality groups have developed a variety of plans to decentralize police departments into community forces, governed by civilian boards.

For the first time in recent history, people of all backgrounds in the United States are seriously discussing how to fundamentally change the police forces. Cuba’s experiences should be part of that discussion.

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Reese Erlich’s nationally distributed column, Foreign Correspondent, appears every two weeks. Follow him on  Twitter, @ReeseErlich; friend him on Facebook; and visit his webpage.

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

The title of John Bolton‘s revenge insinuates highly explosive internal affairs by a guy who’s, besides the Chief of Staff, the most important person besides the President in the White House. John Bolton was President Donald Trump’s Adviser for National Security from 8 April 2018 until 10 September 2019, where Trump fired him. The question arises why Trump took Bolton in the first place.

When President-elect Donald Trump was in the process of forming his team, John Bolton also begged for a job. The reason why Trump didn’t want him was his Stalin-like mustache. There would have been a better reason why Trump should have dismissed Bolton. Everybody in Washington D. C. knew what kind of hawk Bolton was. Bolton stands for military strength and war to get America’s will.

Ideally, the National Security adviser serves as a go-between and honest broker of various policy options on national security for the President. Bolton, however, was an advocate of his political agenda. Several times, he thwarted and sabotaged Trump’s policy. Bolton derailed Trump’s rapprochement towards the North Korean Chairman Kim Yong-un by saying the “Libyan model” can be applied to North Korea, too. He opted for regime change in Venezuela. And together with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, he was for war with Iran.

What Iran was concerned about, Bolton was much closer to Netanyahu than his boss, who talks big but doesn’t want war, unlike his predecessors. In the Syrian case, Bolton, together with military hawks torpedoed Trump withdrawal from Syria, again with the support of Netanyahu. It seemed Bolton was more concerned about the security of Israel than of the United States of America.

Why Bolton got the job anyway, were his very close ties to the pro-Israel lobby, especially Sheldon Adelson, Casino magnate and Billionaire from Las Vegas. Adelson would not negotiate with Teheran but would threaten them with an atomic bomb.[1] Adelson donated over 20 Billion to the Trump campaign and bribed Bolton into the White House, according to Washington insiders.

Bolton presents a chaotic President who embraces America’s enemies and spurns friends and was deeply suspicious of his government. According to Bolton, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place, writes Bolton.

Excerpts from the book were leaked to the press to boost the number of sales. Bolton pretends that Trump is easily influenced by foreign leaders, especially strongmen and presumed dictators. Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, rebuked this claim by saying that Putin can’t play Trump “like a fiddle” and that the US President can’t be manipulated.

According to Bolton, Trump asked China’s President Xi Jinping to help his re-election chances by buying more American soybeans and wheat. Trump supposedly agreed to the establishment of concentration camps for Muslim minorities. In the bilateral discussion between the two leaders, only interpreters were present. So much for “The Room where it happened.”

The question arises why didn’t Bolton testified in the impeachment hearings and later criticized the Democrats for getting the impeachment wrong? Before the Senate, Bolton could have said that Trump is unfit for the job. But now, after he got fired, throwing dirt at Trump contradicts all rules of fairness.

The Trump administration wants to prevent the publication of the book due to national security reasons. Besides the legal battle, Trump and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, hit out against Bolton. Pompeo called him a “traitor.” “I’ve not read the book, but from the excerpts I’ve seen published, John Bolton is spreading several lies, fully-spun half-truths, and outright falsehoods.” Pompeo’s reacted immediately because Bolton quotes Pompeo, had scribbled on a piece of paper that Trump “is full of shit.” Trump called Bolton a “washed-up guy” who broke the law.

The White House staff gave the book the go-ahead after having checked it of sensitive national security concerns. Perhaps Bolton thinks he can prevent Trump from winning a second term, but whether a book will make such a difference is somewhat questionable. As it seems, the book contains a lot of lies and many state secrets. The judge has to decide between the First Amendment and state secrets.

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Dr. Ludwig Watzal is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Note

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sCW4IasWXc

Featured image: U.S. National Security Advisor, Ambassador John Bolton meets The Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu for dinner at the Prime Minister’s Residence, in Jerusalem, August 2018. (U.S. Embassy/public domain)

That’s not a chip on my shoulder.
That’s your foot on my neck.
– Malcolm X

On May 25, a Minneapolis police officer tortured George Floyd to death in what his brother, Philonise Floyd, called “a modern-day lynching in broad daylight.” Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in all 50 states and Washington D.C.; the anti-racist uprisings continue.

Why do a majority of people in this country now support the Movement for Black Lives? Why have calls to defund and abolish the police entered the mainstream discourse? Why are people risking the deadly coronavirus to join the protests? And why are we seeing what may be the broadest popular movement in the history of the United States?

More than 400 years after the first Africans were kidnapped, forcibly brought to this country and enslaved, White supremacy continues to infect our society. Police murder Black people with impunity. Black people are incarcerated at an unprecedented rate. And White fragility keeps us in denial about our White skin privilege.

In his 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that racism must be exposed. He wrote,

“Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”

When the shocking image of Officer Derek Chauvin choking the life out of Floyd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds confronted us, we were forced to take sides. People of all races and ages were collectively enraged.

“People are marching as a way of screaming, a way of exhaling pain, as an enormous group catharsis,” Charles Blow wrote in The New York Times. “This isn’t only about the pain of police brutality, it’s about all the pain. This is about all the injustice and disrespect and oppression. This is about ancestry and progeny.”

The powerful video of Floyd’s lynching is reminiscent of the 1950s Civil Rights Movement. Televised images from Little Rock in 1957 “were so forceful that they told their own truths and needed virtually no narration,” David Halberstam wrote in The Fifties. “It was hard for people watching at home not to take sides: There they were, sitting in their living rooms in front of their own television sets watching orderly black children behaving with great dignity, trying to obtain nothing more than a decent education, the most elemental of American birthrights, yet being assaulted by a vicious mob of poor whites.”

Although white supremacy continues to permeate our society, Donald Trump has unleashed the dogs of racism in a frightening way. An early promoter of the Birther movement, Trump launched his 2016 presidential campaign by calling Mexicans rapists and criminals. When he said there were “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville, one side was the White supremacists.

In the face of massive protests throughout the country, Trump announced on June 1 that he had ordered federal troops to Washington, D.C., “to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights.” This is evidence of what Kali Akuno, co-founder and co-director of Operation Jackson, calls Trump’s “Brown Shirt Force.” In a reference that evokes Bull Connor’s 1963 threats against peaceful civil rights protesters with snarling dogs, Trump tweeted he would use “vicious dogs” against protesters who tried to breach the fence in front of the White House. “Negro Dogs” were used to catch runaway slaves and escaped prisoners during Jim Crow.

White supremacy is rooted in the belief that Black people are inferior to White people. In 1900, Charles Carroll, a polygenist minister in Missouri, wrote a rant opposing miscegenation called The Negro, a Beast; or, “In the Image of God.” In it, he portrays “The Negro, a beast, but created with articulate speech and hands, that he may be of service to his owner – the White Man.”

As revealed in my cousin Erika Cohn’s new documentary, Belly of the Beast, many people, particularly women of color, in California women’s prisons have been forcibly sterilized. Nineteen-year-old Kelli Dillon began her 15-year sentence for killing her husband who was trying to kill her. While undergoing a routine procedure, Dillon was sterilized against her will. During the 20th century, over 30 U.S. states passed laws allowing forced sterilization. After World War II, compulsory sterilizations primarily targeted non-white women. From 1909-1979, California forcibly sterilized more than 20,000 people, many labeled “defectives,” including people of color.

The Thirteenth Amendment, enacted in 1865, is widely regarded as abolishing slavery. It reads,

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” [emphasis added].

But Professor Dylan Rodriguez, writing in the Harvard Law Review, describes “the Thirteenth Amendment’s juridical translation of slavery from a racial chattel institution to a criminal justice function.” The amendment “in fact refurbished a fundamental (racial) power relation mediated by the racist state by recodifying the terms of bodily capture and subjection (that is, enslavement by a state).” We have what Rodriguez calls the “carceral-racial state.”

We Charge Genocide (WCG), the grassroots organization based in Chicago, disagrees with the notion that “police brutality” is exceptional rather than part and parcel of systemic racism suffered by Black and Brown people. WCG decries “systemic, institutionalized, juridically condoned police torture, cruelty, inhumane and degrading treatment, murder, harassment, and unjustified detention,” Rodriguez writes.

Floyd’s murder galvanized calls for reforms such as banning chokeholds, no-knock warrants, and the use of military weapons against protesters; ending qualified immunity for officers charged with using excessive force; mandating body-worn cameras, and the creation of a federal database of abusive officers.

In 2015, six cities including Minneapolis were part of Barack Obama’s Justice Department’s new form of policing program. But police brutality today is as brutal as ever.

Maria Nieto Senour resigned after serving for four years on the San Diego Community Review Board on Police Practices. “Unfortunately, there are members of the CRB who had such a pro-police bias that they did not represent the broader community,” she told Jurist. The board was provided with “a great deal of information from the police perspective and relatively little from the perspective of marginalized communities.” Senour said that much of what the police do “would be better done by mental health and/or social workers so funding should be shifted away from police budgets and assigned to other functions.”

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) supports 8 to Abolition’s demands to defund the police, demilitarize communities, remove police from schools, free people from prisons and jails, repeal laws that criminalize survival, invest in community self-governance, provide safe housing for everyone, and invest in care, not cops. The NLG also supports reparations for slavery and discrimination against Africans and African descendants.

Rodriguez calls abolition “a fundamentally creative force” in one of “those rare historical moments when definitive destruction of oppressive structures and power relations appears possible, practical, and capable of catalyzing a (potentially) radically different social form.” He advocates “a radical reconfiguration of justice.”

This transformational moment is becoming a transformational movement. The time to effect revolutionary change is now.

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This article was originally published on Jurist.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is by BruceEmmerling / Pixabay

Malcolm X Speech in Los Angeles on May 22, 1962

On April 27th 1962, two LAPD police officers instructed to closely monitor a mosque’s activities (Muslim Temple 27 in Los Angeles) saw Black men taking clothes out of the back of a car outside the mosque. They approached aggressively and soon got violent, and as Malcolm X puts it, “hell broke loose”. The situation ended with seven unarmed Black Muslims shot outside the mosque. Nation of Islam (NOI) member William X Rogers was shot in the back and paralyzed for life. Temple Secretary Ronald X Stokes, 29, was killed. “They’re going to pay for it”, Malcolm X declared, going to Los Angeles to eulogize Stokes at a funeral attended by 2,000 people.

Despite an autopsy that established Stokes was shot at close range and had been stomped, kicked and bludgeoned while dead or dying, an all-White coroner’s jury deliberating the Stokes’ killing, took 23 minutes to conclude it “justifiable homicide.” By contrast, 14 NOI members were indicted for assault in the incident and 11 were found guilty. Elijah Muhammad’s reluctance to aggressively retaliate to Stokes’ death and refusal to work with civil rights organizations, local Black politicians and religious groups, would be the first of a series of events, causing irreparable rifts between The Honorable Malcolm X and the so-called ‘Messenger of Allah’ Elijah Muhammad. And lead to his eventual departure from the Nation of Islam and embrace of traditional, Sunni Islam.

Full transcript below.

In the name of Allah,  the beneficent, the merciful to whom all praise is due, whom we forever thank for giving us the honorable Elijah Mohammad as our leader, teacher, and guide. And I specifically, ladies and gentleman, and brothers and sisters, open up like that because I  am a representative of the honorable Elijah Mohammad. And were it not for him, you and I wouldn’t be here today.

In order for you and me to devise some kind of method or strategy to offset some of the events or the repetition of the events that have taken place here in Los Angeles recently, we have to go to the root. We have to go to the cause. Dealing with the condition itself is not enough. We have to get to the cause of it all. (crowd concurs) Or the root of it all. And it is because of our effort toward getting straight to the root that people oft times think  we’re dealing in hate.

But first I would like to congratulate and give praise to the Negro, so-called Negro leaders and so-called Negro organizations and, excuse me if I say so-called, it’s hard for me to just outright say Negro when I know what that word Negro really means. (thunderous applause)

The person whom you have come to know as Ronald Stokes, we know him as Brother Ron – one of the most religious persons to display the highest form of morals of any Black person  anywhere on this Earth. And as one of the previous speakers pointed out, who knew him, everyone who knew him had to give him credit for being a good man. A clean man, an intelligent man, and an innocent man when he was murdered.

Ronald Stokes

The Negro, so-called Negro, organizations and leaders should be given great credit for their failure or refusal to let the White man divide them and use them, one against the other, during this crisis. (thunderous applause) As Reverend [Walkard] Wilson pointed out, I think it was eight years ago today that the Supreme Court handed down the desegregation decision. And despite the fact that eight years have gone past, that decision hasn’t been implemented yet. (applause from audience)

I don’t have that much faith. I don’t have that much confidence. I don’t have that much patience. And I don’t have that much ignorance to… (thunderous applause) If the Supreme Court, which is the highest lawmaking body in the country, can pass a decision that can’t get even eight percent compliance within eight years, because it’s for Black people, then my patience has run out. (applause)

When Black people who are being oppressed become impatient, they say that’s emotional. (murmuring) Please… When Black people who are being deprived of their citizenship… not only of their civil rights, but their human rights, become impatient, become fed up, don’t wanna wait any longer, then they say that’s emotional. (laughter and applause)

The Negro, so-called Negro, leaders and organizations should be praised. They should be congratulated. They should be complimented because out of all of them combined, the White man has not yet found one who will play the role of Uncle Tom. (thunderous applause) But yet he has found no Tom, no puppet, no parrot, who is still dumb enough in 1962 to represent the injustices that he is inflicting against our people. (applause)

We don’t care what your religion is. We don’t care what organization you belong to. We don’t care how far in school you went or didn’t go. We don’t care what kind of job you have. We have to give you credit for shocking the White man by not letting him divide you  and use you one against the other. (applause)

In the past, the greatest weapon the White man has had has been his ability to divide and conquer. As Jackie Robinson pointed out beautifully on the television last night, 4/5 of the world isn’t White. Isn’t that what Jackie said? (applause) And if 4/5 of the world is dark, how is it possible for 1/5 to rule, oppress, exploit, dominate, and brutalize the 4/5 who are in the majority? How did they do it? Divide and conquer.

If I take my hand and slap you, you don’t even feel it. It might sting you, because these digits are separated. But all I have to do to put you back in your place is bring those digits together (and punch you). (applause) This is what the White man has done to you and me. He has divided us, and used us one against the other. But today, thanks to Allah… You can say thanks to God, or thanks to Jesus, or thanks to Jehovah – whatever you want. (applause) But as a follower of the honorable Elijah Muhammad, we have been taught to say thanks to Allah. And that’s what Jesus said. Jesus called on Allah. He said, “Allah! Allah! Allah [Inaudible]” I believe what’s good for Jesus is good for you. If Allah was good enough for Jesus to call upon, I think He should be good enough for you to call upon. (man: That’s right!)

Since the so-called Negro community has shocked the White man by resisting all efforts to divide us, I think that you and I should continue to shock him by singing and working together in unity. Despite religious, political, economic, or educational, or social differences, let us remember that we are not brutalized because we’re Baptists. We’re not brutalized  because we’re Methodists. We’re not brutalized because we’re Muslims. We’re not brutalized because we’re Catholics. We’re brutalized because because we are Black people in America. (applause)

Here your mother is being raped, and you’re not supposed to be emotional. Your women – please – your woman can’t walk the street without some cracker putting his hands on her, and you’re not supposed to be emotional! (applause) If you say that you’re fed up, if you teach the Negro… (film skips)

They don’t even know their own name (woman: That’s right!) Why? Because he took took it away from her. Please, please. 20 million Black people don’t even know their own language. Why? Because he took it away from us. 20 million Black people who don’t even know the history of their ancestors. Why? Because he took it away from us! And if you try and tell them how thoroughly and completely they’ve been robbed, he says you’re teaching hate. (applause) That’s something to think about.(murmuring)

Today we’re coming out of college, you’re coming out of the leading universities. You’re trying to go in a good direction. But you don’t know which direction to go in. And if somebody tries to take you right to the root of your problem they say that that man’s a hate teacher. If I ask why should the Senators in Washington… and, then again, if we tell you that Negroes are being hung on the tree, or being shot down illegally, unjustly… and those Negroes should do something to protect themselves, you say you’re advocating violence.

The White man is tricking you! He’s trapping you. He doesn’t call it violence when he lands troops in South Vietnam. (applause) Please, please, please! He doesn’t call it violence when he lands troops in Berlin. When the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, he didn’t say get non-violent. He said, “Praise the Lord, but pass the ammunition.” (applause) But when someone attacks you, when someone comes at you with a club, when someone comes you with a rope, when someone comes at you with a gun, despite the fact that you’ve done nothing he tells you, “Suffer peacefully.” (murmuring) “Pray for those who use you to spite me.” “Be long suffering.” And how long can you suffer after suffering for 400 years? (applause)

So I just wanna play up that little point right there because he said that we play on your emotions. And when you turn on your television tonight, or your radio, or read the newspaper, they’re gonna tell you in that paper that I was playing on your emotions. Imagine you, a second class citizen. That’s not getting emotional! It’s getting intelligent.

And as far as your mayor is concerned, I see… (I) should say their mayor. A man named Yorty, who has been slandering the Muslims, a professional liar… a professional liar. (applause) Who has mastered the art of using half truths. Put in the paper that they break into our religious place of worship and got records that they can use to prove that most of us have criminal records. You can’t be a Negro in America and not have a criminal record. (thunderous applause) Martin Luther King has been to jail. (applause) Please. James Farmer has been to jail. Why, you can’t name a Black man in this country who was sick and tired of the hell that he’s catching who hasn’t been to jail. Charged him with being seditious.

They put Moses in jail! (woman: Yeah!) They put Daniel in jail. (woman: Yeah!) Why, you haven’t got a man of God in the Bible that wasn’t put to jail when they started speaking up against  exploitation and oppression. (applause) They charged Jesus with sedition. Didn’t they do that? (crowd concurs) They said he was against Caesar. They said he was discriminating  because he told his disciples, “Go not the way of the gentiles, but rather go to the lost sheep.” He discriminated! Don’t go near the gentiles, go to the lost sheep. Go to the oppressed. Go the downtrodden. Go to the exploited. Go the people who don’t know who they are, who are lost from the knowledge of themselves and who are strangers in a land that is not theirs. Go to those people! Go to the slaves. Go the second class citizens. Go to the ones who are suffering the brunt of Caesar’s brutality.

And if Jesus were here in America today, he wouldn’t be going to the White man. The White man is the oppressor! He would be going to the oppressed. He would be going to the humble. He would be going to the lowly. He would be going to the rejected and the despised. He would be going to the so-called American Negro. (applause)

To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace. I formally was a criminal. I formally was in prison. I’m not ashamed of that. You never can use that over my head. And he’s using the wrong stick! I don’t feel that stick. (laughter and applause) I went to a prison because I believed in men like Sam Yorty. I went to prison because I  trusted men like Sam Yorty. I went to prison following the philosophy of men like Sam Yorty. But since I’ve been following the honorable Elijah Muhammad, I have been reformed  and that’s more… Please… That’s more than Sam Yorty and Chief Parker and all these other White politicians that have been able to do with the inmates in the prisons of this State. They should give Mr. Muhammad credit. They should give Mr. Muhammad credit for reforming and rehabilitating men whom they have failed to reform and rehabilitate.(thunderous applause)

Mayor Yorty went forward to some press report that Mr. Muhammad had once been found guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He failed to explain, purposely, that in 1934, the honorable Elijah Muhammad refused to send his children to White schools in Detroit, Michigan, that were teaching you about Little Black Sambo. That’s the minor that he contributed to the delinquency of. You see this vicious, fork-tongue  White man has been able to take lies and make you turn against those who want to help you and make others turn against you. This is the contributing to the delinquency of a minor that this mayor, or a man who calls himself mayor, is talking about.

In the same article he said that the Muslims are the same people who rioted in the United Nations. Someone should pull his coat and let him know that at the present moment there’s six million dollars worth of suits [inaudible] levelled against two of New York’s leading newspapers  for making a mistake of charging the Muslims as being involved in those United Nations riots. We were not involved! And if this fork-tongued man who calls himself your mayor had taken the time to find that out, he wouldn’t be walking into the trap that he’s letting his ignorance lead him into!(applause) And if you take the time to read the Washington Post that came out the Sunday after that incident took place, the Washington Post pointed out on the front page that the Muslims had nothing to do with the UN riots and they quoted, in saying so, the person who was at that time the Commissioner of Police in New York City. See, it’s lies that the White man has spread about the Muslims to try and make you afraid of the Muslims, or to try and make you think that the Muslims were a criminal element, an uncouth element in things that you have not liked to be associated with.

Also, they say that… I’m just clearing these things up and then we’re going to get into what happened. They also say that the honorable Elijah Muhammad was draft dodger. No, he wasn’t. He just refused to go to the army because he was a man of peace. He was a minister of a religion of peace. He was teaching peace. So he outright refused to go to the army. That’s not draft dodging. That’s intelligence. (cheering)

Here, before the grand jury, because the coroner’s jury is stacked against Negros. (cheers and applause) The Grand Jury is stacked against Negros. The press, the radio, the television and the newspapers are stacked against Negros. (crowd concurs) But, please, the Los Angeles Police department is stacked against all Negroes, all except those he has appointed to high positions.

The controlled press, the White press inflames the White public against Negroes. The police are able to use it to paint the Negro community as a criminal element. The police are able to use the press to make the White public think that 90%, or 99%, of the Negroes in the Negro community are criminals. And once the White public is convinced that most of the Negro community is a criminal element, then this automatically paves the way for the police to move into the Negro  community, exercising Gestapo tactics stopping any Black man who is in this… on the sidewalk, whether he is guilty or whether he is innocent. Whether he is well dressed or whether he is poorly dressed. Whether he is educated or whether he is dumb. Whether he’s a Christian or whether he’s a Muslim. As long as he is Black and a member of the Negro community, the White public thinks that the White policeman is justified in going in there and trampling on that man’s civil rights and on that man’s human rights. (applause)

Once the police have convinced the White public that the so-called Negro community is a criminal element, they can go in and question, brutalize, murder, unarmed innocent Negroes and the White public is gullible enough to back them up. This makes the Negro community a police state. This makes the Negro neighborhood a police state. It’s the most heavily patrolled. It has more police in it than any other neighborhood, yet it has more crime in it than any other neighborhood. How can you have more cops and more crime? (laughter) It shows you that the cops must be in cahoots with the criminals. (laughter, applause)

(They hate) the texture of the hair that God… Please… That God gave them so much that they put lye on it.  (laughter) Do you realise… now, you know brother; lye will eat a hole in steel and you know your head is not that hard. (applause) Who taught you… Please. Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin to such extent that you bleach to get like the White man? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to? So much so that you don’t want to be around each other. You know, before you come asking Mr. Muhammed does he teach hate? You should ask who, yourself, who taught you to hate being what God gave you. (applause)

Malcolm X’s ‘conk’ during his delinquent youth, when he was nicknamed ‘Detroit Red’. Here is how he tells it in his Autobiography: « How ridiculous I was! Stupid enough to stand there simply lost in admiration of my hair nowlooking “white,” reflected in the mirror in Shorty’s room. I vowed that I’d never again be without a conk, and I never was for many years. This was my first really big step toward self-degradation: when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh to have it look like a white man’s hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are”inferior”-and white people”superior”- that they will even violate and mutilate their God-createdbodies to try to look “pretty” by white standards. »

We teach you to love the hair that God gave you. Here you, way out in the middle of the ocean, can’t swim and you worried about someone that’s in the bathtub and can’t swim. (laughter and applause) We don’t steal. We don’t gamble. We don’t lie, and we don’t cheat. And that also deprives the government of revenue (laughter)because you can’t get into a whiskey bottle without getting past the government seal. You can’t open a deck of cards without getting past the government seal. Hell, the White man makes the whiskey then puts you in jail for getting drunk. (cheering)He sells you the cards and the dice and puts you in jail when he catches you using ’em. So, he’s against us because we fix it where he can’t catch you anymore. We take the dice outta your hands and the cards out of your hands and the whiskey out of your head.

The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman. And as Muslims, the honorable Elijah Mohammad teaches us to respect our women and to protect our women. And the only time a Muslim really gets real violent is when someone goes to molest his woman. (man: Right!) (applause) We will kill you for our woman. I’m making it plain. Yes. We will kill you for our woman. (applause) We believe that if the White man will do whatever is necessary to see that his woman gets respect and protection then you and I will never be recognised as men until we stand up like men and place the same penalty over the head of anyone who puts his filthy hands in the direction of our women. (thunderous applause)

We respect them, but we want them to respect us. We think that the law should respect the Negro community. The law should protect the Negro community. The law should approach the Negro community with intelligence if it expects the Negro community to react intelligently. So, the honorable Elijah Mohammed teaches us to always avoid anything that smacks of disrespect for the law. And if the police department tells the truth, they will have to admit that they have never had any, uh, experiences with Muslims that have ever been anything other than honorable unless they themselves come at us in a dishonorable way.

There’s no case against the Muslims. It has no case against these brothers whom they shot down. And because it has no case, it’s trying to create a case. It’s trying to manufacture a case. And therefore they set up a grand jury hearing of the case so that they could hear it behind closed doors, and after hearing what we have to say then they’ll… their particular strategy or defense against the actions that they committed on that April the 27th. So, at the advice of our attorneys, we purposefully, the victims, those who have been indicted, or rather those who have been arrested and are out on bond, have purposefully refrained and refused from making any statement whatsoever until after the case appears in court.

And when you hear their story it will be in a public trial. We have already been… had experience with these private hearings behind closed doors. Anything that the White man has to do to the Muslim, he has to do it in the open. He has to do it in public, or he has to put every single one of us behind bars for the rest our our lives. (applause)

When Mayor Yorty called for a government investigation of a religious group that have the highest moral standards of any group in the Negro community, Mayor Yorty was giving you an example of what Hitler did in Nazi Germany when he began to go on the rampage. (applause)

We feel, we have confidence that  the White public and the Black public, if they hear our case, if they hear and have access to the investigation, will never be fooled by this phony set up that’s stacked from the top all the way down. And if you doubt it, when you leave home tonight, when you go home tonight, look for the press. I’d like at this time to call forth these brothers who are under, uh, who were arrested. The brothers who were arrested. Come up here behind these chairs, please. (applause) They were suspects. (laughter) This wouldn’t happen in a White neighborhood. White man can walk down the street with packages on his head, packages under his arm and packages anywhere else and won’t anybody question his right to carry those packages. But a Negro is suspect because the press makes you suspect. Yes, the White press makes Negroes suspect. (murmuring) (video skips)

… all the information you need, Officer. And the Officer made one stay at the rear of the car and the other go to the front of the car, and while he was taking the one to the front of the car, the polite attitude, the humble if, the submissive, intelligent peaceful spirit that he uexpectedly found in this Negro infuriated him. And he began to… He told the brother; ‘Put down your hands.’ Brother was talking, he’s not a criminal. A man has a right on the sidewalk to talk with his hands. ‘Put down your hands, don’t talk with your hands.’ And when the brother continued to gesture with his hands the Officer grabbed his hand, twisted it around, ’round behind his back flung him up against the car and then that’s when hell broke loose. That was when hell broke loose. A struggle ensued, shots were fired by the police and by a Negro doorshaker. (laughter)

An alarm went out. When the alarm went out, instead of the police going to the place where the incident occurred, the police went one block away to the temple. When they arrived there, they got out of their cars with their guns smokin’. You woulda thought it was Wyatt… What’s his name? Wyatt Earp. I’m telling you, they came out of those cars, and we have enough witnesses to hang ’em. With their guns smokin’. Chief Parker knows this, Mayor Yorty knows this and every police official in the city knows that. They didn’t fire no warning shots in  the air they fired warning shots point blank at innocent, unarmed, defenseless Negroes. As I say, two of the brothers were shot in the back. Another was shot in the shoulder. Another was shot, two of them were shot, excuse the expression, through the penis. (murmuring) Another was shot in the hip and the bullet came out the other side. But Arthur here was shot 1/4 of an inch from his heart.

Let me tell you something, and I’ll tell you why you say ‘we hate White people’. We don’t hate anybody. We love our own people so much, they think we hate the ones who are inflicting injustice against them. (applause) (video skips)

… who has been shot, the bullet having passed a 1/4 of an inch through his heart. I’m not gonna let him talk, which I think you can understand why. You should listen to the conversation of the police officers while it was going on. Two of the brothers who had been shot, who were lying hand in hand, the officer said they were chanting a death chant. You read that. They were saying ‘Allahu Akbar’. What does that mean? It means that God is the greatest. It means that God is the greatest.(applause)

Understand what the White officer called a death chant was a prayer. They were praying when they were shot down. They were saying Allhu Akbar. And it shook the officer up that they haven’t heard Black people talk any kinda talk but what they taught ’em. And two of the brothers who were shot in the back were telling me that as they lay on the sidewalk, they were holding hands. They held hands with each other saying Allahu Akbar. And the blood was seeping out of them where the police bullets had torn into their insides. Still, they said Allahu Akbar and the police came and kicked them in the head. Police kicked them in the head telling them to shut up that noise while they were laying on the sidewalk in front of our temple. Kicked them in the head. Shut up that noise.

