Global Research

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam seemed to relish it before the cameras this week.  The United States was enduring extensive shudders of internal instability in the wake of the George Floyd protests.  Dubious proposals to deploy the military were on the books.  This was a superb stage show.  The Chinese move to crush or, to be more accurate, bring forward, the ultimate incorporation of Hong Kong into the PRC structure, had received some breathing space.

It all had to do with a little matter called sovereignty. For years, the United States, the United Kingdom, and European Union have seen Beijing’s sovereignty over the island qualified by the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law.  On the horizon lay the magic year when this singular status would end: 2047.  In 2016, the Under Secretary for Constitutional & Mainland Affairs Ronald Chan announced that 2047 should not trouble those in Hong Kong.  There was “no question of the expiry of the Basic Law after 2047.”  

In the “one country, two systems” formula, the one country has, at stages, been forgotten in favour of the two systems, with Hong Kong having sway in most matters of governance except foreign affairs and defence.  Much of this was bound to be wishful thinking on the part of those outside China.  Since June 2019, when large and determined protests commenced against the proposed extradition treaty to China, the program of integration and winding back various provisions otherwise guaranteeing autonomy in the province has been fought tooth and nail. 

The onset of the pandemic provided something of a forced lull, enabling the power brokers on the mainland to take stock.  In April, a sense of what was to come was floated.  Beijing threatened a sitting legislator with disqualification for sitting in office for resorting to filibustering.  New security legislation was aired as a distinct possibility.  And a conclusion was reached that the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO) and Liaison Office in Hong Kong were exempt from the application of Article 22 of the Basic Law.  The provision prohibits “departments of the Central People’s Government” from meddling in matters otherwise within the scope of Hong Kong’s autonomy.

For all that, last month’s resolution through the National People’s Congress to enact a national security law specific to Hong Kong was merely part of an organic process that would ultimately challenge, if not displace the “one country, two systems” idea.  Alvin Y.H. Cheung picks up on this in Just Security, suggesting three “interrelated and long-running developments: the Beijing and Hong Kong governments’ abuse of ‘advocating independence’ as political and legal cudgel; the growing role of the Liaison Office; and the political capture of a previously professionalized civil service apparatus.”    

The proposed provisions are not pretty for the protesters, but then again, such laws are the generic stuff of a state apparatus that needs to prove its mettle.  These include stopping or punishing conduct that seriously endangers national security (the usual offences of separatism, subversion or organising and carrying out terrorist activities would apply).

In of itself, any security-minded type would have little issue with language that focuses on targeting subversive elements, anything threatening national security and interference from a foreign power.  (According to the NPC, the legislation “opposes the interference in the HKSAR affairs by any foreign or external forces in any form”, and authorises the taking of “necessary countermeasures” where necessary.)  Such language is the essence of muscular sovereignty, however ugly it looks.

The reaction towards the unilateral move has been a gift to Lam and Beijing.  We use a fist; you use a sledgehammer.  US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo concluded that the NPC’s decision neutered Hong Kong’s autonomous status.  “No reasonable person can assert today that Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy from China, given facts on the ground.”   Having attacked China intermittently over its handling of the novel coronavirus, US President Donald J. Trump further mudded matters by seeking to, in his instruction, “revoke Hong Kong’s preferential treatment as a separate customs and travel territory from the rest of China.”  Such privileges are to be found in the US Hong Kong Policy Act 1992, which seems to be sliding into the morgue of treaties and understandings that has been increasingly packed by the Trump administration.

Such an alteration of Hong Kong’s status will have the ill-considered effect of pushing it further into the arms of PRC control.  This point has been made by pro-democracy publisher Jimmy Lai, who claims that “removing those privileges would only make Hong Kong more dependent on China.”

In this latest rhetorical skirmish, everyone has a take on sovereignty.  Naturally, the unfortunates in Hong Kong are wedged in between.  Commentary has been quick and sharp on the subject of the NPC resolution, much of it regretful or indignant if you so happen to be in the British or US camp.  “It should have come to this,” rued Caron Anne Goodwin Jones of the Birmingham Law School. The “de facto mini-constitution that came into effect after the British handover in 1997 – specifically limited Beijing from applying national laws to the territory, except in matters of defence and foreign affairs.” 

Jones naturally puts this down to unnecessary PRC authoritarian paranoia.  China, she suggests dismissively, has no grounds for fearing the prospect of Hong Kong become a base for subversion.  Nowhere does she mention the eye-poking Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, passed by the US Congress and celebrated by certain protesters for permitting the imposition of “sanctions on those responsible for human rights violations in Hong Kong.”  The mantra about the PRC challenging the “rules-based” order, a rather seedy way of concealing the role of power behind it, is cited in conclusion.

This rings rather oddly in an age where international paperwork on that very order is being torn-up with relish, most of all by that unruly man in the White House who deems all that preceded him “bad” and the “worst”.  Anything with a pre-existing rule or code must, by Trump’s reckoning, be rotten.  Be it trade wars or long standing security agreements, the MAGA platform of Trump has insisted on casting all the crockery out and replacing it with makeshift, rickety substitutes.  Now, it seems that the PRC has taken a leaf out the president’s own book of ruffling chaos, suggesting that Hong Kong’s Basic Law can be tampered with ahead of time.

China’s foreign ministry has not shied away from poking fun at the anger from Washington.  US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus was sappy in her remark that China’s move was “a pivotal moment for the world”, one that challenged the “rule of law”, inviting an acid response from Hua Chunying: “I can’t breathe.”

Britain has also waded into the sovereignty debate in its own, merry way.   The UK government has offered all Hong Kong citizens who hold British National (Overseas) passports and those eligible for the BN(O) status but had not renewed their passports on expiration the right to live and work in the UK as a prelude to becoming citizens.  Up to three million would fall into this category.  China, in turn, claims the offer violates the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration.  No one, it seems, wants to read the fine print these days.

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

Os homens fazem a sua própria história, mas não a fazem segundo a sua livre vontade; não a fazem sob circunstâncias de sua escolha e sim sob aquelas com que se defrontam diretamente, legadas e transmitidas pelo passado. (Marx, 18 de Brumário)

Muitos intelectuais estão escrevendo artigos premonitórios sobre este período histórico que estamos vivendo. David Harvey, em “Política anticapitalista em tempos de coronavírus”, escreve muito, mas fecha sua análise com críticas ao autoritarismo “draconiano” da China e na previsão de uma crise iminente no país asiático. Zizek, em recente artigo, conjectura a “necessidade de um comunismo reinventado” sobre uma base “de confiança nas pessoas e na ciência”, destilando seu eurocentrismo e uma completa desatenção à geopolítica global. E assim, sucessivamente, destacados intelectuais, articulados na “Sopa de Wuhan” (livro digital produzido pela Pablo Amadeo, Editorial Aspo), expõem sua visão eurocêntrica e seu indisfarçável sentimento antichinês que, tal como o antissovietismo de ontem, a russofobia de hoje, e seu primo pobre brasileiro, o antipetismo, são todos mutações de um mesmo vírus, o anticomunismo (embora alguns daqueles intelectuais se autodeclarem comunistas).

O “Marxismo Ocidental”, ao qual Domenico Losurdo dedicou grande esforço para elucidar, não tem nestes expoentes do pensamento ocidental respostas satisfatórias para conjecturar o mundo pós-pandemia. Simplesmente, eles não fazem as perguntas concretas, e são míopes sobre a realidade concreta do sistema (“sistema mundo”) internacional, por não terem incorporado organicamente ao seu “marxismo” a disciplina crucial da geopolítica. Em outras palavras, por mais nobreza, humanidade e coerência que possa conter uma peça literária, ela não deixará de ser o que é: uma obra ficcional. A redundância deliberada de Lenin em “A Revolução Proletária e o Renegado Kautsky” quando afirma: “a essência, a alma viva, do marxismo é a análise concreta de uma situação concreta” expressa exatamente o que é preciso remarcar: o movimento do real se dá por suas próprias contradições, não por aquelas que venhamos a cozinhar em nosso cérebro. No entanto, estas são palavras frequentemente esquecidas pelos marxistas ocidentais em geral, e pelos da “Sopa” em particular, e se aproximam muito dos demiurgos da realidade, de que falava Marx no posfácio da segunda edição do “Capital”. Dizia Marx: “meu método dialético não só se diferencia do hegeliano, mas também é seu oposto direto. Para Hegel, o processo de pensamento, que ele, sob o nome de ideia, transforma num sujeito autônomo, é o demiurgo do real, real que constitui apenas a sua manifestação externa. Para mim, pelo contrário, o ideal não é nada mais que o material, transposto e traduzido na cabeça do homem”. A menos que acreditemos na possibilidade encantadora de vermos uma vaca parindo uma gaivota, e recusemos a ideia de tornar a virose um sujeito autônomo, impõe-se perguntar em qual conjuntura internacional surge este “mundo autônomo” pós-pandemia? Se é por demais inconsistente do ponto de vista lógico, por demais absurdo do ponto de vista histórico, é canalha por demais, do ponto de vista político, a perspectiva de ocultar as contradições que atravessavam as relações internacionais no mundo pré-pandemia. Neste, estavam, e a despeito dos desejos e do diversionismo da casta dos demiurgos, e continuarão operando no mundo pós-pandemia as contradições agudas entre os interesses imperialistas e o projeto civilizatório encabeçado pela China. Ocultar esta dinâmica, ou tentar equidistar e refugiar-se numa posição nem-nem, obviamente não é uma postura desinteressada, mas, no limite, seu sucesso poderá apenas retardar um processo inexorável, jamais detê-lo. Em outras palavras, o que se apresenta diante de nós, de forma insistente, é, no fundo, o problema fundamental da filosofia: a disputa, desde o mundo pré-socrático, entre o idealismo e o materialismo. Se buscássemos uma explicação para esse fenômeno em Nietzsche, poderíamos dizer que “estes problemas são sempre os mesmos que teimam em retornar eternamente, sob outras formas ou condições”.

O vir-a-ser do mundo aparece a muitos de nós, e também aos pensadores da “Sopa”, como uma representação (aleatória/distorcida) da realidade, derivada, muito mais da sua “vontade desejante” (e do enquadramento teórico por eles utilizado como instrumento para elaborar suas conclusões) do que uma construção centrada nas contradições do mundo “realmente existente”. Nessas representações, a visão distorcida do “Oriente”, o “orientalismo” (objeto já examinado por Said) e, principalmente, o “eurocentrismo” (tema central na obra do filósofo latino-americano Enrique Dussel) dão mostra de sua vivacidade e persistência entre os pensadores do Ocidente: é a força do seu ethos judaico-cristão, que reiteradamente cobra desses intelectuais que assumam sua “missão civilizadora”, que tomem para si a nobre tarefa de, carregando o “fardo do homem branco” europeizado, “iluminar” o caminho dos “infiéis” rumo a um “paraíso futuro” de um “comunismo reinventado”. Nada mais torpe e subserviente às pretensões do imperialismo.

O mundo pós-pandemia pouca coisa trará de novo além daquilo que já estava dado desde muito antes da própria pandemia, há pelo menos 40 anos. Desde a crise sinalizadora dos 70, que marcou o início de um longo processo de decadência imperial norte-americana (Wallerstein, Arrighi, Theotonio dos Santos), aliviado parcialmente durante o período da hegemonia unipolar dos 90 (muito mais pelo fator extrassistema do fim da URSS): esse fenômeno de decomposição de um mundo centrado nos EUA já estava em transição para algo novo. Essa novidade é o ressurgimento da China como potência mundial, e da Ásia como centro econômico de um novo período pós-hegemonia do Império (tema já largamente estudado por Arrighi, Andre Gunder-Frank, entre tantos outros). Essa é a realidade que está se desenvolvendo desde meados dos anos 70, e de forma particularmente acelerada a partir da crise ainda não-solucionada iniciada em 2008. Este fenômeno, ou é ignorado ou é menosprezado pelos intelectuais da “Sopa de Wuhan”, talvez influenciados por Mészáros, que também subavaliou a profundidade da crise do império e sua decadência.

Para tentarmos entender o efeito da pandemia sobre a decadência do imperialismo norte-americano, um processo há muito em curso, podemos lembrar do contexto similar da Peste de Atenas durante a Guerra do Peloponeso. Tucídides nos conta que todos os elementos do declínio da hegemonia ateniense estavam dados, apontando inclusive a “arrogância imperial” ateniense sobre as outras polis gregas. Dizia que a guerra pela hegemonia no Peloponeso era inevitável. Naquele contexto, a praga de febre tifoide que se abateu sobre Atenas, e que levou para o “Olimpo” um terço da sua população, tornou insustentável a crise interna, tendo acelerado a derrota dos atenienses. Nos Estados Unidos de hoje, também inflado de arrogância excepcionalista, a praga do Covid-19 vai provocar, inevitavelmente, um efeito semelhante, talvez até mais terrível do que na antiga Atenas, pois a polis grega naquela altura contava com Péricles como governante, o filósofo Anaxágoras como conselheiro de Estado, Hipócrates como médico e primeiro combatente contra a epidemia, e no comando do exército de Atenas estava ninguém menos que o grande estrategista Alcibíades. Em contraste, os Estados Unidos hoje tem Trump, Pompeo, Bannon e Mark Esper para afrontar esse período histórico profundamente complexo e conturbado. E, como comprovou a história, mesmo com o aporte dos homens mais geniais da sua época, os atenienses não estiveram à altura do desafio do seu tempo; certamente, nada pode nos levar a pensar que a derrota do hegemon de nosso tempo possa ser evitada por esse patético quarteto norte-americano.

O que teremos depois da pandemia não terá nada de tão novo e surpreendente que já não estivesse visível no horizonte para aqueles que faziam as perguntas corretas, como fez Tucídides. As “novidades” que pretendem prognosticar os intelectuais da “Sopa”, parecem ter vindo diretamente do Oráculo de Delfos ou de Amon. Ao contrário do que querem eles, a “novidade” provocada pela pandemia será simplesmente uma aceleração ainda maior do processo de decadência imperial norte-americana. A crise do Coronavírus criará uma nova Grande Depressão interna (pior que a de 1929), que irá contagiar profundamente a Europa Ocidental. É certo que esta crise também afetará em certa medida a China, mas não com a intensidade com que ela se fará sentir no centro do império, nem da forma apocalíptica como profetizam alguns dos intelectuais da “Sopa de Wuhan”. A capacidade, hoje já prejudicada, de influenciar os destinos da humanidade, de exercer sua hegemonia e seu poder brando sobre o conjunto das nações acabou. Isso já era visível na Síria, no Irã e na Venezuela, e esses desdobramentos não foram causados pela pandemia: a pandemia apenas veio restringir ainda mais o alcance da já desgastada hegemonia norte-americana.

Vamos aos dados. No campo econômico, a profundidade da crise do império pode ser facilmente medida através de estatísticas simples, necessárias a uma análise de conjuntura que pretenda dar conta do mundo real e não pairar no nebuloso “mundo das ideias”. Theotonio dos Santos elencava alguns elementos estatísticos que, segundo ele, devem sempre estar presentes numa análise de conjuntura consequente: o PIB (nominal e por poder de compra), a produção industrial, a taxa de desemprego, a dívida pública e a balança comercial. Em termos de PIB nominal a China (13 trilhões de dólares) alcança rapidamente os EUA (20 trilhões de dólares), e a estimativa é de que a China supere os EUA até 2030. No entanto, se tomarmos os dados do PIB por Poder de Compra (muito mais confiável), a China (23 trilhões de dólares) já ultrapassou os EUA (20 trilhões de dólares) desde 2014. A China hoje produz 28.4% de todos os bens manufaturados no mundo, deixando os EUA em segundo (16.7%). Em 2018 a China ultrapassou os EUA como maior nação exportadora mundial, com 14% de todas as exportações globais daquele ano. Os EUA possuem uma dívida externa de 22 trilhões de dólares, o que corresponde a 107% do seu PIB. O desemprego nos EUA, mascarado por dados artificiais até aqui, será brutal a partir da pandemia: apenas nestas últimas nove semanas (durante a pandemia) 38,7 milhões de trabalhadores norte-americanos ficaram desempregados. Por último, se tomarmos as reservas dos países, temos a China em primeiro lugar, com 3.2 trilhões de dólares, enquanto os EUA possuem apenas 117 milhões de dólares, menos da metade do total de reservas do Brasil. A China é, simplesmente, a maior parceira comercial de 150 países, incluindo os próprios EUA. O maior projeto de integração econômica, política e cultural da história, o projeto Iniciativa Cinturão e Rota(as “Novas Rotas da Seda”) da China pretende interconectar toda a Ásia Central, Sudeste Asiático, África, Oriente Médio e Europa por vias terrestre (com trens de alta velocidade) e marítima (com grandes portos de águas profundas). Interconectividade comercial e investimentos em infraestrutura por todos os países onde passa. Os Estados Unidos não têm nenhum projeto dessa magnitude para oferecer aos países em desenvolvimento. Na verdade, os Estados Unidos nunca tiveram um projeto com este alcance; para a Iniciativa Cinturão e Rota, o governo da China pretende investir 1.9 Trilhões de dólares, 13 vezes mais que o Plano Marshall de 1948.

Alguns elementos ainda importantes para a sustentação da hegemonia dos EUA são o sistema financeiro internacional, por eles criado após a II Guerra Mundial e o papel do dólar como moeda de reserva internacional. Hoje, ambas estas instituições já estão em processo de erosão. O sistema financeiro internacional dirigido pelos EUA, representado pelo FMI e pelo Banco Mundial, perdeu sua capacidade de “seduzir” os países em desenvolvimento com o “canto da sereia” de empréstimos de dólares. Estes “empréstimos”, na verdade, afundavam os países no círculo vicioso dos “mecanismos da dívida eterna”, impondo contrapartidas de austeridade econômica, privatizações de empresas estatais, desregulamentação (precarização) das relações de trabalho, em suma, o receituário neoliberal. Além, é claro, das contrapartidas políticas, como a subserviência aos interesses internacionais dos EUA. O lançamento dos bancos de investimento da China põe em xeque este sistema financeiro centrado nos EUA e na preservação unilateral de seus interesses. O Banco Asiático de Investimento em Infraestrutura (BAII) da China, desde sua fundação em 2016, conta com cerca de 90 países membros (excluindo os EUA, Taiwan e Japão) e já tem um capital de 100 bilhões de dólares, metade do capital com que foi formado o Banco Mundial em 1944. Por último, o outro dos pilares de poder hegemônico, representado pelo dólar norte-americano como moeda de reserva mundial, também está com os dias contados, e desde muito antes do Covid-19. Vários países, como Rússia, China, Irã, Venezuela, países da Ásia Central, BRICS (inclusive o Brasil, no âmbito dos BRICS) já não usam mais o dólar em seu comércio bilateral. Lenta mas firmemente, o dólar vai perdendo seu poder diante das moedas nacionais, principalmente do yuan chinês, que recentemente (2016) se tornou uma das moedas com Direitos Especiais de Saque e que podem ser usadas como Moedas de Reserva do FMI.

A multipolaridade já é uma realidade global palpável também no campo militar, embora muitos intelectuais continuem a falar de um “novo século americano” e da “hegemonia militar americana”. O poder militar da Rússia, independentemente da pandemia, já é superior ao poder militar dos Estados Unidos, e a demonização da Rússia responde a esse fato. O bilionário orçamento militar norte-americano, usado por muitos “analistas” como prova de supremacia, nada tem a ver com capacidade militar efetiva, como demonstrou Andrei Martyanov em Losing Military Supremacy, uma vez que muito mais da metade do inflado orçamento militar norte-americano representa apenas verbas de custeio (manutenção de altos salários do oficialato e das quase mil bases militares espalhadas ao redor do mundo). Este orçamento também está completamente “enredado” numa malha de corrupção entre o Estado, os organismos de segurança (a CIA e o Pentágono) e as Empresas do Complexo Industrial Militar dos Estados Unidos, onde o superfaturamento de projetos é a regra. O Destroier Zumvalt de 3.45 bilhões de dólares por unidade, fez água na sua primeira missão e teve de retornar a base para manutenção. O caça F-35 (o projeto mais caro da história da aviação, 400 bilhões de dólares) com um custo unitário próximo de 116 bilhões de dólares, pode ser detectado por radares russos dos anos 70, como ficou confirmado em 2018, quando estes caças, pertencentes a Força Aérea de Israel, foram detectados pelos radares sírios e tiveram que retornar a sua base.

