Global Research

State-sponsored class warfare rages. Ongoing for decades, it’s all about governance of, by, and for the privileged few at the expense of most others.

What’s untenable persists with no end of it in prospect, no plan for improving the lives and welfare of ordinary Americans by its ruling authorities, notably ones most disadvantaged.

The divide between super-rich and growing poverty and subsistence-level income in the US is greatest since the late 19th/early 20th century robber baron age.

Because of bipartisan complicity against social justice, inequality and injustice are deepening, not improving — notably at a time of protracted main street Depression conditions since 2008 that’s greatly worsened by the current economic collapse.

Real unemployment is about 40% of working-age Americans, reality concealed by phony Labor Department numbers and failure by establishment media to set the record straight.

Before the current economic collapse, over 20% of Americans were unemployed, based on how data were calculated pre-1990.

Today the figure is around double that level, likely to worsen before improving.

Most US workers with jobs earn poverty-level wages with few or no benefits, why households need two or more to survive.

The self-styled “land of the free and home of the brave” from “sea to shining sea” is indifferent toward the rights and welfare of its ordinary people — exploiting, not serving them so the nation’s privileged class can benefit.

It’s why protests in large and smaller US cities nationwide continue in their second week, triggered by the death of a single Black man at the hands of 4 Minneapolis cops.

What touch a raw nerve at the right time could have been something else.

Mass outrage against systemic inequality and injustice has been simmering longterm.

It was just a matter of time before exploding into rage in the streets for positive change.

Most individuals involved are peaceful, expressing their constitutionally affirmed First Amendment rights.

Violence and vandalism appear orchestrated by rogue elements. Piles of bricks, rocks, and other projectiles discovered in cities before lawless actions began raised obvious red flags.

Instead of White House leadership when most needed,

Trump threw more fuel on a raging inferno.

Notably it was by threatening to use combat troops to restore order and supporting unacceptable remarks that referred to protesters as “terrorists.”

Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law president Kristen Clarke called characterizing “peacefully assembled demonstrators (as terrorists) abhorrent,” adding:

“It is remarkable that…Trump objects so vehemently to those speaking out against racial and police violence while embracing gun-toting activists who take siege of government buildings and violent white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville” — in August 2017.

Since largely peaceful protests began in response to George Floyd’s May 25 death at the hands of Minneapolis cops, over 10,000 arrests were made — mainly for peaceful civil disobedience.

Resisting tyranny is a universal right, an obligation to challenge what’s unacceptable — clearly the state of America that’s beautiful for the privileged few alone at the expense of most others.

Jefferson called “resistance to tyranny…obedience to God.”

Philosopher John Locke said when government fails the people, its “trust must necessarily be forfeited, and the power devolve into the hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew where they shall think best for their safety and security.”

In his landmark essay on civil disobedience, Henry David Thoreau said “(m)ust the citizen ever for a moment…resign his conscience to the legislator,” adding:

“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”

“All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.”

“Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”

The state “is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength.”

“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion…They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.”

Martin Luther King stressed that “noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”

He championed “creative protest,” adding: Passivity is no option in the face of injustice.”

At a time of institutionalized racism, inequality and injustice in the US, sustained resistance in the streets against what’s intolerable is the only viable option.

Nothing else can work. Nothing ever has. Nothing ever will. The only language the US ruling class understands is toughness.

People power alone can change things, More than an option, it’s a moral obligation.

The late human rights champion/defense attorney Lynne Stewart urged Americans to “Organize, Organize, Organize.”

“The only thing we have is each other,” she stressed.

Resisting tyranny and courage for justice defined her activism.

People have power when they use it. At a time of eroded constitutional protections,  repressed dissent, government as the handmaiden of monied interests, and raging war on humanity at home and abroad, it’s vital for ordinary people to resist.

Ballot box activism is futile, taking to the streets nonviolently essential.

Sustained collective defiance against the unacceptable system is the only chance for constructive change.

It took a decade of anti-war activism in the 60s and 70s to end US aggression in Southeast Asia — a pyrrhic victory as things turned out because activism for peace, equity and justice waned.

Struggles for justice are long-term, compromises unacceptable.

So is letting energy for change wane, what time and again defeats social movements.

The hugely corrupted US system is too debauched to fix.

They only option is replacing it with governance serving everyone equitably, not just the privileged few, the unacceptable way things are now.

Formidable tasks take time, the impossible a little longer.

People power makes positive change possible.

Now is the time to go for it without quitting until peace and social justice goals are achieved.

It won’t happen any other way.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from OneWorld

Under FBI orders, Facebook and Google removed American Herald Tribune, an alternative site that publishes US and European writers critical of US foreign policy. The bureau’s justification for the removal was dubious, and it sets a troubling precedent for other critical outlets.

***

The FBI has publicly justified its suppression of dissenting online views about US foreign policy if a media outlet can be somehow linked to one of its adversaries. The Bureau’s justification followed a series of instances in which Silicon Valley social media platforms banned accounts following consultations with the FBI.

In a particularly notable case in 2018, the FBI encouraged Facebook, Instagram and Google to remove or restrict ads on the American Herald Tribune (AHT), an online journal that published critical opinion articles on US policy toward Iran and the Middle East. The bureau has never offered a clear rationale, however, despite its private discussions with Facebook on the ban.

The FBI’s first step toward intervening against dissenting views on social media took place in October 2017 with the creation of a Foreign Influence Task Force (FTIF) in the bureau’s Counterintelligence Division. Next, the FBI defined any effort by states designated by the Department of Defense as major adversaries (Russia, China, Iran and North Korea) to influence American public opinion as a threat to US national security.

In February 2020, the FBI defined that threat in much more specific terms and implied that it would act against any online media outlet that was found to fall within its ambit. At a conference on election security on February 24, David K. Porter, who identified himself as Assistant Section Chief of the Foreign Influence Task Force, defined what the FBI described as “malign foreign influence activity” as “actions by a foreign power to influence U.S. policy, distort political sentiment and public discourse.” 

Porter described “information confrontation” as a force “designed to undermine public confidence in the credibility of free and independent news media.” Those who practice this dark craft, he said, seek to “push consumers to alternative news sources,” where “it’s much easier to introduce false narratives” and thus “sow doubt and confusion about the true narratives by exploiting the media landscape to introduce conflicting story lines.”

“Information confrontation”, however, is simply the literal Russian translation of the term “information warfare.” Its use by the FTIF appears to be aimed merely at justifying an FBI role in seeking to suppress what it calls “alternative news sources” under any set of circumstances it can justify.

While expressing his intention to target alternative media, Porter simultaneously denied that the FBI was concerned about censoring media. The FITF, he said “doesn’t go around chasing content. We don’t focus on what the actors say.” Instead, he insisted that “attribution is key,” suggesting that the FTIF was only interested in finding hidden foreign government actors at work.

Thus the question of “attribution” has become the FBI’s key lever for censoring alternative media that publishes critical content on U.S. foreign policy, or which attacks mainstream and corporate media narratives. If an outlet can be somehow linked to a foreign adversary, removing it from online platforms is fair game for the feds. 

The strange disappearance of American Herald Tribune

In 2018, Facebook deleted the Facebook page of the American Herald Tribune (AHT), a website that publishes commentary from an array of notable authors who are harshly critical of U.S. foreign policy. Gmail, which is run by Google, quickly followed suit by removing ads linked to the outlet, while the Facebook-owned Instagram scrubbed AHT’s account altogether.

Tribune editor Anthony Hall reported at the time that the removals occurred at the end of August 2018, but there was no announcement of the move by Facebook. Nor was it reported by the corporate news media until January 2020, when CNN elicited a confirmation from a Facebook spokesman that it had indeed done so in 2018.  Furthermore, the FBI was advising Facebook on both Iranian and Russian sites that were banned during that same period of a few days.  As Facebook’s chief security officer Alex Stamos noted on July 21, 2018,

“We have proactively reported our technical findings to US law enforcement, because they have much more information than we do, and may in time be in a position to provide public attribution.”

On August 2, a few days following the removal of AHT and two weeks after hundreds of Russian and Iranian Pages had been removed by Facebook, FBI Director Christopher Wray told reporters at a White House briefing that FBI officials had “met with top social media and technology companies several times” during the year, “providing actionable intelligence to better enable them to address abuse of their platforms by foreign actors.”  He remarked that FBI officials had “shared specific threat indicators and account information so they can better monitor their own platforms.”

Cybersecurity firm FireEye, which boasts that it has contracts to support “nearly every department in the United States government,” and which has been used by Department of Homeland Security as a primary source of “threat intelligence,” also influenced Facebook’s crackdown on the Tribune. CNN cited an unnamed official of FireEye stating that the company had “assessed” with “moderate confidence” that the AHT’s website was founded in Iran and was “part of a larger influence operation.”

The CNN author was evidently unaware that in U.S. intelligence parlance “moderate confidence” suggests a near-total absence of genuine conviction. As the 2011 official “consumer’s guide” to US intelligence explained, the term “moderate confidence” generally indicates that either there are still differences of view in the intelligence community on the issue or that the judgment ”is credible and plausible but not sufficiently corroborated to warrant higher level of confidence.” 

CNN also quoted FireEye official Lee Foster’s claim that “indicators, both technical and behavioral” showed that American Herald Tribune was part of the larger influence operation. The CNN story linked to a study published by FireEye featuring a “map” showing how Iranian-related media were allegedly linked to one another, primarily by similarities in content.  But CNN apparently hadn’t bothered to read the study, which did not once mention the American Herald Tribune.

Finally, the CNN piece cited a 2018 tweet by Daily Beast contributor Josh Russell which it said provided “further evidence supporting American Herald Tribune’s alleged links to Iran.” In fact, his tweet merely documented the AHT’s sharing of an internet hosting service with another pro-Iran site “at some point in time.”  Investigators familiar with the problem know that two websites using the same hosting service, especially over a period of years, is not a reliable indicator of a coherent organizational connection.

CNN did find evidence of deception over the registration of the AHT. The outlet’s editor, Anthony Hall, continues to give the false impression that a large number of journalists and others (including this writer), are contributors, despite the fact that their articles have been republished from other sources without permission.

However, AHT has one characteristic that differentiates it from the others that have been kicked off Facebook: The American and European authors who have appeared in its pages are all real and are advancing their own authentic views. Some are sympathetic to the Islamic Republic, but others are simply angry about U.S. policies: Some are Libertarian anti-interventionists; others are supporters of the 9/11 Truth movement or other conspiracy theories.

One notable independent contributor to AHT is Philip Giraldi, an 18-year veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Service and and an articulate critic of US wars in the Middle East and of Israeli influence on American policy and politics. From its inception in 2015, the AHT has been edited by Anthony Hall, Professor Emeritus at University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada.

In announcing yet another takedown of Iranian Pages in October 2018, Facebook’s Gleicher declared that “coordinated inauthentic behavior” occurs when “people or organizations create networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are what they’re doing.” That certainly doesn’t apply to those who provided the content for the American Herald Tribune.

Thus the takedown of the publication by Facebook, with FBI and FireEye encouragement represents a disturbing precedent for future actions against individuals who criticize US foreign policy and outlets that attack corporate media narratives.

Shelby Pierson, the CIA official appointed by then director of national intelligence in July 2019 to chair the inter-agency “Election Executive and Leadership Board,” appeared to hint at differences in the criteria employed by his agency and the FBI on foreign and alternative media.

In an interview with former acting CIA Director Michael Morrell in February, Pierson said,

“[P]articularly on the [foreign] influence side of the house, when you’re talking about blended content with First Amendment-protected speech…against the backdrop of a political paradigm and you’re involving yourself in those activities, I think that makes it more complicated” (emphasis added).

Further emphasizing the uncertainty surrounding the FBI’s methods of online media suppression, she added that the position in question “doesn’t have the same unanimity that we have in the counterterrorism context.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist who has covered national security policy since 2005 and was the recipient of Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2012.  His most recent book is The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis co-authored with John Kiriakou, just published in February.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

There is no doubt that colonialism and racism sit at the root of America’s domestic problems. The push to dominate others abroad is directly linked to the belief that those who are different at home should also be dominated.

There are still Americans alive today that remember segregation laws that denied black Americans their basic rights and dignity. Before that, there was outright slavery.

Even today, racism is still institutionalized. It also permeates American culture, laying just beneath a superficial layer of tolerance and equality.

This is not just about white people who remain racist against blacks and other minorities – a product of America’s terminally ill culture – it is also about fundamental racism that still very much sits at the heart of American foreign and domestic policy – against not only blacks, but virtually every race on the planet from Africans to Asians to even Slavs.

The US is a nation that encourages its people to hate entire groups of people abroad to help justify otherwise unjust wars. Arabs, Chinese people, Russians – are all vilified with bigotry and hatred sanctioned by mainstream American culture. It isn’t hard to see why in a nation like this, hatred for other groups is easily justified in the minds of racists and the unjust.

Not Just Police in America – Racism is a Key Feature of US Foreign Policy 

It was under US President Barack Obama that the US decimated the North African nation of Libya, deposing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi – a champion of African dignity and progress and the champion of tens of thousands of blacks from all over Africa who travelled to Libya to find work and a better life – work and a better life Gaddafi provided them until he was brutally murdered and his government replaced by heavily armed, racist terrorists backed by the US and its European allies.

US-backed militants in Libya would hunt down Libya’s black population, killing them, torturing them, and even enslaving them in open air slave markets – a spectacle one might have believed was unthinkable in the 21st century – but something made possible by America, its foreign policy, and its deeply rooted racism and sense of supremacy – despite having a “black” president at the time.

President Obama is hardly the only one to blame – he simply picked up where others left off – and his successor, US President Donald Trump is simply next in line to carry forward systemic US injustice worldwide. The fact that President Obama was black made no difference and simply helps illustrate how while superficial milestones are waved in America’s face – the fundamental rot of injustice, racism, and supremacist thinking persists.

When a nation is able to justify denying one group of people their dignity, worth, and rights as human beings it is a slippery slope that easily leads to other groups likewise being stripped of their humanity and abused.

If Black Lives Matter – They Must Always Matter, Everywhere, All the Time 

Any case of police brutality is tragic and needs to be addressed -a problem in its own right. If officers killed George Floyd because he was black, it represents an additional problem that must also be addressed.

If Americans genuinely believe black lives matter – then they need to commit to fighting injustice against them, and all other victims of American racism and supremacy. If they speak up only when it is popular and “trending” it’s as good as not speaking up at all.

If they are silent when America is mass murdering blacks overseas, killing brown people across the planet, or attempting to normalize racism against Asians – Chinese people in particular – they are complicit in the very sort of deeply rooted, institutionalized racism that underpins US foreign policy and the globe-spanning industrialized injustice it represents – and the very sort of racism that manifests itself as injustice against blacks at home.

America needs genuine opposition to racism. Not opportunistic posturing.

US politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pose as dedicated to racial equality and fighting racism – yet she regularly finds herself in support of US military aggression abroad which exclusively targets nations populated by black, brown, and Asian people.

Her most recent display of supreme hypocrisy was her support of US meddling in Hong Kong – an extension of the British Empire’s seizure from and subjugation of this Chinese territory.

The British Empire – of course – also pursued its foreign policy based entirely on the belief that white Westerners were superior to all others and that it was their right – even duty – to impose British “civilization” upon “heathen” races – China was no exception to this belief.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may or may not appreciate that her support for US meddling in Hong Kong helps continue this disgraceful tradition and agenda – believing instead that supporting “democracy” in Hong Kong is not simply the same brand of Anglo-American racism merely repackaged for more sensitive global audiences. But she is supporting racism, supremacy, and hegemony all the same.

Black lives will never matter as long as “Black Lives Matter” remains a hollow political slogan shouted by interests easily able to ignore or even support injustice purveyed by the US against others abroad – including blacks.

Deeply rooted racism in the US is just one of many symptoms of an overall desire for hegemony and the notions of racial, political, and cultural supremacy that underpin it. Until this is addressed, racism will continue, with only the most superficial and unsustainable efforts made to stop it.

As long as America believes it is better than all others abroad – able to justify exploitation, coercion, and even military aggression to assert itself and pursue its “interests” – racism and injustice will persist at home. The same corporate-financier interests driving US injustice abroad see the US population – white and black – as merely another market segment to use and abuse – to divide and conquer – to put under itself for its own benefit.

Black lives matter, whether they are being strangled by a racist white cop in America or being bombed by US warplanes in Libya. Once Americans can unite in both understanding and opposing this across-the-board racism and injustice, something might actually be done about it besides kicking the can down the road for a few more months until the next video of police abuse emerges online.

America will not heal its domestic hatred and divisions if it remains built entirely on projecting and profiting from hatred and division abroad. It was no coincidence that legendary champions for equality like Martin Luther King Jr. were both opposed to racism and injustice at home and ceaselessly opposed  to American aggression and hegemony abroad. The two are linked by the common thread of fundamental injustice. Until they are both exposed and smashed completely, they will both continue.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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.

Featured image is from NEO

The US-China relationship continues to sour under the impact of Covid-19, with the Trump administration threatening to cut all ties with China in a move that would divide the world into two competing trade entities.¹ It’s been a bad year for China, with accusations over the origins of the pandemic coming on top of China’s difficulties in managing the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.² Under these circumstances, the energy perspective provides a fascinating set of insights into the evolving US-China relationship.

The economic havoc unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic has been bad enough, with reports of looming industry collapse by the International Energy Agency and others.³ But its economic impact has been exacerbated by an ugly price war in the oil industry, seeing prices tumble alongside a collapse in demand. At one point in April, the oil price reached a widely publicised negative level – an unprecedented phenomenon. Now the price is low but at present relatively stable, following a tripartite agreement between the world’s three largest oil suppliers – the US, Saudi Arabia and Russia. In the last few days, the oil price has recovered to nearly $30 per barrel, providing some modest relief.⁴ But the impact on the US has been severe, with the high-cost and highly debt-leveraged shale oil industry, which propelled the US to become the world’s largest oil producer, facing near collapse. It has long been the goal of both the Saudi and Russian oil industries to damage the upstart US shale industry, which was protected by relatively high oil prices. Now with this protection withdrawn, combined with collapsing demand, the US industry faces severe problems.

Meanwhile the clean energy transition continues apace, and looks like being strengthened in Asia by the chaos unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic. In China in particular, but also in Japan and Korea, clean energy promises a lower cost energy alternative to the fossil fuels – coal, oil, gas – that powered Asia’s industrialization. The effect of the plunging oil price on everyone is decidedly mixed. The effect on China, the world’s largest oil importer, is entirely benign. China’s state-owned oil enterprises are benefiting from the low oil price by replenishing the national oil reserves. Meanwhile the US reliance on fossil fuels, notably shale oil where big players like Exxon-Mobil have been investing heavily, with full political support from President Trump, is about to take a severe beating. Had the US been diversifying its energy base and building a strong renewables sector, it would have taken advantage of this crisis (self-inflicted by major producers Russia and Saudi Arabia), to enhance its technological leadership. In the US power sector, solar and wind continue to grow only modestly (as shown in Fig. 4 below) while fossil fuel suppliers are now in deep trouble. Obvious opportunities are ignored — even pandemic-related loans for renewables to revive the economy remain untapped. Meanwhile China continues to ramp up its green economy sectors at a speed that could take it to a leadership on energy matters in the 21^st century – from green electric power generation (solar and wind) and the manufactured devices involved, to green transport (electric vehicles EVs and fuel cell vehicles FCVs), energy storage, and the beginnings of a comprehensive hydrogen economy that could eventually phase out the fossil fuel economy.⁵

It takes a crisis to reveal the relative strengths of competing global giants. It is the oil price crisis and its impact on US shale oil production that is revealing just where China and the US stand with their very different energy strategies.

How oil market shares have evolved

The US ceased to be a dominant exporter of conventional oil in the 1970s – from which time US foreign policy was shaped by managing the flow of oil from Middle East suppliers such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran. But the technological innovation of hydraulic fracture (fracking), along with deep sea oil drilling and tar sands recovery, changed all that in the early 21^st century. Horizontal drilling and other innovations helped create a new US oil industry based on huge reserves such as the Permian and the Bakken in Texas and Eagle Ford in Montana and North Dakota and into Canada. Fears of oil supplies peaking abated. The next decade of the early 2000s saw US oil fortunes transformed on the basis of unconventional oil – and focusing US energy interests once again on oil and fossil fuels and neglecting alternatives such as renewables.

Source

US oil production (with unconventional shale oil from hydraulic fracturing playing a major role) overtook Russian production in Feb 2018 and then Saudi production in July 2018, rising to account for 15% of global oil production by the end of 2019. This is costly production, due to the complex production methods and the high levels of debt leverage that enabled shale oil producers to break into the oil industry dominated by giant incumbents. This was a classic instance of Schumpeter’s argument that the dynamism of capitalism is unleashed by the capacity of innovators to break into an established industrial sector on the strength of debt finance. But in the case of shale oil, US producers need a break-even price of oil more than $45 per barrel in order to be profitable – a level that is much higher than costs of production of conventional oil producers.⁶ Over the past decade this break-even condition was satisfied, more or less (with the exception of an earlier price war in 2015 launched by Saudi Arabia to try to knock the US shale oil producers out of contention). But the combination of collapse in demand in March 2020 due to the pandemic, and the oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, destroyed these favorable circumstances. The US shale oil industry has been in free fall ever since. According to an influential op-ed in the NY Times, “Energy independence was a fever dream, fed by cheap debt and frothy capital markets.”⁷The Financial Times is adopting a similarly pessimistic tone in stating that at current levels (around $20 a barrel) the US shale oil industry cannot cover its costs, and bankruptcies are inevitable.⁸

How the oil price war unfolded

Oil prices have been maintained in recent years by agreements to curtail production by OPEC members (led by Saudi Arabia) and extended beyond OPEC to include Russia (OPEC +). In early March, OPEC and Russia agreed to extend production curtailment designed to bring supply into closer alignment with falling demand, under the impact of Covid-19. This agreement, the latest in an arrangement involving the OPEC+ countries, did not last. By March 13, it was clear that Russia would not go along with further cuts (which its strategists saw as unduly benefiting the US shale oil industry). So Saudi Arabia, under its mercurial crown prince, MBS, responded by launching a major price war, with its lead oil supplier Saudi Aramco offering steep discounts to leading customers, particularly in the EU, and at the same time drastically expanding the level of supplies. This price war was fuelled by long-standing rivalry between these two major oil producers, as well as their joint hostility to the US shale oil industry.

What followed was global chaos in the oil market – what the FT called “8 days that shook the oil industry – and the world”.⁹ Over the course of March and April, oil prices fell dramatically, actually reaching negative territory on April 20 – due to oil storage options dwindling and futures traders scrambling to find places to store unwanted deliveries. Saudi Aramco announced yet steeper discounts for its customers in April, leading to lower prices on the commodity exchanges.¹⁰ The dramatically lower oil prices in turn led to stock market mayhem.

The collapse in oil prices has been a dramatic illustration of the consequences of an otherwise strong cartel (in this case OPEC + Russia) falling apart, and the protagonists having the market muscle to engage in a “nuclear level” price war. It is the timing of this price war combined with the collapse in demand due to the pandemic that has unleashed the chaos that could prove ruinous to the US shale oil industry with profound impact on the US economy.¹¹

Source

A price war generally lasts as long as the protagonists can withstand the damage they create. In this case the damage was enormous – described in the industry as a “nuclear version” of a price war. Saudi Arabia could withstand prolonged price cutting because of its low costs – reported to be as low as $4 per barrel.¹²Russia likewise was prepared for a long price reduction, particularly because its supply lines – in the form of pipelines – are superior to those of its OPEC rivals. But it was the impact on the US shale oil industry that was most savage.

US shale oil production had been riding high after a decade of substantial investment, powered by debt leveraging. US oil production overtook that of Saudi Arabia and Russia as the shale revolution prospered. But this industry was uniquely vulnerable to a downturn because of its high costs.

The predictions from oil industry observers are dire. The Norwegian oil consultancy Rystad predicted on April 22 that the US shale oil industry was set for its biggest monthly decline in history amidst the “double whammy” of the oil price collapse and demand destruction due to Covid-19. The number of new- start fracking operations (lifeblood of the industry) in April fell by 60% (to below 300 wells – 200 in the Permian and 50 wells each in the Bakken and Eagle Ford). Rystad is predicting numerous bankruptcies in the US shale oil industry in 2020.¹³ The US business magazine Forbes describes the situation as “fracking’s new world order” where only the strongest US companies will be able to survive.¹⁴

What about the effects on China? China is the world’s largest oil importer (after the EU), and consumer (after the US), importing more than 70% of its crude oil requirements in 2019 – equivalent to 10.1 million barrels per day. With its largest oil supplier, Saudi Arabia, locked in a price war with Russia, its second largest supplier, China is able to take tactical advantage of the lower prices to expand its strategic oil reserves.¹⁵ But there is not the slightest hint that this welcome reduction in prices will shift China’s energy strategy, which favors a green shift linked to manufacturing and urbanization. As argued earlier, this shift has everything to do with maintaining energy security and relieving air pollution from burning of fossil fuels.¹⁶ It does not appear to be side-tracked by the economic slowdown sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic. The story is a complicated one, because China’s scale of industrialization is so large, and its early dependence on fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) was so complete. So it is worth examining China’s quite different energy strategy, and the extent to which it is maintained even at a time of US-China hostility. While it remains a major user of coal, and still has the world’s largest carbon emissions, what is less widely known is that China is a world leader in the shift to renewables. It is a fortunate side effect of this consistent strategy that it is also a low-carbon strategy that can mitigate climate change.

The alternatives to oil – “manufactured energy” based on renewables

In the international political economy of the oil industry, Russia and Saudi Arabia have long been leaders because of the fortuity of large domestic oil reserves combined with national strategic choices made to build their economies around these accidents of geography. But China and the US are different. They need broad energy supplies – and their national great power strategies turn largely upon what their energy choices imply for securing those supplies. The US rose to great power status in the 20^th century on the back of its oil industry, and it has been an oil power for the past century and more – reviving its industry dominance in the past decade by the turn towards alternatives like shale oil. China on the other hand has never been an oil power but has grown to become a major oil consumer and importer, with its troika of state-owned oil firms PetroChina, Sinopec and CNOOC. China has looked for stability in oil supplies even as it accesses supplies from late arrivals such as Iran (which became a major oil producer in the 1970s and is now a major supplier to China), Namibia and South Sudan – with all the geopolitical complications associated with these powers. For example, when China became an early customer of oil imported from South Sudan, the country was plunged into a civil war that curtailed these supplies. (As early as 2011, the year of South Sudan’s independence, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) established an office in the country – but it had to withdraw when the civil war intensified.¹⁷) Such are the geopolitical constraints that have shaped China’s energy strategies towards favoring manufactured green choices and away from fossil fuel dependence.

Little wonder then that China has maintained an open-ended energy strategy, avoiding dependence on any single source (such as imported oil or coal) and maximizing its reliance on its strength in domestic manufacturing. As the rising 21^st century great power, China first industrialized on the foundations of fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas. But the geopolitical constraints associated with this strategy (at the scale being pursued by China) proved to be severe, and have driven China to switch to a strategy where investments in clean energy outrank fossil fuel investments, and so the country’s energy system as a whole edges towards being more green than black (even if there are occasional instances of backsliding). When I last looked at these issues in detail, covering the years to 2017, the trend towards the greening of China’s electric power system was clear.¹⁸ But the system as a whole continued to be more black than green; electric power generated in 2017 was sourced overall from thermal sources to the extent of 71% with 25% from WWS sources.¹⁹ This shows that the transition at such a large scale is complex, and huge industries like coal mining and transport and coal burning cannot be phased out overnight if jobs and livelihoods are not to be savaged.

Neverthelss China’s overall energy strategy, based as it is on utilizing a foundation of urbanization, electrification and reliance on domestic sources of manufactured energy, has continued to place emphasis on renewable sources that provide a measure of domestic energy security. Wind power based on manufactured wind turbines; solar PV power based on manufactured solar cells; hydroelectric power based on dams and water turbines – these are the foundations of an energy strategy based on manufacturing rather than on drilling and digging for supplies beset by geopolitical uncertainties.

China’s investments in its domestic electric power system have been favoring renewable green (water, wind, sun: WWS) sources over black, fossil fuel sources, for the past several years. The impact is visible clearly in the rising trend towards WWS electric power, shown in Figure 3.

Fig. 3. China electric power generation, 1990 – 2019. Source: Author (with thanks to Ms Carol X. Huang)

The chart shows that in the past decade, China’s electric power capacity sourced from green renewable sources (WWS) has increased from 24% to 38% — or a 14% green shift in a decade. This is a huge shift for such a large system. At this rate, China’s electric power capacity would exceed 50% WWS within the next decade – by 2030 or possibly earlier. This would be a tipping point of enormous significance – meaning that China’s electric power system (the biggest in the world) would be more green than black by this date. The chart reveals that China’s actual generation of green electricity (from WWS sources) has risen over the same decade from 18% to 27% of total electric generation – or a 9% green shift in a decade.²⁰ Green power would then feed into other sectors including transport (EVs and FCVs as well as electric trucks, buses and fuel cell powered ships), construction and wider industry such as steel and cement. Because a green electric power system is based on manufacturing, and its costs are declining as per the manufacturing learning curve, so the greening trend can be expected to accelerate.

Meanwhile the US with its Trump-sanctioned bets being placed on the instabilities and high costs of shale oil, as opposed to the diminishing costs and energy security of manufactured energy associated with the green shift, is headed into an energy danger zone. US electric power capacity is still dominated by fossil fuels (LNG 43% and coal 21%, plus oil 3% — totalling 67%) with WWS sources accounting for just on 24% in 2019.²¹ The nuclear share remains at 9%, stable over many years, while wind and solar are rising slowly. The US counterpart to China’s green shift in electric power is shown in Chart 4, from the year 2005 when the US entered shale oil production. While there is a slow increase in renewables (mostly wind and solar with hydro barely changing) it is not on anything like the scale seen in China.²² Of course these are trends that could well be buffeted by continuing trade hostility between the US and China – but there is a momentum behind China’s strategic direction, given the continuing likely fall in costs of generating power from WWS sources, associated with the learning curve.

Fig. 4 US vs China: WWS sources of electric power (capacity and generation), 2005-2019. Source: Author, based on data from the BP Statistical Review and (for 2019) the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Thanks to Ms Carol X. Huang for the chart.

The continuing trade war between the US and China largely bypasses these central energy issues, because the US and China are pursuing such different strategies. China is clearly not attempting to oust the US as an oil producer, while the US, since 2005 and particularly under Trump, is clearly not attempting to oust Chinese global ambitions in renewables and green energy. The result is a stand-off so far where Trump’s anti-China rhetoric has yet to claim any major casualties – but the election year 2020 could hold further surprises.²³

These differences in trends in electric power capacity between China and the US are emblematic of starkly contrasting energy strategies. And it looks in early May as if a strategy based on continued reliance on extracting liquid fossil fuels from the ground, utilizing high-cost technological innovation in the form of hydraulic fracture, deep sea drilling and tar sands recovery is not such a good bet as contrasted with rising electrification, rising reliance on renewables (WWS) and the building of vast domestic manufacturing industries to supply the devices needed. China has discovered a formula for driving its industrial development with an energy strategy, building the industries of the future (renewable power, electric transport, regenerative farming) and allowing them to progressively take over the fossil fuelled incumbents. China has discovered that the costs of the clean energy transition are no more than would be required to maintain the fossil fuel status quo – and build new export-oriented industries at the same time, while reducing its dependence on foreign energy imports. It has taken an oil price crisis and a pandemic to reveal the clear differences between these competing national strategies and their contrasting implications.

Acknowledgments: My thanks to Dr Michael Peck and Prof Linda Weiss for their comments on an earlier draft, and to Ms Carol X. Huang for her assistance in drawing the charts.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

John A. Mathews is Professor Emeritus in the Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University, Sydney. He was Professor of Strategy for many years at Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Sydney, and concurrently the Eni Chair of Competitive Dynamics and Global Strategy at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome.

Notes

¹ ‘Trump threatens to cut off relations with China’, Financial Times, 14 May 2020.

² ‘Hong Kong in 2020: Pandemic, protest, and great power rivalry’, Mark W. Frazier, Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, May 15 2020.

³ ‘Renewable power surges as pandemic scrambles global energy outlook’, report finds, Science Mag, April 30 2020.

⁴ ‘Oil prices stage a modest recovery as demand rises and supply drops’, New York Times, May 17 2020.

⁵ ‘Covid-19 will not slow Southeast Asia’s shift from coal to renewables’, Sara Jane Ahmed, Nikkei Asian Review, May 11 2020.

⁶ ‘Falling prices are hitting US shale oil producers’, Stockhead, Feb 9 2020.

⁷ ‘Coronavirus may kill our fracking fever dream’, Bethany McLean, New York Times, Apr 10 2020. Bethany McLean is the author of Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It’s Changing the World (Columbia Global Reports, 2018).

⁸ ‘Will American shale oil rise again?’, Derek Brower and David Sheppard, Financial Times, April 25 2020.

⁹ ‘Eight days that shook the oil market – and the world’, Financial Times, Mar 13 2020.

¹⁰ ‘Saudi Arabia shows Asia focus with renewed oil price discounts’, Financial Times, May 8 2020.

¹¹ ‘Will American shale oil rise again?’, Derek Brower and David Sheppard, Financial Times, April 25 2020.

¹² ‘By pumping at will, Saudi Arabia hurts oil investment’, Washington Post, March 16 2020.

¹³ ‘Few US shale firms can withstand prolonged price war’, Reuters, March 16 2020.

¹⁴ See Forbes May 7 2020.

¹⁵ South China Morning Post, Mar 10 2020.

¹⁶ See my 2017 book, John A. Mathews, Global Green Shift, London, Anthem Press – and accompanying webpage.

¹⁷ ‘How China came to dominate South Sudan’s oil’, The Diplomat, February 11 2019.

¹⁸ New capacity added in 2017 amounted to 132 GW, of which 52 GW was thermal capacity (mainly coal) and 77 GW was sourced from WWS; likewise in terms of investment, fresh investment in 2017 on power generation was RMB 270 billion, of which RMB 74 billion went to thermal sources and 156.5 billion went to clean WWS sources. Both these results indicated that the system was greening more than blackening at the margin. See ‘The greening of China’s energy system outpaces its further blackening: A 2017 update’, John A. Mathews and Carol X. Huang, with comments from Thomas Rawski and Mark Selden, Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, May 1 2018.

¹⁹ In 2019 generation from thermal sources dropped to 69%, while generation from WWS rose to 26.4%.

²⁰ The shift in green power for electricity generation includes generation from hydro power, wind power and solar power, with their different capacity utilization rates. Hence the extent of the green shift for electric generation is lower than for capacity.

²¹ See data from US Energy Information Administration (EIA).

²² As shown in Fig. 4, by 2019 the US had built electric capacity from WWS sources amounting to just over 25%, compared with China’s level of 38.4%; and in terms of actual electricity generated, the US generated 18.7% from WWS sources, compared with China’s level of 26.4%. China has clearly advanced a lot closer to installing a clean energy economy in recent years.

²³ See Mel Gurtov and Mark Selden, The dangerous new US consensus on China and the future of US-China relations, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Aug 1 2019, 17 (15/5).

Featured image is from InfoBrics

There is no question that the number of police killings of civilians in the U.S. – who are disproportionately Black and other people of color – are the result of policies and practices that enable and even encourage police violence. Compared to police in other wealthy democracies, American police kill civilians at incredibly high rates:

.

The chart above compares the annual rates of police killings in each country, accounting for differences in population size. This is the most apples-to-apples comparison we can make. But the total number of deaths at the hands of police is also worth seeing in comparison with other countries:

The sources for these charts are listed in the table below:

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

To reach the hearts and minds of Americans, the Zionist Israeli Left is manipulating the Black Lives Matter movement. The slogans and images of protestors coming out of Tel Aviv continue to hoodwink the world with a sudden and self-serving concern for Palestinian lives.

Two slogans are circulating among the Zionist Israeli Left: ‘Jewish and democratic’ and ‘Palestine Lives Matter’. These are, simply put, a contradiction in terms designed to whitewash the racist nature of Zionism.

When White supremacists in the U.S. adopted the “All Lives Matter” slogan, everyone quickly understood that the use of it was intended to denigrate the “Black Lives Matter” slogan. The Zionist embrace of “Palestinian Lives Matter” is also a denigration. Palestinian lives suddenly matter to them now only out of fear that Israel’s impending annexation of parts of the West Bank means the end of Zionism and will allow the world to understand the true supremacist nature of the state, which at heart is: “only Jewish lives matter”.

To be truly pro-Palestinian one must be anti-Israel, anti-Zionist. These protestors cling, cynically or out of some delusion, to the notion that to be “Jewish and democratic” is possible, that denying Palestinians equality and return to their stolen homeland is a matter of Jewish national “survival”.

It’s the same lying story or so-called “narrative” that Zionists have long succeeded in imposing on the world by camouflaging Zionism’s racist Jewish supremacist nature and denying the devastation the founding of this Jewish state on Palestinian soil has wreaked on Palestinians. Now that their leaders are up-front with their racist plans and supremacist ideology, they no longer deny, and are even apologetic, but they continue to lie.

Commenting on Facebook, Ronnie Barkan says about the protestors:

They haven’t demonstrated against Zionism — most of them are fascist and Zionist! they simply don’t like the “demographic threat” in losing their cherished ethnic-majority in their cherished race-state via possible annexation. the leftists, ie anti-Zionist and humanist, in that demo are minimal to insignificant in numbers. The overwhelming majority were the “liberal Zionists” mentioned above who dread the notion of equal rights among the ~20 million sons and daughters of this land.

In defense of some of the euphoria of the moment, Christopher Ben Kushka comments:

Jonathan Ofir has pointed out in great detail why larger parts of that demonstration were problematic (to put it mildly). “We can´t breathe since 1948” (on your own wall) plus “Nakba since 1948 — Abolish Zionism” plus “Israel is no democracy but Apartheid (state)” are among the strongest statements I have seen at an Israeli demonstration. And acknowledging that doesn´t turn me … into cheer leaders for the liberal-zionist discourse for whom the 67 occupation is a nuisance to get rid of so they can live their hedonist life style.

Nur Masalha explains:

I think there were a minority of anti-Zionist Israelis and Palestinians in that recent “anti-annexation” demo in Tel Aviv — but there is also a lot of truth in what Rima Najjar says, especially the fact that “Zionism” and “democracy” are a contradiction in terms; that liberal Zionists see the annexation of the West Bank as an existential threat to the “demography” to the self-defined “Jewish state of Israel” — a form of demographic racism; and that liberal Zionists see the “Jewish and democratic” state of Israel as “democratic for Jews” and “Jewish to Palestinians”. Some of the tangible evidence for the presence of anti-Zionist Israelis and Palestinians at the anti-annexation demo in Tel Aviv was the banners: “Nakba since 1948: Abolish Zionism”.

Back in 1964, in an essay titled ‘Zionist logic’, Malcolm X offered Americans a hard-hitting attack on Zionism and explained how it is tinged with messianic religiosity and how it was basically a new form of colonialism in disguise that threatened, not only Palestinians, but also the newly independent African countries that accepted Israeli aid. He wrote:

The Israeli Zionists are convinced they have successfully camouflaged their new kind of colonialism. Their colonialism appears to be more “benevolent,” more “philanthropic,” a system with which they rule simply by getting their potential victims to accept their friendly offers of economic “aid,” and other tempting gifts, that they dangle in front of the newly-independent African nations, whose economies are experiencing great difficulties. During the 19th century, when the masses here in Africa were largely illiterate it was easy for European imperialists to rule them with “force and fear,” but in this present era of enlightenment the African masses are awakening, and it is impossible to hold them in check now with the antiquated methods of the 19th century.

In 1970, The Committee for Black Americans for Truth about the Middle East published ‘An Appeal by Black Americans Against United States Support for the Zionist Government of Israel’ in The New York Times. In it, they affirmed: “We stand with the Palestinian people in their efforts to preserve their revolution, and oppose its attempted destruction by American Imperialism aided by Zionists and Arab reactionaries.”

Adding: “Zionism is a reactionary racist ideology that justifies the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homes and lands, and attempts to enlist the Jewish masses of Israel and elsewhere in the service of imperialism to hold back the Middle East revolution.”

In the euphoria of the Black Lives Matter moment and all the slogans it has inspired, let’s not forget that Zionism is Jewish supremacy.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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 is from Palestine Solidarity Campaign

The following article aims at providing a critical analysis of the Israeli policies towards the colonized Gaza Strip and its Palestinian people. Consequently, it will concentrate on the Military Siege imposed on the Gaza Strip, and on the deliberate Israelipolicy of undernourishment of  Gazans. It will be concluded with an analysis of the impact of this policy on the Gazans and the relationship of this policy and Israel’s national security.

Before we deal with these issues, it is necessary to analyze the legal status of the Palestinian territories because its status is interpreted differently by a section of Israeli legal experts and by the International Law, international treaties and international legal experts.

Sovereignty and Belligerent Occupation

In accordance with International Law, both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, i.e. the Palestinian Territories, are considered occupied territories. It has been agreed upon by the international community, including its astounding legal experts, that the proper legal tools that are applicable in cases of belligerent occupation, are the 1907 Hague Regulations, the 1949 Four Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I, and customary international humanitarian law.[1]

According to Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations, a “territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.”[2]

Moreover, according to Article 2, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 “…apply to any territory occupied during international hostilities. They also apply in situations where the occupation of state territory meets with no armed resistance.”[3]

In addition to these international treaties, the UN Charter defines and regulates the legality of any particular occupation. It uses a law known as jus ad bellum that clearly states that“Once a situation exists which factually amounts to an occupation the law of occupation applies – whether or not the occupation is considered lawful.”[4]

The applicability of the law of occupation is not dependent on “…whether an occupation has received Security Council approval, what its aim is, or indeed whether it is called an “invasion”, “liberation”, “administration” or “occupation”.[5]

Since the very beginning of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories in 1967, the Israeli authorities have avoided using the term occupation and replaced it with the terms, “administration”, “liberation”, and “disputed territories”. In recent years, they succumbed to the term “territories” as if the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) were territories located on Mars waiting to be defined by Israeli legal innovative experts.

Negation of Occupation by the Levy Report

In an attempt to legitimize the illegal Israeli colonial settlements inside the West Bank, Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu set up, in January 2012, a committee of three legal experts that became known later as the Levy Committee. The Committee was chaired by right-wing former Supreme Court justice Edmond Levy (image on the right; source is Wikimedia Commons) and it included also two former right-wing justices, Alan Baker, a settler and Techia Shapira, former deputy president of the Tel Aviv District Court.[6]

The Levy Committee was delegated with the task of investigating the legal status of unauthorized West Bank Jewish settlements. In addition, the Levy Committee also examined whether the Israeli “presence” in the West Bank is to be considered an occupation or not.[7] On 9 July 2012 the Levy Committee issued its report which became known as the Levy Report. Its most important conclusion was

…that the classical laws of belligerent occupation “as set out in the relevant international conventions cannot be considered applicable to the unique and sui generis historic and legal circumstances of Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria spanning over decades”, and that the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention against the transfer of populations is not applicable to the Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank. The Report concluded that “Israelis have the legal right to settle in Judea and Samaria and the establishment of settlements cannot, in and of itself, be considered illegal”.[8]

In other words, the Levy Committee arbitrarily decided that both the 1907 Hague Convention and the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 are not applicable to the West Bank under Israeli rule. According to the bizarre logic of the three bogus legal experts there is no Israeli military occupation in the West Bank. Instead, there is what they called an “Israeli presence” in the West Bank including Israeli settlements, which were considered by the rightist legal experts as perfectly legal. They based this dubious “legality” on fictitious and bizarre international law.

Nevertheless, the Levy Report was praised by settler circles and a collection of Zionist right wing writers and politicians. However, a group of Israeli authentic legal experts voiced their criticism of the Levy Report.

In their response to the Levy Report, both human rights legal activists Anu Deuel Lusky of Yesh Din and Keren Michaeli of the Emile Zola Chair for Human Rights, wrote a critical reading and legal analysis of the Levy Committee’s conclusions. Both legal experts remarked that:

A review of the report shows that it chose to ignore hundreds of Supreme Court rulings, dozens of decisions by United Nations bodies and international tribunals, and thousands of articles by international legal experts. All these sources show a rare consensus in the legal community regarding the status of the West Bank as occupied territory. The Levy report does not engage with accepted legal principles and its conclusions lack any legal foundation.[9]

Despite its legal fragility, the Levy Report was taken with utmost respect by the Israeli colonial right. It was later adopted by the Netanyahu rightwing government which stopped using the term occupied West Bank and began to call it “the disputed territories”. Later on, they began to call the West Bank and the Gaza Strip “the territories”. In other words, “Israel asserts that these territories are not currently claimed by any other state, and that Israel has the right to control them.”

In contradiction to this false and weak legal argument, legal experts at the Institute for Middle East Understandingpointed out that the term:

“Occupation” is a legal status in international law, not just a description of the forceful means by which Israel has controlled the territories it seized in 1967. Although Israeli diplomats contest the designation of the territories as “occupied,” and describe them as merely “administered” by Israel, there is no such status in international law.[10]

By rejecting the applicability of the internationally accepted international law to their military occupation, the Israeli colonial right used what could be called “legal acrobatics” to redefine the legal status of the West Bank.

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

Consequently, the actual daily activities of the Israeli army inside the West Bank and the active support of colonial settler vigilantes, who daily shoot, burn, and cut Palestinian olive trees, were both regarded by those bogus legal experts of Levy and company, as being an innocent “presence” of Israelis but not as components of a vicious military occupation. Apparently, it was the fault of the Palestinians who committed a grand mistake by regarding them as vicious military army and vigilantes. Palestinians sick imagination has made up this image with a hidden intention to tarnish the civilized image of these innocent Israelis who happen to be visiting their ancestral country.