And one of them, when he was on his way to the police station in the ambulance, one of the ambulance attendants told the White cop, ‘Why don’t you kill the nigger?’ He said, ‘I’ll tell them that he tried to get away. Why don’t you kill the nigger? While you got a chance. I’ll swear that he tried to get away.’ If he didn’t say this, then I need to be put in jail, and I’ll gladly go. (applause)

One of them who was being taken to jail in a police car as the ambulance sirens were coming to the place, one of the policeman said to the other: ‘What are the ambulances rushing for? Nothing but some niggers.’ So, he looked then and saw the Muslim brothers sitting beside him  and he shut up. But after he got to the jail, the same officer that said this turned to the brother and said; ‘I hope that you didn’t get offended by what I said back there under the heat of emotion, because some of my best friends are colored.’ (roaring) That’s what he said. That’s his password: ‘Some of my best friends are colored.’

And I for one, as a Muslim, believe that the White man is intelligent enough, if he were made to realise how Black people really feel and how fed up we are without that whole compromising sweet talk. Why you’re the one that make it hard for yourself. The White man believes you when you go to him with that old sweet talk ’cause you been sweet talkin’ him ever since he brought you here. Stop sweet talking him. Tell him how you feel. Tell him how or what kinda hell you been catching and let him know that if he’s not ready to clean his house up, if hes not ready to clean his house up, he shouldn’t have a house. It should catch on fire. And burn down. (applause)

As Muslims, we identify ourselves with the dark world. So we’re not any minority. We’re a part of the majority and the White man is the minority. (applause) You have to know this to understand us: we don’t think any odds are against us. We don’t fight a battle like the odds are against us. Why, the whole dark world today is in unity. It’s one. If you don’t think so, look at the United Nations. When the dark world votes, they vote as one. They gettin’ the colonialists out of Africa, and out of Asia. Tellin’ them to get out. They don’t have any nuclear weapons but they got a solid, united voice and their unity alone is sufficient to drive the oppressor and exploiter of their people out of their own country.

You and I need to learn a lesson from that right there. In the UN, the dark world consists of Buddhist’s, Hindu’s, Shinto’s, Taoist’s, Christian’s, Muslims, everything. But they’re together. They forget their religious and political differences. They think as one. They move as one against a common enemy. And [the French occupier]of Algeria, he’s going, don’t think he’s not going, he’s going. (applause) They’re getting him out of Angola, out of Tanganyika, out of Uganda, out of Kenya. He’s going from South Africa, too. He hasn’t got long to be there. All over this earth, dark people who have been oppressed and exploited by those who are not their own kind, strangers, are coming together to get the oppressor off their back. You and I learn a lesson from that.

We are oppressed. We are exploited. We are downtrodden. We are denied, not only civil rights, but even human rights. So, the only way we’re going to get some of this oppression and exploitation away from us, or aside from us is come together against the common enemy. (applause) When they sat down at the Bandung conference, everyone there had this in common: a dark skin. Some of those who were sitting there were socialists, some were communists, some where capitalists, some were Christian, some were Buddhist. They were everything! But all of ’em was dark skinned. And they looked at that dark skin and agreed that this is one thing they had in common.

Forget that you’re a Methodist, forget that you’re a Catholic, forget that you’re a Protestant, forget that you’re a Muslim. Remember that all of us are Black, and we’re catching h… [end of video].

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All images in this article are from RNU

Along with protecting China’s national security, its legitimate right, the new law aims to counter months of US orchestrated violence and vandalism in Hong Kong.

They were and continue to be led by 5th column elements that rocked the city last year, a scheme by US dark forces to destabilize and weaken China by attacking its soft underbelly.

From 1841 to 1997, Hong Kong was exploited as a British colony. The city is now Chinese territory.

Governed by Chinese laws, it enjoys a degree of local autonomy.

Britain and the US have no more say over how Hong Kong is governed than does Beijing have over how New York, London, or any other foreign cities are run.

They’re sovereign territory of their respective countries. China respects what the US and West reject.

Notably the US seeks control over all parts of the world not its own, what its global empire of bases is all about, platforms for endless preemptive wars of aggression.

US foreign policy reflects what the scourge of imperialism is all about — an unparalleled menace to everyone everywhere under both right wings of the its war party.

After being drafted last month during Beijing’s annual Central People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), adopted by the National People’s Congress (NPC), and sent to a Standing Committee for preparation in final form, details of the new law were released on Saturday.

As reported by Xinhua, it contains 66 articles in six chapters for safeguarding the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR).

The law “requires the HKSAR to establish a commission of safeguarding national security which shall be supervised by and accountable to the Central People’s Government.”

It “establish(es) an office of safeguarding national security in the HKSAR.”

It covers duties of the HKSAR to safeguard national security with jurisdiction over related issues, and enforcement of the law’s provisions under continuation of a “one country, two systems” arrangement.

The Central People’s Government in Beijing has authority for national security overall, similar to how Western nations operate.

The US 10th Amendment states that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people” — local autonomy that doesn’t conflict with federal powers.

UK devolution law grants powers to the parliaments of London, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the central government having oversight authority.

Under China’s new national security law, “(t)he Central People’s Government shoulders the fundamental responsibility for national security affairs related to the HKSAR, while the HKSAR bears the constitutional responsibility of safeguarding national security,” Xinhua explained, adding:

“The executive organs, legislature and judiciary of the HKSAR shall, in accordance with relevant laws, effectively prevent, stop and punish acts and activities that endanger national security.”

“Safeguarding China’s sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity is the common obligation of all Chinese people, including Hong Kong.”

The HKSAR is responsible for acting against activities in the city that jeopardize national security.

Four categories of crimes are designated as national security threats: secession, subversion of state power, terrorist activities, and collusion with foreign or external forces.

The  HKSAR has jurisdiction over combatting them. A central government office charged with safeguarding national security throughout China is authorized to supervise and coordinate its activities with the HKSAR.

In some cases that threaten national security, what the law calls specific circumstances, central authorities in Beijing may exercise jurisdiction over crimes committed in Hong Kong or anywhere else in China.

If differences between the new national security law and local laws administered by the HKSAR, the NPC Standing Committee has final say.

China’s Global Times (GT) said the new national security law aims “to fix national security loopholes in Hong Kong, rather than depriving the city of its high degree of autonomy.”

Most, perhaps all nations, have laws to protect national security from internal and external threats.

Given Washington aim to transform China into a vassal state, wanting its development curbed, Beijing and the nation’s people are very much threatened.

The main responsibility of all ruling authorities is to protect the state from threats to its sovereignty.

The US poses an enormous threat to all countries unwilling to subordinate their rights to its interests.

China’s national security law is one more way for Beijing to protect the nation’s sovereign rights from foreign threats, notably by the US.

Overall, “(t)he central government’s direct jurisdiction over national security cases in (Hong Kong) will be very limited,” GT reported, adding:

“The protection of human rights and presumption of innocence before judicial conviction will be upheld.”

“The national security law for the HKSAR will not weaken the political rights of Hong Kong people, change the lives of local residents, or influence the implementation of Hong Kong’s common law.”

“It just clarifies the responsibility of the central government and the HKSAR over maintaining national security, drawing a bottom line that all Hongkongers should abide by in terms of national security while establishing a legal mechanism to carry out all these.”

“It is not meant to change operation of the city’s function, governance, or people’s way of work and life.”

It’s the responsibility of federal governments everywhere to enforce the rule of law nationwide.

US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called the rule of law “the noblest of human productions.”

Grandson of a slave Justice Thurgood Marshall had a different view, saying:

“Do what you think is right and let the law catch up.”

The law should be all about serving and protecting everyone, assuring equity and justice for all — not just the privileged few as in the US, West and most other countries.

China’s national security law was established to counter foreign interference in its internal affairs, prohibited under international law.

The measure does not “extinguish challenges to (Beijing’s) power,” as the NYT falsely reported.

Nor does it “dismantle (Hong Kong’s) legal autonomy, as the Wall Street Journal claimed.

Or is it “the worst nightmare come true,” as a local official hostile to Beijing maintains, or the “death knell” for Hong Kong, as loose cannon Pompeo roared.

The new law will become effective on an unspecified date, most likely ahead of September 6 Hong Kong Legislative Council elections.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The system-wide challenges the United States faces with policing are entrenched and deeply rooted. When the historical and current practices of police are examined, it is evident police have been designed to uphold the status quo including racial injustice and class inequality. Whenever political movements develop to respond to racial and class unfairness, the police have undermined their politically-protected constitutional rights.

Police have used infiltration, surveillance, and violence against political movements seeking to end injustices throughout the history of the nation. It is the deeply embedded nature of these injustices and the structural problems in policing that are leading more people to conclude police must be completely transformed, if not abolished.

We advocate for democratic community control of the police as a starting point in addition to defunding the police and funding alternatives such as programs that provide mental health, public health, social work and conflict resolution services, and other nonviolent interventions. Funding is needed for the basic human needs of housing, education, employment, healthcare, and food especially in communities that have been neglected for years and whose low-wage labor has enriched the wealthy in this unequal society.

The Roots Of Policing Are Rotten

The needs of the wealthy have been the driving force for the creation of police. Policing developed to control workers, many who were Irish, Italian and other immigrants seeking fair wages in the North and African people who were enslaved in the South. Victor E. Kappeler, Ph.D writes in “A Brief History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing” that “Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities.”

A. Southern Police Created to Protect Slavery

In the south, the driving force of the economy was slavery where people kidnapped in Africa were brought to the Americas as chattel slaves, workers who created wealth for their owners. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database lists 12.5 million Africans who were shipped to the Americas, 10.7 million of which survived the dreaded Middle Passage. Of that, 388,000 were brought to North America. African slaves were forced to reproduce for their owners and to sell.

From the start, African people revolted against slavery and fought to escape it. This 400 years legacy of racist injustice that helped form the United States is the history we must confront. The roots of policing in what became the Confederacy and later the sheriffs who enforced Jim Crow grew out of the containment of slaves, the most valuable ‘property’ in the nation.

Olivia Waxman describes this history writing that in the South, “the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered . . . on the preservation of the slavery system.” She describes “slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts” as one of the primary police institutions.

Gary Potter writes in “The History of Policing in the United States,” that “Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules.” The purpose of slave patrols was to protect the wealth of the white people who owned slaves.

Potter writes, “the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. During the Civil War, the military became the primary form of law enforcement in the South, but during Reconstruction, many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves.”

Hundreds of laws were passed in the South around slavery and its enforcement but laws were also passed in northern colonies including Connecticut, New York, and others to control slaves. The US Congress passed fugitive Slave Laws allowing the detention and return of escaped slaves, in 1793 and 1850. Racist police made up the “kidnap gang” in New York City in 1830 who would capture Africans and bring them to a rubber stamp court that would send them to the South as captured slaves – often before their families knew they were arrested. Throughout this history, there were people who fought police violence and abuse as is discussed in The Black New Yorker Who Led The Charge Against Police Violence In The 1830s.

The history of racist policing did not end with the abolition of slavery. Police forces were involved in enforcing the racist Black Code, the Convict-Lease System, and JimCrow segregation. The terrorism of white supremacist groups like the KKK, the burning of black schools and churches and lynching became the common realities of the south. White police often did not stop, or seriously investigate these crimes; some even participated. In the era of Civil Rights, southern police used violence against nonviolent protesters – beatings, fire hoses and dogs.

This also occurred in the north. For example, Minnesota was infamous for arresting indigenous people on charges like vagrancy and forcing them to work for no pay.  This spurred the formation of the American Indian Movement. Dennis Banks describes, “The cops concentrated on the Indian bars. They would bring their paddy wagons around behind a bar and open the back doors. Then they would go around to the front and chase everybody toward the rear. ” They would be taken to stadiums and convention centers and forced to work for no pay. The police did not do this at white bars, only bars where Native Americans gathered.

The War on Drugs became the new disguise for police violence against black people. “We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news,” said President Nixon’s domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman to Harper’s Magazine. Mass incarceration of the 1980s, begun under President Reagan and continued under President Clinton with Joe Biden leading efforts in the Senate, disproportionately impacted black and brown people. Now slavery legally continues as prison labor.

AT&T workers on strike. From Socialist Worker.

B. Northern Police Protect Commercial Interests, Hold Down Wages

The history of policing in the northern colonies was also driven by economics. Commercial interests protected their property through an informal, private for-profit form of hiring people part-time. Towns relied on a “night-watch” to enforce laws. Boston started a night-watch in 1636, New York followed in 1658 and Philadelphia created one in 1700.

As cities become more populated, the night-watch system was ineffective. Commercial interests needed more regular policing and so they hired people to protect their property and goods as they were transported from ports to other areas. Boston, a large shipping commercial center, became the first city to form a police force when merchants convinced the government that police were needed for the “collective good” thereby transferring the cost of maintaining a police force to the citizens.

A driving force for police expansion was workers, who were often immigrants, seeking better pay and working conditions. Abolishing The Police: A Radical Idea That’s Been Around For Over A Century, describes how the first state police force was formed in 1905 in Pennsylvania to combat workers forming unions. According to a study in 1969 by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, the United States has the bloodiest and most violent labor history of any industrial nation in the world.

Sam Mitrani, author of The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894, writes in In These Times that “as Northern cities grew and filled with mostly immigrant wage workers who were physically and socially separated from the ruling class, the wealthy elite who ran the various municipal governments hired hundreds and then thousands of armed men to impose order on the new working-class neighborhoods. Class conflict roiled late-19th century American cities like Chicago, which experienced major strikes and riots in 1867, 1877, 1886, and 1894. In each of these upheavals, the police attacked strikers with extreme violence, even if in 1877 and 1894 the U.S. Army played a bigger role in ultimately repressing the working class.”

Martha Grevatt points out that “Throughout labor history, one finds innumerable accounts of cops engaging in anti-union violence. Police viciously attacked unarmed pickets during the 1994 Staley strike in Decatur, Ill., as well as the 1995 Detroit newspaper strike, to name a few examples. They arrested and harassed UAW members during last year’s strike against GM.”

This is not only a time of growing protest against police violence but also against the mistreatment of workers. Over the last two years, there has been a record number of strikers not seen in 35 years. PayDay Report counts more than 500 strikes in the last three weeks with a peak number on Juneteenth at “29 ports across the West Coast” and the UAW stopping production on all assembly lines “for 8 minutes and 46 seconds to honor George Floyd.”  They have tracked more than 800 strikes since March.

Historic Time Of Uprising And Unrest Rattles The Police And Power Structure

The rebellion by workers and anti-racism activists is unprecedented in the lives of most people alive today. There is a nationwide uprising in every state and in thousands of cities and towns.  Repression by the power structure with militarized police and the National Guard has failed to stop the protests. Democrats have failed to divert the movement of the energy into the elections, as Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi have offered inadequate reforms such as more police training. Fundamental changes are needed.

Police will continue to make efforts to shut down the unrest. The FBI and local police have a long history of combatting movements. In addition to the violent response that has been well documented against the current rebellion, we should expect infiltration, surveillance, creation of internal divisions, and other tactics, even murder.

All of these acts against labor, civil rights, peace, environmental, and other movements have happened before and we should expect them again. Documents show a nationwide effort of police and the FBI to defeat the Occupy Movement that included entrapment of activists in crimes. There has also been aggressive police violence against people protesting pipelines and seeking climate justice.

Black activists continue to be a major focus of the FBI and law enforcement. Media Justice and the ACLU reported last week that one million pages of materials on FBI surveillance were discovered in a FOIA request showing widespread surveillance of black activists.

The small victories that have been won by the movement are already causing repercussions. Police are threatening to quit because they are being held accountable for violence, even though they remain protected by immunity from prosecution. A survey last week found 3 out of 4 Washington, DC police were ready to leave the force. CNN reported police in Minneapolis, Atlanta, South Florida, and Buffalo quitting. In Atlanta, police got the “flu” after felony murder charges were brought against the officer who killed Rayshard Brooks.

New York City police are planning a strike on the Fourth of July to show people what life would be like without police. However, this may backfire as during a 1997 slowdown and also during a 2014–2015 slowdown, crime did not spike, and may even have declined a bit. The nation’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Bob Barr threatened in December 2019 that if some communities don’t begin showing more respect to law enforcement, then they could potentially not be protected by police officers.

To Transform The Police, The Economy Must Be Transformed

The US Constitution, written by slaveholders and businessmen who profited from slave products, puts property rights ahead of individual rights. The Bill of Rights was an afterthought. The result of treating people as property, Jim Crow laws, redlining, and other racially unfair economic practices has left Black Americans with a $13 trillion dollar wealth gap.

Max Rameau told us in a recent podcast, To Deal With Police, We Must Understand Why They Even Exist, that when we understand the purpose of police is to protect property, it becomes more evident why they cannot be reformed. Unless we confront neoliberal capitalism that creates inequality and a hyper-class-based society, the wealthy will always find someone to pay to protect them.

In fact, the call to defund the police can be easily thrown off course by getting activists fighting for small gains of cuts to police budgets, while the police are increasing their funding from private corporations. Already, as reported by Eyes on the Ties, “Police foundations across the country are partnering with corporations to raise money to supplement police budgets by funding programs and purchasing tech and weaponry for law enforcement with little public oversight.” Their report documents support to police from Wall Street and finance, retail and food industries, Big Tech, fossil fuel corporations, sports, and universities.

It is fantasy to believe police exist for public safety. As Justin Podur writes, “Society doesn’t need a large group with a license to kill.” Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report advocates for community control over police but he doesn’t stop there, writing “communities should control, not just the police, but much of the rest of their neighborhoods’ vital services and resources.”

As Richard Rubinstein writes in ThePolice May Pull the Trigger but it is the System That Kills, “Racism, police brutality, and economic injustice can be thought of as separate boxes, but they are part of one self-reinforcing system. And that system’s defining characteristic – the feature most resistant to change – is that it is based on the production of goods and services for profit, not to satisfy basic human needs.”

Like many conflicts in the United States, the problems of police violence comes down to corporate-capitalists vs. the people. Racial separation and inequality are ways the ownership class keeps people divided so the people can be controlled. This is the reality of the US political system and the reality of policing in the United States, but we can change that reality by continuing to organize, staying in the streets and building our power.

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

Featured image is from CODEPINK

In what potentially could be a radical change in Washington’s policy towards Venezuela, U.S. president Donald Trump confessed that he has had doubts about his decision to recognize opposition leader Juan Guaidó as president of the South American country. Trump revealed in an interview with Axios in the Oval Office what he thinks about the self-proclaimed wannabe president of Venezuela, Guaidó, and even confessed that he “would maybe think” of meeting personally with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has already publicly expressed his willingness to talk with the American president.

“Maduro would like to meet. And I’m never opposed to meetings — you know, rarely opposed to meetings. I always say, you lose very little with meetings. But at this moment, I’ve turned them down,” Trump said.

In a preview of the interview published by Axios, Trump revealed how little confidence he has in Guaidó because the politician failed to take control of the Venezuelan government despite the strong support provided by the U.S. and another 60 countries that recognize him as the legitimate president.

Asked by Axios whether he regretted his decision on backing Guaidó on the advice of John Bolton, his former National Security Advisor, Trump initially said “not particularly,” but then went on to say, “I could have lived with it or without it, but I was very firmly against what’s going on in Venezuela.”

In another part of the interview, Trump speaks directly of the moment when he decided to recognize the opposition leader as president: “Guaidó was elected. I think that I wasn’t necessarily in favor, but I said — some people that liked it, some people didn’t. I was OK with it. I don’t think it was — you know, I don’t think it was very meaningful one way or the other.”

Also, in the preview, Axios quoted a fragment of Bolton’s upcoming book The Room Where It Happened, where he reveals some behind the scenes diplomacy of the Trump Administration and the private feelings the president has about Guaidó. Bolton says that Trump “thought Guaidó was ‘weak,’ as opposed to Maduro, who was ‘strong’” and that “Trump was calling Guaidó the ‘Beto O’Rourke of Venezuela,’ hardly the sort of compliment an ally of the United States should expect.” O’Rourke, who was a Democratic Presidential Candidate and is one of Trump’s biggest critics, was called a “poor bastard” who “quit like a dog” by the American president, a demonstration of just how low Trump thinks of Guaidó.

Trump in the interview described Bolton as a “nutjob” who may be the “dumbest human being on Earth.” Trump could perhaps seek to slowly normalize relations with Maduro and move away from Guaidó, while placing the blame entirely on Bolton for the escalation of hostilities between Washington and Caracas.

In 2019, shocking events were triggered when Guaidó proclaimed himself president. An attempt to forcibly enter a shipment of “solidarity aid” into Venezuela from Colombia that likely had weapons was made; Venezuela suddenly was without electricity after a cyberattack; there was another coup attempt; and, many attacks on military barracks. Yet, Maduro survived the intense pressures from the U.S. and sixty of its allies.

The American President is known to admire authoritarianism and/or strong leaders. Despite sanctions, coup attempts and threats of military invasion, Maduro has not only survived the U.S.-led destabilization, but cemented his positions as leader of Venezuela. Although they may be adversaries, it would not be a wild claim to say that Trump admires Maduro’s strength and determination, especially as Guaidó utterly failed when he had every advantage afforded to him.

If someone had said in 2019 that just a year later Venezuela would not only be more stable than the U.S. when we consider the Black Lives Matter uprising in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, but would also achieve a seat in the UN Human Rights commission, no one would have believed it.

The U.S. could not allow 2019 to confirm the decline of its dominance over Latin America. With the defeat it suffered in Venezuela, the return of Cristina Kirchner in Argentina and the breakdown of neoliberal governments in the region, Washington had to resort to coups to protect its interests, as seen in Bolivia.

Venezuela now has a fragmented opposition to Maduro that is immersed in an internal war. At this point, Guaidó is not guaranteed to be re-elected as president of the National Assembly. For the U.S. however, it does not matter who occupies that position so long as they are serving Washington’s agenda. The so-called Deep State in the U.S. remains pitifully unchanged in their policy to destroy the existence of sovereign governments in the region. However, is Trump attempting to break free of such war hawks by expressing an openness to speak with Maduro? Although Trump may have individual opinions on not wanting to challenge Venezuela, despite public rhetoric, he will be restricted by the main power structures that exist in the U.S. and push for complete dominance no matter the administration in power and what they want to achieve.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

On June 1, in the midst of the turmoil created by the coronavirus pandemic and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration quietly issued 12 fracking permits to Aera Energy, a joint venture owned by ExxonMobil and Shell.

Oil drilling in California has faced criticism for its disproportionately negative health impacts on Latino communities and other people of color. The 12 new permits will be for fracking in the Lost Hills Oil Field. The Kern County town of Lost Hills is more than 97 percent Latino, according to 2010 U.S. Census data.

The fracking permits are the latest example of California’s oil industry benefiting from regulatory or deregulatory action during the COVID-19 pandemic and came just months after the Newsom administration said it supported taking actions to “manage the decline of oil production and consumption in the state.” Aera, which also received 24 permits from the California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) on April 3 during the early days of COVID-19, has well-connected lobbyists in its corner who work for the firm Axiom Advisors.

One of them, Jason Kinney, headed up Newsom’s 2018 transition team and formerly served as a senior advisor to Newsom while he was lieutenant governor. He is also a senior advisor to California’s Senate Democrats. The other, Kevin Schmidt, previously served as policy director for Newsom when the latter was lieutenant governor. Aera paid Axiom $110,000 for its lobbying work in 2019 and, so far in 2020, has paid $30,000, lobbying reports reveal.

Axiom’s lobbying disclosure records show both Kinney and Schmidt listed as lobbyists and Aera as one of the firm’s clients. Kinney’s wife, Mary Gonsalvez Kinney, was also the stylist for Newsom’s wife–Jennifer Siebel Newsom–dating back to their time spent living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Kinney and Schmidt did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article.

Calling the situation “unseemly,” Jamie Court, president for the Los Angeles-based group Consumer Watchdog, wrote via email that “Aera should not be able to buy the influence it apparently has over state oil and gas policy.” Last November, prior to the 24 permits issued in April, Newsom had declared a statewide fracking permit moratorium in response to a scandal involving a regulator for the California Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR). The regulator, who had been tasked with heading oversight issues on issuing permits, was revealed to have stock investments valued up to $100,000 in Aera Energy’s parent company, ExxonMobil. Newsom fired the head of DOGGR at the time, Ken Harris, and eventually renamed the agency CalGEM.

Kinney and Schmidt are not the only two with Newsom ties. Aera CEO Christina Sistrunk sits on the governor’s Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery, created to craft an economic recovery plan in response to the ongoing COVID-19 economic fallout.

Aera is one of the state’s top drillers and accounts for nearly 25 percent of California’s production, its website claims. Aera landed 490 drilling permits from CalGEM in the first quarter of 2020, according to data collected by FracTracker, and 651 permits in 2019.

Lost Hills

The town of Lost Hills has a population of about 2,500 people and its field ranks sixth in oil produced in the state. The field sits in close proximity to a residential neighborhood just west of Interstate Highway 5, close to both a middle school and public park.

Infrared camera footage from 2014, taken by the advocacy group Earthworks and the Clear Water Fund for a 2015 report they published, showed that the Lost Hills field emits prolific amounts of toxic chemicals into the air, including methane, acetone, dichlorodifluoromethane and acetaldehydes. High levels of isoprene and acetaldehydes can cause cancer, while the other substances can result in serious health damage, including heartbeat irregularities, headaches, nausea, vomiting, throat irritation, coughing and wheezing.

In a survey done for that same report of Lost Hills residents, respondents reported having “thyroid problems (7 percent), diabetes (7 percent), asthma (11 percent) and sinus infections (19 percent).”

“Of all respondents, 92.3 percent reported identifying odors in their homes and community,” it further detailed. “Odors were described as petroleum, burning oil, rotten eggs, chemicals, chlorine or bleach, a sweet smell, sewage, and ammonia. Participants reported that when odors were detected in the air, symptoms included headache (63 percent), nausea/dizziness (37 percent), burning or watery eyes (37 percent), and throat and nose irritation (18.5 percent).”

Methane is a climate change-causing greenhouse gas 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A 20-year window falls within the 2030 deadline established by IPCC climate scientists in a 2018 report that concluded that, if bold action is not taken steadily until then, the world could face some of the most severe and irreversible impacts of climate change.

Setbacks

The new Lost Hills permits came as CalGEM completed its pre-rulemaking public hearings, on June 2, for regulations pertaining to distancing setbacks of oil wells from homes, schools, health clinics and public parks.

The rulemaking process also came as a direct result of the Newsom administration’s November fracking moratorium announcement, found within that same directive.

Last January, two months after the directive, new CalGEM head Uduak-Joe Ntuk, Newsom’s legislative affairs secretary Anthony Williams and Department of Conservation director David Shabazian all attended and spoke at a pro-industry hearing convened by the Kern County Board of Supervisors. They held the hearing in direct response to Newsom’s November announcement. Aera CEO Sistrunk spoke at that hearing and the company promoted it on its website.

The lobbying disclosure records also show Kinney and Schmidt’s firm represents Marathon Petroleum, which advocated against legislation that would mandate CalGEM to implement a setbacks rule by July 1, 2022. That bill, AB 345, had previously mandated that a setback rule be put into place by 2020.

But after receiving lobbying pressure from the Common Ground Alliance— which has united major labor groups with the oil industry, and which was incorporated by an attorney whose clients include Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP America and Western States Petroleum Association—Assembly Appropriations Chairwoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) made it a two-year bill during the 2019 legislative session. The “two-year” option for state legislators extends the lifeline of a bill for potential amendments and passage into the second year of every two-year legislative session. Gonzalez told Capital & Main the bill received two-year status due to its high implementation cost.

Aera’s parent company, ExxonMobil, has given Gonzalez $5,500 in campaign contributions since her first run for the Assembly in 2013. Aera also gave a $35,000 contribution to the California Latino Legislative Caucus Foundation during the first quarter of 2020, its lobbying disclosure form shows. Gonzalez is the chairwoman of the California Legislative Latino Caucus and the foundation is its nonprofit wing. And both Aera and the Common Ground Alliance share the same attorney, Steven Lucas, incorporation documents and disclosure forms show.

“The Governor has been clear about the need to strengthen oversight of oil and gas extraction in California and to update regulations to protect public health and safety for communities near oil and gas operations,” Vicky Waters, Newsom’s press secretary, told Capital & Main in an emailed statement. “CalGEM has launched a rulemaking process to develop stronger regulations and will consider the best available science and data to inform new protective requirements.”

Waters did not respond to questions about Axiom Advisors and its personnel ties to Gov. Newsom.