A grande novidade do mundo pós-pandemia, portanto, não se revela pela bola de cristal dos intelectuais da “Sopa de Wuhan”: ela já está visível há muitos anos, e vem tomando forma e se solidificando cada vez mais. A pandemia só fará acelerar, dramaticamente, este processo. A aliança Rússia-China, o maior pesadelo de Brzezinski, já é uma realidade. E a hegemonia norte-americana está oca de base material, sobrando-lhe apenas seu aspecto puramente cultural-ideológico que, por certo é muito poderoso, mas não poderá se sustentar sozinho por muito tempo sem um respectivo recheio econômico. A casca ideológica logo vai deixar ver suas rachaduras, e a pandemia também vai acelerar o desgaste ideológico-cultural do imperialismo: pirataria (roubo) de equipamentos médicos destinados a outros países, as sanções unilaterais, as disputas com a OMS, os desentendimentos econômicos com a União Europeia, a compra de vacinas futuras de uma empresa alemã para uso exclusivo dos norte-americanos (‘America First”), as pressões contra a Rússia, Venezuela e Irã, agressões a países soberanos, cloroquina e desinfetante, estupidez e terraplanismo, fanatismo evangélico, tudo isso aprofundará as fissuras na casca ideológica que envolve um império economicamente oco, esvaziado, que se debate numa Guerra Comercial de vida ou morte contra a China. O único elemento que mantém, por enquanto, coesa esta casca é o anticomunismo, que se manifesta sob os diferentes formatos que ele adquiriu na atualidade: Sinofobia, Russofobia, antichavismo, antipetismo, etc. A crise do império é pois, multidimensional.

Não haverá novo Plano Marshall norte-americano para reconstruir a economia global pós-pandemia, e o imperialismo não poderá manter a posição dominante que sustentou até aqui. Isto é um fato. O Estado nacional impôs sua importância, sobre as tristes imagens das fossas comuns dos mortos pelo Covid-19, no mundo todo. A política neoliberal do Estado Mínimo, vê-se agora no “grupo de risco”, carregando com ela um “deus mercado” ausente e também infectado pelo Coronavírus. A julgar pelo que ocorre, particularmente na França e no Reino Unido, sua sobrevivência à pandemia não mais está assegurada. Por certo, o imperialismo e seu persistente e universal receituário de políticas neoliberais estão entubados. Mas, como vimos, estes entes políticos não ficaram doentes agora, pela intervenção exógena de um vírus; suas “imunidades” já vinham baixas desde que estalou a crise de 2008, o que favoreceu a sua infecção pelo Covid-19.

O mundo que virá não será necessariamente algo tão novo quanto alguns acreditam, nem tão aberto a reconfigurações como presumem os intelectuais da “Sopa de Wuhan”. Será simplesmente a reafirmação do mundo que já existe hoje como contra-hegemônico; um mundo multipolar que se irá afirmar de forma mais rápida e definitiva. Com ele, muitas oportunidades surgirão para o avanço e a radicalização de processos revolucionários (eleitorais ou insurrecionais); muito espaço irá se abrir para os trabalhadores e para governos progressistas, depois que o imperialismo se veja privado da prerrogativa de exercer o papel de polícia do mundo e impedido de interferir nos assuntos internos de outros Estados. Essa transição abrirá uma nova etapa para o desenvolvimento dos países do “terceiro mundo”, até então fustigados, golpeados (hoje, também pelo lawfare), sancionados e ameaçados pelo imperialismo.

O mundo pós-pandemia pode muito bem ser um mundo pós-imperialista. No fim, é justamente o entendimento do conceito de imperialismo que faz com que todos esses “especialistas” incorram em posturas lamentáveis que beiram a apologia ao Império. É impensável para eles, um mundo onde uma potência não-ocidental (com tudo o que isso implica em todos os terrenos) seja a potência hegemônica. Este fato fere de morte seu congênito eurocentrismo. Tentemos consolá-los lembrando-lhes que a China sempre foi a maior potência mundial: desde o nascimento de Cristo até o século XIX a China foi a maior economia mundial. Uma guerra interrompeu esta condição: a Guerra do Ópio de 1839, quando o imperialismo lançou a China no “Século das Humilhações”. E o espectro de uma nova guerra também hoje ameaça a humanidade. Daqui resulta a importância da Luta pelo Socialismo vir necessariamente acompanhada da Luta pela Paz, uma vez que todas as transições hegemônicas, até hoje, estiveram marcadas por grandes guerras. Então, o predomínio econômico e cultural do Ocidente foi apenas um hiato, um acidente, e o mundo está voltando ao seu histórico centro não-europeu. O verdadeiramente novo é que, pela primeira vez na história, podemos ter uma potência hegemônica dirigida por um Partido Comunista.

Talvez, ao expressar seu medo mais recôndito, o chanceler Ernesto Araújo tenha razão: “depois do coronavírus”, poderá vir realmente o “Comunavírus”!

Aquiles Fraga, historiador

Em 24 de maio de 2020

欧亚日记》。美国国会的法案将维吾尔族人的待遇联系起来，你能说什么？

丹尼斯-艾特勒。美国参议院通过的这项法案是又一次试图妖魔化中国，煽动反中共的舆论。它是基于没有证据的指控，即中国的维吾尔族人作为少数民族受到大规模的镇压和奴役。这些指控的证据是由美国政府支持、教唆和资助的新疆分裂分子提供的。因此，美国政府资助了许多团体，而这些团体又被美国政府用来提供证据，用于制裁中国。这不过是一个自我实现的预言，客观的观察者应该是没有任何可信度的。正如美国国务卿蓬佩奥本人所透露的那样，美国以撒谎、欺骗和偷窃为荣，并有 “整个培训课程 “教你如何做。你可以放心，新疆的反华分裂分子恰好是维吾尔族的，他们在新疆的反华分裂分子都是听从美国资助者的教条，并接受了如何做的训练。美国参议院议案中针对中国的指控，就是用这种半真半假、歪曲实际情况的方式编造出来的，目的是为了给美国的反华宣传战提供弹药。

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The US Is Trying to Dismember China by Promoting Separatism in Its Regions

By Dr. Dennis Etler and Eurasia Diary, May 21, 2020

我们将切断整个关系’–特朗普在最近接受福克斯-商业界采访时威胁中国，暗示他可能会与中国断绝外交关系，从而节省5000亿美元。不过，他没有说怎么做。

特朗普先生的愤怒指的是他所说的中国在电晕危机中的 “管理不善”。这与他的政府正在推动的新的抨击中国的强硬路线是一致的。”我对中国非常失望，”特朗普在接受福克斯采访时同样表示。”我们要求过去，他们说不，”他继续说，指的是美国疾病控制和预防中心(CDC)2月向受病毒困扰的武汉市提出的援助意向。”他们不需要我们的帮助。而我想，这也没问题，因为他们一定知道自己在做什么。所以，这不是愚蠢、无能就是故意的。”

这些话是强词夺理、毫无根据的，因为在中国如何准确地管理不当的COVID-19疫情，并据说是美国COVID危机的罪魁祸首，从来没有明确的指责中国的说法 显然，美国对中国的抨击与中国对电晕疫情的 “管理不当 “无关，而是中国大胆地远离美元经济，2020年第一季度，东盟国家已以15。 1%，超过了欧盟（欧盟），成为中国最大的贸易伙伴。与韩国和日本的贸易额又达到了13.7%，总量接近30%。加上中国与俄罗斯的贸易，另一个至少15%，正在接近中国最亲密的伙伴放弃以美元计价的商业交易的50％的临界点。

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China’s New Crypto-Currency – First Step to Full Dedollarization?

By Peter Koenig, May 17, 2020

The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order

by Michel Chossudovsky

In the expanded second edition of Chossudovsky’s international best-seller, the author outlines the contours of a New World Order which feeds on human poverty and the destruction of the environment, generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife and undermines the rights of women. The result as his detailed examples from all parts of the world show so convincingly, is a globalization of poverty.

This book is a skillful combination of lucid explanation and cogently argued critique of the fundamental directions in which our world is moving financially and economically.

In the enlarged second edition, the author reviews the causes and consequences of famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, the dramatic meltdown of financial markets, the demise of State social programs and the devastation resulting from corporate downsizing and trade liberalisation.

“This concise, provocative book reveals the negative effects of imposed economic structural reform, privatization, deregulation and competition. It deserves to be read carefully and widely.”
– Choice, American Library Association (ALA)

“The current system, Chossudovsky argues, is one of capital creation through destruction. The author confronts head on the links between civil violence, social and environmental stress, with the modalities of market expansion.”
– Michele Stoddard, Covert Action Quarterly

Click to learn more about The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order by Michel Chossudovsky

Preface to the Second Edition

Barely a few weeks after the military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, overthrowing the elected government of President Salvador Allende, the military Junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet ordered a hike in the price of bread from 11 to 40 escudos, a hefty overnight increase of 264%. This economic shock treatment had been designed by a group of economists called the “Chicago Boys”.

At the time of the military coup, I was teaching at the Institute of Economics of the Catholic University of Chile, which was a nest of Chicago trained economists, disciples of Milton Friedman. On that September 11, in the hours following the bombing of the Presidential Palace of La Moneda, the new military rulers imposed a 72-hour curfew. When the university reopened several days later, the “Chicago Boys” were rejoicing. Barely a week later, several of my colleagues at the Institute of Economics were appointed to key positions in the military government.

While food prices had skyrocketed, wages had been frozen to ensure “economic stability and stave off inflationary pressures.” From one day to the next, an entire country was precipitated into abysmal poverty: in less than a year the price of bread in Chile increased thirty-six times and eighty-five percent of the Chilean population had been driven below the poverty line.

These events affected me profoundly in my work as an economist. Through the tampering of prices, wages and interest rates, people’s lives had been destroyed; an entire national economy had been destabilized. I started to understand that macro-economic reform was neither “neutral” – as claimed by the academic mainstream – nor separate from the broader process of social and political transformation. In my earlier writings on the Chilean military Junta, I looked upon the so-called “free market” as a wellorganized instrument of “economic repression”.

Two years later in 1976, I returned to Latin America as a visiting professor at the National University of Cordoba in the northern industrial heartland of Argentina. My stay coincided with another military coup d’état. Tens of thousands of people were arrested and the Desaparecidos were assassinated. The military takeover in Argentina was a “carbon copy” of the CIA-led coup in Chile. Behind the massacres and human rights violations, “free market” reforms had also been prescribed – this time under the supervision of Argentina’s New York creditors.

The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) deadly economic prescriptions applied under the guise of the “structural adjustment program” had not yet been officially launched. The experience of Chile and Argentina under the “Chicago Boys” was a dress rehearsal of things to come. In due course, the economic bullets of the free market system were hitting country after country. Since the onslaught of the debt crisis of the 1980s, the same IMF economic medicine has routinely been applied in more than 150 developing countries. From my earlier work in Chile, Argentina and Peru, I started to investigate the global impacts of these reforms. Relentlessly feeding on poverty and economic dislocation, a New World Order was taking shape.

Meanwhile, most of the military regimes in Latin America had been replaced by parliamentary “democracies”, entrusted with the gruesome task of putting the national economy on the auction block under the World Bank sponsored privatization programs. In 1990, I returned to the Catholic University of Peru where I had taught after leaving Chile in the months following the 1973 military coup.

I had arrived in Lima at the height of the 1990 election campaign. The country’s economy was in crisis. The outgoing populist government of President Alan Garcia had been placed on the IMF “black list”. President Alberto Fujimori became the new president on the 28th of July 1990. And barely a few days later, “economic shock therapy” struck – this time with a vengeance. Peru had been punished for not conforming to IMF diktats: the price of fuel was hiked up by 31 times and the price of bread increased more than twelve times in a single day. The IMF – in close consultation with the US Treasury – had been operating behind the scenes. These reforms – carried out in the name of “democracy” – were far more devastating than those applied in Chile and Argentina under the fist of military rule. In the 1980s and 1990s I traveled extensively in Africa. The fieldresearch for the first edition was, in fact, initiated in Rwanda which, despite high levels of poverty, had achieved self-sufficiency in food production. From the early 1990s, Rwanda had been destroyed as a functioning national economy; its once vibrant agricultural system was destabilized. The IMF had demanded the “opening up” of the domestic market to the dumping of US and European grain surpluses. The objective was to “encourage Rwandan farmers to be more competitive”. (See Chapter 7.)

From 1992 to 1995, I undertook field research in India, Bangladesh and Vietnam and returned to Latin America to complete my study on Brazil. In all the countries I visited, including Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco and The Philippines, I observed the same pattern of economic manipulation and political interference by the Washington-based institutions. In India, directly resulting from the IMF reforms, millions of people had been driven into starvation. In Vietnam – which constitutes among the world’s most prosperous rice producing economies – local-level famines had erupted resulting directly from the lifting of price controls and the deregulation of the grain market.

Coinciding with the end of the Cold War, at the height of the economic crisis, I traveled to several cities and rural areas in Russia. The IMFsponsored reforms had entered a new phase – extending their deadly grip to the countries of the former Eastern bloc. Starting in 1992, vast areas of the former Soviet Union, from the Baltic states to Eastern Siberia, were pushed into abysmal poverty.

Work on the first edition was completed in early 1996, with the inclusion of a detailed study on the economic disintegration of Yugoslavia. (See Chapter 17.) Devised by World Bank economists, a “bankruptcy program” had been set in motion. In 1989-90, some 1100 industrial firms were wiped out and more than 614,000 industrial workers were laid off. And that was only the beginning of a much deeper economic fracturing of the Yugoslav Federation.

Since the publication of the first edition in 1997, the World has changed dramatically; the “globalization of poverty” has extended its grip to all major regions of the World including Western Europe and North America.

A New World Order has been installed destroying national sovereignty and the rights of citizens. Under the new rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) established in 1995, “entrenched rights” were granted to the world’s largest banks and multinational conglomerates. Public debts have spiraled, state institutions have collapsed, and the accumulation of private wealth has progressed relentlessly.

The US-led wars on Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), mark an important turning point in this evolving New World Order. As the second edition goes to print, American and British forces have invaded Iraq, destroying its public infrastructure and killing thousands of civilians. After 13 years of economic sanctions, the war on Iraq plunged an entire population into poverty.

War and globalization go hand in hand. Supported by America’s war machine, a new deadly phase of corporate-led globalization has unfolded. In the largest display of military might since the Second World War, the United States has embarked upon a military adventure, which threatens the future of humanity.

The decision to invade Iraq had nothing to do with “Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction” or his alleged links to Al Qaeda. Iraq possesses 11 percent of the World’s oil reserves, i.e. more than five times those of the US. The broader Middle East-Central Asian region (extending from the tip of the Arabian peninsula to the Caspian sea basin) encompasses approximately 70% of the World’s reserves of oil and natural gas.

This war, which has been in the planning stage for several years, threatens to engulf a much broader region. A 1995 US Central Command document confirms that “the purpose of US engagement. . . is to protect US vital interest in the region – uninterrupted, secure US/Allied access to Gulf oil” .

In the wake of the invasion, Iraq’s economy has been put under the jurisidiction of the US military occupation government led by retired General Jay Gardner, a former CEO of one of America’s largest weapons producers.

In liaison with the US administration and the Paris Club of official creditors, the IMF and World Bank are slated to play a key role in Iraq`s post-war “reconstruction”. The hidden agenda is to impose the US dollar as Iraq’s proxy currency, in a currency board arrangement, similar to that imposed on Bosnia-Herzegovina under the 1995 Dayton Accord. (See Chapter 17.) In turn, Iraq’s extensive oil reserves are slated to be taken over by the Anglo-American oil giants.

Iraq’s spiralling external debt will be used as an instrument of economic plunder. Conditionalities will be set. The entire national economy will be put on the auction block. The IMF and the World Bank will be called in to provide legitimacy to the plunder of Iraq’s oil wealth.

The deployment of America’s war machine purports to enlarge America’s economic sphere of influence in an area extending from the Mediterranean to China’s Western frontier. The US has established a permanent military presence not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it has military bases in several of the former Soviet republics as well. In other words, militarization supports the conquest of new economic frontiers and the worldwide imposition of the “free market” system.

Global Depression

The onslaught of the US-led war is occurring at the height of a global economic depression, which has its historical roots in the debt crisis of the early 1980s. America’s war of conquest has a direct bearing on the economic crisis. State resources in the US have been redirected towards financing the military-industrial complex and beefing up domestic security at the expense of funding much needed social programs which have been slashed to the bone.

In the wake of September 11, 2001, through a massive propaganda campaign, the shaky legitimacy of the “global free market system” has been reinforced, opening the door to a renewed wave of deregulation and privatization, resulting in corporate take-overs of most, if not all, public services and state infrastructure (including health care, electricity, water and transportation).

Moreover, in the US, Great Britain and most countries of the European Union, the legal fabric of society has been overhauled. Based on the repeal of the Rule of Law, the foundations of an authoritarian state apparatus have emerged with little or no organized opposition from the mainstay of civil society.

The new chapters added to this second edition address some of the key issues of the 21st century : the merger boom and the concentration of corporate power, the collapse of national and local level economies, the meltdown of financial markets, the outbreak of famine and civil war and the dismantling of the Welfare State in most Western countries.

In Part 1, a new Introduction and a chapter entitled “Global Falsehoods” have been added. Also in Part 1, the impacts of “free markets” on women’s rights are examined. In Part II, on sub-Saharan Africa, the chapter on Rwanda has been expanded and updated following fieldwork conducted in 1996 and 1997. Two new chapters, respectively, on the 1999- 2000 famine in Ethiopia and on Southern Africa in the post-Apartheid era have been added. The chapter on Albania in Part 5, focuses on the role of the IMF in destroying the real economy and precipitating the breakdown of the country’s banking system.

A new Part 6 entitled “The New World Order” includes five chapters. Chapter 18 centers on the “structural adjustment program” applied in Western countries under the surveillance of the World’s largest commercial and merchant banks. The ongoing economic and financial crisis is reviewed in Chapters 19 and 20. Chapters 21 and 22 examine, respectively, the fate of South Korea and Brazil in the wake of the 1997-1998 financial meltdown, as well as the complicity of the IMF in furthering the interests of currency and stock market speculators.

Click here to learn more about The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order!

Global Research Publishers, 2003 | ISBN 978-0973714708 | 400 pages with complete index

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

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The “leak“– this time from the German Ministry of the Interior – shows a “secret” 93-page document, admitting basically how badly Germany reacted to the corona hoax – no, the paper doesn’t call it a ”hoax”, but you can taste it between the lines. In essence it says the economic and social collateral damage is much, but much larger than the impact of COVID-19- in terms of lives lost due to postponed treatment for cancer, heart and other life-threatening diseases, collapse of social infrastructure, despair, suicide, joblessness – no future in sight… for many the world just collapsed like a house of cards – no perspective nothing.

The paper also refers to other corona outbreaks from earlier years, and “regular” flu epidemics, which were much more serious than the 2020 one – the latter, COVID-19, denominated by WHO as a pandemic – under orders of the mighty behind the WEF -The World Economic Forum – the infamous Davos Club, to which also Bill Gates belongs, the vaccine tsar, who stated in a February 2010 Southern California TED Talk entitled “Innovating to Zero” –

“If we are doing a real good job [vaccinating], we can reduce the world population by 10% to 15%” (see this).

Please, for your own sake and for that of your children and children’s children, keep this always in mind, when you hear Bill Gates and vaccination. The one that we are all risking to be “forced”  to get – is the one against COVID-19.

Would you trust Mr. Bill Gates – for any vaccine, actually for any health advice?

But, it gets better (or actually worse), he basically makes WHO’s health policies as far as vaccination goes, literally wiping out (excluding) any other medically and scientifically proven preventive and curative measures.

Why? Because The Gates Foundation is one of the key financiers of WHO’s budget, in addition to Big Pharma and other interest groups, especially GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) – another creation of Bill Gates. Telecoms are also among the contributors of the WHO’s budget.

The Telecoms are rolling out clandestinely the dangerous and untested and understated 5G (fifth generation technology) which cellular phone companies began deploying worldwide- to better control you – and about which WHO – the world’s foremost health agency – has not said a word, with regard to health impacts of 5G.

That’s the way it goes in our neoliberal-leaning-to neo-fascist – everything-goes world.

Back to the German Interior Minister, Mr. Horst Seehofer. His study team of experts finds that the Covid disease was of lesser importance than for example the flu of the 2017 / 2018 season. The study also looked at death statistics and found that the overall death rate in Germany from all causes is comparable to that of previous years and lower than that of the last big flu 2017/2018 season, which went virtually unnoticed. There are no extra deaths, as the German statistics and covid-accounting would indicate with the official 8,522 death toll as of 2 June 2020.This would be a significant spike as compared to previous years – which however, isn’t reflected in the statistics.

In essence the study concluded – politely – Covid-19 was a huge False Alarm. When the Minister’s spokesperson was confronted by journalists about the leaked paper, he said something to the effect – we are not discussing anything with conspiracy theorists. Total denial. – Why?

Please see these articles for more details, this and this.