Finally, one should conclude this legal argument by asserting that despite the efforts extended by the Israeli dubious legal experts, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are occupied territories. Therefore, “… Israel has never had any legal rights of sovereignty over any of the lands it took in 1967, and never had any right to settle its own citizens there.”[11]

Despite the preposterous argument put forward by Israeli and Zionist propagandists that after the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the Gaza Strip is no longer occupied by Israel. This feeble fairy tale does not seriously take into regard that “…Even after its 2005 redeployment, Israel did not release its hold on Gaza; it continues to control all access to the territory, as well as its airspace, territorial waters and even its population registry…”[12]

Gaza Siege and the Diet of the Colonized

The Israeli colonial authorities have frequently used the pretext of security as a justification for its settler colonialist policies pursued, for 53 years, over the Palestinian civilians. The grossly inhuman nature of these policies needed some sort of legitimacy, even fictitious legitimacy. So, the brutal siege of the Gaza Strip and the consequent restrictions imposed on the Palestinian colonized residents, were in dire need for “legitimacy”. Consequently, the mantle of “national security” was thrown on the siege of the Gaza Strip, which is in fact the most brutal colonial siege in the annals of human history.

In a method that is devoid of the slightest segment of empathy and human feelings, Israeli colonial fascistic experts devised a program of starvation for two million Palestinian civilians living inside the Gaza Strip, which is literally a huge open-air prison camp. Starvation was meant to be a punitive policy towards the Palestinian civilians who chose a Hamas government in an internationally monitored parliamentary elections in 2006. The result of the elections was not acceptable by the two Western democracies, Zionist colonialist Israel and imperialist USA. Therefore, they complicity collaborated to get rid of Hamas through a starvation program that chillingly calculated the minimum number of calories that are necessary to prevent the genocide of two million human beings.According to Gisha, an Israeli human rights organization“… Israeli authorities had calculated the number of calories consumed by Gaza residents and used it to establish a “humanitarian minimum”, a minimum of food supply necessary for not causing hunger or malnutrition in the area…”[13]

In order to cover up this fascist inhuman program, the Israeli army generals Beni Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi hid the starvation program under the claim of a fictitious security mantle. “…claiming that disclosure would put national security at risk and damage Israel’s foreign policy…”[14] They were forced to disclose their horrible starvation program by “Gisha”, which managed to force the IDF, in the court of law, to disclose it. In court, the Israeli ministry of defense

“… agreed to disclose some of the documents stating that their disclosure no longer threatened national security or foreign affairs. However, it refused to make public the “red line document” which supposedly contained calculations of the most minimal consumption of food in Gaza that the closure policy would not cross…”[15]

This brutal colonial policy towards the Gaza Strip was elaborated by the Israeli colonialist army in cooperation with the Israeli Ministry of Health. Already on 1 January 2008, a document was produced. It bore the innocent title of “Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip – Red Lines.”[16] According to Major Guy Inbar, the Israeli military spokesman,“… the calculation, based on a person’s average requirement of 2,300 calories a day, was meant to identify warning signs to help avoid a humanitarian crisis, and that it was never used to restrict the flow of food.”[17]

Based on this document, the Israeli colonialist army regulated the exact number of trucks that were allowed to enter the Gaza Strip, bringing in food and medicine. Furthermore, based on this document, the Israeli colonial authorities decided how many Gazans can exit the Gaza Strip for the purpose of receiving medical treatment.

This criminal Israeli policy of denying medical permits and restricting import of medicine to Gaza residents was continued in 2019. In its report “Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories 2019”, Amnesty International reported the following:

“In June, 2019 the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported an acute medicine shortage for patients with cancer and chronic diseases in Gaza. Israel continued to arbitrarily deny medical permits to Gaza residents to allow them to enter Israel or the West Bank for treatment…”[18]

Saree Makdisi, an author of Palestinian and Lebanese descent, has reported that:

Patients are dying unnecessarily: cancer patients cut off from chemotherapy regimens, kidney patients cut off from dialysis treatments, premature babies cut off from blood-clotting medications. In the past few weeks, many more Palestinian parents have watched the lives of their sick children ebb slowly, quietly and (as far as the global media are concerned) invisibly away in Gaza’s besieged hospitals.[19]

In reality, the Israeli colonial masters have replaced God Almighty in actually deciding who among Gazan cancer patients, kidney patients, premature babies, should live and get the life-saving medical treatment and who should die.

Deliberate Undernourishment for Security Reasons

To begin with, Israeli military siege of the Gaza Strip went through stages of severity. Actually, the siege did not start in 2006. Preliminary steps of rough and inhuman treatment of Gazans were already taken in 1991 during the PLO-Israeli secret negotiations that preceded the Oslo Accords. Later on, more severe stages that coincided with political developments, took place. According to the analysis of Saree Makdisi, these stages could be pointed out as follows:

The current squeeze on Gaza began in 1991. It was tightened with the institutionalization of the Israeli occupation enabled by the Oslo Accords of 1993. It was tightened further with the intensification of the occupation in response to the second intifada in 2000. It was tightened further still when Israel redeployed its settlers and troops from inside Gaza in 2005 and transformed the territory into … a prison… It was tightened to the point of strangulation following the Hamas electoral victory in 2006, when Israel began restricting supplies of food and other resources into Gaza. It was tightened beyond the point of strangulation following the deposition of the Fateh-led government in June 2007.[20]

The following is a partial list of 54 items, prohibited to import into the Gaza Strip, by the Israeli colonial authorities. It was revealed by the Israeli ministry of defense after it was taken to the court of law by Gisha – The Israeli Human Rights Organization:

sage, cardamom, cumin, coriander, ginger, jam, halva, vinegar, nutmeg, chocolate, fruit preserves, seeds and nuts, biscuit and sweets, potato chips, gas for soft drink, dried fruit, fresh meat, plaster, tar, wood for construction, cement, iron, glucose, industrial salt, plastic/glass/metal containers, industrial margarine, tarpaulin sheets for huts, fabric (for clothing), flavor and smell enhancers, fishing rods, various fishing nets, buoys, ropes for fishing, nylon nets for green houses, hatcheries and spare parts for hatcheries, spare parts for tractors, dairies for cowsheds, irrigation pipe systems, ropes to tie green houses, planters for saplings, heaters for chicken farms, musical instruments, size A4 paper, writing implements, notebooks, newspapers, toys, razors, sewing machines and spare parts, heaters, horses, donkeys, goats, cattle, chicks.[21]

One wanders about the rationale behind the prohibition of allowing the import of these items into the besieged Gaza Strip. Could it be Israeli “national security”? The prohibition against the import of these items show a discreet number of colonial rationales behind it and a number of colonial aims.

To begin with, there is a calculated attempt to obstruct a number of economic aspects of life of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. For example there appears an attempt to hinder and obstruct the already weak Gazan industrial base by two methods: (1) prohibiting the import of industrial related items, raw materials and spare parts; (2) the closure of “…5,000 factories in Gaza which were closed down due to the 14-year-long Israeli siege.”[22] This obstruction caused to the industrial base by the Israeli siege of Gaza has forced “…thousands of workers, engineers, accountants and technicians to lose their jobs”[23]. According to member of parliament and head of the Popular Committee Against the Siege on Gaza, Jamal Al-Khodari, “… the Israeli occupation is still imposing a ban on exports and imports and putting many restrictions on the entry of raw materials…”[24]

Another attempt clearly appears to be the calculated policy to obstruct and restrict the development of the agricultural sector.  The Israeli siege prohibits the import into the Gaza Strip of agricultural equipment necessary for irrigation, hatcheries, green houses, and fishing. It furthermore, prohibits the import of spare parts for hatcheries and tractors. In addition, the Israeli colonial authorities banned the import of horses, donkeys, goats, cattle and chicks.

The attempt to obstruct both the Gazan industrial base and the agricultural sector, aim at destroying the productive branches of Gazan economy, thus increasing Palestinian economic dependency on the Israeli economy. It further leads to severe levels of unemployment and poverty among the Gazan workers.

Consequently, the prohibition of the import of musical instruments, size A4 paper, writing implements, notebooks, and newspapers, aims at harming the intellectual development of the Gazans. It further creates problems to the activities of the non-government organizations, government ministries, institutions, political parties, universities and schools.

Finally, the prohibition of importing a number of essential spices aims at obstructing the tastes and cooking culture of the Gazan society, which uses lots of spices in their cooking meals. The targeting of these spices for prohibition reveals the existence of an extreme and dark racist frame of mind by the Israeli colonial army and the Israeli colonial ministry of health. Both of these colonialists calculated and conspired to make Gazans suffer more by eating tasteless food that lack essential spices. These barbaric colonialists insisted on devising advanced inhuman levels in their policy of collective punishment of Gazan stomachs and senses of smelling and tasting. 

When taking the entire list of prohibitions into consideration, the tight siege of the Gaza Strip would appear devoid of the slightest relation to so-called Israeli national security. When the security element is completely discounted, the siege of the Gaza Strip appears to be nothing but an expression of a brutal, colonial, inhuman, barbaric and racist practice which has been callously and chillingly calculated by inhuman and alienated generals and functionaries of the Israeli ministry of health. This policy drives at creating deliberate undernourishment andhorrible starvation for two million Palestinians. Therefore, it is a policy of collective punishment which flagrantly contravenes international law.

As a direct result of this brutal starvation program, the health of the people of the Gaza Strip deteriorated to dangerous scales. “…Anemia rates rocketed to almost 80 percent. UNRWA noted at about the same time that “we are seeing evidence of the stunting of children, their growth is slowing, because our ration is only 61 percent of what people should have and that has to be supplemented.”[25]

Moreover, Israeli colonial policy towards the Gaza Strip has severely harmed the general health situation of the people of the Gaza Strip. In addition to undernourishment, Israeli colonial policy has led to the following hazardous developments. The people of the Gaza Strip

… are now essentially out of food; the water system is faltering (almost half the population now lacks access to safe water supplies); the sewage system has broken down and is discharging raw waste into streets and the sea; the power supply is intermittent at best; hospitals lack heat and spare parts for diagnostic machines, ventilators, incubators; dozens of lifesaving medicines are no longer available. Slowly but surely, Gaza is dying.[26]

This state of affairs in the Gaza Strip, has been already confirmed by commissioner general of UNRWA who warned that: “Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and — some would say — encouragement of the international community…”[27]

When put under the scrutiny of international law and relevant international treaties, many of the Israeli policies and practices towards the Gaza Strip could be easily regarded as different types of war crimes. The following is an appraisal of some of the war crimes that were committed by the Israeli colonial authorities who were supported and sanctioned by the Israeli government and the various Israeli politicians.

Israeli War Crimes in the Gaza Strip

In accordance with the International Committee of the Red Cross, war crimes could be defined as: “… any serious violation of international humanitarian law constitutes a war crime. This is clear from extensive and consistent case-law from the First World War until the present day.[28]

Moreover, there are two distinguished types of war crimes, those violations “…that are committed willfully, i.e., either intentionally (doles directus) or recklessly (dolus eventualis)…”[29]

Furthermore, the ICRC has carried out “A deductive analysis of the actual list of war crimes found in various treaties and other international instruments, as well as in national legislation and case-law…”[30] This deductive analysis clearly “… shows that violations are in practice treated as serious, and therefore as war crimes, if they endanger protected persons or objects or if they breach important values.”[31]

When it comes specifically to situations of war crimes committed, under belligerent military occupation, against persons or property, the most appropriate instrument to use is the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. According to provisions of this Convention, war crimes are any of the following acts[32]:

• willful killing;
• torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments;
• willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health;
• extensive destruction or appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly;
• compelling a prisoner of war or other protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power;
• willfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of a fair and regular trial;
• unlawful deportation or transfer;
• unlawful confinement;
• taking of hostages.

Acts or omissions. War crimes can consist of acts or omissions. Examples of the latter include failure to provide a fair trial and failure to provide food or necessary medical care to persons in the power of the adversary.

On 24 June 2015, the United Nations Human Rights Council, issued a report entitled “Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories”, in which it revealed the relevant statistics on the death toll of the Palestinian civilians who were killed by the Israeli army during the aggressive attacks on the Gaza Strip that were conducted in 2014. The Report mentioned that

“…The death toll alone speaks volumes: 2,251 Palestinians were killed, including 1,462 Palestinian civilians, of whom 299 women and 551 children;[33] and 11,231 Palestinians, including 3,540 women and 3,436 children, were injured (A/HRC/28/80/Add.1, para. 24),of whom 10 per cent suffered permanent disability as a result…”[34]

In addition to that, the Report mentioned that

“…Alongside the toll on civilian lives, there was enormous destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza: 18,000 housing units were destroyed in whole or in part;[35] much of the electricity network and of the water and sanitation infrastructure were incapacitated; and 73 medical facilities and many ambulances were damaged…”[36]

The Human Rights Council concluded by accusing Israel of committing “…violations of international humanitarian law … which may amount to war crimes…”[37] It will take lot of efforts until the International Court of Justice will investigate Israeli war crimes. This step depends on the UN Security Council which is legally responsible to take a decision on this issue. As long as the US dominates the Security Council, Israel will have protection and thus can escape impunity.

“…despite considerable information regarding the massive degree of death and destruction in Gaza, the Human Rights Council raises questions about potential violations of international humanitarian law by these officials, which may amount to war crimes. Current accountability mechanisms may not be adequate to address this issue…”[38]

The above mentioned war crimes have been repeatedly committed by the Israeli army, security institutions and settler vigilantes. The killings of Palestinians, by these Israeli authorities, is a daily practice. No serious official investigations are conducted when the victim is a Palestinian Arab. This state of affairs encourages more Israeli perpetrators to shoot and kill Palestinians, not only inside the colonized Palestinian territories but also inside the Israeli settler colonialist state.

So far, no Israeli war criminal has been brought to the International Court of Justice, and the Israeli state has managed to escape impunity, due to the direct support and protection that have been provided to Israel by the imperialist leaders in the West, especially the United States. However, there is no limitation of time on war crimes and Israel might one day pay for the war crimes, the massacres, the daily killings, the destruction of villages and cities, the ethnic cleansing, and the many more war crimes that Israel perpetrated not only in Palestine but also in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq and Jordan.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Dr. Zuhair Sabbagh teaches sociology at Birzeit University in the colonized West Bank. He is a resident of Nazareth, Israel. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Manchester and is author of a number of books and research articles.

Notes

[1] International Committee of the Red Cross, “Occupation and international humanitarian law: questions and answers”, https://www.icrc.org, 4-8-2004.

[2] The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Laws and Customs of War on Land (HAGUE, IV) of 1907”, https://www.britannica.com .Relieved on: 1-6-2020.

[3] International Committee of the Red Cross, op. cit.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Wikipedia, “Levy Report”, http://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on:  8-5-2020.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Lazaroff, Tovah (9 July 2012). “Legal report on outposts recommends authorization”. The Jerusalem Post.,http://web.archive.org, as quoted by Wikipedia, “Levy Report”, http://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 8-5-2020.

[9] Lusky, Anu Deuel and Michaeli, KerenYesh Din, “Unprecedented: A legal analysis of the report of the Committee to Examine the Status of Building in Judea and Samaria (The Levy Committee)”, https://www.yesh-din.org, 19.5.2014

[10] Institute for Middle East Understanding, “What are the Occupied Territories?”, https://imeu.org, 21-12-2005

[11] Ibid.

[12] Makdisi, Saree “Starving Gaza”,  The Nation, https://electronicintifada.net,  2-2-2008

[13] Gisha, “Ministry of  Defence V. Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement”, https://www.right2info.org, 19-12-2011

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] AAA 3300/11 Ministry of Defense v. Gisha “Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip – Red Lines” Presentation,  www.gisha.org, 5-9-2012

[17] Associated Press, “Israel used ‘calorie count’ to limit Gaza food during blockade, critics claim”, https://www.theguardian.com, 17-10-2012

[18] Amnesty International, “Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories 2019”, https://www.amnesty.org.Retrieved on: 6-5-2020

[19] Makdisi, Saree, “Starving Gaza”, The Nation, https://electronicintifada.net,  2-2-2008.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Gisha, “Partial List of Items Prohibited/Permitted into the Gaza Strip – May 2010”, www.gisha.org.Retrieved on: 1-6-2020.

[22] The Palestine Chronicle, “5,000 factories Closed in Gaza Due to Israeli Sieg”, https://www.palestinechronicle.com, February 22, 2020

[23] Ibid.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Makdisi, Saree , op. cit.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Ibid.

[28] ICRC, “Definition of War Crimes”, https://ihl-databases.icrc.org, Retrieved on: 10-5-2020

[29] Ibid.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Data compiled by the OCHA Protection Cluster, 31 May 2015. For its methodology, see A/HRC/28/80/Add.1, para. 24, footnote 43.

[34] Human Rights Council, “Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories”, https://www2.ohchr.org,24 June 2015

[35] OCHA, Gaza Initial Rapid Assessment, 27 August 2014, p. 4.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ibid.

Featured image is from TruePublica

Venezuelan authorities appeared in court in London last Thursday May 28 to demand that the Bank of England comply with instructions to sell part of the 31 tons of gold it holds on behalf of Venezuela.

Venezuelan Central Bank President Calixto Ortega reported on Wednesday that an agreement had been made with the United Nations Development Programme that it would receive the proceeds of the sale, and these would be used to buy food, medicine and health imports to tackle the Covid 19 pandemic and save many lives.

The Bank of England, which is ostensibly independent of the UK government, is arguably in breach of its contract with the Central Bank of Venezuela by refusing to comply with requests for repatriation of the gold on the pretext that the legitimacy of the Venezuelan government has been questioned. Such justification is demonstrably false, since the government of President Nicolas Maduro is recognised by the United Nations.

Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuelan Vice-President, stated that behind the Bank of England’s decision to freeze the Venezuelan gold lies a UK government manoeuvre to strip her country of its assets as part of an attempt at ‘regime change’.

Venezuela Solidarity Campaign fully supports Venezuela’s plan, negotiated with the UNDP, to use its own gold reserves to fund vital supplies of food, medicine and other medical supplies.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from VSC

The justice for George Floyd mobilizations today reflected the state’s worst nightmare – a multi-national and multi-racial action initiated by Black people with Black leadership.

So, we say: Justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland; for our political prisoners; for the super-exploited Black and Brown working class; for oppressed Indigenous nations; and for the millions subjected to U.S. warmongering, sanctions and criminality. We say this to shift the focus from the individualization of this week’s rebellion back to the objective structures of white supremacist, global colonial/capitalist domination. (BAP Newsletter )

The ruling class is befuddled and confused about how to respond to the ongoing street demonstrations sparked by the murder of George Floyd. The mobilizations clearly disrupted their plans for “normalcy” with the forced opening of the economy. The ferocity of the demonstrations that had not been seen since the brief uprising in 92 in response to the Rodney King verdict seems to have caught the authorities completely by surprise.

In the 1992 street actions in Los Angeles the nation and the world saw the first multi-racial, multi-national street action that was very different from the Black rebellions that rocked the U.S. in the 1960s. The racial configuration of the participants captured the range of non-European national minority communities and migrant peoples from across the Americas’ region.

But even in a departure from what occurred in 92, the justice for George Floyd mobilizations today reflected the state’s worst nightmare – a multi-national and multi-racial action of whites, Latinx, LGBTQ, immigrant and migrant workers and Black youth, initiated by Black people with Black leadership. The response from the rulers was predictable but unsurprising in its ideological and strategic coherence to break that emerging coalition of social forces.

I posted a comment on Facebook in response to what I saw as the counter-moves being made by the state. I was asked by several people to elaborate on those points, which I offer here.

In my original Facebook post I said:

“The enemy knows how to quickly adapt in the ideological struggle: 1) undermine the emerging unity with white agitator propaganda, 2) follow up with declaration against something called Antifa as a terrorist group, 3) instruct the police to join demos and express solidarity, 4) release statements from police chiefs and others pushing the bad apples theme, and most important, 5) keep the focus on the individual and call for “justice” for that individual to avoid attention on the systemic and enduring elements of Black and Brown colonized oppression.”

The white outside agitator trope. If it wasn’t frightening enough to see images of young white kids marching shoulder to shoulder with African and other colonized peoples, seeing white kids actually engaged in militant engagement with police authorities, which went beyond the approved forms of resistance, triggered a cognitive dilemma almost as serious as when they tried to comprehend and explain how China could escape the COVID-19 with five thousand deaths while the virus was killing tens of thousands in the U.S.

That cognitive dissonance could only be achieved by resurrecting the outside agitator notion that emerged in the 30s and was directed at organizers from the Communist Party and militant union organizers who were working in the U.S. South. But that trope was given its fullest form in the Civil rights struggles in the 50s and 60s.

It’s redeployment today is geared to 1) delegitimizing Black agency by implying that resistance of this sort had to be directed by white folks, and, 2) generating suspicion and even hostility toward white participants. Granted, issues of counter-productive tactics and police infiltration are real issues. But the state saw a vulnerability in evoking the white agitator trope that the black petit-bourgeois administrators in various cities enthusiastically embraced.

Antifa as a terrorist group: With the ideological foundation of the white outside agitator, the next step was creating a more understandable target by inventing an organizational form in order to give the threat a more serious and ominous character. The problem should have been, though, that Antifa is not really an organization but an idea with a loose network of some organizations and mostly individuals, many of whom are anarchists with many other political orientations, who believe that the U.S. is facing a neofascist threat that should not be ignored.

But the fact that Antifa is a mirage is secondary when the objective is to drive an ideological agenda. The success of this, however, is yet to be determined.

Instruct/encourage police to engage in public relations shunts like taking a knee or even walking with the demonstrators in some locations. Shrinking the distance between the police and the demonstrators is easy when the issue is being framed as “justice” for George Floyd, and by implication the idea that his killers were “bad apples.”

Those kinds of political stunts are not even inconsistent with a simultaneous display of military prowess and heavy-handed treatment of demonstrators, especially if the idea is taking hold that it is the “bad apples” among the demonstrators that are deserving of policing.

The bad apple trope plays right into the monumental political error being made by resisters by keeping focus on George Floyd as an individual, even if by extension the critique extends to the police and policing as a whole. The bad apple notion exempts a condemnation of the institution as a whole and diverts attention away from a deeper understanding of the role of the police as the leading edge of the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state.

Hundreds of Black and Latinix people are dying every day from what the Black is Back Coalition  calls the colonial virus known as COVID-19. Yet because we are not watching grandma take her last breath on the ventilator after having been laying around the hospital for days, her unnecessary death and the literal deaths of thousands of our people did not bring the people out of their houses during lockdown and into the streets.

Those deaths will continue long after the other cops are charged, and the military secures the cities and people go home, because those deaths are generated by the contradictions of capitalism. They are produced by the structural violence that is inherent in a system that devalues all life but especially the life of non-European workers and the poor.

So, the state has responded. The challenge for us is how do we counter the state’s attempt to pre-empt the development of a new movement.

The definition of the “people” is an historic one that emerges out of concrete struggle with specific historical conditions. The deep structural crisis of the system of national and global capital are creating the conditions for neofascism as a capitalist reform strategy. Therefore, we must not allow the state to undermine the basis for building new forms of solidarity among people who are finding their voice.

“The bad apple notion exempts a condemnation of the institution as a whole and diverts attention away from a deeper understanding of the role of the police.”

And while Trump may be the face of this movement and the public attention fixed on his most bombastic statements and the spectacle of armed citizen groups showing up at various state capitals, he does not have complete power over the real rulers of capital. Trump barely controls the Executive branch and has had his program of radical nationalist economic reform, including gutting Obamacare, curtailed. Instead, he has become an administrator of the neoliberal agenda like the last five presidents before him.

It is those ruling class forces who fear the masses and will give Trump or even Biden, if he is elected, free reign to continue to jettison the last vestiges of liberal democracy in order to maintain the rule of capital. When it was clear to the Obama Administration that he was not going to be able to co-opt the occupy movement, he moved with decisive action to shut it down across the country.

Trump will move just as decisively and with same level of ruling class support to shut down the protests when he sees it politically advantageous to do so.

Two things must happen fairly quickly. On the ideological level, a shift must occur away from the focus on individual justice for Floyd back to a critique and opposition to the ongoing structural violence of the system. It is clear that the state is unwilling and unable to protect the fundamental human rights of the people. The demand for People(s)-centered human rights provides a broad, radical framework for advancing concrete demands that can unite broad sectors of the population.

And secondly, and most importantly, the theme and message around the importance of organization must be aggressively advanced. Mass mobilizations have a place but developing the organizational forms that will build and sustain the power necessary to bring about radical fundamental change is the primary challenge and historic task.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on Black Agenda Report.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.  

Featured image is from BAR

Three years ago, on this day, Francois Houtart left us.

He died in his sleep in the early hours of June 6 in Quito. It was only when I was working on his autobiography after his death that I learnt that he had long been carrying a pacemaker on him. Living in Quito at 2850 metres above sea level no doubt added to the stress. A year before, in July 2016, we invited Francois to Hong Kong to participate in the Third South South Forum on Sustainability, and the format that year was that he gave a lecture every morning for four consecutive days on July 23-26, followed by discussions. At the age of 91, Francois delivered his lectures with great lucidity, and his spirit for struggle and his faith in utopia were contagious. To you, I recommend his autobiography (the English edition was published by Global U for free download from the Global U website) and his lectures.

Please see this.

Let us remember Francois on this day, and take strength from his way of living his life as intensely as possible.

On June 2, President Trump threatened to deploy military troops against Americans in response to nationwide protests after the recent murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Trump’s suggestion to use military force against U.S. civilians shocked many—but in fact police already have been using a weapon banned in international warfare against protesters: tear gas.

Across the country, police officers have tear-gassed protesters in attempts to clear out crowds. While U.S. officials have a history of using tear gas as a “riot control agent” (defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as “chemical compounds that temporarily make people unable to function by causing irritation to the eyes, mouth, throat, lungs and skin”), tear gas was banned in international warfare through the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997.

The Convention is a treaty that 193 nation-states are party to through the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) headquartered in the Netherlands. The treaty’s purpose was to eliminate weapons of mass destruction in international warfare by prohibiting the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons, defined by the OPCW as a “chemical used to cause intentional death or harm through its toxic properties.” Tear gas irritates the respiratory system, skin and eyes, which can lead to loss of eyesight and breathing problems, classifying it as a chemical weapon if used to intentionally cause harm or death (such as when it was used during World War I).

Under Article II Section 9 of the treaty, however, chemical agents used for “domestic riot control purposes” by law enforcement are not prohibited. Because U.S. law enforcement claims to use tear gas as a method to clear crowds, rather than to cause “intentional death or harm,” it has been used widely by police officers across the country.

Aside from international regulations that limit tear gas use in warfare, the United States has no regulations on the use of tear gas domestically, nor does it require training for officers who do use it.

The CDC reports that “prolonged exposure [to tear gas], especially in an enclosed area, may lead to long-term effects such as eye problems including scarring, glaucoma and cataracts, and may possibly cause breathing problems such as asthma.” ProPublica also reports that the chemical may make people “more susceptible to contracting influenza, pneumonia and other illnesses.”

Despite these risks, on Monday night federal law enforcement officers tear-gassed peaceful protesters in front of a church in Washington, D.C., to make way for the president’s photo-op. The White House has since claimed that a “pepper irritant” was used rather than tear gas; yet the CDC still defines the irritant as a type of tear gas because of the physical damage it can cause. As we enter day 10 of protests against police violence, and despite first-amendment rights to peacefully gather, tear gas continues to be used on protesters.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Janea Wilson is a summer 2020 editorial intern for In These Times.

“Ancient and slow-growing deep sea corals, endangered large whales and sea turtles, and an incredible array of fish, seabirds, sharks, dolphins and other wildlife—these are the species and habitats that will pay the price.”

***

In a move that environmentalists warned could further imperil hundreds of endangered species and a protected habitat for the sake of profit, President Donald Trump on Friday signed a proclamation rolling back an Obama-era order and opening nearly 5,000 square miles off the coast of New England to commercial fishing.

“We’re opening it today,” Trump said during a roundtable talk in Maine with commercial fishermen and the state’s former governor Paul LePage. “What reason did he have for closing 5,000 miles? That’s a lot of miles. Five thousand square miles is a lot. He didn’t have a reason, in my opinion.”

The reason behind the establishment of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in 2016, conservation groups hastened to point out, was to shield endangered species and their ecosystem from harmful intrusion and permanent damage by commercial interests.

Fishing industry interests challenged former President Barack Obama‘s designation of the marine monument but were rebuffed in federal court last year.

“Opening up the nation’s only marine national monument in the Atlantic will help no one but a handful of fishers while risking irreparable damage to the marine wildlife that have no other fully protected areas off our eastern seaboard,” said Bob Dreher, senior vice president of Conservation Programs at Defenders of Wildlife. “Ancient and slow-growing deep sea corals, endangered large whales and sea turtles, and an incredible array of fish, seabirds, sharks, dolphins, and other wildlife—these are the species and habitats that will pay the price.”

During the roundtable discussion Friday, Trump said “I love that” when Interior Secretary David Bernhardt—a former oil and mining lobbyist—informed the president that his proclamation is effectively “taking down a ‘no fishing’ sign” in the Atlantic Ocean.

“The minute you sign it, we will begin planning,” Bernhardt said.

Trump’s order Friday is just the latest move the president has taken to gut environmental protections under the cover of the Covid-19 pandemic and a nationwide uprising over police brutality. On Thursday, as Common Dreams reported, Trump signed an executive order allowing federal agencies to waive environmental rules to speed approval of energy projects like oil pipelines.

Brad Sewell, senior director of oceans for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in a statement that commercial fishing “poses a range of threats, such as harm to deep-sea corals from heavy fishing gear, and entanglement of bycatch and marine mammals.”

Sewell said NRDC is prepared to take legal action against the Trump administration to “protect these marine treasures from harm and exploitation by commercial fishing and other extractive industries.”

“These fragile, extraordinary ocean areas are full of thousand-year-old corals, endangered whales, and other precious marine life,” said Sewell. “They belong to all Americans, and they are held in trust for future generations.”

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

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

In this final post to mark our 10th birthday, I want to peek a little into the future, looking at what we are facing in relation to drone warfare in the coming years. Of course predicting the future is always a little foolish – perhaps especially so in the middle of a global pandemic – but four areas of work are already fairly clear: public accountability over the deployment of armed drones; the push to open UK skies to military drones;  monitoring the horizontal and vertical proliferation of military drones and opposing the development of lethal autonomous weapons, aka ‘killer robots’.

Public accountability over the deployment of armed drones

Most immediately, there is an need to discover where British armed drones have been deployed outside of action against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. All the MoD will currently say is that RAF Reapers have been undertaking missions outside of Operation Shader, but refuse to give any other details.

The deployment of UK Reaper drones for unknown purposes and without public accountability or oversight (or any seeming interest) by MPs is very worrying. Not only is it right that there should be proper public and parliamentary oversight over the deployment of military force , but such secret deployments also lays open the possibility of the UK being held responsible for military action when it is not actually involved.

The UK should not be following the US down the path of secret drone deployments and unaccountable use of armed force.  Although there is a clear desire by the government and the Ministry of Defence to treat drones akin to special forces and simply not discuss them, this must be resisted. It is vital that proper parliamentary and public accountability over the deployment of British armed drones is established now, else unaccountable deployments will become the norm over the next few years.

Opening UK skies to military drones

Another area that is likely to be a focus of our work over the coming years is the push to open UK airspace to military drones. The MoD have initiated proceedings to allow the UK’s new armed drones, which the UK is choosing to call ‘Protector’ to fly initially in and around the area where RAF Waddington is situated in Lincolnshire as a first step to gaining authorisation to fly it in unsegregated airspace across the UK (see left).  There are serious safety, privacy and civil liberties concerns about this proposal and we are determined that there should be proper public engagement in the decision to open UK skies to military drones. The fact that the MoD have already pressurised the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) into changing safety procedures to allow the flight of a military drone into the UK bodes ill.

Campaigners in the US are arguing that when it comes to opening their airspace to military drones, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has been ‘captured by the Pentagon‘. It is notable that here in the UK, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) are attempting to pass decisions about whether military drones are safe to fly ‘beyond line of sight’ to the Military Aviation Authority (MAA), a wholly owned agency of the Ministry of Defence, and not in any way an independent regulator.  Meanwhile the CAA have announced that its new chair is to be Sir Stephen Hillier, the former Head of the RAF.

The government are likely to insist that the UK must open our skies to military drones to enable RAF crews to train with these systems. Once permission is granted, however, it is likely that the UK will begin training the aircrews of other nations on these systems within UK airspace, no doubt a money spinner for the MoD, but further supporting and enabling the proliferation of armed drones.

The next generation

While the UK is currently acquiring the latest, updated version of the Predator drone – the Protector – work is continuing, behind the scenes on the next generation of armed drones. BAE Systems’ advanced stealth drone, Taranis, has reportedly ended its development journey and is sitting quietly somewhere in a hangar. Officially, at least, lessons learned from developing, building, trialling and testing this advanced drone are simply being fed into the UK’s next generation aircraft, the Tempest, which according to official reports, may end up being ‘optionally manned’.

However, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the work done on Taranis (and the vast sums spent on it) are being used to develop a Taranis-like drone in secret. Just last autumn, Aviation Week revealed that a US drone developed in secret had become operational and it’s possible that a similar secret drone development programme is underway within the UK, although at this stage it is pure speculation.

Separate from this, the UK is investing and developing a number of smaller, swarming drone projects and a separate ‘loyal wingman’ drone programme. Both of these projects are to enable other states air defences to be overwhelmed in order to carry out armed attacks.

It is very important that there is proper scrutiny of these developments and their impact on peace and security is examined and evaluated. Government and industry spokespeople will insist that these systems must be developed in order to increase security and save lives. It is vital that these claims are contested. Researchers are already pointing out that some types of swarming drones could be considered a weapon of mass destruction, while others suggest they could be developed to target a particular ethnicity in an act of genocide.

Autonomy, AI and LAWS

Taranis and early swarming drones, mentioned above, rely to some degree on being able to operate autonomously and raise concerns about the ethics and legality of autonomous weapons.  Beyond those specific systems however, there are now real worries that the building blocks for the development of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) are being put in place.

Drone Wars is a founder member of the Killer Robots Campaign and we see much of the work being done around developing future combat drones as a gateway to the development of these weapons. In 2018 we published Off the Leash, a detailed report into the development of autonomous military systems in the UK and we are continuing to investigate and research developments both here in the UK and globally.

Although many envisage and fear a Terminator-style, fully autonomous weapons systems, what is more concerning over the next decade is the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the intelligence and targeting chain. General Atomics are developing and promoting systems that use AI to ‘transform data into actionable intelligence’ for drones, while BAE Systems, another key drone manufacturer want to ‘expedite machine learning adoption across the US defense and intelligence communities’ through using AI to turn ‘unstructured and semi-structured data into relevant and actionable intelligence for its customers’.

While some of this may no doubt be hyperbole and marketing spin, the push to use AI to search through thousands of hours of drone surveillance video and other electronic data in order to be able to ‘find, fix and finish’ targets is all too real and all too dangerous. Lessons from the killing of innocent civilians due to misreading of intelligence and data are simply not being learned.

Grateful thanks

So, there is much work to be done over the next few years, but it has been good to take some time to reflect and to mark the decade’s work.

It is also right to say a few words of thanks. In particular, I want to name and thank the wonderful Angela Broome, sadly no longer with us, but without whom there would be no Drone Wars. Also to thank my past and present colleagues – Mary, Peter, Joanna and Tim; our Steering Committee Pat, Ann, Dave, Penny, Max and Haifa, and our institutional funders.  There are, of course, a great many other people who have contributed and helped in many different ways –  far too many to name – but to all those who have contributed time and ideas, who have assisted in research and helping us think through strategy, who have participated in debate and discussion, and who have contributed financially, I am deeply grateful. Onwards.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Drone Wars UK

There comes a time when shooting around in circles just hits walls, bullets splinter off sidewalks, and shatter a window here and there. But people are in safety. They watch from a distance and with self-assurance.

Venezuela has received five tankers from Iran loaded with hydrocarbons – petrol gas, additives – shipped through a totally US-militarized Caribbean Sea, amidst warnings of attacks and retaliations – and as usual, sanctions ’no end’. How much more sanctions can a country get?

There is an immune system, called sovereignty and fearlessness – confidence and dignity. Knowing your rights. That’s what makes the whole difference.

Granted, the tankers were escorted by the Venezuelan Navy and Air Force; especially through Venezuelan waters. And they made it undisturbed to the port of El Palito, a small Venezuelan port run by Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA.

The American shooting didn’t take place and the event was not televised.

Another aggression against Venezuelan sovereignty is the Bank of England’s withholding totally illegally some US$ 1.2 billion worth of Venezuelan gold, deposited voluntarily by Venezuela in times of trust – as part of Venezuela’s reserve funds. With oil prices collapsed, Venezuela decided to use part of her gold reserves to purchase medication and food to counter the disastrous corona effects.

Venezuela claimed the gold deposited at the Bank of England (BoE) which offers gold custodian services mostly but not exclusively to developing nations; and so, does the New York FED and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basle and several other international institutions and central banks considered safe and trustworthy. These are legal arrangements under which the depositing country may withdraw the funds at any time and at will.

Venezuela has a sovereign right to claim these funds without any explanation or justification. The BoE refused, claiming the Government of Nicolas Maduro was not the legitimate government recognized by the UK. Can you imagine – if any government decides to confiscate funds from another government, because they don’t like its leadership — where would we end up? – Well, there is not much guessing. We are already there. The Anglo-Zionist world makes its own rules and decides over and above any international law. And the spineless European puppets follow their cue. It is high time that this matrix collapses and gives way to a civilization that recognizes the values of democracy, justice, basic ethics and human rights.

In this case, Venezuela explained that the money is needed to buy food and medication to counter the nefarious effects of COVID-19.  The UN, intervening on behalf of Venezuela, has requested the BoE to return the money. That gesture or action by the UN is in itself is an act of ‘independence’ by the UN against the US, for whom the UN otherwise does the bidding. But to no avail. The BoE didn’t release the Venezuelan-owned gold. As a compromise, Venezuela suggested that the funds be handed over to UNDP (United Nations Development Program) which would buy vital food and medication for Venezuela.

Already at the end of 2018, Venezuelan Finance Minister Simón Zerpa and Central Bank President Calixto Ortega, travelled to London to demand that Venezuela be allowed to take the gold back to Venezuela. In January 2019, the BoE refused the request. All it said publicly was that it did not comment on customer relationships. However, the real reason was clear.

The US-trained and self-proclaimed, US supported Juan Guaido, an Assembly member, who was never elected – who never faced a presidential election – asked Downing Street that the gold was not returned to the legitimate Maduro Government which Washington, the UK and other EU members, out of the blue and without any legal reasons declared illegitimate. What a world! – Imagine that some 40 or 50 countries in the world would decide that Donald Trump and Angela Merkel were illegitimately in their high offices. Well, you laugh. It would never happen.

Under pressure from Washington, and her own neofascist government, the UK and her central bank didn’t budge. The case was brought on May 14, 2020, to a Court in London. A Venezuela-favorable judgement is however unlikely. The case will then go to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Will the ICJ have enough backbone to decide against Washington? That  remains to be seen. It would be another sign that Trump’s last trumps are gone.

On yet another account, the Trump Administration has seized all Venezuelan assets in the US, including in 2018, the CITCO refinery and gas station network, in a further attempt to hurt their self-made archenemy, socialist Venezuela. CITCO’s assets in the United States, are estimated at about 8 billion dollars, plus about 30 billion dollars of annual revenues. CITCO covers about 10% of the US domestic gasoline market. Overall Venezuelan assets confiscated – or more accurately described as stolen – in the US and overseas are estimated at about 50 to 70 billion dollars.

In addition to other strangulating sanctions and coercive actions by Washington against Venezuela, just think what these illegally US-appropriated funds could do to ease living conditions of Venezuelans whose hardship has exclusively been brought about by Washington and Washington’s coercion of its so-called western allies – alias vassals, especially Europe – to economically sanction Venezuela. A hardship being exacerbated by the Covid-19 crisis. Mind you, Venezuela has done no harm, has never threatened any of the countries that follow the US dictate on “economic sanctions”.

Yet, through this all, Venezuela remains calm, non-aggressive, non-conflictive, self-assured and survives; and Venezuela has actually mastered the Covid-crisis better than most of Latin America. According to WHO, as of 4 June Venezuela registered 1819 confirmed cases and only 18 deaths.

Venezuela’s strength of resistance and self-determination is extraordinary. It is THE recipe for success and for overcoming western oppression. This autonomy and Iran’s undisturbed solidarity and sovereign action to help Venezuela with oil tankers despite the US threats, are signals to the world that Washington’s empire is crumbling.

Or, as Andre Vltchek pointedly says in his article about the brutal police murder of Mr. George Floyd,

“The World Cannot Breathe!” Squashed by the U.S. – A Country Built on Genocide and Slavery: Now more and more people can finally see what few of us have been repeating for years: The entire world has its neck squashed by the U.S. boot. The entire world “cannot breathe”! And the entire world has to fight for its right to be able to breathe!”

Let’s add to this: And the entire world is no longer afraid to stand up and defend and fight for their rights.

This “fight” is increasingly a battle of the 99 % against the 1% – the rich and powerful wanting to control ever more of the globe’s resources.

With every day this battle is turning more in favor of We, the People.

The worldwide corona-lockdown and the social and economic calamity of uncountable unemployment, famine and misery – unheard of in human history – is unwittingly inciting  billions of victims worldwide into an important awakening, of which the masters behind this nonsensical lockdown, behind the power and control thirst – the Gates, Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Et Al, are possibly not aware of.   

The ruthless killing of George Floyd has set in motion a series of riots throughout the US – affecting some 150 US-cities.

These unrests will likely gain their own dynamic, as the wave spreads to Europe and possibly also to the Global South.

While the generous financiers of Antifa, Black Lives Matter (supported by the Ford Foundation and Soros) and other protest organizations may have as a clear objective, namely the  outright “Militarization of the West”, the dynamics of an awakened people may potentially derail this diabolical project and ring in a new set of societal values.

The resisting forces and perseverance of the people of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, let alone, Russia and China, have magical power.

Never mind the physical losses of stolen assets, of economic sanctions, of attempted humiliation by the neoliberal western alliance breaching contracts and agreements at will, i.e. the Iran Nuclear Deal, several disarmament agreements with Russia – and more – the new wave of spiritual and universal consciousness gains, far outpace these losses.

The forces of Light may overcome the Darkness which has engulfed humanity over the last 5,000 years – laying the foundation for a new society with values of equality and peace for a common future for mankind.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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; New Eastern Outlook (NEO); RT; Countercurrents, Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press; The Saker Blog, the 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. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

As global affairs intensify, I often find myself in that category of those discouraged and disillusioned, fully cynical, wondering if anything I can do is worthwhile in the long run.  A global pandemic, an economic collapse preceding the pandemic and severely worsened by it (and different reactions to it); an infrastructure continually pumping more and more carbon and other chemicals into the atmosphere; nuclear war always imminent; a powerful rogue nation dealing internally with its own internal rogue elements and externally applying illegal actions against countries it disagrees with over oil and the avoidance of the US$:  all add up to a world of dystopian insanity.

On the other hand, the beautiful spirit of human creations with music, art, theater, dance; and  human endeavours challenging humanity for a better world with science, education, health, human rights; the recognition that we are all one race, all cousins, living on a single blue planet; the astounding beauty of nature as it cycles through seasons and lifecycles: that part adds up to a world of beauty and inspiration.

I cannot reconcile the two, the ugly side of humanity and the beautiful side of humanity, other than to think of human nature, with the emphasis on nature and its long biological imperative to survive.  Obviously, for the short term, a dystopian society benefits a few, while harming many and harming the prospect of longterm societal cooperation.  An increasingly industrialized, technological, financialized society attempting to defy death and celebrate youth, but above all else promoting the falsehood that we are all individuals with the liberty and freedom to act as we please without any responsibility attached for the assistance and betterment of others and the environment we need to survive in, has proven to be a disaster of its own making.

The U.S., the great promoter of all the liberty, freedom, and rugged individualism platitudes (a polite word for verbal garbage), has used that language to cover up many aggressions towards other nations over many decades.  In essence it is a colonial settler country within which violence and domination have been used to carve out its empire.  Now it has come home with alarming force – blowback of its militarization of other nations’ struggles.

While the mainstream media follows all the COVID news and now the riots and demonstrations in the U.S. and elsewhere, Israel is quietly – at least as far as the media is concerned about reporting it – preparing to annex all but a tiny fraction of the occupied West Bank.

In Canada, Justin Trudeau has reacted well to the COVID crisis, and his twenty one second pause after a reporter’s question was probably the best response to questions about Trump’s actions and comments in the U.S. Really, what can you honestly say to the guy without inflaming his narcissistic bullying threats and rants although it would be benificial if some top politician would risk sticking it in his craw (cause considerable or abiding resentment).

Trudeau was also questioned about Israel, and responded in what some claim as unfair criticism of Israel.  Part of the criticism of Trudeau’s response is the old canard about why criticize Israel when many other countries also have serious human rights problems.  Well, yes they do, but Israel just happens to be at the center of and actively involved in global geopolitical events supported by our rogue southern neighbour.  It is involved both as an ally of global dominance and involved as a purveyor of military, security, and technological information “field tested” in Palestine for better crowd control and domination of an indigenous or domestic population.

But Trudeau’s actual response was rather timid, and is probably aimed at his attempts to put Canada into the UN Security Council (two seats available for three contenders: Ireland, Norway, and Canada):

“I have highlighted both publicly and directly to Prime Minister Netanyahu and alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz the importance of staying away from measures that are unilateral and our deep concerns and disagreement with their proposed policy of annexation,” Trudeau said.

“We think that the path forward is a two-state solution reached to by dialogue between the parties involved and anything that is unilateral action by either side is unhelpful in the cause of peace.”  CBC, Evan Dyer, June 02, 2020.

In other words, Canada effectively is allowing the status quo to continue its slow ethnic cleansing of Palestine.  The two state solution is gone and Canada – at least the government – has not yet realized it, or is wilfully not wanting to admit it.

“Dialogue between the partners” is another spurious argument as there are no partners – Israel is fully supported by the rogue manipulations of the U.S. government and there is no balance of partners when Israel has all the firepower it needs, using the military to control the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza.  Dialogue never worked, was never intended to work, not for a two state solution.  It was used to delay, obfuscate, dissimulate, and outright lie about Israel’s intentions towards its final goal of an ethnically cleansed Jewish state.

In a world dominated by Trump tweets, COVID fears, economic uncertainty Israel is simply going about its own business with a free hand.  Canada will not offer a significant protest, only offer the official dead-end two state solution and “dialogue”.