“An Afterthought”

The permits handed to Aera coincide with the Newsom administration granting the industry a suite of regulatory relaxation measures during the COVID-19 era. These include a delay in implementing management plans for idle oil wells and cutting the hiring of 128 analysts, engineers and geologists to bolster the state’s regulatory efforts on oil wells—even though the industry was legally obligated to pay for it.

These measures came after San Francisco public radio station KQED reported that the oil industry’s top trade associations, the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and California Independent Petroleum Association (CIPA), requested that CalGEM take such actions.

Aera’s general counsel, Lynne Carrithers, sits on the board for CIPA, while the company is also a WSPA dues-paying member.

In response to a question about the cancellation of hiring of 128 regulators, Teresa Schilling, a spokeswoman for the Department of Conservation—which oversees CalGEM—said by email that the “Administration had to revisit many proposals in the January budget as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fiscal challenges it created.”

“Significantly expanding a fee-based program in this time of belt-tightening would not be appropriate,” Schilling continued, speaking to the oil industry’s current financial travails. “However, CalGEM is committed to continuing its critical core enforcement and regulatory work with its current resources. Furthermore, all regulations remain in effect and operators are still accountable for meeting them.”

Schilling added that, with regards to the connections with Axiom Advisors, the administration works with “a variety of stakeholders on policy issues and budget decisions,” calling the latest budget proposal “consistent with Administration priorities.”

But Cesar Aguirre, a community organizer with the Central California Environmental Justice Network who lives near Lost Hills in Bakersfield, sees the situation differently.

“The Lost Hills community is already surrounded by extraction and the Newsom administration and CalGEM continue to show that they intend to put the environment and frontline communities as an afterthought,” he said, advocating for the passage of AB 345. “These actions show us that Californians can’t depend on empty political promises to protect public health.”

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Featured image is from Capital & Main

Politico’s scandalous “report” alleging that Putin secretly supported and even possibly organized the left-wing terrorist activities of the “Baader-Meinhof Group” during his time with the KGB in East Germany is pure propaganda which is intended to serve the purpose of implying that Trump’s attempt to clinch a “New Detente” with his Russian counterpart over the past few years is akin to him hypocritically “colluding” with the man who’s now being portrayed as the “godfather” of his hated Antifa nemeses.

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US Economic Embargo​​​​​​​ on Syria Is ‘Crime Against Humanity’

By Mark Taliano and Press TV, June 22, 2020

The new sanctions came into effect under the so-called Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act on June 17, targeting almost all Syrian economic and trade activities as well as the country’s government and business officials loyal to Damascus.

The restrictive measures, signed by US President Donald Trump last December, penalized 39 companies and individuals, including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma — the first time she has been hit by US sanctions.

The US “Caesar’s Law” Sanctions Regime against Syria. How It Will Affect Lebanon: Israel Will be Targeted

By Elijah J. Magnier, June 19, 2020

The enactment of “Caesar’s Law” – the new US sanctions designed to “pursue individuals, groups, companies, and countries that deal with the Damascus government” – is apparently directed against Syria but in reality aims to subdue Lebanon and its population to accommodate Israel’s conditions. Lebanon’s “Axis of the Resistance” member, Hezbollah, has an open conflict with Israel.  Israel has a list of imposing demands: close off the flow of weapons via the Lebanese borders with Syria, disarm Hezbollah, impose its own terms on land and maritime borders, and push Lebanon to join other Middle Eastern countries in signing a peace deal- with Israel. But Hezbollah naturally has other plans- to enforce a new Rule of Engagement and take the attack initiative rather than opt for the defence response. This is similar to the Gaza deterrence policy of Hamas, another member of the “Axis of the Resistance”, that has been to hit targets in Israel if (and when) economic sanctions are imposed.

Why Is the US Still Sanctioning Syria? Beijing Pressures Washington

By Tony Cartalucci, June 19, 2020

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.

“Main Victim of Caesar Act Is the Syrian Citizen.” Ambassador Bashar Al-Ja’fari

By Dr. Bachar al-Jaafari and The Syria Times, June 18, 2020

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 US Admits They Are to Blame for Hunger in Syria

By Steven Sahiounie, June 12, 2020

United States Special Envoy to Syria, James Jeffrey, announced on Sunday that Washington had offered Syria a proposal to end the US sanctions. The Foreign and Expatriates Ministry in Damascus said that the statements by James Jeffrey constitute a clear admission by the Trump administration of it being directly responsible for the suffering of Syrians. The Syrians see the increasing sanctions as economic-warfare after the US failure to bring about ‘regime change’, by using terrorists supported by the CIA. Damascus declares the sanctions violate human rights and international law as they affect the Syrian population.

Video: Hearing Is Not Like Seeing: NATO’s Terrorists Burning Syrian Wheat Crops

By Arabi Souri, June 12, 2020

A video clip shared by local farmers from Ras Al-Ayn showing an inferno burning their livelihood before their eyes, hundreds of acres of wheat on fire just as the crop is due to harvest.

We’ve been reporting about these fires in areas of operation of the NATO’s Turkish (Orwellian-named) ‘Spring of Peace’ military operation in northern, and especially in northeastern Syria regions as well as in areas where remnants and sleeper cells of NATO-sponsored terrorists of ISIS and its affiliates are active in the south of the country.

The US Supports New Kurdish Unity to Destabilize the Middle East

By Steven Sahiounie, June 20, 2020

The Kurdish National Unity Parties (PYNK), a newly-established umbrella group consisting of 25 parties, was formed on May 20 to support the Kurdish unity talks, which have resulted in a “common political vision” on governance and partnership following a series of US-backed talks.  The statement released on June 17 by all parties is the culmination of talks which first began in October 2019, and are based on the 2014 Duhok Agreement, in which the parties reached a power-sharing compromise, but the agreement was never implemented. Talks will continue until a final agreement on matters related to finance, administration, and the military is reached.

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The media is churning out countless alarmist stories each day about the threat of COVID-19 and the dangers of societal reopening. “Risk of new lockdown rises with fear of second COVID-19 wave,” writes Reuters, as one example of the genre.

These stories generally incite, rather than inform. They cherry-pick facts and lack context. Only when the COVID picture is viewed in perspective are people able to make wise decisions about their actions. It should be safe for society to continue broadly reopening while directing resources to specific at-risk populations, such as nursing homes and prisons, which are more vulnerable.

The media has focused on increasing numbers of positive tests and hospitalizations in parts of the country to imply reopening is reckless. “Confirmed coronavirus cases have risen by double-digit percentages in 16 U.S. states that have gradually loosened restrictions since Memorial Day,” says Marketwatch.

Yet this perspective omits several essential facts. First, testing capacity has dramatically increased. The U.S. has tested 3.4 million people over the last week — about 40% more than the weekly numbers one month ago. It’s no surprise that positive cases have increased in some areas along with testing, especially since numerous antibody studies suggest that the disease is far more widespread than initially thought. We are witnessing a new infectious disease, and these case count ebbs and flows are to be expected.

In a country as vast and varied as the U.S., there will likely be COVID hotspots somewhere. Yet focusing on these in national news gives the impression that the country, or even individual states, are in far more danger than in reality. Even with a significant increase in testing, the number of new positive tests nationally has remained flattened as society has reopened.

Numerous news outlets are featuring rising COVID hospitalizations in some states to indicate a second wave. Admittedly, hospital admissions are a more objective measure of disease severity than positive tests. Often left unsaid, however, is that hospitalizations are falling in most states. Wouldn’t it be more helpful to cite these statistics in context?

Even in the states with rising hospitalizations, media stories about percentage increases often exaggerate the threat when increases occur from low baseline figures. For instance, numerous stories highlight how Arkansas’s COVID hospital admissions have increased by 121% since Memorial Day. Sounds bad, until you look at the raw numbers, which reveal that this increase only amounts to 111 patients.

Likely for political reasons, the media has identified Florida as the leading edge of a second wave. “Floridians flattened the COVID curve. Then, amid upbeat talk, the numbers began to rise,” reads a Miami Herald headline. Yet the data shows that new positive cases in Florida have tracked the increase in testing. Over the last month, hospitalizations have increased by about 50%, or just over 4,300 patients (in a state of 22 million people). Yet, the number of daily COVID deaths in the state has fallen considerably, by about one-third from May 10, using a seven-day rolling average.

This rise and fall in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths is precisely what one expects with a new infectious disease as we learn more and adjust. It’s part of “the dance” that we all knew was coming after the curve was flattened. It shouldn’t be used to justify pausing societal reopening, so long as appropriate precautions are encouraged and taken.

Reopening remains a success, with the positive case rate flattened, hospitalizations falling in most of the country, and deaths significantly reduced. That’s the positive story that the media should tell. Even if it won’t get as many clicks.

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Thomas Price M.D. is the former HHS Secretary and a senior healthcare fellow at the Job Creators Network.

C.L. Gray M.D. is the president and founder of Physicians for Reform and a partner of the Job Creators Network.

Featured image is from RealClearPolitics

This article was originally published in December 2015.

For the past 69 years, many of the most notorious U.S.-backed South American dictators, along with their secret police and torturers, have learned their dark arts from a secretive American training facility.

Located in Fort Benning, Georgia, the facility changed its name from “School of the Americas” to “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” in 2001. Human rights advocates say the change was purely cosmetic, a result of the increasing pressure the facility faced from activists and other critics. In November, thousands protested outside Fort Benning in what has become an annual occurrence.

Originally founded in 1946 and based in Panama, it was expelled from the nation in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. According to SOA Watch, a nonprofit which seeks the closure of the torture school, hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, murdered or “disappeared” through the work of its 64,000 graduates.

It first became a target for activists over three decades ago, after repeated atrocities in El Salvador were linked to graduates of the school. In December of 1980, three Catholic nuns, Dorothy Kazel, Maura Clarke, and Ita Ford, along with a Catholic lay missionary, Jean Donovan, were kidnapped by El Salvadoran soldiers who proceeded to torture, rape, and murder the four women under orders from the country’s military dictatorship in retaliation for their advocacy for the impoverished.

Protesters march to the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/WHINSEC).

Roy Bourgeois, a Vietnam veteran-turned-Catholic priest and a friend of two of the victims, discovered their killers had graduated from SOA, leading him to found SOA Watch and become a major organizer of the massive protests at the gates of Fort Benning.

In a Dec. 7 appearance on “The Empire Files,” journalist Abby Martin’s weekly news program that tackles American imperialism on Telesur, Bourgeois said his time in El Salvador was more terrifying than anything he saw in Vietnam.

“I’ve never seen such abuse of power, such brutality by the military,” he told Martin, adding:

“How could they rape and kill nuns who were working with the poor? How could they assassinate a bishop in church who’s talking about the poor?”   

In March of 1980, Óscar Romero, a Catholic bishop, was shot by a sniper in the pulpit, moments after he finished a sermon in which he demanded better human rights for El Salvadorans. Soldiers attacked his funeral with sniper rifles and bombs as well, killing dozens in attendance. The deeper Bourgeois investigated the atrocities in the country, the more ties he found between the soldiers spreading chaos and death and the SOA training.

But that’s far from the only massacre linked to SOA graduates, and it’s not even the largest. On Dec. 11, 1981, the El Salvadoran army wiped out the village of El Mozote, killing 800 civilians — but only after systematically raping, torturing, and beating the men, women and children in groups. According to Martin’s report, of the 12 officers cited in the war crime by the United Nations, 10 were SOA graduates.

These photos from the U.S. backed dirty war in El Mozote, El Salvador were taken from the book “El Salvador: Work of Thirty Photographers (1983)

Freelance journalist Ramona Wadi, writing for MintPress News in April, noted that the torture school has trained thousands of soldiers for countries from Chile to Guatemala in the past 20 years, and it continues to be linked to serious human rights violations. She noted a 2014 analysis by the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Colombia-Europe-U.S. Human Rights Observatory, which found that “out of 25 Colombian graduates from 2001 to 2003, 12 had either been charged with ‘a serious crime or commanded units whose members had reportedly committed multiple extrajudicial killings.’”

Although the school touts an eight-hour course in human rights that’s now mandatory for students, Wadi noted that despite years of protest and “beyond the cosmetic reforms” adopted by the government, it’s still supplying the torturers and killers that support U.S. imperialism in Latin America.

Watch “The U.S. School That Trains Dictators & Death Squads” from “The Empire Files with Abby Martin”:

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Featured image: A guest instructor debriefs students from the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation and Naval Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School after a field training exercise. (U.S. Navy photo)

American diplomatic and military support for Taiwan has grown dramatically during the Trump years. The administration has taken steps to boost that support, but Congress also has pushed its own initiatives. One key measure was the passage of the Taiwan Travel Act in 2018, which not only authorized but encouraged high-level defense and foreign policy officials to interact with their Taiwanese counterparts. 

That was a dramatic change from the policy adopted when the United States shifted diplomatic relations from the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1979. U.S. policy thereafter had confined all contacts to low-level officials only. More recent congressional measures have sought to emphasize that the United States is firmly in Taiwan’s camp. The trend is not merely a matter of academic interest, since under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), the United States is obligated to regard any attempt by Beijing to coerce Taiwan as a “grave breach of the peace” in East Asia.

The U.S. determination to resist China’s attempts to exert its power in the Western Pacific has grown still stronger after Beijing imposed a new national security law on Hong Kong in May, greatly diluting (if not negating) that territory’s guaranteed political autonomy. The Trump administration, with bipartisan congressional support, rescinded Hong Kong’s special trade status and adopted other punitive measures.

U.S. leaders also sought solidarity from America’s allies in both Europe and East Asia for a joint statement of condemnation and the imposition of sanctions in response to the PRC’s erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy. The lack of support from European capitals creates serious doubts about how much assistance Washington could expect if a showdown with China emerges at some point over Taiwan’s de facto independence. Allied backing on the Hong Kong issue was tepid and grudging, at best.

Among the European powers, only Britain (Hong Kong’s former colonial ruler) joined the United States in embracing a hardline approach. Receptivity to a confrontational policy was noticeably lacking among Washington’s other European allies. The German government’s reaction was typical. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas contended that the best way for the European Union to influence China on the Hong Kong dispute was merely to maintain a dialogue with Beijing. That stance fell far short of being an endorsement of the U.S. strategy.

France appeared to be even less eager to join Washington in trying to pressure Beijing. The South China Morning Post reported that in a telephone call to PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Emmanuel Bonne, diplomatic counselor to French President Emmanuel Macron, stressed that France respected China’s national sovereignty and had no intention to interfere in its internal affairs about Hong Kong.

The European Union itself adopted an anemic response to the PRC’s passage of the national security law. Anxious not to become entangled in America’s escalating rivalry with China, EU foreign ministers on May 29 echoed Germany’s preference and emphasized the need for dialogue about Hong Kong. After a videoconference among the bloc’s 27 foreign ministers, EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell said that only one country bothered to raise the subject of sanctions. Borrell added that the EU was not planning even to cancel or postpone diplomatic meetings with China in the coming months. So much for Washington’s goal of a common diplomatic front by the Western allies against Beijing’s actions in Hong Kong.

Washington did receive one apparent endorsement of its effort to gain allied cooperation for a stronger stance against the PRC. In early June, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg insisted that alliance members needed to adopt a more global approach to security issues, unlike the Europe- and North America-centric tack that he contended had usually shaped the alliance’s agenda. With an implicit reference to China, Stoltenberg stated that “as we look to 2030, we need to work even more closely with like-minded countries, like Australia, Japan, New Zealand and [South] Korea, to defend the global rules and institutions that have kept us safe for decades.” Highlighting those nations for special mention was hardly coincidental. And in an unsubtle slap at Beijing, he contended that the greater cooperation with the noncommunist Pacific nations aimed to create an international environment based on “freedom and democracy, not on bullying and coercion.”

Stoltenberg is swimming upstream, given the strong indications from leaders of the EU and such key EU powers as France, Germany, and Italy that they have no wish to adopt a confrontational policy toward China. And even Stoltenberg emphasized that NATO cooperation with China’s East Asian neighbors would not be primarily military in nature. However, nonmilitary support will be of small comfort to the United States if a showdown over Taiwan materializes.

The reaction of key Asian allies to Beijing’s new restrictions on Hong Kong was not measurably better than the level of support Washington received from its European allies. Japan’s response likely disappointed Washington the most. After more than a week of internal debate, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government declined to join the United States, Britain, Australia, and Canada in issuing a statement condemning the PRC’s actions in Hong Kong. Press reports indicated that the decision “dismayed” U.S. leaders. South Korea seemed even more determined than Japan to avoid taking sides in the dispute between the United States and China.

The bottom line was that with the exception of Australia, the United States could not count on its East Asian allies for even diplomatic and economic support against the PRC in response to its actions regarding Hong Kong. Such an outcome does not bode well if Washington seeks stronger backing—especially military backing—in the event of PRC aggression against Taiwan.

Unfortunately, the prospect of such aggression is increasing rapidly. Beijing has explicitly removed the word “peaceful” from its stated goal of inducing Taiwan to accept unification with the mainland. Equally troubling, PRC military exercises in and near the Taiwan Strait are becoming ever more numerous and menacing. On June 9, Chinese fighter planes once again violated Taiwan’s airspace, causing Taipei to send its own planes to intercept the intruders. The overall level of animosity and tension between Beijing and Taipei is at its worst level in decades.

Washington faces the prospect of being called upon to fulfill its implicit commitment under the TRA to defend Taiwan’s security. The trigger could come in the form of a PRC attack on some of Taipei’s small, outlying island holdings directly off of the mainland or in the South China Sea. Even a frontal assault on Taiwan itself cannot be ruled out. Such developments would immediately test the seriousness and credibility of the U.S. defense commitment.

Worse, the United States might well be waging the military struggle alone. The European allies almost certainly would not embroil themselves in a U.S.-China war. The reaction of Australia, South Korea, and Japan is somewhat less certain. PRC coercion against Taiwan would constitute a far more serious disruption of East Asia’s security environment than Beijing’s decision to tighten its grip on Hong Kong. All three countries would face an agonizing dilemma. If they joined a U.S.-led military defense of Taiwan, they would face severe retaliation. However, if they left the United States hanging, U.S. leaders, enraged at such a betrayal, would likely terminate Washington’s security alliances with those countries.

In any case, the United States cannot count on military support from its allies in a showdown with the PRC over Taiwan. It is yet another risk factor that Washington needs to take into account as it does a badly needed, long overdue, risk-benefit calculation regarding America’s commitment to Taiwan’s defense.

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Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The American Conservative, is the author of 12 books and more than 850 articles on international affairs. 

Featured image is from hyotographics/Shutterstock

The US economic embargo against Syria which doesn’t have the approval of the UN Security Council is a “crime against humanity,” a Canadian political commentator has said. 

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Mark Taliano added that the United States and its allies are supporting the harsh sanctions against the Arab country which are “cancer to the world.”

The new sanctions came into effect under the so-called Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act on June 17, targeting almost all Syrian economic and trade activities as well as the country’s government and business officials loyal to Damascus.

The restrictive measures, signed by US President Donald Trump last December, penalized 39 companies and individuals, including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma — the first time she has been hit by US sanctions.

The US and European Union had already imposed sanctions on Syria, freezing the assets of the state and hundreds of firms and individuals.

But the new measures can freeze the assets of anyone dealing with the Syrian government, regardless of nationality, and target many more sectors.

“I don’t even call them sanctions because they’re entirely criminal. It’s an economic embargo. It doesn’t have the Security Council approval. These are high crimes. It’s collective punishment, crimes against humanity,” Taliano told Press TV in a phone interview on Friday.

“The US and its allies, including Canada, are rogue states. They are collectively punishing countries that insist on the rule of international law and nation-state sovereignty and self-determination. They are cancer to the world,” he added.

“They’re targeting everyday civilians and they are not targeting, in fact, they’re supporting al-Qaeda and ISIS as they have been doing for the last 10 years in Syria. It’s entirely diabolical.”

Taliano went on to say that the US and its allies are “guilty” of international war crimes and that their acts of invasion under the guise of humanitarian purposes enjoy support from the US intelligence agencies.

“What the mainstream doesn’t say is that the West is entirely guilty of supreme international war crimes, daily really. The entire regime-change wars have no basis in international law. They claim that it’s about humanitarianism but of course there’s nothing humanitarian about it,” the Canadian analyst said.

“The West does not now and never did wage wars for humanitarian purposes. The West is criminally occupying, looting petroleum resources… There’s nothing humanitarian about this,” Taliano added.

“The West supports all the terrorists and so I mean those of us who are aware of what’s going on are just totally disgusted at the criminality of our government, and the duplicity of our politicians, who do not represent us, and we denounce the censorship of the truth, and the negation of any and all forms of International Justice,” he underlined.

US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft said at a Security Council meeting on Tuesday that the sanctions are aimed to prevent Damascus from achieving victory in the fight against foreign-backed militants.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The Syrian government says the Israeli regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding the Takfiri terrorist groups that are wreaking havoc in the country.

The government forces have already managed to undo militant gains across the country and bring back almost all of Syrian soil under government control.

The government gains in Syria have enraged the US, which has long been collaborating with anti-Damascus militants and stealing Syria’s crude resources.

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This video featuring Prof. Michel Chossudovsky was first released on April 20, 2020

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Millions of people have lost their jobs, and their lifelong savings. In developing countries, poverty and despair prevail. 

While the lockdown is presented to public opinion as  the sole means to resolving a global public health crisis, its devastating economic and social impacts are casually ignored.

What we are experiencing is a process of global impoverishment. The closure of the economy in a large number of countries has led to a dramatic loss of life. 

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of  mass unemployment, bankruptcy and extreme poverty. 

This is the true picture of what is happening. Poverty is Worldwide. 

The crisis has redefined the structure of the World economy.

It  precipitates entire sectors of the global economy including air travel, tourism, retail trade, manufacturing, etc. into bankruptcy.  The lockdown creates famine in developing countries. It has geopolitical implications.

This engineered crisis is unprecedented in world history. It is an act of war.

Curtailing economic activity Worldwide undermines the “reproduction of real life”. 

This not only pertains to the actual production of the “necessities of life” (food, health, education, housing) it also pertains to the “reproduction” of  social relations, political institutions, culture, the arts, sports events, national identity.

At the time of writing (early May 2020): Impossible to estimate or evaluate. Approximately half the global economy has been disrupted or is at a standstill?

The lockdown triggers a process of disengagement of human and material resources from the productive process.

The real economy in many sectors is brought to a standstill.

Billionaires, powerful banking and financial institutions (which are creditors of both governments and corporations) are waging an undeclared war against the real economy. Whereas the Big Money financial and banking establishment are “creditors”, the  corporate entities of the real economy which are being destabilized and driven into bankruptcy are “debtors”.

This diabolical process is not limited to wiping out small and medium sized enterprises. Big Money is also the creditor of  large corporations (including airlines, hotel chains, hi tech labs, retailers, import-export firms, etc.) which are now on the verge of bankruptcy.

In the US, numerous retailers, airlines, restaurant and hotel chains filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February. But this is just the beginning. The big gush of bankruptcies will occur in the wake of the lockdown (“The New Normal”). And at the time of writing (May 2020), the financial establishment is relentlessly pressuring (corrupt) national governments to postpone the lifting of the lockdown. And the governments are telling us that this is to “protect people against the virus”.

What these reports fail to mention are the unspoken causes: a fear campaign on behalf of the creditors, instructions by corrupt governments to close down the economy, allegedly to “save lives”, which is a big lie. Lives are not being saved, and they know it.

The coronavirus crisis “has ground U.S. business to a halt”. National economies are destabilized. The objective of Big Money is to weaken their competitors, “pick up the pieces” and eventually buy out or eliminate bankrupt corporations. And there are many to choose from.

Let’s be clear. This is an imperial agenda. What do the global financial elites want?

The tendency is towards the centralization and concentration of economic power.

Heavily indebted national governments are instruments of Big Money. They are proxies. Key political appointments are controlled by lobby groups representing Wall Street, The Military Industrial Complex, Big Pharma, Big Oil, the Corporate Media and the Digital Communications Giants, etc.

Big Money in America and Europe (through Washington Lobby groups) seek to control national governments.

In what direction are we going? What is the future of humanity?

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The following is my opinion based on more than a decade and a half of research into ruling elites. Please be aware this sort of commentary is now considered domestic terrorism by the FBI, the national security state, and its propaganda media. 

I have decided to post my thoughts on the destruction of America (and Europe) before the election. If current polling is any indication, Donald Trump will not be re-elected. Joe Biden will be the establishment’s teleprompter reader. The Senate will swing over to Democrat control. Democrats and their “progressive” (corporate-financed) allies will go after anyone to the right or left of the establishment, with the exception of groups like Black Lives Matter, which now receive millions of dollars from the likes of Citibank and the Ford Foundation, the latter long known to be a front operation controlled by the CIA. 

“The Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy recently 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,” reports The Washington Times. 

The COVID virus is a biological weapon deliberately released in China and from there spread to much of the rest of the world. It did not escape from the Wuhan lab. It was released by the US military while participating in an athletic event in Wuhan. However, it is believed the virus was circulating in November of 2019, possibly earlier. 

In April, a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Antiviral Research (Vol. 16, April 2020) concluded the COVID virus contains features not present in other viruses. Moreover, the paper argued the virus has no known ancestry and contains elements present in MERS, which the authors say “was not observed in the lineage b of betacoronaviruses.” In other words, the virus is an engineered bioweapon and not a freak of nature. 

However, this military-industrial lab-created disease was not designed to kill millions and become the 21st century’s version of the Black Death. It is far more useful as a fear-inducing mechanism. 

Here is the game plan as I see it:   

1) bring down teetering fiat money and toxic asset driven economy and blame it on the virus.

2) destroy Main Street business in competition with corporate behemoths (recall John D. Rockefeller—his operating maxim was that competition is a sin). 

3) create massive and sustained unemployment.

4) normalize the idea of house arrest and the negation of core constitutional rights.

5) enhance already intrusive and unconstitutional surveillance with “contact tracing” via smartphone and Bluetooth technology (check out this article which details how Michigan authorities used contact tracing against anti-lockdown protesters). 

6) foment unrest and exacerbate social ills as a diversion from the planned globalist reformulation of the world economy and society (i.e., “global governance,” aka New World Order). 

7) direct the corporate propaganda media to obsessively dwell on irrational race- and gender-based ideology and conflict, thus widening an engineered political divide, creating social chaos and violence, and thus diverting and reducing the threat posed to the elite and the national security state apparatus. 

8) keep the narrative focused on Donald Trump; downplay the evolving economic depression, distract attention, and debate away from the elite’s endless wars and neoliberal predation (this was accomplished during the Obama regime). 

9) continue to manufacture foreign enemies—Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Syria—and crackdown on “domestic terrorists” and “conspiracy theorists” now conflated with ISIS.

After Democrats take back Congress and the White House, this last point will kick into overdrive. MAGA, already maligned as Nazis and white supremacists, will be investigated and supporters will be prosecuted and imprisoned. Ditto folks on the left, or those not associated and bankrolled by elite foundations and corporations. 

I am convinced the ruling and financial elite consider most of us useless eaters, cattle to be exploited. They have spent the last decade accruing vast wealth at the expense of the so-called 99%. They are responsible for endless wars—now largely irrelevant to the average American—and are responsible for the murder of millions of innocent civilians and igniting social and sectarian violence in the smoldering ruins left in their “creative destruction” wake. 

Finally, I sincerely doubt the American people are capable of confronting the elite and returning the nation to a sanity that has been missing for decades. First and foremost, they are unable to break free of the voodoo spell of relentless narrative propaganda. Millions view the left-right paradigm not as a cynically crafted ploy to divert them from the real problem—the theft of the future and present by psychopathic and misanthropic rulers, condemning billions of misery and privation—but rather as a political reality. 

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

Medium has just introduced Momentum, a Medium blog about the fight against anti-Black racism. Medium’s announcement says,

Momentum is a blog that captures and reflects the moment we find ourselves in, one where rampant anti-Black racism is leading to violence, trauma, protest, reflection, sorrow, and more. This blog is a source for news about policies, activism, and personal perspectives in the fight against systemic racism from across Medium and beyond.

I have no quarrel with the idea of such a blog, and, indeed, applaud it. But, as a Palestinian with a Medium blog of my own called Palestinian and Righteously Angry, where I mostly post about the iniquities of Zionism, I have a question for the editors of Medium:

Do you consider Zionism a form of “racism and racial discrimination”, as adopted by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 on 10 November 1975?

If so, and given that Palestinians are also in a historic moment currently — what with Israel’s plan of annexing parts of the West Bank — when will the time come for Medium editors to introduce a blog in support of the fight against the systemic apartheid of Zionism?

If not, if you do not consider Zionism a form of racism and racial discrimination, would you kindly explain to me why not?

Is it because the 1975 UNGA resolution in that regard was revoked at the end of 1991 as a result of pressure from the US and its allies, who continue to consider the supremacist Zionist national movement as a noble endeavor?

If so, I beg you to read Ben Norton’s article of 2015 titled “US and Israel rewrite history of UN resolution that declared Zionism is racism.” In it he concludes, “while UN GA Res. 3379 was repealed, the truth cannot be revoked. Zionism was and remains an unequivocally racist movement — just like any other hyper-nationalist and ethnocratic movement.”