The team of scientists that elaborated the report for the Interior Ministry (Bundesministerium des Innern – BMI), was flabbergasted, when the Ministry distanced itself from their report. The research team issued a Press Release, triggered by the leaked document – even though it, the BMI, signed off on the scientists’ report. See this (from RT Deutsch [Germany], in German).

The Press Release basically said that the corona-virus was a treatable respiratory disease, not deadly, that it could be prevented and cured; that risk groups, the elderly and those with chronic illnesses, would need to get special attention and treatment; that there was no need to lockdown the entire country to overcome this corona virus, thereby destroying the economy and livelihood of millions of people – which would have a collateral damage way out-weighing the number of corona-victims. For example, postponed cancer and heart operations, due to keeping hospital beds empty for Covid-Patients, may account for between 5,000 and 125,000 early deaths. This does not account for the countless deaths from hopelessness, despair and suicide.

The Press Release concluded, expecting the BMI to respond and to enter a constructive debate with the report team. The Press Release was signed by a number of prominent signatories.

• Prof. Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Universitätsprofessor für Medizinische Mikrobiologie (im Ruhestand) Universität Mainz 
• Dr. med. Gunter Frank, Arzt für Allgemeinmedizin, Mitglied der ständigen Leitlinienkommission der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Familienmedizin und Allgemeinmedizin (DEGAM), Heidelberg
• Prof. Dr. phil. Dr. rer. pol. Dipl.-Soz. Dr. Gunnar Heinsohn, Emeritus der Sozialwissenschaften der Universität Bremen 
• Prof. Dr. Stefan W. Hockertz, tpi consult GmbH, ehem. Direktor des Instituts für Experimentelle Pharmakologie und Toxikologie am Universitätskrankenhaus Eppendorf 
• Prof. Dr. Dr. rer. nat. (USA) Andreas S. Lübbe, Ärztlicher Direktor des MZG-Westfalen, Chefarzt Cecilien-Klinik
• Prof. Dr. Karina Reiß, Department of Dermatology and Allergology University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein
• Prof. Dr. Peter Schirmacher, Professor der Pathologie, Heidelberg, Mitglied der Nationalen Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina 
• Prof. Dr. Andreas Sönnichsen, Stellv. Curriculumsdirektor der Medizinischen Universität Wien, Abteilung für Allgemeinmedizin und Familienmedizin.
• Dr. med. Til Uebel, Niedergelassener Hausarzt, Facharzt für Allgemeinmedizin, Diabetologie, Notfallmedizin, Lehrarzt des Institutes für Allgemeinmedizin der Universität Würzburg, akademische Lehrpraxis der Universität Heidelberg 
• Prof. Dr. Dr. phil. Harald Walach, Prof. Med. Universität Poznan, Abt. Pädiatrische Gastroenterologie, Gastprof. Universität Witten-Herdecke, Abt. Psychologie 4

This list of highly reputed medical professionals is testimony of the seriousness of the report-which by the way came to very similar conclusions than did other studies in other countries, including in the US and in Russia.

For example, on 26 May, Dr. Alexander Myasnikov, Russia’s head of coronavirus information, gave an interview to former [Russian] Presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak, in which he apparently let slip his true feeling. Believing the interview over, and the camera turned off, Myasnikov said:

“It’s all bullshit […] It’s all exaggerated. It’s an acute respiratory disease with minimal mortality […] Why has the whole world been destroyed? That I don’t know,”

The Connection – Corona, Racial Riots towards a total Military Lockdown – Abrogation of Human and Civil Rights – Suspension of Constitutional Rights – Martial Law

This begs the question – the imminent question – is there a connection between the corona disaster with the world economy and people’s livelihoods destroyed and the racial riots triggered by the savage police killing of an African American – Mr. George Floyd – in Minneapolis. Riots that within days have spread to over 40 US cities, violence no end. On the weekend the riots have spread to London and Berlin, so far mostly peaceful.

Tuesday evening, 2 June – tens if not hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in French cities, including at least 20,000 in front of a ‘Palais de Justice’ – (a justice or tribunal building) in the north of Paris.

The protests were generally against police brutality, against racism and against the senseless and devastating lockdown – which in France and most of the rest of Europe, is still not totally over, despite all scientific reports and recommendations – let alone those from economists – that there is no danger – and that the economy should now be boosted, so it may pick up fast.

Already now – with only the tiny tip of the iceberg visible – the world is facing 2 billion people out of work in a few months (ILO up-date) – drifting towards famine despair – and death – from famine, suicide, neglect desolation- hopelessness…. Yes, Mr. Gates – so far, the crisis works in your favor. But justice will prevail. Whether with you or without you. People are waking up.

Is it coincidence that the German Interior Ministry does not accept the report established by its own team of experts? – Admitting the “false alarm” as the report calls it, admitting the over-reaction and immediately counter-act to revive the economy, to support laid-off people, to help grappling small- and medium size enterprises back on to their feet- to avoid the worst – that might have spared Germany from riots- and may have made example throughout Europe on how to react. But no.

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.

Violence in Europe, is it gradually moving from country to country? Is it coincidence, or planned? And who finances these riots? – The organization Black Lives Matter which is involved in campaign and riots in the US (among others), is amply funded by Soros, Ford, Rockefeller and other One-World-Globalists, so was Occupy Wall Street – and so are most ‘protests’ at G-20 and G-7 meetings including the World Social Forum (WSF).

Vested-interest funding, foreign or domestic, is involved whenever ’Black Blocs’ – (image right) those men in black ransack and loot shops, break windows, destroy and burn cars.

The “Black Blocs” are  people, who are actually either themselves policemen or hired by the police to justify the violent police interference. – Remember the Yellow Vests – more than a year of weekend-demos before corona put a halt to the movement?

What is being planned is sheer urban warfare. And Europe feels prepared for it. There is the European Corps (Eurocorps), an intergovernmental military corps with its headquarters of approximately 1,000 soldiers stationed in Strasbourg, Alsace, France.

The Eurocorps is operational since 1995.

They have been trained for urban warfare, along with other European special forces, mainly at a NATO-supported urban military training camp in Saxony-Anhalt, Northern Germany.

Is this planned move of riots throughout the Global North – maybe also spreading to specific countries of the Global South – Step One of the “Lock Step Scenario” – 2010 Rockefeller Report which starts with a corona pandemic in 2020 – towards total military control, towards Martial Law – towards suspension of all civil and human rights; suspension of our constitutional rights? – Who knows. It’s an evil plan.

Germany could have stopped it. This medical expert report provided the basis for an honest admission – for stepping out of the “Lock Step” – it might have still been time. Sticking to the people. Admitting the mistake – the rest of Europe would follow and the monster project of the deep dark evil state would falter. But Germany seems to have missed the boat – or the opportunity of being THE Peace maker. By coercion or free will? But what kind of coercion could force a Government like that of Germany into this diabolical submission?

Otherwise, will it again be the Germans like 75 years ago, after WWII, when the majority of Germans said “we didn’t know” – will we experience a “Déjà-Vu” – 20 or 30 years from now?

No chance.

We are waking up, with or without the German Government.

But the German people are with Us, the People.

And we shall overcome, the man-made corona crisis, and the purposefully man-fueled racial riots – as well as their “amalgamation”.

We want to live a free life.

We want to rebuild our willfully destroyed social- and physical infrastructure – we want to be free.

No more surveillance – and enslavements by the Gates, Rockefellers and Rothschilds of this world.

We do not accept force-vaccination. We want to be free to choose. We do not need, nor do we want a One World Order. And if it is a New World Order, it is We, The People, who are going to design and build it.

We are sovereign beings – and will create our sovereign states on the basis of new-found solidarity for a common future among mankind.

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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.

Featured image is from Pixabay

On May 19th, an implicit international political warning was issued, but it wasn’t issued between countries; it was issued between allied versus opposed factions within each of two countries: U.S. and Ukraine. In the United States, it’s a Republican Party warning to the Democratic Party: a warning by Trump, against Biden and against Obama. It’s saying: “We’ve got the goods on you, and we’re not releasing it yet. But here’s a sample. So, let’s deal.”

It’s a warning that comes from the current President of Ukraine, Volodmyr Zelenskiy, and that places into an exceptionally bad light his immediate predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, as having been a mere vassal of Trump’s immediate predecessor, Obama.

The Ukrainian pro-Zelenskiy, anti-Poroshenko, and pro-Trump, faction, are warning the U.S. Democratic Party, which backed Poroshenko.

This warning comes via an online pro-Zelenskiy Ukrainian TV station, InTimeUkraineTV, and it was issued in a 32-minute 19 May 2020 youtube:

One can hear there, first, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and then U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, tell Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko how to run his country so that the IMF would continue to guarantee (back up by U.S.-and-allied taxpayers) the investments by U.S.-and-allied private investors in Ukrainian Government debt (bonds).

VIDEO. 

The alternative that Poroshenko faced was always that those investors would lose whatever they had invested, and that Poroshenko would then no longer be protected by the U.S. Government and by its allied governments.

These are only selected excerpts, and they constitute also a warning that unless the pro-Poroshenko and pro-Obama people soon start cooperating with the pro-Zelenskiy and pro-Trump people, portions from U.S.-Ukraine diplomatic phone-conversations which were recorded that are even more incriminating against the Poroshenko-Obama people will likewise be made public. In that sense, it’s like blackmail, but it is currently only political — instead of also legal — jeopardy.

Here are some of the noteworthy revelations in this, the first such release:

The U.S. officials, agents for U.S. President Barack Obama, are shown, in early 2016, not negotiating with, but instructing, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko, who, at 17:00- 22:50, requests Biden to “increase the pressure” in order to get the (extremist anti-Russian) parliamentary factions of Tymoshenko, Lyashko, and Samopomich, to back the U.S.-demanded bills (proposed laws) that are in Ukraine’s parliament. At 19:20, Biden mentions the American Natalie “Jaresko [on her] facebook page talking about wanting to consider being Prime Minister with the technocratic government.”

Michael Bloomberg’s blog (Bloomberg News) had headlined, on 22 March 2016, “Ukraine’s Jaresko Says She’d Be Willing to Head New Cabinet”, and reported that neither President Poroshenko nor the (secretly Obama-appointed — see video here of that secret U.S. appointment of Ukraine’s Prime Minister, and the transcript and explanation of it here) then-current (that U.S.-appointed) Ukrainian Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, would speak publicly regarding the initiative by the American Natalie Jaresko to become (the American-appointed) Yatsenyuk’s successor.

Poroshenko’s reply to Biden was to “promise [you] to receive my proposal about the technocratic government of Jaresko.” Bloomberg’s employees reported there that the IMF wanted her to become Yatsenyuk’s successor so that “The reforms will be more radical, and it means more political risks, more possible conflicts with parliament” (because — though Bloomberg hid this — protecting the investors in Ukrainian Government bonds would require yet more impoverishment of the Ukrainian public). As Poroshenko told Biden at 20:00,

“the reason of the political crisis is that the three fractions [factions, or political parties] from Samopomich, Tymoshenko and Lyashko, go out from [leave] the coalition, and we [are] left together with the [U.S.-appointed] Prime Minister in a minority.  I invite Samopomich and propose them to either to support Jaresko or to propose his [its] leader as a [the] next Prime Minister.”

So, although Poroshenko had not publicly endorsed Jaresko’s bid to become the next Prime Minister to replace the current American-appointed one, he did confirm privately to Biden that he supported either her or Samopomich’s pick to fill that spot. But Poroshenko went on to say that Samopomich would cooperate but only this one time, and Poroshenko then explained to Biden, “This is not possible under our Constitution; they should sign up personally their membership in coalition,” which they refused to do.

The vassal, Poroshenko, was here explaining to the emperor, Obama (through the emperor’s messenger, Biden), the difficulties that were blocking the IMF’s forced enserfment of the Ukrainian people. (22:15:)

“Without Samopomich, with the rejection of Tymoshenko and Lyashko, we don’t have [enough] for your ask [of] 226” votes (a governing majority — which would enable Ukraine’s public to become yet-more exploited directly, and U.S.-and-allied publics to become more exploited indirectly because the downside financial risks of those international debts would then be transferred onto them).

(22:40:)  “I asked to contact [your] Ambassador maybe to increase the pressure and to support Jaresko’s candidacy by Samopomich.” (23:23:) “Our U.S. partners give grants to Samopomich and give him [it] significant financial support.”

Poroshenko was telling Obama (via Biden) “maybe to increase the pressure,” if he wants to get Ukraine’s elected politicians to cooperate. He was saying: They don’t want to lose their seats, but maybe more money from U.S. taxpayers might persuade them to take the risk of losing their seats (via sufficiently high bribes and/or threats).

Whether InTimeUkraineTV, or any other Zelenskiy front, has these recordings going all the way back to the coup that handed control of Ukraine’s Government over to the United States Government, is not known, but the prior evidence suggests that it almost certainly is the case.

Whether or not there are already ongoing negotiations between the Trump team and the Obama team regarding how America will be run (or how America’s ‘elections’ will be run), is even less certain. What has not been disclosed from those recordings is a weapon.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Featured image is from Public Domain

China’s political, economic, industrial, technological, and military development poses the greatest threat to US hegemonic aims.

Its growing prominence on the world stage comes at a time of US decline.

The harder the US tries to reverse things by hardline policies, notably its endless wars by hot and other means, the further behind it falls.

In his book titled “The World in Crisis,” historian Gabriel Kolko said US decline “began after the Korean War, was continued in relation to Cuba, and was greatly accelerated in Vietnam – but (Bush/Cheney did) much to exacerbate it further.”

Obama/Biden followed the same counterproductive pattern. Do does Trump/Pence.

Historian Immanuel Wallerstein believed US decline began in the 1970s, accelerating post-9/11, adding:

“The economic, political and military factors that contributed to US hegemony are the same (ones) inexorably produc(ing) (its) decline.”

‘Political scientist Chalmers Johnson noted that the counterproductive path followed by the US is same dynamic that doomed past empires.

He cited “isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy,” combined with growing homeland authoritarianism and loss of personal freedoms.

It’s way too late for scattered reforms of the government and military, he stressed.

Lessons of history are clear. Wrong choices followed by the US is heading its imperial project for the dustbin of history like all other previous empires.

Johnson noted that the “combination of huge standing armies, (forever) wars, military Keynesianism, and ruinous military expenses have destroyed our republican structure in favor of an imperial presidency.”

Once begun down this path and won’t change, ruinous tyranny is the likely result, much of it already in place.

Ongoing violence, vandalism, and looting in city streets nationwide plays into the hands of US dark forces.

The US already is a police state. What’s going on in its second week is an excuse for authorities to institute martial law, even suspend the Constitution, on the phony pretext of protecting national security — at a time when the only US enemies are invented. No real ones exist.

Escalating homeland toughness also provides greater cover for waging war on China by other means.

A White House document titled “Strategic Approach to the People’s Republic of China” falsely accused the country of “exploit(ing) the free and open rules-based order and attempt(ing) to reshape the international system in its favor (sic).”

Translation: The US wants China co-opted. It wants all nations subservient to its interests, none going their own way under their own system that diverges from the American way — used to dominate other countries.

Those not bowing to its will are targeted for regime change, how the scourge of imperialism works.

China isn’t for co-opting. It’s pursuing its independent course, seeking cooperative relations with other countries, at war with none, threatening none — polar opposite how the US operates.

The White House document (document below) falsely accused Beijing of “undermin(ing) the sovereignty and dignity of countries and individuals around the world” — precisely how the US operates.

In contrast to China’s carrot approach, the US uses sticks.

In furthering its own imperial interests, the document demands that “Beijing…cease or reduce actions harmful to the United States’ vital, national interests and those of our allies and partners (sic).”

The above sounds like a call to arms, suggesting perhaps use of force if China isn’t subservient to US interests, notably by falsely accusing its authorities of “malign behavior,” adding:

“Congress…provides legal authorities and resources for the United States government to take the actions to achieve our strategic objectives.”

The US is “building cooperative partnerships and developing…alternatives with foreign allies, partners, and international organizations to” counter China in the Indo-Pacific and globally.

“This report does not attempt to detail the comprehensive range of actions and policy initiatives the (Trump regime) is carrying out across the globe as part of our strategic competition,” the document said.

“Rather, this report focuses on the implementation of the (National Security Strategy) as it applies most directly to the PRC.”

China’s development challenges US economic dominance over other nations, its rage for maintaining a unipolar world order that already changed to multi-world polarity, a notion unacceptable to the US ruling class.

China’s technological and other economic growth comes at the expense of US and other Western interests.

The document considers this an “unfair advantage,” falsely saying “(t)he PRC retains its non-market economic structure and state-led, mercantilist approach to trade and investment (sic).”

China is as capitalist to the core as the US and other Western countries — under its own system, not following diktats others want imposed on the country, what no nations should accept.

The US considers that unacceptable, especially in China’s case because of its increasing prominence on the world stage at the expense of US rage to dominate other countries worldwide.

Accusing China of “predatory economic practices…littered with broken and empty promises” describes how the US operates.

China’s Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation seeks greater regional integration, an initiative intending over $1 trillion in investment longterm.

The chairman of China’s largest construction machinery manufacturer XCMG earlier said “One Belt, One Road (OBOR) makes our internationalization strategy like a tiger with wings added.”

It’s a major initiative to advance China’s economic interests.

The White House document falsely said it aims “to reshape international norms, standards, and networks to advance Beijing’s global interests and vision” at the expense of other nations, adding:

Its projects “are characterized by poor quality, corruption, environmental degradation, a lack of public oversight or community involvement, opaque loans, and contracts generating or exacerbating governance and fiscal problems in host nations (sic).”

“Given Beijing’s increasing use of economic leverage to extract political concessions from or exact retribution against other countries, the United States judges that Beijing will attempt to convert OBOR projects into undue political influence and military access (sic).”

Countries involved in the initiative stand to benefit along with China through mutual cooperation — polar opposite US exploitive policies in dealings with other nations, including allies.

China “challenges our values (sic), the document states.

They’re unrelated to “the unalienable right of every person to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

They’re all about pressuring, bullying, and bludgeoning other nations to bend to Washington’s will — endless wars by hot and other means its favored strategies.

China operates by a different standard, favoring world peace, stability, and cooperative relations with other countries, not dominance over them that cuts to the core of Washington’s imperial agenda.

The White House document includes a litany of false accusations against Beijing.

Unacceptable US hostility toward China risks eventual confrontation.

What Beijing wants avoided with all nations, the US pursues against one after another belligerently.

Two global wars taught its ruling class nothing. A third one in the thermonuclear age could end life on earth if waged.

What’s unthinkable is possible because of US rage to dominate other nations by whatever it takes to achieve its objectives.

According to a 19th century proverb:

“Only when the last tree has died, and the last river been poisoned, and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.”

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image: Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in a file image. Image: Youtube

Relations between Turkey and Syrian armed groups that used to be considered cordial due to massive support provided by the Turkish authorities to the Syrian opposition are rapidly deteriorating over Turkey’s incursion into the Libyan conflict, according to sources among the Syrian militants fighting in Libya. 

Last month, over 2,000 fighters defected from Sultan Murad Division, one of the key armed factions serving the Turkish interests in Syria. The group’s members chose to quit after they were ordered to go to Libya to fight on the side of the Turkey-backed Government of National Accord (GNA). This marks a drastic shift in the attitude of the Syrian fighters towards participation in the Libyan conflict: just a few months ago there was no shortage of mercenaries willing to fly to Libya via Turkey for a lucrative compensation of $2,000 – 5,000 and a promise of Turkish citizenship offered by Ankara.

Both promises turned out to be an exaggeration, if not a complete lie. The militants who traveled to Libya got neither the money nor the citizenship and other perks that were promised to them, revealed a fighter of Ahrar al-Sharqiya faction Zein Ahmad. Moreover, he pointed out that after the fighters arrived in Libya they were immediately dispatched to Tripoli, an arena of regular clashes between GNA forces and units of the Libyan National Army despite Turkish promises of tasking them with maintaining security at oil facilities.

Data gathered by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights shows that around 9,000 members of Turkey-backed Syrian armed factions are currently fighting in Libya, while another 3,500 men are undergoing training in Syria and Turkey preparing for departure. Among them are former members of terror groups such as Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, as confirmed by reports of capture of a 23-years-old HTS fighter Ibrahim Muhammad Darwish by the LNA forces. Another example is an ISIS terrorist also captured by the LNA who confessed that he was flown in from Syria via Turkey.

By sending the Syrian fighters to Libya Ankara intended to recycle and repurpose these groups for establishing its influence without the risks and consequences of a large-scale military operation involving major expenses and casualties among Turkish military personnel. However, the recent developments on the ground show that this goal was not fully achieved. 