In a world on the edge of losing control and when social/economic uncertainty combine with systemic racism it is difficult to not just sit back, and let it all happen as beyond one’s control.  But Palestine needs a voice, more correctly needs its voice to be heard, and at times such as these when concerns about racism and indigenous rights are brought to the fore, it is all the more important to say, yes you are being heard.  If nothing else, I can say, I hear you.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Lately, a particular memory/image of my grandmother Sitti Fattoum has been coming back to me vividly. She’d be sitting in a chair, maybe watching TV, or at the kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee, when suddenly, without provocation, she would clap her hands, the palm of one striking the back of the other, and say, to no one in particular:

راحت فلسطين

Palestine is gone! Gone!

I think part of it is that, as a child, I never understood her agony properly — how could I? Startled, I would ask, what was that, Sitti? And she would simply repeat the phrase with such sadness and alarm on her face, it could have all happened yesterday.

How could I, born in exile just after the Nakba, in the arid town of Zarka in Jordan, have any sense of what she had lost, the beauty and richness of what she was holding onto in her heart, her village of Lifta? Even as she went around muttering at the poor soil of her Zarka garden and how it yielded something only with extreme difficulty, I still could not fathom her deprivation and the enormity of her loss. She was an uneducated fellaha (farmer) for whom land and growing things were part of her soul.

And now, on the eve of Israel’s annexation of parts of the West Bank, I feel the urge to lament to my children and grandchildren about it, just as she did to me, but I don’t know how much of the pain they would understand or absorb.

One thing I wonder about: how did I, born and reared in exile from Palestine, grow up to inherit and possess a psyche that totally inhabits my grandmother’s loss and pain. Perhaps part of it is the result of the few years of my life, when I too experienced the feel of the soil of Palestine in my hands, not as a farmer, but as a boarder in Schmidt’s Girls College in Jerusalem, where I and my sisters were placed after the early death of our mother and before the Naksa, the Six-Day War on 5 June 1967 and Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem, 53 years ago today.

But what about my children and grandchildren? Is their birthright completely lost to them, as I ask in Palestine is now the birthright of Trump’s grandchildren rather than mine?

The Palestinian plight is savagely painful and the pain is compounded by the bafflingly off-hand dismissal and erasure by Western powers of that pain, and by the monumental challenges facing Mahmoud Abbas, our nominal and imposed leader, for many of our true leaders are either murdered or languishing in Israeli prisons. I hope and pray Abbas will find his way, as mapped for him here, to doing the right thing — transfer the Palestinian Authority apparatus to the Palestinian National Council (PNC)

As a supporter of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, heart and soul, I find empowerment, inspiration, hope and comfort in connecting what’s happening globally regarding Black lives, police brutality and the ongoing exposure of the myriad systemic injustices and inequalities in the U.S. that devalued George Floyd’s life, with the Palestinian struggle.

As someone said on Facebook, “It literally took the whole damn world to make it happen” — to draw attention to the injustice.

Given Israel’s forthcoming unconscionable annexation of parts of the West Bank, even though, in large part, it is merely rubber-stamping the status quo, there is an urgency to the Palestinian struggle that imposes its own priority on the moment and gains strength and solace from what’s happening globally with BLM. It will take the whole damn world to rise up against Zionism before Palestine will be free at last.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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.

The 1% is the source of violence in the U.S.  Antifa is nothing but a flag which is carried mostly by “secret informants” rather than by a few politically confused Antifa disciples!

The Trump Administration is using this name to suppress the legitimate voices of all in opposition.

For a peaceful society and economic equality, working people and youth must organize in their communities, independent of billionaire parties. To rely on either party will only bring more misery.

The Democratic Party wants us to suffer peacefully and the Republicans make us suffer painfully.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Massoud Nayeri is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

As a European growing up in the Cold War with the image of America as the land of liberty and freedom the scenes of carnage that we see today are truly saddening.  Superficially this is a problem of racial discrimination within the backdrop of a failed COVID-19 response and rising unemployment. However, although riots have been sparked by the death of African American George Floyd at the hands of police, the fuel that continues to kindle this blaze is systemic in nature.

Two acute meta-problems have matured and coalesced to bring the U.S. to the state it is in now. Firstly, there is the problem of the ordinary citizen who is indoctrinated with the dogma of ‘market-fundamentalism’. Secondly, there exists the true state of economic affairs which is ‘corporate-welfarism’.

Market-fundamentalism is a belief that only the free-market can solve social-economic problems. Here everything from infrastructure, transport, healthcare, and even prisons must fall into the realm of private-capital who act in the interests of maximizing profits rather than overall social good. Under this ideology, poverty is blamed on the poor who in the Darwinian market struggle deserve their poverty due to their inherent deficiencies.

In the U.S. questioning this market-fundamentalism is heresy. The public has been conditioned to believe in the famous Margaret Thatcher maxim that, “there is no alternative”. However, whether one believes this or not, the deeper underlying problem is that this ideology does not actually reflect the true nature of the U.S.’s political-economic system which is one based on corporate-welfare. Consequently, by not even recognizing the facts as they are, transformation and development becomes arduous if not impossible.

Corporate-welfarism is when private-enterprises, which run on the motive of delivering capital to shareholders, are given huge tax breaks, subsidies, and grants. This creates a parasitical class who remain detached from the imperative of providing comprehensive economic development while also remaining outside the disciplining force of the market. Martin Luther King Jr termed this system of corporate-welfare, “socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor”. This is because losses incurred are socialized and profits are privatized.

The 2008 recession provides a textbook example of this systemic inequality. The banking subprime mortgage scam led to millions of foreclosures on U.S. properties. Statistics by Attom data solutions show that U.S. foreclosures in both 2009 and 2010 reached almost 3 million. Despite the well-known fraud President Barrack Obama tragically bailed out the private banks to the tune of over $700 billion dollars. He sided with the banking elites over the masses.

As the first president with African roots, it was hoped Obama would understand the developmental rights of the American poor whose ranks are over-represented by black Americans. However, he was a servant for entrenched banking interests. For example, Goldman Sachs was one of Obama’s biggest donors. A WikiLeaks document revealed that Citigroup bank had given him a list of preferred candidates for cabinet positions, one month before his presidential election of 2008, which corresponded almost exactly to the eventual composition of Obama’s cabinet. After his presidency, Obama made $1.2 million from just three speeches to Wall Street firms.

When ideology no longer reflects lived experience propaganda becomes glaringly obvious and social tensions ensue. America prides itself as being ‘number one’. It markets itself as the land of the just, the land of the free and the land of the plenty. However, increasingly for many whose lives are becoming progressively difficult, they can’t relate to this narrative and refuse to blame themselves for their poverty. At the same time, they realize their dilemma does not stem from the oft evoked foreign ‘bogeyman’ that U.S. elites so often call upon.

Despite all the abundance that exists in America, infrastructure is in decay. The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness reveals that the US has roughly 563,000 homeless people, more than any other developed nation. As shown by World Prison Brief, America has the highest prison population in the world of whom 33% are African-American. Combined with these stark figures the U.S. has a health system controlled by private-capital that is not fit for an advanced country. On the other hand, while there is not enough money for socialized health care, America has more than enough finances to fund several ongoing conflicts and hundreds of military bases around the world.

During the riots, there was a recognition by U.S. citizens that these systemic inequalities, combined with a mediated view that does not match lived experience, exists. This was clearly shown with the destruction of the CNN Atlanta Headquarters that was attacked by crowds recently. There have also been numerous targeted offensives on banks during the midst of the riots.

Nevertheless, America is still a great nation that has great potential to thrive and improve. The U.S. is a country rich in resources; it has brought to the world incredible technological innovations and ideas, and its population is hardworking and entrepreneurial. As such it has the basis to bring greater benefit to its citizens and the whole world rather than just Wall Street. However, to do so America must address its own internal contradictions and dogma rather than resorting to its usual knee jerk reaction of blaming country ‘x’.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is by Rosa Pineda/Wikimedia Commons

Eight minutes, forty-six seconds is a long time: a long time when you are meditating; a long time while waiting for a protest march to pass; a long time with your finger on the video button of your phone following a scene of terror; an unimaginable time when you are being slowly crushed by human weights on your neck, perhaps detecting some mildly agitated bystanders through the haze of your dying brain.

I realized how very, very long 8:46 minutes can be when participating by video in George Floyd’s memorial service in Minneapolis Thursday evening. I activate the PBS video link to the celebration and eulogy, then without knowing how it will end, I find myself compelled to follow the entire recording.

At 1:32:25, following Rev. Al Sharpton’s rousing and resolute eulogy, this indefatigable American activist invites us to join their 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silent tribute to George Floyd.

Sharpton does not end his summons here. He challenges me in the next 8:46 minutes, to ‘feel’ what this space-in-time meant to George Floyd, namely the extinguishing of the person George Floyd, pinned under three American policemen, crushed to death, with the man’s final three lifeless minutes held there by their combined contempt.

In the past, I have bowed in prayer for 1 minute, even for 2 minutes in tribute to I-cannot-recall-what. I’ve kept abreast of news reports of Back Americans murdered and brutalized by police. I know the names and some details of the most notorious cases—twelve or fifteen in recent years. I’ve viewed historical footage of public lynchings of our Black Americans. I review videos of U.S. police terrorizing citizens, of guards brutalizing prisoners, of U.S. troops wantonly humiliating Arab and Asian captives.

I claim I can share the anger of Black colleagues, the fears of parents of Black children, the conviction of their prayers and abiding faith. I’ve listened attentively to African American civil rights orators. I post quotes by Martin Luther King Jr., invoke the simple counsel of Jesse Jackson, reference Professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, celebrate Colin Kaepernick’s ‘taking the knee’, scrutinize essays by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and repeat Maya Angelou’s pithy wisdoms. Yet, I’d never directed my compassion for eight minutes and 46 seconds—neither during an anthem, nor Barack Obama intoning Amazing Grace, nor a Qur’anic ayah or Arab nasheed, nor any Christian psalm – on the concept of an individual’s martyrdom in a finite incident of Black American life.

Source: the author

This 8 minutes and 46 seconds is inimitable.

The almost two hour pre-recorded ceremony ends in 15 minutes. Here in my home it’s approaching midnight; I could fast-forward this segment or watch just one minute of the 8:46 minutes. I could simply close my computer.

No. I cannot disengage from this call to prayer.

My concentration breaks after a few seconds, distracted by camera shots scanning the room of weeping, embracing mourners. I resume my meditation, taking up Sharpton’s invitation to enter the body of George Floyd lying on the street for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. I concentrate for a further minute as I gaze at that gleaming copper coffin cradling Floyd’s body. My meditation breaks again. I refocus: feel Floyd’s weakening heart beats; listen to the murderers’ mocking; then hear George Floyd’s final call: “Mama”.

“America?”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

B. Nimri Aziz is an anthropologist and journalist who’s worked in Nepal since 1970, and published widely on peoples of the Himalayas. A new book on Nepali rebel women is forthcoming.

Hanne Herland of the European Herland Report has just had her book published in which she argues that the ruling elite has resurrected feudalism by financializing the economy and offshoring middle class jobs.  The title is New Left Tyranny, but it is about gangster state capitalism. 

Historically, capitalism freed labor from bondage by making labor the private property of the person. Serfs who owed labor obligations to lords became free individuals. Free labor markets and emergent capitalism made productive by technological advancements created with time rising living standards and a free people determined to protect their independence by holding government accountable. 

This system was eventually wrecked by banks that financialized the economy and diverted discretionary personal income to the payment of interests and fees to banks, and by global corporations that moved first world jobs to Asia, thus raising their profits at the expense of domestic consumer purchasing power and living standards.  The result was the concentration of income and wealth in the hands of a few multi-billionaires.

First world work forces were re-enserfed as part-time jobs with no health or pension benefits replaced the security of a middle class existence. Corporate investment in the US ceased as corporations used their profits to buy back their own stocks, thus raising share prices and maximizing executive bonuses and shareholders’ capital gains.  This selfish management of corporations brought economic growth to a halt.  The ladders of upward mobility were dismantled.

Growing economic uncertainty for larger numbers of people put further stress on already stressed marriage and family relationships. Years of attacks by left-wing intellectuals on Western principles and values, the re-writing of history to serve left-wing agendas, the dilution of national identity in diversity and multiculturalism, and the teaching of race and gender hatreds by Identity Politics has produced a disunited and dysfunctional society.  In the US the Democrat Party has abandoned the working class it once championed, labeling blue collar workers “the Trump deplorables.”  

Everywhere in the Western World Towers of Babel are being erected. The ethnic nationalities that constituted a country are becoming increasingly alienated from their country as it ceases to be theirs.  In France, Sweden, and Germany law favors immigrant-invaders over the ethnicities—French, Swedes, Germans—that gave the countries their names. Ethnic nationalities are also under attack from the European Union whose purpose is to replace European ethnicities with “Europeans” of no ethnicity.  Everywhere the bonds that held things together are being severed.

Tyranny can be the only outcome.

Democracy is touted, but everywhere in the Western World the traditional ethnicities feel powerless and unable to affect how they are governed. Dissent is censored by the ruling elites who have in place powerful means to control explanations and to implement agendas that the people do not support.  

Capitalism, no longer productive, has turned to looting. Privatization is the method.  First it was third world countries that were looted. Then the weaker first world countries such as Greece, which lost its municipal water companies and ports. Real estate speculators made a grab for the country’s protected islands. Now it is the public sectors of the First World countries that are being looted. Regulations that protect the environment are ignored or withdrawn so that private firms can plunder national forests and mine wildlife refuges. Valuable public assets are sold at prices below value to well-connected elites. For example, the British post office was sold to a private company at a fraction of the value of the properties it owned. France sold off its public companies. New private firms are created, the revenues of which come entirely from public budgets.  The number of private businesses today whose only revenues come from some government’s budget is stunning. 

The examples of politicians creating private businesses for politically-connected people by assigning the provision of various government services to private companies is endless. The state of Florida has contracted out to a private firm the issuance of new vehicle license tags. Will driver’s licenses be next? Soldiers no longer perform guard duty or KP.  The army is fed and guarded by private contractors. See this. 

The claim is always made that it is less costly and saves taxpayers money to rely on the private sector, but it always costs much more. Individuals working for private military contractors, for example, earn between $9,000 and $22,500 per month. If the person is working abroad, $104,100 of his earnings are tax free under the IRS foreign earned income inclusion. A soldier earns $1,468 a month.  A captain’s pay is $4,952.

In the US traditional government functions are being turned over to newly created “private” companies that have no customers but the government.  Soon the US government will be merely a revenue collector that hands out money to private firms.

Private billionaires will have superseded the government just as in the feudal age Dukes, earls, and barons superseded the king.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Protracted main street depression conditions have existed in the US since 2008 with no relief for ordinary Americans in prospect.

Before economic collapse this year, unemployment exceeded 20%, Labor Department numbers rigged to pretend otherwise.

The so-called U-3 BLS number omits working-age Americans without jobs who want them, including many longterm unemployed individuals not looking after months of failure to find employment.

Monthly BLS jobs report conceal what should be headline news, including that most US jobs created are poverty-wage, poor-or-no benefit temporary or part-time service industry ones.

Most households need two or more to survive. Living on the edge, they’re one or a few missed paydays from homelessness, hunger, despair and overall deprivation.

Record numbers of Americans are food insecure, the specter of hunger haunting the world’s richest country because its ruling class serves privileged interests exclusively at the expense of the public welfare.

It’s what the scourge of neoliberal harshness is all about, supported by both right wings of the one-party state.

It’s not a pretty picture. “America the beautiful” is a mirage in a nation where poverty is the leading growth industry — disturbing reality concealed by establishment media.

Michal Harrington explained the problem in 1962, things far worse today than what he described in his book titled “The Other America,” saying:

“In morality and in justice, every citizen should be committed to abolishing the other America, for it is intolerable that the richest nation in human history should allow such needless suffering.”

“But more than that, if we solve the problem of the other America, we will have learned how to solve the problems of all of America.”

Food insecurity, hunger, and unemployment haunted America at higher levels than at any time since the Great Depression before 2020 economic collapse began.

Now they’re off the charts with no near-or-longer-term plan for turning things around — just continued governance of, by, and for the privileged few alone at a time of a growing permanent underclass.

During the Great Depression, FDR explained that “one-third of (the US was) ill-housed, ill-clad (and) ill-nourished” — the problem far greater today than then.

It’s because unemployment is far greater now than in the 1930s, the highest in US history by far.

FDR’s “New Deal for the American people” was polar opposite today’s bipartisan conspiracy against public health and welfare.

He called “vast unemployment (of his time) the greatest menace to our social order,” calling for “social justice” that’s fast eroding today at a time when boosting it greatly is needed.

Friday’s jobs report concealed reality. Economist John Williams said BLS numbers are “not particularly credible.”

“Prior period downside revisions” weren’t explained, nor “revised methodologies and seasonal adjustments” that distorted reality.

Nearly 5 million unemployed Americans were counted as “employed, the third (consecutive) month of acknowledged misreporting.”

Last month’s reporting period was at a time of US lockdown nationwide.

Yet the BLS claimed 2.5 million new jobs were created — when millions of new weekly unemployment claims continue to be filed.

The report noted that hundreds of thousands more workers were permanently laid off because lost business isn’t coming back soon.

Hundreds of thousands of public workers continue to be let go, mostly at the state and local levels because of severe budget constraints, revenues falling way short of the ability to maintain public services at pre-economic crisis levels.

Through May into early June, data show the US economy contracting, far from expanding.

Key economic metrics contracted to record-low levels. Q II GDP is estimated to show around a 50% contraction, a number far exceeding anything during the Great Depression or any previous time in US history.

Based on how US unemployment was calculated pre-1990, Williams now puts it at 35%, over one-third of US workers without jobs.

Along with the vast majority of others underemployed, the US is a nation of paupers while its privileged class never had things better.

Notably the wealth of super-rich Americans is increasing during hard times while food banks are hard-pressed to feed millions of hungry Americans.

The USA is a nation in decline, a surging stock market concealing reality.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said nationwide “economic pain” continues, stressing it’ll “be longstanding without” considerable federal aid — that’s not forthcoming.

California, the state with the nation’s largest economy, teeters on bankruptcy, needing $54 billion in federal aid to provide basic services.

Many are being slashed, including for health, education, and other vital programs.

New York, Illinois and other US states are face similar hard choices.

Instead of federal aid to states in need and to stimulate economic growth and jobs creation, trillions of federal dollars went to Wall Street and other corporate America favorites.

Crumbs alone have gone to the unemployed, the impoverished underemployed, the “ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished.”

While most US states ended lockdowns, others likely to end them in short order, mass unemployment remains at a record high.

Over 40 million Americans employed in January were fired, laid off, or furloughed, record numbers over a short period.

Small and medium-sized businesses were most affected, the backbone of the nation.

Around half of lost jobs are permanent because countless numbers of shut down companies face bankruptcy.

The Wall Street Journal reported that 722 US firms filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May alone, a near-50% year-over-year increase, much more of the same ahead.

Many reopening won’t operate at previous levels, notably restaurants, hotels, airlines, shopping malls, retail stores, commercial real estate, enterprises related to tourism, and others relying on large gatherings like sports.

According to US bankruptcy attorney James Conlan, “we’re going to see an extraordinary number of large corporate bankruptcies, not just in the US but across the globe.”

The effects of unprecedented US economic collapse won’t magically turn around any time soon — especially with no federal economic stimulus and jobs creation programs planned.

Trump’s phony Friday claim about the US economy ready to take off like a “rocket ship” belies the dismal state of main street America — his regime and Congress doing nothing to turn things around.

What happens when millions of unemployed Americans can’t pay mortgage, car loans, or credit card bills.

Are mass evictions coming, numbers of homeless to increase exponentially, along with growing hunger?

The notion that Friday’s jobs report showed the beginning of economic recovery is belied by reality in US cities and towns nationwide.

Ongoing protests against institutionalized racism, inequality and injustice met by police violence reflect America’s dismal state.

It’s not about to change by the nation’s ruling class without sustained public activism in the streets for redress of longstanding grievances.

It’s the only way change ever comes. There’s no other way.

Power yields nothing without a demand. It never did and never will.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Charleston’s The Digitel | CC BY 2.0

It is time for power to the people! 

Global capitalist inequality contributes directly to health pandemics, environmental degradation, and mass poverty. Elite-corporate oligarchs control the governments and political parties. They use established militarized police states to protect their vast empires of property and money worldwide. The global one percent own half of the world’s wealth, and the richest 10 percent control 81 percent of all wealth. Only 200 elite people in a handful of companies make the investment decisions for over $50 trillion of capital.

Concentrated wealth is violence towards the 80 percent of the people in the world living on less than ten dollars a day, with a majority of those surviving on just a few dollars. Over 30,000 people die daily from the violence of empire. Mass malnutrition, homelessness, imprisonment, insecurity are the manifestations of concentrated global capital.

A racist police murder has triggered a national revolt. Massive, mostly peaceful protests have resulted, expressing outrage against continued killings of people of color. The circumstances of this outrage are amplified by the forty million newly unemployed in the US, and the friends and families of the 100,000 plus virus victims.

The people protesting in the streets lack any real form of democratic power other than the ability to destroy property and disrupt daily commerce. When property damage, fires, and lootings occur there has been widespread condemnation of these behaviors by politicians, and corporate media opinion writers. Accordingly, we know that agents of the national security state will foment property damage to use as a justification for expanded repression and increased militarism.

For many middle-class folks the looting of property is considered morally wrong. They worry about losing their own modest assets in widespread civil unrest and are quick to say they oppose racism but deplore violence. However, many would likely applaud democratic governmental appropriations of 90 percent of Jeffrey Bezos’ $151.6 billion, Bill Gates’ $102 billion and other elite billionaires if the money were to be used for the permanent elimination of hunger and basic human needs in the world. The real moral obligation for us all is the reallocation of world resources for all humankind to have their essential needs covered. Electoral politics, spontaneous marches, and general strikes will likely not result in the transfer of wealth from the 1 percent to the rest. We need an easily adoptable strategy of resistance.

Capital violence happens every day worldwide, and US racism is a major aspect of that violence. We must ask ourselves– Is the widespread revolt against police racism in the US today the possible beginning of a broader social democracy movement to openly address the inequality of concentrated wealth? Could a widespread revolt become a human rights revolution? Can we build a grassroots democratic movement that seeks to bring about a greater sharing of the world resources controlled by the 1 percent? 

A democratic movement, with activists following the moral guidelines from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and holding a united strategy, could well pressure elites into a greater sharing of their wealth without the turning to violent fascist repression. Here is how that could work.

A grassroots democracy movement could engage in targeted property restrictions and disruptions of commerce within the global elites themselves and their businesses. This type of property disruption is morally justified as a strategy for broader change. We all know the names of and have access to the transnational corporate properties benefiting from the continued violence of inequality, racism, and militarism worldwide. Were democracy movement protests to make these properties commercially unusable there would be rapid adjustments sought by the elite oligarchs.  Some elites would call for greater repression and others would be open to economic sharing. The key for movement activists would be to maintain disruptive pressures on targeted transnational concerns through boycotts, sit-ins and blockades, and to carefully avoid violence towards the police and the elites themselves.

A strategy of commerce disruption that focuses on transnational business and elite oligarchs could be adopted by peaceful human rights movements with very positive effects for human inequality. These actions should strategically avoid the disruption of locally-owned businesses, family commerce, and working peoples’ livelihoods whenever possible.

We should try to transform current and future protests from random street disruptions to the specific targeting of businesses controlled by the global power elites. Elite responses will likely be strained, some will demand martial law, but many in the Davos crowd already recognize that the current economy is unsustainable. We should pressure them to mediate wealth sharing among the global elites and suspend the tendency towards repressive fascism. There is hope for a better world and we can pressure elites through moral collective actions to help achieve that goal.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on Project Censored.

Prof. Peter Phillips is a Political Sociologist at Sonoma State University; author Giants: The Global Power Elite, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018); past director of Project Censored; co-author/editor of fourteen Censored yearbooks, 1997 to 2011; co-author of Impeach the President, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007); and winner of the Dallas Smythe Award from the Union for Democratic Communications. Peter Phillips is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

Featured image is from Project Censored

Israel Is, Like the US, Prime Target for New Mass Uprising

By Michael Jansen, June 05, 2020

Having announced he would begin the process to annex portions of the occupied Palestinian West Bank on July 1, he must be concerned that in response, violence, similar to the rioting in the US, could erupt in the, so far, mainly quiet West Bank and East Jerusalem. After more than a century of Palestinian resentment and resistance to expropriation and suppression, Israel is, like the US, a prime target for a new mass uprising, a Third Intifada.

The Shallow Deep-State Goes Deeper as It Moves Toward Martial Law

By Edward Curtin, June 05, 2020

The people who own the United States and their allies around the world have a plan.  It is so simple that it is extremely devious.  Their plan has been in operation for many years.  It has most people bamboozled because it is Janus-faced by design, overt one day, covert the next, but both faces operate under one controlling head.  Some call this head the Deep-State. Even the Deep-State calls itself the Deep-State in a double fake. It is meant to make people schizoid, which it has.

Obama’s Essay on Protests: Maintaining the Status Quo

By Robert Fantina, June 05, 2020

Former President Barack Obama has weighed in on the current civil unrest and ongoing racial injustice. While most people recognize his intelligence, especially when compared to the irrational blustering of his successor, his calm, measured opinion on how the nation should move forward only perpetuates the current injustices.

The DOJ Has Launched an Investigation as More Evidence Emerges that Someone Is Orchestrating the Violent Riots

By Michael Snyder, June 05, 2020

The Department of Justice has announced that it is attempting to determine if there is a “coordinated command and control” behind the violent riots that have erupted all over the United States.  In recent days, officials all over the country have used words such as “organized” and “organizers” to describe the orchestration that they have been witnessing in their respective cities.  And all over the U.S., law enforcement officials have reported finding huge piles of rocks and bricks pre-staged at protest locations in advance, and scouts have often been used to direct rioters to locations where police are not present.  In addition, something that we have been hearing over and over again is that many of the people that are involved in the violence are not known by any of the locals.

 The Corona “Global False Alarm”, the Campaign against Racism and Neoliberalism

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 04, 2020

Across America, as well as in Western Europe, there is an ongoing campaign against racism following the dramatic events in Minneapolis. Our thoughts are with George Floyd, his family and friends.  We stand in solidarity with African-Americans who are the target of police killings and racial discrimination. Colonial and contemporary history has left its mark. Today, African-Americans are also the victims of neoliberalism which triggers poverty, social inequality and unemployment.

How Endless War Contributes to Police Brutality

By Bonnie Kristian, June 05, 2020

It is not a conversation we may quickly or easily conclude. The problems in American policing are multitude and systemic, matters of both policy and culture. Much of this can only be corrected at the state or local level, and as there are around 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States, this is a monumental task. In very few cases could sweeping federal action affect any substantive reform.

The Truth Behind the Murder of Robert F. Kennedy: Conspiracy and Cover-up

By Michael Welch, William Pepper, and Mark Robinowitz, June 04, 2020

On June 6th 1968, one more flame illuminating a social landscape darkened by war, poverty, and civil unrest was snuffed out, and along with it, any optimism of a peaceful transition to a brighter future.

The shooting death of Senator and Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, apparently at the hands of a lone assassin marked the third such murder of high profile political leader in the United States in a five year period, and the second in a little over two months.

---

Can you help us keep up the work we do? Namely, bring you the important news overlooked or censored by the mainstream media and fight the corporate and government propaganda, the purpose of which is, more than ever, to “fabricate consent” and advocate war for profit.

We thank all the readers who have contributed to our work by making donations or becoming members.

If you have the means to make a small or substantial donation to contribute to our fight for truth, peace and justice around the world, your gesture would be much appreciated.

China’s priority infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), faces enormous problems just seven years after it was proclaimed in 2013. Serious problems and charges of China luring poorer nations into what a leading Indian analyst termed a “debt trap diplomacy,” began to appear already in 2018 when Malaysia and Pakistan, under new governments demanded a renegotiation of terms with Beijing. Now the global economic impact of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, with the simultaneous collapse of economies from China to the USA, to the EU and across the developing world, are creating staggering new challenges for the China prized project.

When Xi Jinping first announced the ambitious China Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), then known as the Economic Silk Road in 2013, it was hailed as a much-needed boost to world infrastructure development which had the promise to lift hundreds of millions across Eurasia and beyond out of poverty. Many saw it as the effort to replicate the economic model that gave China the most extraordinary industrial growth of any nation in modern history.

While detailed information is anecdotal so far, it is clear that the massive global lockdown around the covid19 is having a major impact for many BRI member countries. A major problem is that the China BRI major pathways for railway and shipping infrastructure involve agreements with some of the world’s poorest economies and some of the largest credit risks.

Initially most financing has come from Chinese state banks, in order to rapidly kick-start the BRI concept. While exact figures are not available from Chinese agencies, best estimates by the World Bank are that through 2018 Beijing has made a total of $ 575 billion in commitments for overseas investment in BRI projects. Officially Beijing has stated plans to invest up to $1 trillion over several decades and hopes to attract other funders to total $8 trillion.

According to various studies, most of the China financial support for BRI member state infrastructure projects are in the form of loans at commercial terms, project financing where the resulting rail or port revenue goes to repay the loans. As many recipients such as Sri Lanka are already in precarious economic status, the risk of default even before the covid19 crisis was high. Now it is far, far worse.

Among the top 50 countries owing significant debt to China are Pakistan, Venezuela, Angola, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Kenya, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Indonesia, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Zambia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Sudan, Cameroon, Tanzania, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Algeria and Iran. These are definitely not countries with AAA credit rating. Before covid19 lockdowns they were struggling. Now several of the BRI debtor countries are asking Beijing for debt relief.

Debt relief?

Until now China has reacted to the demands of Malaysia and Pakistan for earlier debt relief in a pragmatic manner, changing terms of earlier debt agreements. However, now, with China’s economic growth officially at the lowest in 30 years, and still well below full capacity following the January-March coronavirus lockdowns, Chinese banks face an entirely new international debt crisis, in some ways similar to that of Latin America and African countries in the late 1970s. China is ill-prepared to step in this time, with a major domestic banking problem and staggering bank debts.

All these BRI countries depend on export revenues to the industrial economies to service their China BRI debt. This is just what is being devastated during the global lockdown. Oil producing countries such as Angola or Nigeria find their oil revenue drastically down as global air and land and sea transport since February has plunged. In addition, as EU and North American economies lockdown much of their industry, they do not import the raw materials from China’s BRI partner countries. Return to normal is not even in sight. African mining companies producing lithium, cobalt, copper and iron ore are experiencing decreasing demand from China.

Pakistan and Indonesia Danger

Pakistan of all BRI partner states is one of the most strategic for China. The BRI China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, originally projects totaling $61 billion, was reduced to a more manageable $50 billion in 2018 when Imran Khan became Prime Minister. Then the bottom fell out of the Pakistani economy in 2019. Now in 2020 with spread of reported covid19 cases across Pakistan, the government reported a catastrophic 54% plunge in exports in April. A March 31 report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimated that Pakistan will be one of the states hardest hit by the economic fallout of covid19 along with sub-Saharan African BRI partners. It faces a “frightening combination” of crises including mounting debts, a potential deflationary spiral as well as a disastrous impact on the health sector.

Clearly since the January developments around coronavirus in China and Pakistan, economic growth has been devastated even more. The Khan government is drawing up a list of new BRI projects in hopes Beijing will approve when Xi Jinping visits later this year. At this point it is highly questionable if China will be receptive to lending even more to Pakistan.

Indonesia is another key BRI partner in Asia where the China projects have been forced on hold by covid19. A $6 billion, 150 km-long Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail line lies dormant as Chinese key personnel had been blocked from travel by the lockdowns in both China and Indonesia. The rail project is 40 per cent owned by China Railway International and was financed principally by a $4.5 billion loan from China’s Development Bank. In 2019 Indonesian President Joko Widodo proposed a list of projects totaling some $91 billion to China. Their future is now in doubt given the collapse of Indonesian oil and gas revenue.

Africa hard hit

A recent report by Fitch Rating agency estimates that the Coronavirus outbreak will seriously impact sub-Saharan African growth, particularly in Ghana, Angola, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Zambia, South Africa, Gabon and Nigeria – all countries that export large amounts of commodities to China. China state banks loaned $19 billion to sub-Saharan African energy and infrastructure projects since 2014, most of it in 2017. In total, African states owe some $145 billion to China with $8 billion due this year.

For more than a decade China has been involved in Africa, even predating the BRI. Oil-rich Nigeria has been a major focus of BRI investing with Huawei Technologies investing a reported $16 billion to date in IT infrastructure. The CCECC state-owned Chinese construction firm has contracts to build four international airport terminals. In addition it has contracted to build the Lagos-Kano, Lagos-Calabar rail and Port Harcourt-Maiduguri railways, with costs at $9bn, $11bn and $15bn respectively. The China National Offshore Oil Corp. has invested some $16 billion in projects in the Nigerian oil and gas industry. Many of these are project financing deals where the revenue from the rails or airports or oil refining should repay the Chinese investors. With the dramatic collapse of world trade and economy, much of that revenue is in severe question for the forseeable future.

In Kenya China holds an estimated 72% of that country’s bilateral debt. The country has a total of $50 billion in external debt. China financed the $4 billion Mombasa-Nairobi railway to the Mombasa Port, also known as the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), the country’s largest infrastructure project. The costs for the China-financed project were to be paid out of port revenues. However even before the coronavirus economic shocks, revenues were running far below projections and in July, 2019 a 5-year grace period ended, forcing Kenya to repay almost $1 billion of the cost annually. Kenya owes $2.3 billion for the project to the China Ex-Im Bank. Its foreign reserves at end 2018 were only $9 billion.

Ethiopia with a population of over 100 million, is another key troubled member of China’s Africa BRI. China is Ethiopia’s major creditor and already in March, 2019 the country was forced to ask China to restructure debt repayment, well before the present global crisis hit. At that point imports exceeded exports by some 400% and government debt stood at 59% of its gross domestic product. External debt was $26 billion. The largest project, the $4bn Ethiopia-Djibouti railway, was backed by a $3.3 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank of China. So far the railway revenue has been crippled by light loads, electricity shortages and disruptions due to protests in the Afar region, making loan repayment dubious even before. To deal with electricity shortages, China Gezhouba Group is working to complete already existing Grand Renaissance Dam to support the electrified railway.

From trains and buildings to roads and highways, China has become a major player in the development of Ethiopia’s infrastructure and economy. Ethiopia owes more than $12 billion in loans to China, not only for the construction of its cities, but also for its import and export needs. The Exim Bank of China lends money to organizations like the Ethiopian Airlines for things such as aircraft purchases. In 2019 according to UNCTAD, 60% of all Ethiopian project financing came from China. How the global economic and trade collapse impacts repayment of that China debt is unclear.

In 2018 China pledged to set up a special investment fund of some $60 billion to invest in further BRI projects across Africa. At this point that looks highly doubtful both in terms of Chinese funding amid the global crisis and of African countries’ ability to pay.

Peak BRI?

Add to the growing headaches for China state banks and companies in the now 138 countries in some degree affiliated with China’s Belt, Road Initiative, the economic problems in Venezuela, Iran and countless other developing economies, and it becomes clear that a major strategic rethink of the BRI is inevitable. In 2018, the Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP set up its own BRI think tank – the Center of One Belt and One Road Security Studies in Shanghai – to get a comprehensive overview of the vast global commitments under the banner of BRI for the first time.

In their official 2019 report, ‘The Belt and Road Initiative: Progress, Contributions and Prospects’ they recognized that “the Belt and Road Initiative is in urgent need of finance” from new models of international investment and funding due to its massive scale. Now, amid the worst world economic collapse since the 1930’s, with a trade war with its largest trading partner, USA, the prospects of major new capital from the World Bank, IMF and other international sources are dim. Hopes of billions in BRI co-financing from sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf oil monarchies has evaporated with the collapse of oil prices. The Chinese government has just stated that the impact of covid19 on the BRI will be “temporary and limited.” That will require major rethinking, if so.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

Featured image is from NEO

---

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

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

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

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

“You have no right not to be vaccinated, you have no right not to wear a mask, you have no right to open up your business… And if you refuse to be vaccinated, the state has the power to literally take you to a doctor’s office and plunge a needle into your arm.”—Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor

You have no rights.

That’s the lesson the government wants us to learn from this COVID-19 business.

Well, the government is wrong.

For years now, the powers-that-be—those politicians and bureaucrats who think like tyrants and act like petty dictators regardless of what party they belong to—have attempted to brainwash us into believing that we have no right to think for ourselves, make decisions about our health, protect our homes and families and businesses, act in our best interests, demand accountability and transparency from government, or generally operate as if we are in control of our own lives.

We have every right, and you know why? Because we were born free.

As the Declaration of Independence states, we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights—to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness—that no government can take away from us.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped the government from constantly trying to usurp our freedoms at every turn. Indeed, the nature of government is such that it invariably oversteps its limits, abuses its authority, and flexes its totalitarian muscles.

Take this COVID-19 crisis, for example.

What started out as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) has become yet another means by which world governments (including our own) can expand their powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress their constituents.

Until now, the police state has been more circumspect in its power grabs, but this latest state of emergency has brought the beast out of the shadows.

We are on a slippery slope to outright despotism.

This road we are traveling is paved with lockdowns, SWAT team raids, mass surveillance and forced vaccinations. It is littered with the debris of our First and Fourth Amendment freedoms.

This is what we have to look forward to in the months and years to come unless we can find some way to regain control over our runaway government.

The government has made no secret of its plans.

Just follow the money trail, and you’ll get a sense of what’s in store: more militarized police, more SWAT team raids, more surveillance, more lockdowns, more strong-armed tactics aimed at suppressing dissent and forcing us to comply with the government’s dictates.

It’s chilling to think about, but it’s not surprising.

We’ve been warned.

Remember that Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command? The one that anticipates the future domestic political and social problems the government is grooming its armed forces to solve through the use of martial law?

The chilling five-minute training video, obtained by The Intercept through a FOIA request and made available online, paints a dystopian picture of the future bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.

But here’s the kicker: what they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

This COVID-19 crisis is pushing us that much closer to that dystopian vision becoming a present-day reality.

For starters, let’s talk about the COVID-19 stormtroopers, SWAT team raids and ongoing flare-ups of police brutality.

With millions of dollars in stimulus funds being directed towards policing agencies across the country, the federal government plans to fight this COVID-19 virus with riot gear, gas masks, ballistic helmets, drones, and hi-tech surveillance technology.

Indeed, although crime rates have fallen dramatically in the midst of this global COVID-19 lockdown, there’s been no relief from the brutality and violence of the American police state.

While the majority of the country has been social distancing under varying degrees of lockdowns, it’s been business as usual for the nation’s SWAT teams and police trained to shoot first and ask questions later.

In Kentucky, plain-clothed cops in unmarked cars used a battering ram to break down Breonna Taylor’s door and carry out a no-knock raid on her home after midnight. Fearing a home invasion, the 26-year-old emergency medical technician and her boyfriend—who had been in bed at the time of the invasion—called 911 and prepared to defend themselves. Taylor’s boyfriend shot one of the intruders—later identified as police—in the leg. Police fired at least 20 shots into the apartment and a neighboring home, killing Taylor. The drug dealer who was the target of the late-night raid lived 10 miles away and had already been arrested prior to the raid on Taylor’s home.

In Illinois, police opened fire in a subway station, shooting a 33-year-old man who allegedly resisted their attempts to tackle and arrest him for violating a city ordinance by passing between two cars of a moving train. Ariel Roman, a short-order cook, claimed he was suffering from an anxiety attack when he was “harassed, chased, tackled, pepper-sprayed, tasered and shot twice” by police.

In Maryland, police dispatched on a nuisance call to break up a crowd of neighborhood kids( half of them teenagers, and the other half youngsters around 4 and 5 years old) gathered in an apartment complex parking lot opened fire on a 29-year-old man seen exiting his car with a gun. An eyewitness claimed “the officer pointed a flashlight and his gun at the group immediately and began chasing and shooting a minute or two after getting out of the patrol car.” Police reportedly shot the man after he threw down his gun and ran in the opposite direction.

In Virginia, more than 80 local, state, and federal police agents risked spreading COVID-19 to “a highly vulnerable population” when they raided a low income, public housing community in an effort to crack down on six individuals suspected of selling, on average, $20 to $100 worth of drugs.

In Texas, a SWAT team backed up with a military tank Armored Personnel Carrier raided Big Daddy Zane’s Bar whose owner and patrons were staging a peaceful First and Second Amendment protest of the governor’s shutdown orders.

Police have even been called out to shut down churches, schools and public parks and beaches that have been found “in violation” of various lockdown orders.

Now there’s talk of mobilizing the military to deliver forced vaccinations, mass surveillance in order to carry out contact tracing, and heavy fines and jail time for those who dare to venture out without a mask, congregate in worship without the government’s blessing, or re-open their  businesses without the government’s say-so.

There are rumblings that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will start thermal screenings to monitor passengers’ temperatures in coming weeks. This is in addition to the virtual strip searches that have become routine aspects of airport security.

Restaurants in parts of the country are being tasked with keeping daily logs of phone numbers, emails, and arrival times for everybody who participates in dine-services, with no mention of how long such records will be kept on file, with whom they will be shared, and under what circumstances.

With the help of Google and Nest cameras, hospitals are morphing into real-time surveillance centers with round-the-clock surveillance cameras monitoring traffic in patients’ rooms. Forget patient privacy, however. Google has a track record of sharing surveillance footage with police.

And then rounding out the power-grabs, the Senate just voted to give police access to web browsing data without a warrant, which would dramatically expand the government’s Patriot Act surveillance powers. The Senate also voted to give Attorney General William Barr the ability to look through the web browsing history of any American — including journalists, politicians, and political rivals — without a warrant, just by saying it is relevant to an investigation. If enacted, privacy experts warn  that the new provisions threaten to undermine the free press by potentially preventing the media from exposing abuses of power or acting as a watchdog against political leaders.

If we haven’t already crossed over, we’re skating dangerously close to that line that keeps us on the functioning side of a constitutional republic. It won’t take much to push us over that edge into a full-blown banana republic.

In many ways, this is just more of the same heavy-handed tactics we’ve been seeing in recent years but with one major difference: this COVID-19 state of emergency has invested government officials (and those who view their lives as more valuable than ours) with a sanctimonious, self-righteous, arrogant, Big Brother Knows Best approach to top-down governing, and the fall-out can be seen far and wide.

It’s an ugly, self-serving mindset that views the needs, lives and rights of “we the people” as insignificant when compared to those in power.

That’s how someone who should know better such as Alan Dershowitz, a former Harvard law professor, can suggest that a free people—born in freedom, endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, and living in a country birthed out of a revolutionary struggle for individual liberty—have no rights to economic freedom, to bodily integrity, or to refuse to comply with a government order with which they disagree.

According to Dershowitz, who has become little more than a legal apologist for the power elite, “You have no right not to be vaccinated, you have no right not to wear a mask, you have no right to open up your business… And if you refuse to be vaccinated, the state has the power to literally take you to a doctor’s office and plunge a needle into your arm.”

Dershowitz is wrong: while the courts may increasingly defer to the government’s brand of Nanny State authoritarianism, we still have rights.

The government may try to abridge those rights, it may refuse to recognize them, it may even attempt to declare martial law and nullify them, but it cannot litigate, legislate or forcefully eradicate them out of existence.

Up to now, we’ve been largely passive participants in this experiment in self-governance. Our inaction and inattention has left us at the mercy of power-hungry politicians, corrupt corporations and brutal, government-funded militias.

Wake up, America.

As I  make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, these ongoing violations of our rights—this attitude by the government that we have no rights—this tyrannical movement that is overtaking our constitutional republic and  gaining in momentum and power by the minute—this incessant auction block in which government officials appointed to represent our best interests keep selling us out to the highest bidder—all of these betrayals scream for a response.

To quote the great Rod Serling: “If we don’t listen to that scream—and if we don’t respond to it—we may well wind up sitting amidst our own rubble, looking for the truck that hit us—or the bomb that pulverized us. Get the license number of whatever it was that destroyed the dream. And I think we will find that the vehicle was registered in our own name.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

On June 6, 2020, we will be commemorating the passing of Robert F. Kennedy. His legacy will live. Below is Michael Welch‘s Global Research radio interview with William Pepper. A full transcript is included.

“I went there because I was curious and disturbed by what I had seen in the evidence…I was disturbed that the wrong person might have been convicted of killing my father. My father was the chief law enforcement officer in this country. I think it would have disturbed him if somebody was put in jail for a crime they didn’t commit.”

– Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (quoted in the Washington Post, May 26, 2018)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

On June 6th 1968, one more flame illuminating a social landscape darkened by war, poverty, and civil unrest was snuffed out, and along with it, any optimism of a peaceful transition to a brighter future.

The shooting death of Senator and Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, apparently at the hands of a lone assassin marked the third such murder of high profile political leader in the United States in a five year period, and the second in a little over two months.

As with the killings of his brother President John F. Kennedy, and of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, suspicions have emerged that Bobby’s murder following a resounding victory during the Democratic Primaries for President of the United States may have been the result of a conspiracy involving elements of government and law enforcement.

RFK was opposed to the war in Vietnam and had been campaigning on promises to alleviate poverty and heal the racial divide within America. These positions helped endear him to desperate and hopeful public while potentially making him a target for those literally invested in the state of affairs at the time.

This week’s broadcast of the Global Research News Hour marks the 50th anniversary of the passing of Robert F. Kennedy with a show focused on a re-examination of the case, and evidence that accused assassin Sirhan Sirhan, currently serving a life sentence, was not the primary culprit.

We first speak with repeat guest Mark Robinowitz. Robinowitz has reviewed available research on suspected Deep Political events from the JFK assassination to 9/11. He helps address the question of possible motives for RFK’s assassination, the option of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for getting to the bottom of this and other State Crimes Against Democracy, and the significance of RFK Jr.’s recent admission to the Washington Post newspaper that he does not believe Sirhan Sirhan murdered his father.

We follow up that conversation with another repeat guest – William Pepper. A skeptic of the official stories behind both Robert Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King’s assassinations, Dr. Pepper has acted as counsel for Sirhan Sirhan in the Kennedy assassination case, and is seeking an official judicial review of the evidence. We’ll go over some of the forensic details of the crime in our second half hour.

Mark Robinowitz is a writer, political activist and ecological campaigner. He manages the site JFKMLKRFK.com which looks into the political assassinations of the 1960s and connects them to political and economic realities of that time. He is based in Eugene, Oregon.