Norton goes on:

None other than the founding father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, recognized this elementary fact. In a 1902 letter to Cecil Rhodes — a diamond magnate and white supremacist British colonialist with oceans of African blood on his hands — Herzl, writing of “the idea of Zionism, which is a colonial idea,” requested help colonizing historic Palestine.

“It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor, not Englishmen but Jews… How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial,” Herzl wrote. “I want you to… put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan.” [Italics mine]

Two kindred spirits — the white supremacist colonialist and the Jewish supremacist colonialist, the latter already obliterating Palestine and referring to her indiscriminately as “a piece of Asia Minor”.

Cecil Rhodes’ statue at Oxford University will reportedly fall: “We have seen and felt the legacy of Rhodes’s crimes,” said postdoctoral researcher Sizwe Mpofu Walsh, who campaigned to remove the statue.

When will the statue of Theodor Herzl fall — in Israel and at Medium? It is time to amplify Palestinian voices, not censor them as Facebook is doing. It is time to stand against Zionism and help the world to learn how to advance justice in Palestine. Zionism is racism.

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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Statue of the founder of Zionism Theodor Herzl, unveiled in 2012 at the Mikveh Israel synagogue in Tel Aviv. It is called “Herzl meets Emperor Wilhelm II” (Source: author)

At my Quaker Meeting, occasionally someone will say, “Could we have some silence please?” especially during a business meeting, which we call Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business. Someone may request silence when the discussion becomes too contentious, and we are not progressing towards resolution.  We wait and listen.

What are we listening for? As corny and old-fashioned as it may sound, we are waiting for guidance from god.  I have been attending the Quaker Meeting for many years now and have felt increasing awe and reverence for this process by which Quakers conduct business. No shouting. No interrupting. Even the most timid, the most outlying or awkward person may be given time to gather her thoughts, to breathe and to speak, perhaps falteringly, even if she has to pause before continuing. People wait. It is quite amazing. I had never seen anything like it.

Quakers do not vote on issues but discuss, sometimes a lot, and tiringly. Members direct comments to the clerk. At its best, there is time for each person who wants to speak to be heard during the meeting. Instead of voting, we try to discern the “sense of the Meeting” before acting. We are trying to discern god’s will. And even one person can change the movement of the group as he or she feels led to speak. One voice can be the one to heed even if the whole group is going another way – because we believe that all have direct access to god’s guidance, no one person more than another. If the group has not gathered a sense of unity, then the meeting may decide to postpone action. We wait and listen more — and try again at another meeting.

As I have sat it these business meetings, I have noted what a miracle they are to have survived in this form for hundreds of years of Quaker history, women as well as men, speaking and following leadings.

In this contentious time of lockdowns, isolations, staggering losses of livelihoods and social supports, then violence, snarling faces, flying opinions and accusations, burning buildings, crashing glass, and dizzying confusion of language and numbers and messages changing every day,  I have longed to hear someone say those words: “Could we have some silence please?” This signals a pause for us to collect our thoughts and feelings.

Apart from monthly business meetings, our meetings for worship are filled with mostly silence while we wait and listen for god. As led, someone may stand to share what we call vocal ministry, which is usually brief.  After the message is shared, the Meeting then settles into silence once again, so the message has time to live in the air among us.  It is also during our Meetings for Worship that we gather strength to act in the world.

At Meeting, all kinds of people gather in silence, old people, couples, single people, families. We haven’t been able to meet in person for months now, and I do not participate in computer meetings because they usually make me queasy.

Flashing Internet images and slogans on social media and other web sites also make me queasy.  Anyone can create in seconds a poster with short texts or an image with a caption, and can immediately broadcast it to thousands, even millions. These patched-together messages blink and flash and multiply. I don’t use Twitter, don’t really understand it, but it sounds to me like something a 13-year old boy made up. Yet, we see public figures use haphazard phrases — tweets (which sounds silly) that instantly become headlines in national newspapers. This cannot be good for our clear thinking or our culture. We can’t even open our email programs without seeing the lowest forms of speech elevated to look like relevant news. We drown in cacophony and mayhem.

Many at protests and riots hold up their devices, filming, and those films and images fill screens and minds. It becomes very hard to think clearly about anything. The Internet has changed our brains, as Nicholas Carr describes in his book, The Shallows. He describes how our attention spans have been shattered by clicking through short texts and flashing images as we are increasingly challenged to sustain even the concentration required to sit and read a whole book, for instance. Carr summarizes the findings of early computer scientist Joseph Weizenbuam, who notes the danger as we become more intimately involved with our computers and “experience more of our lives through the disembodied symbols flickering across our screens  — is that we’ll begin to lose our humanness, to sacrifice the very qualities that separate us from machines” (p. 207). Weizenbaum says that to avoid that fate we must “have the self-awareness and courage to refuse to delegate to computers the most human of our mental activities and intellectual pursuits, particularly ‘tasks that demand wisdom’” (p. 208).

Images, language, repetitions flash too quickly for adequate processing and wise decisions. They repeat across TV stations that call themselves news but work more like advertising.  For instance, inanimate objects like face masks, become imbued with values and feelings like care, protection, altruism, even membership in a community, regardless of conflicting information on their effectiveness to prevent the spread of a virus.Similarly, Coke can come to represent fun and belonging through repetition, language, and images; a cigarette brand can endow someone masculine strength; Campbell’s soup can represent nurturing. Advertising is also used to pressure us into conformity, for instance, wear this brand of athletic shoes, and you will exude status and success. Now, advertising strategies become mixed with daily bombarding messages, and it becomes very hard to think independently. Once advertising works, it does not matter what the facts may be.

Could we have some silence please?

Lately, I find myself longing for a Ticonderoga number two pencil, soft lead, rustling steadily over nubby white paper. I am reminded of one of my poetry teachers describing how long it can take to craft a good poem or to compose a whole poetry manuscript. “You know what it’s like,” he said. “It’s like carving a chair.” I remember how long it takes to learn to play the violin, to learn to draw.  These slower, more methodical activities strengthen our brains for concentration; they build pathways for creativity, for problem-solving, ultimately for more careful thinking, for judgement and wisdom, which we seem to be increasingly lacking now.

Shouts and crashes, burning and shooting reverberate through Chicago, Illinois where there were 18 murders in 24 hours this past weekend, according to The Chicago Sun Times. “The most violent weekend in the city’s modern history,” the paper reported. Eighty-five people were shot and 24 killed in just one weekend.  “And no police were anywhere,” the story stated. On May 31, there were 65 thousand 911 calls, which was 50 thousand more than a usual day, the paper reported, while just a couple of weeks ago, the mayor of that city, as well as other governors and mayors around the county, threatened to jail or fine people who were out anywhere, even small groups.

Young people have been out in massive gatherings now all over the country with small and large businesses looted and destroyed, fires raging in buildings and churches, car windshields smashed and car bodies burned, belying mainstream media reports that the protests were mostly “peaceful.” We can’t lockdown whole societies for months, rip down whole social fabrics without dire consequences. Young people had no school, no graduations to attend, no sports activities or clubs; they lost part-time jobs pieced together at restaurants or coffee shops; they have had no grandmothers making them go to church youth group or funerals or family picnics because there have been none of these.  Just weeks and weeks inside with video games and cell phones and what else? There is a deep breakdown of trust in our institutions and the means by which we get information. Forty million people are unemployed, a quarter of the U.S. population. A black man is killed by a policeman, almost three months into lockdown. What tinderbox is inside – the killer, the victim, and everyone else?

Can we have some silence please?

We hear cries to defund the police, but I remember that an average police officer makes about as much as a public-school teacher. The African American police chief in Seattle may disagree with this proposal to defund the police as her entire department has been disbanded with the building taken over by protesters and rioters. Instead of defunding local police departments, we may consider starting by defunding a fighter jet or two. One of them costs about 89.2 million dollars, according to Lockheed Martin’s web site. Or, perhaps cutting a nuclear submarine or two. Twelve of them will cost 128 billion dollars, according to an April 8, 2019 Time magazine story. How many literacy programs for children, teens, and young adults in Chicago would some of that money fund? How many small business loans for black business owners would it provide?

A kid may call the police when his father is beating up his mother. He would want the police to be there. Police get called when someone is suicidal, wielding a knife, maybe high on meth or Fentanyl. Police have to deal with assaultive mentally ill people shouting in their face; they have to deal with protestors with clubs – and try to contain violence, protect themselves and others, and not get anyone hurt or killed. It is a very hard job, my cop friends have described to me. One of my friends teased me, saying that maybe I should join him on the right-wing side of politics. I reminded him that I am not on anyone’s wing. In fact, I believe the wings, right and left, have outlived their meanings and their usefulness and think they should lift on the wind and fly off, making room for more independent thinking and more options.

“It’s the responsibility of the alternative media to hit the pause button, to take a breath and not be swept away along with the emotional current,” writes an editor of Off-Guardian magazine, a site developed by writers and thinkers who had been banned from making comments on the Open Comments section of the mainstream U.K paper, The Guardian. We are in treacherous times when independent thinkers and writers, who question dominant narratives, may be banned from speaking or writing – or worse, lose friends or family members or jobs. This development is deeply sad and worrisome.

Could we have some silence please?

Seeing computer images of riots, massive looting, a black woman crying over her destroyed business, a black man, D.C. city employee, in required mask and gloves, outside in the heat, cleaning graffiti from the Lincoln Memorial, I long for one of our elder members, Tim Hall, to stand up and say what I imagine he might after we have sat in a long silence. He may share a message about god’s surrounding love for all of us, no matter who we are. He might remind us, in his corny, old-fashioned way that I have often found comforting, that in spite of its challenges, this is a mostly good world that god has given us to care for.

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Christine E. Black‘s work has been published in The American Journal of Poetry, New Millennium Writings, Nimrod International, The Virginia Journal of Education, Friends Journal, Sojourners Magazine, English Journal, Amethyst Review, and other publications. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Pablo Neruda Prize.

Featured image: Copyright Historic England Archive, James O. Davies

Mexico’s oligarchs and establishment political parties have united in a secret alliance to try to remove left-wing President López Obrador from power, with help from the media, Washington, and Wall Street. Leaked documents lay out their devious strategy.

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Some of the most powerful forces in Mexico are uniting in a campaign to try to topple the country’s first left-wing president in decades, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. And they apparently have support in Washington and on Wall Street.

Known popularly as AMLO, the Mexican leader is a progressive nationalist who campaigned on the promise to “end the dark night of neoliberalism.” He has since implemented a revolutionary vision he calls the “Fourth Transformation,” vowing to fight poverty, corruption, and drug violence — and has increasingly butted heads with his nation’s wealthy elites.

López Obrador has also posed a challenge to the US foreign-policy consensus. His government provided refuge to Bolivia’s elected socialist President Evo Morales and to members of Evo’s political party who were exiled after a Trump administration-backed military coup.

AMLO also held a historic meeting with Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and even stated Mexico would be willing to break the unilateral US blockade of Venezuela and sell the besieged Chavista government gasoline.

These policies have earned AMLO the wrath of oligarchs both inside and outside of his country. On June 18, the US government ratcheted up its pressure on Mexico, targeting companies and individuals with sanctions for allegedly providing water to Venezuela, as part of an oil-for-food humanitarian agreement.

The value of the Mexican peso immediately dropped by 2 percent following the Trump administration’s imposition of sanctions.

These opening salvos of Washington’s economic war on its southern neighbor came just days after López Obrador delivered a bombshell press conference, in which he revealed that the political parties that had dominated Mexican politics for the decades before him have secretly unified in a plot to try to oust the president, years before his democratic mandate ends in 2024.

The forces trying to remove AMLO from power include major media networks, massive corporations, sitting governors and mayors, former presidents, and influential business leaders. According to a leaked document, they call themselves the Broad Opposition Block (Bloque Opositor Amplio, or BOA).

And they say they have lobbyists in Washington, financial investors on Wall Street, and major news publications and journalists from both domestic and foreign media outlets on their team.

El pdte. @lopezobrador_ difundió un documento llegado a Palacio (cuyo origen y autenticidad desconocemos) que propone la conformación de un bloque opositor para arrebatar la presidencia en el 2021, en el que participan partidos, empresarios, medios, intelectuales, periodistas. pic.twitter.com/zfXSlGdUYP

— Jesús Ramírez Cuevas (@JesusRCuevas) June 9, 2020

‘Broad Opposition Block’ BOA plot to demonize AMLO with media propaganda

In a press conference on June 9, the Mexican government published a leaked strategy document purportedly drafted by the Broad Opposition Block, titled “Let’s Rescue Mexico” (Rescatemos a México). The AMLO administration said it did not know the origin of the leak.

These pages consist of an executive summary of “Project BOA,” outlining what it calls a “plan of action” – a blueprint of concrete steps the opposition alliance will take to unseat AMLO.

One of the key points in the plan is the following: “Lobbying by the BOA in Washington (White House and Capital Hill) to stress the damage that the government of the [Fourth Transformation] is doing to North American investors.”

The lobbying strategy depends heavily on turning the US against AMLO: “More than comparing it with Venezuela,” the document reads, “BOA should highlight the very high mass migration of Mexicans toward the United States if the crisis of unemployment and insecurity gets worse.”

Then the BOA adds: “Repeat this narrative in the US and European media.”

The section of the BOA plan on lobbying in Washington and using the media to push anti-AMLO messaging

The leaked pages say that BOA has the “international press (USA and Europe)” on its side, along with “foreign correspondents in Mexico.”

The document even names specific media outlets, along with individual journalists and social media influencers, who could help spread their anti-AMLO propaganda. On the list are some of the top news publications in Mexico: Nexos, Proceso, Reforma, El Universal, Milenio, El Financiero, and El Economista.

The list of sympathetic anti-AMLO media outlets and journalists in the BOA document

The “plan of action” makes it clear that this powerful opposition alliance seeks to use its extensive control over the media to obsessively blame AMLO for “unemployment, poverty, insecurity, and corruption” in Mexico.

BOA even states unambiguously in its plan that it will use “groups of social media networks, influencers, and analysts to insist on the destruction of the economy, of the democratic institutions, and the political authoritarianism of the government of the 4T” (using an acronym for the Fourth Transformation process).

This makes it especially ironic that the BOA document reluctantly acknowledges that the López Obrador “government has managed to mitigate the economic impact of the health crisis of coronavirus by giving large amounts of public money to the affected, through social programs.”

The leaked pages likewise admit that AMLO has an approval rating of more than 50 percent — lower than his peak at 86 percent support in the beginning of 2019 or his 72 percent at the end of the year, but still impressive for a region where US-backed leaders like Chile’s Sebastián Piñera or Colombia’s Iván Duque have routinely enjoyed approval ratings of 6 percent and 24 percent, respectively.

#ConferenciaPresidente. Presentan un documento confidencial de un presunto Bloque Opositor Amplio (BOA) para desplazar a Morena y al gobierno actual en las elecciones del 2021. pic.twitter.com/ffoGXoWuVH

— Jenaro Villamil (@jenarovillamil) June 9, 2020

Mexico’s establishment political parties and former presidents unite to oust AMLO

With backing from the US government and utter dominance of media narratives, the Broad Opposition Block plan is to unite all of Mexico’s establishment political parties.

Together, these parties could potentially run candidates under the BOA umbrella, according to the document. Their goal would be, in the 2021 legislative elections, to end the majority that AMLO’s left-wing party Morena won in Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies.

After that, BOA states clearly that it plans to block reforms in the Mexican legislature, and ultimately impeach President López Obrador by 2022 — at least two years before his term ends.

Quite revealing is that the “Let’s Rescue Mexico” document does not mention anything about average working-class Mexicans and their participation in the political process. Nor does it acknowledge the existence of labor unions or grassroots activist organizations, which make up the base of AMLO’s movement and his Morena party.

This is not surprising, considering the BOA alliance lists some of the most powerful figures in the Mexican ruling class.

All the major political parties are included: the right-wing National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional, or PAN), the center-right Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI), the centrist Citizens’ Movement (Movimiento Ciudadano, or MC), and even AMLO’s former Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática, or PRD).

The list of political parties included in the BOA document

BOA also includes the new political party México Libre, a vehicle for former right-wing President Felipe Calderón, a major ally of George W. Bush who declared a catastrophic “war on drugs” in Mexico, leading to tens of thousands of deaths.

Along with Calderón, BOA lists former President Vicente Fox, another right-wing US ally, as a coalition ally. Fox worked closely with the Bush administration during his term as president to isolate the leftist governments in Latin America, and even tried to undemocratically remove AMLO as mayor of Mexico City and ban him from running for president.

BOA also says it has support from the governors of 14 states in Mexico, along with opposition lawmakers in both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, judges from the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary (TEPJF), and officials from the National Electoral Institute (INE).

Wall Street investors and Mexican oligarchs back anti-AMLO alliance

Joining the entire Mexican political establishment in the Broad Opposition Block is a powerful financial oligarchy, both domestic and foreign.

Along with its “anti-4T lobbyists in Washington,” the leaked document says BOA has “Wall Street investment funds” behind it.

BOA adds that it is supported by “corporations linked to T-MEC,” using the Spanish acronym for the new “United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement” free-trade deal, known popularly as NAFTA 2.0.

The powerful business groups and corporations listed in the BOA document

Some of the richest capitalists in Mexico are associated with BOA. Named in the leaked document is the Mexican corporate behemoth FEMSA and oligarchs from its associated Monterrey Group, which the New York Times once described as a “a tightly knit family of wealthy and conservative businessmen.”

The BOA pages also point to Mexico’s powerful Business Coordinating Council (Consejo Coordinador Empresarial) and Employers Confederation of the Mexican Republic (Coparmex) as allies.

Opposition denies involvement in BOA, while turning up heat on AMLO

In the days after López Obrador’s press conference exposing the Broad Opposition Block, some of the prominent figures implicated in the alliance, such Felipe Calderón, denied involvement.

Some of these political and economic elites even claimed BOA doesn’t exist, seeking to cast doubt on the president’s scandalous revelation and accusing him of fabricating the scandal.

But their efforts are clearly part of a larger campaign by Mexican opposition groups to remove President Andrés Manuel López Obrador from power. As AMLO’s Fourth Transformation moves forward, their destabilization tactics have grown increasingly extreme.

López Obrador himself has warned of the radicalization of the right-wing opposition. As The Grayzone previously reported, the president made an ominous reference to the threat of a potential coup in November 2019.

Referencing Mexico’s former President Francisco Madero, a leader of the Mexican Revolution and fellow left-winger who was assassinated in 1913, AMLO tweeted, “How wrong the conservatives and their hawks are… Now is different… Another coup d’état won’t be allowed.”

Ahora es distinto. Aunque son otras realidades y no debe caerse en la simplicidad de las comparaciones, la transformación que encabezo cuenta con el respaldo de una mayoría libre y consciente, justa y amante de la legalidad y de la paz, que no permitiría otro golpe de Estado.

— Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) November 2, 2019

The next part in this investigative series by The Grayzone will show how far-right forces in Mexico are pushing for a coup against AMLO.

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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

At least 6 soldiers were killed and 9 others were injured in an ISIS attack on a Syrian Army checkpoint near the town of Ithriyah, located on the Hama-Aleppo road. According to pro-government sources, at least 5 ISIS members were killed in the clashes.

Regular ISIS attacks in desert areas in central Syria are a serious problem for Syrian government forces. During the past few weeks, the army and its allies completed a series of combing operations against ISIS cells in eastern Homs, southern Raqqa and western Deir Ezzor. It seems that these efforts forced the terrorist group to shift its focus towards eastern Hama.

Nonetheless, there is little doubt that as soon as the Syrian military sends units hunting down ISIS cells along the Palmyra-Deir Ezzor road to the Itriyah area, ISIS attacks in the Deir Ezzor countryside will resume once again.

The Damascus government will likely continue lacking resources to clear the entire desert of ISIS cells as long as it needs to keep large forces on the contact line with the Turkish Army and its proxies in Greater Idlib, near the region of Afrin and in northeastern Syria.

Idlib militant groups are not only waging a never-ending propaganda war against the Damascus government, but also find time for regular infighting.

On June 17, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham arrested Abu Salah al-Uzbeki, the founder and former leader of the Katibat al Tawhid wal Jihad terrorist group, which consists mostly of ethnic Uzbeks. Al-Uzbeki and two of his bodyguards were captured by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham forces near the city of Idlib on June 17. The reason for tensions is that Katibat al Tawhid wal Jihad recently distanced itself from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and signed a pact with Ansar al-Din, another al-Qaeda-linked group. Earlier this month, Ansar al-Din and several other medium and small groups created a new coalition – Fa Ithbatu. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham may have considered this move as an attempt to challenge its dominant position among the so-called moderate opposition.

Usbat al-Tha’ireen, an Iraqi pro-Iranian group formed earlier in 2020, released a new video claiming responsibility for a series of attacks on US forces and facilities across Iraq.

In the video entitled “Victory Comes With Patience” it claimed that:

• On June 8, it shelled Camp Taji damaging a C-130 military transport aircraft of the US Air Force;
• On June 11, it launched rockets at the US embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone;
• On June 16, it launched rockets at the US-operated military section of Baghdad International Airport.

Usbat al-Tha’ireen is the group that killed 3 US-led coalition personnel with a rocket strike on Camp Taji on March 11. Nonetheless, its claims about the damaging of the C-130 aircraft belonging to US military can hardly been verified.

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From inception, “America the beautiful” was and remains pure fantasy.

Throughout US history, its “lamp beside the golden door (alone welcomed) huddled masses yearning to breathe free” of the “right” race, ethnicity, and religion.

The welcome mat for people of color, the “wrong” nationality, and “wrong” religion was never out — other than for indentured servitude to corporate America and its privileged class.

That said, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration policy (2012) lets undocumented immigrants entering America as minors receive renewable deferred action from deportation, along with work permit eligibility.

So-called “Dreamers” were earlier estimated to number around 1.7 million, undocumented immigrants entering America before age-16 prior to June 2007.

Today the number is around 700,000.

Eligibility to stay in the US requires they be in school, have graduated from high school, or received an honorable discharge from the military.

Anyone convicted of a felony or serious misdemeanor is ineligible. So are individuals considered a threat to national security.

DACA excludes a path to citizenship and eligibility for federal welfare or student aid.

In September 2017, Trump rescinded DACA immigration policy.

Federal District Court Judge William Alsup ruled against his move.

Lawyers for DACA’s continuation argued that ending the program would cause “serious, irreparable harm” to affected individuals, adding:

“DACA covers a class of immigrants whose presence, seemingly all agree, pose the least, if any, threat and allows them to sign up for honest labor on the condition of continued good behavior.”

“This has become an important program for DACA recipients and their families, for the employers who hire them, for our tax treasuries, and for our economy.”

Throughout his tenure, Trump’s immigration policy has been and remains all about keeping individuals from the “wrong” countries out of the US.

He wants Dreamers and their family members deported, tougher asylum and refugee status standards, expedited deportations, sanctuary cities made ineligible for federal funds, visa overstays ended, limiting green cards for spouses and minor children of legal immigrants, and other policies that close the “golden door” to unwanted immigrants.

In October 2017, the ACLU sued “to hold the (Trump regime accountable to earlier) promises it made and ensure that DACA provides protection from deportation for however long the program exists, adding:

No one should “be stripped of a benefit as important as DACA without basic due process protections.”

“The Trump (regime’s) arbitrary decision to end the program makes it clear that we cannot leave these young people’s fate to whoever happens to be sitting in the White House.”

On Thursday, the US Supreme Court ruled by a 5 – 4 majority against Trump’s intention to end DACA.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said the Trump regime’s policy to end the program violated the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA, 1946).

It’s “(a)n Act to improve the administration of justice by prescribing fair administrative procedure(s)” — granting federal courts oversight over government agency actions.

Majority justices also included  Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Dissenting justices included Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas.

Writing for the dissenters, Thomas called the ruling political, not legal.

Trump lashed out at the ruling in typical Trumpian fashion, tweeting:

“These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives (sic).”

“We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else.”

“Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?”

“(W)e need NEW JUSTICES of the Supreme Court.”

Specifically, Roberts said the following in ruling against Trump on DACA:

The Trump regime “failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA recipients,” adding:

“That…failure raises doubts about whether (it) appreciated the scope of its discretion or exercised that discretion in a reasonable manner.”

“We (Court justices) do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies.”

“The wisdom of those decisions is none of our concern.”

“Here we address only whether the (Trump regime) complied with (APA) procedural requirements that insist on ‘a reasoned explanation for its action.’ ”

Sweepingly declaring “Dreamers” illegal constitutes “an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws…an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch.”

The decision to end DACA was “arbitrary and capricious.”

At the same time, all nine justices agreed that the executive branch has authority to rescind DACA on its own — as long as no federal law is breached.

Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling by no means resolves this issue.

DACA remains potentially jeopardized by revised White House policy that complies with APA.

It’s unlikely in an election year at a time of Trump’s declining popularity, economic collapse, increasing COVID-19 outbreaks in many states, and unprecedented unemployment.

From now to November, he’ll no doubt focus mainly on improving his reelection chances.

According to immigration law expert/Law Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, “(i)t’s not remotely possible (for Trump to challenge Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling) before the election.”

“But if (he’s) reelected, he almost certainly will try again” to abolish DACA.

Ahead of Thursday’s ruling, around 200 major US corporations filed amicus briefs in support of DACA — with no altruistic motives in mind, concerned only about the availability of cheap labor sources to exploit.

A Final Comment

In response to Thursday’s ruling, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said the following:

“Ending DACA would have been cruel to the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who call America home, and it would have been bad for our nation’s health.”

“The highest court in our land saw through the Trump (regime’s) illegal, baseless excuses.”

Separately, an amicus brief by attorneys in support of Dreamers explained that 27,000 of their numbers are vitally needed healthcare workers.

Another 200 are practicing physicians, medical residents and students.

Terminating DACA would be “catastrophic” to efforts involved in containing and treating outbreaks, they argued.

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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 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), founded in 2001 by the Shanghai Five (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) and to which Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan were later added would be the ALBA and Iran countries hard core of resistance to world hegemony of the United States and Great Britain. Consequently, the avowed objective of the United States would be to dynamite this organization, having Balochistan, Kashmir and Xinjiang as scenarios for its destabilizing operations.

China and the diversification of its energy sources

Russia and China sealed a stratospheric oil contract that becomes one of the largest in the history of the energy industry for which the Russian company Rosneft, (the country’s largest oil company), will supply oil to the Asian giant for 25 years worth of 270,000 million dollars (about 205,000 million euros). This, coupled with the gas mega-contract signed by the Russian Gazprom and the Chinese CNPC, through which Russia will supply the Asian country with 38,000 million cubic meters of natural gas for an approximate amount of $ 400,000 million and with a validity of 30 years through The Sila Sibiri pipeline (The Force of Siberia), would lay the economic foundations of the Euro-Asian Union that began its journey on January 1, 2015 as an economic and military alternative to the US project to create a Trans-Pacific Association (TPP for short) English).

However, in an attempt to avoid Russian energy dependence, China would have taken on the challenge of building a new canal in Nicaragua (Grand Interoceanic Canal) similar to the Kra Isthmus canal that it has projected between Thailand and Burma to bypass the Malacca Strait, converted “de facto” into a saturated seaway affected by pirate attacks and inaugurated in 2010 the gas pipeline that connects China with Turkmenistan and that surrounds Russia to avoid its total Russian energy dependence while diversifying its purchases.

In addition, China would be building an extensive port network, which would include ports, bases and observation stations in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Burma and of which the strategic port in Pakistan, Gwadar, (the “gorge” of the Persian Gulf), would be a paradigm, to 72 kilometers from the border with Iran and about 400 kilometers from the most important oil transportation corridor and very close to the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The port was built and financed by China and is operated by the state-owned China Overseas Port Holding Company (COPHC), as the region around the port of Gwadar contains two thirds of the world’s oil reserves and 30 percent passes through it of the world’s oil and 80 percent of that received by China and is on the shortest route to Asia (Silk Road).

Pakistan and India: Two irreconcilable neighbors

Pakistan’s dangerous rapprochement with China would have accelerated the Pentagon’s doctrine of achieving the balkanization of Pakistan and its weakening as a state with Baluchistan as the insurgency’s field of operations. Thus, the US announced the suppression of military aid to Pakistan in the amount of $ 300 million while promoting the independence movement in the province of Balochistan where the strategic port of Gwadar is located with the avowed objective of making the star project unfeasible. of China, the “Initiative of the Belt and the Silk Road” and later the CIA will resort to the endemic contentious Kashmir that will be a new local episode between a Pakistan allied with China and an India supported by Russia, with the aggravating circumstance of having both nuclear ballistic missile countries.

Russia would be a strategic ally of India as it is the largest arms supplier to an India that has maintained an arms race for years with its rival and neighboring Pakistan with the unequivocal objective of preparing for a new armed confrontation. India would have the latest generation Agni V nuclear missile that can carry a nuclear warhead over a distance of 5,000 kilometers, while Pakistan would have the Hatf IV ballistic missile, developed with the help of China and capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching 900 kilometers. . Thus, in the event of a new Indo-Pakistani armed confrontation, we would attend the first Russia-China military pulse in the form of a nuclear collision restricted to the Indian-Pakistani geographical area, the subsequent extension of “constructive chaos” to Chinese territory not being ruled out.