The Syrian fighters sustain heavy casualties due to the lack of training and weaponry. Total count of losses among the Turkey-backed groups reached hundreds and continue to grow as GNA and LNA clash with intermittent success. Until Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan curbs his ambition, destructive nature of involvement of the Syrian armed groups in Libya may result in the downfall of Turkey’s influence over the Syrian opposition.

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In a new political detective story, set in the Middle East, Charlotte Dennett combines oil pipeline politics, relentless journalism and a revealing family biography to unravel the Great Game

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All families have unsolved mysteries, stories lost or rarely told. But few if any have a storyteller as prepared or as dogged as Vermont lawyer and journalist Charlotte Dennett — or a family saga so entwined with the politics of oil and pipelines in the Middle East.

In a new book, The Crash of Flight 3804, Dennett melds two narratives, the personal and the geopolitical. The subtitle suggests its scope: A Lost Spy, a Daughter’s Quest, and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil. It’s an epic yet intimate voyage full of dark discoveries, suspenseful, brave, ambitious and detailed.

Let’s look at those four qualities, beginning with a bit of the suspense. In 1943, Charlotte’s father, Daniel Dennett, went from a life of teaching and scholarship to wartime espionage. A Harvard-educated Mideast specialist who spoke Arabic, French and German, he taught English in the 1930s at the American University in Beirut. That made him a good catch for either the State Department or the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor of the CIA.

But as the Agency proudly points out on its website — now that it has finally recognized Dennett as its “forgotten first star” — he chose intelligence over diplomacy.

In 1944, Dennett became the OSS chief of counterintelligence in Beirut, re-assigned to the Strategic Services Unit (SSU) once the war ended. By 1946, at age 36, he was running Beirut intelligence operations, just as the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) was morphing into the CIA. Dennett’s CIG code name was Carat. His cover was cultural attache, but he felt engaged in cultural warfare, and not only with the Russians but also with some allies, notably the British and French. Financier Bernard Baruch had just named the unfolding struggle: “We are in the midst of a Cold War.”

On March 19, 1947, Dennett boarded Flight 3804, a C-47 army transport plane, bound from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia. At this point one part of his job was helping to negotiate the route of a new, US-controlled Trans-Arabian oil pipeline that would run across Arabia to either Lebanon or Palestine. Where it would end was becoming a key sticking point. In his last correspondence, Dennett talked about US oilmen arguing over a final terminal on the Mediterranean, and Syrians balking over transit rights.

The stated mission was to deliver top secret communications equipment, take and deliver aerial photos, and meet with Sinclair Oil officials. On board, along with Dennett and the flight crew, were Donald Sullivan, a US petroleum attache inspecting holdings and projects, and John Creech, the intelligence agency technician responsible for the equipment. The plane never landed, instead slamming into a mountain north of the capital.

The first person to reach the crash site was an unnamed British officer. The official explanation was a weather-related accident.

Charlotte Dennett, less than two months old when her father died, has spent much of her life searching for the truth about what happened, and the bigger picture surrounding that personal loss. Among the more revealing documents she found along the way was Daniel Dennett’s 1944 “analysis of work” for the OSS, in which he acknowledged that Saudi Arabia’s oil deposits were so enormous “that we must control them at all costs.” That phrase, “at all costs,” resurfaces frequently, and headlines the last chapter.

The book opens with a brief foreward by another Dennett, Charlotte’s older brother, also named Daniel. He is known as one of the “the four horsemen,” thought leaders of the new atheist movement. The others are Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens. If the four horsemen were a rock band, Dennett would be the quiet one.

“The Great Game for Oil is one of civilization’s dirty secrets,” he explains, one perhaps understood best by persistent journalists like his sister and master spies like his dad. And he introduces Kim Philby, who played a crucial role in post-war intelligence, a high-level British double agent who ultimately defected to the Soviet Union. Both Daniel and Charlotte Dennett see motives for Philby and British involvement in their father’s untimely death. As head of UK counterintelligence for the Middle East, Philby certainly had the opportunity and was linked to other sabotage.

But would the British make such a move? And why? Like many questions posed throughout the book, these can’t be definitively answered. But Dennett often presents a persuasive case, or admits to speculating when a trail runs dry. At one point, she bravely asks whether her father was tolerant and humane as a spy. Whose interest did he serve? Did he know or care, she wonders, “about what was happening to the Jews of Europe when he strove to make Lebanon safe for the Trans-Arabian Pipeline?” This is impossible to determine, but the question itself is laden with meaning. Sometimes she sees him as a victim of the Great Game, sometimes as a player and master spy.

In any case, if Daniel Dennett’s death wasn’t an accident, were the British directly implicated, or did Philby point the Soviets (or some other group) toward his activities in the region? That’s one type of question. The title of Chapter Five poses another: Is the Syrian War a pipeline war? As you might suspect, her answer to this one is yes. And although recent conflict has delayed projects involving that country, she predicts, “covert pipeline wars between the west (seeking to bypass Russia) and Russia (seeking to consolidate its hold over pipeline routes to Europe) will no doubt resume.”

At times The Crash of Flight 3804 reminds me of Fate is the Hunter, a 1964 aviation disaster film. The main storyline concerns the crash of a commercial airliner. Investigators initially point to pilot error (Dennett’s crash was blamed on uncertain weather.) But Glenn Ford, playing the airline’s Director of Flight Operations, won’t accept conventional wisdom and eventually discovers the real reason — a complex chain of coincidences. In the process, the film explores the lives of passengers and crew, the technical operations of aircraft, the process of investigation, and the pressures of relentless news media and industry politics.

Dennett employs a similar approach. After introducing her father and briefly describing the crash, she uses various chapters to chronicle oil politics in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Israel, along the way introducing journalists and others who have provided inspiration or uncovered key facts, while exploring her family’s connections to various events and places. The structure is ambitious but can prove frustrating at times, offering up recent history with only a tangential connection to the main narrative. But unlike the film, Dennett rarely equivocates. Rejecting fate or coincidence, for instance, she says British interests were the most likely outside factor in Daniel Dennett’s death, probably involving sabotage with Ethiopian participation, and possibly orchestrated by Kim Philby.

A British hand makes sense. In March 1938 the Standard Oil Company of California (renamed Aramco in 1944) had discovered vast oil deposits in Saudi Arabia. Britain still dominated the region, but was feeling the pressure. King Abdul Aziz Al Saud, known as Ibn Saud, thought his future might be with America and considered his 1945 meeting with Franklin Roosevelt “the high point of my entire life.” By 1947, the US had replaced Britain as Saudi Arabia’s favored trading partner. Winston Churchill was furious about the loss of influence.

In his last letter home, Dennett expressed concern about British colonialism and the adoption of similar policies by Aramco. In addition, however, he was heading to a meeting with Sinclair Oil, which often broke step with the industry. According to Harvey O’Connor, who wrote a 1955 precursor to Dennett’s book called The Empire of Oil, Sinclair’s founder, Harry Sinclair, was the only oil magnate to sign an agreement with the Oil Workers International Union. “Repeatedly, he delighted in breaking the Standard of New Jersey wage program by giving advantageous terms to the union,” O’Connor wrote. Standard of New Jersey meant Rockefeller power.

After decades of research on the region, however, there are matters beyond her father’s case on Dennett’s mind. “Telling the truth had been drummed into me in childhood by my mother (despite the fact that my father was a spy who by profession, was taught how to lie!),” she writes. Nevertheless, she has often found herself “seeking truth and finding oil.” Looking back at seven decades, as well as recent violence in Syria, Iraq, Gaza and Yemen, she forcefully argues that “the timeworn quest for oil — to be pursued and protected ‘at all costs’ — lies at the heart of many of these tragedies.”

Dennett acknowledges that some may consider this conclusion an oversimplification, and allows room for other arguments. Some wars and violence in the Middle East do appear to have multiple causes. Despite the evidence she assembles, that looks like the case in Syria and Yemen. On the other hand, there is little doubt that oil was a decisive factor in the Iraq War of 2003, and it has been a driving force elsewhere. There is important, fresh information and insight in Dennett’s reading of recent Middle East events. But the granular details of pipeline schemes can become a distraction, diverting focus from the central storyline.

“Everywhere it has been hunted as a wild animal, and the law of the jungle has entered into the heart and sinew of the industry. The sordid and bloody story has been told in local and world wars, in revolutions and corruption, in continuing world turmoil.” – Harvey O’Connor, The Empire of Oil

As someone who has known Charlotte Dennett for more than 30 years, I’m familiar with her political views, and have read both her 2010 book, The People V. Bush: One Lawyer’s Campaign to Bring the President to Justice and the National Grassroots Movement She Encounters along the Way, and her previous work with husband Gerard Colby. As she explains in the new book, for years “we followed the trail of US evangelical missionaries and spies from Latin America to Southeast Asia and Africa and inevitably found oil and fundamentalism as common denominators of conquest.” The result was a massive book with an equally big title, Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil.

What intrigued me more and kept me reading this time were the twists and turns of her personal journey, as well as her family’s deep and complex connections with the Middle East. They go back much farther than 1975, when Charlotte dodged gunfire in Beirut as a young reporter; or 1947, when she was born there and her father’s plane went down; or even 1931, when 21-year-old Daniel Dennett arrived in Beirut to teach. Her grandmother, Elizabeth Redfern, spent three years in Turkey as a missionary educator from 1900 to 1903, teaching biology at the American College for Girls.

And it was no accident. Redfern’s father, a Massachusetts lumber merchant, thought that was an excellent idea. In fact, he needed her “to be his eyes and ears in Turkey as the United States entered the Great Game.” The race was on to build railroads, and white pine from Maine made good railroad ties. “My grandmother was there to see it all, whether or not she understood its ramifications,” Dennett writes.

Apparently, Elizabeth Redfern wasn’t the only amateur spy at the school. With daily horseback rides other missionary teachers “did their part in informally gathering and passing on intelligence to the school’s wealthy trustees.” It was all there: missionaries, spies, commercial scheming over transportation and oil in the Middle East.

Despite its connection to her husband’s death, Charlotte’s mother loved Beirut, and managed to return as a librarian in 1963. Charlotte finished high school there, two years that changed her life, introducing her to “an interpretation of the Middle East that was entirely different from anything I’d seen in the United States.” In the 1970s, she came back as a reporter, writing sunnily about developments in rapidly changing societies. In Abu Dhabi, for example, she reported that petroleum “has launched a small, poverty-stricken country into space age modernity and affluence.”

But some stories couldn’t be published, material that ended up in a file called “What Charlotte couldn’t write.” Things like tyrannical rule in Iran under the US-backed Shah, men in dark suits and sunglasses surveilling street corners for any disturbances, universities plied with drugs to keep the students pacified, and the Shah’s sister trafficking opium. Once she teamed up with Colby, however, to investigate the connections between Rockefeller, missionaries, CIA operatives and genocide in the Amazon, self-censorship was no longer an issue.

That makes the last chapter of the book a bit surprising, although a fitting climax for her quest. It begins with two CIA men visiting their home for a chat in April 2019, and culminates in May with handshakes, promises and speeches at CIA headquarters as Dennett wonders whether Big Oil can be restrained or the agency can change its ways. “Are we on the cusp of something new? Or the same old story…”

In 2007, after repeated rejection of requests for documents on her father’s death, Dennett sued the CIA. This attracted some press, including coverage by the Village Voice and New York Times. The court backed the agency’s typical national security argument and her case was dismissed on appeal. But the spooks took notice and apparently had another move.

When Mark Schwendler, a CIA historian, and David Marlowe, assistant director of the Near East Mission, showed up in Burlington last year it was all smiles and jokes. Colby and Dennett were skeptical: “We figured that they surely must have researched us ahead of time and discovered that I was writing a book about my father.” Apparently, Schwendler was conducting related research, following up on a 2008 think tank recommendation that Dennett be added to the CIA’s memorial wall. It still sounded suspicious.

Schwendler then provided crash documents that pointed to weight, weather and pilot problems. But Dennett had seen reports that contradicted those theories. By the end, it was obvious that the writers knew more than the CIA men. The visit concluded with a promised tour of the agency’s spy museum and some creepy final words: “Welcome to the family. We are all family.”

On May 21, 2019 Dennett and Colby got their tour and more. In a Langely, Virginia conference room, renamed for the two fallen heroes, they saw tributes and heard warm remarks by Marlowe. They visited Dennett’s star, newly engraved on the CIA wall, and took part in an emotional ceremony. There was even a private meeting with CIA Director Gina Haspel, who called her father a role model and agreed to consider releasing more documents. The agency delivered on that in January 2020, removing some redactions and releasing more Information about the elder Dennett’s last months.

The real surprise was Charlotte’s take away from the charm offensive: “Apparently my wanting to do justice to my father won them over to our patriotism and the sincerity of our work, despite some understandable misgivings about our previous books.” Really? Despite knowing well that spies routinely dissemble, she considered the respect and sensitivity shown at the CIA that day to be genuine. Well, possibly. But it might also be strategic, keeping potential threats as close as possible.

“These Americans (being part of an oath-taking secretive organization) do not get the same public accolades as our armed forces on Memorial Day,” Dennett also notes. “Intelligence agencies are needed… members of the CIA may not always feel comfortable in what they are ordered to do, but they strongly believe in the overall mission: that ultimately, they are protecting democracy itself.”

That argument seems out of place, a soft defense of an intelligence community that has often backed repressive regimes, created massive chaos, and helped private interests protect oil and pipeline routes “at all costs.” Then again, most spies probably do believe that protecting democracy and American interests are closely linked, if not the same thing. And her father clearly had some misgivings, at least about the “imperial drift” of oil companies like Aramco. On the final page, Dennett does balance her qualified support with mention of a recent questionable CIA operation, running local militias in Afghanistan that commit serious human rights abuses.

Her last thoughts also suggest that we live in unsusual times, when members of the intelligence community can be whistleblowing fighters against a corrupt federal regime, and patriots can be liberals who love their country while criticizing its shortcomings and mistakes. This is intriguing. Yet she provides no details and offers no advice on how to avoid the next showdowns over oil, beyond responsible individual acton and insistence on the right to be fully informed.

Instead, Dennett asks more questions: Have we turned a page? Will the truth about Americans trying to grab Ukrainian natural gas be exposed? Can a powerhouse like Saudi Aramco, the personification of big oil in league with big banks, “be restrained by the heartfelt pleas of millions of young climate activists?” We need frank, intelligent investigations and discussions about such issues. But she doesn’t pretend to offer all the answers. Rather, Dennett’s combination of oil pipeline politics, relentless journalism, and revealing family biography makes for an absorbing political detective story, one likely to leave you with new questions of your own.

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Greg Guma writes on his blog site, Greg Guma / For Preservation & Change, where this article was originally published. 

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

The United States is on fire. Since the police killing of George Floyd on May 26, millions have taken to the streets in protest, clashing with police. At least 11 people have died, and thousands have been arrested. 15 states (plus Washington, D.C.) have called in the National Guard to quash protests raging in over 100 cities. Violence has been widespread, particularly in the epicenter Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, with buildings engulfed in flames, stores looted and vehicles destroyed.

While protestors are undoubtedly responsible for some share of the destruction, the country’s law enforcement officials have also been caught multiple times sabotaging and destroying property as well, presumably in an attempt to escalate the situation or to defame the protests.

In Seattle, police were caught on camera smashing through the door of a local Target, seemingly far away from any conflict or commotion.

WHY IS SEATTLE POLICE DESTROYING PROPERTY PLEASE EMAIL TO SPD pic.twitter.com/VYUdt4CwRV

— madison (@macaronimadi) May 31, 2020

In Boston, video circulated appears to show multiple police officers destroying their own car.

Boston police caught smashing their own car. #bostonprotest pic.twitter.com/6EOakRP5yB

— david 🌹🌻 #GreenEnter (@realDavidOnline) June 1, 2020

In San Bernardino, CA, protestors claim they held four hours of peaceful demonstrations until the police arrived, at which point the area was engulfed in flames.

we spent close to four hours peacefully protesting and the minute the police showed up, shit starts burning. something’s rotten in the city of san bernardino. https://t.co/SZMGk4CVvL

— 𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚝𝚕𝚎𝚍𝚞𝚌𝚔 ☽ (@itsablurrsir) June 1, 2020

In Chicago, images show a group of police swarm a car, hitting it with clubs. Eyewitnesses say they were looking for looters but they attacked the wrong vehicle anyway.

Chicago Police smash car windows of suspected store looters. An eye witness says police got the wrong car pic.twitter.com/CeKPjJYM6U

— Kollege Kidd (@KollegeKidd) May 31, 2020

Earlier this week there was also the suspicious case of the Minnesota vandal dubbed “Umbrella Man.” Video shows the oddly dressed individual methodically smashing the windows of an Autozone store. Umbrella Man was immediately identified as Jacob Pederson of the Minneapolis Police Department by online sleuths and real-life acquaintances, something the police have denied.

What is beyond doubt, however, is that police all over the world commonly use agent provocateurs to undermine protests. During the 2009 G20 protests in the United Kingdom, authorities used undercover agents to blend into crowds, spying on them. Police also regularly pose as members of the masked anarchist group Black Bloc, attempting to incite riots. At a 2016 anti-austerity demonstration in Montreal, officers were exposed and fled the protest.

Escalating Violence

While the level to which police themselves are destroying property is debatable, what is not is that they have escalated violence at many protests. In Houston, a mounted police officer trampled a female bystander looking the other way at an otherwise passive protest. In New York, videos of multiple cars driving through and over scores of protestors went viral.

Wtf!!! #BlacklivesMaters #brooklynprotest pic.twitter.com/S1oet8JC0x

— Pierre G. (@pgarapon) May 31, 2020

An NYPD officer also attacked a retreating young woman, shouting that she was a “fucking bitch” as he threw her to the ground. She ended up in the hospital with her injuries.

Update: Got her permission with a fuck yeah. The cop pushed her so hard at Barclays & she flung back. She is tiny. Now she’s in the ER after a serious seizure. I’m waiting for updates but have to wait outside because of COVID-19. Please keep my protest sister in your thoughts. pic.twitter.com/MqV0QJ0D8h

— Whitney Hu 胡安行 – #DefundTheNYPD #AbolishPolice (@whitney_hu) May 30, 2020

Law enforcement in Erie, PA, were caught on camera kicking a young girl lying in the street in the face. The reason she was lying in the street covering her face, according to protestors, was that she was incapacitated due to tear gas.

Erie, PA cop viciously kicks a woman while she sits on the floor covering her face, this is insane pic.twitter.com/UoZPgw8mMo

— Denis (@Gramatik) May 31, 2020

The police also appear to be making a point of attacking journalists. Denver police threw a reporter into a burning fire for getting too close to them. Minneapolis cops shot freelance reporter Linda Tirado in the face, leaving her permanently blind in one eye. Minnesota police also shot a Reuters crew on Saturday with rubber bullets, one being hit in the face, the other in the arm, and the back of the neck. Los Angeles Times reporter Molly Hennessey-Fiske also reported that police attacked her and a group of other journalists, firing tear gas at point-blank range at her. A CBS News crew, totally alone in a quiet parking lot was set upon by armed officers firing rubber bullets at them, hitting their sound engineer.

Regardless, it is doubtful whether there will be any legal consequences for the police involved in these situations as law enforcement operates under a culture of immunity from prosecution or even censure. Derek Chauvin – Floyd’s killer – for example, was protected by successive state prosecutors in Minnesota, despite multiple times shooting, and in one case, killing civilians while in uniform. If police can often get away with murder, property damage will likely be no big deal.

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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.

Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary. 

GCHQ, the UK’s largest intelligence agency, is secretively promoting arms companies involved in war crimes to British school children, apparently without the informed consent of parents, it can be revealed.

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Declassified UK can reveal that a secretive GCHQ programme is allowing officials from British and American arms companies involved in human rights abuses against children overseas to enter dozens of UK schools and recruit children for “work placement opportunities”.

The UK’s largest arms exporter, BAE Systems, is being facilitated to offer careers advice and workshops to children aged 9-12 years old.

In some cases, pre-teenage and teenage children are being taught by arms company staff how to build drones and “sniff” on their classmates’ internet connections.

The programme, known as the Cyber Schools Hub (CSH) or CyberFirst, is operating in over 40 schools and gives GCHQ access to British children as young as four for activities promoting so-called “cyber security”. The UK government plans to roll out the programme nationwide. Programme literature shows that GCHQ is aggressively pushing for arms companies to enter schools.

It can further be revealed that the programme, paid for by British taxpayers, is providing equipment to the world’s largest arms company, the US corporation Lockheed Martin, to incentivise it to enter schools in Gloucestershire, the county in southwest England where the CSH pilot scheme is mainly running.

The taxpayer has paid undisclosed sums for school children to attend work experience at Lockheed Martin, which opened a £3-million “Cyber Works” facility in Gloucester in 2017.