William Pepper is a barrister in the United Kingdom and admitted to the bar in numerous jurisdictions in the United States of America. He is the author of three books on the assassination of Martin Luther King. He has acted as counsel for Robert F Kennedy’s accused murderer Sirhan Sirhan. His website is williampepper.com. 

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Transcript- Interview with William Pepper, May 30, 2018

Global Research: We’re joined once again by Dr. William Pepper. He’s a barrister in the United Kingdom and admitted to the bar in numerous jurisdictions in the United States of America. He’s the author of three books on the assassination of Martin Luther King. He’s also acted as counsel for Robert F Kennedy’s accused murderer, Sirhan Sirhan. He joins us now from New York, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, to help us explore that case welcome back Dr. Pepper.

William Pepper: Thanks, it’s good to hear you Michael.

GR: Now I understand you met Bobby Kennedy and person. What were your impressions of the man?

WP: Well, I knew Bobby Kennedy back in 1964. I was quite young, but I was his citizens’ chairman in Westchester County, New York, when he ran for the Senate, so I had basically control of that aspect of his senatorial campaign. At that point in time, I didn’t like him personally. I thought he was arrogant. I thought that he was out of touch with the needs of poor people in America and that his views were quite restricted in that respect.

But the Bob Kennedy they killed in 1968 was really quite a different person. He had traveled into Appalachia and he had seen things he never saw before in terms of how people were forced to live. And he developed a degree of empathy that was remarkable, so he was really quite a different person and …considering those experiences over the four-year period.

GR: How did you come to be convinced of the innocence of his accused murderer, Sirhan Sirhan?

WP: Well, by examining the evidence. I was asked to look at the evidence of the case, and the number one piece of evidence was Tom Noguchi, the medical examiner, Tom Noguchi’s autopsy report of the senator. And it showed that the senator was hit with three bullets at powder burn range in the rear, fired from the rear, slightly upward, with the final shot entering his head right by the right ear, about an inch, inch-and-a-half from behind the right ear. A fourth bullet went through a shoulder pad. There was testimony of upwards of 40 people available, witnesses, all of whom put Sirhan in front of the senator, between three and five feet in front of him.

So there was no way that he could have fired the fatal shot at Senator Kennedy. It’s just, it’s just, it was impossible. As I looked further, I found out that his own defense counsel really joined the prosecution team. Grant Cooper was his name, and he was under, himself, he was under a pending indictment at that time for the illegal possession of grand jury minutes in another case. So he was really effectively working under the control of the prosecution when he addressed the jury for the first time he said, “We are not here to prove our client innocent of this crime. He is guilty of it. We are only here to save this life from the very, from an order of capital punishment.”

So the evidence was just so powerful that it, to me, it was inconceivable, that if an evidentiary hearing was allowed or a jury trial was allowed where the evidence would be put into play, there’s no question that he would have to be found not guilty of that crime.

GR: Now, you just mentioned Grant Cooper, and he clearly, there was an irregularity there, and at least in theory everyone is entitled to a fair trial. How is it that, that aspect of it… Even if you believe that Sirhan Sirhan was guilty, he didn’t get a fair trial. So how do you explain the inability for this to be addressed through a formal process and appeal?

WP: Well they… There’s never been an evidentiary hearing. They blocked us every step of the way. I’ve been involved in the case since 2007, and we’ve been unsuccessful, and you are asking a very good question. How does that happen? We have filed very strong briefs of appeal. I don’t believe they’ve been read, or if they’ve been read, they just have been dismissed out of hand, and that’s a sign of the weakness and the failure of the criminal justice system in the United States.

It’s a political case, it’s a high-profile case, and there was just no deliberate intention to grant our appellant briefs. So they have denied us all the way to the Supreme Court, and we are at this point, we’ve exhausted our domestic remedies, and we are at this point filing a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. And we’re hopeful that we may get a hearing before that commission, which is a part of the requirements of the undertaking of the United States in the Organization of the American States Treaty.

It’s a devastating situation, and I’m sure that this occurs again and again in cases where verdicts are simply effectively locked in all the way up the appellant structure.

GR: Do you, do you have any further comments… I mean you just mentioned in the evidence of powder burns, the idea that Bobby Kennedy was shot from behind when Mr Sirhan was clearly in front of him as confirmed by multiple witnesses, but there were ballistics reports, were there not, that… Well there were some… more recent indications that there were far more bullets fired than were actually, could have been in Mr. Sirhan’s gun. Do you want to maybe speak a little bit more to these sorts of …well, the ballistics evidence?

WP: Yes, yes. Philip Van Praag, who’s an audiologist and an audio specialist, using highly sophisticated equipment was able to ascertain, on the basis of a tape recording that was made at the time, that 13 bullets were fired. Sirhan’s gun, of course, only had eight, but that’s beside the point because Sirhan was cued to stand up by his controller. He was very heavily under chemical and orthodox hypnosis, and on the cue, he stepped up and was fulfilling the role of distracting everyone by firing at what he saw was a target that he had recently fired at, they…at a pistol range where he had been that afternoon.

He discharged two bullets. After he fired the two bullets his arm was pinned to the surrounding table, and he was, had no control over the gun hand when he pulled… kept pulling the trigger and bullets went flying all over the place.

But he shot two bullets only, only two bullets, and there were a total of 13 bullets which of course included the total of four bullets fired at Senator Kennedy by the real assassin. So Philip Van Praag was able to put the number fired at that amount, but in addition to that, he was able to show with his equipment that the bullets were fired in two different directions. The ones into the senator were fired in a direc…in the opposite direction of the two bullets that were fired by Sirhan in front. So the audiological evidence – ballistic evidence that was not introduced, not put forward at the trial, is another indication of the existence of a second shooter who fired the fatal bullet.

GR: Now, you alluded to the idea that Sirhan Sirhan had been under heavy influence, chemically, and hypnotic suggestion, and what not, and that’s probably one of the more contentious aspects of the case, at least to the casual observer, because you’re invoking the whole idea of MK Ultra and the Manchurian Candidate, like a real life Manchurian Candidate, somebody weaponized to fulfill some sort of a role.

I was wondering if you could maybe help put some meat to that, something that… can we independently confirm that he was under that kind of influence given that he himself admits no memory of what happened that day. That’s his story anyway.

WP: Yes, yes, Well we use the, probably the world’s leading expert on hypnosis and the MK Ultra experience. MK Ultra was a CIA program, of course, that was in effect in the 1960’s, where hypnosis was used. We had Dr. Daniel Brown of Harvard, an associate professor of Harvard psychology, who spent over 70 hours with Sirhan and worked with him both, had him under hypnosis and also in a free state.

And Dan Brown’s reports were a part of our own analysis of the case and our putting forth a defense, and Dan was able to ascertain that Sirhan was in a clinic for a period of two weeks when he dropped out of sight, no one knew who he where he was, he allegedly had fallen off a horse, and he was in the clinic getting a treatment for that, but, in fact, that experience exposed him to both chemical and regular hypnotic procedures.

So he was well-prepared as… to be the patsy distracter. That function on the evening, after being effectively picked up by a woman in a black polka dot dress who guided him through the whole event, and on cue had him stand up and distract by firing those two bullets.

So that was, it was Dan Brown’s analysis after over 70 hours of working with Sirhan that that was what happened. And how he was prepared. So it’s contentious. Of course it’s contentious. No one wants to believe that that is possible, but it certainly is possible, and the CIA developed techniques with great sophistication, that was a part of their MK-Ultra program, and Sirhan fell right into it.

On a 1 to 5, 5 being the highest possibility of being susceptible to hypnosis, on a 1 to 5, Dan put Sirhan at a 5, and there is just no question in our mind that that was what happened, that Dr. Brown is correct.

GR: You mentioned that the involvement of a woman in a black polka dot dress. Now the existence of this person was confirmed by multiple independent eyewitnesses and… Can you comment on who that person was? Did she appear in any official reports?

WP: Well, we don’t know who the person was at this point. She was obviously someone who was sent for and used for that particular purpose, and, as you said, a number of eyewitnesses confirmed her existence and her presence. There are some minor references to her in official reports. They tried to determine that she was another woman who was there and identified her as a member of the Kennedy team even, who was there. But that was a false effort, and, very clearly, the other woman was not involved, was even on crutches at the time, so there is a great deal of speculation as to the woman in the black polka dot dress.

But as she fled the pantry room right after the killing, she ran down a flight of stairs with a couple of her colleagues and ran past a woman named Serrano who was a witness, and said, We shot him. We’ve shot him, and when asked who they shot, she said they shot Senator Kennedy. And as she continued, they continued out on the parking lot and ran past a New York couple called Bernstein, and said the same thing, We’ve shot him. We’ve shot him. This woman then disappeared into the night, and she has not been found located or surfaced. We believe we had an idea who she was, but that is still subject to the investigation.

GR: You mentioned that this young woman Serrano, who heard that admission of We shot him, she’s not, she’s still alive but she’s not willing to speak any further on this whole subject. I think it’s kind of an interesting aspect, because there are indications that she had been, that there’d been efforts to get her to rethink what she said she saw, and she seemed to stick to her story. Can you talk about that, you know, efforts by the official authorities to address her inconvenient testimony.

WP: Yes, they brutally… they brutally interrogated her, did everything they could to get her, to to try to get her to change her story and to make it more, I think you used the word inconvenient, make a more convenient statement that would be compatible with the official account. And it’s unfortunate that she went through that kind of experience, but it’s indicative of the efforts of the local law enforcement officials to cover up what really happened.

In addition to that, they took away ceiling tiles, they took away door panels that had bullet holes in them, anything too that indicated that there were more bullets fired. They removed evidence from the crime scene in an effort to cover up what really happened actually.

GR: That’s very interesting, because if you recall in our last interview about the death of Martin King, you mentioned the corruption within the Memphis Police Department, and not only the failure to get to the truth, but efforts to cover up the crime. Could you comment any further on the LAPD’s investigation of the Kennedy assassination and any parallels between the way the LAPD and the Memphis Police Department investigated these high crimes?

WP: Yeah, I mean, they are similar in the efforts of local law enforcement to cover up the truth and to effectively establish an official account of the assassination which involves a patsy. In the case of Martin King, of course, it was James Earl Ray, who I represented the last 10 years of his life, and that story is so, now so officially destroyed, that the evidence that I put forward — my final book on the King case is called The Plot to Kill King, the evidence set out there is so powerful, so strong, that there’s just no way that the official story can stand.

So we have a similar situation with respect to the assassination of Bob Kennedy two months later. The evidence is so overwhelming, despite the really hard, heavy efforts of the Los Angeles police to cover up, that if a hearing or trial were ever allowed where the evidence could be put forward, there’s no doubt in my mind that Sirhan would be found not guilty. But that, of course, is a struggle. You have an official story, and you have official efforts to make sure that that story stands up as best as they can, and they do everything possible to effect that result.

GR: You mentioned earlier that you want to, you’re presenting the evidence to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Now that’s under the umbrella of the organization of American states which is seen by some as a construct furthering US Colonial dominance of the Americas. I discussed that in a previous show, a report they put together that seems skewed in its examination of the unrest currently in Nicaragua, so I’m wondering, is it reasonable to assume that this construct would be any more accommodating of a new trial or a new hearing of the evidence than traditional US-based courts have been?

WP: Well, I think your analysis is apt. It may be suited to a different time, and that’s a hope that we have. There is now increasing amounts of skepticism, cynicism, and even open hostility toward the United States for it efforts in Latin and South America in support of oligarchic or dictatorial regimes that are more sympathetic to American effective colonization of the region.

The United States used to have a great deal of influence over the Inter-American Commission, as well as the Inter-American Court. I think that has waned considerably, and… at this point in time. So we do have, and perhaps naively, but we do have hope that the Inter-American Commission will give us an opportunity to put evidence on the record and effectively for the world to see, and for the American criminal justice system to see, with respect to this case.

But I think you’re quite right, it is, in many ways it’s a difficult task that we’ve undertaken, so I don’t know how it will come out. But we do expect a ruling within the next 60 days. They have had this 213-page petition now for ten months, and we understand we will get some kind of ruling within that period of time.

GR: Now, William Pepper, I’m sure you were aware that Robert F, Robert Kennedy Jr, has been reported as not believing the official story of the Kennedy assassination in the Washington Post, of all places, and of course Robert Kennedy Jr is a pretty prominent personality in his own right. I just wanted to ask what you make of that admission and if that may change the playing field in any way?

WP: Well, I think it’s certainly supportive of the truth. And the search for truth. And I think that Bob Kennedy Jr., along with Paul Schrade, who was a victim of the shooting on the night, I think both of them have provided a basis for an effort to bring the truth forward. So I think yes, I think to the extent that after a long period of time, Bobby Kennedy Jr. has had the opportunity to evaluate all the evidence and in good conscience is now come out and made this statement of support.

I think it’s not immediately known, but his sister, Kathleen Kennedy, who is the eldest of the Kennedy children, and a former lieutenant governor of the state of Maryland, has also come out now in support of this search for the truth and in support of her brother. She has made that quite clear.

GR: Just as a final thought, I was wondering if you have any intuitions about how history might have played out differently if Bobby Kennedy had not been killed that fateful evening.

WP: Oh, yes, I think there would have been an effort, at least, to dramatically change the socio-economic and international position of the United States in the world, and at home, if Bob Kennedy had been elected president. The war in Vietnam would have ended much more quickly, the oil depletion allowance, the 27 and a half percent tax credit on oil that’s removed from American soil, would have been ended, I think the Federal Reserve System would have undergone a serious examination and probably would have been replaced as well.

So, we would have had a different position in the world as well as in the United States. And the oligarchic forces in this country, in the United States, the powerful and the wealthy, would have been impacted greatly by a Kennedy Administration. And that, of course, is the reason why he was killed, why he was taken out of the picture.

GR: William Pepper, it’s always a pleasure to speak with you. Thanks again for making yourself available to address this important topic.

WP: You’re welcome. I hope you can distribute these thoughts as widely as possible so that we have a more informed people that a democracy requires.

GR: We’ve been speaking with New York City-based lawyer and author William Pepper. His publications on the topics of the Martin King and Kennedy assassinations can be found at the site williampepper.com

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . Excerpts of the show have begun airing on Rabble Radio and appear as podcasts at rabble.ca.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in  at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca

RIOT RADIO, the visual radio station based out of Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario has begun airing the Global Research News Hour on an occasional basis. Tune in at dcstudentsinc.ca/services/riot-radio/

Radio Fanshawe: Fanshawe’s 106.9 The X (CIXX-FM) out of London, Ontario airs the Global Research News Hour Sundays at 6am with an encore at 4pm.

Los Angeles, California based Thepowerofvoices.com airs the Global Research News Hour every Monday from 6-7pm Pacific time. 

Notes:

1) Tom Jackman (May 26, 2018), ‘Who killed Bobby Kennedy? His son RFK Jr. doesn’t believe it was Sirhan Sirhan’, Washington Post; https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/05/26/who-killed-bobby-kennedy-his-son-rfk-jr-doesnt-believe-it-was-sirhan-sirhan/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a4828031c707

International Conference on the 75th anniversary of the Liberation of Italy and the End of World War II organised by the Italian Committee No War, No Nato and Global Research. 

The great Italian journalist Giulietto Chiesa passed away a few hours after the realization of this Conference.

His last words (Panel 4 and Conclusion) focussed on Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Information, and Freedom for Julian Assange. 

“It is essential to join all our forces together, which are significant, “not so small” but there is a fundamental flaw: that of being divided, unable to speak with a single voice. We need the means and the instrument to speak to the millions of citizens who want to know.”

His last words were confirmed by the fact that, immediately after the streaming, the online conference was “obscured” because the following content had been identified by the so-called YouTube community as “inappropriate or offensive to some audiences.”  That’s what is commonly referred to as Censorship. 

Scroll down for list of  participants and index

VIDEO

International Conference on the 75th anniversary of the Liberation of Italy and the End of World War II.

In the Panel 4 and in the Conclusions, the last words of the great Italian journalist Giulietto Chiesa who passed away a few hours after the realization of this online Conference:

Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Information, and Freedom for Julian Assange. www.cngnn.it

***

Participants and index:

Welcome: Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti (Italy) journalist, writer. 00:00:16

Opening: Manlio Dinucci (Italy) essayist, geopolitical journalist. 00:03:59

PANEL 1 – SOCIO-ECONOMIC IMPACT OF CORONAVIRUS CRISIS 00:12:41

Michel Chossudovsky (Canada) Economist, 00:13:17

Peter Koenig (Switzerland) Economist 00:29:40

PANEL 2 – 75 YEARS OF WARS 00:42:56

Video “The wars after the Cold War” : 00:43:31

Yugoslavia a Founding War; 00:43:40

Nato expansion in the East toward Russia; 00:47:02

US and NATO attack and invade Afghanistan and Iraq 00:49:17

Nato demolishes Libyan State 00:52:13

David Swanson, director of World Beyond War (USA); 00:56:23

Video “The US/Nato War to Demolish Siria” 01:07:22

Tim Anderson (Australia) Economist; 01:09:15

Video “The US/Nato direction in the Ukrainian Coup” 01:15:41

Giorgio Bianchi (Italy) Photo journalist 01:18:54

Franco Cardini (Italy) Historian and writer 01:26:52

Video “The Italian Aircraft Carrier on the War Front” 01:39:05

PANEL 3 – THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR 01:44:56

Video “Nato is Born of a Bomb” 01:45:34

Video “US and Nato Tear Treaties” 01:47:04

Vladimir Kozin (Russia), Chief Adviser of the Center for Political-Military Studies; 01:50:33

Diana Johnstone (USA) author and journalist, 02:07:11

Kate Hudson (United Kingdom) Secretary General of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament 02:20:07

PANEL 4 – FREEDOM FOR JULIAN ASSANGE 02:23:21

Giulietto Chiesa (Italy) Journalist and writer 02:24:24

Video card on Julian Assange by Oceans on the moon group. 02:31:45

Ann Wright (USA), former US Army Colonel and Depute, 02:38:04

John Shipton (Australia) Julian Assange’s father, exclusive interview by Berenice Galli 02:50:50

Germana Leoni von Dohnanyi (Italy) journalist, writer 03:06:17 –

 

 

,

His Legacy will live.

Let us build the grassroots movement both nationally and internationally.

CLOSING Giulietto Chiesa 03:09:06

“The tool is not the problem, it’s what we do with it.”

– Tests which are not reliable!
–  False negatives (real patients not detected).
– False positives (patients who are not positive)
– Tests that detect fragments of the virus and not the virus itself!
– Tests that don’t quantify the viral load, the most important thing…
– Test kits infected with the virus itself: you could catch it by getting tested!

So, you’ve been tested? Negative? Positive?

Maybe you’re like most people, eager to find out if you’ve got it or better yet, prove that you’re immune to the VID thing.

With this article, I don’t want to add a layer of fear to the pandemic of panic spread by our dear media in recent months.

Nevertheless, even if some people don’t want to “know anything” and will do whatever they are told to do [1]:

E.g. Wear a mask everywhere all the time, stay away from your family and friends, don’t dare to go out or take public transport without your “armour and visor”, don’t dare to touch anything without wearing gloves stuck to the skin as a result of sweating…  Etc.

I think that looking for more truth and getting closer to the truth is the best antidote to fear.

So, these tests! what are they

Introduction: Diagnosing COVID-19 disease

People confuse the disease with the agent accused of causing it.

COVID-19 refers to the disease characterized by “airway involvement” with a wide variety of symptom patterns (see below).

It is caused by a virus, SARS-CoV-2, of the coronavirus family [2], SARS for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

Another coronavirus of this type, SARS-CoV-1, had already occurred in 2003, less contagious but more dangerous (in terms of mortality).

FIRST, On the one hand, you have a disease marked by the existence of signs or symptoms [3]. [No be confused with the causative virus]

The diagnosis is clinical!

Major signs/symptoms :

1.  Cough
2.  Dyspnea (difficulty breathing)
3.  Chest pain
4. Anosmia (loss of sense of smell)
5. Dysgeusia (taste abnormality) with no other apparent cause.

Minor signs/symptoms :

1. Fever
2. Muscle aches and pains
3. Fatigue
4. Rhinitis (cold)
5.  Sore throat
6.  Headaches
7. Anorexia (loss of appetite and weight loss)
8. Acute confusion
9. Acute confusion
10. Sudden fall without apparent cause

As you can see, it’s a bit of everything and anything.

A little fever and a troubled sense of smell (which can be caused by a zinc deficiency) and hop, you’re clinically suspect of COVID-19.

SECOND, On the other hand, you are diagnosed as having the “causative virus”, SARS-CoV-2, linked to this clinical picture with possibly (severe forms) a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that can lead to hospitalization or even admission to the intensive care unit.

The main technique used around the world, in hospitals as well as by general practitioners and/or mobile screening centres, to detect the presence of the virus is called RT-PCR. This technique confirms the presence of SARS-CoV-2 (a fragment actually), not the disease!

Tests for the diagnosis of the presence of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus

1- RT-PCR

For Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction, invented in 1985 by the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1993) Kary Mullis.

It is a machine capable of detecting the smallest amount of DNA or RNA (nucleic acids) present in the cell being studied. It detects and then amplifies the detected material, much like a photocopier-enhancer.

The material detected is RNA in the case of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

The primers specific to the genetic material of the virus under study, in this case SARS-CoV-2, are all that is needed to detect the slightest trace of it in the cells collected.

A few definitions before going any further:

–  The sensitivity of the test is the ease with which the test identifies the target.
–  The specificity of the test is the ability of the test to identify the target and not another one.

The ideal test is both highly sensitive (100%) and highly specific (100%).

Is RT-PCR highly sensitive and highly specific? It depends.

– False negatives: RT-PCR comes back negative for SARS-CoV-2 even though the patient is infected. The less sensitive the test is, the more false negatives will occur.
–  False positive: RT-PCR comes back positive for SARS-CoV-2 when the patient is NOT infected. The less specific the test is, the more false positives will occur.

Can you imagine the possible dramatic consequences of such errors, in terms of contagion, contamination, improper containment or epidemiological evaluation?

In the literature [4], the PCR technique is called “rapid, sensitive and reproducible”.

For the WHO, our health institutes, most of the media, everything is fine.

However, it’s not all that idyllic!

The first disappointment is that RT-PCR does not detect the virus, but a genetic trace (RNA) of the virus, which is not the same thing.

A positive RT-PCR test does not necessarily indicate the presence of a complete virus. It is the complete, intact virus that is the transmissible actor of COVID-19.

As the FDA [based on CDC] admits [5], the detection of viral RNA by RT-PCR does not necessarily indicate an active viral infection (with clinical syndrome)!

A second disappointment is that RT-PCR cannot quantify the viral load since it artificially amplifies (multiplies) the detected genetic material. It only says whether the virus is present or not, and again, only traces of the virus, not the whole virus.

Third disappointment, the technique is complex and has many limitations! Even more so in detecting RNA viruses as in the case of SARS-CoV-2.

“The interpretation of PCR results is difficult. Any PCR must be performed on a good quality sample and adapted to the indication. For some viral infections, a positive PCR is not synonymous with disease… The dialogue between the clinician and the microbiologist is essential for a good diagnosis. “(RMS, 2007, Vol 3).

In most cases, the cells studied come from the upper respiratory tract, and are collected using a long cotton swab inserted into the nasal cavity at a relatively deep level [6]. It is said that to be effective, the procedure must be painful for the person being tested.

If the cells contain the smallest nucleic fragment (RNA) of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the theory is that it will be detected by RT-PCR. But not that the patient is necessarily sick with COVID-19!

In this article from the Swiss Medical Journal of 2005 [7], we read that :

“For some infections, PCR tests are considered as a reference method while for others, they are only an aid to diagnosis. Contact with the laboratory performing the analysis is important in order to interpret the PCR results correctly.”

For respiratory infections,

“Serology (blood test – see below) remains the definitive proof of an infection that has caused an immune response and is therefore still considered…as a reference test.”

For coronaviruses, culture is difficult and detection by RT-PCR is the technique of choice.

But many steps are required to prime and amplify the specific genetic material and it is a complex and very sophisticated process with many opportunities for misinterpretation or misrepresentation [8] :

Mishandling, miscalibrated or contaminated equipment (from the person being tested, the laboratory technician or the environment), misstorage or misdirection and the whole result can be compromised.

PCR tests can be falsified when the sample is contaminated with other strains, especially bacterial strains.

There is a significant risk of false negatives, as reported on the Alternative Well-Being website [9] :

1- The test is badly done

2- The virus is elsewhere (not in the site where the sample is taken)

3- The tests have not been approved

4- The virus is already mutating

There is an even higher risk of false positives, as pointed out by the independent journalist Pryska Ducoeurjoly [10], based on the Swiss Medical Journal (8 April 2020) and the French journal Prescrire [11].

2- Rapid antigenic test

A variant of PCR, the results of which may take 24 to 48 hours to be known, is a faster antigenic test (results in 15 minutes), certified by the Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products in Belgium [12]. It allows the detection of antigens (viral proteins), again from a nasopharyngeal swab.

However, it is much less specific!

In one study, only 50% of patients confirmed positive by RT-PCR were detected by this antigenic test.

This test is not recommended by the WHO for the detection of COVID-19 disease.

That says it all.

Tests for confirmation of viral infection and its follow-up

1- Serological tests

These tests are based on a blood test followed by an analysis in a specialized laboratory.

We look for the presence of antibodies developed by the patient. This is used to find out whether the person has actually been in contact with SARS-CoV-2 (IgM) and whether they have become immune to it (IgG).

This is the test that many Belgians are eagerly awaiting and which will be reserved in priority for care personnel.

2- ELISA tests

These special serological tests (dozens of samples processed at one time) are carried out in university laboratories to monitor the evolution of antibodies over time and to assess the type and duration of immunity induced by SARS-CoV-2 infection.

What is the cost of these tests in Belgium?

1. For the molecular detection test (PCR), the RIZIV reimburses 46.81 EUR.
2. For the antigen detection test, the RIZIV reimburses 16.72 EUR.
3. For the antibody detection test (serological test), the RIZIV reimburses 9,60 EUR.

These amounts include all costs related to the test: sampling material, equipment, reagents, investment costs, quality monitoring, personnel costs, supervision, protective material, transport costs, etc.

There is no patient co-payment (no co-payment) [13].

Infected specimen collection kits!

As if that were not enough, we learn that batches of detection kits are infected with SARS-CoV-2!

Notably in the USA [14], Quebec [15], UK [16], Africa (Tanzania) [17]…

“As the new coronavirus began to spread across the country, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sent contaminated test kits to the states in early February, according to a federal investigation.”

“Thousands of swabs ordered by Quebec City to test for COVID-19 were found to be potentially contaminated... Fungal contamination was found on several swabs. According to Nicolas Vigneault, spokesperson for the Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux, the swabs came from a shipment received from China.”

“One batch of coronavirus tests, out of the millions expected by the UK, has been contaminated by the virus itself. The British government had ordered batches of tests for coronavirus from a laboratory. But one of these was infected by … Covid-19 itself,” the Telegraph explains, without giving any explanation as to why this unfortunate contamination occurred. The delivery of these tests was immediately cancelled.”

“The Tanzanian President believes that the coronavirus epidemic is not yet on the scale of the official figures. According to him, the data on Covid-19 are being doctored by alarmist authorities, he denounced in his speech… He claims to have himself secretly tested a goat, a quail and a papaya, but to his astonishment the results were positive. He therefore questions the reliability of the tests. These positive results on animals and even plants are, for him, proof that people declared positive for the virus might not actually be carriers. This would mean that the real situation is not as alarming in Tanzania.”

That’s a lot of mistakes, all over the world, don’t you think?

Strange, the lack of coverage in major Western media.

It’s very serious though, and it calls into question the whole campaign of massive screening for this coronavirus.

The opinion of an international expert

John P. A. Ioannidis is not just anyone on the international medical scene.

“John P. A. Ioannidis is a professor of medicine and a researcher at Stanford University’s School of Medicine and School of Humanity and Science. Director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center, he is co-director, with Steven N. Ioannidis, of the Stanford Prevention Research Center. Goodman, the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford. “[18].

He is one of the most recognized specialists in health epistemology.

He is adamant:

“As the coronavirus pandemic unfolds, we’re making decisions without reliable data.” [19]

It confirms that the PCR tests used in the COVID-19 crisis are not as reliable as that, despite the efforts of the media and our health institutes (Sciensano in Belgium) to make us believe so.

See his interview : Perspectives on the Pandemic | Dr. John Ioannidis Update: 4.17.20, at minute 27 for his comments on PCR testing in the context of COVID-19.

In summary

What a fiasco.

The diagnostic tests represented above all by RT-PCR, a gene amplification technique, are far from having the expected reliability, which is crucial in a crisis such as the one we are going through.

Even if positive, the RT-PCR test only reveals an RNA fragment of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, not the COVID-19 disease itself. In order to say that, we need a corresponding clinical picture! All other pathologies of the patient must be considered and if the patient dies, they must be taken into account before attributing death to COVID-19!

This is frightening when you imagine the possible unjustified consequences of decisions made on the basis of these tests!

– Confinement/quarantine
– Unprecedented freedom-destroying measures
–  Hospital and health centre upheavals
–  Serious diagnoses may be wrongly given to terrorized people who are actually in good health.
– Social distancing with heavy consequences on human relations
– Major economic and social impact, the real scope of which is currently unknown
–  Suspension of all social activities (schools, restaurants, leisure activities)
– Whole population tracking and policing projects

I think that in the face of so much self-sustained insanity, despite the widespread virus of fear, the best antidote is to stay calm.

Come to your senses.

Reassess the true extent of this disease (mortality below 3% [of positive cases] as of May 26, 2020- [20]).

The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus will have to take its rightful place among all other health problems, no more, no less.

And we, may we quickly live again without masks, without social distance and without  laws which threaten civil rights.

And learn from so many mistakes.

                                                                                                                                                                                            

Dr. Pascal Sacré

Translation by Maya from the French original published by Mondialisation.ca

Notes:

[1] Wear a mask everywhere all the time, stay away from your family and friends, don’t dare to go out or take public transport without your armour and visor, don’t dare to touch anything without wearing gloves stuck to the skin by perspiration…

[2] Coronaviruses Coronaviruses (CoVs) are a large family of viruses that cause symptoms ranging from the common cold to more serious illnesses such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). World Health Organization (WHO).

[3] PRISE EN CHARGE D’UN PATIENT POSSIBLE OU CONFIRMÉ DE COVID-19

[4] PCR en microbiologie : de l’amplification de l’ADN à l’interprétation du résultat, Revue Médicale Suisse, RMS 106, 2007, Vol 3

[5] FAQs on Testing for SARS-CoV-2 U.S. Food and Drug Administration FDA

[6] Tutoriel prélèvement nasopharyngé : Un geste technique, essentiel à la fiabilité du test COVID-19

 [7] Détection et quantification des acides nucléiques en infectiologie : utilité, certitudes et limites « Nous présentons ici une revue de l’utilité des techniques PCR pour identifier les pathogènes les plus courants ainsi que des commentaires permettant de guider l’interprétation de ces résultats dans un contexte clinique. », Revue Médicale Suisse, RMS 13, 2005, Vol 1

[8] The Inconsistences of Quantitative Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction in Diagnostics Microbiology Acta Scientific Microbiology Vol 1 Issue 2 February 2018

[9] 4 explications à l’échec des TESTS du Covid-19 , 9 avril 2020

[10] Tests du covid-19, attention aux faux positifs !, Pryska Ducoeurjoly  5 mai 2020

[11] Valeur prédictive des résultats des tests diagnostiques : l’exemple des tests covid-19 23 avril 2020

[12] COVID-19 : le dépistage Le test a été développé par le Laboratoire Hospitalier Universitaire de Bruxelles, le LHUB – ULB : un des cinq plus grands laboratoires hospitaliers universitaires en Europe, à la pointe en matière de biologie clinique.

[13] Remboursement des tests de détection du Coronavirus pendant la pandémie de Covid-19

[14] Les tests de dépistage fournis par les centres de contrôle aux USA étaient infectés par le Covid-19 

[15] Des milliers d’écouvillons importés de Chine par Québec sont inutilisables. D’autres provinces signalent des tests de dépistage contaminés. 22 avril 2020

[16] Coronavirus. Des tests de dépistage commandés par le Royaume-Uni contaminés par le Covid-19 

[17] Tanzanie, Coronavirus : le Président John Magufuli dénonce des « statistiques trafiquées et revues à la hausse » 4 mai 2020

[18] John P. A. Ioannidis

[19] Un fiasco en devenir? Alors que la pandémie de coronavirus s’installe, nous prenons des décisions sans données fiables Nous manquons de preuves fiables sur le nombre de personnes infectées par le SRAS-CoV-2 ou qui continuent de l’être.

[20] Le coronavirus (COVID-19) – Faits et chiffres, 26 mai 2020

 

Today the non-profit organization Beyond Nuclear filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit requesting review of an  April 23, 2020 order and an October 29, 2018 order by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), rejecting challenges to Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance’s application to build a massive “consolidated interim storage facility” (CISF) for nuclear waste in southeastern New Mexico. Holtec proposes to store as much as 173,000 metric tons of highly radioactive irradiated or “spent” nuclear fuel – more than twice the amount of spent fuel currently stored at U.S. nuclear power reactors – in shallowly buried containers on the site.   

But according to Beyond Nuclear’s petition, the NRC’s orders “violated the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act  by refusing to dismiss an administrative proceeding that contemplated issuance of a license permitting federal ownership of used reactor fuel at a commercial fuel storage facility.”

Since it contemplates that the federal government would become the owner of the spent fuel during transportation to and storage at its CISF, Holtec’s license application should have been dismissed at the outset, Beyond Nuclear’s appeal argues. Holtec has made no secret of the fact that it expects the federal government will take title to the waste, which would clear the way for it to be stored at its CISF, and this is indeed the point of building the facility. But that would directly violate the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA), which prohibits federal government ownership of spent fuel unless and until a permanent underground repository is up and running.  No such repository has been licensed in the U.S. The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) most recent estimate for the opening of a geologic repository is the year 2048 at the earliest.

In its April 23 decision, in which the NRC rejected challenges to the license application, the four NRC Commissioners admitted that the NWPA would indeed be violated if title to spent fuel were transferred to the federal government so it could be stored at the Holtec facility.  But they refused to remove the license provision in the application which contemplates federal ownership of the spent fuel. Instead, they ruled that approving Holtec’s application in itself would not involve NRC in a violation of federal law, and that therefore they could go forward with approving the application, despite its illegal provision. According to the NRC’s decision, “the license itself would not violate the NWPA by transferring the title to the fuel, nor would it authorize Holtec or [the U.S. Department of Energy] to enter into storage contracts.” (page 7). The NRC Commissioners also noted with approval that “Holtec hopes that Congress will amend the law in the future.” (page 7).

“This NRC decision flagrantly violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which prohibits an agency from acting contrary to the law as issued by Congress and signed by the President,” said Mindy Goldstein, an attorney for Beyond Nuclear. “The Commission lacks a legal or logical basis for its rationale that it may issue a license with an illegal provision, in the hopes that Holtec or the Department of Energy won’t complete the illegal activity it authorized. The buck must stop with the NRC.”

“Our claim is simple,” said attorney Diane Curran, another member of Beyond Nuclear’s legal team. “The NRC is not above the law, nor does it stand apart from it.”

According to a 1996 D.C. Circuit Court ruling, the NWPA is Congress’ “comprehensive scheme for the interim storage and permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste generated by civilian nuclear power plants” [Ind. Mich. Power Co. v. DOE, 88 F.3d 1272, 1273 (D.C. Cir. 1996)]. The law establishes distinct roles for the federal government vs. the owners of facilities that generate spent fuel with respect to the storage and disposal of spent fuel. The “Federal Government has the responsibility to provide for the permanent disposal of … spent nuclear fuel” but “the generators and owners of … spent nuclear fuel have the primary responsibility to provide for, and the responsibility to pay the costs of, the interim storage of … spent fuel until such … spent fuel is accepted by the Secretary of Energy” [42 U.S.C. § 10131]. Section 111 of the NWPA specifically provides that the federal government will not take title to spent fuel until it has opened a repository [42 U.S.C. § 10131(a)(5)].

“When Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and refused to allow nuclear reactor licensees to transfer ownership of their irradiated reactor fuel to the DOE until a permanent repository was up and running, it acted wisely,” said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist for Beyond Nuclear. “It understood that spent fuel remains hazardous for millions of years, and that the only safe long-term strategy for safeguarding irradiated reactor fuel is to place it in a permanent repository for deep geologic isolation from the living environment. Today, the NWPA remains the public’s best protection against a so-called ‘interim’ storage facility becoming a de facto permanent, national, surface dump for radioactive waste. But if we ignore it or jettison the law, communities like southeastern New Mexico can be railroaded by the nuclear industry and its friends in government, and forced to accept mountains of forever deadly high-level radioactive waste other states are eager to offload.”

In addition to impacting New Mexico, shipping the waste to the CISF site would also endanger 43 other states plus the District of Columbia, because it would entail hauling 10,000 high risk, high-level radioactive waste shipments on their roads, rails, and waterways, posing risks of radioactive release all along the way.

Besides threatening public health and safety, evading federal law to license CISF facilities would also impact the public financially. Transferring  title and liability for spent fuel from the nuclear utilities that generated it to DOE would mean that federal taxpayers would have to pay for its so-called “interim” storage, to the tune of many billions of dollars.  That’s on top of the many billions ratepayers and taxpayers have already paid to fund a permanent geologic repository that hasn’t yet materialized.

But that’s not to say that Yucca Mountain would be an acceptable alternative to CISF.

“A deep geologic repository for permanent disposal should meet a long list of stringent criteria: legality, environmental justice, consent-based siting, scientific suitability, mitigation of transport risks, regional equity, intergenerational equity, and safeguards against nuclear weapons proliferation, including a ban on spent fuel reprocessing,” Kamps said. “But the Yucca Mountain dump, which is targeted at land owned by the  Western Shoshone in Nevada, fails to meet any of those standards.  That’s why a coalition of more than a thousand environmental, environmental justice, and public interest organizations, representing all 50 states, has opposed it for 33 years.”

Kamps noted that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has upheld the NWPA before, including in the matter of inadequate standards for Yucca Mountain.  In its landmark 2004 decision in Nuclear Energy Institute v. Environmental Protection Agency, it wrote, “Having the capacity to outlast human civilization as we know it and the potential to devastate public health and the environment, nuclear waste has vexed scientists, Congress, and regulatory agencies for the last half-century.”  The Court found the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s insufficient 10,000-year standard for Yucca Mountain violated the NWPA’srequirement that the National Academy of Sciences’ recommendations must be followed, and ordered the EPA back to the drawing board. In 2008, the EPA issued a revised standard, acknowledging a million-year hazard associated with irradiated nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Even that standard falls short, Kamps said, because certain radioactive isotopes in spent fuel remain dangerous for much longer than that.  Iodine-129, for example, is hazardous for 157 million years. 

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

 Well, let’s go to that sea of new human interest corporate commercials saying how they all ‘Care about you during this pandemic’.

All those nice and decent companies want to see you through this, of course IF you use their products or services. They care!

How about those Big Pharma commercials that tout how they will ‘Help’ you to pay for their overpriced, under regulated and too often over proscribed drugs?

Thank God for the one rule that, to date, has not (Yet) been repealed forcing Big Pharma to list the many side effects from those drugs. The number of them for each drug is mind boggling!

I also just love how many corporate retail chains offer to donate pennies from each of your transactions to the pandemic relief efforts nationwide. Duh, why haven’t those chains and franchises just donated pennies from said transactions into a pool to give back to their employees as extra income? As is, most of those jobs are what Henry Hill in the film Goodfellas referred to as ‘Dead end jobs with bum paychecks’.

Don’t you just love the BS  that comes out of the mouths of all those mega millionaire television newscasters and guest ‘Experts’?

They all listen to the myriad of stories about working stiffs and unemployed working stiffs who face eviction and or foreclosure during this pandemic, and reveal their usual Crocodile Tears to the cameras.

Wouldn’t it be nice, as former NFL star running back Warwick Dunne did around 20 years ago, to purchase homes for single Moms in economic distress? I mean, a guy earning mega millions on television, the movie industry, or professional sports can easily afford to fork out one or two million to buy a slew of homes for those in need. They get a hefty tax write off anyway, on top of the good deed. Maybe if Sean Hannity, the finally revealed slumlord, was to donate some of his rental properties to his low income tenants, perhaps we could begin to see the ‘Hope and Change’ that the phony Obama lectured us on.

Then we come to the greatest group of hypocrites ever assembled, our politicians. Wow! These guys and gals really take the cake! The Republicans on the far right, and their Democratic adversaries on the center right love to pontificate about how they ALL care. Really? Who do they care for? Is it their working stiff constituents or the high roller corporate donors and Military Industrial Empire that they always vote to protect?

Well, look at this current economic depression we are wading through, along with the uncertainty of life itself during the pandemic. What the two parties joined together to do is give away, as in 2008-09, most of the money to prop up the house of cards called Wall Street, along with those huge corporations who together run Amerika… or should I say ‘Ruin Amerika’. Have you even heard, on most of the mainstream, and even alternative electronic media, about the ONLY solution to immediately save us working stiffs? That being a UBI, or  (Non inflationary, by the way) Universal Basic Income that continually puts anywhere from $1000 to $2000 a month per person into our own hands, hopefully Tax Free. Imagine how those big corporate behemoths will salivate as our UBI stimulates this economy in the best and most useful manner.

Think of all the customers the millions of retailers will get back. The bastard absentee landlords will lick their lips to finally get paid their rent each month.

Maybe a pandemic and economic recovery will get those hypocrite politicians to subsidize local community efforts  to buy up all  rental property thru eminent domain and become ‘Non Profit Landlords’.

The next step should be forming Non Profit local mortgage banks that charge but ‘Overhead’ on mortgage loans. Imagine how tens of millions of current renters could now actually afford to own a home or apartment. Factored  in with a UBI, there would be such economic stimulus to really Make America Great Again, pardon my borrowing of that phrase.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

Riots have sparked all over US’ cities for more than a week now for the extrajudicial killing of a black man named George Floyd on May 25 in Minnesota, USA. Similar protests on police’s violence after the death of George Floyd also starting in France for the murder of Adama Traoré, a black man suffocated while he was pinned down by gendarmes after his arrest in July 2016. Around 20,000 protesters gathered in Paris on June 2 to show solidarity for victims of police brutality and to demand justice for Traoré. 

In April 2020, similar police  brutality and racism even though not resulting in death also occurred to a man of colour from Egypt who was humiliated and beaten up by the police inside the police van in Ile-Saint Denis. Suspected of theft of building materials, the man jumped to the river Seine and when the police managed to take him out from the river he was mocked in a very racist way and received some violent abuse inside the police’s van. One of the police said “A ‘bicot’ like that doesn’t swim” which followed by the laughter from the other police. The word “bicot” which derived from the word “l’arbicot” (means “petit arabe” or little Arab in French) is a very racist language term that goes back to the French colonial history.

In the video of the incident from the Twitter account of ‘Là-bas si j’y suis’, media site where journalist and activist Taha Bouhafs works and reported the incident, we can hear the scream and cry of the Egyptian man suspected of theft and the laughters of the police inside the van.

La vidéo en question pic.twitter.com/qRZ6UX1MJ7

— Là-bas si j'y suis (@LabasOfficiel) April 26, 2020

Journalist and writer Claude Askolovitch explained this police’s racism and the origin of the racist word “bicot” in “28 Minutes” on Arte TV. The word came from the 19th century when French army colonised Algeria and the word is used to add insult to the oppressed Algerian people who have to obey their French colonisers. It started with the word “larbi” or “l’arabe” (means Arab) which later on transformed to “larbicot” and in 1892 it became “bicot” (means little Arab) which became an authorised insult to use to the North Africans people. There are other racist terms such as “l’ignoble crouille” (horrible North African Arab), “melon” (person from Arab origin), “raton” (rat), “bougnoule” (black, north african), “youpin” (person with origin or belief in Judaism), etc.

Claude Askolovitch also commented that these police’s behaviour brings the French back to a time when racism was a way of being French (“Ce temps ou le racisme était une manière d’etre francais”), implying that there was a systemic racism in France or that racism was part of the French culture, embedded in the French’s DNA.

France like USA also has a very dark history of slavery (more than 400 years ago) and colonialism (ancient form of imperialism). Until today France still imperialise its ex-colonies countries in Africa and the French central bank “Banque de France” governs their currencies, which is unitedly named “CFA Franc”. France pillages Africa’s natural resources and governs every aspect of those countries in Africa from economic, politic, democracy, etc.

The beautiful city of Nantes, France despite its very dark history of slavery. Pictured here is The Castle of the Dukes of Brittany. Photo Credit: Avion Tourism

Memorial of the Abolition of Slavery in Nantes, France is a symbolic witness to France’s horrific past of slavery, abuse of another human beings and trading black slaves as if human beings are commodity. The hypocrisy of how France perceives its dark history and acknowledges its crimes against humanity is clearly shown when the monument to commemorate the victims of slavery is called the “Memorial of the Abolition of Slavery”, as if the perpetrator takes credit of its own crimes by making himself a hero by abolishing slavery, a slavery that the perpetrator created in the first place. Clearly there is a part-denial on how France is accepting and taking responsibility of its past.

Mémorial de l’abolition de l’esclavage (Memorial of the Abolition of Slavery) in Nantes, France. ©Discover Paris!

It is important to understand that to justify the inhumane slavery and colonialism, it is crucial to see the oppressed as less human than the oppressor, it is important to see them as lower, objectify them as sub-human to devoid us from conscience of the horrible wrong things we did to others (another human beings). Thus it is important to instil racism for political purposes so the oppressor can build an empire for power and profit. Racism is a tool of manipulation in the quest for control, power, hegemony and greed.

The systemic or institutionalised racism in French Police or in France as a state as general definitely goes a long way back to its dark history of slavery and colonialism. And until this matter is fully addressed, there will always be the injustice sentiment and social unrest lurking under the surface of society, ready to emerge anytime.

Photo Source: FemmedInfluence

For every nation to develop or advance in humanity, it has to embrace its past and history fully no matter how dark it is, and to learn from its history because those who have never learned from history are doomed to repeat it.