The explosive cocktail of Kashmir

Kashmir would be the perfect paradigm for the implementation of Brzezinski’s theory of “constructive chaos” in the region, a concept that would be based on the maxim attributed to the Roman emperor Julius Caesar “divide et impera”, to achieve the establishment of a field of instability and violence (balkanization) and create chaos that would spread from Lebanon, Palestine and Syria to Iraq and from Iran and Afghanistan to Pakistan, Kashmir and Anatolia (Asia Minor).

Kashmir would have become an explosive cocktail by combining ingredients as unstable as the Hindu-Muslim religious dispute, the territorial dispute and the icing on the cake of Kashmiri independence fighters supported by ex-jihadist fighters from Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, traditionally oppressed by an Indian Army that it would have about 500,000 soldiers deployed in Kashmir (1 soldier for every 9 inhabitants) and the nationalist government of Modi would have revoked the special status of Kashmir, which in practice results in the sine die detention of local politicians in Kashmir and the strict control of Internet service.

On the other hand, in 1962 a confrontation broke out between India and China over the Chinese disagreement with the border line established in 1914 (McMahon Line), after which China gained control of the Aksai Chin plateau in addition to the Siachen Glacier, (territories which India continues to claim as its own.) China it aspires to store the water from the sources of rivers such as the Brahmaputra to supply Chinese cities in the east of the country, which would have set off alarms in the Modi government, which fears a notable reduction in the flow of available drinking water, so they do not rule out bombard Chinese hydraulic facilities. The recent armed incident in which several Indian soldiers were killed would have increased tension between the two countries, a circumstance that will be used by the United States to destabilize the border shared by both countries known as the Current Control Line (LAC).

Towards the destabilization of Xinjiang

Regarding eastern Turkestan or Xinjiang (“New Frontier”), it was incorporated into the Chinese empire in the 18th century and represents 17% of the country’s land area and 2% of its population) and the Xinjiang Uighur ethnic group (of origin Turkish-Mongolian and with a total of 8.5 million inhabitants), it preserves ethnic and Islamic characteristics that would place them very close to their relatives in Central Asia and Turkey, making it the ideal breeding ground to implement the Brzezinski style strategy of the “shock of civilizations ”.

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With the Netanyahu regime of Israel on the cusp of violating international law once again, this time by annexing large parts of Palestine, the United States is not only not opposing, but actually encouraging this crime. Of course, the U.S. is no fan of international law, as demonstrated in just the last few years by its withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA); sanctions against Iran and Venezuela; financing of anti-government terrorists in Syria; supporting Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war against Yemen, and moving the U.S. embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, to name just a few.. And it isn’t just international law that the government disdains: U.S. law decrees that, for a nation to receive aid from the U.S., it must adhere to basic human-rights requirements. Israel doesn’t even come close, but gets $4 billion from the U.S. annually.

Pundits advise us that Trump’s chances of reelection shrink by the day. After all, he mishandled the coronavirus pandemic which has now killed over 115,000 U.S. citizens, and he watched the economy crash due to the pandemic. His early, rosy proclamations about how he was not worried about it, that it would ‘miraculously’ go away in the spring, etc., have all proven to be false.

Additionally, with civil unrest in the U.S. reaching levels not seen in decades, the result of deeply embedded racism within the police departments across the nation and in what passes for the U.S. justice system, he has only made things worse.

From quoting racists from the era of the 1960s (“when the looting starts, the shooting starts”), calling demonstrators “thugs” and saying local police should “dominate” them, to using tear gas to disperse peaceful demonstrators in front of the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, so he could stand in front of it and wave a bible aloft, he has done nothing to address the anger and pain that people are experiencing all over the country.

So with the bumbling Trump so much out of step with much of the country, enter Joe Biden. It remains a mystery to this writer how he won the nomination over Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, but he has now earned enough votes to ensure that he will be the nominee. And what would a Biden presidency mean for Palestine?

Nothing positive, unfortunately. Biden has stated that, while he disagrees with the move of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he would not change it. And although he says he opposes the annexation of the West Bank, he would not, as president,  withhold financial aid to Israel as leverage to bring that country into compliance with international law. This is not without precedent.

In 1988, then Secretary of State George Schultz proposed a plan to help solve the Palestine-Israel issues. It included an international conference, a six-month period to bring about Palestinian self-determination, and scheduling talks at the end of that year to finally resolve the entire conflict. This proposal was immediately and entirely rejected by then Prime Minister Yizhak Shamir.

The U.S., in response, issued a new memorandum, emphasizing economic and security agreements with Israel, and accelerating the delivery of seventy-five F-16 fighter jets. It was hoped, apparently, that this would induce Israel to accept Schultz’s plan. If that was the hope, it failed completely.  “Instead, as an Israeli journalist commented, the message received was: ‘One may say no to America and still get a bonus.’”

So violation of international law in the context of Palestine will be as meaningless to a President Biden as it has been to President Trump and was to Presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc. This may seem puzzling, considering that U.S. government spokespeople are forever proclaiming the U.S. to be a model of freedom and democracy, one that supports the human-rights struggles and self-determination of peoples around the world. One wonders if that fairy tale is believed even by those who mouth it, considering all the evidence that belies it.

We will look at just a few of those facts; time and space prevent a more in-depth study:

• Ottoman Empire: In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson said this: “The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development….”  Very pretty words, indeed, but without any substance. They troubled his Secretary of State, Robert Lansing. In his private notes, Lansing wrote the following: “Will not the Mohammedans of Syria and Palestine and possibly of Morocco and Tripoli rely on it? How can it be harmonized with Zionism, to which the President is practically committed?”
• Chile: In 1970, Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile in elections that international observers agreed were fair and democratic. But Allende was a socialist, so the U.S. fomented unrest, and after three years, Allende was overthrown, replaced by the brutal dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. His reign of terror lasted sixteen years, during which thousands of Chileans disappeared or were tortured, and all political parties were banned.
• Libya: in 2011, Italian journalist Yvonne Devito said this about Libya, prior to the U.S. invasion: “Libya is considered to be the Switzerland of the African continent and is very rich, and schools are free for the people. Hospitals are free for the people. And the conditions for women are much better than in other Arab countries.” Yet the U.S. decided to invade, at least partly because of Muammar Qaddafi’s uncompromising support for Palestine. Today, thanks to U.S. intervention, Libya is a failed state, its people living in fear and poverty.

It must be remembered that Biden has been in office every year since 1969, with the exception of the last four. So he has been a part of every U.S. international debacle in forty-seven of the last fifty-one years. This includes his support of the invasion of Iraq to rid that nation of weapons it didn’t have.

Biden’s apparent prejudice against the Palestinians is in keeping with his general racism. He strongly opposed desegregation in the early part of his career, and he co-wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. This bill increased the number of police officers and prisons, brought longer prison sentences and, perhaps worst of all, introduced financial incentives to lengthen those sentences.

And now he has proclaimed that a Biden presidency will mean business-as-usual for the U.S. in its relations with Israel (giving it everything it wants), and Palestine (continuing to finance and foster its brutal oppression). One must wonder if the $785,732.00 that he has received from pro-Israeli lobbies for his presidential run has influenced him in any way.

This is the United States of America: not the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave’, but the land of racism, oppression, police brutality and brutality abroad. It is a government that runs amok on the world stage; it is estimated to have killed at least 20,000,000 people just since the end of World War II. And the killing continues to this day.

The 2020 election, regardless of who wins the presidency, will not change this ugly and bloody record of domestic and international violence. Suffering around the world, and certainly in Palestine, will only increase.

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This article was originally published on Peacedata.

The US ruling class bears full responsibility for the economy’s unprecedented dysfunctional state. What was unimaginable long ago is reality today, redefining what house of cards economic conditions are all about.

It’s an unsustainable situation certain to implode ahead with longterm devastating consequences for ordinary Americans — paying the price so privileged ones can benefit.

Since March, unprecedented numbers of US workers applied for unemployment benefits, around 46 million so far, according to Labor Department data.

It’s an undercount as applications of many filers haven’t been processed, more coming as layoff announcements continue.

According to Bloomberg News, about one-third of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits received nothing so far.

A Bloomberg analysis showed that unemployed US workers should have received $214 billion in benefits through May.

As of early June, they’ve only gotten $146 billion — benefits for recipients to expire at end of July if not renewed, what’s likely because of GOP leadership opposition to continue them.

An earlier McKinsey research analysis said up to one-third of US workers could be unemployed by 2030 because robots are replacing humans, adding:

Around “60 percent of occupations have at least 30 percent of constituent work activities that could be automated.”

Who’ll buy what industry produces if mass unemployment as the new normal greatly reduces personal income overall?

The extraordinary disconnect between equity prices and economic reality in the US is unprecedented.

According to economist David Rosenberg, “(w)hat we have now is nothing short of market manipulation.”

“Reducing the cost of overnight funds is one thing.”

“Extending the intervention to Treasuries or high-quality securities is something we became accustomed to in the aftermath of the last Great Recession.”

“That’s when the (Wall Street owned) Fed became a duration bond manager.”

“But the central bank is now becoming a hedge fund.”

“Adding low-quality corporate credits to its balance sheet is a whole different game.”

Fed market manipulation is “keeping zombie companies alive, rendering fundamental analysis and price discovery obsolete, and leading to a complete misallocation of resources.”

“Capitalism has taken a semi-permanent vacation. AWOL.”

“And what it means for the future of society, to be running such reckless and feckless fiscal and monetary policies, is troublesome to say the least.”

“There is zero chance this ends well…The market is rigged pure and simple.”

“(R)emember that (earlier) bubble(s) came crashing down, and there was nothing the Fed could do about it.”

“Societies that run their policies on such guilt truly are doomed, and that is what historians will be writing about in the future.”

By going all out to benefit corporate favorites and investors through unprecedented and reckless casino capitalism, US policymakers and the Fed sacrificed the economy and ordinary Americans.

A Thursday Wall Street Journal article reflected a key aspect of the US economy’s dismal state, saying:

“Americans have skipped payments on more than 100 million student loans, auto loans and other forms of debt since the coronavirus hit the US, the latest sign of the toll the pandemic is taking on people’s finances,” adding:

“The surge in missed payments suggests that the flood of layoffs related to the coronavirus has left many Americans without the means to keep up with their debts.”

“Many people have used up their stimulus checks, and unemployment benefits in high-cost areas aren’t enough to replace paychecks or to help debt-laden borrowers pay down their bills.”

An unfolding situation in Kentucky is happening elsewhere nationwide.

Numbers filing for unemployment benefits are so large and backed up that state police said individuals at the end of a Frankfort queue will wait up to eight hours to speak to a representative to get their claim processed.

A queue at the Kentucky Career Center had people waiting 10 hours for unemployment claim help.

All of the above is on top of growing US food insecurity, hunger, and homelessness in the world’s richest nation.

Its ruling class under both right wings of the one-party state proved it’s dismissive of public health and welfare even during unprecedented hard times, likely to be protracted.

There’s no economic recovery in prospect, only the illusion of improvement at a time of unprecedented widespread deprivation and continuing layoffs.

Increasing numbers of COVID-19 outbreaks in many US states are part of the first wave.

A second, potentially much larger, one may come this fall and winter, making economic collapse worse if happens.

It’s why self-protection caution is essential to maintain, what’s likely to be the case for some time.

Economic collapse caused far greater harm to millions of Americans than coronavirus outbreaks.

Manufactured main street Depression begun in 2008 was deepened this year by its ruling class.

It’s all about the greatest ever wealth transfer from ordinary people to privileged US interests, along with enabling corporate favorites to reduce competition.

Ordinary Americans are paying the price, exploited so privileged ones can benefit.

That’s the disturbing reality of today’s new normal.

Manufactured current conditions made the US more unsafe and unfit to live in than at any previous time in modern memory — with no end of harder than ever hard times for ordinary Americans in prospect.

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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.

Tensions in the skies. RT presented a news story of the United States intercepting a fleet of Russian bombers off the Alaskan coast. Four Russian Tu-95 bombers, accompanied by Su-35 and MiG-31 fighters jets, flew from Siberia toward Alaska where they were shadowed by US F-22 fighters.

The US and NORAD admitted that the Russian planes stayed in international airspace and did not enter American sovereign airspace.

Siberia and Alaska are close. At its narrowest point the Bering Strait separates Russia and the US by only 88.5 km (55 mi), so it wouldn’t take long upon leaving one coastline to approach the other country’s coastline.

As for the tensions, they were attributed to the Russian bombers and fighter jets being “too close for comfort.”

Siberia and Alaska are very close, but the South China Sea is quite distant from the continental US and US Pacific territories. Nonetheless, the US sends its warships into the South China Sea — this to the consternation of China.

If China were to send its warships through the Straits of Florida would the US reaction be muted?

The provocations have their impetus in former president Barack Obama’s Pivot to Asia, which has been an abysmal failure, as it has failed to prevent the rise of China.

Another failed US foreign policy objective was to prevent the Democratic Republic of Korea from becoming a nuclear state. US belligerence toward the government in the north of the Korean peninsula has not been effective in causing the North Koreans to cower. While US president Donald Trump has taken steps to engage North Korea, it has been mixed with hyperbolic threats and bombast.

The US, with South Korea, practices decapitation exercises targeting the leadership of the nearby DPRK — a country that is also distant from the continental US.

The examples of the US being too close for the comfort of other nations are myriad.

Russia is one country indignant at America provocations near its borders. Back during the Ronald Reagan administration, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev received a promise that NATO would not advance “one inch to the East.” The US reneged on its promise and has expanded ever closer to Russia, placing missiles and basing soldiers nearby.

Presently, in Syria the US is not just nearby; it is physically ensconced on the sovereign territory of Syria. There the uninvited and unwelcome US troops are helping to plunder Syrian oil.

US troops are also unwelcome in Iraq, which told the US troops to leave the country. Trump responded by threatening to impose sanctions against Iraq. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and resistance to the US troop presence has caused the evacuation of some US bases in Iraq.

Following 9-11, the US invaded Afghanistan when it failed to turn over the accused mastermind Osama bin Laden. The Taliban said they would consider surrendering bin Laden to the US if the US provided evidence of bin Laden’s guilt. However, the US refused to provide evidence, and subsequently the US finds itself militarily mired in Afghanistan approaching 20 years onward, and at a cost approaching $1 trillion dollars.

From Asia to Africa. The US meddling in the backyards of other countries is spread far and wide. No matter that Africa is another continent across the Atlantic from the US. US forces are involved in the fighting in Somalia, Kenya, Niger, and other African countries.

From Africa to South America. Trump has deployed US warships to the waters near Venezuela. Then, in early May of this year, there was a bizarre attempt to overthrow the elected government in Venezuela and capture president Nicolás Maduro. The coup attempt ended in utter ignominy for the would-be coupists, which included two former US special forces soldiers. US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, a self-confessed and proud liar, stated, “There was no US government direct involvement in this operation.” [italics added] Makes one wonder exactly what the indirect US government involvement was.

Later in May, Trump warned Iran and Venezuela to not engage in trade with each other. Nonetheless, both countries, already under US sanctions, ignored the threats and Iran dispatched five tankers loaded with gasoline to help Venezuela. Despite the thousands of kilometers that Iran is from the US, it still has to contend with the presence of US warships in the Persian Gulf.

In Closing

Hypocrisy is defined as “the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform.”

Given the fact that the US reacts aggressively to the presence of foreign militaries that it considers too close for comfort, how ought one view the juxtaposition of the US military to countries that do not appreciate the presence of the US military?

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Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Twitter: @kimpetersen.

This video featuring Prof. Michel Chossudovsky is part of a Global Research series on the corona virus crisis. First released on April 10, 2020

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to trigger the entire World into a spiral of  mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair. 

This is the true picture of what is happening.

“Planet Lockdown” is an encroachment on civil liberties and the “Right to Life”.

Entire national economies are in jeopardy. In some countries martial law has been declared.

Small and medium sized capital are slated to be eliminated. Big capital prevails.

A massive concentration of corporate wealth is ongoing. 

Its a diabolical “New World Order” in the making. The most serious global crisis in modern history.

More details in:

Towards A New World Order? The Global Debt Crisis and the Privatization of the State

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 17, 2020

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Video: The Complexities of COVID-19

Registered nurse, Erin Olszewski, spent a month at the epicenter of the epicenter, Elmhurst Hospital in NY.

After witnessing the same malpractice matching testimonies of other outspoken nurses in the U.S., she decided to wear a hidden camera to prove to the world there is a bigger threat than Coronavirus taking place in this hospital.

Del sat down with Erin for an emotional interview on The HighWire.

(To watch the entire exposé from Journeyman Pictures, click here https://bit.ly/37lZtAS ).

“These people are not dying from Covid”

.

Video

Apart from the deaths, there are the wounded, who very often find themselves crippled for life – some experts calculate that for every person killed in war, ten others are wounded. This means that the number of people wounded by US wars should be counted in the hundreds of millions.

To this estimation in the study we must add a non-quantified number of dead, probably hundreds of millions, which have been caused, from 1945 until today, by the indirect effects of  wars – famine, epidemics, forced migrations, slavery and exploitation, environmental damage, subtraction of resources from vital needs in order to cover military expenditure.

The study documents the wars and coups d’État executed by the United States in 30 Asian, African, European and Latin-American countries. It reveals that US military forces are directly responsible for between 10 and 15 million deaths, caused by the major wars – those against Korea and Vietnam and the two wars against Iraq. Between 10 and 14 million other deaths have been caused by the proxy wars waged by the allied armed forces trained and commanded by the USA in Afghanistan, Angola, Congo, Sudan, Guatemala and other countries.

The Vietnam War, which spread to Cambodia and Laos, caused a number of deaths estimated at 7.8 million (plus a huge number of wounded, and genetic damage affecting generations due to the dioxin sprayed by US aircraft).

The proxy war of the 1980’s in Afghanistan was organised by the CIA, which trained and armed – with the collaboration of Osama bin Laden and Pakistan – more than 100,000 mujahideen to fight the Soviet troops who had fallen into the “Afghan trap” (as it was later described by Zbigniew Brzezinski, specifying that the training of the mujahideen had begun in July 1979, five months before the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan).

The bloodiest coup d’État was organised in 1965 in Indonesia by the CIA – it handed over the list of the first 5,000 Communists and others marked for death to the Indonesian murder squads. The number of people assassinated is estimated at between 500,000 and 3 million.

That is the “free and open international order” that the United States, independently of the White House, persist in pursuing in order to “safeguard the people from aggression and coercion”.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Translated by Pete Kimberley

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

Featured image is from NEO

First published June 3, 2020

Governments have used psychological warfare throughout history to manipulate public opinion, gain political advantage, and generate profits. Western governments have engaged in such tactics in the war on terrorism as well as in its predecessor, the war on communism. In both cases, state-sponsored terrorism and propaganda were used to distort the public’s perception of the threats, leading to increased governmental control of society and huge financial benefits for corporations. It appears that the same kinds of effects are being seen as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many of the features and outcomes seen in the war on terrorism and the war on communism are evident in this new “war on death.” Therefore, it’s reasonable to wonder if the extreme response to COVID-19, and its associated virus SARS-COV-2, could be another psychological operation against the public. Considering facts about the disease and the disproportionate response emphasizes the possibility.

If COVID-19 has been co-opted for manipulation of the public, through hyping the threat and pushing exploitive solutions, who is behind it and who benefits?

Let’s first review what features and outcomes the “coronavirus scare’ shares in common with the “red scare” that drove the perceived threat of communism and the “Muslim scare” behind the perceived threat of terrorism. Here are a dozen characteristics that these perceived threats share.

1. Fear-based and globally directed
2. Media saturation with bias toward fear
3. Data manipulation and propaganda
4. Censorship of opposing views
5. Intelligence agency control of information
6. Preceded by exercises mimicking the threat
7. Series of claims made that are later proven false
8. Response threatens democracy
9. Large increase in wealth and power for a few; increase in social inequality
10. Increased government control of the public and reduced individual freedoms
11. Response kills far more than the original threat
12. Evidence for manufactured events (see below)

There are also differences between the COVID-19 pandemic response and the “wars” on communism and terrorism. One difference is that, for the virus, agencies dedicated to public health have taken the lead. Although the central characters that hyped the communism threat and the terrorism threat were sometimes the same people, they tended to represent military, diplomatic, or intelligence agencies.

The primary actors driving the coronavirus lockdowns and associated control mechanisms are political leaders. However, the directives being acted upon come from the World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the United Nations ostensibly responsible for international public health. Others controlling the coronavirus scare are national health agencies, most notably the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS).

Are these agencies acting solely in the interest of public health?

The WHO

The common impression is that the entire matter began in reaction to events in China but even that is not clear. For example, the virus is said to have originated in the city of Wuhan and the first, limited, lockdown occurred in that area from January to March. China has since said that it warned the WHO about the virus during the first week of January. However, it is known that U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of the potential outbreak even before that, in November 2019. A Chinese spokesman later suggested that the U.S. military might have brought the virus to Wuhan during the military games held there in October.

The first instance of an entire country being locked down for the coronavirus was in Italy. This occurred on March 9^th based on advice from the Italian government’s coronavirus adviser Walter Ricciardi, who said,

“The situation risks going out of control and these measures are necessary to keep the spread at bay.”

Ricciardi, a WHO committee member, later admitted that Italy had inflated the death counts from the virus, stating,

“The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus.”

Many have noted the inordinate influence of billionaire Bill Gates on the activities and direction of the WHO. As of 2017, this influence was seen as troubling, with health advocates fearing that, “because the Gates Foundation’s money comes from investments in big business, it could serve as a Trojan horse for corporate interests to undermine WHO’s role in setting standards and shaping health policies.”

Gates has been called a ruthless schemer by his Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Allen is not alone in that assessment.

Despite engaging in a costly “public charm offensive,” Gates is seen by many as a predatory and monopolistic opportunist hiding behind a false front of philanthropy. With regard to the coronavirus scare and Gates’ stated goal of vaccinating the entire world population, however, people should be most concerned that he has worked diligently on mechanisms of population control.

Of course, no one person controls the world yet so who is supposed to be running WHO, apart from Bill Gates? The face of the WHO is Dr. Tedros Adhanom, the director-general of the organization. Tedros has a poor history of ethics in leadership, with many accusations having been made against him including that he covered-up epidemics in the past.

Alarms about Tedros began to go off immediately after his appointment in 2017, when he named Robert Mugabe, the former dictator of Zimbabwe, as a goodwill ambassador to the WHO. Mugabe’s rule over Zimbabwe was dominated by “murder, bloodshed, torture, persecution of political opponents, intimidation and vote-rigging on a grand scale.” This appointment indicated that Tedros’ judgment of goodwill was dubious at best.

A letter from a group of American doctors that same year described why Tedros has become known as “Dr. Cover Up.” They wrote,

“Your silence about what is clearly a massive cholera epidemic in Sudan daily becomes more reprehensible. The inevitable history that will be written of this cholera epidemic will surely cast you in an unforgiving light.” They added that Tedros was “fully complicit in the terrible suffering and dying that continues to spread in East Africa.”

Problems at WHO didn’t start with Tedros, however. After the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, evidence came to light that the WHO had exaggerated the danger and had spread fear and confusion rather than helpful information. It was later learned that “Italy, Germany, France and the U.K. made secret agreements with pharmaceutical companies” that “obliged the countries to buy vaccinations only if the WHO raised the pandemic to a level 6.” The WHO then proceeded to change its guidelines for defining a pandemic in order to accommodate those contracts, thereby increasing the public’s fear despite the fact that the pandemic never became a serious threat.

Although WHO has been praised for its work to reduce some illnesses like polio, it has also been found that drugs and vaccines recommended by WHO have been “found to be harmful and without significant clinical effect.”

A comprehensive view suggests that the WHO is more of a corporate interest agency than an organization committed to preserving public health. That’s not surprising due to the fact that 80% of WHO’s funding comes from “voluntary contributions” provided by private donors including pharmaceutical companies and industry groups like Bill Gates’ Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). And since the worldwide response to COVID-19 has been directed and coordinated by an organization that works on behalf of multi-national corporations that stand to benefit, the idea that the coronavirus scare could be a psychological operation seems plausible.

The CDC

In the U.S, the CDC is also heavily influenced by corporate and political interests. This became clear when, in 2016, a group of senior scientists within the CDC filed an ethics complaint against the agency making that exact claim. They wrote, “It appears that our mission is being influenced and shaped by outside parties and rogue interests.” The scientists noted that, in order to pursue political objectives, “definitions were changed and data cooked” at CDC, even to the point of misrepresenting data to Congress.

Like the WHO, the CDC has a history of pushing harmful vaccines. An example was covered in a 60 Minutes episode exposing the harm done by the Swine Flu vaccine in 1976 and CDC’s urging that all Americans be injected with that harmful vaccine. The report revealed that the illness was hyped based on very questionable data and the vaccine caused neurological damage.

The current Director of CDC is retired U.S. Army doctor Robert Redfield, who is known for having led the Pentagon’s disastrous response to HIV-AIDS in the 1980s. “A devout catholic, Redfield saw AIDS as the product of an immoral society. For many years, he championed a much-hyped remedy that was discredited in tests. That debacle led to his removal from the job in 1994.” Public health reporter Laurie Garrett remarked, “Redfield is about the worst person you could think of to be heading the CDC at this time. He lets his prejudices interfere with the science, which you cannot afford during a pandemic.”

The CDC is an agency within the department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Alex Azar, a lawyer and former pharmaceutical company executive, was appointed as Secretary of HHS in 2017. Azar has deep connections to the pharmaceutical industry and is known for having engaged in price gouging with his former employer.

Azar is also known for leading the HHS response to the anthrax scare of 2001, the first known bioterrorism attack on the United States. The anthrax attacks were targeted against members of Congress and the media that were dissenting voices in the national discussion about the Patriot Act, the oppressive legislation introduced immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Although Muslims were first blamed through highly questionable evidence, it was ultimately found that the weaponized anthrax came from U.S. military laboratories.

Azar was instrumental in defining the National Biodefense Strategy in 2018, working closely with John Bolton, Trump’s National Security Advisor. Bolton, a neocon and member of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), has a long history of pushing authoritarian policies and war.

In the U.S. the person most visibly in charge of the COVID-19 response is Anthony Fauci, who is the long-time director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Like Redfield, Dr. Fauci is a Catholic and has said that values he learned in his Jesuit education continue to guide him.

After weeks of Fauci having led the coronavirus response in the U.S., it was learned that his NIAID had funded “gain of function” research at the Wuhan laboratory where the SARS-COV-2 virus is suspected of having originated. Fauci’s response to questions about that inexplicable coincidence was simply to denounce “conspiracy theories” rather than addressing the questions directly, much as others did when questioned about 9/11 foreknowledge.

Whether SARS-COV-2 was genetically engineered in a laboratory, like the NIAID-funded Wuhan lab, is a subject that has become of interest to many scientists. The Wuhan laboratory is not the only place the U.S. supports work like this, however, as the Pentagon funds such labs in 25 countries across the world. Located in places such as Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South East Asia, and Africa, these labs isolate and manipulate viruses like the bat coronaviruses from which SARS-COV-2 originated. This bat-research program is further coordinated by a group called EcoHealth Alliance.

The manipulation of viruses for gain of function at U.S. funded labs is, like the origin of the weaponized anthrax at U.S. labs, evidence that bioterrorism and pandemics can be manufactured events. This is another way in which the coronavirus scare could reflect the war on terrorism and war on communism, both of which were driven by manufactured terrorist events.

It is remarkable that Fauci funded work to manipulate coronaviruses then became the voice of the coronavirus pandemic response while also working closely with Bill Gates’ GAVI initiative. Fauci has boasted that NIAID and GAVI work together to push vaccines with “outright collaboration between us in setting the standard of what is needed.” This makes it easier to see that a new pattern of hyped pandemics resulting in increased population control and global vaccinations is not only possible but would be a very lucrative business model.

The NHS and Corporate Nations

By now it’s well known that the initial projections for deaths due to COVID-19 were massively overestimated and one academic paper was responsible for the panic. The lead author of that paper, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, has since resigned in disgrace from his government advisory position. Much like the U.S. government’s explanation for destruction of the World Trade Center buildings, his estimates were based on computer models that cannot be shared with the public.

As in the U.S., U.K. intelligence agencies have taken a leading role in managing the coronavirus scare. The terrorism expert who is expected to be the next chief of MI6 was selected to lead a new “biosecurity centre” to evaluate the coronavirus threat and “enable rapid intervention.” Additionally, the U.K. intelligence agency known as Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) was granted powers over the NHS’s computer systems. GCHQ is known for engaging in illegal activities related to population control mechanisms such as mass surveillance.