Lockheed Martin, which has been awarded exclusive “associate” status in GCHQ’s schools programme, manufactures the Mark 82 bomb which was used by Saudi Arabia in August 2018 to blow up more than 40 children on a school bus in Yemen.

The ongoing war in Yemen, which began in 2015, has produced the world’s largest humanitarian disaster where 2.2-million children are acutely malnourished.

Other arms companies involved in the CSH programme include giant US corporations Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, the latter a manufacturer of arms for use in Yemen and Iraq which have killed scores of civilians, including children.

BAE Systems, meanwhile, with the support of the British government, plays a key role in sustaining the Saudi war in Yemen, maintaining Saudi warplanes at their main operating bases. Amnesty International is calling for both BAE and Raytheon to be investigated by the International Criminal Court for complicity in war crimes.

A number of schools involved in the GCHQ programme have hosted “cyber days” where arms companies such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, among others, undertake visits for what GCHQ calls a “speed dating” experience with pupils. One school aimed this “experience” at Year 8s (i.e. 12-year-olds).

A permission slip in one school seen by Declassified suggests that parents are not being fully informed about the involvement of arms companies or GCHQ in the CSH programme. Only limited details about the project have been made public and the overall cost is classified.

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade told Declassified:

“This is very concerning. Arms companies exist for one reason only, and that is to sell as many weapons as possible. GCHQ should not be allowing them into schools under the guise of education. They are not investing time and resources into visiting schools because they care about education, they are doing it because they want to influence young people and improve their image among parents.”

Smith added:

“The arms company reps won’t be highlighting the terrible damage that their weapons have caused around the world. BAE and Raytheon, for example, will not be talking about the schools that have been bombed in Yemen, which their fighter jets and bombs have played a key part in. This programme needs to be stopped.”

Taught by Raytheon

GCHQ runs the Cyber Schools Hub programme through one of its arms, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which opened in 2016. The programme has been running since 2018 and lists a number of “partners” which include major private arms companies from the US and UK.

However, the true extent of arms company involvement is larger than declared by the programme. Declassified has seen evidence that French arms manufacturer Thales has entered one school to “support” a group of Year 8 girls (i.e. 12 year-olds) despite having no official or public connection to the programme.

Another company, Raytheon, was only recently listed as a CSH “partner” despite being involved since at least January 2019. It is not known if other arms companies are operating in the schools off-the-books.

Raytheon, the Massachusetts-based arms corporation, made £59-billion in sales last year, while its UK subsidiary is a major supplier to the British Ministry of Defence.

The company’s factory in Glenrothes, Scotland, produces circuit boards for the Paveway missiles, which are exported by Britain to Saudi Arabia whose air force has used them to devastating effect in the war in Yemen.

Pictures have been posted of children from Denmark Road High School for Girls in Gloucester building quadcopters – often used as drones – with Raytheon. At Crypt School, also in Gloucester, a team of Year 9 students took part in the Quadcopter Challenge, organised by Raytheon. The aim was to design, build, programme and test a quadcopter, before competing against other local schools.

“Ambassadors from Raytheon will be on hand to support the students in developing new skills,” the school notes proudly.

Another school, Kingsholm primary in Gloucester, hosted a “Raytheon junior cyber day” where students undertook activities such as “learning how you can eavesdrop on a computer screen using a simple radio tuner, antenna and free software”. The event was hosted by 12 staff from Raytheon along with members of the Gloucestershire and Manchester police.

Photos were also recently posted of Raytheon delivering talks at another school, Cleeve, in Cheltenham – where GCHQ has its headquarters – to mark International Women’s Week in March.

In 2015, Raytheon opened a Cyber Innovation Centre in Gloucester that it says is focused on “big data, analytics and network defence”, while Gloucestershire Conservative MP Jack Lopresti received gifts worth £320 from Raytheon UK in January 2020.

In 2017, Lopresti lobbied a government minister in parliament for the RAF to retain a surveillance aircraft, Sentinel, whose radar system has been developed by Raytheon. The chair of Raytheon UK is Lord Strathclyde, a former Conservative leader of the House of Lords.

Careers advice for 11 year olds

GCHQ divulges little information about arms company activities in the CSH programme. But Declassified has seen a newsletter produced for a short period from December 2018 to July 2019, which gives some details.

One newsletter notes,

“Industry engagement is a massive bonus for schools in general, but for cyber schools in particular. Massive enterprises such as Northrop Grumman and Raytheon are involved with the programme, developing special work placement opportunities and realising that there are a whole group of non-degree educated youngsters they might miss out on.”

The companies themselves do not list their activities in the CSH programme on their websites.

The CSH programme advertises the fact that BAE Systems – the UK’s largest arms corporation with sales of £20-billion in 2019 – has delivered workshops for Year 5 (age 9-10) students. It adds that BAE has also provided “careers advice” for Year 7 (age 11-12) students at a school which is not part of the programme, in its national careers week.

BAE has also been “acting as guardians” for the “CyberFirst Girls” teams entered by two local schools, although it is unclear what this involves.

On one occasion, GCHQ noted it “had just got BAE Systems on board” and passed on a “request for support” from another school, Wyedean, also in Gloucestershire, for a GCHQ programme aimed at Year 8 girls. The newsletter notes, “Together with Tom, the BAE Systems project coordinator, they very quickly organised a large number of staff volunteers to support the school.” Thales was also contacted to provide support, to which it agreed. These arms companies were focused on “forming” the Year 8 children’s “thought processes”, the newsletter notes.

When another school, Ribston Hall, wanted to improve its 15th position in the “CyberFirst Girls” competition, it put out a “cry for help”. “This cry for help was answered by both Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems, with staff from both companies going into school to help the girls again in a pastoral/thinking perspective,” the newsletter notes.

The NCSC states that it has set up “distribution centres with the support of the schools and industries involved in the project” to loan out technology. It is unclear which arms companies, if any, are involved in this activity.

But the NCSC has said that staff at Lockheed Martin – “working closely” with the computer science teacher at one school – facilitated three students on a week’s work experience opportunity at the firm, funded by the NCSC project team. The children were meant to “learn about all the different ways into industry and what the company does”. The experience at the arms company ended with a “BBQ social”.

Offering work experience in arms companies is an expanding programme.

“Having a flexible time for work placements and selecting appropriate students will help us increase the number of placements,” notes one newsletter, adding, “Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are expanding the numbers of students that they can accommodate.”

Further information about the nature of these work placements and what the parents of the children are told has not been made public. One newsletter notes, however: “Northrop Grumman continues to undertake E-mentoring with both Year 11 and Year 13 Cleeve School students helping them prepare for their recent exams”. This mentoring has utilised Skype and email.

The philosopher’s den of cyber innovation and magic

In mid-2019, Wyedean School – where Harry Potter author JK Rowling was a pupil – hosted 200 Year 5 primary school children for a full day of “experiencing” cyber security. Some 40 representatives of arms and cyber companies, including BAE Systems and Raytheon, also took part. The “experience” finished with a Harry Potter afternoon tea.

It is not known if the children’s parents knew arms companies were giving them lessons.

Wyedean School also launched the “Philosopher’s Den of Cyber Innovation and Magic”, used to support “lunchtime, breaktime and after school” cyber security events.

The new “Den” included 10 Harry Potter themed workstations funded by the NCSC as well as “Interactive Picture Frames (just like on the stairs in the Harry Potter movies)” and “Hagrid’s Cottage (a very upcycled summer house that has been skilfully decorated and animated by staff and students)”.

The newsletter adds as an aside: “Local companies also supported the development of the Den”, without divulging which companies. The Den, however, was officially opened with BAE Systems in attendance.

Funding arms companies

One newsletter, under the heading “Can we help you develop an activity?”, notes that “when the NCSC team visit a company who are keen to support schools with computer science, we quite often run into the issue that while companies can provide the time for their staff to go into schools, they do not have funding lines that they can tap into to provide equipment to support the activity.” It adds: “so the NCSC team are now supporting companies with equipment”.

One recipient is Lockheed Martin, which was given equipment “to help develop activities on logic gates and 3D printing”. Lockheed, based in Maryland, USA, with a large UK operation, is the biggest arms company in the world with revenue in 2019 of £47.6-billion. Lockheed Martin’s UK operation is headedby Peter Ruddock, a former Air Marshal in the Royal Air Force.

There is evidence that GCHQ’s programme is not following guidelines on obtaining parental consent. The permission slip for parents in one school seen by Declassified makes no mention of the arms companies involved in the programme.

Neither does the slip mention that the NCSC is part of GCHQ, which was in 2013 exposed as running programmes of mass surveillance and was found by the European Court of Human Rights to be breaking the law.

Good practice school guidelines state: “Where consent is required, the key is to provide parents with sufficient information to make an informed decision about the participation of their child”. The NCSC told Declassified that in the CSH programme, “Parents are consulted through the schools’ standard processes.”

In the seven newsletters Declassified has seen – which run to 22,000 words – the words “arms” or “weapons” do not appear once. The manufacturers of deadly weapons are referred to simply as “companies” or “enterprises”. It is not known if that is how they are presented to unwitting parents.

When Declassified asked the NCSC what information is given to parents about the programme, the agency replied: “We have no contact with parents. What teachers/schools share with parents is done independently of NCSC.”

After answering questions on Declassified’s first investigation of its school programme, the NCSC did not respond to further questions about the role of arms companies.

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Matt Kennard is head of investigations and Mark Curtis is editor, at Declassified UK, an investigative journalism organisation focused on UK foreign, military and intelligence policies. Twitter – @DeclassifiedUK. You can donate to Declassified UK here.

A week ago in Minneapolis, for all the world to see, a black man, George Floyd, was murdered by a policeman, Derek Chauvin.  Protests broke out in nearly 100 American cities, and even worldwide, and have continued now for more than a week.

Murders of black men by police in America are not new. They are endemic. So why the deep, widespread, and sustained protests this time?

Certainly the nature of this particular murder explains in large part the especially angry protests and response. But it’s not the entire explanation. Youth of all color, race and ethnicity are leading the demonstrations.

A Sadistic, Merciless & Intentional Killing

The killing of George Floyd was a particularly reprehensible police murder. It was clearly intended. It was merciless. It was sadistic. As the world has watched, Floyd was cuffed, face down on the street, pleading for his life. And the more he pleaded, the more Derek Chauvin, the cop, seemed determined and unrelenting, intent on keeping his knee on Floyd’s neck.  The first six minutes, as Floyd pleaded for his life, even pitifully calling out for his mother at the end, a sure indication he felt he was nearing his last moments of life. But for almost 3 minutes more Chauvin’s knee remained after Floyd had already lost consciousness.

What angers those who observed the murder most is the lack of mercy shown by Chauvin and his three complicit partner officers. What they showed was clearly an intention to kill.  Chauvin appeared almost to take pleasure in keeping his knee on Floyd’s neck for three minutes more after he lay motionless. That made it a particularly sadistic murder.

It suggested to observers of the video, especially to black folks, that the police in 2020 will show you no mercy. Plead all you want for your life when cuffed, helpless, face down in the dirt. They’ll still murder you. And apparently enjoy it in the process!

The murder act was followed soon by another typical series of events, also all too often occurring in America today: Minneapolis police and the city’s district attorney (DA) office prevaricated and hesitated taking action, only responding when protests erupted.  That delay suggested a typical cover up was underway, as is so often the response of local authorities in such cases.

There’s a big problem in America today: the cozy relationships that exist between police and DA offices. Both ‘scratch each others’ backs’, as the saying goes: The DA depends on police testimony to get convictions in court; in turn the DAs go light and help protect the police in exchange for their favorable testimonies. Police unions frequently provide significant campaign donations to District Attorney candidates that favor them, creating a kind of political ‘conflict of interest’ by Das. Coroner offices play a contributing role, by providing whatever autopsy results are necessary to support the DA.  Carefully selected Grand Juries, should legal challenges to murder get that far, then endorse their joint mutual cover ups. It’s an institutional arrangement that too often thwarts the process of Justice.

So it’s not just an occasional racist cop. It’s institutionalized racism. A pattern that repeats over and over again. This is what the protesters of Floyd’s murder also realize and demonstrate against. They’ve seen it before. Time and again.

Black folks today know that pleading for your life when about to be murdered—like pleading for Justice after the fact—will more often than not fall on institutional deaf ears when police brutality is concerned.  No mercy and no justice come in the same institutionalized racist package.

Protests As Acts of Solidarity

The immediate and increasingly angry protests that followed the murder of George Floyd are not due solely to the police killing of Floyd. The media would have you think so. That it’s only about the murder of Floyd and policy brutality. The politicians would like you to think so. All those leaders calling for calm and dialogue want you to believe so.

Floyd may have been murdered in nine minutes. But many youth in America today, especially but not only youth of color, feel their own lives are slowly and steadily being drained on a daily basis, sucked dry by the unfairness and injustice of ‘the system’.  They feel that system—a capitalist system that increasingly rewards the wealthy and ignores the rest as never before in its history—has its knee on their necks too.  And that system, that knee, is no less unrelenting, shows no mercy, and has no intent on relieving the pressure.

Working class youth of all color today know their lives are being destroyed more insidiously, step by step, year by year, as they struggle to survive: laid off and moving from low paid job to job, accumulating crushing debt laid upon debt, lacking minimal health benefits, changing apartment to apartment as rents are continually raised, with no hope of ever having a normal family life, of ever paying off student loans, in effect having to live a 21^st century form of economic indentureship, a second or even third class economic citizenship—while they watch multimillionaires and billionaires almost exponentially add to their wealth.

In just the last three years under Trump, corporations registered record profits, wealthy investors and 1% were given $4.9T in tax cuts and $3.4T in stock buybacks and dividend payouts.  While the rich and their corporations get richer, the rest make due with stagnant or falling wages, working two and three jobs, and constant job loss and turnover.

All those protestors on the streets this past week—virtually all young folks—are not just demonstrating against the murder of Floyd and institutionalized racism. That’s the tip of the protest spear. But it’s more than that. It goes deeper than that. There’s a deeper frustration and desperation behind it all, affecting tens of millions but especially American youth.

The youthful protesters looked at Floyd and they saw themselves.  The protests are thus an eruption of social solidarity among wide sections of American youth! Not just among black and minority youth but American youth in general.  Look at the composition of the demonstrators city after city. They are mostly Millennials and GenZers of all races and ethnicities and gender who feel they have been left behind by ‘the system’.  Left out and declared disposable.  They are virtually all working class youth.  What the protests show is that Class and Race are coming together! Especially among the youth.

They are fearful of police brutality, especially blacks and youth of color. But they are fearful as well of being condemned to a life of low paid, no benefits, insecure and futureless part time and temp work. Working often two and even three jobs cobbled together just to get by.

And now, with the advent of the Coronavirus pandemic, even those mostly low paid service jobs have been wiped out by the virus and recent economic crash—many of which, they sense, aren’t coming back soon or even at all.  The Congressional Budget Office today, June 2, 2020 announced it will likely take ten years for the jobs now being lost to come back, and many won’t return at all! There will be no V-shape quick recovery. It will be W Shape, extended over a decade or more, with periodic brief and weak recoveries followed by repeated relapses and recessions—whether or not there are subsequent waves of the virus. The economic die is cast. The US economy (and global) have entered a phase of chronic, long run decline.

What the protestors don’t realize yet, but will soon, is that more of their low paid jobs with no future are about to be wiped out by the coming Artificial Intelligence revolution and automation now ramping up.  According to McKinsey Consulting, AI will eliminate 30% of all occupations in the next five to ten years.  Even their low pay, futureless service jobs will be eliminated.

Add to all the above fears of the worsening climate crisis the protesting youth know they will have to live through. And to that the growing public awareness of a deepening political crisis in America, as the nation drifts into tyranny driven by the Trump wing of the US political elite.

The USA has entered a ‘triple crisis’: health care & environment, jobs and the economy, and a growing political crisis of Democracy in America itself. The protestors know this. They sense and feel it and are growing frustrated, angry and desperate.  The youth of America are growing increasingly desperate. All that ‘social crisis kindling’ is feeding the protests. Police brutality, institutional racism, and murder is just the spark that has set it all off. It’s not just about George Floyd any more.

What to do? Some Proposals 

So what’s the solution(s)? To escalating police murders; to white supremacist provocateurs who are intent on stoking a race war (as they say in their own words); to the sub-classless looters that prey upon the protests and demonstrations; to the local institutionalized racism. What might be done?

It’s no longer acceptable to say, as elites of both parties and their media declare daily, that demonstrators should calm down, go home, and let’s dialogue about how to reform the police.  That’s been done before. Many times. With little result. It’s time for black folks, protestors and demonstrators on the streets today to develop their own independent solutions to the problem of police brutality.

There are three general actions that might be undertaken immediately to confront institutional racism in America that chronically gives us murders of George Floyds:

• Break the iron nexus between Police Departments and District Attorney Offices
• Launch a National ‘Policing the Police’ Movement
• Form Local Community ‘Committees of Safety’

At the core of institutional racism is the relationship between local police departments and District Attorneys. The police rely on the DAs to smother, delay and defuse investigations and prosecutions of police who have engaged in brutality and murder against black and other minorities.  The DAs depend in turn on police testimony in court cases to enable them to win their cases and advance their personal careers. In exchange for police assistance, the DAs go light on police charged with brutality. Knowing they are covered, police feel more inclined to shoot first and not worry about the outcome. It’s a ‘scratch my back-I’ll scratch yours’ mentality that permeates both institutions—police departments and DA offices—nearly everywhere in America today.

Coroner’s offices play a secondary but important role in the process when a murder is involved. They assist the DA by rendering a decision of the cause of death that conveniently points away from the police action in question. The decease died of a heart attack and had underlying heart problems is often the official cause of death. It wasn’t choking of the defendant by the police. It was a heart attack that would have occurred regardless of the choke hold. The guy had a bad heart or some other underlying condition was the cause of death—not the police tactic employed.

Another institutional player in the charade is often a local Grand Jury. This archaic institution is nothing like a real ‘jury’, although called that. It is a selected group of often pro-police and so-called ‘upstanding citizens’—meaning more often than not white, conservative and business oriented. Grand juries often rule to throw out charges, giving the DA cover not to proceed to prosecution. Should the DA still proceed, the charges are reduced from murder to something less based on Grand Jury lesser recommendations. If convicted, the police in question’s penalty is often reduced to only employment termination. But he is then eligible to go to another police dept. and rehired. Police departments often have a silent understanding to rehire each other’s ‘bad apples’. Thus a cop with a long record of abusing blacks and minorities continues to work somewhere ‘down the road’.  It’s not unlike the Catholic church simply moving some pederast priest to another parish.

Breaking the Police-District Attorney Cover-Up Nexus

• Local DA’s must be prohibited from prosecuting their local police in cases of racist related brutality and murder. The prosecution responsibility must be moved to an independent source outside the county or city.
• Police department unions and organizations should be prohibited from contributing to DA election campaigns
• Coroners should be selected by the murdered party’s family to ensure impartiality
• Grand Juries should be abolished, especially and starting with cases involving police brutality and killing
• A police discharged for cause, involving a racist brutality case, should be prevented from rehire by another police department anywhere

Launching a national ‘Policing the Police’ Movement 

• A national ‘Policing the Police’ movement should be launched. Wherever a cop confronts and stops someone, the public should use smartphones or other photo  devices to record the interaction.  This is now done haphazardly and occasionally. There should be a general education effort nationwide to get everyone to engage in the practice of video recording police whenever they see a police interaction with any citizen.
• An independent national database of photos and video recording of confrontations should be created.
• A public education campaign should be launched as well, encouraging the public to immediately send all videos to the independent national database.
• The public database should be accessible to everyone online

Forming Local Community ‘Committees of Safety’

• All cities should form local community ‘Committees of Safety’ to police the police, to gather information on confrontations and make the information available to the general public
• The Committees should organize protests and demonstrations and coordinate with other Committees outside their local area to organize larger protests and demonstrations
• During protests and demonstrations, Committee members should undertake the task of identifying, confronting, and rooting out provocateurs. And distribute photo leaflets of known white supremacists and provocateurs to participants in the protests and demonstrations
• The Committees of Safety should publicize to the community at large those identified as looters during the protests and demonstrations
• Committees should endorse and run candidates for city councils, city managers, DAs, and local elected judgeships that are committed to, and supportive of, black lives matter and other minority civil rights
• Committees would raise demands for local ordnance changes and state wide legislation to protect the rights of demonstrators, and organize recalls of politicians who do not
• Committees would undertake other measures as necessary to ensure the safety of protestors from provocateurs, white supremacist violence, and other proponents of violence against people or property during demonstrations

Many of these proposals are not new. Others are being introduced by protestors right now. But the point is the protests and demonstrations should be taken to the next organizational level. They cannot go on as just spontaneous events. They will eventually dissipate without organization. Or be captured by provocateurs and looters. Or manipulated by politicians for purposes of personal election and careers. Or all the above.