Understanding Human Behaviours, Psychology (How to Maintain Division or Population Control in Society through Institutionalised Racism)

“Divide and Conquer” or “Divida et Impera” (Divide and Rule) of Julius Caesar’s strategy to divide Rome is an old strategy that has been used even before Julius Caesar was born. It is an old tactic used by our “ruling elites” to easily manipulate, divide and distract us, to keep us busy fighting and destroying each other instead of realising the real issues and concentrating our power against the real “enemies”.

To easily control us, we need to be ignorant and brainwashed to keep us dumb and docile, to deprive us from any chance of realizing of what is going on and any chance of fighting back. To easily divide people, racism can be a useful tool.

In our modern society, to control us the people, these are the several pillars of strategy being used against us:

1) Fake Corporate Mainstream Media

Our mainstream medias are owned by the ruling elites. The purpose of the mainstream media is to manufacture our consent, perfectly explained by the renowned intellectual Prof. Edward S. Herman (together with Noam Chomsky) in his book “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media”. Its purpose is to manufacture our consent to align with the ruling elites’ plan and agenda. For example to go to war which is consent to justify killing others in the name of lies and profit, not for humanitarian reasons. The mainstream corporate media is a propaganda tool to propagate lies, to brainwash our way of thinking, and manufacture consent for the ruling elites’ agenda. It is also one of the main tools to instil hate, fear, white supremacy and racism in society for example by propaganda of blaming the immigrants for all the problems occurred in a country or instilling “Yellow Fear” by blaming China for the Covid-19 pandemic.

2)  Education System that Indoctrinate not Educate

Our education system does not educate but instead indoctrinate. It teaches us lies instead of our real history. Our education system shapes our way of thinking for the purposes of aligning with our ruling elites’ agenda. Its objective is not to make us smarter but to control our mind and how we are supposed to think. Indoctrination is an act of war to people’s mind and intelligence.

Education system is the other arm of the propaganda after the Fake Mainstream Media. It can act as a propaganda arm for the government or the ruling class, to maintain control, division and White Supremacy which is the deep ideology behind racism. Education institution teaches lies in history, lies in the concept of economic and finance so that the gullible masses have difficulty understanding the manipulation, the fraud and the mass plundering of wealth by our ruling class (government, elites, bankers, corporations, billionaires, etc). By not teaching the truth in history and inducing chauvinism one can feel superior compare to other nationalities which can lead to deluded exceptionalism. This delusional superiority and exceptionalism can drive one to become white supremacist or racist.

3) Agents Provocateur (The Fake Experts)

Our world is inundated with incompetent, pseudo-elected and unelected leaders and experts who don’t have the people’s interests in their mind. They are paid and bought for, to do the bidding for the ruling elites.

The leader of USA, President Donald Trump often spews racism in his speech. Bill Gates who recently suddenly appeared all over the news and media to talk about Covid-19 pandemic as if he is an expert on pandemic and idolised as a genius and generous donor by the mainstream media turned out to be a scam when the real truth comes out. We pay respect or listen to the wrong people or the wrong experts because that is what the mainstream media and ruling elites want for us.

In France, the agent provocateur expert in racism is none other than the right-wing extremist Eric Zemmour. Eric Zemmour is notoriously well known in France for his racist sexist comments or speeches and for inciting hate against minorities. He has been sued several time by ‘SOS Racisme’, a non-profit organisation that tries to eliminate racism and xenophobia in France. The problem with Zemmour is that in a normal democratic society, he will not be given platform for his own regular TV shows for him to spew hate and racism. For sure there is a vested interest by the ruling elites and the mainstream media for Zemmour to appear regularly on TV giving his opinions and views to influence the public sphere as much as possible and to move the public more to the extreme right-wing political ideology. What is even more bizarre is Zemmour’s cult followers who really believe whatever Zemmour says and support his racism and sexism. As long as there are agent provocateur like Zemmour and his blind incapable of logical thinking followers, ending racism and sexism will be a very difficult battle.

In France police violence and brutality has spread to other citizens not just to citizens of colour, example during the Yellow Vest Movement or early in this year alleged murder of Cédric Chouviat, a delivery man who was stopped by the police because of his dirty motorcycle’s number plate that resulted in a violent inspection control that caused Cédric Chouviat his death.

To fight racism and police brutality we also need to fight impunity of those in power who have done wrong to the people. There should be justice in a society for it to be able to run smoothly and to have peace.

From Slavery to Modern Slavery, White Supremacy, Systemic Racism, and Imperialism

There is still a long road to fight racism and to achieve equality and justice for all, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, etc. The old form of slavery and colonialism have evolved to another more modern form of racism and imperialism, but the essence is still the same. At the core, it is discrimination and exceptionalism, to see others different races from the White as subordinate, as less human than the White that gives the White the illusion that they have the rights to do everything including inhumane things to others different than them.

To have deep understanding in order to bring real systemic changes we have to understand the root cause of the problems which linked to the West’s dark history of slavery and colonialism, understand the pillars of strategy used against us listed above, know the truth and be well-informed as responsible world citizens. We need to solve the real root causes of the problems and not just its symptoms. To bring real changes, we as society as a whole, the whole world have to relentlessly fight until real systemic changes are achieved.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on Indonesia Merdeka.

The Syrian Government is trying to keep medicine at an affordable price for the consumer by limiting the price of medicines, but the pharmaceutical industry inside Syria needs to raise the prices to sustain production.

This is due to two main factors: Sanctions and economy.

Some factories are closing and some are reducing work force.

It’s extremely difficult to purchase the ingredients to make basic medicines through sanctions and also through the exchange rate dollar and the Syrian pound.

Most Syrians earn the same salary they did prior to the beginning of the war 12 years ago but the cost of living has become unbearable for the average family, because the price of manufacturing has increased, and the pharmaceutical companies need to pass on to the consumer, and here is the rub, the consumer can’t afford the increase on its present salary.

The Syrian Government is conducting negotiations with the manufactures at this moment to reach some kind of compromise.
Sanctions

The United States first introduced sanctions at the end of April 2011 against five key persons and entities in the Syrian Government. This measure was followed shortly afterwards by similar sanctions imposed by the European Union. The US sanctions were significantly extended on 18 August 2011 and the list of sanctioned parties has grown. The EU followed on 3 September 2011 by targeting the supply, transport, financing and insurance of Syrian oil and petroleum products.

That was the beginning closely followed by EU sanctions against persons & entities 2013 sanctions can be increased at any time without notice:

• embargo on telecommunications monitoring and interception equipment
• ban on provision of certain services (related to such equipment)
• import ban on crude oil and petroleum products
• ban on provision of certain services (related to crude oil and petroleum products)
• embargo on key equipment and technology for the oil and natural gas industries
• ban on provision of certain services (to the oil and natural gas industries) – ban on provision of new Syrian banknotes and coins
• ban on trade in gold, precious metals and diamonds with the Government of Syria
• embargo on luxury goods
• ban on certain investment (in the oil and natural gas industries, in construction of power plants for electricity production)
• prohibition to participate in the construction of new power plants for electricity production
• restraint on commitments for public and private financial support for trade with Syria and ban on new long term commitments of Member States
• ban on new commitments for grants, financial assistance and concessional loans to the Government of Syria
• prohibition for the European Investment Bank to make certain payments
• restrictions on issuance of and trade in certain bonds
• restrictions on establishment of branches and subsidiaries of and cooperation with Syrian banks
• restrictions on provision of insurance and re-insurance – restrictions on access to airports in the EU for certain flights
• inspection of certain cargoes to Syria and prior information requirement on cargoes to Syria
• restrictions on admission of certain persons
• freezing of funds and economic resources of certain persons, entities and bodies
• prohibition to satisfy claims made by certain persons, entities or bodies – valid until 1.6.2017

And each year it gets worse.

With the fake gas attacks an increase in sanctions came into force, this was partially due to the report on Douma by the OPCW which left out valuable information it was not until 2020 when whistle blowers revealed the truth ,but still strict sanctions on Syria were imposed.

Equipment Laboratory equipment, including parts and accessories for such equipment, (destructive or non-destructive) analysis or detection of chemical substances,

This part read carefully,

with the exception of equipment, including parts or accessories, specifically designed for medical use, universities inside Syria cannot purchase test tubes or basic lab equipment due to sanctions.

Trump is also going to extend more measures through the Caesar Act.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

 

ANNEX

A list of Banned Chemicals

A list of Banned Chemicals:

Separate chemically defined compounds according to Note 1 to Chapters 28 and 29 of the Combined Nomenclature (1), at 90 % concentration or greater, unless otherwise indicated, as follows: Acetone, (CAS RN 67-64-1) (CN code 2914 11 00) Acetylene, (CAS RN 74-86-2) (CN code 2901 29 00) Ammonia, (CAS RN 7664-41-7) (CN code 2814 10 00) Antimony, (CAS RN 7440-36-0) (heading 8110) Benzaldehyde, (CAS RN 100-52-7) (CN code 2912 21 00) Benzoin, (CAS RN 119-53-9) (CN code 2914 40 90) 1-Butanol, (CAS RN 71-36-3) (CN code 2905 13 00) 2-Butanol, (CAS RN 78-92-2) (CN code 2905 14 90) Iso-Butanol, (CAS RN 78-83-1) (CN code 2905 14 90) Tert-Butanol, (CAS RN 75-65-0) (CN code 2905 14 10) Calcium carbide, (CAS RN 75-20-7) (CN code 2849 10 00) Carbon monoxide, (CAS RN 630-08-0) (CN code 2811 29 90) Chlorine, (CAS RN 7782-50-5) (CN code 2801 10 00) Cyclohexanol, (CAS RN 108-93-0) (CN code 2906 12 00) Dicyclohexylamine (DCA), (CAS RN 101-83-7) (CN code 2921 30 99) Ethanol, (CAS RN 64-17-5) (CN code 2207 10 00) Ethylene, (CAS RN 74-85-1) (CN code 2901 21 00) Ethylene oxide, (CAS RN 75-21-8) (CN code 2910 10 00) Fluoroapatite, (CAS RN 1306-05-4) (CN code 2835 39 00) Hydrogen chloride, (CAS RN 7647-01-0) (CN code 2806 10 00) Hydrogen sulfide, (CAS RN 7783-06-4) (CN code 2811 19 80) Isopropanol, 95 % concentration or greater, (CAS RN 67-63-0) (CN code 2905 12 00) Mandelic acid, (CAS RN 90-64-2) (CN code 2918 19 98) Methanol, (CAS RN 67-56-1) (CN code 2905 11 00) Methyl chloride, (CAS RN 74-87-3) (CN code 2903 11 00) 23.7.2013 Official Journal of the European Union L 198/33 EN ( 1) As set out in the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 927/2012 of 9 October 2012 amending Annex I to Council Regulation (EEC) No 2658/87 on the tariff and statistical nomenclature and on the Common Customs Tariff (OJ L 304, 31.10.2012, p. 1). Methyl iodide, (CAS RN 74-88-4) (CN code 2903 39 90) Methyl mercaptan, (CAS RN 74-93-1) (CN code 2930 90 99) Monoethyleneglycol, (CAS RN 107-21-1) (CN code 2905 31 00) Oxalyl chloride, (CAS RN 79-37-8) (CN code 2917 19 90) Potassium sulphide, (CAS RN 1312-73-8) (CN code 2830 90 85) Potassium thiocyanate (KSCN), (CAS RN 333-20-0) (CN code 2842 90 80) Sodium hypochlorite, (CAS RN 7681-52-9) (CN code 2828 90 00) Sulphur, (CAS RN 7704-34-9) (CN code 2802 00 00) Sulphur dioxide, (CAS RN 7446-09-5) (CN code 2811 29 05) Sulphur trioxide, (CAS RN 7446-11-9) (CN code 2811 29 10) Thiophosphoryl chloride, (CAS RN 3982-91-0) (CN code 2853 00 90) Tri-isobutyl phosphite, (CAS RN 1606-96-8) (CN code 2920 90 85) White/yellow phosphorus, (CAS RN 12185-10-3, 7723-14-0) (CN code 2804 70 00) ANNEX II Entry referred to in point (11)(c) IX.A2.010.

 

During a daily press briefing in Ottawa this Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continued parasitizing on calamitous issues to increase the tempo of his bid for election to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) seat next June 17. How else can one explain that he took the unusual step to comment, in his various first sentences, on the situation in the U.S.? In a supposedly self-effacing comment, he stated that “anti-Black racism also exists in Canada.” How convenient for the statesman. Trudeau did not utter a word about the extreme violation of human rights in the U.S. nor show support for the just cause of protesting there, at least in the manner that the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) point out: 

“Over 50 years ago, American Civil Rights Leader Dr. Martin Luther King said… A riot is the language of the unheard … This quote explains and underscores what we are seeing in the media in response to the police killing of a Black man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis … Unfortunately, these are not isolated incidents. A recent U.S. study found that about 1 in 1,000 black men and boys in the U.S. can expect to die at the hands of police. That is, they are 2.5 times more likely than white men and boys to die during an encounter with a member of the police force.”

Trudeau, perhaps also animated by his UNSC elections campaign, did not utter a word about the violent century-old colonialist racism against First Nations in Canada. Did Trudeau have a memory lapse about First Nations in Canada? No, the answer perhaps lies in the fact that in 2014 the Report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur James Anaya on the rights of Indigenous peoples in Canada consisted of a devastating criticism of the situation of Indigenous peoples in Canada. And Canada has not been applying the 2007 United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People. If Trudeau had mentioned this, he would have opened a can of worms, as the situation is notoriously known to much of the public. Thus, this would be bad press for a UNSC seat.

When a reporter asked him in that same press briefing for his view specifically on Trump’s incendiary comments against the protesters, Trudeau said, “I am not going to speak on behalf of other countries.”

This is not true, and to utter blatant falsehoods is certainly not becoming of a country seeking a seat at the UNSC. Trudeau has indeed commented on many occasions regarding countries whose governments he does not like, such as Nicaragua, Bolivia (before the racist Trump–Trudeau coup), Palestine, China, Russia, Iran and many others. In fact, on the hot issue of Venezuela, Trudeau literally “speaks on behalf of other countries,” that is, Venezuela. Through the mouth of the Trump-appointed so-called president-in-waiting Juan Guaidó, Trudeau like Trump “speaks on behalf of Venezuela.”

While very aggressive in meddling in the affairs of counties whose governments do not appeal to Trudeau, he does not have a word to say about violation of human rights against the countries he does like, such as Colombia, Brazil, Honduras, Israel, Saudi Arabia and, last but indeed not least, the U.S. itself. Not a word was uttered in the June 1 press briefing about violation of human rights in the U.S.

This hypocritical contradiction, becoming so glaring, actually made it into the Canadian mainstream media. On June 2, the day following what the whole world witnessed on television, namely Trump ordering his troops to attack protesters in front of the White House so that he can have a photo op with a bible at the nearby official White House church, the daily press briefing took place. However, and this is unusual, the question and answer period was converted even by mainstream media into a relatively aggressive interrogation of Trudeau for his foreign policy double standard. Several, and not just one, journalists’ questions implored Trudeau to comment on Trump’s actions and words, not only the previous day’s police attacks and church photo op, but since the beginning of the crisis. Trudeau again refused to answer the question, let alone address Trump’s words and deeds against protesters. A journalist (seemingly frustrated) made another attempt as the Q and A drew to an end, and thus addressed Trudeau in the following way:

“You’ve been reluctant to comment on the words and actions of US president Donald Trump. But we do have Donald trump now carrying out military action against protesters. We saw people there gassed yesterday to make place for a photo op.  But if you do not want to comment on that, what message do you think that you are sending?”

Trudeau stood silent for 20 seconds, on live TV, a very unusual act that has international repercussions.

On June 3, the Turkish-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) announced a military offensive to capture Tripoli Airport from the Libyan National Army (LNA) and push the LNA back from the southern suburbs of the city of Tripoli itself.

GNA fighters and members of pro-Turkish Syrian militant groups supported by the Turkish military attacked the airport from the southern and western directions and in the evening of the same day took control of it. LNA forces showed very little resistance to the advancing Turkish-backed forces and even left behind several pieces of military equipment in the airport area.

“Our heroic forces have liberated the entire Tripoli International Airport, and our heroic forces are chasing the remnants of Haftar militias, which are fleeing towards Qasr bin Ghashir,” Col. Mohamad Qununu, a spokesman for the “Anger Volcano” operations room declared.

A day earlier, GNA troops ambushed a convoy of LNA forces behind the frontline in southern Tripoli destroying at least 3 vehicles. This became the first indication that the LNA defense was crumbling. The coordination between various LNA units was interrupted.

On June 4, the GNA and its allies launched an attack on positions of the LNA in Qasr bin Ghashir reaching the western vicinity of the town. More than a dozen drone strikes targeted the town over the past 24 hours. Pro-LNA sources claim that these strikes killed a number of civilians.

According to pro-GNA sources, 15 LNA members were killed in the recent clashes. Pro-LNA sources say that 7 GNA fighters were eliminated.

If Turkish-led forces are able to capture Qasr bin Ghashir, LNA southern positions in Tripoli will collapse fully and only Sidi Salih Airport and Tarhuna will remain as the main strongholds of troops loyal to Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.

On June 4, Haftar arrived in Cairo to meet with representatives of the Egyptian government, one of the two key backers of the LNA, the other one being the UAE. Nonetheless, unlike Turkey, Egypt and the UAE do not openly employ their militaries to support their allies in the Libyan conflict. The further expansion of Turkey and the advances of Turkish-led forces deeper into central Libya could force them to change their current approach. In such a case, the Libyan conflict would flare up even further.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Support South Front in its endeavors. If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

The Nord Stream 2 project involves the construction of two gas pipelines with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea. The gas pipeline will run through the territorial waters or exclusive economic zones of Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. However, this gas pipeline is strengthening Russia’s relations with European states, making the U.S. desperate to end the project.

As reported by Bloomberg on Wednesday, U.S. senators are planning to extend sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 project. Sanctions are expected to target insurance companies associated with the project.

Senator Ted Cruz led the charge against Moscow and said the Russian pipeline is “a critical threat to America’s national security and must not be completed.” He added that Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to circumvent the sanctions passed by Congress last year. He of course did not explain how a Russian pipeline a continent away from the U.S. and in northern Europe could impact their security.

Cruz, a Republican, was joined by Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, who said that the pipeline “threatens Ukraine, Europe’s energy independence and gives Russia an opening to exploit our allies” and that “Congress must once again take decisive action and stand in this pipeline’s path.” He, just like Cruz, did not explain exactly how the pipeline is a threat or security concern, especially against Ukraine.

The pipeline does not threaten Europe’s energy independence, and rather, as is enshrined in a free market economy that the U.S. says it ardently defends, allows Europe to have another option for gas. Although Russian gas already reaches Europe, it goes via Ukraine that is volatile and a high risk for Russia. The Director General of the Ukrainian gas transportation system Sergei Makogon said earlier this year that Ukraine “will make every effort to prevent the completion of Nord Stream 2, as this project has a clear political character and runs counter to European principles of solidarity.”

With Russian gas to Europe at risk, the Nord Stream 2 project ensures Russia’s gas can reach European markets so it can compete with gas from Qatar, the U.S. and other sources. And it is with this that lays the problem for Washington. It is obviously absurd to suggest that Russian gas “threatens Ukraine” or is a “critical threat to America’s national security.” The proposed sanctions, that also has backing from Republican Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, is just part of “gas wars” initiated by the U.S. to force countries to buy American liquefied natural gas.

It is for this reason that Russian Ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said on that the U.S.  will not be able to stop the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

Last week, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, who resigned on June 2, said that new sanctions against Nord Stream 2 could be adopted by the U.S. Congress in an operational mode. Their purpose is to prevent commissioning of the gas pipeline.

At that time, media also swept on the news that an alleged dispute broke out between U.S. President Donald Trump and long-time German Chancellor Angela Merkel because of differences of opinion on the Nord Stream 2 project. However, neither Berlin nor Washington officially confirmed this rumour. Also, at the end of last year, the U.S. adopted a defense budget providing for sanctions on companies involved in laying the gas pipeline. As a result, the Swiss company Allseas stopped work and withdrew its ships. The head of the Ministry of Energy Alexander Nowak said after that Russia is able to complete the project itself however.

The Nord Stream 2 subsidiary, Gazprom Nord Stream 2, is building the gas pipeline. The annual meeting of Gazprom’s board of directors is scheduled for June 11 and it is expected the main topic of talks to be about the impact of Western sanctions on Gazprom and response measures. This is more crucial as now Poland has joined the U.S. in anti-Nord Stream 2 sanctions.

The Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection initiated a new proceeding against Gazprom regarding the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, threatening the Russian company with a fine of €50 million. The Polish office demanded that Gazprom provide documents regarding the project, namely contracts concluded between Gazprom’s subsidiary and other companies financing the construction of the gas pipeline. These were primarily contracts for the transmission, distribution, sale, supply and storage of gas fuels. Gazprom did not provide this information, and now Poland aims to fine the company.

Despite these pressures, in which Poland has a very minor part, Russia will unlikely be deterred by threats of sanctions. Russia has already learned long ago how to operate while under sanction and will continue to pursue projects that serve their state interests and integrate Russia closer to Europe. This is especially important as the European countries are more interested in convenient gas that is not only logistically easier, but cheaper than many other alternatives.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

On May 22, 2020, The Lancet published “Hydroxychloroquine or Chloroquine With or Without A Macrolide For Treatment of COVID-19: a Multinational Registry Analysis”.  It was described as an observational study purportedly involving more than 96,000 hospitalized Covid-19 patients in  671 hospitals across six continents. What was not disclosed is the fact that the two lead co-authors have significant, relevant financial conflicts of interest that just may have biased the reported findings. 

• The database belongs to Surgisphere Corporation whose founder and CEO, is Dr. Sapan Desai, who is a lead co-author of the study. Dr. Desai has refused to disclose the data – for independent confirmatory review. In fact, he refuses to identify the participating hospitals, or even the countries.
• Dr. Mandeep Mehra, the lead co-author is a director at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, which is credited with funding the study. Dr. Mehra and The Lancet failed to disclose that Brigham Hospital has a partnership with Gilead and is currently conducting TWO trials testing Remdesivir, the prime competitor of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19, the focus of the  study.

The Lancet report claimed that COVID-19 “patients treated with hydroxychloroquine (with or without a macrolide) were at increased risk of de-novo ventricular arrhythmia and “a greater hazard for in-hospital death.” Such an alarming finding from an  inaccessible dataset should have raised concerns for the editor of the Lancet, about the integrity of the study and the accuracy of the claimed findings. In fact, within  days of the Lancet publication, concerns about that dataset were raised on social media, on PubPeer, the post-publication discussion website, and in newspapers.

Within days of publication, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) declared on CNN “The scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy.” A media blitz against hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) created panic: clinical trials aimed at testing hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 were suspended by International public health institutions including the World Health Organization the UK government regulatory agency and the French government.

The chief scientist at the WHO, Soumya Swaminathan, stated that although the Lancet data weren’t from a randomized controlled trial, the data were compelling because they “came from multiple registries and quite a large number of patients, 96,000 patients.”

Knowledgeable scientists and experienced clinicians around the world were skeptical

The alarming findings and serious negative impact of the Lancet report led numerous scientists around the globe to scrutinize the report in detail. That scrutiny by legitimate, independent scientists has led to many serious questions about the integrity of the study, the authenticity of the data, and the validity of the methods the authors used.

An Open Letter posted online, is addressed to the authors of the report: Mandeep R Mehra, MD, Sapan S Desai, MD, Frank Ruschitzka, MD, Amit N Patel, MD, and to the editor, Dr. Richard Horton. The letter was signed by more than 200 prominent scientists across the world, including 17 from institutions in Africa.

The scientists question the evidence for claimed serious risks posed from the use of hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 patients. Among the concerns raised by the scientists are the following:

• A range of gross deviations from standard research and clinical practices, such as: patients were prescribed inexplicably high daily doses of hydroxychloroquine –far higher than the FDA-recommended doses.
• There was no ethics review.
• The number of patients reportedly from Australia far exceeded the number of patients in the Australian government database;.
• Gross misrepresentation of the numbers of deaths in Australia.
• “Both the number of cases and deaths [the claimed 40% deaths in Africa], and the details provide seem unlikely.”
• Refusal to identify the hospitals that contributed patient data.
• The ratios of patients who received chloroquine (49 %) to those who received hydroxychloroquine (50% ) are implausible; in Australia chloroquine is not available without special government authorization.

The Guardian reported on May 28^th that it could not confirm that UK’s health agencies had even provided data for the study.

On May 29^th The New York Times reported that 100 scientists and clinicians raised serious questions about the validity of the The Lancet report findings. It reported that on May 29^th Dr. Mehra issued the following statement: “We leveraged the data available through Surgisphere to provide observational guidance to inform the care of hospitalized Covid-19 patients” [Perhaps someone can translate what “leveraged the data” means ….? The Times understated the number of scientists who signed the open letter; it is closer to 220]

Dr. James Watson, senior scientist at the MORU-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Thailand doubts that any research organization could have obtained such detailed massive records for so many people in Africa that quickly. Based on healthcare workers’ descriptions of medical record-keeping, at many hospitals in Africa, he indicated: “I just find it very hard to believe.” Dr. Watson contributed concerns regarding the African data to the Open Letter. He had to suspend a just-launched trial of HCQ to comply with UK regulators following the Lancet report.

Dr. Anthony Etyang, a consultant physician and clinical epidemiologist with the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya, who is also a signatory to the Open Letter, wrote to The Scientist expressing his doubts about the numbers of African patients in the Surgisphere dataset, noting that even private hospitals on the continent have poor medical records.

Rather than investigating the serious issues raised about the integrity of the report, The Lancet editor posted the authors’ claimed to “correction” of the numbers of patients in Asia and Australia on a page designated “Department of Error” – whatever that means!

• The nature and number of the serious “discrepancies” that have emerged following the Lancet publication of the Surgisphere “study,” lead one to suspect out-and-out FRAUD.

Disputed Hydroxychloroquine Study Brings Scrutiny to Surgisphere, an investigative report by Catherine Offord in The SCIENTIST, May 30, 2020,  looked deeper than others and uncovered background information about Dr. Desai and the changes in Surgisphere’s product line and his marketing methods. In 2008, Surgisphere was the publisher of medical textbooks that ran afoul when physicians complained about falsified rave reviews. In 2010, Surgisphere became a high impact, online medical journal, whose website boasts that it “accrued over 50,000 subscribers spanning almost every country around the world… with almost one million page views per month.” The Journal of Surgical Radiology had a three-year run; its last issue was published in January 2013.

The Scientist reports that Dr. Desai is named in three medical malpractice lawsuits that were filed during the second half of 2019.

Additional disturbing facts about Surgisphere have been uncovered by a team of investigative reporters — Melissa  Davey, Stephanie Kirchgaessner, and Sarah Boseley – for The Guardian.

“Surgisphere, the company that provided the database for studies published by two of the world’s leading medical journals – The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine – based on Surgisphere data. The studies were co-authored the  hydroxychloroquine studies.

“Surgisphere’s employees have little or no data or scientific background. An employee listed as a science editor appears to be a science fiction author and fantasy artist. Another employee listed as a marketing executive is an adult model and events hostess… until Monday, the “get in touch” link on Surgisphere’s homepage redirected to a WordPress template for a cryptocurrency website, raising questions about how hospitals could easily contact the company to join its database.”

The fiasco of the publication of essentially fraudulent reports in the journals with the greatest impact on both clinical treatment and public health policies, reveals how thoroughly corrupted so-called peer review has become because it lacks external, independent review by scientists who have NO STAKE in the study outcome. It was only after the reports by The Scientist andThe Guardian, that the editors of The NEJM and The Lancet were compelled to issue an: “Expression of concern.”  This fiasco demonstrates why intelligent people seek alternative sources for reliable information.

The website, Science Defies Politics exposes numerous scientifically invalid studies that were essentially “hit jobs” against the use of hydroxychloroquine.

WHY are very powerful corporate-government stakeholders so intent on killing a drug with a 70 year track record? Because the drug works against the pandemic; it is readily available, and costs very little. Therefore, it poses a financial threat to both pharma companies and their partners in government and academia, those who are intent on profiting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

As uncovered by Science Defies Politics: 16 of the panel members selected by NIH to formulate  the official COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines – including two of the three co-chairs – were paid by Gilead. They issued guidelines that raised fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the use of HCQ combined with AZ, while raising no fear, doubt, or uncertainty about using Gilead’s unproven, unapproved, drug remdesivir; a drug that has shown mediocre performance in clinical trials.  Seven of the NIH panelists failed to disclose their financial ties to Gilead. They are listed here.

The medical scientific literature is infested with financially motivated, shoddy, studies aimed at promoting products and, when a life-saving, non-patentable product, proves effective, scientists are hired to author study reports that are designed to tarnish scientists’ reputations, and to proclaim findings that refute legitimate findings. In this case, studies designed to “debunk” the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19.

Examples of countries and physicians who have witnessed the effectiveness of the HCQ – Az combination as a treatment for covid-19, are viewed by corporate-government collaborating partners as posing a major threat to their marketing agendas.

For example,  Senegal and India are putting their hopes in hydroxychloroquine, marketed by Sanofi, under the trade name Plaquenil. A Sanofi spokesperson stated: “We are providing the drug to hospitals and doctors to enable them to carry out clinical trials to determine whether hydroxychloroquine is effective or not, but not to treat Covid-19.”

On May 23^rd the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) issued expanded revised guidelines for use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for COVID-19:

“The Joint Monitoring Group and the NTF have recommended prophylactic use of HCQ in asymptomatic frontline workers, such as surveillance workers deployed in containment zones and paramilitary/police personnel involved in Covid-19 related activities, asymptomatic household contacts of laboratory confirmed cases and all asymptomatic healthcare workers involved in containment and treatment of Covid-19 and working in non-Covid hospitals/non-Covid areas of Covid hospitals/blocks.“.

Didier Raoult, MD, PhD — “a Science Star” — as the NYT described him in a recent profile, who has identified 500 novel species of human-borne bacteria; a scientist known all over the world as the discoverer of the first giant virus, a discovery that earned him the Grand Prix, one of France’s most prestigious awards.

Dr. Raoult is the founder and director of the research hospital, the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée Infection (IHU).  He is a professor on the faculty of Medicine of Ais-Marseille University, and since 2008, he has been the director of the Infectious and Tropical Emergent Diseases Research Unit), which employs more than 200 people and runs a hospital with 3,700 patients.  He has more than 2,300 indexed publications and was classified among the ten leading French researchers by the journal Nature.  Dr. Raoult has a reputation for bluster but also for creativity that others lack. As the Times noted,  “He looks where no one else cares to, with methods no one else is using, and [he] finds things.”

Since publishing favorable reports about a treatment combination of two cheap, widely prescribed medicines: hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin, as a treatment of choice against Covid-19, Dr. Raoult has become the subject of intense demonization by the corporate-influenced medical establishment, the media, and the who resort to this tactic whenever they lack evidence or legitimate grounds to support public health policies that cause people harm. Their fallback tactic is to demonize every doctor who challenges them and refuses to adhere to their financially – driven prescribing decrees.

Dr. Raoult’s latest scientific report about HCQ, Early Diagnosis and Management of COVID-19 Patients: A Real-Life Cohort study of 3,737 Patients, Marseille, France was posted on May 27, 2020,

It is a retrospective study report of the clinical management of 3,737 patients, including 3,054 (81.7%) treated with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin (HCQ-AZ) for at least three days and 683 (18.3%) patients treated with other methods. Outcomes were death, transfer to the intensive care unit (ICU), ≥ 10 days of hospitalization and viral shedding.

“Treatment with HCQ-AZ was associated with a decreased risk of transfer to the ICU or death (HR 0.19 0.12-0.29), decreased risk of hospitalization ≥10 days (odds ratios 95% CI 0.37 0.26-0.51) and shorter duration of viral shedding (time to negative PCR: HR 1.27 1.16-1.39). QTc prolongation (>60 ms) was observed in 25 patients (0.67%) leading to the cessation of treatment in 3 cases. No cases of torsade de pointe or sudden death were observed.

Conclusion
Early diagnosis, early isolation and early treatment with at least 3 days of HCQ-AZ result in a significantly better clinical outcome and contagiosity in patients with COVID-19 than other treatments.”

In France, doctors who have followed the research of Dr. Raoult, and have themselves witnessed the effectiveness of the HCQ-AZ combination, are suing the government. They demand the right to treat their patients with these drugs before easing of the lockdown. They seek to prevent complications and deaths from a second wave of Covid-19.

Dr. Violaine Guérin, an endocrinologist who conducted a trial on 100 doctors infected with COVID-19, and their families, reported her study findings that demonstrated the effectiveness of prescribing HCQ combined with azithromycin at the first sign of symptoms. The drugs substantially reduced the viral load of Covid-19:

“Taking hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin on the outset of flu symptoms can prevent Covid-19 from getting worse. We can treat people now before they end up on a ventilator.” Her findings replicated those Dr. Didier Raoult.

Dr. Guérin recommends prescribing hydroxychloroquine for health workers infected by the coronavirus, which is outside of its approved uses. Health unions in France warned that almost 12,000 health care professionals out of 550,000 – roughly a quarter of the country’s health force – were sick with Covid-19. Dr. Guérin recommends its use on compassionate grounds, stating:

“From the very beginning, doctors have been calling for the right to self-prescribe because they are the ones on the frontline of the coronavirus battle. We cannot waste time when we can treat Covid-19 now, as long as this is done in the early stages of the virus and patients are screened for pre-existing medical conditions.”

Soon after this favorable study was published, the Minister of Health Olivier Veran in bald political arm twisting fashion, asked the highest health authority to review its authorization for the use of HCQ  to treat Covid, suggesting further restriction.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is by Anthony Brown/Alamy Stock Photo

Countless warnings about how law enforcement could use contact-tracing apps to monitor people have gone unheeded.  

As BGR.com revealed police are using contact tracing to identify protester’s affiliations.

“According to Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner John Harringon, officials there have been using what they describe, without going into much detail, as contact-tracing in order to build out a picture of protestor affiliations — a process that officials in the state say has led them to conclude that much of the protest activity there is being fueled by people from outside coming in.”

A Twitter feed titled “Minnesota Contact Tracing” revealed how police are using contact tracing to identify and arrest protesters. “Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington says they’ve begun contact tracing arrestees.” 

Recently, 100 human rights groups warned that an Apple-Google contact tracing app could be used as a cover to identify activists and minorities.

“An increase in state digital surveillance powers, such as obtaining access to mobile phone location data, threatens privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of association, in ways that could violate rights and degrade trust in public authorities—undermining the effectiveness of any public health response. Such measures also pose a risk of discrimination and may disproportionately harm already marginalized communities.”

So despite all assurances to the contrary, it appears that 100 human rights groups were right; law enforcement can and will use contact tracing to identify protesters.

Updated 6/3:

VoteMap used anonymous data to identify protesters phones

According to an article in The Detroit News, police can identify anonymous protesters cell phones.

“The tracking, known as geoharvesting, is when data is gathered from a smartphone app on a device connected to the internet. That data contains geolocation information that can be queried to show movement on a map.”

 “The cellphone users remained anonymous and their locations were instead culled from the publishers of the opt-in apps they were using, said McEwan, CEO of the Austin-based startup Datum that is the parent company under which VoteMap falls. People gauging cellphone locations the day of the April 30 protest and the day after would not be able to see to whom the phone belonged,” she said. (To find out more about VoteMap click here.)

As NBC News noted, contact tracers also use geofencing to help identify protesters.

“Geofencing” captures the social media posts of people entering a specific area. The technology locates any cellphones that cross into the area by locking onto their geolocation systems, and then records social media posts and sometimes other data from the phones.”

Time exposed how the military (National Guard) uses a classified system called “Secret Internet Protocol Router” or SIPR to monitor protesters. (To learn about Perspecta Inc.’s role click here & here.)

Big Tech’s hands are dirty with Federal money paying for new ways to monitor Americans.

A recent Business Insider article describes how police use Big Tech to monitor activists and protesters the moment they walk out their door.

“Law enforcement agencies have made full use of high-tech surveillance tools as protests sweep the country following the death of George Floyd. A predator drone operated by Customs and Border Patrol circled above protesters in Minneapolis.”

Buzzfeed News warns, “law enforcement has a wide breadth of surveillance technologies that could be used to monitor and target protesters — including controversial facial recognition software Clearview AI, license plate readers, body cameras, and video analysis tools.”

Both of these articles reveal a frightening array of Big Tech surveillance devices being used by police nationwide.

Minneapolis police and the Minnesota Fusion Center are also using Clearview AI, BriefCam, Ring doorbell cameras, Axon police body cameras, ShotSpotter and license plate readers to create an intimate view of people’s lives.

BuzzFeed’s article also revealed how police use Arxys “Milestone” software which uses video detection and analytics to identify people.

“The Minneapolis Police Department said in a surveillance white paper that it uses Arxys [Milestone] software — a video management tool that claims to offer “video motion detection” and “video analytics” — to analyze CCTV footage.”

While both articles do a great job of revealing some of the ways law enforcement can monitor anyone, it really did not go into detail about how invasive Big Tech’s surveillance devices truly are.

Let’s say you use your smartphone for everything; texts, phone calls, pictures, music, etc., if you also use Alexa or a NEST thermostat or any smart device in your home, these devices collect, store and transmit all that personal data, which police can use to identify a person. Police can also identify people who use a Tablet or laptop, because like a phone they have an IP and MAC address.

If you use any of these devices to make online purchases, police can ask those companies to provide details of what you bought and when. Anytime you use a credit/debit or customer rewards card, someone is compiling a database of everything you purchased.

Let’s say you drive or take public transit, police can track your vehicle and they can use facial recognition to identify where you work or which bus or train stops you use.

If you drive or take an Uber or Lyft, chances are your personal information is being recorded and used to build a massive database of your comings and goings. From the moment you step outside of your home, your neighbor’s Ring doorbell or Flock cameras have identified you, your family and your vehicle.

And if they are any social distance snitches in your neighborhood, they have recorded you and reported you to police via Ring Neighbors or NextDoor.

Thanks to Big Tech, a person’s everyday life is no longer private. Now everything we do is being recorded in real-time. Things like what and where you eat, who your friends and family members are, who your family doctor is or where you worship are all available to law enforcement.

Despite what Big tech, politicians and law enforcement say, AI and smart devices are being used to identify activists and protesters.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Study.com

Today’s fires which have spread across America in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the knee of Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin has presented America with the chance to do some serious soul searching. It has also presented certain Deep State opportunists, color revolutionaries and anarchism-financing billionaires a chance to unleash what some are calling an “America’s Maidan” in the hopes of accomplishing what four years of Russiagate failed to do.

The fact that these riots have occurred at a moment when America finds itself seriously reviving the spirit of JFK’s space vision is an irony that in many ways parallels the earlier “pregnant moment” of 1968. (In case you are not aware, NASA has officially revived manned space launches on May 28 for the first time since Obama killed the Saturn rocket program in 2011, establishing a new program to return to the Moon before going to Mars under the Artemis Program established in 2017. The Artemis Accords of May 15 lay out the framework for international cooperation in space closely dovetailing similar commitments made by Russia and China).

In 1968, the seeds of two opposing futures clashed for dominance in America and the world more broadly. On the one hand, humanity landed for the first time upon another celestial body and great hopes for a space-based economic system were felt by the entire world, while on the other hand race riots gripped America while an insane war in Vietnam was taking on a new anthrax-filled life ultimately killing over 500 000 young Americans and millions of Vietnamese. In this dystopian nightmare, endless sums of money were absorbed into the American Military Industrial Complex that John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had died resisting.

Faced with these two futures, the citizens of 1968 chose poorly, and acquiesced to be put onto a path of insanity as Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights Movement became replaced by FBI-funded radicals under Cointel Pro, America’s space program was atrophied with Apollo’s moon program being killed in 1973 and the Vietnam war destroyed the last remnants of patriotism in the hearts of young moral Americans.

Fortunately, the study of the past affords us more than simply reasons to be depressed by stories of assassination and failure.

Along with a proper sense of history, come the insights needed to prevent tragic choices and impulses from repeating themselves into the future, and with this fact in mind, it is important to observe the life of a particular non-tragic personality in America who overcame his fears in order to take to the stage of history, when others would not during a time of great crisis: Senator Robert Kennedy (aka: The man who should have been president), whose anniversary of assassination on June 5, 1968 is upon us.

Robert Kennedy as a Force in World History

While serving as Attorney General-first under the leadership of his brother John, then under Lyndon Johnson (until 1965), Robert Kennedy’s life was always defined by a strong commitment to peace, development and cooperation with justice for all races.

Exemplifying his intention to bring people into the process of historical change, Robert spoke to crowds in Apartheid South Africa in 1961 (after the ruling government refused to meet him) saying:

“Few have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. … It is from numberless acts of courage and belief such as these that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

After quitting his job as Attorney General in 1965 in order to become a Senator and later presidential candidate, Kennedy focused his energy on reviving his brother’s Peace Corps, attacking the growing war in Vietnam, opposing racism at home and ending the despair of ghetto poverty that no one wished to look at.

In the midst of the July 1967 Detroit riots that resulted in 43 dead, 1189 injured and 2000 buildings destroyed, Robert was asked what he would do if he were president. In response RFK said that he would force the media to show all of America what life is really like in the Ghettos:

“Let them show the sound, the feel, the hopelessness, and what it’s like to think you’ll never get out. Show a black teenager, told by some radio jingle to stay in school, looking at his older brother- who stayed in school who is out of a job. Show the Mafia pushing narcotics; put a candid camera team in a ghetto school and watch what a rotten system of education it really is. Film a mother staying up all night to keep the rats from her baby… Then ask people to watch it… and experience what it was like to live in the most affluent society in history- without hope.”

Later that Summer, Martin Luther King and Bobby began a close collaboration with Martin telling his associates that the Civil Rights Movement would put its full support behind Bobby in the run up to the 1968 elections. Bobby had earlier intervened into Martin Luther King’s October 1960 arrest in Atlanta for the crime of driving with an invalid licence in racist territory. Both leaders advanced civil rights on their respective paths during the next few years but their peak collaboration only began during the Summer of 1967 as both men made their resistance to the war in Vietnam known publicly.

In an interview on Face the Nation in November 1967, Bobby Kennedy gave a lesson to Americans that could have applied as easily to today’s regime change-crazed America, asking rhetorically:

“Do we have the right in the United States to say we’re going to kill tens of thousands of people, make millions of people, as we have… refugees, kill women and children? I very seriously question whether we have that right… Those of us who stay in the United States, we must feel it when we use napalm, when a village is destroyed and civilians are killed. This is our responsibility.”

Martin Luther King’s untimely death on April 4, 1968 resulted in a new wave of urban race riots that took America by storm sweeping through 120 cities and resulting in 39 deaths (mostly black) and 2600 injured. Over 75 000 troops were deployed to the streets of America during this time of tension.

Bobby Kennedy was on a plane to a presidential campaign rally in Indianapolis when he received news of King’s murder and was advised by both the Indianapolis police chief and his own staff to cancel the rally for his own safety. Not only did RFK not listen to this advice, but the statesman went straight into the ghettos of Indianapolis, stood on a flatbed truck and gave a speech to thousands of poor, broken hearted Americans who sat on a razors edge, as he delivered the news of King’s death. Choosing to stand with the people totally unprotected, Robert’s words held such potent love and empathy that they cut through the anger and rage of the mob resulting in a miracle as Indianapolis became the only major city in which no riots occurred. If you have not yet listened to this speech, take the 6 minutes to do so now.

King’s close associate Ralph Abernathy reported to Arthur Schlesinger:

“I was so despondent and frustrated at King’s death, I had to seriously ask myself- can this country be saved? I guess the thing that kept us going was that maybe Bobby Kennedy would come up with some answers for the country… I remember telling him he had a chance to be a prophet. But prophets get shot.”

Indeed, just one day after his victory of the democratic primaries in California on June 4, 1968, Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles. Although a young Palestinian man named Sirhan Sirhan was made the lone scape goat, mountains of evidence accumulated over the years has pointed to a much darker story. Such evidence includes the findings of RFK’s coroner who proved that the killing bullet entered not from the front but rather at close range from the back of the neck.

Today’s world desperately needs citizens and statesmen with the wisdom of such figures as Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy if a similar tragedy will not unfold again today as it did in 1968. In those days, covert intelligence operations transplanted King’s Civil Rights movement with its effective use of civil yet peaceful disobedience, with the “New Left”, featuring armed and violence-prone operatives running bomb creating organizations like the Weather Underground that littered bombs (and STDs) across America. With the rise of the drug-loving anarchists of the new left who would later become leading figures of today’s sociopathic establishment, a new ethic was created on the basis of equating all aspects of western civilization (including the space program, atomic technology, the American constitution and western values more broadly) to be as evil as the war in Vietnam, corporate greed and the military industrial complex.

So here we are once more, standing on the precipice of a new age of cooperation, space exploration and international development vs a Deep State-managed dystopian world order that would make Orwell turn in his grave. If even a modicum of the wisdom expressed by MLK, JFK or Bobby Kennedy is alive in the heart of Donald Trump, and a few other world leaders, then I would say the chance of a bright future for mankind is not lost.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review.

Featured image is from Flickr

The novel coronavirus has done severe economic damage all over the globe. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) stated on June 1, 2020 that it could take nearly a decade for the economy to grow back to levels forecasted this January. As economists, we want to understand just how much damage has been done to what people and sectors and how that damage was perpetrated. There’s usually more than one perp in a Depression. 

First, the coronavirus obviously causes direct health effects that can impact economies. Note that economists like myself are not suggesting illness or death is bad primarily because of their economic effects; the social and personal costs of pandemics are devastating on their own.

Second, people voluntarily change their consumption, work, and personal behavior in reaction to pandemics, without the need for any intervention.

Third, political interventions like stay-at-home orders and business closures coercively change consumption, work and personal behaviors in ways that impact economies.

In this study, I’m interested mostly in the effects of political interventions. No one person can do much to affect mass, decentralized behavioral changes. But political officials taking advice from epidemiological and economic experts can directly and severely affect state and regional economies.

The numbers I use to track these intervention-based effects are state-specific insured unemployment claims from March 1, 2020 until May 9, 2020, the most recent reflected week at the time of writing. I group states by their lockdown status circa the most recent reflected week. Generally, I index insured unemployment rates to 0% on March 1, 2020, so what you’re seeing in these charts is the difference between the unemployment rates in each state reflecting the two weeks ending on March 1, 2020 and the unemployment rates in each state reflecting the two weeks ending on May 9, 2020.