Totalitarian outcomes are further enabled with billionaire Peter Thiel’s CIA-initiated company Palantir managing the databases used by both the CDC and UK’s NHS that drive COVID-19 decision making. For perspective, in 2009, Thiel said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” providing another clue that public health and awareness are not the main priorities behind the coronavirus scare.

The data behind the COVID-19 pandemic was never reliable, with test kits being inaccurate, government policies inflating the death counts, and the media focusing solely on fear-based predictions that are repeatedly proven false. Recently, scientists and government leaders from other countries, including Russia, Germany and Denmark, have begun speaking out about how the coronavirus threat has been exaggerated.

The outcomes of the coronavirus scare have included huge windfalls for billionaires, financial institutions, and corporations. Legislation being passed in response to COVID-19 is largely beneficial to corporate interests. The outcomes for everyone else have been fear, unemployment, poverty, loss of freedoms, grave risks to democracy, and death.

How this is possible is related to the fact that governments, and the nations they represent, are no longer what they were. In many ways, corporations have replaced governments as the drivers of public policy and, as with Peter Thiel’s Palantir, the public’s interest is not their concern. Meanwhile, over two dozen companies have become larger and more powerful than many national governments. As a result, governments are now false fronts for corporations and the decisions they make, for example to lockdown citizens and remake their economies, are driven by profit-based strategies indifferent to public interests.

In summary, the features and outcomes of the coronavirus scare reflect those of previous psychological operations including the war on terrorism and its predecessor, the war on communism. The people and agencies driving the coronavirus scare have a history of unethical behaviors, including hyping pandemics to push vaccines, and appear to seek long-term profits through implementation of a highly controlled society. Therefore, the response to COVID-19, if not the virus itself, can be seen as a psychological operation used to drive those outcomes.

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Kevin Ryan writes on Dig Within where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

First published by GR on April 9, 2020

What will be next? Is a question on many people’s minds. Very likely the world will never be the same again. That might be good, or not so good, depending on how we look at this disastrous, “pandemic” which by all serious accounts does not deserve the term “pandemic”, that was unwittingly attributed to the SARS-2-CoV, or 2019-nCoV, renamed by WHO as COVID-19.

On March 11, Dr. Tedros, WHO’s Director General called it a pandemic. This decision was already taken by the WEF (World Economic Forum) in Davos, from 20 -24 January 2020, when the total COVID19 cases outside of China were recorded by WHO as 150. On  January  30, the WHO Director General determines that the outbreak outside of Mainland China constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). This was a first indication that there was something not quite right, that there is another agenda behind the “outbreak” of the COVID-19 disease.

On March 26, in a peer-reviewed article in the highly reputed New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the US National Institutes of Health – NIH), likened COVID19 to a stronger than usual common flu:

If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.  nejm.org

This scientific assessment in the New England Journal of Medicine has not prevented Dr. Fauci from saying exactly the opposite, when interviewed by the mainstream media: see below.

In the meantime, other high-ranking scientists, microbiologists and medical doctors from all over the world, are questioning the draconian worldwide shutdown because of the corona virus. They all say, these draconian measures are not necessary to contain a pandemic with a relatively low fatality rate.

Even in Italy, if the counting and accounting was done more carefully, more according to true statistical norms, the fatality rate would be perhaps 1%, or less. On March 23, Italy’s civil protection chief Angelo Borrelli, told La Repubblica newspaper, it was credible that for every officially reported case, there may be at least 10 infected cases not reported, asymptomatic cases, not requiring a doctor’s visit. If this were true, the actual mortality rate would in a stroke become one percent instead of ten percent.

What the world is experiencing, resembles a well-planned worldwide declaration and implementation of Martial Law with socio-economically disastrous consequences, far worse than the disease itself. Nobody moves. The economy comes to an almost standstill.

This begs the question, what is behind it, and what comes next?

Let’s first look at a not-so-good scenario.

Al-Jazeera reports on 2 April that Global Coronavirus cases top 1 million with 50,000 deaths. Politico said on April 2 that only two weeks into the corona lockdown almost 10 million workers in the US are without a job.

“The total job losses in just two weeks — almost 10 million Americans — amounts to a staggering, sudden blow to American workers never seen before in the U.S. economy. The labor market in the coming weeks could blow past the 15 million jobs lost at the peak of the 18-month Great Recession from 2007 to 2009.”

Goldman Sachs – GS (on 20 March 2020)

“sees unprecedented stop in economic activity, with 2nd quarter GDP contracting 24% Goldman Sachs economists forecast a historically sharp and swift recession, with second-quarter GDP sinking a stunning 24% after a 6% decline in the first quarter.” GS economist predict a further GDP decline of 5% in the second quarter 

“Home lenders brace for up to 15 million US mortgage defaults.” So, says Bloomberg (April 2), adding that “Mortgage Defaults Could Pile Up at Pace That Dwarfs 2008”. Mortgage lenders are preparing for the biggest wave of delinquency in history

All of this is already happening. These figures cover only the United States, and do not yet account for Europe and the rest of the world. Such figures for Europe are not yet available, but predictions are that they may be similarly grim.

Looking at Asia, except for China, Africa and Latin America, they have a large informal sector which is difficult to control, but which most certainly is slipping through any flimsy social safety net countries may have.

Reliable statistics are not available. But “guestimates” have it, for example in Peru, that in good times, the informal sector may amount to as much as one third of the economy. In hard times, like now, possibly up to 50%, or even higher.

The picture of a coming mega-depression, that never existed in recent history, may continue as many of the bankrupt small and medium size enterprises – including airlines, tourist industries – et al, will be bought up by huge monopolies, that already exist, (e.g.Google, Amazon, AliBaba and more). Mergers of gigantic proportions may take place. It may be the last shift of capital from the bottom to the top in our era of civilization as we know it.

5G and Artificial Intelligence

In the meantime, G5 and soon to come, 6G will be rolled out to drive Artificial Intelligent (AI) which may push ahead the development of these colossal corporations, their production, distribution and ultimately the peoples’ consumption around the world.

Telecom companies are already flooding the world with electromagnetic fields (EMF), so poisonous that many people will be affected. The plan is to increase its intensity by tens of thousands of satellites to cover by 2030 every centimeter of the planet. But get this, none of the health impacts of 5G have been officially studied. Not in the US, not in Europe and not in China. The impact may be disastrous on human life, and on life on Mother Earth in general.

Numerous scientists have written about it, warned governments of the potentially disastrous effects on life – and have launched petitions to stop the launch of 5G, or to put a moratorium on 5G until serious studies have been carried out. See EU 5G Appeal – Scientists warn of potential serious health effects of 5G . The organization in charge of health and of prevention of health damage, is the UN-agency, World Health Organization (WHO). Yes, the same that has declared COVID-19 a global health emergency, in early February 2020, when there were less than 200 official “confirmed cases” worldwide, outside of China.

As of this day, WHO has strangely kept silence on the issues related to 5G. Why? – There are unproven suspicions voiced, including from some renown scientists that the severity of COVID-19 may, at least in some cases, have to do with 5G.

5G has already been rolled out in Northern Italy, Rome and Napoli – and in New York City

A Parenthesis. Contradictory Report

According to the WHO, COV-19 is akin to influenza.

In this regard, New York Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell, suggests that his assessments do not correspond to the normal pattern of COV-19 as defined by the WHO.

Dr. Kyle Sidell is an emergency medicine physician based in Brooklyn,  New York, affiliated with the Maimonides Medical Center. According to Dr. Kyle Sidell, COVID-19  is an “Oxygen Deprivation Disease” dissimilar from Pneumonia. All locations report severe cases of respiratory blockages that cannot be resolved with the common respirators. In fact, they are made worse by respirators. – What are the underlying causes.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjKLVH3z82o&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop).

Back to the economic calamity that is already upon the world’s population.

It is even worse for the people of the informal sector. They have no firm employment, they depend on day-to-day labor, or even hourly work. They live from one day to the next, they have no savings. Their sheer survival depends on these sporadic jobs and meek incomes – incomes way below the minimum wage that allow them barely to survive- and often not.

They suffer famine, disease – as they have no fixed homes, no money to pay rent – they may die of famine or sheer despair.

Delinquency and crime may also increase exponentially. Hungry people have nothing to lose. They may raid supermarkets and drug stores. It has also been reported that bodies were found in the streets of large cities in Latin America.

They could have died from all sorts of reasons related to the economic shut-down: hunger, diseases, desolation, suicide. Is their infection (or death) ascribed to COVID-19?  What this would result in is a process of inflation of  the estimates pertaining to those people who have allegedly died from the virus, thereby contributing to more fear and more panic.

Is that the goal? Make everybody afraid. People in fear and panic can easily be manipulated.

People will ask for police protection from an invisible enemy. The size of the COVID-19 virus is 70 to 90 billionth of a meter, or nano meter- nm (one nm = 0.000000001 m). Scary. You don’t see it, but people could transmit it – invisibly too. They could be deadly – in the case of COVID-19, their lethality is relatively low. Depending on how you measure the infection and death rate (see paras. 2 and 3, above). But the fear factor may be more important than the virus itself.

This doomsday scenario is not a fiction, its real. Its already happening now.

And what we see, might be just a tiny tip of the iceberg.

We may be looking at a complete collapse of our western economy, and growing misery- for the masses. –

What will happen to these people, without jobs, without incomes, many of them may also lose their homes, as they will not be able to pay their mortgages or rents?

Reduction of Population 

In 1974, under the Nixon administration, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was entrusted –under the auspices of the National Security Council– to outline the contours of a “depopulation program” largely targeting  Third World countries. A Document entitled NSC Study Memorandum 200 was drafted.

The Depopulation Agenda has remained an integral part of US foreign policy. It was also endorsed by several corporate charities and foundations.  In this regard, the Bill and Melinda Gates and the Rockefeller foundations  have addressed the relationship between extreme poverty and depopulation.

Is population reduction part of this ongoing pandemic exercise which may be followed by a compulsory vaccination program?

Bill Gates in a 2010 TED show talked about a 10% to 15% population reduction (circa 1 billion people) through global vaccination, health care, etc.

According to William Engdahl:

“Gates made his remarks to the invitation-only Long Beach, California TED2010 Conference, in a speech titled, “Innovating to Zero!.” Along with the scientifically absurd proposition of reducing manmade CO2 emissions worldwide to zero by 2050, approximately four and a half minutes into the talk, Gates declares, “First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.” (Ref. Bill Gates, “Innovating to Zero!, speech to the TED2010 annual conference, Long Beach, California, February 18, 2010).

Click link to view the Bill Gates Video (3′.55″ – 4’30”)

Vaccination

The Gates Foundation has for the last 20 years carried out intensive children vaccination programs in Africa.

In 2014 and 2015 Kenya carried out a massive tetanus vaccination program, sponsored by WHO and UNICEF. The Government administered a vaccine of tetanus toxoid impregnated with beta human chorionic gonadotropin (BhCG) that causes permanent infertility among girls and women, to about 500,000 girls and women between the ages 14 and 49.

An organization called GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) is a public-private partnership; the public part being WHO and UNICEF; the private partners are a series of pharma-giants. GAVI is handing out free vaccines to poor countries, like Kenya.

If a vaccine can be implanted with a sterilization agent, any other health or DNA affecting molecule or protein can be put into a vaccination cocktail. (See these references Kenya: Thousands infertile after govt-sponsored vaccination and “Mass Sterilization”: Kenyan Doctors Find Anti-fertility Agent in UN Tetanus Vaccine?

Event 201. The Pandemic Simulation Exercise

There is another important factor which may all be linked the COVID-19 outbreak, curiously right at the beginning of the decade 2020, and only a few weeks after Event 201 on October 18, in NYC, sponsored by – you guessed it, Bill Gates, The Johns Hopkins University Health Institute (founded by the Rockefeller Foundation), and  the WEF (World Economic Forum), that meets every year in January in Davos Switzerland).

One of the agenda items of Event 201, was a simulation of a pandemic – curiously called 2019-nCoV – the current corona virus pandemic. The simulation results were after 18 months 65 million deaths, a stock market crash of at least 30%, massive bankruptcies and massive unemployment – in short, an economic collapse which the world has never experienced in recent history. That was the simulation. – Is this the direction we are headed for now?

Agenda ID2020

Strangely in order to carry out and monitor these various components of a larger game plan or picture, there is this little-heared-of Agenda ID2020 – also a creation of the Gates Foundation. One of the Cabal’s ideas is to have every citizen of the world equipped with an electronic identity, so he can be followed and his words and actions monitored everywhere. This is one of the Agenda ID2020 tasks, to be first tested – currently ongoing – in Bangladesh.

The idea is, in due time (whenever the program is ready) – to use the vaccination program, possibly forced, to inject along with the vaccine also a nano-chip, that can be injected along with the vaccination program. It could be done without the person’s knowledge and later remotely uploaded with personal data, from health records, to criminal records, to bank accounts. In fact, the Gates Foundation, together with GAVI has already developed a tattoo-like chip which would be used for both, vaccination and electronic ID.

See the following references:

Coronavirus – No Vaccine Is Needed to Cure It

Coronavirus Is More Than a Health Disaster – It’s a Human Calamity

To implement, monitor and control these multiple-purpose programs strong electromagnetic waves are needed.

That’s why 5G – totally unstudied, untested – in uncharted waters is necessary. No time to be lost in testing. Because the target for this program to be completed is 2030, the same as the target for the UN-declared Sustainable Development Goals. (SDG)

In fact. Agenda 2020 is intimately linked to the SDG’s, specifically to SDG 16 which is basically promoting the rule of law.

During a special Summit in May 2016 in New York, inspired by the Gates Foundation, the United Nations Office for Partnership (UNOFP), the SDG 16.9 was created, fitting the purpose of Agenda ID2020:

“Provide legal identity to all, including birth registration, by 2030 …. harnessing Digital Identity for the Global Community…. Around one-fifth of the world’s population (1.8 billion people) is without legal identity, which deprives them of access to healthcare, schools, shelter.”

See also Coronavirus – No Vaccine Is Needed to Cure It  

This is  a scenario on  which we must reflect.

Now let’s look at a good scenario, one that we the people have the power to make good.

First, no complex projection of the type described before can ever be modeled and implemented over time, because dynamics take over. The world is alive. Anything that is alive cannot be directed by linearism (modelling is linear), but is subject to the laws of dynamics.

Second, we have the power to reverse this nefarious game plan which threaten Humanity and Mother Earth. It’s a question of waking up. And many people start seeing the light -perhaps in part because of this absurdity, this worldwide lockdown, this insanity of an endless thirst and greed for power and money by a few. Mother Earth is sick and tired of this abuse of the upper crust of society. She is stronger than the 0.01%. We, the people, can join Mother Earth, be on her side, and be safe.

People start seeing the thought of utter destruction behind this fake epidemic, or according to WHO’s highly questionable leadership, a pandemic – a fear-mongering pandemic. We might as well call the corona virus, Virus “F” – for Fear. And yes, people can die of fear. WHO is dancing to the tune of the powerful, of Bill Gates, the Rockefellers, the pharma giants – and the behind-the-door (invisible) WEF-politicians and bankers. All this, under the pretext of saving the world from the invisible corona virus, from a pandemic that isn’t.

As this neoliberal corrupt system comes crashing down, there will be many victims, sadly, many may not survive – a lot of misery, desolation and suffering. We, as a society should act in solidarity and do whatever we can to help the victims, to reduce the damage, to the extend our hands, arms and souls with all our positive spirits and actions. And the will-power of solidarity is enormous, almost endless.

The World Bank and the IMF have already offered help with large low-cost loans and even some grants for the poorest of the poor countries. Initial figures of the WB were US$ 12 billion and by the IMF US$ 50 billion for corona damage-alleviating lines of credits. In the meantime, both have upped the ante. In the case of the IMF, they are talking of up to a trillion dollars. Some IMF Board members have called for a Special SDR (Special Drawing Rights) Fund of up to 4 trillion SDRs. This shows how much the ruling elite doesn’t want to lose their handle on globalization. More than 60 countries have apparently already applied for “help” (sic) from the IMF.

These governments are committing their countries’ and their peoples’ soul to enslavement, to the ever-bolder elite economic and monetary tyranny. These loans are conditional, similar to what was earlier called  “structural adjustments” – privatization of social services and infrastructure – what’s left of it – and concession to foreign corporations to exploit their natural resources oil, gas, minerals…. What ever the west covets to forge forwards towards full domination of planet earth.

My advice to all countries and peoples who want to use this economic holocaust to restructure their economy, to regain their financial and monetary sovereignty, stay away from the IMF, the World Bank and all the regional development banks, even the various UN funding mechanisms.

Become self-sufficient, autonomous to the extent possible, applying the simple principle of – Local production for local consumption with local money and local public banks that work for the development of the local economy. Use local money, and local debt for your economic development. No outsider will be able to claim repayment of your local internal debt. That you will manage internally at YOUR own terms and conditions.

China and other nations have applied this principle. This is what makes countries immune against predatory financing. You may enter into solidarity pacts with like-minded countries, for example, à la ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America), an alliance of Latin American and Caribbean countries based on the idea of social, political and economic integration.

Conclusion

We have enormous spiritual powers within us which we can mobilize to stem against the propaganda stream. In fact, the reason we are exposed to this type of ferocious propaganda, is precisely because the masters know about that strength of the human mind. And the way to immobilize it is through fear. That’s what’s happening.

The longer this pathetic and oppressive Martial Law situation lasts (yes, in many countries, even Europe, Martial Law has become the state of the affair), the more this inner power and conviction of Self, of us, Sovereign Selves that we are, will resurface in humanity and displace the fear – to become a force to stand up against the evil forces, stand up for justice and for human equality, for human dignity – and ultimately for solidarity and love.

Love is what makes us overcome this diabolical plan.

That is the scenario of hope and love. Endless hope is hoping and creating to the end, then the end will never come. And as we hope and create endlessly, avoiding conflict, we see the light emerging from the dark – a harmonious flow of peaceful creation.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

The Corona crisis is marked by “Obedience to higher authority” despite the lies and fabrications. The lie is sustained by a fear campaign.

“Milgram (1963) was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.”

What is happening today is a Lockdown of national economies worldwide imposed by national governments, which are obeying orders from higher authority.

Unemployment, poverty and despair  worldwide. Those are the consequences. The harm to millions of people is self-evident, yet both the governments and the people abide. They accept the Lie.

Michel Chossudovsky, June 2020

***

One of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology was carried out by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.

Milgram (1963) examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense often was based on “obedience” – that they were just following orders from their superiors.

The experiments began in July 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question:

Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974).

Milgram (1963) wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to authority figures as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II.

Milgram selected participants for his experiment by newspaper advertising for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University.

The procedure was that the participant was paired with another person and they drew lots to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher.’  The draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was one of Milgram’s confederates (pretending to be a real participant).

The learner (a confederate called Mr. Wallace) was taken into a room and had electrodes attached to his arms, and the teacher and researcher went into a room next door that contained an electric shock generator and a row of switches marked from 15 volts (Slight Shock) to 375 volts (Danger: Severe Shock) to 450 volts (XXX).

Milgram’s Experiment:

Aim:

Milgram (1963) was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.

Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities, for example, Germans in WWII.

Procedure:

Volunteers were recruited for a controlled experiment investigating “learning” (re: ethics: deception).  Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional, from the New Haven area. They were paid $4.50 for just turning up.

At the beginning of the experiment, they were introduced to another participant, who was a confederate of the experimenter (Milgram).

They drew straws to determine their roles – learner or teacher – although this was fixed and the confederate was always the learner. There was also an “experimenter” dressed in a gray lab coat, played by an actor (not Milgram).

Two rooms in the Yale Interaction Laboratory were used – one for the learner (with an electric chair) and another for the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator.

The “learner” (Mr. Wallace) was strapped to a chair with electrodes. After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the “teacher” tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices.

The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger – severe shock).

The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose), and for each of these, the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock, the experimenter was to give a series of orders/prods to ensure they continued.

There were four prods and if one was not obeyed, then the experimenter (Mr. Williams) read out the next prod, and so on.

Prod 1: Please continue.

Prod 2: The experiment requires you to continue.

Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.

Prod 4: You have no other choice but to continue.

Results:

65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e., teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts.

Milgram did more than one experiment – he carried out 18 variations of his study.  All he did was alter the situation (IV) to see how this affected obedience (DV).

Conclusion:

Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being.  Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up.

People tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and/or legally based. This response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for example in the family, school, and workplace.

Milgram summed up in the article “The Perils of Obedience” (Milgram 1974), writing:

‘The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations.

I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist.

Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not.

The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.’

Milgrams’ Agency Theory

Milgram (1974) explained the behavior of his participants by suggesting that people have two states of behavior when they are in a social situation:

• • The autonomous state – people direct their own actions, and they take responsibility for the results of those actions.

• The agentic state – people allow others to direct their actions and then pass off the responsibility for the consequences to the person giving the orders. In other words, they act as agents for another person’s will.

Milgram suggested that two things must be in place for a person to enter the agentic state:

1. The person giving the orders is perceived as being qualified to direct other people’s behavior. That is, they are seen as legitimate.
2. The person being ordered about is able to believe that the authority will accept responsibility for what happens.

Agency theory says that people will obey an authority when they believe that the authority will take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. This is supported by some aspects of Milgram’s evidence.

For example, when participants were reminded that they had responsibility for their own actions, almost none of them were prepared to obey. In contrast, many participants who were refusing to go on did so if the experimenter said that he would take responsibility.

Milgram Experiment Variations

The Milgram experiment was carried out many times whereby Milgram (1965) varied the basic procedure (changed the IV).  By doing this Milgram could identify which factors affected obedience (the DV).

Obedience was measured by how many participants shocked to the maximum 450 volts (65% in the original study). In total 636 participants have been tested in 18 different variation studies.

Critical Evaluation

The Milgram studies were conducted in laboratory type conditions, and we must ask if this tells us much about real-life situations. We obey in a variety of real-life situations that are far more subtle than instructions to give people electric shocks, and it would be interesting to see what factors operate in everyday obedience. The sort of situation Milgram investigated would be more suited to a military context.

Orne and Holland (1968) accused Milgram’s study of lacking ‘experimental realism,’’ i.e.,’ participants might not have believed the experimental set-up they found themselves in and knew the learner wasn’t receiving electric shocks.

Milgram’s sample was biased:

• The participants in Milgram’s study were all male. Do the findings transfer to females?
• Milgram’s study cannot be seen as representative of the American population as his sample was self-selected. This is because they became participants only by electing to respond to a newspaper advertisement (selecting themselves). They may also have a typical “volunteer personality” – not all the newspaper readers responded so perhaps it takes this personality type to do so.Yet a total of 636 participants were tested in 18 separate experiments across the New Haven area, which was seen as being reasonably representative of a typical American town.

Milgram’s findings have been replicated in a variety of cultures and most lead to the same conclusions as Milgram’s original study and in some cases see higher obedience rates.

However, Smith and Bond (1998) point out that with the exception of Jordan (Shanab & Yahya, 1978), the majority of these studies have been conducted in industrialized Western cultures and we should be cautious before we conclude that a universal trait of social behavior has been identified.

Ethical Issues

• • Deception – the participants actually believed they were shocking a real person and were unaware the learner was a confederate of Milgram’s.However, Milgram argued that “illusion is used when necessary in order to set the stage for the revelation of certain difficult-to-get-at-truths.”Milgram also interviewed participants afterward to find out the effect of the deception. Apparently, 83.7% said that they were “glad to be in the experiment,” and 1.3% said that they wished they had not been involved.
  • Protection of participants – Participants were exposed to extremely stressful situations that may have the potential to cause psychological harm. Many of the participants were visibly distressed.Signs of tension included trembling, sweating, stuttering, laughing nervously, biting lips and digging fingernails into palms of hands. Three participants had uncontrollable seizures, and many pleaded to be allowed to stop the experiment.In his defense, Milgram argued that these effects were only short-term. Once the participants were debriefed (and could see the confederate was OK) their stress levels decreased. Milgram also interviewed the participants one year after the event and concluded that most were happy that they had taken part.
  • However, Milgram did debrief the participants fully after the experiment and also followed up after a period of time to ensure that they came to no harm.

Milgram debriefed all his participants straight after the experiment and disclosed the true nature of the experiment. Participants were assured that their behavior was common and Milgram also followed the sample up a year later and found that there were no signs of any long-term psychological harm. In fact, the majority of the participants (83.7%) said that they were pleased that they had participated.

• • Right to Withdrawal – The BPS states that researchers should make it plain to participants that they are free to withdraw at any time (regardless of payment).

Did Milgram give participants an opportunity to withdraw? The experimenter gave four verbal prods which mostly discouraged withdrawal from the experiment:

• • 1. 1. Please continue.
       2. The experiment requires that you continue.
       3. It is absolutely essential that you continue.
       4. You have no other choice, you must go on.

Milgram argued that they are justified as the study was about obedience so orders were necessary. Milgram pointed out that although the right to withdraw was made partially difficult, it was possible as 35% of participants had chosen to withdraw.

Milgram (1963) Audio Clips 

Below you can also hear some of the audio clips taken from the video that was made of the experiment. Just click on the clips below.

You will be asked to decide if you want to open the files from their current location or save them to disk.  Choose to open them from their current location. Then press play and sit back and listen!

Clip 1: This is a long audio clip of the 3rd participant administering shocks to the confederate. You can hear the confederate’s pleas to be released and the experimenter’s instructions to continue.

Clip 2: A short clip of the confederate refusing to continue with the experiment.

Clip 3: The confederate begins to complain of heart trouble.

Clip 4: Listen to the confederate get a shock: “Let me out of here. Let me out, let me out, let me out” And so on!

Clip 5: The experimenter tells the participant that they must continue.

Notes:

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371-378.

Milgram, S. (1965). Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority. Human relations, 18(1), 57-76.

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. Harpercollins.

Orne, M. T., & Holland, C. H. (1968). On the ecological validity of laboratory deceptions. International Journal of Psychiatry, 6(4), 282-293.

Shanab, M. E., & Yahya, K. A. (1978). A cross-cultural study of obedience. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society.

Smith, P. B., & Bond, M. H. (1998). Social psychology across cultures (2nd Edition). Prentice Hall.

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Wikipedia’s Culture of Editorial Chaos and Malice

By Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null, June 19, 2020

Under Wikipedia’s editorial rules, “tendentious editing” is forbidden. This is editing that is blatantly partisan, biased and malicious that violates the principles of a neutral point of view (NPOV). Other examples of tendentious editing include editorial warfare and vandalism, gaming the system, abusive language and behavior, misuse and distortion of content and references, unwarranted censorship and banning of editors who make efforts to appeal to neutral point of view rules. Since the encyclopedia’s parent organization the Wikimedia Foundation does not conduct direct oversight on the content that eventually reaches the site’s pages, Wikipedia has turned into an ochlocracy, a form of governance and majoritism that adheres to the chaos of mob rule. Senior editorial administration roles are not based upon any intellectual acumen or expertise in a subject; instead it has degenerated into a merit-based aristocracy that is determined by the number of entries contributed and successful edits.

US to Form Icebreaker Fleet for the Arctic. “Polar Security Cutter”

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, June 19, 2020

On June 9, Donald Trump announced that he plans to create a fleet of icebreakers by 2029, according to a statement made to several departments. The fleet would be used in the Arctic and Antarctica. The project already has a name: Polar Security Cutter. The goal is to replace the only two American icebreakers, USCGC Polar Star and USCGC Healy, with a new, more modern and equipped fleet, capable of meeting the new objectives of the American strategy for the poles.

Nixon-Trump vs. the Strategy of Tension

By Pepe Escobar, June 19, 2020

Trump’s MAGA woes have been compounded by a shoddy geopolitical move in tandem with Law and Order: his re-election campaign will be under the sign of “China, China, China.” When in trouble, blame a foreign enemy.

That comes from serially failed opportunist Steve Bannon and his Chinese billionaire sidekick Guo Wengui, or Miles Guo. Here they are in Statue of Liberty mode announcing their no holds barred infowar campaign to demonize the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to Kingdom Come and “free the Chinese people”.

Colonial History, Gunboat Diplomacy and China Bashing

By Nora Fernandez, June 19, 2020

European powers approached America, Africa and Asia with gunboat diplomacy and colonialism, trafficking people, assaulting and pillaging the world, and using whatever means to ensure profit and domination. Non-Europeans have faced a common historical thread of subjugation, slavery, racism, misery, abuse and death, even if they are not always aware. Original peoples were driven to extinction in many places by mere contact with old world germs, but the ones who survived suffered and succumbed to European abuse. European victors wrote history ignoring truth, but modern revision shows victors total disregard for human life, truth and limits. I guess colonizing minds pay no attention to feelings distracting from empire building and wealth accumulation. Still, in fairness to Europeans, hunger for more seems to be a dominant human flaw, a construct that imperialism and capitalism express with total brutality. Sadly for us, both persists and dominate the world today, implemented by descendants of our colonial-neocolonial ancestors, like the US.

Dark Clouds of Military Tension Over the Korean Peninsula, North Korea Waited, Disappointed and Now Angry

By Prof. Joseph H. Chung, June 19, 2020

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.