Without organization, the ‘I Can’t Breathe’ anti-racist, anti-policy brutality movement that has swept the country runs the risk of eventually fading—just as had other promising popular movements like ‘Occupy’ in 2011 and the ‘Yellow Vests’ in France of a few years ago.  Without organization, the provocateurs and looters will also increasingly displace the protestors in the media–providing cover for a ‘law and order’ right wing reaction that will use the violence to crush the demonstrations while ushering in still further restrictions on civil liberty rights of assembly and expression.  Nor will the police and politicians rid the protests of provocateurs and looters. The protestors must do so themselves. But that cannot be done without organization.

The other even greater risk, absent organization, is that mainstream politicians will divert the energy and anger of the protestors into channels to get themselves elected.

Organization is needed as well simply in order to expand and build the protests and demonstrations, and to ensure they continue with ever larger turnout.

Forming local community ‘Committees of Safety’ are the core organizational element necessary for building the organizational power of the protests and demonstrations. Launching a ‘policing the police’ movement is a way to connect the general ranks of the demonstrators—and the public in general—to the work of the Committees of Safety. And the Committees and the public Policing the Police movement are together the means by which to independently politically attack the institutionalized racism embedded today in the relationships between police departments, district attorneys, coroners, and Grand Juries.

Breaking institutional racism requires an independent political movement, with a grass roots organizational structure. That independent movement is on the streets of America right now. Will it take the movement to the next level, a level necessary to break the embedded local institutions of racism?

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Dr. Jack Rasmus writes on his blog site, Jack Rasmus, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

It now seems certain the social lockdown imposed during the COVID scare will be extended with a “second wave” blamed in part on people protesting the police execution of George Floyd. 

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Packed crowds protesting George Floyd's death have health officials worried about possible COVID-19 outbreak https://t.co/o2A7njr5vE

— WLWT (@WLWT) June 2, 2020

As it now stands, there is no way the massive protests in America will come to end anytime soon. The yellow vest protests in France went on for months, only to be sidelined by COVID. Make no mistake. Macron and the neoliberals were seriously freaked out by week after week of yellow vest protests and riots. The elite considered it a serious threat to the French state and its corrupt establishment.

Trump has absolutely no viable options. He has threatened to send federal troops into states in violation of what remains of Posse Comitatus. It was mostly destroyed by the national security state logic of the neocon John Yoo and the Bush administration. 

Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act to go after rioters and looters. It should be mentioned that police (now embedded with federalized National Guard soldiers) are exploiting the violence to attack peaceful demonstrators, for instance, the following chemical attack in Philadelphia.

Former Portland Police Chief Danielle Outlaw oversaw a police force that violently policed protests. Now she is the Police Commissioner of Philly and her cops are deploying tear gas on protesters during the COVID-19 pandemic. pic.twitter.com/SVTSw2k14q

— nyc law grrrl (@nyclawgrrrl) June 2, 2020

The Chicago Police are notorious for use of over-the-top violence in reaction to dissent in the Windy City. Apparently little if nothing has changed since 1968 and the savage beatdown of protesters, media, and bystanders by Mayor Daley’s police during the Democratic Convention. 

Few deny George Floyd was sadistically executed, but what’s missing here is the fact his murder is part of a far larger issue that is not being addressed. 

The paramilitarization of state and local law enforcement by the federal government has resulted in heavily armed police-soldiers that regard both the guilty and innocent alike as enemy combatants. Since the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the onset of the disastrous war on drugs, the Pentagon has fed a steady stream of hardware designed for war and mass murder into police agencies from sea to shining sea. 

For the last 19 yrs in the guise of fighting terrorism both political parties have funded militarized police forces throughout the country. Billions of dollars for tanks, tactical weapons, tear gas & training has created this bullshit.Are we now the enemy? pic.twitter.com/1MrvlhFCHI

— Tim Robbins (@TimRobbins1) June 2, 2020

This is not incidental. The state has prepared for war in America over a period of several decades. During the Iran-Contra testimony of Col. Oliver North we learned the government planned to rendition and imprison thousands of American dissidents during a war in Central America against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. North was involved in the illegal CIA war against Nicaragua and its support of the Contra mercenaries. 

As I write this, federal military occupations of downtowns, neighborhoods, critical infrastructure, etc., are underway. The severity of the riots has provided cover for a super-charged move to fully implement a military police state. It won’t be realized as such by many if not most Americans. 

The rioters and looters piggybacking on race and police brutality protests are providing a perfect excuse for the state to militarily control the larger blue or liberal metropolitan areas of the United States, possibly for some time to come. 

Take a look at Hollywood Blvd. #LAProtests

We're seeing a #PoliceState turn into a #MilitaryState.pic.twitter.com/HQqIFeJz3q

— Johnny Akzam (@JohnnyAkzam) June 2, 2020

No doubt this “civil war” will run through summer and land square in the lap of both parties during the conventions.

Due to the riots and protests, the Democrats have pushed their convention back to August from July, probably in the hope, there will be some kind of resolution that will settle the dust by the end of summer. It’s not going to happen, even though, as of Wednesday, the rioting and violence have ratcheted down a notch or two. 

Likewise and undoubtedly more violently during the RNC convention the following week in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Late note: North Carolina rejected convention taking place in NC, no doubt realizing and dreading the consequences). 

Expect militarized national conventions, unlike anything in the past. 

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

Here is one thing I can write with an unusual degree of certainty and confidence: Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin would not have been charged with the (third-degree) murder of George Floyd had the United States not been teetering on a knife edge of open revolt. 

Had demonstrators not turned out in massive numbers on the streets and refused to be corralled back home by the threat of police violence, the US legal system would have simply turned a blind eye to Chauvin’s act of extreme brutality, as it has done before over countless similar acts. 

Without the mass protests, it would have made no difference that Floyd’s murder was caught on camera, that it was predicted by Floyd himself in his cries of “I can’t breathe” as Chauvin spent nearly nine minutes pressing his knee to Floyd’s neck, or that the outcome was obvious to spectators who expressed their growing alarm as Floyd lost consciousness. At most, Chauvin would have had to face, as he had many times before, an ineffectual disciplinary investigation over “misconduct”. 

Without the current ferocious mood of anger directed at the police and sweeping much of the nation, Chauvin would have found himself as immune from accountability and prosecution as so many police officers before him who gunned down or lynched black citizens.

Instead he is the first white police officer in the state of Minnesota ever to be criminally charged over the death of a black man. After initially arguing that there were mitigating factors to be considered, prosecutors hurriedly changed course to declare Chauvin’s indictment the fastest they had ever initiated. Yesterday Minneapolis’s police chief was forced to call the other three officers who stood by as Floyd was murdered in front of them “complicit”.

Confrontation, not contrition 

If the authorities’ placatory indictment of Chauvin – on the least serious charge they could impose, based on incontrovertible evidence they could not afford to deny – amounts to success, then it is only a little less depressing than failure.

Worse still, though most protesters are trying to keep their demonstrations non-violent, many of the police officers dealing with the protests look far readier for confrontation than contrition. The violent attacks by police on protesters, including the use of vehicles for rammings, suggest that it is Chauvin’s murder charge – not the slow, barbaric murder of Floyd by one of their number – that has incensed fellow officers. They expect continuing impunity for their violence.

Here is the overhead… pic.twitter.com/US6Qqhkz3O

— Rob Bennett 🤠 (@rob_bennett) May 31, 2020

Similarly, the flagrant mistreatment by police of corporate media outlets simply for reporting developments, from the arrest of a CNN crew to physical assaults on BBC staff, underlines the sense of grievance harboured by many police officers when their culture of violence is exposed for all the world to see. They are not reeling it in, they are widening the circle of “enemies”.

This was before curfew and our cameraman @p_murt clearly a member of the press, a block away from the White House this evening… pic.twitter.com/X7oQqZm8eW

— Aleem Maqbool (@AleemMaqbool) June 1, 2020

Nonetheless, it is entirely wrong to suggest, as a New York Times editorial did yesterday, that police impunity can be largely ascribed to “powerful unions” shielding officers from investigation and punishment. The editorial board needs to go back to school. The issues currently being exposed to the harsh glare of daylight get to the heart of what modern states are there to do – matters rarely discussed outside of political theory classes.

Right to bear arms 

The success of the modern state, like the monarchies of old, rests on the public’s consent, explicit or otherwise, to its monopoly of violence. As citizens, we give up what was once deemed an inherent or “natural” right to commit violence ourselves and replace it with a social contract in which our representatives legislate supposedly neutral, just laws on our behalf. The state invests the power to enforce those laws in a supposedly disciplined, benevolent police force – there to “protect and serve” – while a dispassionate court system judges suspected violators of those laws.

That is the theory, anyway.

In the case of the United States, the state’s monopoly on violence has been muddied by a constitutional “right to bear arms”, although, of course, the historic purpose of that right was to ensure that the owners of land and slaves could protect their “property”. Only white men were supposed to have the right to bear arms.

Today, little has changed substantively, as should be obvious the moment we consider what would have happened had it been black militia men that recently protested the Covid-19 lockdown by storming the Michigan state capitol, venting their indignation in the faces of white policemen.

(In fact, the US authorities’ reaction to the Black Panthers movement through the late 1960s and 1970s is salutary enough for anyone who wishes to understand how dangerous it is for a black man to bear arms in his own defence against the violence of white men.)

Brutish violence 

The monopoly of violence by the state is justified because most of us have supposedly consented to it in an attempt to avoid a Hobbesian world of brutish violence where individuals, families and tribes enforce their own, less disinterested versions of justice.

But of course the state system is not as neutral or dispassionate as it professes, or as most of us assume. Until the struggle for universal suffrage succeeded – a practice that in all western states can be measured in decades, not centuries – the state was explicitly there to uphold the interests of a wealthy elite, a class of landed gentry and newly emerging industrialists, as well as a professional class that made society run smoothly for the benefit of that elite.

What was conceded to the working class was the bare minimum to prevent them from rising up against the privileges enjoyed by the rest of society.

That was why, for example, Britain did not have universal health care – the National Health Service – until after the Second World War, 30 years after men received the vote and 20 years after women won the same right. Only after the war did the British establishment start to fear that a newly empowered working class – of returning soldiers who knew how to bear arms, backed by women who had been released from the home to work on the land or in munitions factories to replace the departed men – might no longer be willing to accept a lack of basic health care for themselves and their loved ones.

It was in this atmosphere of an increasingly organised and empowered labour movement – reinforced by the need to engineer more consumerist societies to benefit newly emerging corporations – that European social democracy was born. (Paradoxically, the post-war US Marshall Plan helped subsidise the emergence of Europe’s major social democracies, including their public health care systems, even as similar benefits were denied domestically to Americans.)

Creative legal interpretations 

To maintain legitimacy for the state’s monopoly on violence, the legal establishment has had to follow the same minimalist balancing act as the political establishment.

The courts cannot simply rationalise and justify the implicit and sometimes explicit use of violence in law enforcement without regard to public sentiment. Laws are amended, but equally significantly they are creatively interpreted by judges so that they fit the ideological and moral fashions and prejudices of the day, to ensure the public feels justice is being done.

In the main, however, we the public have a very conservative understanding of right and wrong, of justice and injustice, which has been shaped for us by a corporate media that both creates and responds to those fashions and trends to ensure that the current system continues undisturbed, allowing for the ever-greater accumulation of wealth by an elite.

That is why so many of us are viscerally appalled by looting on the streets by poor people, but reluctantly accept as a fact of life the much larger intermittent looting of our taxes, of our banks, of our homes by the state to bail out a corporate elite that cannot manage the economy it created.

Again, the public’s deference to the system is nurtured to ensure it does not rise up. 

Muscle on the street 

But the legal system doesn’t just have a mind; it has muscle too. Its front-line enforcers, out on the street, get to decide who is a criminal suspect, who is dangerous or subversive, who needs to be deprived of their liberty, and who is going to have violence inflicted upon them. It is the police that initially determine who spends time in a jail cell and who comes before a court. And in some cases, as in George Floyd’s, it is the police that decide who is going to be summarily executed without a trial or a jury.

The state would prefer, of course, that police officers don’t kill unarmed citizens in the street – and even more so that they don’t carry out such acts in full view of witnesses and on camera, as Chauvin did. The state’s objections are not primarily ethical. State bureaucracies are not overly invested in matters beyond the need to maintain external and internal security: defending the borders from outside threats, and ensuring internal legitimacy through the cultivation of citizens’ consent.

But the issue of for whom and for what the state keeps its territory safe has become harder to conceal over time. Nowadays, the state’s political processes and its structures have been almost completely captured by corporations. As a result, the maintenance of internal and external security is less about ensuring an orderly and safe existence for citizens than about creating a stable territorial platform for globalised businesses to plunder local resources, exploit local labour forces and generate greater profits by transforming workers into consumers.

Increasingly, the state has become a hollowed-out vessel through which corporations order their business agendas. States function primarily now to compete with each other in a battle to minimise the obstacles facing global corporations as they seek to maximise their wealth and profits in each state’s territory. The state’s role is to avoid getting in the way of corporations as they extract resources (deregulation), or, when this capitalist model regularly collapses, come to the aid of the corporations with more generous bailouts than rival states.

Murder could prove a spark 

This is the political context for understanding why Chauvin is that very rare example of a white policeman facing a murder charge for killing a black man.

Chauvin’s gratuitous and incendiary murder of Floyd – watched by any American with a screen, and with echoes of so many other recent cases of unjustifiable police brutality against black men, women and children – is the latest spark that risks lighting a conflagration.

In the heartless, amoral calculations of the state, the timing of Chauvin’s very public act of barbarity could not have been worse. There were already rumblings of discontent over federal and state authorities’ handling of the new virus; fears over the catastrophic consequences for the US economy; outrage at the inequity – yet again – of massive bailouts for the biggest corporations but paltry help for ordinary workers; and the social and personal frustrations caused by lockdown.

There is also a growing sense that the political class, Republican and Democrat alike, has grown sclerotic and unresponsive to the plight of ordinary Americans – an impression only underscored by the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

For all these reasons, and many others, people were ready to take to the streets. Floyd’s murder gave them the push.

The need for loyal police 

In these circumstances, Chauvin had to be charged, even if only in the hope of assuaging that anger, of providing a safety valve releasing some of the discontent.

But charging Chauvin is no simple matter either. To ensure its survival, the state needs to monopolise violence and internal security, to maintain its exclusive definition of what constitutes order, and to keep the state as a safe territorial platform for business. The alternative is the erosion of the nation-state’s authority, and the possibility of its demise.

This was the rationale behind Donald Trump’s notorious tweet last week – censored by Twitter for “glorifying violence” – that warned: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Not surprisingly, he invoked the words of a racist Miami police chief, Walter Headley, who threatened violence against the African-American community in the late 1960s. At the time Headley additionally stated: “There’s no communication with them except force.”

Trump may be harking back to an ugly era of what was once called “race relations”, but the sentiment lies at the heart of the state’s mission.

The state needs its police forces loyal and ready to use violence. It cannot afford discontent in the ranks, or that sections of the police corps no longer identify their own interests with the state’s. The state dares not alienate police officers for fear that, when they are needed most, during times of extreme dissent like now, they will not be there – or worse still, that they will have joined the dissenters.

As noted, elements in the police are already demonstrating their disenchantment over Chauvin’s indictment as well as their sense of grievance against the media – bolstered by Donald Trump’s regular verbal assaults on journalists. That sentiment helps to explain the unprecedented attacks by the police on reliably compliant major media outlets covering the protests.

Minnesota police arrest CNN reporter and camera crew as they report from protests in Minneapolis https://t.co/oZdqBti776 pic.twitter.com/3QbeTjD5ed

— CNN (@CNN) May 29, 2020

Ideological twins 

The need to keep the security forces loyal is why the state fosters a sense of separateness between the police and those sections of the populace that it defines as potentially threatening order, thereby uniting more privileged segments of society in fear and hostility.

The state cultivates in the police and sections of the public a sense that police violence is legitimate by definition when it targets individuals or groups it portrays as threatening or subversive. It also encourages the view that the police enjoy impunity a priori in such cases because they alone can decide what constitutes a menace to society (shaped, of course, by popular discourses promoted by the state and the corporate media).

“Threat” is defined as any dissent against the existing order, whether it is a black man answering back and demonstrating “attitude”, or mass protests against the system, including against police violence. In this way, the police and the state are ideological twins. The state approves whatever the police do; while the police repress whatever the state defines as a threat. If it is working effectively, state-police violence becomes a circular, self-rationalising system.

Throwing the protests a bone 

Charging Chauvin risks disrupting that system, creating a fault line between the state and the police, one of the state’s most essential agencies. Which is why the charging of a police officer in these circumstances is such an exceptional event, and has been dictated by the current exceptional outpouring of anger.

Prosecutors are trying to find a delicate compromise between two conflicting demands: between the need to reassure the police that their violence is always legitimate (carried out “in the line of duty”) and the need to stop the popular wave of anger escalating to a point where the existing order might break down. In these circumstances, Chauvin needs to be charged but with the least serious indictment possible – given the irrefutable evidence presented in the video – in the hope that, once the current wave of anger has subsided, he can be found not guilty; or if found guilty, given a lenient sentence; or if sentenced more harshly, pardoned.

Chauvin’s indictment is like throwing a chewed-dry bone to a hungry dog, from the point of view of the state authorities. It is an act of parsimonious appeasement, designed to curb non-state violence or the threat of such violence.

The indictment is not meant to change a police culture – or an establishment one – that presents black men as an inherent threat to order. It will not disrupt regulatory and legal systems that are wedded to the view that (white, conservative) police officers are on the front line defending civilisational values from (black or leftwing) “lawbreakers”. And it will not curtail the state’s commitment to ensuring that the police enjoy impunity over their use of violence.

Change is inevitable 

A healthy state – committed to the social contract – would be capable of finding ways to accommodate discontent before it reaches the level of popular revolt. The scenes playing out across the US are evidence that state institutions, captured by corporate money, are increasingly incapable of responding to demands for change. The hollowed-out state represents not its citizens, who are capable of compromise, but the interests of global forces of capital that care little what takes place on the streets of Minneapolis or New York so long as the corporations can continue to accumulate wealth and power.

Why would we expect these global forces to be sensitive to popular unrest in the US when they have proved entirely insensitive to the growing signals of distress from the planet, as its life-support systems recalibrate for our pillage and plunder in ways we will struggle to survive as a species?

Why would the state not block the path to peaceful change, knowing it excels in the use of violence, when it blocks the path to reform that might curb the corporate assault on the environment?

These captured politicians and officials – on the “left” and right – will continue fanning the flames, stoking the fires, as Barack Obama’s former national security adviser Susan Rice did this week. She denied the evidence of police violence shown on Youtube and the very real distress of an underclass abandoned by the political class when she suggested that the protests were being directed from the Kremlin.

More of Susan Rice speculating on CNN that Russia is fueling US protests: "I would not be surprised to learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form." pic.twitter.com/qLGdZuxBuo

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) May 31, 2020

This kind of bipartisan denial of reality only underscores how quickly we are entering a period of crisis and revolt. From the G8 protests, to the Occupy movement, to Extinction Rebellion, to the schools protests, to the Yellow Vests, to the current fury on US streets, there is evidence all around that the centre is struggling to maintain its hold. The US imperial project is overstretched, the global corporate elite is over-extended, living on credit, resources are depleting, the planet is recalibrating. Something will have to give.

The challenge to the protesters – either those on the streets now or those who follow in their wake – is how to surmount the state’s violence and how to offer a vision of a different, more hopeful future that restores the social contract.

Lessons will be learnt through protest, defiance and disobedience, not in a courtroom where a police officer stands trial as an entire political and economic system is allowed to carry on with its crimes.

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This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/ 

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Violence has erupted in major cities all over America yet again today, and we are being told to brace ourselves for more rioting, looting and civil unrest in the days ahead. The death of George Floyd was a great tragedy, and the vast majority of Americans agree that we do not want to see that sort of police brutality in our nation, and so this should actually be a moment that brings our country together. But instead, America is being torn apart. The protests against police brutality have been hijacked by sinister forces, and they are attempting to channel the outrage over George Floyd’s death in a very violent direction.  As you will see below, law enforcement authorities all over the U.S. are telling us that they have identified a highly organized effort to orchestrate violence, and this appears to be happening on a nationwide basis.

Let’s start by looking at what is happening in New York.  According to the top terrorism official in the entire city, “certain anarchist groups”  were making preparations for “violent interactions with police” before protests in the city even began…

On Sunday night, New York’s top terrorism cop, Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, detailed his office’s analysis and investigation into why the New York City protests have become so violent and damaging at times.