First, let’s look at the series for all states from March 15, 2020 (rates are extremely stable before that) and May 9, 2020. Each thin line is a state’s own series, colored by group. States locked down but with stated lockdown end dates are red, states locked down with no stated end dates are orange, states partially or fully reopened are blue, and states with no official lockdown are green. Thick lines in the series represent group averages.

Next, let’s take a look at each group. I start with states that were still locked down on May 9, since their group average (15.5% insured unemployed) is the highest of all the groups.

Washington (29.5% indexed to March 1 and 31.2% unindexed unemployment), Nevada (25.3% indexed to March 1 and 26.75% unindexed unemployment), and Hawaii (22.45% indexed to March 1 and 23.42% unindexed unemployment) have the highest levels of unemployment in the closed group.

In the next graph, I look at the states locked down on May 9 whose lockdowns didn’t have definitive end dates.

There aren’t many states in this group as of May 9. It’s important to note that some states started their lockdowns in March and April with indefinite lockdowns and by May 9 had formulated plans with on-paper end dates or phased reopenings.

The next graph looks at states amidst a partial or full reopening as of May 9. Note that this group consists of both states whose reopenings were weeks old and states whose reopenings were brand new as of May 9. For the sake of rigor I disincluded states that reopened on May 9, and kept those states in the “closed” group.

Florida is the obvious outlier of this graph, with 29.5% indexed to March 1 and 31.2% unindexed unemployment.

The final graph looks at the states with no formal shutdown orders, or what I call “no lockdown” states.

While the outlier of this small group, Arkansas, did not have a formal lockdown order, it did shut down restaurants, elective surgeries, casinos, venues and salons throughout the state.

Here are the group averages on their own graph:

What story do these graphs tell? An incomplete story, to be sure, like watching a very small part of a crime scene in which there are several perpetrators unfold before one’s eyes. Here’s a summary table of where group averages were on May 9:

In general, states that were still closed on May 9 had the highest average insured unemployment rates relative to the average for that same group on March 1. The unemployment rate of fully locked down states was at least double than states that had no formal lockdown. States that were fully or partially opened by May 9 fared better than fully locked down states, but as a group had almost double the average insured unemployment rate of states without a formal lockdown.

It’s important to issue a few caveats upon further study of this unfolding scene.

First: many states are still today (the beginning of June 2020) in the middle of reopening. Some states like Washington and Wisconsin have seen challenges (in the case of Wisconsin, successful) to their ongoing lockdown.

Second: there is no direct tradeoff between economic health and population-level health. It isn’t clear to what extent lockdowns will reduce COVID-19 fatalities and infections in the long run, as the imposition of general quarantines naturally slow the rate at which a population reaches herd immunity given that they are designed to slow the spread of the virus.

If general quarantines damage the economy enough to send it into its worst depression since the Great One our grandparents lived through, but do not significantly reduce fatalities and infections in the long run, get us foreseeably closer to a workable vaccine, or protect the most vulnerable in particular, then lockdowns might maximize economic pain for minimal health gains.

This is what the unemployment data seem to say at the moment. Economists should continue to look at this and other numbers for clues that can help us understand how best to put together the story of this unfolding scene, so that if some kinds of interventions turn out to be perpetrators instead of panaceas, we know to advise against employing them in the future.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Abigail is an incoming research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Economic Growth and assistant professor of economics at Wichita State University.

Featured image is from the author

At Nellis air base in Nevada – the Pentagon announced – the construction of an experimental 5G network which will begin in July, the network will be fully operational in January of next year.

In this base, Red Flag, the most important air exercise in the United States, was held last March, attended by German, Spanish and Italian forces. Italian forces were also composed of F-35 fighters which – Air Force communicated – were «integrated with the best assets of American aviation» so as to «make the most out of the aircraft potential and weapon systems supplied», certainly nuclear weapons included.

At Red Flag 2021, 5G relocatable cell towers, that can be set up and taken down in less than an hour, will be probably already operating to be tested in a real environment. Nellis base is the fifth base selected by the Pentagon to test the military use of 5G: the others are located in Utah, Georgia, California and Washington State.

A document from the Congress Research Service (National Security Implications of Fifth Generation 5G Mobile Technologies, 22 May 2020) explained that this fifth generation mobile data transmission technology could have “numerous military applications”.

One of these applications concerns “autonomous military vehicles”, that is robotic aerial, land and naval vehicles capable of autonomously carrying out attack missions without being remotely piloted. This procedure requires the storage and processing of a huge amount of data that cannot be carried out only onboard the autonomous vehicle. 5G will allow this type of vehicle to use an external data storage and processing system, similar to today’s Cloud for personal file storage.

Such a system can make possible “new military operational concepts”, such as that of “swarm” in which each vehicle automatically connects to the others to carry out its mission (for example, an aerial attack on a city or a naval attack on a port).

5G will allow the entire command and control system of the United States armed forces to be strengthened worldwide: currently – the document explained – they use satellite communications, but due to distance, the signal takes some time to arrive, causing delay in the execution of military operations. This delay will be virtually eliminated by 5G.
5G will play a decisive role particularly in the use of hypersonic weapons which travel at speeds exceeding 10 times that of sound also equipped with nuclear warheads.

5G will also be extremely important for secret services, making control and intelligence systems much more effective than those currently used.

“5G is vital to maintaining America’s military and economic benefits,” the Pentagon stressed. Particularly advantageous is the fact that “emerging 5G technology, commercially available, offers the Department of Defense the opportunity to use this system at lower cost for its operational needs”. In other words, the 5G commercial network, made by private companies, is used by the US military with a much lower cost than what would be necessary if the network was built solely for military purposes.

This also happens in other countries. It is therefore clear that the 5G dispute, especially between United States and China, is not only part of the trade war. 5G creates a new field for the arms race, which takes place not so much quantitatively but qualitatively.

This is silenced by media and largely ignored even by critics of this technology, who focus their attention on possible harmful effects on health. This very important commitment should however be combined with the commitment against military use of this technology. unknowingly financed by ordinary fifth-generation cell phone users.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was translated from Italian by Roger Lagassé, published on Il Manifesto.

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

Featured image is from Voltairenet.org

US equity prices are near or at all-time highs at a time of unprecedented economic collapse, a festering main street Depression, unemployment way higher than in the 1930s, with no prospect for a V-shaped recovery, only its illusion.

The Wall Street owned and controlled Fed is responsible for the extraordinary melt-up in stock valuations, money printing madness to blame — saving the stock market at the expense of the economy and welfare of ordinary Americans.

For the first time in US history, the Fed’s balance sheet exceeds $7 trillion.

It’s up from around $250 billion in the late 1980s and $750 billion in late December 2007, the onset of the 2008-09 financial crisis — a colossal example of mismanagement, an eventual price to pay for what’s going on.

Wall Street on Parade (WSOP) noted a disconnect between the Fed’s balance sheet and economic collapse.

At yearend 2019, WSOP explained that the Fed “was already deep into a debt crisis,” reflected by its minutes.

From mid-September 2019 to late January, the Fed already “had made $6.6 trillion cumulatively in emergency revolving repo loans to Wall Street” — even though the first US COVID-19 death didn’t occur until February 28.

Flooding the market with liquidity at near-zero percent interest is a virtual open sesame to unrestrained speculation for easy profits — no matter the extraordinary divergence between equity valuations and intrinsic value.

While highly indebted US households pay double-digit interest on outstanding credit card balances, banks and investors have access to near-free money, because of unprecedented Fed policy, changing the rules on how it operates.

As the saying goes, there’s something rotten in Denmark — courtesy of the US ruling class in Washington, at the Fed, and in corporate suites.

From 2008 to now with no end of it in prospect, the White House and Congress let the Fed (aka Wall Street) artificially manipulate markets and interest rates for maximum speculative profit-making.

It’s operating like never before as “both the lender and buyer of last resort,” WSOP explained, breaching its Federal Reserve Act (1913) statutory obligations.

The greater the Fed-produced equity and bond bubble, the louder the bang when it bursts beyond repai.

At the same time, protracted main street Depression conditions have festered for over a decade, conditions today worse than at any previous time in US history.

On June 3, economist John Williams warned that the entire economic expansion since 2009 “is at risk of collapse,” adding:

“Exploding federal deficit and debt shows (a) historic low ability of the US economy to cover (its) government obligations.”

The state of the US economy is the most dismal in its history by virtually all key metrics — notably GDP, retail sales, industrial production, durable goods orders, and unemployment at around 40%, not the phony low-ball Labor Department number.

Annualized Q II contraction is estimated to be about 50%, far exceeding all previous downturns.

And yet the Trump regime and Congress are doing little to nothing to create jobs and stimulate economic recovery — their focus almost entirely on serving corporate America and high-net-worth households.

US policy comes at the expense of ordinary Americans — hung out to dry by ruling class indifference to their health, welfare, and other fundamental rights.

Over a decade ago, noted investor Scott Minerd said “(t)he Fed will never be able to end quantitative easing. It’s here forever” — artificially manipulating markets, adding:

“This policy blunder will have long-term implications for our society.”

“The Fed and Treasury have essentially created a new moral hazard by socializing credit risk.”

“The United States will never be able to return to free market capitalism as we knew it before these policies were put in place.”

Minerd and others believe it’ll take years for the US economy to recover to its 2019 level.

Countless millions of ordinary Americans and others abroad may never recover, including hundreds of thousands of small, medium-sized, and some large enterprises gone forever — millions of lost jobs with them.

Boston-based philosopher king of Wall Street Jeremy Grantham warned of an unsustainable divergence between “depressionary” economic conditions and melt up in equity valuations.

“(B)oth can’t be right,” he stressed. Dismal economic data are worse than during the 1930s Great Depression.

Unprecedented US unemployment makes near-term economic recovery virtually impossible.

In his quarterly letter to investors, Grantham said the following:

“The current P/E on the US market is in the top 10% of its history.”

“The US economy in contrast is in its worst 10%, perhaps even the worst 1%.”

“In addition, everything is uncertain, perhaps to a unique degree.”

Economic and market data reflect “one of the most (extreme) mismatches in history.”

What’s new in the current environment “is the meaningful possibility of a disastrous economic outcome combined with a substantially overvalued stock market.”

What’s going on today in the US economy and markets is unprecedented.

“(T)his event is unlike all” earlier disturbing times.

“It is totally new, and there can be no near certainties, merely strong possibilities” — why he’s “nervous” as “should be” all investors.

US and global economic weakness preceded current conditions.

Supply and demand shocks alone are “generating a much faster economic contraction than that (during) the Great Depression.”

“The (US) drop in GDP and rise in unemployment in four weeks have equaled what took one to four years to reach in the Great Depression and were never reached in the other events.”

Grantham believes it’ll take “at least 5 years to regain 2019 levels of activity…Nearly certain is that a V-shaped recovery looks like a lost hope.”

He added that the notion of a magical vaccine in the coming months to make coronavirus outbreaks go away would be the equivalent in poker of “drawing successfully to several inside straights in a row.”

Statistically the odds against drawing it once are over ten to one.

“(W)e have never lived in a period where the future was so uncertain…perhaps to a unique degree,” Grantham stressed.

Current economic conditions and equity valuations are entirely disconnected from each other.

Markets eventually return to their mean valuations, no exceptions in modern financial history.

Is this time different? Will the sun one day rise in the West and set in the East?

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Former President Barack Obama has weighed in on the current civil unrest and ongoing racial injustice. While most people recognize his intelligence, especially when compared to the irrational blustering of his successor, his calm, measured opinion on how the nation should move forward only perpetuates the current injustices.

We will look at the most troubling aspects of his essay in some detail.

• “The overwhelming majority of participants have been peaceful, courageous, responsible, and inspiring. They deserve our respect and support, not condemnation — something that police in cities like Camden and Flint have commendably understood.

“On the other hand, the small minority of folks who’ve resorted to violence in various forms, whether out of genuine anger or mere opportunism, are putting innocent people at risk, compounding the destruction of neighborhoods that are often already short on services and investment and detracting from the larger cause.”

This is overlooking the base issues, and blaming the victim. As this writer has noted elsewhere (see this), many of the people protesting, especially in the inner cities, have been marginalized and disenfranchised for generations. They see what others have, and know that such things are beyond their reach simply because they are Black. If their anger lashes out in violence and looting, they cannot be blamed. The racial injustices in the United States do not only manifest themselves in the murders of innocent people like George Floyd. They impact every aspect of the lives of people of color who are disproportionally poor in the U.S. Education and employment opportunities for them are far more limited than for whites. The ability to escape poverty is extremely difficult for anyone in the United States, but for people of color, there are more barriers than for whites. Police in the inner cities constantly harass Black and brown people in an apparent belief, at least ostensibly, that doing so will keep them from any criminal activity. As a result, ‘crimes’ for which whites will never be accused (selling ‘loosies’ – individual cigarettes), or seldom be accused (possession of small amounts of marijuana or cocaine) will result in anything from jail time to execution for people of color. And once there is a criminal record, opportunities for employment and higher education are limited.

• “Second, I’ve heard some suggest that the recurrent problem of racial bias in our criminal justice system proves that only protests and direct action can bring about change, and that voting and participation in electoral politics is a waste of time. I couldn’t disagree more. The point of protest is to raise public awareness, to put a spotlight on injustice, and to make the powers that be uncomfortable; in fact, throughout American history, it’s often only been in response to protests and civil disobediencethat the political system has even paid attention to marginalized communities. But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices — and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands.”

Obama encourages citizens to vote, an activity from which he certainly benefited, but makes no mention of the ongoing voter suppression targeted mainly at the poor and people of color, the very same people who take to the streets when blatant, murderous injustices occur. He also doesn’t mention the fact that lobbies contribute large amounts of money to candidates, thus thwarting the will of the voters.

Survey after survey indicate that people want sensible gun laws; student debt relief; affordable medical care and many other rights and protections, yet these are not offered because they do not benefit large corporations. Who does Obama suggest that people vote for to bring about these changes?

• “But the elected officials who matter most in reforming police departments and the criminal justice system work at the state and local levels.

“It’s mayors and county executives that appoint most police chiefs and negotiate collective bargaining agreements with police unions. It’s district attorneys and state’s attorneys that decide whether or not to investigate and ultimately charge those involved in police misconduct.”

The problem of racism exists in every corner of U.S. society, but the murders of innocent, defenseless Black men, women and children seem to occur mostly in the cities. Is Obama suggesting that the mayors of the nation’s major cities aren’t every bit as beholden to their corporate backers as are senators and members of the House of Representatives? Does he believe that a dedicated minority attorney can go door-to-door and be nominated for district attorney or state attorney without the backing of powerful party leaders and interest groups? And it is no secret that in order to secure that backing, candidates must sell their souls, leaving behind the people who need them most.

• “Unfortunately, voter turnout in these local races is usually pitifully low….” Yes, it is, and that is the result of people voting and seeing nothing change, and voter suppression, as mentioned above. Voter suppression takes many forms including limiting the number of polling places; making them more difficult to access by only having them in cities, leaving rural citizens without transportation out of luck; demanding photo identification which is often a driver’s license, which not everyone has, and many others. This is done in the name of preventing voter fraud, of which there is no evidence of being a serious problem.
• “Finally, the more specific we can make demands for criminal justice and police reform, the harder it will be for elected officials to just offer lip service to the cause and then fall back into business as usual once protests have gone away.”

This does nothing to address systemic racism in the nation. Laws can be passed at the local level, just as civil rights laws were passed five decades ago; they are barely a step above meaningless. What must be done is clear:

• Enforcement of laws. For example, when a child (Tamir Rice) is playing with a toy gun and he is shot and killed by a police officer, that officer must be charged with murder. When a man (Philandro Castile) is stopped because his taillight has a burned-out bulb and is summarily executed, the police officer who killed him must be charged with murder. How will the election of local and state officials impact this?
• Racial profiling must stop. This writer cannot imagine how many times he has driven with a taillight out, or some other small infraction, and yet he has never been stopped for it. Why not? He is white, so is not subject to harassment. All the elections in the world will not change this. It must be made completely unacceptable. Police officers who have a disproportionate number of arrests of people of color must be fired.
• Police harassment of people of color must stop. There are enough problems in inner cities without complicating people’s lives with constant harassment. In the George Floyd case, it is alleged that he passed a counterfeit bill. He may have done so, but he may have had no idea that it was counterfeit. But regardless of that, even if he’d printed it in his basement an hour earlier, the penalty is not being tortured to death. Nothing in Obama’s pretty words would impact this issue.
• The criminal ‘war on drugs’ must end. This is a trillion-dollar boondoggle that has had no impact on drug use in the United States. All it has accomplished is the incarceration of millions of people, mostly Black, thus leaving families and communities without needed citizens. But the for-profit prison system is booming. Obama’s suggestions do nothing to address this problem.

The entire problem, Obama says, can be resolved through voting in people at the local and state levels who are receptive to what is needed. He conveniently overlooks the fact that doing so is next to impossible. Interference by outside donors and other special interests prevents people of integrity from getting too far in the electoral process. The ‘war on drugs’ and the for-profit prisons for which it supplies prisoners make too much money for too many people to ever see it change due to an election. And institutional racism is inherent at all levels of governance, and within too many corporations, and is all just considered ‘business as usual’.

Trump has suggested that states use the military to ‘dominate’ the protesters, something one would expect any dictator to demand. But what must be done is the reverse; the protesters must dominate the cities and the military must join the protesters. Otherwise, Obama’s words notwithstanding, it is only a matter of time, and probably a very short amount of time, before we are all once again carrying signs with the name of another Black victim of police violence spelled out across it.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

The rescheduling of the Group of Seven (G7) summit from late June to September and Russia’s invitation to participate alongside Australia, India and South Korea has sparked discussions among both Russian officials and experts.

The Kremlin reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump had discussed in a telephone call, at the initiative of the U.S. side, the situation surrounding Covid-19, the Crew Dragon spacecraft launch, the Group of Seven (G7) summit, as well as the situation on the oil market.

“Donald Trump has informed (Putin) of his idea of holding the Group of Seven summit and possibly inviting the leaders of Russia, Australia, India, and South Korea. The importance of intensifying the Russian-U.S. dialogue on strategic stability and confidence-building measures in the military sector was noted,” according to the press service report.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova praised President Trump’s idea to hold the Group of Seven (G7) summit in an expanded format was a step in the right direction, but it still did not provide for universal representation.

“The idea of an expanded Group of Seven meeting marks a course in the right direction in principle, and yet it doesn’t provide for genuinely universal representation,” Zakharova said in a statement published on the Foreign Ministry’s official website.

“For example, it’s obvious that any substantial ideas of global significance can hardly be implemented without China. We have an efficient and approbated format that has proven to be good: it’s the G20, which represents the G7, BRICS, and the leading centers of economic growth and political influence around the world, rather than only part of it,” she said.

Moscow agrees with Trump’s view that the G7 is currently “a very outdated group of countries” and that it does not properly represent “what’s going on in the world. It’s impossible to address global policy and economic issues within the framework of exclusive clubs. This is an objective reality,” Zakharova said.

However, Russia intends to obtain more information about the upcoming G7 summit through diplomatic channels since there are many things are still unclear.

“There is an understanding that all modalities of this initiative of US President Donald Trump regarding Russia’s participation in the G7 summit, all nuances tied to holding such forums, of course, should be discussed through diplomatic channels and our diplomats will maintain contacts to get additional information from American partners,” Kremlin Spokesman, Dmitry Peskov said.

He further underlined that Moscow has no comment regarding the statement put forward by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who said that Russia should not be invited to the G7 summit.

“This is a format that Russia is not taking part in and that is why from the start we said that there are more questions than answers at this stage there,” Peskov clarified, local Russian media reported.

“If Russia is invited, then what to do with other members’ point of view? If Russia is invited, then in what capacity? This is a format that we do not participate in,” the Spokesman cited questions that might potentially arise. According to him, “there are still many unclear moments in this initiative (to invite Russia to the summit). We hope that diplomats will clear them up.”

In an interview with the Russian daily newspaper Izvestia, Chairman of the Russian Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev,

“Trump’s initiative is not about bringing Russia back into the group, it is about inviting more countries as observers. The G7 will make decisions and others will somehow certify the process.”

It is usual practice to invite countries to a summit, Head of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) Andrey Kortunov pointed out. However, some G7 countries don’t want to see Russia at the meeting even in such a capacity because in their view, this sort of move would mean a concession to Moscow. It is also unclear why Russia should participate in a summit aimed against China given Moscow’s close relations with Beijing.

“Attempts to involve Russia in a fight against China are bound to fail. It is unclear what Moscow could gain from it,” Kortunov noted.

“Western countries haven’t put forward any practical proposals that Moscow would see as worthy of consideration. No one is offering to remove the sanctions, recognize Crimea’s reunification with Russia or ensure major investments in the Russian economy,” the expert explained.

This is why it is a fool’s errand to try to make Russia part of an anti-China front. Trump’s initiative, which has stirred up media interest, will likely lead to nothing, the expert concluded.

Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said

“Naturally, we are carefully following all remarks of the American president, and we registered his statements that G7 looks like an outdated group of countries that no longer reflects global developments. We definitely agree with this approach. We come from the premise that global political issues should be resolved with more (states) represented rather than in some elite clubs.”

The diplomat noted that it is hard to imagine resolution of global problems without China today. Moreover, he emphasized that there are other and more effective formats, like G20, much better suited to tackle global security and strategic stability.

Russia’s interest began to fade away far before the Group of Seven withdrew from Russian presidency in 2014. Now, rejoining the Group of Seven “is gone for good,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told a meeting of the think-tank Valdai Discussion Club, commenting on the prospects of Russia’s possible return to the elite club. Established in 2004, the Valdai Club’s primary goal is to promote dialogue between Russia and the rest of the world.

The Russian senior diplomat noted that today “really serious matters” can be discussed in other formats, such as the Group of Twenty and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).

“We understand that the Group of Seven is still a symbol of status but the nature of its activities provides grounds for lots of questions. We don’t want to just be there. Moreover, we don’t even want to know anything about the preliminary conditions of Russia’s return to the group set by it or at least some of its members,” he added.

Indeed, times have changed and this an indelible fact. With the rise of China, India, Brazil and others, the G7, as a platform compared to G20 and other regional groups such as BRICS to deal with global issues, has little significance.

Set up in the 1970s when the U.S., Italy, Japan, Canada, France, Germany, and Britain dominated the world economy, the G7 shaped and led the global agenda. In 1997, it was renamed the Group of Eight (G8) after Russia joined the club. In 2014, Western countries decided to return to the G7 format in the wake of the developments in Ukraine and the deterioration of relations with Russia. The United States presides over the G7 this year.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Kester Kenn Klomegah writes frequently about Russia, Africa and the BRICS.

I am not trying to be cute and play with words.  That title is meant to convey what it says, so let me explain.

The people who own the United States and their allies around the world have a plan.  It is so simple that it is extremely devious.  Their plan has been in operation for many years.  It has most people bamboozled because it is Janus-faced by design, overt one day, covert the next, but both faces operate under one controlling head.  Some call this head the Deep-State. Even the Deep-State calls itself the Deep-State in a double fake. It is meant to make people schizoid, which it has.

The so called Deep-State has been given many names over the years.  I will not bore you with them, except to say that it was once called the power elite. They are the upper classes, the super wealthy who control the financial institutions, Wall Street, the intelligence agencies, the corporate media, the internet, the military, and the politicians. They are multinational.

They are the wealthy nihilists who care not one jot for the rest of the world. They operate in secret, yet also run above-ground organizations such as the World Bank (WB), the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), etc. Their bloodstream runs on war, the preparations for war, and economic exploitation of the world. All wealthy people are not party to their machinations, but they are almost always complicit in profiting from their crimes, unless they are very stupid.  Or play stupid.  Since I am talking about a great confidence game, that is quite common.

Other people, all other classes, the poor, middle-classes, even a portion of the upper middle classes mean nothing to the power elite unless they can serve their interests.  They are always waging class warfare to maintain their domination and control. Their recent version of this class war is underway in the United States and in many other countries. As of today, they are using race fears to create chaos and outrage to disguise their class warfare that is leading to the imposition of martial law.  Soon they will shift back to the coronavirus fraud. Back and forth, in and out, now you see it, now you don’t.

By shutting down the world’s economy, they have destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people and are creating poverty on a vast scale. Much famine and death will follow.  In the United States alone, 40-45 million people have applied for unemployment insurance and job loss is the greatest since the Great Depression. The reason: a massive propaganda campaign created around Covid-19 fear porn.

This class war is not new, but it is conducted today at warp speed since these people control the technology that has allowed them vastly increased power. In the U.S.A., it is conducted as usual under the guise of Republicans versus Democrats, the two representative political factions that are the faces of the controlled “opposition,” who are actually allies in the larger confidence game.  Keeping “hope” alive is central to their strategy.  Mind control is what they do.  Speed is their greatest ally.  Race is central to their game plan.  They always say they are protecting us.

It is all a lie.  A show.  Nothing but a spectacle for the gullible.  A shadow play.

The current president, Donald Trump, is the choice of one faction of these psychopaths.  This year, Joseph Biden, is the shaky presumptive choice of the other. Both are deranged puppets.  Regular people fight over who is better or worse because they are living inside what Jim Garrison, the former District Attorney of New Orleans and the only person to ever bring a trial in the assassination of President Kennedy, long ago called “the doll’s house.”

It is a place where illusions and delusions replace reality.  It is 24/7 propaganda. It keeps people engaged. It gives them something to argue about, one team to root for.  It’s a sport. It is similar to Plato’s Cave.  Fire has been replaced with electronic lighting and screens, but little has changed.

The sick system of exploitation is oiled and greased with the tantalizing bait of hope dangled for the masses.  Shit slogans like “We are all in this together.”

But there is no hope for this system.

But when the propaganda is so slick that it creates a double-bind, people grasp at any neurotic “solution” out of frustration.  As I write, huge angry crowds are out in the streets protesting the sick murder of a black man, George Floyd, by a white cop. Police infiltrators have started violent looting.  Chaos reigns, as planned. Such killings are routine, but someone turned a switch for this one when just yesterday operation corona lockdown with its fear and fake statistics had everyone cowering behind masks at home as the economic lives of vast numbers were destroyed in a flash.  For today, the masquerade is in the streets. Many good people are caught up in it.  In a few days the scene will shift and we can expect another “bombshell.”  These surprises will keep happening one after another for the foreseeable future.  Shock and Awe for the home crowd.  The war come home.  The controllers know you can’t wage war against the rest of the world unless you do so at home as well.

When one group within the deep-state won the internecine battle in 2016 and “shocked” the country with the election of the comical Trump, the other deep-state group called the Democrats, immediately set in motion a plan to try to oust him or to make it seem as if they were trying to do so. The naïve thought this may happen, and their deluded yearning has been stretched until the 2020 presidential election, although some probably think Trump might go before then.  He won’t.

So many people have destroyed their minds and relationships because they can’t see through the fraud.

Early in 2017, as the outgoing front man for the CIA/warfare/Wall St. state, Barack Obama, left his time bombs for the future. The pink pussy hats were sent out marching to open the show.  Russia-gate was launched; eventually impeachment was tried. The Democrats. with their media allies, went on a non-stop attack. It was all so obvious, so shallow in its intent, as it was meant to be. But millions who were in the doll house were outraged, obsessed, frantic with rage. They bought the con-game. Both those who hate Trump and those that love him have spent almost four years foaming at the mouth, breathless.

Trump was cast as the personification of evil.  A relentless attack on Trump began and has continued all this time. It is pure theater. Trump remains at the helm, as planned, holding the Bible aloft in a style reminiscent of a Bible thumping Klansman from TheBirth of a Nation. Only the ignorant thought it might have been different. He knows how to perform his role. He is a fine actor.  He outrages, spews idiocies, as he is supposed to do. That Mussolini style stance, that absurd hair, the pout.  Just perfect for an arch-villain. It’s so obvious that it isn’t. Herein lies the trick.

And who profits from his policies?  The super-rich, of course, the power-elite. Who just stole 6-10 trillion dollars of public money under the hilariously named Cares Act?  The super-rich, of course, the deep-state.  It was a bi-partisan bank robbery from the public treasury carried out under the shadow of Covid-19, whose phony hyped up numbers were used to frighten the populace into lockdown mode as the Republican and Democratic bank robbers smiled in unison and announced forcefully, “We care!”  We are here to protect you.

Remember how Barack Obama “saved” us by bailing out Wall St. and the big banks to the tune of trillions in early 2009.  Then waged unending wars. Left black Americans bereft.  He cared, too, didn’t he.  Our leaders always care.

Obama was the black guy in the white hat. Trump is the white guy in the black hat. Hollywood on the Potomac, as Gary Wills called it when Ronald Reagan was the acting-president.  Now Obama’s war-loving side-kick, the pale-faced, twisted talking Biden is seriously offered as an alternative to the Elvis impersonator in the White House.  This is the false left/right dichotomy that has the residents of the doll’s house in its grip.

If you can’t see what’s coming, you might want to break out of the house, take off your mask, go for a walk, and take some deep breaths.  The walls are closing in.

Knees will be on everyone’s necks in the months ahead.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Visit the author’s website here.

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

The indefensible death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers and the indiscriminate police violence in subsequent protests have returned police misconduct to the center of our national conversation.

It is not a conversation we may quickly or easily conclude. The problems in American policing are multitude and systemic, matters of both policy and culture. Much of this can only be corrected at the state or local level, and as there are around 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States, this is a monumental task. In very few cases could sweeping federal action affect any substantive reform

But one way in which Washington is directly implicated in police brutality is its contribution to the militarization of local police departments through the Pentagon’s 1033 Program and the so-called “war on terror” more broadly. Often in concert with the war on drugs, the fight against terrorism has been used to blur the lines between the military and the police, arming ostensible peace officers with mindsets, tactics, and weapons of war.

Many Americans first learned of the 1033 Program in 2014, when both peaceful protest and destructive unrest broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown. Photos from Ferguson showed police rolling through suburban streets in armored vehicles which, to the civilian eye, looked like tanks in a war zone. They looked like military gear because they were military gear — Defense Department castoffs given to local police departments for counter-drug and counter-terror operations.

The 1033 Program provides much more than vehicles. Police can also request weapons including bayonets, automatic rifles, and grenade launchers, as well as ammunition, body armor, robots, watercraft, and aircraft including surveillance drones. Former President Obama placed a few limits on the equipment transfers in 2015; Present Trump has since lifted them.

The outcome was predictable: Police never felt constrained by the Pentagon’s suggestion for how its hand-me-downs should be used. Cops use military gear when responding even to nonviolent protests, as we’ve seen yet again this past week. They use it in many more mundane situations, too.

Heavily armed SWAT teams, originally created for barricade and hostage situations, are widely employed beyond that intended purpose. Documented uses include arresting an unarmed optometrist for privately betting on football games, ransacking a backyard chicken coop, preventing unlicensed barbering, and forestalling a suicide attempt by preemptively killing the suicidal man.

Armored vehicles are used to patrol beaches, malls, theme parks, and college ball games. The St. Louis County Police Department, which includes Ferguson in its purview, uses a SWAT team to execute all search warrants. It is not unique in that practice. Escalation and threat inflation have become routine in American policing as they are in American foreign policy.

The 1033 Program, which predates post-9/11 counterterror efforts, is not the only way the our endless wars has fostered police militarization in America. Two other aspects deserve special attention.

First, less visible than armored vehicles is the civil liberties threat posed by the militarization of police intelligence collection and use. The “war on terror” served as justification for a massive expansion of domestic surveillance in America, and that expansion has trickled down from Washington to police departments around the country. Federal agencies share the data they collect via warrantless mass surveillance with state and local law enforcement. This spying is used to investigate suspected crimes with no connection to terrorism.

It’s also used to spy on people not suspected of any crime at all: Washington “loosened or ignored law enforcement guidelines restricting intelligence gathering [by] removing or weakening the criminal predicates necessary to ensure a proper focus on illegal activity,” a Brennan Center report explains. That produced “increased police spying on minorities and political dissidents and increased efforts to escape judicial and public oversight.” Meanwhile, federal funds buy police departments ever more invasive spying technology, including Stingray cell-site simulators whose use is actively concealed from the public.

Beyond the gear and surveillance, however, perhaps the most damaging effect of war on terror-encouraged police militarization is psychological. It pushes police officers engaging with the public to behave as they look, to act like soldiers dealing with enemy combatants. The task conforms to the tools provided — with deadly result.

“Give a man access to drones, tanks, and body armor, and he’ll reasonably think that his job isn’t simply to maintain peace, but to eradicate danger,” observed The Concourse writer Greg Howard amid the Ferguson demonstrations in 2014. “If officers are soldiers, it follows that the neighborhoods they patrol are battlefields. And if they’re working battlefields, it follows that the population is the enemy.”

This dynamic is deliberate: Police officers are explicitly trained to conceive of themselves as warriors in battle, always on high alert and prepared to kill. And it is disproportionately true in black and other minority communities, as the deaths of Floyd and Brown — and Breonna Taylor and Atatiana Jefferson and Philando Castile and Walter Scott and Tamir Rice and Aiyana Jones and so many more — steadily remind us. As long as police continue to function as an occupying military force, that list will continue to grow.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must be very worried over the US-wide protests by African-Americans and their supporters against the murder by smothering of a black man by a white police officer on May 25.

Having announced he would begin the process to annex portions of the occupied Palestinian West Bank on July 1, he must be concerned that in response, violence, similar to the rioting in the US, could erupt in the, so far, mainly quiet West Bank and East Jerusalem. After more than a century of Palestinian resentment and resistance to expropriation and suppression, Israel is, like the US, a prime target for a new mass uprising, a Third Intifada.

Netanyahu must also fear that his friend and ally Donald Trump, who supports annexation, could very well lose the US presidential election in November. Indeed, Netanyahu has vowed to get the job done before US voters go to the polls. Trump is, after all, now facing the sort of protests and violence that Netanyahu might have to deal with in a month’s time. Trump’s poll ratings have also fallen because of his mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis, which has killed more than 110,000 US citizens.

The situations in the US and Palestine are analogous. Both countries were born sin and continue to reap the resentments of peoples they harmed by denying their humanity.

The US practiced slavery, ethnic cleansing of indigenous tribes and racism against non-whites. For the white majority, the non-white presence, interests and rights were and largely remain of little or no concern. This is why centuries old anger has repeatedly driven black citizens into the streets to protest discrimination, persecution and lynching. While peaceful demonstrations have erupted across the US in response to Floyd’s death, many rioters have retaliated for decades of abuse by looting and burning private and public property.

Palestinians face the very same treatment by Israelis. This was inevitable. As early as 1895, the founding father of “the Jewish state”, Theodor Herzl referred to the native Palestinians as “the pennyless population” which could be expropriated and spirited across the border. To put it bluntly, the Palestinians whose peoplehood and rights were denied could be expelled.

The language of denial of Palestinians as a people was picked up by Lord Arthur Balfour when he drafted his infamous 1917 declaration pledging Britain, as post World War I mandatory power, to facilitate a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine while referring to the native population as “non-Jewish communities”.

Following the 1967 Israeli conquest of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir continued routine denial by stating “There is no Palestinian people. There are Palestinian refugees.” She did not, naturally, explain why Palestinians were and are refugees. Later she elaborated on her contention that there are no indigenous Palestinians by saying that when she settled in Palestine in 1921, the Jewish colonists were “the avowed Palestinians”. Israel and Israelis generally refer to Palestinian citizens of Israel as “Arab Israelis”. The words “Palestine” and “Palestinians” call into question the very legitimacy of Israel.

This being the case, there is little wonder that Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem took to the streets last weekend after Israeli soldiers shot and killed Iyad Halak, 32, an unarmed autistic Palestinian man as he was walking to a school for students with special needs where he studied and worked every day. The soldiers claimed he was carrying a “suspicious object that looked like a pistol”. When they shouted at him, he fled, they chased him, cornered him and, allegedly, shot at his legs. Although Israel claims, the senior officer called a halt to the firing, one man loosed off six or seven shots at Halak, killing him. Some 150 Palestinians from East Jerusalem marched in the streets to protest his death. One poster asserted, “Palestinian lives matter”, a slogan echoing the US “Black lives matter”. Israeli police forcibly dispersed the protesters.

On social media, Palestinians rightly compared this case with the murder of George Floyd in the distant US state of Minnesota. Palestinian men and boys like their black counter parts in the US fear for their lives whenever they go out of their homes. In both countries “agents of law and order” regularly get away with murder. Promised investigations come to naught and perpetrators go unpunished. Consequently, tension and resentment build up to boiling in US black and Palestinian communities.

In recent years, Israel has prepared the way for annexation. It has taken over the land of Palestinian farmers in the Jordan Valley and forced them to move to Jericho, the largest town in the area, or into several other small enclaves while Israeli colonists harvest date palms and other crops in the Valley. Israel has done the same thing to Palestinians in the West Bank, particularly in the Bethlehem area.

Netanyahu’s annexation of West Bank Israeli colonies and the Jordan Valley could prompt Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and, perhaps, even Gaza to revolt. By annexing the Jordan Valley and Israeli squatter enclaves in the West Bank, Netanyahu will finish off any notion of a Palestinian state as there will be no land for this state.

In an interview with an extreme right-wing newspaper, Israel ha-Yom, he frankly stated that when he annexes the Jordan Valley to Israel. Its 60,000 Palestinian residents would remain as now “subjects“ of the occupation rather than citizens of any state. Therefore, Palestinians living in their occupied country will remain “stateless” with no rights, no protections against Israel, and no passports, which would allow them to travel freely.

Palestinians are much worse off than members of the US black community who are legally citizens, with rights and passports. If they focus their rage over the killing of George Floyd to effect change in the still colonial US, they may even be treated as citizens with rights and respect.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from IMEMC

The Department of Justice has announced that it is attempting to determine if there is a “coordinated command and control” behind the violent riots that have erupted all over the United States.  In recent days, officials all over the country have used words such as “organized” and “organizers” to describe the orchestration that they have been witnessing in their respective cities.  And all over the U.S., law enforcement officials have reported finding huge piles of rocks and bricks pre-staged at protest locations in advance, and scouts have often been used to direct rioters to locations where police are not present.  In addition, something that we have been hearing over and over again is that many of the people that are involved in the violence are not known by any of the locals.  At this point, the evidence appears to be so overwhelming that some sort of national coordination is taking place that the Department of Justice has decided to launch a formal investigation…

Federal law enforcement officials are probing whether “criminal actors” are coordinating violent activities during protests and are looking into reports that “rocks and bricks” have been dropped off to throw at police and other law enforcement as cities across the country grapple with the uptick in violence, a senior Department of Justice official said.

“You see the hallmarks… We’re trying to see if there’s a coordinated command and control, you see those bread crumbs and that’s what we’re trying to verify,” said the Department of Justice official.

The orchestration of the violence appears to be most advanced in major cities such as New York. According to the head of the NYPD, “caches of bricks & rocks” have been strategically placed all over the city during the past several days…

The New York Police Department’s top cop is calling out “organized looters,” who he says are “strategically” leaving piles or buckets of debris on street corners citywide.

“This is what our cops are up against: Organized looters, strategically placing caches of bricks & rocks at locations throughout NYC,” NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea wrote in a Wednesday morning tweet, along with a video showing four blue boxes filled with gray debris.

Of course it is entirely possible that someone is buying bricks for the rioters, but Shea has pointed out that several construction sites in the city have had bricks stolen from them…

“Pre-staged bricks are being placed and then transported to ‘peaceful protests,’ which are peaceful protests, but then used by that criminal group within,” he said. “We’ve had construction sites burglarized in recent days in Manhattan … during a riot, it’s interesting what was taken – bricks.”

Shea explained how bricks had previously been thrown at NYPD members in the Bronx, and water bottles filled with cement have also been used as weapons.

So it would appear that someone has been stealing bricks and leaving them in pre-staged piles for the rioters.

But at this point we don’t know precisely who is doing this or why they are going to so much trouble.

It is also being reported that teams of looters armed with power tools are systematically working together to loot one location after another in New York City.  The following is how one eyewitness described what she has been witnessing…

One of the numerous police reports from eyewitnesses came from Carla Murphy, who lives in Chelsea.

Murphy, in an interview Tuesday, said she started hearing commotion from mobs of people along her street and neighboring streets about 10:30 p.m. Monday night. She first watched from her building and then went down to the street and saw organized groups of people working together to break in to store after store in the West Side neighborhood.

“Cars would drive up, let off the looters, unload power tools and suitcases and then the cars would drive away,” she said. “Then the cars would come back pick them up and then drive off to the next spot. They seemed to know exactly where they were going. Some of the people were local, but there were a lot of out-of-towners.”

This isn’t just a few angry protesters smashing a few windows.

This is organized crime at a very high level, and these people know exactly what they are doing.

Meanwhile, more evidence of coordination continues to emerge in other major cities as well…

In Tampa, there were reports that members of the bomb team found mortars in bushes downtown, and bricks and other items were hidden in trash cans to throw at police officers.

In Seattle, a video out up online by an anarchist shows that around midnight, a crowd of 100-150 nearly all-white agitators with umbrellas started throwing bottles at police.

And for several more examples of this sort of orchestration, please see the article that I posted a couple of days ago.

It appears to be obvious that some sort of coordination is taking place, but now federal authorities are faced with the daunting task of trying to prove who is behind it.

According to Fox News, Justice Department officials are hoping to find “ways in which we can exploit phones and data communications that could give us a mosaic to see if there’s a coordinated command and control, that’s what we’re looking for.”

It is believed that social media is being heavily used to direct the movement of rioters and looters, and that would mean that there should be digital trails for investigators to follow.

Needless to say, many Americans believe that “Antifa” is behind much of the violence, and a brand new Rasmussen Reports survey has found that 49 percent of all U.S. voters believe that it should be declared a terror organization…

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 49% of Likely U.S. Voters think the “antifa” movement should be designated a terrorist organization. Thirty percent (30%) disagree, while 22% are undecided.

Hopefully those responsible for the violence will be discovered and brought to justice, because what we have been witnessing over the past week has been absolutely horrible.

Unfortunately, the level of anger in this country is likely to continue to rise the closer we get to election day, and more eruptions of violence are likely in the months ahead.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Michael Snyder is the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Featured image is by Rosa Pineda/Wikimedia Commons

Former president George W. Bush has returned to the spotlight to give moral guidance to America in these troubled times. In a statement released on Tuesday, Bush announced that he was “anguished” by the “brutal suffocation” of George Floyd and declared that “lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for all is the duty of all.”

Bush’s declaration was greeted with thunderous applause by the usual suspects who portray him as the virtuous Republican in contrast to Trump. While the media portrays Bush’s pious piffle as a visionary triumph of principle, Americans need to vividly recall the lies and atrocities that permeated his eight years as president.

In an October 2017 speech in a “national forum on liberty” at the George W. Bush Institute in New York City, Bush bemoaned that “Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.” Coming from Bush, this had as much credibility as former president Bill Clinton bewailing the decline of chastity.

Most media coverage of Bush nowadays either ignores the falsehoods he used to take America to war in Iraq or portrays him as a good man who received incorrect information. But Bush was lying from the get-go on Iraq and was determined to drag the nation into another Middle East war. From January 2003 onwards, Bush constantly portrayed the US as an innocent victim of Saddam Hussein’s imminent aggression and repeatedly claimed that war was being “forced upon us.” That was never the case. As the Center for Public Integrity reported, Bush made “232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda.” As the lies by which he sold the Iraq War unraveled, Bush resorted to vilifying critics as traitors in a 2006 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Bush’s lies led to the killing of more than four thousand American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. But since those folks are dead and gone anyhow, the media instead lauds Bush’s selection to be in a Kennedy Center art show displaying his borderline primitive oil paintings.

In February 2018, Bush was paid lavishly to give a prodemocracy speech in the United Arab Emirates, ruled by a notorious Arab dictatorship. He proclaimed: “Our democracy is only as good as people trust the results.” He openly fretted about Russian “meddling” in the 2016 US election.

But when he was president, Bush acted as if the United States were entitled to intervene in any foreign election he pleased. He boasted in 2005 that his administration had budgeted almost $5 billion “for programs to support democratic change around the world,” much of which was spent on tampering with foreign vote totals. When Iraq held elections in 2005, Bush approved a massive covert aid program for pro-American Iraqi parties. The Bush administration spent over $65 million to boost their favored candidate in the 2004 Ukraine election. Yet, with boundless hypocrisy, Bush proclaimed that “any (Ukrainian) election…ought to be free from any foreign influence.” US government-financed organizations helped spur coups in Venezuela in 2002 and Haiti in 2004. Both of those nations, along with Ukraine, remain political train wrecks.

In that October 2017 New York speech, Bush proclaimed: “No democracy pretends to be a tyranny.” But ravaging the Constitution was apparently part of his job description when he was president. Shortly after 9-11, Bush turned back the clock to before 1215 (when the Magna Carta was signed), formally suspending habeas corpus and claiming a prerogative to imprison indefinitely anyone he labeled a terrorist suspect. In 2002, Justice Department lawyers informed Bush that the president was entitled to violate the law during wartime—and the war on terror was expected to continue indefinitely. In 2004, Bush White House counsel Alberto Gonzales formally asserted a “commander-in-chief override power” entitling presidents to ignore the Bill of Rights.

Under Bush, the US government embraced barbaric practices which did more to destroy America’s moral credibility than all of Trump’s tweets combined. Bush’s “enhanced interrogation” regime included endless high-volume repetition of a Meow Mix cat food commercial at Guantanamo, head slapping, waterboarding, exposure to frigid temperatures, and manacling for many hours in stress positions. After the Supreme Court rebuffed some of Bush’s power grabs in 2006, he pushed through Congress a bill that retroactively legalized torture—one of the worst legislative disgraces since the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. During his years in the White House, Bush perennially denied that he had approved torture. But in 2010, during an author tour to promote his new memoir, he bragged about approving waterboarding for terrorist suspects.