Canada Loses UN Security Council Seat Bid

By Jim Miles, June 19, 2020

With only one round of voting, Canada lost its bid to secure a Security Council (UNSC) seat at the UN. (Wednesday, June 17, 2020).  The result is what many domestic critics had hoped for, but in both foreign policy and domestic affairs it changes little – obviously, Canada remains off the UNSC and will continue with its usual policies for the future.

Trump Signed a Bill Calling for Sanctions Against China’s So-called “Treatment of Uighurs”

By Paul Antonopoulos, June 19, 2020

Leaked excerpts from the upcoming memoir The Room Where It Happened has made stunning allegations against U.S. President Donald Trump. Former U.S. National Security Advisor, John Bolton,  claims in his book that Trump attempted to interfere in a criminal investigation into Turkey’s Halkbank for the largest sanctions violation scheme in U.S. history as a favor to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; accuses Trump of withholding military aid to the Ukraine; and, that Trump fully approved of the alleged “concentration camps” for the Uighur minority in China’s Xinjiang province. Whether these claims are true or not, this memoir is set to cause massive disruptions and uproar in the White House.

Leaked excerpts from the upcoming memoir The Room Where It Happened has made stunning allegations against U.S. President Donald Trump. Former U.S. National Security Advisor, John Bolton,  claims in his book that Trump attempted to interfere in a criminal investigation into Turkey’s Halkbank for the largest sanctions violation scheme in U.S. history as a favor to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; accuses Trump of withholding military aid to the Ukraine; and, that Trump fully approved of the alleged “concentration camps” for the Uighur minority in China’s Xinjiang province. Whether these claims are true or not, this memoir is set to cause massive disruptions and uproar in the White House.

Bolton claims that in a one-on-one meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the 2019 Group of 20 summit in Japan, the American President gave full support to these alleged concentration camps that Xi described as “Vocational Education and Training Centers” to combat Islamic extremism. The Uighurs as a minority of only 25 million people in a country of 1.4 billion are overwhelmingly Muslim. A minority are extremists and were responsible for the 1992 Ürümqi bombings, the 1997 Ürümqi bus bombings, the 2010 Aksu bombing, the 2011 Hotan attack, 2011 Kashgar attacks, the 2014 Ürümqi attack and the 2014 Kunming attack, among many.

In addition, there are about 10,000 Uighur terrorists and their families that belong to the Al-Qaeda affiliated Turkistan Islamic Party who have colonized areas of Syria’s Idlib province. These terrorists have been responsible for executions, the demolition of Christian churches and train child soldiers. China fears that if there are 10,000 Uighur’s with this ideology 4,500km away in Syria, the actual number adhering to an extremist interpretation of Islam in Xinjiang would be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

“According to our interpreter,” Bolton writes of the meeting, “Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.”

However, within only hours of Bolton’s allegations against Trump, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, reported that Trump had signed a bill calling for sanctions against China’s so-called treatment of the Uighurs. Trump said in a statement that the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 legislation “holds accountable perpetrators of human rights violations and abuses such as the systematic use of indoctrination camps, forced labor, and intrusive surveillance to eradicate the ethnic identity and religious beliefs of Uighurs and other minorities in China.” According to Al-Jazeera, Trump did not hold a ceremony to mark the signing of the bill.

However, this calls into question just how likely Trump is going to enforce the provisions of the bill in light of Bolton’s allegations, especially as the American president has avoided making these accusations against China, unlike Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. On the other hand, it is also unlikely that the bill was drafted and signed in only a matter of hours after Bolton’s allegations, and not only because of practicality reasons. Bolton’s allegations against Trump also relate to his dealings with Turkey, North Korea, Ukraine, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, and in comparison to allegations about Trump backing Erdoğan in circumventing sanctions, his alleged comments about supporting concentration camps in Xinjiang is minor and not a matter of immediate concern. It is more likely that the revelations by Bolton were coincidentally released just hours before Trump’s signing of the bill.

Whatever the case may be, China did not hold back its denunciations of the latest diplomatic aggression made by the U.S.

“We again urge the U.S. side to immediately correct its mistakes and stop using this Xinjiang-related law to harm China’s interests and interfere in China’s internal affairs,” China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday. “Otherwise, China will resolutely take countermeasures, and all the consequences arising from there must be fully borne by the United States.”

The signing of the bill came more of a shock to China as it was signed when Pompeo was meeting with China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, in Hawaii.

Yang told Pompeo “both sides stand to gain from cooperation and will lose from confrontation” but that Washington needed to respect Beijing’s positions on Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry. “Cooperation is the only correct choice for both sides. It is hoped that the U.S. and China will go hand-in-hand.”

Beijing would have been infuriated that a bill like this was signed so soon after Yang met with Pompeo, especially as there could be truth to Bolton’s allegations that Trump supports China’s so-called concentration camps.

It calls to question why the Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to delay Tuesday’s scheduled release of the book, along with an emergency application to temporarily stop publication. This comes as Trump said Bolton could face criminal charges for publishing classified information, but also tweeted the book was “made up of lies & fake stories” and Bolton was a “disgruntled boring fool.” If the allegations made in the book are not true, why is there such a heavy-handed response from the Justice Department and even threats of criminal charges made by Trump?

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Perhaps the greatest farce in the modern history of technology is the perception of Wikipedia as a legitimate encyclopedia. It has none of the qualifications as such but has all of the characteristics of a compromised propaganda machine disguised as an encyclopedia.

An authentic encyclopedia is transparent. Users can review the qualifications and expertise of its contributors. There is no personal animus or bias. If anything, these are people who are acutely conscious of the facts regarding any given subject. There is no whitewashing, no recasting or repurposing of negative content into positive opinions or vice versa. If an error is detected, it can be quickly corrected.

Now compare that with Wikipedia where there are over 100,000 editors who are mostly anonymous. Expertise in the field that any of these anonymous contributors are editing is not required.  The hypothesis that through Wikipedia’s backdoor platforms that discussion, debate and argument can eventually reach a consensus that reflects the facts and truth on a subject is not only unrealistically idealist but notably naive. This is conspicuously true for one subject that dwarfs all others — health and medicine — where content is radically recast as either acceptable, refutable, or worse assailed and slandered. Content that represents the medical orthodoxy and based upon the pharmaceutical paradigm is acceptable. Everything else is rejected and degraded under sarcastic terms as pseudoscience, quackery or lunatic charlatanry.

Under Wikipedia’s editorial rules. “tendentious editing” is forbidden. This is editing that is blatantly partisan, biased and malicious that violates the principles of a neutral point of view (NPOV). Other examples of tendentious editing include editorial warfare and vandalism, gaming the system, abusive language and behavior, misuse and distortion of content and references, unwarranted censorship and banning of editors who make efforts to appeal to neutral point of view rules. Since the encyclopedia’s parent organization the Wikimedia Foundation does not conduct direct oversight on the content that eventually reaches the site’s pages, Wikipedia has turned into an ochlocracy, a form of governance and majoritism that adheres to the chaos of mob rule. Senior editorial administration roles are not based upon any intellectual acumen or expertise in a subject; instead it has degenerated into a merit-based aristocracy that is determined by the number of entries contributed and successful edits.

Evidently, the encyclopedia’s culture of editorial hostility, malignity, harassment and toxic behavior has over-powered the Foundation’s capacity to rein it in.  In May, it was announced that new rules and a code of conduct would be drafted to curtail harassment. Unfortunately, these new rules will apply more strictly against harassment and psychological molestation towards women and members of the LBGQ community. Equally, pathological behavior against political persuasions, current events, various ideological beliefs and medicine demands similar deterrents and strict measures to ban editors who violate decent conduct that is expected of a legitimate encyclopedia.

We live in a time when the health of Americans is declining exponentially. Life expectancy has reversed. Moreover, never before have more people died from medical error, misdiagnosis and the over prescribing of medications. Daily, 4,000 Americans experience a serious adverse drug reaction (ADE) that requires hospitalization, and an additional 770,000 people suffer from ADEs during their hospital stays. In 2016, the CDC very conservatively estimated that over 70,000 deaths were directly associated with prescription complications and overdoses, more than US soldiers killed in the Vietnam War and far greater than deaths due to influenza and pneumonia, alcoholic liver disease, firearms and motor vehicle accidents. Prescription deaths also outnumber illegal drug overdoses. Newer medications, according to Harvard University’s Edmond Safra Center for Ethics, are becoming more deadly. The Center’s paper states,

“Few know that systematic reviews of hospital charts found that even properly prescribed drugs (aside from misprescribing, overdosing, or self-prescribing) cause about 1.9 million hospitalizations a year. Another 840,000 hospitalized patients are given drugs that cause serious adverse reactions for a total of 2.74 million serious adverse drug reactions. About 128,000 people die from drugs prescribed to them.”

Our documentation of the US’ epidemic of medicine’s casualties is far greater, closer to the mortality rates due to heart disease and cancer; this was based upon a five year study and documented in our earlier book Death by Medicine. Besides prescription opioids, antidepressants, amphetamines, anticoagulants, anabolic steroids, ADHD stimulants and antibacterials rank high among iatrogenic deaths. And this ignores the many millions of injuries due to unnecessary prescriptions, clinical infections, surgeries and hospitalizations ordered for enormous profits. Don’t expect to find these facts mentioned properly on Wikipedia. Conventional drug-based criterion for practicing medicine is the only course of treatment Wikipedia advocates while safer alternatives are disparaged and defined as quackery.

One glaring example of Wikipedia’s disdain and hatred towards alternative medicine is its inaccurate treatment of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which has been successfully practiced for thousands of years.  The same is true for Indian Ayurvedic medicine. Recently the Chinese health authorities have drafted legislation that would ban any person or organization who criticizes or ridicules TCM. This comes on the heels of TCM being used alongside conventional medicine for treating CoV19 cases, with far more success than in the US.  Nationwide, over 92 percent of Chinese CoV patients have been treated with TCM formulas, either alone or in combination with Western therapies.  Unlike conventional pharmaceutical-based medicine, TCM and Ayurveda focus on diagnosing the underlying cause of an illness and symptoms, a method that Western science has yet to fully understand and implement. Nevertheless, the empirical evidence supporting these ancient medical modalities is substantial. A recent paper in the Review of Molecular Medicine by the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences and the prestigious National University of Singapore concluded that TCM “represents a vast and untapped resource for modern medicine.” This is a medical system that catalogues over 13,000 different medicinal ingredients and over 100,000 unique decoctions and recipes.

Yet you would never learn anything about the benefits of TCM, Ayurveda and a multitude of other non-drug based and natural therapies including Chiropractic, homeopathy, naturopathy, energy medicine, and faith-based practices if you were to rely on Wikipedia.  Its TCM page promulgates unfounded lies that “there is no high quality clinical evidence that TCM is safe and effective for treating any disease.” The page’s editors are determined that TCM be portrayed as a pseudoscience.  This is despite the several hundred thousand peer-reviewed articles cataloged in the National Institutes of Health’s Library of Medicine that deal with TCM, acupuncture and medicinal plants — a voluminous collection that Wikipedia editors cherry pick and select to advocate their anti-TCM prejudices. It even fails to mention that the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to the first Chinese woman scientist Tu-You for discovering TCM’s remedy artemisia as a basis for the development of an anti-malarial drug.  Efforts to bring balance on the TCM and other alternative health pages are futile. We believe there is very good reason, as we have reported previously, that Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales and the Foundation seemingly support libelous and malicious attacks on complementary and alternative medicine.

It may require a concerted legal campaign to hold the Wikimedia Foundation accountable with a furor of lawsuits charging the organization for castigating and destroying the careers of tens of thousands of health practitioners, systemic censorship and serving as an operation for social media propaganda rather than hiding behind the ruse of being a reliable encyclopedia. For years, it was the official policy of the American Medical Association that Chiropractic was an unscientific cult and made every effort to destroy the profession. Nevertheless chiropractors succeeded in winning a lawsuit against the AMA and ten other medical groups for participating in a conspiracy in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The court consequently ruled that Chiropractic was a legitimate therapeutic science.

Today the mainstream media voices agreement with Wikipedia in denying or ignoring complementary and alternative medicine altogether. Perhaps the media is too lazy to do any research or simply lacks common sense and reason. Or perhaps more realistic, it is tied to the corporatization of all things: pharmaceutical drugs, private insurance, GMOs, vaccines and the roll out of 5G technology. As the media is grossly biased and compromised by private interests, so do we believe is Wikipedia. We do not need to travel far to discover an army of expert medical voices and health professionals articulating their disapproval of the pharmaceutical industry’s control over federal healthcare policies, the crookedness in peer reviewed medical journals to push unsafe or ineffective drugs, and the FDA’s review process. The title of the former head of the Danish Cochrane Collaboration and a world respected professor of medicine Peter Gotzsche’s book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Healthcare tells the whole story. It is a tale about medical induced injury and death when only dealing with pharmaceutical drugs and unnecessary medical procedures at a time when prevention and non-pharmaceutical therapies are voiceless in the nation’s healthcare discussions.

Despite Wikipedia’s failure to be accurate and neutral about subjects that have an immediate impact on the lives and well being of its users, it has been a successful tool for the deep state and special corporate interests. In similar ways it serves as a public relations operation for the drug industry just as the Hill and Knowlton PR firm did for the tobacco industry in the 1950s, except under the cloak of being an authentic encyclopedia. The Foundation has condoned it being used as a weapon to silence and lessen the impact of people such as Robert Kennedy Jr, Deepak Chopra, Craig Murray, John Pilger, Rupert Sheldrake and Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier by characterizing them in derogatory language. Any agent provocateur, sock puppet or astro turf group who succeeds in climbing the editorial ladder can sabotage and control the pages of important decent and ethical people in order to promote ulterior and highly prejudiced agendas. There might be dozens of such editors standing at the gates of a page with their personal agendas to libel and make efforts to destroy the lives of others who they happen to disagree with.  Now after almost fifteen years of neglect and incompetence the Foundation is making a minor effort to deal with the epidemic of editors’ harassment and malice; however, in so doing it is also acknowledging that its entire system and modus operandi is rotten to the core, a repository of chaos and editorial mismanagement. It is also running massively convoluted games.

If you doubt any of this, ask any of the many thousands of individuals who Wikipedia has slandered and libeled. Wikipedia’s argument is that if your character has been assassinated by any of its editors then simply follow the editorial protocol to correct the errors. But for thousands of people this has repeatedly been proven to be a futile exercise. Since the entire Wikipedia model is fraudulent, such efforts are a sham. No one in the alternative health profession is capable of correcting their biographies. Wikipedia Skeptics are the judge, jury and executioner. And the Wikimedia Foundation likes it that way.

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Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null co-direct Progressive Radio Network. They are frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

The Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces are amassing their troops and equipment near the town of Ayn Issa in northern Raqqah. This town, located near the crossroad of the M4 highway and the Sanliurfa-Raqqah road, has been the target of Turkish expansionist efforts for a long while. Nonetheless, the Turkish Army and its proxies failed to capture it during the active phase of their Operation Peace Spring on October 9-22, 2019. Since then, they have been drawing up plans on how to push back the Syrian Army from Ayn Issa and to seize control of at least a part of the M4 highway there. Another such high priority target for Turkey is the town of Tell Tamr located on the road to Al-Hasakah.

Over the past week, the Turkish Army and Turkish-backed groups have significantly strengthened their strike force north of Ayn Issa. This move was made simultaneously with the start of Turkey’s Operation Claw-Tiger against rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq. Syrian sources expect that Turkey may use the recent escalation of its war on the PKK to make another attempt to expand its control zone in northeastern Syria under some pretext or other.

ISIS cells continue their attacks on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Late on June 17, an IED explosion destroyed a vehicle of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces near the village of Ruwaishid killing at least one person. Another ISIS attack reportedly took place near as Suwayr, when ISIS gunmen shelled an SDF checkpoint.

The military situation in southern Idlib remains relatively calm despite provocations from radical militant groups. Fa Ithbatu, a new al-Qaeda-linked coalition formed by Turkish-protected militants, is yet to take any real action against the Syrian Army despite loud statements.

Wa-Harid al-Mu’minin, which preceded Fa Ithbatu, claimed that it had carried out at least 547 attacks on government forces killing at least 950 government fighters over the past 20 months. However, these claims are hardly consistent with reality.

Meanwhile, Turkey has continued to send its proxies from groups deployed in Idlib and Afrin to Libya in order to support the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord. According to reports, the total number of militants deployed or trained for the deployment has reached 14,000. At least 400 of these have already died in fighting against the Libyan National Army. This factor would also undermine the offensive capabilities of Idlib groups in the event of a new confrontation with the Syrian Army.

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On Wednesday, Pompeo met with China’s Yang Jiechi.

He holds several high-level positions in Beijing, including CPC Central Committee Foreign Affairs Commission director.

Both officials met in Hawaii, the meeting requested by Pompeo at at a time of dismal bilateral relations that risk rupture or possible confrontation.

Still, bilateral communications are better than cutting them off altogether despite no chance of resolving major bilateral differences.

For the US, they’re all about China’s unstoppable development, heading toward becoming the world’s leading economy, already a prominent nation on the world stage.’’

It’s why the vast majority of nations want normalized ties, including most European ones.

The problem of dealing with the US diplomatically is that it doesn’t negotiate. It demands, wanting other countries to bend to its will, even when harming their own interests.

Nations unwilling to accept what’s clearly unacceptable face unrelenting US pressure and bullying that time and again leads to war by hot and/or other means — what the scourge of US imperialism is all about, an unparalleled threat to humanity.

A brief statement by Pompeo’s spokesperson following Wednesday’s meeting with Yang ignored a relationship near its breaking point, the US bearing full responsibility.

According to China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijan,

“Yang pointed out that he hoped China and the US would be accommodative to each other…pushing their bilateral relations to the track of coordination, cooperation and stability” — knowing full well the prospect for normalization is virtually nil.

Hegemons don’t operate cooperatively with other nations, especially rival independent ones like China.

On internal issues, including Hong Kong and China’s new national security law, Zhou stressed Beijing’s position, saying:

“China’s determination to push for a national security law in Hong Kong is unshakeable. China resolutely opposes US interference in Hong Kong affairs and the G7 foreign ministers releasing a statement on” the city that’s part of the country’s sovereign territory.

He noted that Yang stressed China’s one country, two systems policy on Taiwan, along with expressing great displeasure about unacceptable US anti-China legislation.

Diplomatic language aside, including Xinhua reporting that Yang and Pompeo “agreed to take action to seriously implement the consensus reached by their leaders, and to continue communication,” the breach between both countries remains wide, deep, and unreconcilable on major issues vital to China’s development.

According to international relations expert Shi Yinhong, “(i)t is unlikely to see either side make significant compromises on (major) issues to enable substantial easing in tensions for a long enough period of time,” adding:

“Maintaining (diplomatic) contact by itself cannot ensure any meaningful improvement in bilateral relations.”

Both countries have had diplomatic relations for decades. Yet current bilateral relations are more dismal than at any time throughout the post-WW II period.

Time and again, diplomatic outreach to the US by sovereign independent nations like China accomplish nothing.

Even when agreement is reached on major issues, the US side usually breaches what it pledged, why both right wings of its one-party rule can never be trusted.

It’s why diplomacy with the US most often accomplishes little or nothing. The only language its ruling class understands is toughness.

Nothing else gets its attention, and like all bullies, it shies away from belligerent confrontation with nations able to hit back hard.

Loose cannon Pompeo is a diplomat in name only, a figure abhorrent of cooperative relations with other nations — belligerence and other hostile actions his favored options.

Treating China as an adversary assures continued widening of the bilateral breach that could lead to confrontation by accident or design.

Beijing will cooperate with the US and other nations as long as its sovereign rights are respected — clearly not the case in dealings with Washington.

It’s why Yang’s Wednesday meeting with Pompeo, that reportedly lasted about seven hours, achieved nothing.

Nor will further bilateral discussions do better as long as the US side makes unacceptable demands, offers nothing but deceit in return, and continues waging war on China by other means.

As the country grows more prominent on the world stage at a time of US decline, bilateral relations are likely to get more irreconcilable than cooperative.

Beijing fully understands what it’s up against in dealings with the US.

It’s a hostile power seeking dominance over all other nations, even-handed cooperative relations with none.

It’s a prescription for bilateral discord that risks possible confrontation if the US pushes too far.

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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 enactment of “Caesar’s Law” – the new US sanctions designed to “pursue individuals, groups, companies, and countries that deal with the Damascus government” – is apparently directed against Syria but in reality aims to subdue Lebanon and its population to accommodate Israel’s conditions. Lebanon’s “Axis of the Resistance” member, Hezbollah, has an open conflict with Israel.  Israel has a list of imposing demands: close off the flow of weapons via the Lebanese borders with Syria, disarm Hezbollah, impose its own terms on land and maritime borders, and push Lebanon to join other Middle Eastern countries in signing a peace deal- with Israel. But Hezbollah naturally has other plans- to enforce a new Rule of Engagement and take the attack initiative rather than opt for the defence response. This is similar to the Gaza deterrence policy of Hamas, another member of the “Axis of the Resistance”, that has been to hit targets in Israel if (and when) economic sanctions are imposed. 

As Israel fears, a forthcoming Middle East war would certainly have multiple united fronts, involving the “Axis of the Resistance” members all together simultaneously. It is not surprising that members of the “Axis of the Resistance” (including Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq) synchronise and rehearse; they have been working on the intensive coordination of war scenarios for over a year. It cannot be ruled out that Israel, noticing the reaction of the “Axis of the Resistance” to the imminent sanctions, will ask the US to agree to stand down, to avoid all-out war. The “Axis of the Resistance” has prepared several scenarios, all on track for implementation, and, without exception, all are very painful for Israel.

The “Axis of the Resistance” understands the motivation behind the US’s “Caesar Act” approach and will have to respond to Israel first since it is the major influence on US decisions in the Levant. There is no lack of options and some of the obvious responses would be to mimic Hamas and hit Israel, as follows:

The first scenario: Lebanon claims the return of the Shebaa Farms and the seven Lebanese villages (Terbikha, Saliha, Malkiyah, Nabi Yusha, Kades, Hunin and IbliQamh) occupied by Israel. Therefore, any Hezbollah attack against the Israeli forces in these villages, by crossing the Israeli boundary fence or bombing objectives in these Lebanese villages, would be considered a legitimate act recognised by the Lebanese government.

The ball is in the US court and there is little doubt that this US administration will make sure many Lebanese politicians, Christians and Muslims, are on its list of terrorists before October 2020, to embarrass any future administration and prevent it from lifting the sanctions easily. Of course, because the US is not acting according to its own chosen agenda and national interests, its understanding of what should or should not be done is defective, or at best limited.

At a certain point, when Hezbollah’s reaction becomes obvious, Israel may consider “inspiring” Washington to cease its pressure on Lebanon, as it did with Gaza, so as to avoid suffering the consequences.

But Israel could also think War is an option because its actions may not have been thoroughly thought out! Israel has killed Hezbollah leaders, Iranian scientists, Hamas commanders, Iraqi commanders: and in consequence the “Axis of the Resistance” became stronger. Learning from History has never been a strong point, neither for Israel nor for the USA.

Washington may not want to push Hezbollah to react and will have to rely on its allies in Lebanon. Therefore, through the International Monetary Fund, may supply Lebanon with a couple of billions of dollars per year so the option of war against Israel and the commercial and energy supply form Iran may be disregarded by the Lebanese government.

All possibilities are on the table. As far as the Gulf is concerned, its recognition and support for Israel makes no difference and changes nothing in the “probabilities of war” equation, because in every single Israeli war against Hezbollah, the Gulf countries were the first to stand behind Israel and yet their support did not tip the outcome in Israel’s favour. There is little doubt that the months that lie ahead before the end of 2020 will be critical for the Middle East.

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In the past few months, the United States has tightened its policies in the Arctic, as several measures show. For decades, Washington has not been concerned with strengthening its military presence at the poles, giving greater focus to other regions of the planet, such as the Middle East. Due to this lack of attention to the Arctic, the US does not yet have a fleet of icebreaker ships, far behind its rivals such as Russia and China. Now, the American government intends to change this attitude.

On June 9, Donald Trump announced that he plans to create a fleet of icebreakers by 2029, according to a statement made to several departments. The fleet would be used in the Arctic and Antarctica. The project already has a name: Polar Security Cutter. The goal is to replace the only two American icebreakers, USCGC Polar Star and USCGC Healy, with a new, more modern and equipped fleet, capable of meeting the new objectives of the American strategy for the poles.

The main US ally in this project is Canada. The neighboring country, despite being militarily much inferior to the USA, already has a very capable icebreaker fleet, with more than 10 operational ships and three others under construction, in addition to planning to build another 4 in the near future. Together, the USA and Canada intend to face the growth of the Russian and Chinese fleets. China, even without direct access to the Arctic, has a small fleet of four icebreakers and plans to build two more ships soon. The Russians, however, are the most equipped. The Russian fleet consists of 53 ships, with another 6 under construction and another 12 scheduled to be built soon.

The American program is the result of a partnership of the US Coast Guard with the company VT Halter Marine Inc., signed in the amount of US $ 746 million. The contract was signed in April 2019, although the details of the cooperation have only been made public recently. There are interests beyond national defense involved in the project. Among the objectives of the program there is the use of the Coast Guard for the safety of commercial ships in the polar zones.

An important point is that the project also aims to replace diesel-powered ships with nuclear powered ships. Diesel-powered propulsion ships are less powerful and less efficient in breaking ice, but currently only Russia has nuclear powered icebreakers, which makes the dispute fiercer. In fact, the United States has all the necessary resources to build nuclear icebreakers, but this will certainly start a “nuclear era” in the Arctic, with the beginning of a new industrial-military race for the modernization of ships.

However, whether or not building nuclear icebreakers, the US will not reach the capacity of the Russian fleet anytime soon. For this reason, the project seems to make it clear that the initial objective, from a realistic perspective, is to undermine Chinese growth. The Chinese presence in the Arctic is the initial target of the cooperation between the USA and Canada, with Russia being a “further step” – and, perhaps, unattainable, considering the immense superiority of the Russian military presence in the Arctic.

It is likely, however, that the project’s slowness will hinder the US government’s claims. The estimated nine-year period for completing the project is long and in this time many things can happen on the international stage and in the Arctic in particular. Russia and China may further increase or modernize their fleets in that time and the United States will remain far behind its “targets” in this dispute. It is unlikely that Washington will be able to assemble a fleet of icebreakers strong enough to face Russia in the near future. The Americans’ dispute will continue to be with China – which already has a big advantage.

To compensate for its weakness in the Arctic, the United States is likely to begin a series of increasingly aggressive and provocative military training aimed at disguising its weakness with a smoke screen. The most strategic, viable and acceptable attitude for Washington would be to stop investing in projects of militarization of the Arctic and start more elaborate national recovery plans for the end of the pandemic, which affects the country drastically. Freezing military spending, withdrawing troops scattered around the world in regional conflicts and focusing on a policy for internal problems would be the best way to deal with the current American situation. However, Washington insists on maintaining a heavy-handed international policy and military presence in all areas of the planet.

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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

This article was first published prior to the June 17 vote on non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council.

Canada lost the vote of June 17 to Ireland and Norway.

Norway secured 130 votes, Ireland got 128 and Canada 108.

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Elections for the two non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for the group Western Europe and Others is taking place on June 17. Canada is facing off against Norway and Ireland. However, an open democratic and critical discussion of Canada’s colonial heritage and its treatment of First Nations peoples, along with and Ottawa’s Trump-aligned foreign policy, has been as difficult to start as a can of pickles with hands generously scrubbed with sanitizer.

In the last Canadian pre-electoral and actual election period in the fall of 2019, Trudeau had to deal with a few challenges from the grassroots. In a sadly mocking and insulting manner, he fended off interruptions from Indigenous complainants suffering from mercury poisoning. He skated around peace activists questioning him and then Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland about their double standards. For example, on the one hand recognizing the fraudulent election of Bolsonaro in Brazil (after the judiciary imprisoned front runner Lula da Silva on spurious charges), while refusing to recognize constitutionally elected Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro on the other. Trudeau and his cabinet also faced protests by activists opposing Canada’s weapons sales to notorious human rights violator Saudi Arabia and Ottawa’s unconditional support for Israel at the expense of Palestine. While corporate media had no choice but to show these disruptions, as they appeared live on TV, it soon went back to business as usual by obediently keeping all these critical issues away from public scrutiny.

Nevertheless, starting on May 19, 2020, this media blackout was forced to change to a certain extent. That day, an open letter was published in the daily Toronto Star signed by hundreds of international, Canadian, Québécois and Indigenous personalities. The document highlighted the whole gamut of issues from the Trudeau government’s forced encroachment onto Indigenous territory to push through new oil and gas pipelines, its heavily U.S.-oriented foreign policy on Venezuela, Haiti, Bolivia and other countries in the Latin American/Caribbean region, its pro-war NATO membership, ambitions toward Africa, utter contempt for Palestinian rights and so much more.