“No. 1, before the protests began,” Miller said, “organizers of certain anarchist groups set out to raise bail money and people who would be responsible to be raising bail money, they set out to recruit medics and medical teams with gear to deploy in anticipation of violent interactions with police.”

And once the protests started, these groups used “a complex network of bicycle scouts”to direct rioters to locations where police officers would not be present…

“And they developed a complex network of bicycle scouts to move ahead of demonstrators in different directions of where police were and where police were not for purposes of being able to direct groups from the larger group to places where they could commit acts of vandalism including the torching of police vehicles and Molotov cocktails where they thought officers would not be.”

These are not just mindless angry mobs.  They are being directed with a purpose, and that is very alarming.

In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has publicly acknowledged that there has been “an organized effort” to turn the protests over George Floyd’s death “into something violent” in her city…

Speaking at an afternoon news conference today with other officials, Lightfoot didn’t say whether the groups are out-of-state left-wing anti-fascist organizations generally known as Antifa, right-wing agitators, local street gangs or something else. She said she’s asked three federal agencies—the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms & Explosives and the U.S. Attorney’s office—for help, with a focus on AFT’s bomb and arson unit.

“There is no doubt. This was an organized effort last night,” she said. “There were clearly efforts to subvert the peaceful process and make it into something violent.”

Lightfoot did not really elaborate on why she believes there has been “an organized effort”, but officials in other cities have been willing to give the public more specifics.

For example, law enforcement authorities in Minnesota have discovered “several caches of flammable materials” that were obviously intended to be used for rioting…

Earlier Sunday, state officials said several caches of flammable materials were found both in neighborhoods where there have already been fires and “in cars we’ve stopped as recently as this morning,” said John Harrington, state public safety commissioner. Some of the caches look like they may have been planted days ago and some only in the last 24 hours or so, he said.

Police are also finding stolen vehicles with plates removed that are being used to transport the flammable materials. Looted goods and weapons also have been found in the stolen cars, he said.

And in several other cities around the nation, law enforcement authorities have found bricks staged at or near protest sites.

On Sunday, police in Kansas City announced that they had found “stashes of bricks and rocks in & around the Plaza and Westport to be used during a riot”…

Kansas City police officers found bricks and rocks staged near protest sites around the city, stoking concerns that individuals or groups had pre-planned looting and destruction that hit the city over the weekend, the department said Sunday.

“We have learned of & discovered stashes of bricks and rocks in & around the Plaza and Westport to be used during a riot,” the department said in a tweet on Sunday.

And in Baltimore, law enforcement officials were racing to dismantle “mounds of bricks and bottles” that had been staged in downtown Baltimore…

According to sources, mounds of bricks and bottles have been found in Downtown Baltimore.

Baltimore Police confirmed they are working with law enforcement partners to sweep the area.

There are several demonstrations planned for Monday evening. Sources told Fox 45 officers are being briefed on the situation during roll call.

In New York, a “cache of bricks” just happened to be sitting directly in the path of rioters on Sunday evening…

Similarly, in New York City, video captured the moment rioters in Manhattan chanced upon a cache of bricks between St. Marks Place and Seventh Street in the East Village on Sunday evening, though no construction site appeared to be nearby.

Even down in Texas, “a large pile of bricks” was stacked up in front of the courthouse in Dallas and huge stacks of bricks were pre-staged right along a path that protesters would be taking in Frisco.

I don’t know about you, but I have a very hard time believing that all of this is just a giant coincidence.

The fact that huge piles of pre-staged bricks are suddenly showing up at protest locations all over America indicates a level of planning and coordination at a very high level.

Obviously we are dealing with something that is far more complex than just a few thousand angry people letting off some steam.

With the U.S. economy in deep disarray and with a presidential election coming up in November, anger and frustration are likely to remain at very high levels in the U.S. throughout the summer, and that will give those that are organizing these efforts more opportunities to promote violence.

Needless to say, the lawlessness that we are witnessing in the streets of our major cities is greatly alarming millions of ordinary Americans, and gun sales are going through the roof…

Gun sales surged in May as shops reported an uptick in interest and demand as the coronavirus pandemic continued and amid national protests after the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd.

“Almost, you couldn’t even keep up with it – that’s how crazy it was,” said Joe Hawk, owner of Guns & Roses in New Jersey. “After Memorial Day, it spiked again – it just went crazy again.”

Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting, a private research firm, estimated that there were more than 1.7 million gun sales in May – an 80% jump from May 2019.

The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis is disappearing, and a lot of people believe that a lot more civil unrest is ahead.

Our nation is more deeply divided than it has ever been in my entire lifetime, and that is not likely to change any time soon.

So I would very much encourage you to do whatever you need to do to get yourself and your family prepared for what is coming, because America appears to be on the precipice of complete and utter chaos.

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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 from TMIN

The Lancet has issued a major disclaimer regarding a study which prompted the World Health Organization to halt global trials of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), an anti-Malaria drug currently being used around the world to treat COVID-19.

As we noted last week, major data discrepancies have called the entire study into question – though the lead author says it does not change the study’s findings that patients who received HCQ died at higher rates and experienced more cardiac complications than without.

Until the data has been audited, The Lancet issued the following “expression of concern” regarding the study.

“Important scientific questions have been raised about data reported in the paper by Mandeep Mehra et al,”reads the “expression of concern” from The Lancet.

“Although an independent audit of the provenance and validity of the data has been commissioned by the authors not affiliated with Surgisphere and is ongoing, with results expected very shortly, we are issuing an Expression of Concern to alert readers to the fact that serious scientific questions have been brought to our attention. We will update this notice as soon as we have further information.”

-The Lancet

Of course, this is yet more evidence of the manufactured disinformation surrounding HCQ that Richard Moss, MD, (via AmericanThinker.com)  exposes below…

I took hydroxychloroquine for two years.  A long time ago as a visiting cancer surgeon in Asia, in Thailand, Nepal, India, and Bangladesh.  From 1987 to 1990.  Malaria is rife there.  I took it for prophylaxis, 400 milligrams once a week for two years.  Never had any trouble.  It was inexpensive and effective.

I started it two weeks before and was supposed to continue it through my stay and four weeks after returning.  But I stopped it after two years.  I was worried about potential side effects of which there are many, as with all drugs right down to Tylenol and aspirin.  These, however, are rare.  At a certain point, I was prepared to take my chances with mosquitoes and plasmodium, and so I stopped.

Chloroquine, the precursor of HCQ, was invented by Bayer in 1934.  Hydroxychloroquine was developed during World War II as a safer, synthetic alternative and approved for medical use in the U.S. in 1955.

The World Health Organization considers it an essential medicine, among the safest and most effective medicines, a staple of any healthcare system.  In 2017, US doctors prescribed it 5 million times, the 128th most commonly prescribed drug in the country.  There have been hundreds of millions of prescriptions worldwide since its inception.  It is one of the cheapest and best drugs in the world and has saved millions of lives.  Doctors also prescribe it for Lupus and Rheumatoid arthritis patients who may consume it for their lifetimes with few or no ill effects.

Then something happened to this wonder drug. 

From savior of the multitudes, redeemer and benefactor of hundreds of millions, it transformed into something else: a purveyor of doom, despair, and unspeakable carnage.

It began when President Trump discussed it as a possible treatment for COVID-19 on March 19, 2020.  The gates of hell burst forth on May 18 when Trump casually announced that he was taking it, prescribed by his physician. 

Attacks on Trump and this otherwise harmless little molecule poured in.  The heretofore respected, commonly used, and highly effective medicinal became a major threat to life, a nefarious and wicked chemical that could alter critical heart rhythms, resulting in sudden cataclysmic death for unsuspecting innocents.  Trump, more than irresponsible, was evil incarnate for daring to even mention it.  While at it, the salivating media trotted out the canard about Trump’s nonrecommendation for injecting Clorox and Lysol or drinking fish-tank cleaner to combat COVID.  It was Charlottesville all over again. 

Before a nation of non-cardiologists, the media agonized over, of all things, the prolongation of the now infamous “QT interval,” and the risk of sudden cardiac death.  The FDA and NIH piled on, piously demanding randomized, controlled, double-blind studies before physicians prescribed HCQ.  No one mentioned that the risk of cardiac arrest was far higher from watching the Superbowl. Nor did the media declare that HCQ and chloroquine have been used throughout the world for half a century, making them among the most widely prescribed drugs in history with not a single reported case of “arrhythmic death” according to the sainted WHO and the American College of Cardiology.  Or that physicians in the field, on the frontlines, so to speak, based on empirical evidence, have found benefit in treating patients with a variety of agents including HCQ, Zinc, Azithromycin, Quercetin, Elderberry supplements, Vitamins D and C with few if any complications.  Or that while such regimens may not cure, they may help and carry little or no risk.

And so, the world was aflame once again with a nonstory driven by the COVID media.  The HCQ divide within the nation is only a continuation of innumerable divides that have surfaced since the pandemic began — and before.  One will know the politics of an individual based on his position on any number of pandemic issues: lockdowns, sheltering in place, face masks, social distancing, “elective surgery,” and “essential businesses.”  The closing of schools and colleges.  Blue states and Red states.  Governor Cuomo or Governor DeSantis.  Nationwide injunctions or federalism.  The WHO and Red China.  Or, pre-pandemic, Brexit, open borders, DACA, and amnesty.  CBD oil, turmeric, and legalizing marijuana.  Russia Collusion, Trump’s taxes, the 25th amendment, Stormy Daniels, the Ukraine non-scandal, and impeachment. Or Obamagate. And now HCQ.

HCQ is only another bellwether.  It represents the latest nonevent in a long string of fabricated media nonscandals.  If a nation can be divided over HCQ it can be divided over anything.  It shows neatly, as many of the other non-issues did, whether one embraces the U.S., our history, culture, and constitutional system, or rejects it.  Whether one believes in Americanism or despises it.  It is part of the ongoing civil war, thus far cold, but who knows?  The passions today are no less jarring than they were in 1860.  One would have thought that a man taking a medicine prescribed by his physician, even a President, would be a private matter.  But no.  Not today.

We swim in an ocean of manufactured disinformation created by a radical COVID media, our fifth column.  They inflame the nation one way or another based on political whims.  The propaganda arm of the Left, they seek victory at all costs including dismantling the economy, culture, and our governing system.  Is there a curative for the COVID media and their Democrat allies who would destroy a nation to destroy Trump?  He is all that stands between us and them.  Is there an antiviral for this, the communist virus that has infected the nation, metastasized throughout its corpus, and now threatens the republic?

Dr. Moss is a practicing Ear Nose and Throat Surgeon, author, and columnist, residing in Jasper, IN.  He has written A Surgeon’s Odyssey and Matilda’s Triumph available on amazon.com.  Find more of his essays at richardmossmd.com. 

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People around the globe have been horrified by the video images of 46-year-old African American George Floyd being executed by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

Darnella Frazier, a 17-year-old African American woman, captured the horrendous act on her cellphone later posting the footage in social media which soon went viral.

Immediately mass demonstrations and rebellions erupted throughout the United States where hundreds of thousands of African Americans and their allies are taking to the streets in righteous indignation demanding the immediate halt to police brutality and all forms of racist violence.

These protest actions both nonviolent and violent are prompting an international outpouring of condemnatory messages decrying the systematic state-sanctioned repression which is a hallmark of U.S. policy. In fact the militaristic foreign policy of Washington and Wall Street is reflected domestically in the growth of the criminal justice system which disproportionately targets, arrests, prosecutes and imprisons African Americans and other oppressed communities of color.

The wars of aggression waged against the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Palestine, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Venezuela, Cuba, etc. are motivated in part by a contrived sense of superiority and manifest destiny as it relates to the oppressed nations which continue to be exploited by the imperatives of imperialism.

As a direct result of U.S. military operations and the implementation of draconian sanctions, the number of refugees and internally displace persons has risen to a level not witnessed since the conclusion of World War II. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic crisis has been thrust upon the entire capitalist world rendering tens of millions to joblessness and financial ruin.

Consequently, many African Americans and progressive forces are welcoming the mass demonstrations, critical statements, slogans, banners and artistic representations against U.S. racist violence which are spreading rapidly throughout the world. These popular manifestations are complimented by institutional and editorial support for those victimized by the racist system.

On May 31, thousands rallied and marched in central London opposing the racist violence perpetuated by the U.S. government. Demonstrators gathered at Trafalger Square and later moving to the American embassy chanting “No Justice, No Peace” and “How Many More?”

The gathering was a clear violation and challenge to the orders issued by the British government in response to the impact of COVID-19. The police surrounded the U.S. embassy although they did not intervene to halt the demonstration.

Another protest was held in Copenhagen, Denmark where people gathered at the U.S. embassy saying “Stop Killing Black People.” Berlin, Germany was the scene of a demonstration on May 30 where protesters rallied outside the U.S. embassy and later marched through the Kruzberg area of the city. Activists advanced slogans such as “Silence is Violence,” “Hold Cops Accountable,” and “Who Do You Call When Police Murder?”

Mass demonstrations opposing United States racist killings

Editorially, European newspapers are publishing columns condemning racist violence carried out by the police in the U.S. The Associated Press reported that one of the leading media outlets on the continent wrote a scathing criticism of domestic policy emanating from Washington emphasizing:

“Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper on Sunday (May 31) carried the sensational headline ‘This killer-cop set America ablaze’ with an arrow pointing to a photo of now-fired police officer Derek Chauvin, who has been charged with third-degree murder in Floyd’s death, with his knee on Floyd’s neck. The newspaper’s story reported ‘scenes like out of a civil war.’”

This same above-mentioned article went on to note that:

“In Italy, the Corriere della Sera newspaper’s senior U.S. correspondent Massimo Gaggi wrote that the reaction to Floyd’s killing was ‘different’ than previous cases of black Americans killed by police and the ensuring violence. ‘There are exasperated black movements that no longer preach nonviolent resistance….”

Governmental and Institutional Condemnation of U.S. Domestic Policy

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been a major focus of animus by the Trump administration. The anti-China rhetoric is not limited to the Republican Party and its leader. The Democrats are also vying with their political competitor to see which grouping can heap more scorn on Beijing.

Nonetheless, China has a long history of solidarity with the African American people dating back at least to the 1960s when the Communist Party under the Chairmanship of Mao Zedong issued several statements of support. Black revolutionaries fleeing from persecution in the U.S. such as Robert F. Williams spent several years in China where he was awarded the status of a representative of the African American people. (See this)

China Leader Chairman Mao with African American Freedom Fighter Robert F. Williams

A recent editorial in the Global Times from June 2 says of the current situation in the U.S.:

“People see the U.S. falling into disgrace. As the novel coronavirus sweeps across the world, the U.S. ranks No.1 in terms of confirmed cases and deaths. As anti-racist protests surge, the government and Congress should have taken quick action to comfort their people, but have instead exacerbated confrontation and led to the spread of the chaos. What is more irritating is that U.S. political elites have played hypocrisy and barbarism. The hooligan nature of Washington makes it a complete nuisance…. The U.S. remains the strongest power in the world, but its strength is not enough to support its ambition of reshaping the global order. The country has too many urgent domestic issues. U.S. failure in containing the COVID-19 epidemic has exposed severe deficiencies in the country’s governance. The ongoing unrest exposes the deep-rooted problem of inequality and a lack of justice, reflecting the anger of the people at the bottom and the destruction when such anger is vented in the internet era.”

The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has issued an appeal calling for calm and restraint in the U.S. On May 28, which we cited in a previous report, the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) under Chairwoman Michelle Bachelet criticized the police execution of George Floyd as well as other victims of racist violence.

In the June 1 press release from the Secretary General’s office it stresses:

“The killing of Mr. Floyd has rocked Minneapolis and other cities across the country, with mostly peaceful daytime demonstrations turning violent as night fell, with many curfews being imposed, and largely ignored. Throughout the weekend, reports reverberated of shootings, lootings and vandalism in a host of American cities, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Meanwhile, riot police fired tear gas and pepper bullets to try to disperse crowds and according to news reports, at least 4,400 people have been arrested. By some accounts, the country is experiencing the most widespread racial turbulence and civil unrest since civil rights icon, Dr. Martin Luther King, was assassinated in 1968.”

In the Republic of Zimbabwe in Southern Africa the government’s foreign and information ministries have refuted allegations made by the National Security Advisor of the U.S. that Harare is working in conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran and China in coordinating anti-racist demonstrations now rocking the social stability of the world’s leading imperialist state.

A June 2 editorial on the unrest in the U.S. taken from the state-run Herald newspaper in Zimbabwe articulates that:

“[W]e know the thugs in our parts of the world will have no cause at all but to effect regime change on behalf of the U.S. Doesn’t what goes around come around? And, yet at this particular moment in the U.S., the protesters against the government’s heavy-handedness on black people is justified. The U.S. must move out of the racial cocoon and get real. It must treat its citizens, black or white, equally before preaching human rights to other nations. Racial discrimination has pricked the U.S. society on its most tender flesh. The pain is all over.”

International Solidarity as an Important Component in the Liberation Struggle

Historically when African Americans and their allies rose up against injustice, the world inevitably took notice. The events since May 25 when Floyd was brutally murdered in the streets of Minneapolis illustrate that the people around the world can be galvanized to support the centuries-long struggle to eradicate institutional racism and national oppression.

The most effective means of maximizing the political impact of international support is the self-organization of the oppressed themselves. This is the central task moving forward in the months and years to come. Without revolutionary organization, the racist capitalist system can undermine, appropriate and misdirect the long term goals of the oppressed.

If the methods of subverting the movement through negative propaganda and psychological warfare fail at being effective, the iron might of the racist state can and will be exercised. The world has witnessed the teargassing and pepper spraying of peaceful demonstrators standing outside the White House on June 1. Curfews have been imposed in the major cities throughout the U.S. amid the deployment of thousands of National Guard troops and Federal Police. Several people have been killed without provocation in the cities of the U.S. during demonstrations since late May and early June.

The racist capitalist system in the U.S. cannot be reformed. In order to eliminate inequality and state repression there must be a fundamental transformation of society where discrimination and exploitation are outlawed and those perpetuating such practices will be prohibited by the organized will of the people.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated

A new round of intense fighting has broken out between the Libyan National Army (LNA) and Turkish-backed forces near Tripoli.

During the past few days, fighters from the Government of National Accord (GNA) and Syrian militants supported by the Turkish military carried out several attacks on Tripoli’s Airport attempting to capture it from the LNA. At one point, Turkish-led forces even entered the territory of the airport but failed to secure their gains and were forced to retreat. The key facility south of Tripoli remained in the hands of LNA troops. As a result of the clashes, the GNA captured a T-72 battle tank, destroyed at least 2 LNA vehicles and lost about a dozen fighters.

Seeking to compensate this military setback, pro-Turkish sources published photos of what they described as a list of Russian mercenaries written in Russian captured south of Tripoli. However, the list appeared to be only Arab names roughly translated into Russian.

Pro-LNA sources say that the GNA and its backers are pushing the propaganda about the supposedly major involvement of Russian military contractors in the conflict to draw the audience’s attention from the fact that Turkey deployed about 10,000 Syrian militants to support the GNA. Recently, Turkey even started supplying its Syrian proxies and GNA fighters with M60 battle tanks.

In response to these attacks, the LNA Air Force intensified airstrikes on positions of Turkish-backed forces near Gharyan, Al-Aziziyah, Ayn Zarah and Misrata. Pro-LNA sources also claimed that at least 3 Turkish-supplied unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down over Bani Waled and another near Tripoli Airport.

At the same time, LNA units captured from Turkish-backed forces the village of Al-Asaba south of Gharyan. According to reports, the LNA is planning to develop the advance in the direction of Kikla in order to secure a link with its forces deployed southwest of Tripoli. Another priority target is Gharyan itself. If the LNA is able to retake it from the GNA, it will be able to stabilize the frontline after the recent setbacks in the battle against Turkish-backed forces and relaunch the advance on Tripoli. On the other hand, if the GNA keeps Gharyan in its hands, it will be able to continue pressuring LNA units at the Tripoli Airport and expand a buffer zone around the city of Tripoli.

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Washington’s failure to overthrow communism in Cuba has been a source of extreme irritation for successive American leaders. The inability of the world’s strongest country to bend Cuba to its will has been nothing if not remarkable.

Even so, a closer examination of the United States-Cuba rivalry reveals some glaring reasons why the superpower was unable to destroy the revolution. One must return to the really critical period of the late 1950s and early 1960s. American imperial planners, and other supporters of the Monroe Doctrine of US domination over the Western hemisphere, may lay the blame squarely at the door of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

It was General Eisenhower who held the post of US president for eight years, until January 1961. During this time Fidel Castro‘s rebels successfully fought their guerrilla war against the dictator that Eisenhower was propping up, Fulgencio Batista. Castro came seamlessly to power on New Year’s Day 1959, and then managed to establish his government’s control in Cuba.