Is Bush nominating himself to be the nation’s racial healer? When he was president, Bush inflicted more financial ruin on blacks than any president since Woodrow Wilson (who brought Jim Crow barbarities to the federal government). Bush trumpeted his plans to close the gap between black and white homeownership rates and promised in 2002 to “use the mighty muscle of the federal government” to solve the problem. Bush was determined to end the bias against people who wanted to buy a home but had no money. Congress passed Bush’s American Dream Downpayment Act in 2003, authorizing federal handouts to first-time homebuyers of up to $10,000 or 6 percent of the home’s purchase price. Bush also swayed Congress to permit the Federal Housing Administration to make no–down payment loans to low-income Americans. Bush proclaimed: “Core American values of individuality, thrift, responsibility, and self-reliance are embodied in homeownership.” In Bush’s eyes, self-reliance was so wonderful that the government should subsidize it. And it didn’t matter whether recipients were creditworthy, because politicians meant well. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign trumpeted his down payment giveaways, a shining example of “compassionate conservatism.”

Thanks in large part to his policies, minority households saw the fastest growth in homeownership leading up to the 2007 recession. The housing collapse ravaged the net worth of black and Hispanic households. “The implosion of the subprime lending market has left a scar on the finances of black Americans—one that not only has wiped out a generation of economic progress but could leave them at a financial disadvantage for decades,” the Washington Post reported in 2012. The median net worth for Hispanic households declined by 66 percent between 2005 and 2009. That devastation was aptly described in a 2017 federal appeals court dissenting opinion as “wrecking ball benevolence” (quoting a 2004 Barron’s op-ed I wrote). But almost none of the media coverage of the ex-president reminds people of the economic carnage of this Bush vote-buying binge.

It is possible to condemn police brutality and, even more importantly, the evil laws and judicial doctrines that enable police to tyrannize other Americans without any help from a demagogic ex-president who ravaged our rights, liberties, and peace. As I commented in an August 2003 USA Today op-ed, “Whether Bush and his appointees will be held personally liable for their [Iraq War] falsehoods is a grave test for American democracy.” The revival of Bush’s reputation vivifies how our political media system failed that test. As long as George Bush doesn’t turn himself in for committing war crimes, all of his talk about “achieving justice for all” is rubbish.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

James Bovard is the author of ten books, including 2012’s Public Policy Hooligan, and 2006’s Attention Deficit Democracy. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and many other publications.

In remembrance of RFK’s assassination in 1968, we repost this article by Edward Curtin first published in 2018.

Early in 1968, Clyde Tolson, F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover’s deputy and bosom buddy, a key player in the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., expressed both the hope and intent of those making sure that there would never be another president by the name Kennedy, when he said about RFK that “I hope someone shoots and kills the son of a bitch.” Earlier, as reported by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in his new book, American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family, the influential conservative Westbrook Pegler expressed this hope even more depravingly when he wished “that some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter [Robert Kennedy’s] spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies.”

These sick men were not alone. Senator Robert Kennedy was a marked man. And he knew it. That he was nevertheless willing to stand up to the forces of hate and violence that were killing innocents at home and abroad is a testimony to his incredible courage and love of country. To honor such a man requires that we discover and speak the truth about those who killed him. The propaganda that he was killed by a crazed young Arab needs exposure.

When he was assassinated by a bullet to the back of his head on June 5, 1968, not by the accused patsy Sirhan Sirhan, who was standing in front of RFK, but by a conspiracy that clearly implicates U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, not only did a precious and good man die, but so too did any chance for significant political change through the official political system, short of a miracle. We are still waiting for such a miracle.

Robert F. Kennedy’s death, following as it did the assassination by U.S. government forces of Dr. Martin Luther King two months earlier, marked an emphatic end to the sense of hope that marked the election to the presidency of his brother John in 1960. Henceforth, efforts to change the political system from within became moot; the coup d’état effected on November 22, 1963 with the CIA’s assassination of JFK was signed and sealed. RFK’s murder added the period to this sentence of rule by murderous deep state forces. And despite valiant efforts of dissent from outside the system since, the systemic war machine has rolled on and the economic stranglehold of the elites has tightened over the decades. An RFK presidency was this country’s last chance from within to save itself from the tyranny that has ensued.

We now live in a country that would be unrecognizable to anyone who died prior to 1968. All protest has become symbolic as the American Empire has expanded abroad through countless ongoing wars, coups and the undermining of foreign governments; civil liberties have been eviscerated; the wealthy elites, ably assisted by a corrupt political establishment, have made a mockery of economic justice; an endless war on terror and a national emergency engendered by the insider attacks of September 11, 2001 and enshrined in public consciousness with the planted emergency telephonic meme of 9/11 have been instituted to justify massive profits for the military-industrial complex; and a new and very dangerous Cold War with Russia has been resurrected to threaten the world with nuclear annihilation.

All this and more has vigorously been supported by every U.S. President since, Democrats as well as Republicans, with no exceptions, including the icons of the neo-liberals, Clinton and Obama, who have bombed and droned the world wide, smiling all the way. We live in very dark times indeed. If significant change ever comes to the United States, it will be a result of pressures from without, for the political system is rotten to the core, and almost without exception our political leaders are cowards and liars. This seems obviously true to me, though it pains me to admit it.

Fifty years have passed since RFK’s murder, and for those fifty years very few Americans have thought to question what is a conspicuous conspiracy. It is as though a painful exhaustion or a veil of denial set in in 1968, a year in which 536,000 plus American troops were waging war against the Vietnamese and the slaughter was horrendous. Body bags and slaughtered Vietnamese filled the TV screens. Chicago cops rioted and beat antiwar demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. American cities were exploding. Then the “peace candidate” Nixon, together with Kissinger, assumed the mantle of power only to increase the horror. War criminals ruled. It was a year when mere anarchy was loosed upon the world and the truth of Robert Kennedy’s assassination was lost in the storm. The manifest truth became latent, and there it has remained for most people all these years. All most people “know” is that RFK was assassinated by a crazy Arab guy. His name? Oh yeah, Sirhan Sirhan or something like that. It was so long ago and, anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore.

But it does matter greatly. Unless we choose to remain children forever, children in denial of the truth of their childhood traumas, the truth about RFK’s murder will haunt us and poison any hope we still might harbor for our country. Killers seized the levers of power with the murders of JFK, MLK, and RFK (and Malcolm X, Thomas Merton, et al.), and they have never relinquished them.

It is time that each of us decide: Do we stand with the killers or their victims?

Finally a Kennedy family member has spoken out on the case. As reported by Tom Jackman in The Washington Post, May 27, 2018, Robert f. Kennedy, Jr., after studying the case at the instigation of Paul Schrade, RFK’s assistant, who was the first person shot that night, and visiting Sirhan in prison, has publicly said that he doesn’t think Sirhan killed his father and has called for a reinvestigation of the case, a most mild request. Who will do the reinvestigation? The authorities in the government and press that have covered up the truth for fifty years? Nevertheless, Jackman’s article and RFK, Jr.’s statement bring needed attention to the assassination while focusing on the fact of a second gunman and therefore a conspiracy. Its focus is on the ballistics of the case, which are of course crucial.

But I would like to focus on another angle that confirms the fact of a second gunman and a vast cover-up that involves the LAPD, FBI, and CIA, therefore not just asserting the presence of a second gunman, but one in the employ of state forces. So let us look into this brutal murder, with its layers of subterfuge.

Right from the start the conspirators had intricate plans in place just in case questions were asked. Plans to confuse. False leads. Fallback stories. Something far beyond the ken of the 24 year old Sirhan Sirhan. Consider the following questions.

If you were going to arrange a political assassination in an indoor crowded setting, would you have one of your operatives (not the assassin) at the murder site be a strikingly curvaceous young woman in a conspicuous white dress with black polka-dots, and then have her flee the scene, yelling, “We’ve shot him, we’ve shot him,” so that multiple witnesses would see and hear her as she made her escape?

Would you have the same woman earlier in the day pick up a salesman in the hotel where the assassination was planned, spend the day with him driving around and having dinner together, while repeatedly inviting (i.e. luring) him to join her later that night at a big public event where they will shoot their famous victim, whom she names?

Would you have your operative tell this man that, although she wasn’t staying at the hotel, and although she had been in town only three days, having flown from NYC where she had arrived from overseas, that she knew the hotel stair routes very well, including an unobtrusive one that she shows the man?

Would you have this woman tell this man that a few days earlier she had met with a very famous political operative (whom she names), diametrically opposed to your victim’s political philosophy and that she would need to flee the country after the assassination and would like the man’s help?

Would you have this woman be seen by multiple witnesses in the company of Sirhan?

Would you have your operative in the tight dress so conspicuously lay down a trail of breadcrumbs from morning until night, until she made her escape, never to be found despite having been seen by more than a dozen credible witnesses at the shooting site?

I think you would agree that you would have to be extremely stupid to plan an assassination in this manner, except if you were extremely devious, and the voluptuous stand-out girl was part of your intricate plot to create a false lead to someone other than the assassins.

This is exactly what happened when Senator Robert Kennedy, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, was shot shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, after celebrating his victory in the California Democratic Primary. The woman in question came to be known as “the girl in the polka-dot dress,” but unlike the ways we associate girls with innocence, this woman was a key player in hideous evil.

Did the polka-dot girl scream “We shot Senator Kennedy” intentionally as part of some sort of “limited hangout” in a most sophisticated conspiracy? For why would a person involved in the conspiracy run away screaming such words, drawing attention to herself and her fleeing companion, unless it was a diversionary tactic?

[“Limited Hangout” according to Former Special Assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Victor Marchetti, is “spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting – sometimes even volunteering – some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.”]

While many people are aware that President John Kennedy was killed five years earlier in a conspiracy organized by U.S. intelligence operatives and that Lee Harvey Oswald was the “patsy” that he said he was, far fewer realize that Robert Kennedy was also killed as a result of a conspiracy and that the convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan did not kill RFK. In fact, not one bullet from his gun struck the senator.

Sirhan was standing in front of Kennedy when, as the autopsy definitively showed, RFK was shot from the rear at point blank range, three bullets entering his body, with the fatal head-shot coming upward at a 45 degree angle from 1-3 inches behind his right ear. In addition, an audio recording shows that many more bullets than the eight in Sirhan’s gun were fired in the hotel pantry that night. It was impossible for Sirhan to have killed RFK.

While Sirhan sits in prison to this day, the real killers of Senator Kennedy went free that night. For anyone who studies the case with an impartial eye (see this, this, this, this, and this), the evidence is overwhelming that there was a very sophisticated conspiracy at work, one that continued long after as police, FBI, intelligence agencies, and the legal system covered up the true nature of the crime.

That Sirhan was a Manchurian candidate hypnotized to play his part as seeming assassin is also abundantly clear. Dr. Daniel P. Brown, an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School, an international expert on hypnosis, affirms the obvious: that Sirhan was hypno-programmed to shoot his pistol in response to a post hypnotic touch cue, most likely from the girl in the polka-dot dress. Dr. Brown states that Sirhan “did not have the knowledge, or intention, to shoot a human being, let alone Senator Kennedy.” At the request of Sirhan’s defense team seeking a new trial and a parole for Sirhan (efforts led by the lawyer William Peppers and the heroic Paul Schrade), Dr. Brown “conducted a forensic assessment in six different two-day sessions over a three year span spending over sixty hours interviewing and testing Sirhan at Corona Penitentiary and Pleasant Valley in California.”

In his declaration to the Parole Board Dr. Brown stated unequivocally that Sirhan was hypnotized and was therefore a “Manchurian Candidate” who did not kill RFK (see the CIA’s programs ARTICHOKE and MKUltra.)

One of the sad ironies of RFK’s murder is that he and his family spent the day of the primary at the home of John Frankenheimer, the producer and director of the film, The Manchurian Candidate, and as Kennedy was being shot, Frankenheimer and his wife were waiting outside the Ambassador Hotel in their car to take the Kennedys back to their house.

But it is not my intention here to detail all the facts of the case that still scream out for justice, as do the linked assassinations of JFK and MLK. In fact, referring to the Kennedy assassination is a misnomer; we should speak of the Kennedy assassinations, since JFK wasn’t the only one. There were others.

I would like to focus on the so-called “girl in the polka-dot dress,” and ask you to think along with me as we explore why she was so conspicuous that day and night, and what function she may have served. I know you will agree that it is counterintuitive for her to have behaved the way she did. Counterintuitive for the general public, that is, but not for those who plan assassinations that they can pin on crazed lone gunmen or strange accidents. Being counter-intuitive, however, is not dispositive. More evidence is necessary to make a case, and that evidence is readily available.

The best detailed day-to-day account of this mysterious girl is in a book by Fernando Faura, The Polka-Dot File: on the Robert F. Kennedy Killing. Faura, an old school reporter nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for another series of articles, investigated the case from day one. He rarely speculates. He sticks to giving us the record of his investigation as it happened – transcripts, documents, FBI and LAPD records, his day-to-day itineraries, his doubts, hunches, confirmations, etc. – all in the space of days, weeks, months of the assassination. Therein lies its great value.

Quoting transcripts of his own tape-recorded interviews with key witnesses, as well as police and FBI records, Faura systematically takes us through his investigation from start to finish. Reading it carefully, one cannot but be deeply impressed by his thoroughness and attention to detail. Nor can one not be chagrined by the ways his work was stymied by law enforcement and he was “followed, spied on, and harassed.” It becomes evident that his pursuit of the truth was dangerous.

He writes, “Seconds after the shooting stopped, a young woman in a polka-dot dress ran out of the kitchen, past Sandra Serrano, a Kennedy campaign worker. The woman shouted, ‘We shot him, we shot him.’ Asked who they shot, the woman replied, ‘Kennedy,’ and ran into the morning darkness, never to be found.” Although Serrano was interviewed by Sandy Vanocur of NBC News on live TV at 1:30 AM shortly after the shooting, she – as well as other eyewitnesses to this girl – was browbeaten by the police to retract her story, yet she never did. The police shut down its pursuit of this girl, despite more than a dozen witnesses who saw and heard her. The LAPD officer in charge of the investigation, Lt. Manny Pena, was CIA connected, having worked for U.S. AID and been recently brought back to control the investigation. So too was the brutal interrogator, Sgt. Hank Hernandez, CIA affiliated.

It is obvious that this girl was part of a conspiracy to kill Robert Kennedy and that it is equally obvious that she was meant to stand out, be seen, and to be heard shouting what she did. Why? And it is equally obvious the authorities had no intention of finding her, concluding, amazingly, that she never existed. This becomes laughable after reading Faura’s chapter of his tape recorded interview with John Fahey, the man who picked up, or was picked up, by the girl in the polka-dot dress and who spent the entire day with her.

Logically it follows that she was meant to create false leads, and generate mystery when there was none. Writing of the JFK assassination, Vince Salandria, the eminent and early critic of the government’s false conspiracy story, has recently said something quite appropriate to the RFK case and this girl: “The Kennedy assassination is a false mystery. It was conceived by the conspirators to be a false mystery which was designed to cause interminable debate. The purpose of the protracted debate was to obscure what was quite clearly and plainly a coup d’état….President Kennedy was assassinated by our national-security state…” While far fewer people have yet to question the false narrative in the RFK case, when or if they do they will find that the polka-dot girl’s actions and her disappearance could keep them guessing for a long time, and that that guessing will lead away from the obvious and essential truth.

The recently deceased investigative journalist Robert Parry has written about how Richard Nixon sabotaged a possible peace accord in Vietnam in the summer/fall of 1968. This he did through an intermediary, right-wing Republican Chinese émigré Anna Chennault, wife of General Claire Chennault, legendary founder of the Flying Tigers. Parry explains, “Nixon’s gambit was to have Chennault pass on word to South Vietnamese President Thieu that if he boycotted Johnson’s Paris peace talks – thus derailing the negotiations – Nixon would assure Thieu continued U.S. military support for the war.” This treachery has been confirmed.

Having stumbled on Parry’s work in 2014, the reporter Fernando Faura was startled to find himself connecting the girl in the polka-dot dress to Anna Chennault and to Nixon. This was because he remembered that the man, John Fahey, who had spent all day with the girl on June 4, 1968 and dropped her off in the evening at the Ambassador Hotel, had told him that the political operative she had met with three days before the assassination was Anna Chennault. Faura speculates that perhaps Nixon was therefore connected to RFK’s assassination because he feared that, if Robert Kennedy were to become the Democratic presidential nominee, he would push to end the Vietnam War and would be more likely that anyone else to defeat him in the general election. He speculates that the “peace talks” conspiracy might have been the origin of the Kennedy killing; that the two conspiracies were connected.

But at the same time Faura writes, “Why is the CIA’s shadow all over this?” And since the CIA’s shadow is all over the RFK assassination, we are left to ask if Nixon and the CIA were operating on the same page. Or was it the reverse, that Nixon and the CIA were at odds? Did the CIA remove Nixon from office with Watergate? Could the girl have been used to create a false lead to Nixon? Or was it something else again? Was it simply fortuitous that Sirhan’s Palestinian Arabic origins were emphasized and that his lawyers, who in no way defended him, suggested that he was mad at RFK for supporting the sending of planes to Israel and the oppression of the Palestinians by Israel? What were JFK’s and RFK’s positions vis-à- vis Israel and their nuclear weapons? Who was the girl? What country had she come from when she arrived in NYC three days before?

While I could answer many of these questions, I will defer to my readers’ passion for investigating the truth.
For many questions leading hither and yon originate with this girl. And it is obvious that she was meant to do that: to muddy the waters and keep people guessing once they came to realize that Sirhan obviously did not kill RFK. And she “disappeared” as quickly as she “appeared.” And the authorities shut down their investigation and pursuit of her. They denied her existence against all the evidence. Meant to stand out, she was also meant to go out, leaving a trail of questions.
Former Congressman Allard Lowenstein, who was investigating Robert Kennedy’s killing and was also strangely murdered, put it well:

Robert Kennedy’s death, like the President’s, was mourned as an extension of senseless violence; events moved on, and the profound alterations that these deaths…brought in the equation of power in America was perceived as random…. What is odd is not that some people thought it was all random, but that so many intelligent people refused to believe that it might be anything else. Nothing can measure more graphically how limited was the general under-standing of what is possible in America.

While such pseudo-innocence prevailed then and is still very widespread, perhaps no one epitomized the twisted mind games played by intelligence agencies more than James Jesus Angleton, the notorious CIA Counterintelligence Chief for so many years, in whose safe were found gruesome photos of Robert Kennedy’s autopsy. Why, one may ask, were those photos there, since Angleton allegedly had no connection to the RFK killing and since Sirhan was said to be the assassin? Was Angleton’s work as CIA liaison with Israel in any way connected?

As I wrote earlier, if one objectively studies the assassination of Senator Kennedy, one cannot but conclude there was a government conspiracy and that Sirhan is not guilty. That much is not particularly complicated, although many people not familiar with the facts of the case may think otherwise.

The mystery girl is another matter. Everything about her has served to hypnotize, first Sirhan, and then those seeking to get to the deeper forces behind this American tragedy.

Robert Kennedy, like his brother John, was a great danger to those virulent forces of war and oppression within his own government, and he died opposing them as a true patriot.

If we wish to honor him, we are obligated to pursue the truth of why he died and why it still matters. No government agency will ever do that for us. Fifty years of silence must be ended, and it up to us.

“Non scoprirai mai la verità se non sei pronto ad accettare l’imprevisto” – Eraclito.

Il Re-Virus è nudo. Questo è ormai un fatto riconosciuto da tutti coloro che hanno il coraggio di guardare in faccia i fatti. In questo articolo non esporrò l’immensa mole di prove che esiste. Ognuno di voi ha fatto, sta facendo o farà la propria ricerca. Citerò solo il documento che è uscito la scorsa settimana dal Ministero degli Interni tedesco:

“Il virus corona è un falso allarme globale. La pericolosità del virus è stata sopravvalutata (non più di 250.000 morti in tutto il mondo con Covid-19, contro 1,5 milioni per l’influenza stagionale 2017-18)”.¹

Lo scopo di questo articolo non è quello di discutere questo argomento. In due mesi, come molti altri, sono riuscito a raccogliere abbastanza fatti da poter rimuovere molti dubbi sulla gravità di questo “virus”. Per poter focalizzare questo articolo sul suo tema principale, lascerò che il lettore faccia le sue ricerche su questo tema al di fuori dei sentieri battuti.

Cominciamo con una domanda: se la pandemia letale non è stata letale, che ne è del confinamento globale?

Incompetenza? Cecità? Cospirazione?

È importante rispondere a questa domanda sulla base dei fatti. Com’ è che è impazzito il mondo? Chi ha deciso l’isolamento? Chi l’ha giustificato? Chi se l’è sognato?

Cominciamo con quest’ultima domanda.

Nessun libro di testo medico raccomanda di mettere in quarantena popolazioni sane, figuriamoci interi paesi. Non è mai stata praticata, né è mai stata raccomandata. L’idea è di origine militare.

Nel 2005, sotto l’egida di Donald Rumsfeld, capo del Pentagono sotto Bush Jr. Dr. Hatchett, l’attuale CEO della “Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations” (CEPI), ha creato un piano per il contenimento totale della popolazione americana in caso di attacco bioterroristico². Questa idea è stata ripresa da un think tank statunitense, la Rockefeller Foundation, nel 2010 nel suo documento “Scenari per il futuro della tecnologia e dello sviluppo internazionale”³. In questo documento si presenta un confinamento autoritario globale di oltre 10 o 20 anni a causa di un’epidemia come uno dei quattro possibili futuri imminenti per l’umanità. Chi ha immaginato il confinamento? Alcuni militari e una lobby americana. Nessuno scienziato. Ancora meno dei medici.

Ora vediamo chi ha giustificato, chi ha sostenuto il contenimento? È importante adesso conoscere il direttore del SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, Regno Unito): Neil Fergusson⁴. Nel 2002, ha calcolato che il morbo della mucca pazza avrebbe ucciso circa 50 000 inglesi e altri 150 000 quando si sarebbe trasmesso alle pecore. In realtà erano 177. Nel 2005, ha previsto che l’influenza aviaria avrebbe ucciso 65.000 britannici. In totale sono stati 457. Un altro attore importante è l’Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità (OMS)⁵. Nel 2009, ha emesso un allarme pandemico per l’influenza H1N1, scatenando l’acquisto di milioni e milioni di vaccini (10 dollari a dose) da parte dei governi. La pandemia non si è mai verificata. I vaccini, costosamente acquistati, sono stati distrutti perché inutilizzati. Inoltre, contenevano mercurio, che ha creato molti casi di narcolessia cronica e altri problemi di salute tra i vaccinati. Nessuno Stato ha ritenuto responsabile l’organizzazione che era costata loro miliardi, o le aziende farmaceutiche che hanno prodotto un vaccino tossico.

Nel marzo di quest’anno, l’OMS ha lanciato il su grido “Pandemia!”, nonostante il numero di casi e di decessi sia molto inferiore a quello dell’influenza stagionale. L’OMS è stata aiutata in questo dai test virologici poco affidabili⁶. Neil Fergusson, invece, fedele alle sue dichiarazioni allarmistiche, aveva previsto con il suo “modello matematico” che 550.000 britannici sarebbero morti di Covid, così come più di 2 milioni di americani, se non fosse entrato in vigore un feroce blocco. Poco prima aveva comunicato lo stesso tipo di cifre al presidente Macron⁷. Da un giorno all’altro, la Gran Bretagna ha attuato il piano del Dr. Hatchett (CEPI), che era già stato attuato da molti paesi. Blocco totale. Non importava che in seguito il SAGE rivedesse i suoi numeri molto al ribasso e che Fergusson fosse stato licenziato. L’OMS, SAGE e CEPI hanno giustificato il confinamento agli occhi del mondo.

Un dettaglio interessante: chi è il generosissimo finanziatore di queste tre istituzioni con i loro acronimi affascinanti? Bill Gates.

Incompetenza? Cecità? Cospirazione? Coincidenza?

Ora sappiamo chi ha ideato l’isolamento, chi lo ha giustificato e chi lo ha fatto rispettare. Rimane una domanda fondamentale. Perché la gente l’ha accettato senza batter ciglio (almeno all’inizio)? La risposta è in quattro lettere: PAURA. Una paura sapientemente orchestrata dai media che formerebbero un meraviglioso coro, essendo tutti così armoniosamente sintonizzati . A proposito, chi è il generoso filantropo che ha dato milioni di dollari ai giornali europei più importanti? Bill Gates⁸. Ma torniamo alla paura. Paura di cosa, innanzitutto? Paura di morire, naturalmente! Senza di ciò, nulla sarebbe stato possibile. La paura ha paralizzato molti pensatori… La paura… Ne riparleremo più avanti.

“LOCKDOWN PARTY”

Un’opera teatrale anonima

diretta da Bill Gates e dai suoi amichetti.

Coro dei narratori – le Monde, der Speigle, CNN, altri.

Il cavaliere con la lunga spada nera travestita da pastore – il governo.

Le pecore – noi

I carabinieri – noi

I macellai – Big Pharma e Big Tech

L’urlatore nel deserto – lui, tu, io.

Gli uomini in piedi – noi.

Il vero Pastore – da determinare.

Detto questo, dobbiamo riconoscere che c’è una pandemia. Ma non necessariamente quello in cui crediamo, non il virus corona. Per capirlo, facciamo un parallelo con il nostro meraviglioso corpo umano.

Il nostro corpo è composto da un numero incredibile di cellule viventi. Queste sono le sue più piccole unità vive e autonome. Tutte lavorano per un unico obiettivo: mantenere vivo e sano l’intero organismo (il nostro corpo). In questo modo, può servire da veicolo per un’entità superiore, che potrei chiamare il nostro Io. Queste cellule si riuniscono in organi, un livello intermedio tra la cellula e tutto il corpo. Ora, cosa succederebbe se le cellule smettessero di lavorare per uno scopo superiore e cominciassero a vivere solo per se stesse, deviando egoisticamente le sostanze nutritive dal corpo per la propria crescita? Esse formeranno quello che viene chiamato cancro. Un cancro è un gruppo di cellule che non funziona per il corpo, ma per se stesse, parassitandolo.

Ora che questo è chiaro, passiamo a un’altra scala. La società è un organismo vivo e complesso, proprio come il corpo umano. È costituito da organi che gli permettono di svolgere le sue funzioni fisiche: banche, scuole, ospedali, aziende, governi… Le unità di base sono gli esseri umani, noi.

Se l’egoismo delle cellule crea il cancro, cosa crea l’egoismo degli individui? Quanti individui nella nostra società sono al servizio di un principio superiore positivo? In altre parole, chi conoscete che metta il servizio agli altri al centro della sua vita? E quante persone vivono quasi esclusivamente al proprio servizio?

Se il corpo umano avesse tante cellule egoiste quanti individui egoisti ha la società, come si chiamerebbe? Valutate la proporzione tra le persone che frequentate… Sarebbe facile arrivare al livello di cancro terminale.

Lo vedete come lo vedo io? Questo egoismo materialista che ha paura della morte è il cancro della nostra società. Per anni ha progredito tranquillamente, quasi senza sintomi. Ed ora comincia a far male. La nostra vita sociale è piena di tumori maligni. I più grandi, come l’economia speculativa, sono più numerosi degli organi sani, come l’economia reale. I più piccoli costellano i nostri rapporti familiari, i rapporti di lavoro, la cultura e forme di governo. Questi comportamenti antisociali, divenuti banali, hanno creato le condizioni per cui il Grande Cancro si sveli ora in tutto il suo splendore e vada all’attacco generale. Metastasi.

È fondamentale vederlo chiaramente. È chiaro che ci sono grandi cattivi egoisti. Ma non avrebbero potuto fare nulla se non fossimo stati malvagiamente egoisti e materialisti anche noi. Sarebbe così comodo puntare il dito contro i tumori principali, sperando che una rivoluzione ce ne liberi come la chemioterapia. Ma sarebbe dimenticare che la mia codardia ha fatto il loro letto. Uccidere i cattivi non fa sparire il male. Salta solo da una persona all’altra, da un Luigi XVI a un Robespierre.

Siamo in una crisi che non ha altra via d’uscita se non la trasformazione individuale e sociale. In effetti, ho già visto diverse persone, di quelle che si sono svegliate molto presto, trasformarsi a poco a poco attraverso la lotta contro il Grande Cancro.

Ed è qui che nasce la bellezza, è qui che nasce la speranza! Quando raggiungo il fondo, posso dare una spinta e cominciare a risalire. Chi cura il cancro? La chemio lo attacca con le sue stesse armi, e il principio del cancro rimane nel corpo fino a quando non rinasce un po’ più tardi, un po’ più lontano. No, non si può curare il male con il male. Ciò che cura il cancro è che l’Io riprenda il controllo delle sue cellule. Viene ristabilito un collegamento tra la cellula e il principio superiore. Le cellule riprendono poi il loro lavoro al servizio del grande insieme, o muoiono. Per noialtri è la stessa cosa in modo diverso. È lo stesso perché ciò che ci salva dal nostro male è il bene degli altri. Quando lavoro per il Bene degli altri, dipanando a poco a poco il mio egoismo appiccicoso e mi lego alle forze del Principio Superiore dell’Umanità, a ciò che di più Umano c’è nell’Uomo. È diverso perché questo Principio Superiore non verrà mai ad imporsi su di noi per rimetterci sulla retta via. Rispetta la nostra libertà. È la nostra libertà. Sta a noi ripristinare il rapporto con Lui.

Cos’è il bene? Le Bien? Per secoli, il Grande Cancro ci ha portato a credere che non esiste, che è relativo. O che risiede nella felicità egoistica della maggioranza. Oh illusione materialistica! Ma ora il Grande Cancro è uscito dalla sua tana, e la porta si è chiusa dietro di lui. È diventato estremamente visibile, così come, accanto a lui, discreto ma molto presente, invitante ma non costrittivo, l’amorevole Bene.

Allora, come si combatte? Bisogna capire che questa lotta è fondamentale. Non lottare é già morire. È peggio che morire, è diventare cattivi, a piccoli passi incoscienti, lentamente, come qualcuno che, stordito dal fumo della sua casa in fiamme, va a letto per un pisolino. È così stanco, poverino! Sta solo seguendo i consigli del suo medico.

Allora, come si combatte? Prima di tutto dobbiamo vederci chiaro. La lotta ha due direzioni. Prima di tutto, dentro ognuno di noi. Il lavoro spirituale individuale è la chiave. Riaprirsi alla percezione del mondo spirituale e liberarsi gradualmente della paura, dell’egoismo, del materialismo e di tutti quei piccoli difetti che fanno di me una persona media. Come dicevano gli antichi greci: “Conosci te stesso, e prenditi a calci in culo!”

La seconda direzione è  la necessità di conoscere il mondo. In particolare, è necessario conoscere il Grande Cancro, come funziona, cosa sta cercando di ottenere. Osservarla, ascoltare chi l’ha studiata, annunciata; fare un controllo incrociato di informazioni, pensare, osservare di nuovo, pensare di nuovo, pensare di nuovo, scambiare.

Per esempio, diamo un’occhiata più da vicino a questo confinamento che i governi sono così desiderosi di mantenere anche quando il cosiddetto virus è andato in vacanza. Quali sono le conseguenze di questo? Ecco un breve elenco.

– Installazione di antenne 5G ad alta velocità, nella maggior parte dei paesi industrializzati (tutti?), ignorando l’opposizione degli abitanti o degli scienziati.

– Bancarotta per molti piccoli commercianti e produttori. Le grandi imprese sopravvivono, buon per loro. Le piccole persone diventano dipendenti dallo Stato per il loro pane quotidiano.

– I diritti fondamentali come l’incontro, il contatto, la protesta, sono sospesi.

– I bambini non hanno più il diritto di avere contatti fisici con altre persone. Non importa quanto questo contatto sia vitale per il loro sano sviluppo.⁹

– Gli schermi monopolizzano le nostre vite e le loro¹⁰, imponendo i loro effetti, più che dannosi, come una panacea.

– Muoiono più persone a causa del contenimento che per il “virus”.¹¹

– La censura (Youtube, Facebook, i media mainstream, …) blocca coloro che mettono in dubbio i benefici dei vaccini, il 5G, il lockdown, o semplicemente la narrazione ufficiale.

– Le aziende farmaceutiche e di comunicazione vedono esplodere i loro profitti.

Cerchiamo ora di seguire la logica che sta dietro a questa distruzione dell’uomo libero per prevedere la sua prossima mossa. Come negli scacchi. Tutto ciò che segue è ipotetico, ma basato su tecnologie già esistenti o in fase di sviluppo, su dichiarazioni di autorità governative o di super ricchi, o su semplici deduzioni.

Immaginiamo che stia arrivando una seconda ondata, o sembra che stia arrivando. Noi riconfiniamo ancora di più. Tutti gli effetti della lista aumentano. Lo Stato e le grandi imprese diventano i salvatori del mondo. Ma per proteggere la popolazione da se stessa, i salvatori hanno messo in atto un passaporto sanitario, rapidamente integrato in un’identità digitale¹² (finanziata da chi? Indovinate chi?), che dice chi è sano e chi no. Se rifiutate il vaccino e l’identità digitale, come faranno i buoni a sapere che non siete un pericolo per loro? Non ti sarà più permesso di stare con loro. Niente più treni o aerei, supermercati o banche. Sei pericoloso.

E’ tutto già in cammino. Basta guardare quello che sta succedendo in Cina, o quello che il World Economic Forum sta progettando sul proprio sito web. Cosa succede dopo? La salute, la comunicazione, l’istruzione, i trasporti sono stati stereotipati e messi nelle mani dello stato orwelliano. Cosa rimane? I soldi, i contanti. E il cibo.

A causa delle conseguenze di ripetuti confinamenti, la produzione alimentare e le catene di approvvigionamento saranno compromesse¹³. Lo Stato, ancora una volta vestito con i pantaloni rossi di Superman, il salvatore dell’umanità, interverrà ancora una volta. Proibirà, scusatemi, sostituirà l’agricoltura biologica e biodinamica, troppo poco redditizie, con un’agricoltura intensiva nelle mani di aziende che sanno quello che fanno. Monsanto, per esempio. Non siete d’accordo. Beh, non mangiate! Mai più…

In ogni caso, non avrete più soldi. I soldi liquidi, trasmettitori di germi patogeni, scompariranno. Le valute virtuali, integrate nella nostra identità digitale (un numero in un database che copre tutta la nostra vita), diventeranno l’unico metodo di pagamento. Chi li controllerà?

Le persone che non si piegheranno dovranno esiliarsi intorno a fattorie di villaggio a bassa tecnologia, nuove arche di Noè in un diluvio di menzogne cancerogene.

Che triste spettacolo! Ne avremmo facilmente paura, tanto le forze contro di noi sembrano sproporzionate. E ancora! Eppure…

Il Grande Cancro ha un punto debole. Una delicciosa crepa nel suo guscio di cartone spinato: si indebolisce quando viene visto. Odia la luce. Come un fungo, cresce solo nell’oscurità, nella pia incoscienza collettiva. Inoltre, ha un grande nemico: il Principio del Bene. A questa entità spirituale sono stati dati molti nomi nella storia: Dio, Tao, Cristo, Hado, l’Io-Sono, Aum, Amore Divino, l’Universo… Il nome non ha importanza. Ciò che conta è il legame con Lui. Fare del centro delle nostre iniziative la Sua casa. Confidare in Lui, in Loro, nella loro ricerca attiva, nell’applicazione qui e ora di ciò che sono; questo è ciò che può permetterci di passare tra le gocce e preparare il futuro.

Anche l’Impero Romano aveva un cancro terminale. Fu distrutta dalla “barbarie” del nord, un mero raffreddore rispetto agli innumerevoli popoli precedentemente sconfitti. Isole di una nuova spiritualità sono sopravvissute sotto forma di monasteri. Da lì sono emersi gli impulsi che hanno permesso all’Umanità europea di crescere di nuovo. Si ripeterà in una nuova forma?

Il Grande Cancro sarà sconfitto, lo so. Sarà fatto nel dolore, ma l’umanità sopravviverà e ne uscirà meglio. Quanto a noi, non è tanto di sapere se sopravviveremo. Sappiamo che prima o poi moriremo, è così grave? Se i materialisti hanno ragione, allora sì, è drammatico, e dobbiamo combattere la nostra morte, a costo della vita degli altri, e diventare un cancro.  Se il Principio del Bene e il mondo spirituale hanno un’esistenza, allora la domanda non è più se un giorno moriremo, ma piuttosto: come abbiamo vissuto? Come abbiamo permesso agli altri di vivere?

Fiducia e amore a voi

Benjamin Bourgeois

25 di maggio 2020

Le « grand cancer » et l’avenir. Confinement général de la population: histoire, analyses et perspectives.

 

 

As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to devastate many nations of the world, the global community and media outlets have been increasingly focusing on questionable activities being carried out at biolabs financed by funds from the US Department of Defense budget.

There have already been a number of publications expressing concern about the collection of human specimens for research from members of various ethnic groups by the Pentagon. The total budget for this program is supposedly $2 billion. The key long-term aims of USA’s biological defense program are to “counter and reduce the risk of biological threats and to prepare, respond to, and recover from them if they happen” in any given region. These goals include monitoring all the research conducted on pathogens; collecting biological specimens in countries of interest (and then handing them over to the United States); studying how susceptible certain ethnic groups are to various diseases and their responses to appropriate treatments, and conducting clinical trials of drugs in regions with ethnically diverse populations. In order to reach these objectives, the United States has ensured the establishment of partner alert and response systems for epidemics in the aforementioned countries, which encompass national, regional and local research laboratories, institutes of veterinary medicine as well as medical facilities.

USA’s National Security Strategy, unveiled in 2017, stated that “China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity”. Hence, it is not surprising that research on bio-threats is being actively conducted in partnership with the United States in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) region. In addition, a network of US partner biolabs is being established on the borders of Russia and China. In this regard, the USA seems to be particularly interested in Central Asian nations, Ukraine and Eastern European countries. It is particularly frightening that, in recent years, new US partner biological laboratories have reportedly been established in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Moldova and Ukraine (altogether, there are several dozen facilities of this nature in 25 countries).

For example, in Ukraine, which appears to be under Washington’s direct influence after the Maidan Revolution, the USA has purportedly opened a network of 15 secret biolabs. Recently, Oleksandr Lazarev, a Ukrainian political scientist, told Ukrainian TV channel ZIK that these laboratories were conducting research on weaponizing viruses and could therefore jeopardize national security. He added that 15 laboratories had been established in Ukraine since the so-called Orange Revolution in 2005. The political scientist pointed out that these facilities were funded by the US Department of Defense, which meant that their presence in the region was in line with USA’s military objectives. Oleksandr Lazarev used biolabs in Georgia as an example of facilities where questionable research was being carried out. According to the Ukrainian expert, in 2008, when the Georgian–Ossetian conflict occurred and there was a flare-up in tensions between the United States and Russia, the African swine fever virus (ASFV) spread from Georgia to Russia. The political scientist said that numerous factors suggested that the pathogen came from the aforementioned biolabs in Georgia. He also reminded the audience that ASFV then reached the territory of Ukraine, where it indiscriminately killed livestock. Oleksandr Lazarev also opined that outbreaks of various dangerous diseases, which had occurred in different regions of Ukraine, were directly linked to the US partner biolabs in the country.

Many media outlets have reported about the work carried out at the Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center (a US partner biolab in Alekseyevka, Tbilisi). These news items have expressed concern about the legitimacy of US-funded activities in Georgia. Secret experiments are being conducted at the facility. Some research is even done on people, who are isolated in special units and subsequently infected with the most dangerous diseases.

Another region that the US Department of Defense is particularly interested in is Central Asia, where the US military and political leadership has decided to establish partner laboratories in Soviet-era facilities, called the “anti-plague system”. In Kazakhstan, four out of nine regional research centers (in Nur-Sultan, Otar and Oral) have already been repaired and equipped with necessary instruments as part of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) program.

In recent years, the United States has continued to ramp up its activities in partner biolabs in Uzbekistan, a country not far from Russia, China and Iran. The Pentagon started increasing the reach of its secret biolabs within Uzbekistan since the end of 1990s, during the upheavals that followed the collapse of the USSR. Hence, US experts from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA, a body within the US Department of Defense) could have gained access to previously secret biological and chemical facilities in this nation. The first National Reference Laboratory opened in 2007 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, with support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

In 2013, two more began operations in Andijan and Fergana, and in 2016, another laboratory opened in Urgench (the Khorezm Regional Diagnostic Laboratory). These facilities, as others in countries of the region, were built with the support of the DTRA of the US Department of Defense. Currently, there are more than 10 laboratories aside from the one in Tashkent: in Andijan, Bukhara, Denau, Qarshi, Nukus (the capital of the Republic of Karakalpakstan), Urgench, Samarkand and Fergana. As this network of US partner biolabs continues to expand in Uzbekistan (the most highly-populated Central Asian country), periodic outbreaks of unknown origins have occurred in the nation. However, there is very little information about them at present. For instance, in August 2011, within 24 hours, 70 sick individuals were admitted to hospital in Yangiyul, a city not far from Tashkent. In 2012, an unknown disease spread in Uzbekistan and dozens of people died as a result. In spring 2017, there was an outbreak of chickenpox (a dangerous disease especially for infants, caused by a virus). It had a negative effect on the health of the population in the region and the country, and spread among individuals of working age. Strangely, the rise in infections coincided with the opening of US partner facilities supposedly aimed at reducing the risk of biological threats. It is, therefore, not surprising that there have been rising concerns among the public about the lack of transparency in these laboratories and reporting practices used by them involving US officials.

The United States has been increasing its sphere of influence in the bio defense sector by, first and foremost, expanding its network of partner biolabs and conducting more experiments of interest to the Pentagon. As a result, the aforementioned countries are losing their ability to function independently in this particular field. Fulfilling its objectives could allow the United States to subsequently use these biolabs for military purposes; to ensure US servicemen are protected if they are deployed in the regions where the laboratories are located, and to conduct in-depth research into pathogens that can affect ethnic groups in different ways.

Recently, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that Washington’s rejection of the protocol containing verification measures to strengthen the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction was a cause for concern. “Tensions around the issue have escalated and Washington’s unwillingness to ensure the transparency of its military biological activities in various parts of the world raises questions about what is really going on there and what the actual goals are,” the official pointed out.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Vladimir Platov is a Middle East expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is by US Navy/Chief Mass Communication Specialist Michael B. Watkins

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a new government policy for nuclear deterrence on Tuesday that allows the use of nuclear weapons in response to conventional arms attacks.  

Russia says its nuclear weapons are developed in order to deter potential attacks and can be used to combat a strike targeting the nation’s critical government and military infrastructure, according to government policy.

The decree Putin signed on Tuesday replaces a 10-year-old document that expired this year. It outlines the types of threats that could trigger Russia’s use of atomic weapons —including an attack with conventional, non-nuclear weapons that “threatens the existence” of the country.

The new policy says that if the government obtains “reliable information” about the launch of ballistic missiles targeting Russia or its allies, a nuclear response is permissible.

In addition, the document specifies that atomic weapons can be used under the condition of “enemy impact on critically important government or military facilities of the Russian Federation, the incapacitation of which could result in the failure of retaliatory action of nuclear forces.”

The New START agreement – a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the U.S. and Russia – was signed by former Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in 2010. It is the last remaining U.S.-Russia arms control deal after the Trump administration withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty last week.

The Obama-era treaty, which limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, is set to expire next February.

The Trump administration reportedly plans to resume arms-control talks with Russia, including on the New START treaty, but the U.S. wants China to be involved in any new pact. Moscow, however, has said Beijing taking part in a nuclear treaty with Washington is not feasible, according to an Associated Press report.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image: In this photo taken from undated footage, an intercontinental ballistic missile lifts off from a truck-mounted launcher somewhere in Russia. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service)

This article was originally published on ACLU in September 2016.

The ACLU of Connecticut is suing state police for fabricating retaliatory criminal charges against a protester after troopers were recorded discussing how to trump up charges against him. In what seems like an unlikely stroke of cosmic karma, the recording came about after a camera belonging to the protester, Michael Picard, was illegally seized by a trooper who didn’t know that it was recording and carried it back to his patrol car, where it then captured the troopers’ plotting.

“Let’s give him something,” one trooper declared. Another suggested, “we can hit him with creating a public disturbance.” “Gotta cover our ass,” remarked a third.

ACLU affiliates around the country have done a lot of cases defending the right to record in public places, but this case (press release, complaint) is particularly striking. I spoke to ACLU of Connecticut Legal Director Dan Barrett, and he told me about how the incident came about:

Our client is a guy who is very concerned with privacy, and who protests DUI checkpoints around the capital region here in Hartford, Connecticut. He feels they’re both unconstitutional and a waste of money. He has done public records investigations, for example, and recently found that for every two man hours put into a check point, it yields just one minor traffic citation—almost always for defective equipment. He was well known to the police, who also knew that he is a peaceful privacy and open-carry gun rights activist.

So Michael was out on Sept. 11, 2015 in West Hartford. He shows up, has a big sign that says “cops ahead, remain silent.” It’s handwritten—this is not threatening stuff. He stood on a small triangular traffic island. He was standing there for an hour, hour and a half without any problems. Then, the state police officers who were working the checkpoint come over to Michael, and the first thing they do is slap the camera out of his hand so it hits the ground. He thinks it’s broken.

It was really brazen. There’s another video showing that the first thing the state trooper does is walk up and with his open hand slap the camera down to the ground. He doesn’t even say anything like “put that down,” or “please lower your camera.” He just slaps it to the ground. Then he interacts with Michael as if nothing happened, as if, “I’m just allowed to do that, and I don’t even have to tell you why I just broke your camera.” It’s an amazing level of hostility.

The troopers search Michael, and theatrically announce that he has a gun—which they knew he had, and which he was carrying legally under Connecticut’s open carry law. So they take his gun, and they go run his pistol permit. As they’re doing that, Michael picks the camera up off the pavement—it’s a nice SLR that can also record video. He picks it up and tries to turn it on as one of the cops walks back over, and that’s where the video starts. The cop announces that “taking my picture is illegal.” Michael debates with him a little because he’s very knowledgeable about the law and the First Amendment, and the end result is that the trooper snatches the camera, walks away, and puts it on top of the cruiser, without realizing that it is working and is recording video.

This is the point at which the troopers’ accidental self-surveillance begins. Barrett continues:

So we get the three troopers at the cruiser talking about what to do. Michael’s permit comes back as valid, they say “oh crap,” and one of the troopers says “we gotta punch a number on this guy,” which means open an investigation in the police database. And he says “we really gotta cover our asses.” And then they have a very long discussion about what to charge Michael with—none of which appear to have any basis in fact. This plays out over eight minutes. They talk about “we could do this, we could do this, we could do this….”