Furthermore, on May 19 when the petition was published in the Star, Trudeau was asked during his daily COVID-19 presser about the seeming existence of divided public opinion concerning his UNSC bid. Instead of discussing the issue, Trudeau arrogantly dismissed it as if it did not exist, saying there was no division whatsoever, and then taking a snipe at Maduro to distract attention from the question.

However, that authoritarian rejection was easier said than done. Against the background of Trudeau’s domestic and foreign policy, Canada’s UNSC bid did not only remain under scrutiny from that day on, but the doubts are actually increasing and picking up steam as the weeks go by.

For example, the Canadian organization, Just Peace Advocates, published a well-documented open letter on Palestine, which was sent to all 193 UN Ambassadors and signed by 100 organizations and dozens of prominent individuals. It immediately impacted the Canadian political scene to the extent that the Canadian Ambassador to the UN, Marc-André Blanchard, was forced to write a reply to all UN Ambassadors, defending Canada’s one-sided Israel policy. This obviously desperate move did not go unnoticed, even by mainstream media, fueling further doubts about the credibility of Canada’s UNSC bid.

National and international corporate media is increasingly covering the debate in Canada. The issues of First Nations’ rights, Venezuela, Palestine and NATO are among the most cited examples of the contradictions being demonstrated by the growing national and international #NoUNSC4Canada forces, and the Trudeau government.

Perhaps the clearest indication that Canada’s “colonialism at home, imperialism abroad” policy is increasingly under national and international scrutiny is the last-minute trip by Canadian Foreign Minister Champagne to the UN in New York, only a few days before the vote. Add to this the crescendo of last-minute phone calls by Trudeau and Champagne. They have called dozens of world leaders, ostensibly to talk about “combating COVID-19.” However, a careful examination of the tweets indicates that in reality, Canada is cynically seeking whatever additional UNSC votes it can, with its supposed concern over COVID-19 serving as a pretext.

In contrast, we do not see Norway or Ireland acting in a similar sycophantic manner. This flagrant difference alone should convince any country to firmly reject Canada and vote for the far more civilized Norway and Ireland.

So far, emphasis in this article has been placed on the debate being opened up in national and international corporate media. However, one should not underestimate the work being done at the grassroots level by thousands of people and organizations in Canada, supported by the progressive international community. Yet, the work of one grass roots activist stands out. The revolutionary artist Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame, tweeted the following on June 13:

“A note to their Excellencies, the Members of the General Assembly of the UN:

An Irishman, a Norwegian and a Canadian go to a party for a game of Musical Chairs.

There are two vacant chairs on the UN Security Council at the party.

When the music stops, let’s make sure the Irishman and the Norwegian are seated at the table where they belong.

And the Canadian kid is left a wallflower until such time as he learns what human rights are…”

Here is the one-minute YouTube video created by 25 year-old Palestinian artist and activist @Lin244 that Waters posted. It had over 20,000 visits in the first 24 hours. It deals with both Canada’s colonialism at home against First Nations peoples as well as its imperialism abroad with the example of supporting Israel/U.S. in its attempt to deny Palestinian human rights.

View the YouTube here:

VIDEO: Palestinian artist Lina Abojaradeh illustrates why she opposes Canada’s bid for the UN Security Council. Listen to her powerful statement and watch the artistic journey here. #NoUNSC4Canada #UNSCelections pic.twitter.com/esMbAyELNQ

— Canadian Foreign Policy Institute (@ForeignPoli_C) June 13, 2020

Keep in mind that we are up against imperial Canada, with enormous funds being spent on the UNSC bid, with its strong international connections in both the British Commonwealth and the Francophonie, plus NATO and other such exclusive international clubs. Nor can one overlook the support by the U.S. in the corridors of power since Washington surely prefers as faithful an ally as Trudeau. The Canadian PM has gone out of his way to demonstrate his sycophancy toward Trump on all international issues since he was first elected in 2015. However, his deference to Trump on even the most  obvious of issues, such as Trump’s handling of racism and his infamous 20-second silence when asked to call out Trump, has left many in Canada wondering if we have an independent foreign policy at all. There is no doubt that slavishly following Trump, especially on the Security Council, will not serve Canadians’ best interests.

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This article was originally published on Orinoco Tribune.

Arnold August is a Canadian journalist and lecturer, the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion and Cuba–U.S. Relations: Obama and Beyond. As a journalist, he collaborates with many websites in Latin America, Europe, North America and the Middle East. He is a contributor to Orinoco Tribune. His website: www.arnoldaugust.com

Featured image is from Orinoco Tribune

Nixon 68 is back with a vengeance, with President Trump placing himself as the guarantor/enforcer of Law & Order.

That slogan guaranteed Nixon’s election, and was coined by Kevin Phillips, then an expert in “ethnic voting patterns”.

Philips makes for a very interesting case. In 1999, he became the author of a seminal book: The Cousins’ Wars: Religion, Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America, where he tracks how a “small Tudor kingdom” ended up establishing global hegemony.

The division of the English-speaking community into two great powers – “one aristocratic, ‘chosen’ and imperial; and one democratic, ‘chosen’ and manifest destiny-driven”, as Philips correctly establishes – was accomplished by, what else, a war triptych: the English Civil War, the American revolution and the U.S. Civil War.

Now, we may be at the threshold of a fourth war – with unpredictable and unforeseen consequences.

As it stands, what we have is a do-or-die clash of models: MAGA against an exclusivist Fed/Wall Street/Silicon Valley-controlled system.

MAGA – which is a rehash of the American dream – simply cannot happen when society is viciously polarized; vast sectors of the middle class are being completely erased; and mass immigration is coming from the Global South.

In contrast, the Fed as a Wall Street hedge fund meets Silicon Valley model, a supremely elitist 0.001% concoction, has ample margins to thrive.

The model is based on even more rigid corporate monopoly; the preeminence of capital markets, where a Wall Street boom is guaranteed by government debt-buybacks of its own debt; and life itself regulated by algorithms and Big Data.

This is the Brave New World dreamed by the techno-financial Masters of the Universe.

Trump’s MAGA woes have been compounded by a shoddy geopolitical move in tandem with Law and Order: his re-election campaign will be under the sign of “China, China, China.” When in trouble, blame a foreign enemy.

That comes from serially failed opportunist Steve Bannon and his Chinese billionaire sidekick Guo Wengui, or Miles Guo. Here they are in Statue of Liberty mode announcing their no holds barred infowar campaign to demonize the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to Kingdom Come and “free the Chinese people”.

Bannon’s preferred talking point is that if his infowar fails, there will be “kinetic war”. That is nonsense. Beijing’s priorities are elsewhere. Only a few neo-conned Dr. Strangeloves would envisage “kinetic war”- as in a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Chinese territory.

Alastair Crooke has masterfully shown how the geoeconomic game, as Trump sees it, is above all to preserve the power of the U.S. dollar: “His particular concern would be to see a Europe that was umbilically linked to the financial and technological heavyweight that is China. This, in itself, effectively would presage a different world financial governance.”

But then there’s The Leopard syndrome: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”. Enter Covid-19 as a particle accelerator, used by the Masters of the Universe to tweak “things” a bit so they not only stay as they are but the Master grip on the world tightens.

The problem is Covid-19 behaves as a set of – uncontrollable – free electrons. That means nobody, even the Masters of the Universe, is able to really weigh the full consequences of a runaway, compounded financial/social crisis.

Deconstructing Nixon-Trump

Russiagate, now totally debunked, has unfolded in effect as a running coup: a color non-revolution metastasizing into Ukrainegate and the impeachment fiasco. In this poorly scripted and evidence-free morality play with shades of Watergate, Trump was cast by the Democrats as Nixon.

Big mistake. Watergate had nothing to do with a Hollywood-celebrated couple of daring reporters. Watergate represented the industrial-military-security-media complex going after Nixon. Deep Throat and other sources came from inside the Deep State. And it was not by accident that they were steering the Washington Post – which, among other roles, plays the part of CIA mouthpiece to perfection.

Trump is a completely different matter. The Deep State keeps him under control. One just needs to look at the record: more funds for the Pentagon, $1 trillion in brand new nuclear weapons, perennial sanctions on Russia, non-stop threats to Russia’s western borders, (failed) efforts to derail Nord Stream 2. And this is only a partial list.

So, from a Deep State point of view, the geopolitical front – containment of Russia-China – is assured. Domestically, it’s much more complicated.

As much as Black Lives Matter does not threaten the system even remotely like the Black Panthers in the 60s, Trump believes his own Law & Order, like Nixon, will once again prevail. The key will be to attract the white women suburban vote. Republican pollsters are extremely optimistic and even talking about a “landslide”.

Yet the behavior of an extra crucial vector must be understood: what corporate America wants.

When we look at who’s supporting Black Lives Matter – and Antifa – we find, among others, Adidas, Amazon, Airbnb, American Express, Bank of America, BMW, Burger King, Citigroup, Coca Cola, DHL, Disney, eBay, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Google, IBM, Mastercard, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Sony, Starbucks, Twitter, Verizon, WalMart, Warner Brothers and YouTube.

This who’s who would suggest a completely isolated Trump. But then we have to look at what really matters; the class war dynamics in what is in fact a caste system, as Laurence Brahm argues.

Black Lives Matter, the organization and its ramifications, is essentially being instrumentalized by selected corporate interests to accelerate their own priority: to crush the U.S. working classes into a state of perpetual anomie, as a new automated economy rises.

That may always happen under Trump. But it will be faster without Trump.

What’s fascinating is how this current strategy of tension scenario is being developed as a classic CIA/NED playbook color revolution.

An undisputed, genuine grievance – over police brutality and systemic racism – has been completely manipulated, showered with lavish funds, infiltrated, and even weaponized against “the regime”.

Just to control Trump is not enough for the Deep State – due to the maximum instability and unreliability of his Demented Narcissus persona. Thus, in yet another priceless historical irony, “Assad must go” metastasized into “Trump must go”.

The cadaver in the basement

One must never lose track of the fundamental objectives of those who firmly control that assembly of bought and paid for patsies in Capitol Hill: to always privilege Divide and Rule – on class, race, identity politics.

After all, the majority of the population is considered expendable. It helps that the instrumentalized are playing their part to perfection, totally legitimized by mainstream media. No one will hear lavishly funded Black Lives Matter addressing the real heart of the matter: the reset of the predatory Restored Neoliberalism project, barely purged of its veneer of Hybrid Neofascism. The blueprint is the Great Reset to be launched by the World Economic Forum in January 2021.

It will be fascinating to watch how Trump deals with this “Summer of Love” remake of Maidan transposed to the Seattle commune. The hint from Team Trump circles is that he will do nothing: a coalition of white supremacists and motorcycle gangs might take care of the “problem” on the Fourth of July.

None of this sweetens the fact that Trump is at the heart of a crossfire hurricane: his disastrous response to Covid-19; the upcoming, devastating effects of the New Great Depression; and his intimations pointing to what could turn into martial law.

Still, the legendary Hollywood maxim – “no one knows anything” – rules. Even running with a semi-cadaver in a basement, the Democrats may win in November just by doing nothing. Yet Teflon Trump should never be underestimated. The Deep State may even realize he’s more useful than they think.

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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Windover Way Photography

I remember a sociology professor that was Maoist, a girl who belonged to a Maoist group and another one who studied Mandarin. A colorful magazine from China sold everywhere, picturing in glossy paper, clean, good looking youth of both sexes dressed Mao style waving gigantic red flags in squares with traditional Chinese buildings. Since then we all witnessed huge changes in the world and in China. At some point in the 1980s China adopted a form of capitalism managed by its Communist Party; the model, open to western corporations eager to produce goods at low cost, expanded over the years. Low salaries and having no unionized labour is the holy grail of money making in manufacturing, Western powers loved it. Soon China moved with the world into the realm of “Neoliberalism” –a push by the very rich to return to their “gilded age” -to obnoxious wealth made ignoring people’s rights and ecological limits. More recently China’s ongoing growth lowered its pace, it was expected, but China plans to move up the capitalist ladder and planned for changes. In many ways China remains elusive and contradictory; but now, China is no longer a friend of the West.

Breaking the Celestial Empire…

European powers approached America, Africa and Asia with gunboat diplomacy and colonialism, trafficking people, assaulting and pillaging the world, and using whatever means to ensure profit and domination. Non-Europeans have faced a common historical thread of subjugation, slavery, racism, misery, abuse and death, even if they are not always aware. Original peoples were driven to extinction in many places by mere contact with old world germs, but the ones who survived suffered and succumbed to European abuse. European victors wrote history ignoring truth, but modern revision shows victors total disregard for human life, truth and limits. I guess colonizing minds pay no attention to feelings distracting from empire building and wealth accumulation. Still, in fairness to Europeans, hunger for more seems to be a dominant human flaw, a construct that imperialism and capitalism express with total brutality. Sadly for us, both persists and dominate the world today, implemented by descendants of our colonial-neocolonial ancestors, like the US.

In 1793 the British Empire encountered China at the height of its development, by then the British had colonized India in Asia. China was a prosperous empire with silk, tea, porcelain, gunpowder, kites and it showed no interest in commerce with Britain. The Chinese Emperor Qianlong expressed his views in a letter to King George:

…As your Ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures…Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its own borders. There was therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce. But as the tea, silk and porcelain which the Celestial Empire produces, are absolute necessities to European nations and to yourselves, we have permitted, as a signal mark of favour, that foreign hongs [merchant firms] should be established at Canton, so that your wants might be supplied and your country thus participate in our beneficence (1).

Eager to access China, the British accepted buying Chinese goods as they were valued in Europe and easy to sell, but soon, they found themselves in a trade imbalance. Gold and silver went to China paying for imports but did not return to Europe as China wanted nothing. It does sounds familiar, doesn’t it? For years the British studied ways to “penetrate the Chinese market” until they found a wedge in opium. The Chinese knew opium as a medicine, but had no idea of the effects of addiction. The British produced cheap opium in India and sold it in China as a recreational drug. The East Indian Company (EIC) the first corporation ever was behind this. The EIC started in the 1600s “created by men who controlled capital to finance voyages for colonization;”a colonization tool causing much damage (2).

Vandana Shiva, discussing the emergence of corporations, explains how the East Indian Company controlled India and used it as a base to move into China. In the 1600 India produced rice, wheat, sugar and raw cotton for Asia and for the world, she says, but when in 1717 the EIC obtained a grant from Emperor Farrkhsujar in Delhi to trade custom-free throughout imperial territories, India’s flourishing ended. Bengal itself collapsed by 1757. By then the EIC traders were no longer simple merchants in India, they were its rulers. Some argue this was due to technology, but it was tariffs and prohibitions what led to the industrial growth of England and to India’s industrial demise. England produced no cotton at all in 1771 but by 1845 it dominated the textile trade, while India had disappeared from production. It is what many call now “free trade and globalization,” says Shiva, but she calls it differently, for her the practice is the “ultimate enclosure” of the commons. Any protective measure a country takes against such penetration, she argues, becomes an issue and can be understood as a declaration of war and followed by sanctions, and even indirect or direct war. (2)

The East Indian Company introduced opium into China in 1825; soon after the Chinese addiction to opium expanded (to 4-12 million people). The Emperor prohibited its use, possession and trade. But, prohibition did not work. Profits were huge and tempting so a strong illegal trade developed. In 1839, desperate, the Emperor sent Commissioner Lin Tse-Hsu to put an end to the opium trade. Lin, aware of the British involvement, wrote to Queen Victoria hoping for her support:

We have heard that in your own country opium is prohibited with the utmost strictness and severity: this is a strong proof that you know full well how hurtful it is to mankind. Since then you do not permit it to injure your own country, you ought not to have the injurious drug transferred to another country…Of the products which China exports to your foreign countries, there is not one which is not beneficial to mankind in some shape or other. There are those which serve for food, those which are useful, and those which are calculated for re-sale; but all are beneficial. Has China (we should like to ask) ever yet sent forth a noxious article from its soil?

The Queen did not respond. Lin implemented his Emperor’s command and destroyed a large supply of opium stored on Chinese soil. Outraged, the British started the first Opium War and easily defeated China with British industrial weaponry. China had to accept a settlement of war which forced the Emperor to agree to open up new ports for trade, surrender the island of Hong Kong and pay millions in compensation for the opium destroyed. Later, in 1856, wanting more concessions, the British launched a second Opium War. China was humiliated, forced to stop holding foreigners accountable under Chinese law for crimes committed in China; it lost its ability to control trade and foreign nationals within its own borders (1).

The East Indian Company is a front runner of global capitalism, an agent of Empire. Corporations and CEOs ensure capital accumulation without any accountability for unethical conduct. A crucial picture of an agent of globalization emerges from Frank Holt’s writings about Alexander the Great, the West “greatest conqueror” and most beloved empire builder. It is normal for most scholars today to acknowledge Alexander the Great as a “reckless alcoholic, a vicious psychopath and a destructive barbarian” Holtz says. And still, some praise in him “an economist who knew what he was aiming at” arguing that Alexander’s way of dealing with the booty he seized from Persia (turning it into coined money) “stimulated markets and created a sound and lasting monetary policy.” Some even say Alexander was a“rare genius” who introduced capitalism into Asia overnight. (3)

Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, imagine Alexander as a (Neoliberal) Chief Executive Officer of today, one relentlessly pushing capitalism forward. This is what he says:

“As a CEO, Alexander would have been effective, successful and comfortable in today’s multinational business world. He would have been sure to make headlines in business journals, dazzle Wall Street with his hostile takeovers, and instill a combination of admiration and fear in the heads of his investors, managers, allies, and adversaries with his tolerance to risk and in-your-face management style.” (3)

The cat that catches mice…

China, after moving through its first revolutionary war (1925-1927) and its second revolutionary war (1949) was facing challenges. After the great famine of the 1950s, and the Cultural Revolution of the 60-70s, China changed direction (1970s-1990s) under the influence of Deng Xiaoping. Considered a pragmatic, he argued in favor of what “worked” and was not fully convinced of the benefits of egalitarianism. He convinced Chinese people of his approach using an interesting image: it doesn’t matter whether a cat is white or black, he argued, as long as it catches mice. He started by imposing admission exams to school and favoring the brightest. China’s transformation continued from there, eventually joining the global economy and the dominant focus on industrialization and growth. The capitalist world had room for China; and, Chinese government gambled on their capacity to control capitalism and use it to China’s advantage. (4)

China the “powerhouse” created wealth but it did not distributed it in an egalitarian manner. By 2014 the top 1% of China’s population owned 1/3 of the country’s wealth.  Today, in the world, the top 1% owns 45% of global wealth while the top 10% owns 82% of it. According to the Forbes List (2020) China has five billionaires among the top 40 billionaires of the world 1% (with fortunes of USD 20 to 38 billions). The first of the Chinese five is Jack Ma, in e-commerce. China also has almost 100 million members of the global 10% and 4.4 million millionaires. In terms of ultra-high net worth individuals China is second only to the US. (5)

Manufacturing continues to be in China’s mind the key to prosperity. China, aware that its manufacturing base is large but not strong, has gaps, faces challenges, wants to make changes. With this in mind China launched in 2015 “Made in China 2025” (MIC 2025). The goal is independence through leadership in innovation, advanced technology and industrial systems in specific areas (aerospace, AI, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications…). China has leading companies in the areas selected; Huawei is one of them. The US, aware of China’s strategy and concerned about its own hegemony worked at blocking China and soon accusations about China’s disloyalty and “suspect” motives invaded the media.

Friend or Foe?

In truth, China is merely following its development path. Its goal to advance from producing low-cost machinery and equipment to higher quality, more advanced products of recognized brands is to be expected in a capitalist world.  But, for China it may mean war with the US and its allies. The vitriol against China is loud and ongoing and although this may not be an “ideological war” (although nasty references to “Communists” are made) US threats of “decoupling” with China cannot be trifled with. Like all wars, market wars are about power. A relentless propaganda machine keeps dressing China as enemy number one. Attacks are diverse and, probably because of Huawei’s ready to go 5G technology, Huawei is a target. The 5 eyes’ intelligence (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, US) met in Nova Scotia to brief Canada’s Prime Minister and plan on Huawei’s CEO extradition to the US. Meng Wanzhou, who at some point even had Canadian landed status, owns two properties and lives with her family in Vancouver, was taken. Her case is in Court. Canada’s good relations with China are at risk but China cannot be surprised.

Animosity against China is also clear in the case of Hong Kong, site of ongoing and violent protest waiving British flags, asking for a return to its colonial master (the British seized it during the First Opium War), waving pictures of President Trump asking him for intervention. It sounded obviously staged from outside. But as a result of these and other attacks China approved a new national security law that includes Hong Kong. As a response the US decides removing Hong Kong’s preferential status –it can no longer see it as a separate trade jurisdiction. Tariffs could apply to Hong Kong, passports and visas be affected and there may even be sanctions. Australia, Canada, UK may follow the US in this. Hong Kong manufacturing could be affected, trade can favor Shanghai and Shenzhen’s  rise, foreign investors may decide to invest in Singapore (6).

COVID-19 complicates matters too. The Trump Administration made loud and public accusations against China and the World Health Organization for “conspiring” to harm the US. Such climate favoured non-sense lawsuits and much talk. The truth is obvious, Western countries have been challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular the US. China, however, has managed it quiet effectively. Numbers talk: China had 4624 deaths while the US has reached 120 000 and counting (see this).

The ongoing cold war climate has to be clear to China because it is recommending to functionaries and journalists at home to keep quiet about MIC 2025 and avoid further wrath. But, can the West stop or are we beyond sanity.

Do unto others…

Fentanyl, a synthetic opiate made by illegal labs, in China and other places, is damaging the Western world. In Canada there were 2946 deaths in 2016 because of Fentanyl overdose, it is easy to OD with a drug so powerful than a few grains of it can stop your breathing. In the US Fentanyl is epidemic killing 30 000 in 2018, its Atlantic coast particularly vulnerable. Like opium, in the past, Fentanyl today is proving difficult to stop. It is easy to make in illegal labs and cheap -a kilogram of pure Fentanyl sells for US $ 2000 while the same amount and potency of heroin costs 50 times more. (7)

Katherine Pfaff, spokesperson for the US Drug Enforcement Agency, told BBC in 2017 that interceptions from the US postal system, information from people on the ground, and tracking cyber footprints, lead them to believe a significant amount of Fentanyl comes from China. A European drug monitoring agency agreed that most shipments of new Fentanyl into Europe originated in China but some illegal production was from labs in Europe. China acknowledged the issue, its fast growing pharmaceutical industry is challenging to regulate, but China promised to work towards ending illegal traffic by increasing control over materials required in the illegal production of Fentanyl. (8) China did not behave like Britain did after prying open the Chinese market with opium. Britain care nothing about destroying Chinese society, or about the pain of millions of lives ruined.

Safety, Equality, Income: the why of the Revolution

In Alberta, a Chinese state-owned company (SSEC Canada Ltd.) was ordered to pay $ 1.5 million after pleading guilty to three workplace safety charges that caused the death of two Chinese temporary foreign workers in 2007. It happened at the Canadian Natural Resources’ Horizon project near Fort McMurray (Canada). SSEC, a subsidiary of Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Company Ltd., tendered a contract including 132 Mandarin-speaking Chinese workers recruited by Canada to work on tanks built while they were inside them. SSEC obtained this contract undermining the price of unionized companies. Two workers were crushed by falling steel and five more were injured. SSEC was rushing workers who did not speak English and had limited safety training. Canadian workers witnessing the incident were shocked by SSEC lack of concern for its workers safety, particularly because SSEC is state-owned. (9)

Industrialization in China created a marked urban/rural divide as policies favoured cities and the reduction of rural investment to finance industrialization. The rural population suffered limited access to services and benefits. Inequality has increased nearly everywhere in the world but it increased particularly in North America, China, India and Russia. It is the end of post war egalitarian policies in many countries. In places like the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil, however, inequality remained stable mainly because such policies never existed there: they are the “inequality frontier.” In countries that were highly regulated before, like India or China and Russia inequality increased. In Russia it increased abruptly, in China more moderately and in India gradually. The balance between private and public wealth changed, this balance is a crucial determinant of inequality. China and Russia had an unusual increase in private wealth since the 1980s, in both public wealth decreased from 60-70% to 20-30% which affected government capacity to regulate the economy, redistribute income and mitigate rising inequality (10).

In 1988, Wang Jian from China Society of Macroeconomics, stated that China should take advantage of its cheap labour force to become a global manufacturing hub. Today, he thinks otherwise:  “It is time to expand at home, on domestic markets,” he argues. Since Washington is pushing to fully decouple from China, China should accept this and focus on turning country’s rural and migrant worker population into urban consumers:  “From globalization-driven to domestic-led economy, self reliance and economic security…securing overseas resources rather than increasing sales.”  He is also concerned about the gap between the nation’s well off and the rest of its 1.4 billion people. (11)

Industrialization and growth has been China’s motto -now encouraging innovation, better use of resources, new -environment friendly- energy, and full digitalization. China could question the Western model with its focus on unending growth which inevitably leads to the destruction of Nature. Besides growth has limits; in a planet with limited resources the effects of our activities are visibly killing our ecosystem. Innovation, substitution and efficiency, says Richard Heinberg, will not keep economies growing because absolute growth ended and we now have only competition and relative growth in a “finite world.”  For the Chinese economy to grow some other economy must shrink. Heinberg, who encourages us to abandon the futile pursuit of growth in consumption, wants us to focus instead on improving quality of life and achieving balance with Nature. (12)

China is aware of its ecological challenges but does China consider the possibility that its advanced development dream may be unattainable? Earth, a living system, may be huge but still finite, complex and interconnected. Is there room for China development of its aerospace industry, its internet of “things” a step towards its internet of “industry”, its robotics? We will have to see. The cat that catches mice may have been “too efficient” exterminating them all. Maybe from this point on there are no more mice to catch.

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Notes

(1) Opium: The Downfall of Imperial China. http://www.historywiz.com/downfall.htm:

(2) Earth Democracy, Justice, sustainability and peace (2005). Vandana Shiva, South End Press, Cambridge, Massachussetts.

(3) The Treasures of Alexander the Great. How a San’s Wealth shaped the World. (2016) Frank L. Holt, Oxford University Press.

(4) Deng Xiaoping,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping

(5) Global Wealth Report 2019, Credit Suisse

https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/reports-research/global-wealth-report.html

(6) The US position on Hong Kong’s special status

https://www.china-briefing.com/news/us-position-hong-kong-special-status-possible-implications/

(7) Fentanyl: The Most Dangerous Illegal Drug in America (2020), RAND Corporation, https://www.rand.org/blog/rand-review/2020/01/fentanyl-the-most-dangerous-illegal-drug-in-america.html

(8) Fentanyl crisis: Is China a major source of illegal drugs? Reality Check Team, BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-45564744

(9) Firm linked to China ordered to pay $ 1.5 million in deaths of workers in Alberta, (2013)https://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/china-linked-firm-to-pay-1-5m-in-death

(10) Income Inequality Report UNESCO 2018

https://en.unesco.org/inclusivepolicylab/sites/default/files/publication/document/2018/7/wir2018-full-report-english.pdf

(11) China’s globalization pioneer says it is now time to look closer to home amid US decoupling move. Frank Tang, June 2020, South China Morning Post.  https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3088060/chinas-globalisation-pioneer-says-it-now-time-look-closer

(12) The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality (2011) Richard Heinberg, New Society, Canada.

A federal lawsuit filed today says President Trump’s June 5 executive order allowing commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was illegal. The lawsuit notes that the Antiquities Act allows presidents to create national monuments to protect objects of historic or scientific interest, but not to revoke protections.

The lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Washington, D.C. by the Conservation Law Foundation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for Biological Diversity and Zack Klyver from Maine.

“Trump’s order was illegal because he can’t just declare commercial fishing is allowed in a protected marine monument,” said Kristen Monsell, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Seamounts monument was created to permanently safeguard this amazing ecosystem and vulnerable species like the endangered sperm whale. Presidents can’t be allowed to gut protections by decree as a favor to commercial fishermen.”

President Obama created the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in 2016 to protect 5,000 square miles of sensitive deep-sea coral reefs and the vulnerable marine life they support. Among those species is the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, whose declining population of about 400 is threatened by entanglement in commercial lobster gear.

Commercial fishing organizations challenged the monument’s designation and ban on fishing, but a federal district court rejected those claims in 2018. That decision was upheld in December by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

“I spend lots of time on the water so I know how important it is to protect this marine monument. My business depends on a healthy ocean,” said Zack Klyver, co-founder of Blue Planet Strategies. “Trump’s attack on New England’s prized marine monument is one I take personally. We need to protect our oceans and their abundance of marine life for future generations to experience”

The Trump administration has been trying to roll back protections of national monuments since early 2017 and open them up to mining, fossil fuel, commercial fishing and other extractive industries. Among the targets in that effort were the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument and the Pacific Remote Islands and Rose Atoll Marine National Monuments in the South Pacific.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is home to unique and incredibly important undersea features and creates an ecologically rich marine environment in which numerous species of marine mammals, sea turtles and fish congregate. It’s also home to cold-water coral species that are thousands of years old, along with other marine species found nowhere else in the world.

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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.

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from 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.