In Connecticut, police officers have clear requirements under the law to intervene and stop or prevent constitutional violations when they see them. But at no time did any of the three officers pipe up and say, “why don’t we just give him his camera back and let him go.”

In the end they decide on two criminal infractions: “reckless use of a highway by a pedestrian,” and “creating a public disturbance.” They have a chilling discussion on how to support the public disturbance charge, and the top-level supervisor explains to the other two, “what we say is that multiple motorists stopped to complain about a guy waving a gun around, but none of them wanted to stop and make a statement.” In other words, what sounds like a fairy tale.

The tickets they gave him started a criminal prosecution in the Connecticut superior court. Eventually the state dismissed first one then the other count, though it took a whole year for him to disentangle himself from the criminal justice system.

Meanwhile, Michael filed a complaint with the state police. They claimed they couldn’t do their internal investigation without interviewing Michael. They kept calling Michael directly—and they did that even though there were criminal charges pending and Michael had a criminal defense lawyer. His lawyer kept calling them and saying “don’t you ever call my client again, you have to talk to me.” But they continued to try and get Michael to come in and be interviewed without his lawyer, claiming that they couldn’t do the investigation unless Michael gave a statement. It was unbelievable—this is an interaction that was recorded from start to finish on high-quality digital video. A year later there has been zero movement on the internal affairs investigation as far as anyone knows, which just shows that police and prosecutors in Connecticut should not be in charge of policing themselves.

As a result of the police’s clear inability to police themselves, the only avenue left for Picard and the ACLU of Connecticut is a lawsuit. That lawsuit is based on three claims, as Barrett laid out for me:

The first claim is the violation of Michael’s right to record—the efforts to prevent Michael from recording what was happening. That includes the fact that they swatted his camera and attempted to break it, and took it away, and they also tried to block him from taking photos of the license plates on the police cruiser using his cell phone after his camera was taken.

The second count is a Fourth Amendment claim: the seizure of Michael’s camera without probable cause to believe that it contained evidence of a crime, or a warrant for its seizure. The police cannot grab people’s property and confiscate it on a whim.

The third is a First Amendment retaliation claim. Whether it was because he was carrying a sign criticizing the police, because he was recording the police, because they just didn’t like him, or all of the above, it really appears from the evidence that they completely manufactured criminal charges against Michael.

If Michael had been just jotting down license plate numbers with a pen and pad and the troopers had taken it, or slapped the pen out of his hand saying “you’re not allowed to write down our license plate numbers,” everyone would recognize how ridiculous the situation was. And if the defendants had been any other kind of state or local employee—if they had been a road crew, and Michael had wanted to film them paving, and they had forced him to stop recording, their actions wouldn’t get any serious consideration by a court. Nothing about the defendants here being police makes their actions any more defensible. All Michael was doing was recording state employees doing their jobs on a public street.

The really interesting thing about this case is not just that the state troopers were so openly hostile to being recorded, or to anyone seeing what they were up to, but also that they appear to have had a very frank discussion inside the cruiser about how to punish somebody who was protesting them.

It’s surprising that we are still regularly hearing about incidents in which police are not respecting the constitutional right to record in public. But to hear police officers casually discussing the fabrication of criminal charges to retaliate against a protester is even more shocking. As Barrett put it to me, “It’s one of those things that on your darker days you may think happens all the time, but you never really thought there’d be a video recording of.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Flickr

The American empire is in decay, but that doesn’t mean things can’t get worse. Protests that erupted over the police killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, continue to rage across the United States. 

Each new day sees another chunk of flesh torn from the face the nation shows the world, revealing the bone and blood underneath. The inequalities and injustices of the world’s richest country are being brutally exposed.

The capital is literally on fire, but the responses of both the president and the liberal establishment suggest that things will likely get worse before – or if – they get better. If optimistic Americans were hoping that relief could come at the ballot box, they may be disappointed: November’s election offers voters a choice between an old, white neo-fascist and an old, white neoliberal.

Fantasies of redemption are ever present, but there is no easy solution to the problem of Donald Trump, just as there is no easy solution to the coronavirus pandemic or to structural racism. In a world in which the stock markets go up while ordinary people’s wealth goes down, the markets have always been happy with the US president. That’s the intractable problem. What former President Barack Obama did nothing to reverse, Trump has only accelerated.

Trump tweets while Washington burns

For now, the president lurches further into fascist territory. There are new demonstrations of this almost every hour; whatever I write here will likely be out of date by the time you read it.

Tear gas was recently used to clear protesters from outside the White House, so that the president could stage a photo opportunity in front of a church, a bible in his hand raised high. Priests and others were reportedly forced off church grounds by law enforcement officers, turning, in the words of one rector, “holy ground… into a battle ground”.

pic.twitter.com/bKvTrqHomS

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 2, 2020

Jesus used force to cleanse the temple of moneymen. Trump and his acolytes, men of money, use force to cleanse the temple of the people. If Nero fiddled while Rome burned, then Trump tweets while Washington suffers the same fate. He smears the protesters. He threatens them and emboldens police.

In a few notable, moving exceptions, police have communed with protestors. For the most part, though, tear gas and rubber bullets are fired into crowds of people. They have been fired at people sitting on their porches. Police vehicles have been driven into protesters. Tasers have been utilised, women have been thrown to the ground and young couples dragged from their cars.

These are just some of many incidents recorded. Many more were not. Each new day brings images of US police forces that could come straight out of a comic-book blockbuster depicting an authoritarian dystopia.

Devoured by capitalism

Put another way, these images could have come straight out of Middle Eastern countries recently occupied by the US military, such as Iraq, or those in which bountiful US support enables the brutal repression of internal dissent, such as Israel/Palestine, Egypt and the Gulf. The imperial war machine, seen before on US streets and well known particularly to the nation’s black population, has come back home.

The street-level resistance to this officially condoned repression arrives in the time of coronavirus, with the US recording by far the largest total number of deaths as a result of the disease. Coronavirus had already revealed – as it did in my own country, the UK – existing social and racial inequalities, as well as the extent to which the public sphere has been devoured by capitalism.

Unemployment in the US now stands at more than 40 million people. Cars queue for miles to access food banks. Black Americans are dying of Covid-19 at three times the rate of their white counterparts.

Meanwhile, many of the usual suspects continue to make out like bandits. The country’s wealthiest hospitals received billions in government bailouts. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is billions of dollars richer, even as his warehouse workers protest their conditions. Corporations that engaged in coronawashing do much the same thing with black lives: they publicly decry racism while continuing to be part of the problem.

Rather than cede management of the virus to scientists and medical experts, a rage-fuelled, paranoid nationalist Trump has cut ties with the World Health Organization and blamed China for the virus – to the point where a neat piece of YouTube propaganda produced by the Xinhua news agency comes across as basically true. Trump has put the economy, meaning the country’s richest corporations and individuals, before working people.

Allegiance to white, Christian America

Trump’s response to the two types of recent American protest bears this out. Before condemning the black and multi-racial protests sparked by police brutality, he was lauding the almost entirely white protests against lockdown.

His recent polling may not look good, but this is a man who responds to his donors and understands his voting base. The donors, along with his rich voters (and there are plenty of them), like their labour cheap and their taxes low. The base likes their guns loud, their racism at about the same volume and their freedom relentlessly performed. Besides, there are other polls that will buoy Trump, like the one this week which found that 58 percent of Americans support calling in the US military to supplement city police forces.

The president’s chilling bible photo opportunity was designed again to show his allegiance to an America that is white and Christian. Christian ministers of various stripes across the country are appalled by Trump, but in a land that long ago married capitalism and religion, stripping Jesus’s life and teachings of their radical, anti-materialist message, the former reality TV star was able to overcome reservations among the Evangelical flock and win the support of a host of key pastors and their followers.

More than that, we know, as Malcolm X once put it, that the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday, when black worshippers go to one church and white worshippers to another. Trump has some celebrity endorsers in the black church, but they are his useful idiots. It is white evangelicals who are mobilising to re-elect a man who can’t even come up with a favourite verse in what is supposedly his favourite book.

Redemption fantasies

Throughout his tenure as president and for a good while before that, one question has stood out above all others: is Trump an aberration? Does his election and subsequent administration represent an unholy departure from sacred norms, or is it simply an extreme iteration of how the country has always done business, both at home and abroad?

To me, it seems as though the answer is both. The more dangerous answer is to claim, as the US liberal establishment does, that Trump is an aberration, and that the election of a civil and sensible centrist will make everything OK again.

Late last month, a parody New York Times front page was circulated on social media. It imagines the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration as president next January, with a headline reading “Biden inaugurated, ‘Nightmare is over’”. Elsewhere on the page, Trump is banned by Twitter for flouting new civility laws, flees Washington in disguise and refuses to attend Biden’s inauguration ceremony. A new cabinet featuring Bezos, Pete Buttigieg and Oprah Winfrey is announced.

The front page was shared first in delight by liberals, and then in disgust by leftists. Fantasies of easy American redemption go beyond the president. The country’s profound domestic struggles are being presented – just as Trump’s 2016 election was – as the work of malign foreign actors.

Magical thinking

A New York Times article from March about Russian attempts to stoke racial tensions in the US is being breathlessly re-shared on social media, as if evil Vladimir Putin in his Kremlin lair conjured up centuries of slavery, segregation and state-sanctioned violence.

Of course Russia, like China, will prod and push at the soft underbelly of its rival while ruthlessly repressing its own internal dissent – but the narrative of foreign interference is liberal magical thinking, and deeply ironic coming from the land of the CIA coup. For many Americans, home, as Gil Scott-Heron sang, “is where the hatred is”.

At the same time – and even while the US military remains far more powerful than any other – the US has lost out to its international antagonists, particularly China, to which it outsourcedits industrial capacity at the expense of its working class.

In Syria, the US expended considerable resources fighting the Islamic State, only to cede control to the Russians. In Iraq, Iran’s influence is now greater, even if the devastation of the US invasion will take generations to get over.

The pursuit of unwinnable wars has cost the US dearly, but the fantasy of spreading free-market democracy continues to engage Washington’s policymakers, and the apparently pragmatic need to support dictators around the world remains.

‘It takes time’

Under Trump, of course, US policy on Israel/Palestine has gone from appearing to sit on the fence (while lavishly funding and arming Israel) to full-throated support of apartheid, conceived and delivered by members of the president’s own family and billionaire party funders. The pain of Palestinians suffering under Israeli occupation shares something, then, with the pain of black Americans suffering at the hands of their own state.

Reporting on Trump’s rise from outsider Republican candidate to president, I became fixated with showing that the US was a fertile breeding ground for the racism, misogyny and division fuelling a chaotic campaign.

The hope and promise of Barack Obama’s election in 2008 had all but evaporated. In Chicago, a slew of notable black residents told me how angry they were with Obama for capitulating to Wall Street, going after teaching unions, keeping Guantanamo Bay open, and doing too little about racial injustice.

In Cleveland, Black Lives Matter organisers reminded me that their movement was founded with a black president and a black attorney general, Eric Holder, in power. But this was not a shortcut to structural change, and in the meantime, conservative white America was organising, with one local Republican Party official telling me that a second civil war may not be a bad thing.

“You always told me ‘it takes time,’” James Baldwin once said, in response to a question about the road to racial justice. “It’s taken my father’s time, my mother’s time, my uncle’s time, my brothers’ and my sisters’ time… How much time do you want for your progress?”

Another civil war?

If there is some hope in this moment, it is that resistance to police brutality and Trump’s growing fascism seems strong on the streets. By contrast, resistance from the Democratic establishment can look an awful lot like someone putting their fingers in their ears and hoping this will all just go away.

In the past few years, the thought among many on the left has been that as the inequities of capitalism are inflicted on more and more people, and as those inequities become more and more exposed, a transition to socialism or social democracy will become inevitable. What has happened, instead, is that the situation has become worse, with Trump’s direction of travel – and the Democrats’ thwarting of Bernie Sanders – presenting just two of many examples.

Baldwin wrote that black and white Americans are “bound together forever”, whether they liked it or not. “What is happening to every Negro in the country at any time is also happening to you. There is no way around this. I am suggesting that these walls – these artificial walls – which have been up so long to protect us from something we fear, must come down. I think that what we really have to do is to create a country in which there are no minorities – for the first time in the history of the world.”

Baldwin’s suggestion may yet come to pass. But as the US tears itself apart, there is every chance that the threat I heard from that local Republican Party official will instead be the country’s fate, and that America will enter into another civil war – if that hasn’t already happened.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Oscar Rickett is a journalist who has written and worked for Middle East Eye, VICE, The Guardian, BBC, Channel 4, Africa Confidential and various others.

The Australian High Court has ruled that correspondence between the Queen and the Governor-General of Australia, her viceroy in the former British colony, is no longer “personal” and the property of Buckingham Palace. Why does this matter?

Secret letters written in 1975 by the Queen and her man in Canberra, Sir John Kerr, can now be released by the National Archives – if the Australian establishment allows it. On November 11, 1975, Kerr infamously sacked the reformist government of prime minister Gough Whitlam, and delivered Australia into the hands of the United States.

Today, Australia is a vassal state bar none: its politics, intelligence agencies, military and much of its media are integrated into Washington’s “sphere of dominance” and war plans. In Donald Trump’s current provocations of China, the US bases in Australia are described as the “tip of the spear”.

There is an historical amnesia among Australia’s polite society about the catastrophic events of 1975. An Anglo-American coup overthrew a democratically elected ally in a demeaning scandal in which sections of the Australian elite colluded. This is largely unmentionable. The stamina and achievement of the Australian historian Jenny Hocking in forcing the High Court’s decision are exceptional.

Gough Whitlam was driven from government on Remembrance Day, 1975. When he died six years ago, his achievements were recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. The truth of the coup against him, it was hoped, would be buried with him.

During the Whitlam years, 1972-75, Australia briefly achieved independence and became intolerably progressive. Politically, it was an astonishing period. An American commentator wrote that no country had “reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution”.

The last Australian troops were ordered home from their mercenary service to the American assault on Vietnam. Whitlam’s ministers publicly condemned US barbarities as “mass murder” and the crimes of “maniacs”. The Nixon administration was corrupt, said the Deputy Prime Minister, Jim Cairns, and called for a boycott of American trade. In response, Australian dockers refused to unload American ships.

Whitlam moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement and called for a Zone of Peace in the Indian ocean, which the US and Britain opposed. He demanded France cease its nuclear testing in the Pacific. In the UN, Australia spoke up for the Palestinians. Refugees fleeing the CIA-engineered coup in Chile were welcomed into Australia: an irony I know that Whitlam later savoured.

Although not regarded as on the left of the Labor Party, Gough Whitlam was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride and propriety. He believed that a foreign power should not control his country’s resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to “buy back the farm”.

In drafting the first Aboriginal lands rights legislation and supporting Aboriginal strikers, his government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history, Britain’s colonisation of Australia, and the question of who owned the island-continent’s vast natural wealth.

At home, equal pay for women, free universal higher education and support for the arts became law. There was a sense of real urgency, as if political time was already running out.

Latin Americans will recognise the audacity and danger of such a “breaking free” in a country whose establishment was welded to great, external power. Australians had served every British imperial adventure since the Boxer rebellion was crushed in China. In the 1960s, Australia pleaded to join the US in its invasion of Vietnam, then provided “black teams” for the CIA.

Whitlam’s enemies gathered. US diplomatic cables published in 2013 by WikiLeaks disclose the names of leading figures in both main parties, including a future prime minister and foreign minister, as Washington’s informants during the Whitlam years.

Gough Whitlam knew the risk he was taking. The day after his election, he ordered that his staff should no longer be “vetted or harassed” by the Australian security organisation, ASIO, which was then, as now, tied to Anglo-American intelligence. A CIA station officer in Saigon wrote: “We were told the Australians might as well be regarded as North Vietnamese collaborators.”

Alarm in Washington rose to fury when, in the early hours of March 16, 1973, Whitlam’s Attorney-General, Lionel Murphy, led a posse of Federal police in a raid on the Melbourne offices of ASIO. Since its inception in 1949, ASIO had become as powerful in Australia as the CIA in Washington. A leaked file on Deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns described him as a dangerous figure who would bring about “the destruction of the democratic system of government”.

ASIO’s real power derived from the UKUSA Treaty, with its secret pact of loyalty to foreign intelligence organisations – notably the CIA and MI6. This was demonstrated dramatically when the (now defunct) National Times published extracts from tens of thousands of classified documents under the headline, “How ASIO Betrayed Australia to the Americans.”

Australia is home to some of the most important spy bases in the world. Whitlam demanded to know the CIA’s role and if and why the CIA was running the “joint facility” at Pine Gap near Alice Springs. As documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed in 2013, Pine Gap allows the US to spy on everyone.

“Try to screw us or bounce us,” Whitlam warned the US ambassador, Walter Rice, “[and Pine Gap] will become a matter of contention”.

Victor Marchetti, the CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, later told me, “This threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House… a kind of Chile [coup] was set in motion.”

Pine Gap’s top-secret messages were de-coded by a CIA contractor, TRW. One of the de-coders was Christopher Boyce, a young man troubled by the “deception and betrayal of an ally” he witnessed. Boyce revealed that the CIA had infiltrated the Australian political and trade union elite and was spying on phone calls and Telex messages.

In an interview with the Australian author and investigative journalist, William Pinwell, Boyce revealed one name as especially important. The CIA referred to the Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, as “our man Kerr”.

Kerr was not only the Queen’s man and a passionate monarchist, he had long-standing ties to Anglo-American intelligence. He was an enthusiastic member of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, described by Jonathan Kwitny of the Wall Street Journal in his book, “The Crimes of Patriots”, as, “an elite, invitation-only group… exposed in Congress as being founded, funded and generally run by the CIA”.

Kerr was also funded by the Asia Foundation, exposed in Congress as a conduit for CIA influence and money. The CIA, wrote Kwitny, “paid for Kerr’s travel, built his prestige, even paid for his writings … Kerr continued to go to the CIA for money”.

When Whitlam was re-elected for a second term in 1974, the White House sent Marshall Green to Canberra as ambassador. Green was an imperious, sinister figure who worked in the shadows of America’s “deep state”. Known as the “coupmaster”, he had played a central role in the 1965 coup against President Sukarno in Indonesia – which cost up to a million lives.

One of Green’s first speeches in Australia was to the Australian Institute of Directors, described by an alarmed member of the audience as “an incitement to the country’s business leaders to rise against the government”.

The Americans worked closely with the British. In 1975, Whitlam discovered that MI6 was operating against his government. “The Brits were actually decoding secret messages coming into my foreign affairs office,” he said later. One of his ministers, Clyde Cameron, told me, “We knew MI6 was bugging Cabinet meetings for the Americans.”

Senior CIA officers later revealed that the “Whitlam problem” had been discussed “with urgency” by the CIA’s director, William Colby, and the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield. A deputy director of the CIA said: “Kerr did what he was told to do.”

On November 10, 1975, Whitlam was shown a top secret telex message sourced to Theodore Shackley, the notorious head of the CIA’s East Asia Division, who had helped run the coup against Salvador Allende in Chile two years earlier. Shackley’s message was read to Whitlam. It said that the prime minister of Australia was a security risk in his own country. Brian Toohey, editor of the National Times, disclosed that it carried the authority of Henry Kissinger, destroyer of Chile and Cambodia.

Having removed the heads of both Australian intelligence agencies, ASIO and ASIS, Whitlam was now moving against the CIA. He called for a list of all “declared” CIA officers in Australia.

The day before the Shackley cabled arrived on November 10, 1975, Sir John Kerr visited the headquarters of the Defence Signals Directorate, Australia’s NSA, where he was secretly briefed on the “security crisis”. It was during that weekend, according to a CIA source, that the CIA’s “demands” were passed to Kerr via the British.

On November 11, 1975 – the day Whitlam was to inform Parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia – he was summoned by Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal “reserve powers” invested in him by the British monarch, Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister.

The “Whitlam problem” was solved.  Australian politics never recovered, nor the nation its true independence.

The destruction of Salvador Allende’s government in Chile four years earlier, and of scores of other governments that have questioned the divine right of American might and violence since 1945, was replicated in the most loyal of American allies, often described as “the lucky country”. Only the form of the crushing of democracy in Australia in 1975 differed, along with its enduring cover up.

Imagine a Whitlam today standing up to Trump and Pompeo. Imagine the same courage and principled defiance. Well, it happened.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Abridged from “The Coup”, in John Pilger’s book, A Secret Country, Vintage Books, London. See also Pilger’s film, Other People’s Wars – http://johnpilger.com/videos/the-last-dream-other-peoples-wars

Featured image is from the author

More than 20,000 National Guard deployed in 29 states along with thousands more local, federal and military troops cannot quell the anger of African Americans and their allies

***

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced in a press conference on June 3 that additional charges would be brought against the Minneapolis police officers involved in the brutal execution of 46-year-old George Floyd on May 25.

One of the central demands of the demonstrations which are continuing in cities and suburbs across the United States is that the third degree murder indictment involving former officer Derek Chauvin, be upgraded to first or second degree. In addition, the people in the streets wanted the other three former officers terminated by the City of Minneapolis in the aftermath of the killing, to also be charged in the case.

Attorney Benjamin Crump who is representing the family, called for the filing of additional charges by the time of the memorial for Floyd on June 4. Crump made this statement on June 3, the same day Attorney General Ellison confirmed that Chauvin has been indicted for second degree murder and the three other former officers involved were charged with accessory to second degree murder.

On June 2, 60,000 people marched through the streets of Houston, Texas led by the family of George Floyd. The African American Minneapolis resident was born in Houston and still maintained close ties to the community there.

Since May 26, demonstrations in response to the killing of Floyd have taken place in the majority of states and urban areas around the U.S. The movement domestically has fueled international solidarity with the struggle against racism. Rallies and marches are occurring in European and African countries. In Zimbabwe, the police had to prevent a crowd from engaging in protest activity outside the U.S. embassy in Harare on June 3.

In what appears to be a nationally-coordinated effort to halt the unrest, the level of state repression is being intensified. In Minneapolis and St. Paul riot police and National Guard engaged in widespread use of crowd control weapons and arbitrary detentions after the imposition of a curfew. These same restrictions on mass gatherings and the enactment of curfews are providing law-enforcement with broad discretion in utilizing weapons and making arrests in areas throughout the country. (See this)

Image on the right: Louisville African American business owner David McAtee killed by police and national guard during unrest

New York City police have been documented beating and falsely arresting demonstrators in complete violation of the right to speech and assembly. Police and National Guard killed a small business owner in Louisville on May 31 while he stood outside his restaurant. In Atlanta six police officers have been indicted after being shown on social media posts and television smashing the car windows and assaulting two students from Spelman and Morehouse Colleges.

Detroit police at the aegis of corporate-imposed Mayor Mike Duggan, have arrested hundreds of demonstrators for violating an unjustified citywide curfew imposed in an attempt to protect the property of the billionaire ruling interests which are based outside the city. Demonstrators, bystanders and members of press have been gassed and hit with rubber bullets fired by the Detroit police.  On the first night of the demonstrations, May 29, a 21-year-old youth from suburban Eastpointe was shot and killed in downtown near the hostile police operations. The authorities claim the death had nothing to do with police action.

U.S. President Donald Trump has consistently demanded that governors and mayors, where mass demonstrations have occurred, to ruthlessly stamp out any unrest. He suggested that “looters” be shot by the police or vigilantes. Later the president said he was not aware of the historical and contemporary significance of the social media post amid a nationwide rebellion against racist violence.

Detroit cops attack anti-racist demonstrations

The evoking of the Insurrection Act of 1807 is a legal as well as symbolic gesture signally to law-enforcement and the Pentagon that aggressive actions taken to quell the manifestations in the streets are endorsed by the White House. Federal police are being deployed in Washington, D.C. along with military troops from Fort Bragg and Fort Drum. A staged gassing of demonstrators in Lafayette Park near the White House and the later photos taken in front of the St. John’s Episcopal Church has been condemned by the hierarchy of the denomination.

A news release issued by the Episcopal News Service emphasized:

“’Trump used a church building and the Holy Bible for partisan political purposes. This was done in a time of deep hurt and pain in our country, and his action did nothing to help us or to heal us,’ Presiding Bishop Michael Curry said in a statement. ‘I am outraged,’ the Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, bishop of Washington, told The Washington Post. ‘Everything [Trump] has said and done is to inflame violence. We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us.’”

Trump said on June 1 that:

“First, we are ending the riots and lawlessness that has spread throughout our country.  We will end it now.  Today, I have strongly recommended to every governor to deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets.  Mayors and governors must establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled. If a city or a state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them. I am also taking swift and decisive action to protect our great capital, Washington, D.C.  What happened in this city last night was a total disgrace.  As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel, and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults, and the wanton destruction of property.

Political Problems for Washington and Wall Street in Suppressing the Unrest

The international spotlight on the U.S. during this period is a cause for concern among some elements within the ruling class including the Pentagon. An exposure of domestic racism and national oppression is creating problems politically for the Trump administration. Some U.S. ambassadors stationed in several African states have spoken out about the Floyd police execution. Such gestures are designed to suggest that the murder of Floyd was an aberration and not reflective of law-enforcement policy as a whole.

Australian reporter attacked by US federal police

This trepidation within the highest structures of the security sector may have been reflected in the press conference held by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper on June 3 when he attempted to distance himself from the gassing of demonstrators outside the White House and the Trump proposal to evoke the Insurrection Act and deploy federal troops into the cities in an effort to restore civil order.

Esper noted at the Pentagon:

“I say this not only as Secretary of Defense, but also as a former soldier and a former member of the National Guard, the option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.”

The statements by Esper have not been well received at the White House. Other Republicans and Pentagon officials are expressing concern about the current direction of the administration in addressing the national unrest just several months prior to a presidential and congressional election. The anti-racist demonstrations and rebellions are coming at a time of monumental healthcare and economic crises. Over 41 million people have applied for jobless benefits while already distressed businesses are being targeted in urban areas by enraged members of the community. Demonstrations erupting across the U.S. are multi-national and youthful in character.

A June 2 article in the New York Times reporting on these developments said:

“[T]he current situation may be the most volatile for Republicans yet, with Americans — already enduring the twin public health and economic calamities of the coronavirus pandemic — almost uniformly outraged at the case of Mr. Floyd, whose brutal death after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes was captured on video. Many Americans in both parties are increasingly unsettled by both the violence stemming from the protests and Mr. Trump’s demands that governors and local authorities take a harder line.”

The Struggle Against Racism Moving Forward

Clearly the role of law-enforcement and the criminal justice system has been further revealed as a harbinger of institutional racism. If there had not been a national and global outpouring of militant opposition to the murder of Floyd, the officers involved may not have ever been arrested and indicted. The response by the African American people, the oppressed communities in general and their allies within the majority white population is decisive in raising the level of the demands and the response by the ruling class.

Nonetheless, there have been other instances where public pressure resulted in the indictment of police officers although the prosecutors and the courts failed to convict. The examples of this scenario are numerous from Charleston, South Carolina and New York City to Baltimore, Maryland. Therefore the indictments are a victory for the struggle even though the courts can pressure juries to acquit law-enforcement agents for murdering African Americans.

Members of the U.S. Congress are proposing legislation to address the proliferation of police misconduct stemming from racial profiling. However, such a bill would undoubtedly face severe opposition due to the strength of the security apparatus whose actual role is to protect private property and the capitalist state.

Police misconduct and racist vigilante violence is firmly embedded within the social fabric of the U.S. Only a revolutionary change in the existing system can effectively put end to these practices.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

Do you value the reporting and in-depth analysis provided by Global Research on a daily basis?

Click to donate or click here to become a member of Global Research.

*     *     *

How American Cities Were Reduced to Esper’s “Battlespace”: From Fallujah to Minneapolis

By Prof. Juan Cole, June 04, 2020

Esper clearly thinks of Cleveland and Oakland as “Fallujahs,” as “battlespaces” departing from the “right kind of normal.” People in Fallujah had resented being invaded and ruled by foreigners who reduced them to 65% unemployment. Some 40 million Americans just lost their jobs, in part because of the ineptitude of the administration of which Esper forms a part (South Korea is better governed and did not close down, using large scale testing, contact tracing, and mask-wearing instead).

When Profits and Politics Drive Science: Rushing a Vaccine to Market for a Vanishing Virus

By Ellen Brown, June 04, 2020

More than 100 companies are competing to be first in the race to get a COVID-19 vaccine to market. It’s a race against time, not because the death rate is climbing but because it is falling – to the point where there will soon be too few subjects to prove the effectiveness of the drug.

The Face of Rebellion: George Floyd and the Struggle Against Racism

By Donald Monaco, June 04, 2020

The subsequent rebellion expresses the anger of people who confront a stifling social reality that threatens their very existence, their backs pressed against the proverbial wall by decades of racial injustice.  Some insurgents are speaking the language of confrontation and violence to leaders of a government who understand no other vernacular. Others are raising their voices and their fists with African-Americans who refuse to be murdered with impunity.  They include many of the nation’s youth who are outraged by systemic brutalization of America’s racial underclass.  And there are the voices of those for whom the murder of Floyd was an affront to human dignity and whose minds are tormented by a culture so racist as to inspire dread.  The rage playing itself out on the streets of America is a stark display of social rebellion, a convulsive refusal to be targeted, humiliated and murdered by killer cops who are invariably exonerated by racist District Attorneys.

Why America’s “Revolution” Won’t be Televised. No one is Aiming at the Empire

By Pepe Escobar, June 04, 2020

Burning and/or looting Target or Macy’s is a minor diversion. No one is aiming at the Pentagon (or even the shops at the Pentagon Mall). The FBI. The NY Federal Reserve. The Treasury Department. The CIA in Langley. Wall Street houses. 

The real looters – the ruling class – are comfortably surveying the show on their massive 4K Bravias, sipping single malt.

US Police Forces Are Trained by Israel: The Knee-On-Neck Tactic that Was Used on George Floyd Is the Same Tactic that Has Been Used on the Palestinians

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, June 04, 2020

The looting of stores and the violence that follows has given more ammunition for the establishment to enforce a total police state. Some of the protesters such as ANTIFA  are setting the stage to restrict whatever civil liberties U.S. citizens have left. However, the tragic murder of George Floyd has the hallmark of an Israeli-trained tactic put to use to restrain suspects. Many U.S. states, cities and towns allow their police departments to be trained by the Israeli police, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and by Israel’s internal security service’s known as Shin Bet who for decades has oppressed the Palestinians with brutal policing tactics.

Democrats Casually “Blame Russia” for the Riots

By Paul Antonopoulos, June 04, 2020

The riots engulfing the U.S. were provoked by Moscow, according to National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017 and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013, Susan Rice. She even took it one step further by claiming that those who smashed police stations were strictly following a “Russian playbook.” This allegation without evidence is of course unsurprising since Rice was a key player in pushing for U.S. sanctions against Russia over issues in Ukraine.

The “Corona Hoax”, The Proliferation of Racial Riots. Towards a Military Lockdown?

By Peter Koenig, June 03, 2020

It is as if riots were what is wanted throughout the US, where President Trump has threatened militarizing the country and has already sent troops into Washington DC, where riots are burning literally holes into entire neighborhoods of the city- violence is rampant in this predominantly colored capital city of the US of A. – And as if riots were also wanted throughout western Europe, with the same objective – chaos, that will require military intervention and eventually Martial Law.

The Bush administration’s war of aggression on and military occupation of Iraq that began in 2003 shifted the United States to a militaristic society. Some 2.7 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, an astonishing number. The Bush administration began the practice of sending to civilian police departments military equipment no longer needed in Iraq– everything from Kevlar vests to armored vehicles. Community policing in some towns and cities gave way to the spectacle of militarized police, heavily armed and armored, and inevitably separated from the public they were supposed to serve and protect.

The Bush administration spent trillions on the unprovoked and worthless Iraq War, money that could have been used to train and finance minority university students and entrepreneurs. At the same time, it cut taxes on the wealthy, which is a way of saying that it cut government services for the middle and working classes.

I grew up in a military family, had uncles who fought in WW II, and have nothing but respect for Veterans and active duty service personnel. When I’ve been privileged to address US military audiences, I’ve felt honored to do so. So in this column I am not putting them down in any way. I am, however, putting down their civilian bosses.

The Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, was a civilian bureaucrat during those wars (though he had served with distinction as an infantry officer in the Gulf War). As a Bush administration official (deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy), he breathed in the atmosphere of illegality created by the 2003 war of aggression. On Monday, he told the nation’s governors that

“I think the sooner that you mass and dominate the battlespace, the quicker this dissipates and we can get back to the right normal.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley was present on the call with the governors, during which Trump threatened to violate Posse Comitatus by sending in the US army to the states to do law enforcement over the heads of the governors. Milley has a duty to say that he will not obey such an illegal order. Actually in 1958 Congress specified a two-year prison term for anyone who acted as Trump said he would act.

Then Esper and Milley accompanied Trump on his Great March from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church after Bill Barr ordered military police illegally to attack peacefully assembled protesters from Lafayette Square.

Esper had no business being involved in the march on on St. John’s church, where Trump had had military police tear-gas clergymen.

James Miller, himself a former undersecretary of defense for policy, resigned from the Defense Advisory Board in protest over Esper’s involvement, which he called a violation of Esper’s oath of office.

But above all Gen. Milley should resign for having been present during an unconstitutional act of repression. Milley gives evidence of being what is called in the trade a “weasel,” of giving his superior whatever he wants. We may well have a constitutional crisis in the beginning of November, and citizens of the American Republic have a right to know that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is above the partisan fray and loyal to the Constitution. After Monday’s events, I don’t think we have that assurance.

Where did this way of thinking even come from?

In 2003 when Bush aggressively made war on Iraq and militarily occupied the city, initially a lot of Iraqis were on the fence. In the city of Fallujah, then about the population of Miami, Fl., people gradually turned against the Occupation. The US military took over a school as a base, and parents complained that it would ever after make their children a target. The US colonels wouldn’t listen. There were crowd protests. Someone used the demonstration as a pretext and opportunity to fire on US service personnel. They fired back. From that incident things spiraled out of control. People in Fallujah were Sunni Arabs and were religiously conservative. They sympathized with Palestinians and knew that US was backing Ariel Sharon in his efforts to repress them. People became increasingly radicalized. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Tawhid terrorist organization gained a foothold. In the spring of 2004, 4 contractors were killed, infuriating George W. Bush.

After his reelection, Bush was determined to make Fallujah safe for patrolling US soldiers. I am not sure it ever really was.

He launched a major invasion of the city. We are told that the US Air Force played an important role through “precision bombing.” Rebecca Grant writes, “For several weeks before the main assault, air strikes and artillery fire targeted key sites in the city as they were identified. The hunt for insurgents evolved into battlespace shaping.”

What isn’t said is that most of Fallujah’s residents ended up being displaced, many living in tents in the desert, and much of the city was reduced to rubble. That is “battlespace shaping” for you.

Esper clearly thinks of Cleveland and Oakland as “Fallujahs,” as “battlespaces” departing from the “right kind of normal.” People in Fallujah had resented being invaded and ruled by foreigners who reduced them to 65% unemployment. Some 40 million Americans just lost their jobs, in part because of the ineptitude of the administration of which Esper forms a part (South Korea is better governed and did not close down, using large scale testing, contact tracing, and mask-wearing instead).

A significant part of the American elite was shaped by Bush’s wars to think about dissidence as the equivalent of insurgency and to see challenges to the status quo as illegitimate.

The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg concluded,

“War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Bush’s war of aggression contained within itself the accumulated evil of the whole, and now that evil is spreading out to turn us all into Fallujans.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

More than 100 companies are competing to be first in the race to get a COVID-19 vaccine to market. It’s a race against time, not because the death rate is climbing but because it is falling – to the point where there could soon be too few subjects to prove the effectiveness of the drug.

So says Pascal Soriot, chief executive of AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish pharmaceutical company that is a frontrunner in the race. Soriot said on May 24^th,

“The vaccine has to work and that’s one question, and the other question is, even if it works, we have to be able to demonstrate it. We have to run as fast as possible before the disease disappears so we can demonstrate that the vaccine is effective.”

If the disease is disappearing of its own accord, why throw billions of dollars at developing a vaccine? The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has already agreed to provide up to $1.2 billion to AstraZeneca and another $483 million to US frontrunner Moderna to develop their experimental candidates. “As American taxpayers, we are justified in asking why,” writes William Haseltine in Forbes.

Both companies have attracted billions from private investors and don’t need taxpayer money, and the government’s speculative bets are being made on unproven technologies in the early stages of testing. The profits will go to the companies and their shareholders, while the liabilities will be borne by the public. Vaccine manufacturers are protected from liability for vaccine injuries by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the 2005 PREP Act, which impose damages instead on the US government and US taxpayers.

Long-term systemic effects including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, autoimmune disease, and infertility can take decades to develop. But the stage is already being set for mandatory vaccinations that will be “deployed” by the US military as soon as the end of the year. The HHS in conjunction with the Department of Defense has awarded a $138 million contract for 600 million syringes prefilled with coronavirus vaccine, individually marked with trackable RFID chips. That’s enough for two doses for nearly the entire US population.

COVID-19, like other coronaviruses, is expected to mutate at least every season, raising serious questions about claims that any vaccine will work. A successful vaccine has never been developed for any of the many strains of coronaviruses despite 30 years of effort, due to the nature of the virus itself. In fact vaccinated people can have a higher chance of serious illness and death when later exposed to another strain of the virus, a phenomenon known as “virus interference.” An earlier SARS vaccine touted as effective because it produced antibodies to the virus never made it to market because the laboratory animals contracted more serious symptoms on re-infection, and most of them died. In reports from China and South Korea, even people who have previously recovered from COVID-19 have become re-infected with the virus. If antibodies created naturally in response to the wild virus don’t protect against future infections, the weaker vaccine-triggered antibodies won’t work either.

Researchers working with the AstraZeneca vaccine claimed success in preliminary studies because its lab monkeys all survived and formed antibodies to COVID-19, but data reported later showed that the animals all became infected when challenged, raising serious doubts about the vaccine’s effectiveness. But these concerns have not deterred the HHS, which is proceeding at “Warp Speed” to get the new technologies on the market.

Fast-tracking Moderna’s mRNA Vaccine

Biotech company Moderna, the US frontrunner, has been allowed to skip animal trials altogether before rushing to human trials. It has gotten fast-track approval from the FDA for its “messenger RNA” vaccine, an innovation that has never been approved for marketing or proven in a large-scale clinical trial. The major advantage of mRNA vaccines is the speed with which they can be deployed. Created in a lab rather than from a real virus, they can be mass-produced cost-effectively on a large scale and do not require uninterrupted cold storage. But this speed comes at the risk of major side effects.

In a 2017 TED talk called “Rewriting the Genetic Code,” Moderna’s current chief medical officer Dr. Tal Zaks said, “We’re actually hacking the software of life ….” As explained by a medical doctor writing in The UK Independent on May 20^th:

Moderna’s messenger RNA vaccine … uses a sequence of genetic RNA material produced in a lab that, when injected into your body, must invade your cells and hijack your cells’ protein-making machinery called ribosomes to produce the viral components that subsequently train your immune system to fight the virus. …

In many ways, the vaccine almost behaves like an RNA virus itself except that it hijacks your cells to produce the parts of the virus, like the spike protein, rather than the whole virus. Some messenger RNA vaccines are even self-amplifying…. There are unique and unknown risks to messenger RNA vaccines, including the possibility that they generate strong type I interferon responses that could lead to inflammation and autoimmune conditions.

As noted in Science Magazine, RNA that invades from outside the cell is the hallmark of a virus, and our immune systems have evolved ways to recognize and destroy it. To avoid that, Moderna’s mRNA vaccine sneaks into cells encapsulated in nanoparticles, which aren’t easily degraded and can cause toxic buildup in the liver. A lab-created self-amplifying virus that evades the cell’s defenses by stealth sounds inherently risky. In fact “stealth viruses” are classified as “bioweapons.”

While long-proven, cheap coronavirus treatments with decades of safety testing are being described as dangerous and unproven for treating COVID-19, no one seems to be looking at the risks of the novel vaccines being rushed to market as the only viable alternative for getting the economy back to work. 

Why the Need for Haste?

The argument originally advanced for fast-tracking a COVID-19 vaccine was that the magnitude of the pandemic required shutting down the whole economy until a vaccine was found. But earlier dire projections have now been heavily revised downward. The 3.4% coronavirus mortality rate put forward by the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) at the start of the pandemic was downgraded by the CDC in May to between 0.2% and 0.3%, less than one-tenth the original estimates. The computer-modeled projection of 2.2 million US deaths issued by Imperial College London in March, which triggered shutdowns across the United States, has also been found to be “wildly” overblown. In fact researchers writing in the UK Telegraph on May 16^th called it “the most devastating software mistake of all time.” They wrote that “we would fire anyone for developing code like this” and that the question was “why our Government did not get a second opinion before swallowing Imperial’s prescription.”

Here is a chart of the actual death rate from COVID-19 in Sweden, which did not lock down its economy, versus the rate projected by the Imperial College model without lockdown:

Sweden has actually fared better than many industrialized countries that did lock down their economies. As of June 5^th, Belgium, the UK, Spain and Italy, which all locked down, had more deaths per million than Sweden; while France, the Netherlands, Ireland, the US, Switzerland and Canada all had fewer. Sweden was in the median range. Other researchers have found no correlation between lockdowns and COVID-19 deaths.

In other news from the CDC, on May 23^rd the agency reported that the antibody tests used to determine whether people have developed an immunity to the virus are too unreliable to be used.

But none of this seems to be dimming the hype and the deluge of investment money being thrown at the latest experimental vaccines. And perhaps that is the point of the exercise – to extract as much money as possible from gullible investors, including the US government, before the public discovers that the fundamentals of these stocks do not support the hype. If we need seven billion doses of the vaccine before life can return to normal, as Bill Gates contends, the profit bonanza is enormous; and there is no need for vaccine manufacturers to proceed with caution, since the government will pick up the tab for vaccine injuries.

Moderna: A Multibillion-Dollar “Unicorn” That Has Never Brought a Product to Market

Moderna in particular has been suspected of pumping its stock price with unreliable preliminary test data. On May 18^th its stock jumped by as much as 30%, after it issued a press release announcing positive results from a small preliminary trial of its coronavirus vaccine. After the market closed, the company announced a stock offering aimed at raising $1 billion; and on May 18^th and 19^th, Moderna executives dumped nearly $30 million worth of stock for a profit of $25 million.

On May 19^th, however, the stock rocketed back down, after STAT News questioned the company’s test results. An antibody response was reported for only eight of the 45 patients, not enough for statistical analysis. Was the response significant enough to create immunity? And what about the other 37 patients?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the results a “catastrophe” for the company. He wrote on May 20^th:

Three of the 15 human guinea pigs in the high dose cohort (250 mcg) suffered a “serious adverse event” within 43 days of receiving Moderna’s jab. Moderna … acknowledged that three volunteers developed Grade 3 systemic events, defined by the FDA as “Preventing daily activity and requiring medical intervention.”

Moderna allowed only exceptionally healthy volunteers to participate in the study. A vaccine with those reaction rates could cause grave injuries in 1.5 billion humans if administered to “every person on earth”.

A volunteer named Ian Haydon buoyed the markets when he appeared on CNBC to say he felt fine after getting the vaccine. But he later revealed that after the second jab, he got chills and a fever of over 103°, lost consciousness, and “felt more sick than he ever has before.” And those were just the short-term adverse effects. The long-term degenerative effects won’t be known for years.

By May 22^nd, Moderna’s stock was down by 26% from its earlier high, making its 30% rise on a misleading press release look like a “pump and dump” scheme. On CNBC on May 19^th, Jacob Frankel, a former Securities Exchange Commission lawyer, said Moderna’s stock offering on the heels of hyped news was the type of action that would draw scrutiny by the SEC, and that it could have a criminal component.

Dual Use? Another Look at Moderna’s mRNA Vaccine

Moderna’s stock has more than tripled this year, taking it to a market cap of over $22 billion. STAT News called it “an astonishing feat for a company that currently sells zero products.” Many of the companies actively developing COVID-19 vaccines have longer and more impressive track records. Why the keen interest in this “unicorn” startup that went public only in 2018 and has no record of market success?

Moderna’s stock first shot up after the World Health Organization announced on February 24^th that the world needed to prepare for a global pandemic, collapsing stock markets everywhere. In a well-timed press release the next day, Moderna announced that testing of its vaccine on humans would begin in March, rocketing its stock price up by nearly 30%. Mega-investors made tens of millions of dollars in a single day, including BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, which made $68 million just on February 25^th. BlackRock was called “the fourth branch of government” after it was tasked in March with dispensing up to $4.5 trillion in Federal Reserve credit through “special purpose vehicles” established by the Treasury and the Fed.

Moderna has other friends in high places, including the Pentagon. Several years ago, Moderna received millions of dollars from the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), as well as from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Perhaps the fact that Moderna’s mRNA vaccine is a “stealth virus” riding in on nanoparticles to evade the cell’s defenses explains DARPA’s interest in the technology. DARPA was behind the creation of both DNA and RNA vaccines, funding their early research and development by Moderna and by Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc.

In a 2010 document titled “Biotechnology: Genetically Engineered Pathogens,” the US Air Force acknowledged that it was studying “genetically engineered pathogens that could pose serious threats to society,” including “binary biological weapons, designer genes, gene therapy as a weapon, stealth viruses, host-swapping diseases, and designer diseases.” In December 2017, over 1,200 emails released under open records requests revealed that the US military is now the top funder behind the controversial “genetic extinction” technology known as “gene drives.” As investigative reporter Whitney Webb observed in a May 4^th article, “these genetic ‘kill switches’ could also be inserted into actual humans through artificial chromosomes, which – just as they have the potential to extend life – also have the potential to cut it short.”

Biowarfare is forbidden under international treaty, but the army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick says its investigations are to “protect the warfighter from biological threats” and to protect civilians from threats to public health. Even assuming that is true, are the army’s technicians proficient enough to tinker with the genetic code without hitting a kill switch or two by mistake?

The military is thinking about war, the pharmaceutical companies and investors are thinking about profits, the politicians are thinking about getting a vaccine to market so the country can return to work, and even the regulators are bypassing proper safety tests in the rush to get the entire global population vaccinated. That means it’s up to us, the recipients of these novel untested GMO vaccines, to demand some serious vetting before the military shows up at our doors with their prefilled RFID-chipped syringes some time later this year.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of Debt, The Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.  She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Natural News