Eisenhower himself had recent history of intervening in Latin America. During the summer of 1954, he sanctioned the ousting of the democratically elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz. In doing so, Guatemala was sent careering into a state of misery which it has yet to emerge from. The previous year Eisenhower, with some British cajoling, had also toppled a nationalist government in oil rich Iran, with the autocratic Shah installed.

From the late 1950s the Eisenhower administration, now in its waning years, would fortunately be unable to repeat such a move in Cuba. Richard Gott, the English author and scholar of Cuban history, wrote that

“the Eisenhower government, as much from inertia as from conservatism or anti-communism, had contently gone on supporting Batista, although with a growing lack of conviction. While continuing to supply weapons, it never provided enough to allow Batista a military victory”. (1)

Castro’s influence in Cuba began to increase gradually from early 1957 as his men, from their Sierra Maestra base in south-eastern Cuba, staged skilful coordinated assaults against Batista’s forces. Eisenhower, meanwhile, paid little attention to what was occurring in Cuba at this point. Despite its close proximity on the map, Eisenhower had never visited the Caribbean island before.

Propaganda poster in Havana, 2012 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Cuba was taken for granted as a US possession, since the Americans replaced Spanish hegemony there in 1898. American landholders owned vast tracts of the country at the expense of landless Cuban peasants. By 1958, almost 75% of Cuba’s agricultural terrain was concentrated in the hands of a minority, with the best land belonging to US monopolies. (2)

On 14 March 1958, the Eisenhower administration suspended weapons sales to Batista, ostensibly because the latter had been killing his own people with US equipment. Just prior to the arms embargo, Batista’s units received a fresh supply of US weapons anyway (3). Yet Eisenhower was, in the short-term, seeking to replace the increasingly unpopular Batista with someone more amenable.

Source: War History Online

On 28 June 1958 Batista attacked Castro’s guerrilla stronghold, the Sierra Maestra mountains, with 12,000 soldiers, many of whom were carrying American-made arms. Batista’s forces for this fateful incursion, including 7,000 poorly trained conscripts, still outnumbered the rebels dozens of times over; but after a six week offensive in which the Batista regime also enjoyed complete air superiority, the attack failed to achieve its objectives. Castro was joyous. He told foreign journalists that his domain of operations was an impenetrable fortress, “Every entrance to the Sierra Maestra is like the pass at Thermopylae”.

In repelling this attack, the guerrillas demonstrated their prowess in warfare. The CIA’s “more progressive elements”, as Gott recounted, continued to look “favourably on Castro” well into 1958 (4). The New York Times had likewise been sympathetic to Castro’s cause, before changing its tune later.

By early autumn 1958, it was becoming obvious that the rebels were winning the war. An unknown quantity, patently nationalist in nature, was challenging American supremacy 90 miles from the US mainland. Were Batista ousted, and the guerrillas victorious, this would represent a clear defeat for American foreign policy. Had Batista been compelled by the US government to leave Cuba, and someone else put in his place, it might have taken some of the wind out of the rebels’ sails; whose focus was concentrated entirely on the despot and his underlings.

Towards the latter stages of 1958, a force of a few thousand US marines could have been dispatched to Cuba, with the aim of thwarting the guerrillas and “restoring order”. Hindsight makes everything easier but the marines’ presence would have boosted Batista’s flagging soldiers, while dealing a psychological blow to the rebels. Eisenhower was surely aware that such a move would provoke further negative responses in Latin America.

During May 1958 vice-president Richard Nixon, while touring the Western hemisphere, had received hostile reactions from protesters. This was mainly due to ongoing US support for brutal Latin American dictators, such as Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay) and Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic). Nevertheless Cuba was a unique case with Washington. It had been a virtual US colony for six decades. There were four previous American military interventions in Cuba by the marines in the early 20th century, so as to reinforce weak US-friendly governments and protect elite concerns. The prevalence of American troops in Cuba would have had the usual demoralising effect on its people.

In late August 1958 the guerrillas were implementing their decisive moves, with not an American combatant in sight. By November 1958, the US State Department and the CIA were predicting Castro’s victory “unless a mediated solution could be found” (5). On 9 December 1958 a clandestine envoy dispatched by Eisenhower, William D. Pawley, went to see Batista. Pawley urged him to accept exile in Daytona Beach, Florida. The offer was refused.

On 23 December 1958, CIA director Allen Dulles informed Eisenhower that,

“Communists and other extreme radicals appear to have penetrated the Castro movement. If Castro takes over, they will probably participate in the government” (6).

Unsettled by this news, Eisenhower expressed regret having not been told earlier. At this late date, the “Great General” placed hopes on some “third force” emerging to somehow supersede Castro.

Instead, on 1 January 1959 the revolution swiftly came to power amid much fanfare. The next day, in Santiago de Cuba in the country’s south-east, Castro gave his first speech to the Cuban public and said,

“This time it will not be like 1898, when the North Americans came and made themselves masters of our country”. (7)

Statements likes this should have left Eisenhower and Nixon no doubt as to which path Cuba would now take. On 3 March 1959, Castro nationalised the Cuban Telephone Company owned by the US conglomerate, ITT (International Telephone & Telegraph); and he also lowered the rates to affordable standards, impacting on US profits. American corporations had dominated Cuba’s telephone and electric services. By 1956 American businesses controlled 90% of these industries in Cuba, as a US Department of Commerce report highlighted. (8)

On 7 March 1959 Castro asked that Washington hand over Guantanamo Bay, a request which was quickly rejected. In the early summer of 1959, the Cuban government began instituting a land reform act, prompting an official note of protest from the US capital. Gott noted how,

“The law struck at foreign landowners, of whom the majority were American” (9).

In June 1959 Eisenhower and the NSC, convening again, decided unequivocally that Castro would have to go.

As any government assumes control by way of revolution or coup d’etat, a crucially important Consolidation Phase ensues. Throughout 1959 Castro’s position was very vulnerable. He had still to establish his authority in Cuba, and there was no financial or military support yet forthcoming from the USSR. In their defence of Cuba in 1959, the revolutionary leaders could rely only on the guerrilla soldiers who secured them power. Batista’s remaining forces were either fleeing the island in disarray, or being tracked down by the victorious rebels.

The foundation of a Cuban army did not begin until mid-October 1959, to be commanded by Raul Castro, and called the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. It would number 40,000 troops by early 1961. (10)

President Eisenhower, with CIA input, started planning an illegal invasion of Cuba more than a year after Castro had taken power, in the spring of 1960. By then the sands of time were already moving fast against the US government. After further delays it would be another year before the attack occurred, three months following Eisenhower’s departure from office.

In April 1961 it was too late for a US-run invasion of Cuba to succeed, certainly one involving Cuban exile soldiers. Even with strong American air cover, it would be difficult indeed for 1,500 exiles to defeat a Cuban army numbering at least 40,000 men – under the highly motivated leadership of the new defence minister, Raul Castro. Three days after the attack’s failure, Eisenhower ungraciously grilled the new president John F. Kennedy in a meeting at Camp David. Kennedy felt that his predecessor had handed him a “burning issue” that should have been resolved before 1961. (11)

In early August and late September 1961, the Soviet Union signed two arms assistance agreements with Cuba, as a military aid program was adopted between Moscow and Havana. Noam Chomsky, the American historian and analyst, outlined that in February 1962 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a plan “to lure or provoke” Cuba’s government “into an overt hostile reaction against the United States”. The Joint Chiefs, with General Curtis LeMay and General Thomas Power straining at the leash, would then launch a frontal attack to “destroy Castro with speed, force and determination”. (12)

It can be acknowledged that Generals LeMay and Power, close colleagues for many years, were also particularly dangerous men. They were described by officers under them as “not stable” mentally which tells its own story (13). Both LeMay and Power pushed for an invasion of Cuba. More broadly in the Cold War they advocated massive nuclear strikes on the Soviet Union, breaching official protocol more than once to pursue their own hawkish strategies.

Evolving US plans to attack Cuba were becoming increasingly reckless. The Attorney General Robert Kennedy warned that a large-scale invasion of Cuba, in the early 1960s, would “kill an awful lot of people” but his main concern was “we’re going to take an awful lot of heat on it” (14). By 1962, US military planners were outlining a desire not to “directly involve the Soviet Union” (15). This was no longer possible, as the Cuban Missile Crisis later that year reveals.

At the revolution’s outset the Kremlin initially showed little interest in Cuba, and knew nothing of Castro’s political leanings. Alexander Alexeyev, the first Soviet diplomat to visit Cuba, arrived in October 1959. Soviet-Cuban economic ties did not gain a head of steam until mid-February 1960, when a commercial agreement was signed. Diplomatic relations were formally established between Cuba and the USSR on 8 May 1960, one year and four months into the revolution.

Lieutenant-Colonel Donald J. Goodspeed, an experienced Canadian military historian who analysed revolutions and coup d’etats, wrote that “what the rebels most need is time” after taking power when they are at their “period of greatest weakness”. (16)

Castro’s new government was granted ample time by Eisenhower. After Castro’s takeover of the Cuban Telephone Company at the expense of US-owned ITT, Eisenhower chaired a National Security Council (NSC) meeting on 26 March 1959, in part to discuss what was taking place in Cuba. Eisenhower asked openly whether the Organisation of American States (OAS) could act against Castro (17). The president was informed that scenario was impossible, as the OAS could not intervene militarily in other countries, and Cuba had at that point not been suspended from the organisation.

In late March 1959, Eisenhower decided upon neither a coup d’etat nor an invasion of Cuba. A coup would most likely have failed. Castro had the loyalty of his advisers and the guerrilla forces, not to mention the Cuban people. An invasion was, once more, the sole means of toppling the revolution.

Lieutenant-Colonel Goodspeed wrote that in order to oust a foreign administration, particularly a centralised one like Castro’s,

“the important members of the existing government must be neutralised so that their writ can no longer run throughout the nation… In even the oldest kingdom or the most legalistic republic the business of governing is actually done, not by tradition or precedent, but by individuals. When these men are disposed of, their control also vanishes”. (18)

From a US imperial standpoint, for Eisenhower to eliminate Castro’s control he would have to remove the Cuban leader; along with other key members of the revolution, like Raul Castro, Che Guevara and Manuel Pineiro. Goodspeed recognised that with an early intervention,

“the swifter the stroke the greater the surprise. Government forces have no time to rally, no time even to think of what would be the best line of resistance”. (19)

As the months slipped by in 1959, Castro’s government was sinking its first tentative roots into Cuba’s fertile soil. Foreign recognition was inevitably sought. In June 1959, Guevara was sent on distant ventures to garner support, visiting such countries as Pakistan, India, Yugoslavia and Egypt. When in Cairo, Guevara made contact with the Soviet embassy there.

In the spring of 1959, the American government agreed to acts of “sabotage” against Cuba, in reality terrorism. Beginning in May 1959, the CIA was also supplying anti-communist guerrillas inside Cuba with weaponry. The first attacks consisted of incendiary and bombing raids by Cuban exile pilots, departing from Miami in US airplanes. This terrorism was doomed to failure from the beginning. The real centres of power, Castro’s military and political apparatus, went untouched. This would be the case again and again. It is quite amazing that Eisenhower, a former World War II Supreme Commander, did not apparently discern this. The terrorist acts against Cuba increased in frequency under Kennedy from late 1961.

The bombing was directed at Cuban industrial and agricultural centres, along with targeting its urban areas. The attacks did not affect Castro’s popularity, as was erroneously expected. It led to a siege mentality and, if anything, strengthened the government’s position further. The arming of anti-communists in Cuba was bound not to prevail either. These subversive elements lacked the backing of Cuba’s people, and they did not have the numbers to defeat the growing military forces harnessed by the Castro brothers. 

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

Notes

1 Richard Gott, Cuba: A new history (Yale University Press, 20 Aug. 2004), p. 164

2 Cuba Platform, “Cuban Land Reform”, https://cubaplatform.org/land-reform

3 Rex A. Hudson, Cuba: A Country Study (Department of the Army; 4th ed edition, 1 January 2003), p. 288

4 Gott, Cuba: A new history, p. 164

5 Thomas M. Leonard, Fidel Castro: A biography (Greenwood, 30 Jun. 2004), p. 44

6 Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, Foreign Relations, 1958-1960, Volume VI, p. 302

7 Nigel D. White, The Cuban Embargo under International Law (Routledge; 1 edition, 3 Nov. 2014), p. 68

8 Timothy M. Gill, The Future of U.S. Empire in the Americas: The Trump Administration and Beyond (Routledge; 1 edition, 24 Mar. 2020)

9 Gott, Cuba: A new history, p. 171

10 Hudson, Cuba: A Country Study, p. 288

11 Nestor T. Carbonell, Why Cuba Matters: New Threats in America’s Backyard (Archway Publishing, 27 May 2020)

12 Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (Penguin, 1 January 2004), p. 83

13 Richard Rhodes, “The General and World War III”, The New Yorker, 12 June 1995

14 Noam Chomsky, Who Rules The World? (Metropolitan Books, Penguin Books Ltd, Hamish Hamilton, 5 May 2016), p. 105

15 Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, p. 83

16 Donald J. Goodspeed, The Conspirators (Macmillan, 1 Jan. 1962), pp. 231-232

17 Office Of The Historian, Memorandum of Discussion at the 400th Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, 26 March 1959

18 Goodspeed, The Conspirators, p. 225

19 Goodspeed, The Conspirators, p. 228

Featured image: Raúl Castro, left, with has his arm around second-in-command, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, in Cuba. In their Sierra de Cristal Mountain stronghold south of Havana, in 1958 during the Cuban Revolution. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

It is the anxiety-inducing nightmare for the studious: A dream where you find yourself in an exam hall, which might, on ordinary days, be a gym or some other facility.  It is repurposed for that most cruel of blood sports: sorting out the learned from the dolts, the prize winners from the dunces.  The stern invigilators gaze as you like vermin to liquidate.  You are seated on a firm stool, rarely comfortable. You have been checked to see if you have any cheating accoutrements.  Permitted items: scrap paper, a pencil, an eraser.   

Before you, apart from the often blue-rinsed wonders wishing to smother you, is the “exam paper”.  It has a “cover sheet”.  The most evident rule, one that does not apply to reading many, say, Australian newspapers, is to not start at the back and work your way to the front. (The back-to-front principle is sound on some level, as Australian sports writing can, in many ways, be more catchy and sprightly than the political dross at the front.)  Not so with your conventional exam papers.  The front sets tone, temper and tempo.

For those sitting exams now, in whatever fanciful mode they are delivered in, the same problems arise.  But another complication has been added: the enormous, mind numbing distraction of the Internet.  Infinite choice can have a negating effect; such an endless buffet destroys a capacity to consume nourishingly. According to sociologist Todd Gitlin, “If you have infinite choice, people are reduced to passivity.”

From this garden variety of choice sprung the social media netizen, the hyper-networked operator of several tasks, meaning that none are done proficiently.  Such a figure is incapable of the deep read.  Such an action becomes one of glancing, skimming, and gazing. Profundity is not consumed and is, for the most part, shunned.  Maryanne Wolf looks at this in the context of the skim reader, saturated with the distraction.  Babies and toddlers are “pacified” by the iPad; school children get stories from smartphones; boys play games instead of reading; parents read their Kindles and wade through newsfeeds and emails.  “Unbeknownst to most of us, an invisible, game-changing transformation links everyone in this picture: the neuronal circuit that underlines the brain’s ability to read is subtly, rapidly changing – a change with implications for everyone from the pre-reading toddler to the expert adult.”

The digital medium is not so much the message as an obfuscation of it.  “Studies on ages from elementary school students to young adults,” noted Wolf in 2018, “indicate that the slower, more time-demanding processes involved in comprehension and attention to details are adversely affected when reading the same content on digital mediums.”

The modern instructor (forget the term pedagogue, which is now being done to death by modern management, class room theories and political correctness), is left with a bewildering array of efforts that repudiate the self-evident front page, the instruction manual, the damnably obvious.  The truth is not out there so much as somewhere, lurking on some digital platform.  One student email suggests that she “heard from somewhere” (vagueness is golden in gossip) that she only had to answer one question from each section in her exam.  Never mind that the front cover of the set paper states, with punchy clarity, that all questions have to be answered, and not doing so will sink the grade.

To answer an exam, the person sitting it will deploy various strategies, except the obvious one.  The obvious one is described in simple terms in a resource book for teachers.  The section titled “Typical exam mistakes and how to avoid them” states the following: “The first most common mistake in exams is not reading the exam or task instructions properly.”  To think we know what to do is not the same as actually understanding what is expected. “Read everything carefully and read the instructions twice or three times to make sure you understand what you have to do.”  Not bad advice.

When answering exams, there will be the chancing opportunist, the ambitious cheater, the diviner.  In that mix can be added the social media mind, addled by availability, rumour and chat room feeds.  While not exactly on point, this could be regarded as a symptom of “secondary orality”, that manifestation of the post-literature world described by Caleb Crain with such force in 2007. In such a culture, disagreeable ideas are put aside as unworkable and undesirable; we “fall back on hunches”, take refuge in our instincts.  This is not helped by learning platforms which are larded with so much screen information so as to infantilize the user. 

An interesting study on how such platforms as Brightspace or Canvas actually serve to impair student learning could be gathered from the fine-boned resistance against downloading certain links, especially those that lead to the intimidating sight of multiple pages. Unless the image is instant and obvious, dashingly glitzy and the soul of brevity, going to a link that states “course guide”, where all the material is available, is hard going indeed.  Preference is given on finding spread material through “tabs” and “modules”, much of it repetitive.  Let the user stroll through a series of clicks, and all will be well.   

Wolf suggests that we need a new literacy for the digital age, in line with a deeper understanding about a very battered neutral circuitry. But what we are getting is an illiteracy profound and pronounced.  And reading the front page of an exam paper was never exactly the sort of thing that was done by many in any case.

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

Featured image is by BAZA Productions, courtesy of ShutterStock.

“Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has recently extended his parliamentary shutdown, effectively shielding himself from criticism as he goes on an unprecedented spending spree using Canadian taxpayers’ dollars.”

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The food crisis that could follow in the wake of the various lockdowns that were implemented on the back of the coronavirus may have long-lasting consequences. We are already seeing food shortages in the making. In India, for instance, supply chains have been disrupted, farm input systems for the supply of seeds and fertilisers have almost collapsed in some places and crops are not being harvested. Moreover, cultivation has been adversely affected prior to the monsoon and farm incomes are drying up. Farmers closer to major urban centres are faring a bit better due to shorter supply chains.

Veteran rural reporter P Sainath has urged India’s farmers to move away from planting cash crops and to start cultivating food crops, saying that you cannot eat cotton. It’s a good point. For instance, according to a report that appeared on the ruralindiaonline website, in a region of southern Odisha, farmers have been pushed towards a reliance on (illegal) expensive genetically modified herbicide tolerant cotton seeds and have replaced their traditional food crops. Farmers used to sow mixed plots of heirloom seeds, which had been saved from family harvests the previous year and would yield a basket of food crops. They are now dependent on seed vendors, chemical inputs and a volatile international market to make a living and are no longer food secure.

But what is happening in India is a microcosm of global trends. Reliance on commodity monocropping for international markets, long global supply chains and dependency on external inputs for cultivation make the food system vulnerable to shocks, whether resulting from public health scares, oil price spikes (the industrial global food system is heavily fossil-fuel dependent) or conflict. An increasing number of countries are recognising the need to respond by becoming more food self-sufficient, preferably by securing control over their own food and reducing supply chains.

Various coronavirus lockdowns have disrupted many transport and production activities, exposing the weaknesses of our current food system. While one part of the world (the richer countries) experiences surplus food but crop destruction due to farm labour shortages, millions of people elsewhere could face hunger due to rising food prices – or a lack of food availability altogether: the story of India’s migrant workers returning to their villages from the cities has been one of hardship, hunger and even death.

If the current situation tells us anything, it is that structural solutions are needed to reorganise food production. In his final report (2014) to the UN Human Rights Council as Special Rapporteur, Olivier De Schutter called for the world’s food systems to be radically redesigned. His report concluded that by applying agroecological principles to the design of democratically controlled agricultural systems we can help to put an end to food crises and poverty challenges. De Schutter argued that agroecological approaches could tackle food needs in critical regions and could double food production in 10 years. However, he stated that insufficient backing seriously hinders progress.

In addition to De Schutter’s 2014 report, the 2009 IAASTD peer-reviewed report, produced by 400 scientists and supported by 60 countries, recommends agroecology to maintain and increase the productivity of global agriculture. Moreover, the recent UN FAO High Level Panel of Experts concluded that agroecology provides greatly improved food security and nutritional, gender, environmental and yield benefits compared to industrial agriculture.

As a model of agriculture, agroecology is based on traditional knowledge and modern agricultural research, utilising elements of contemporary ecology, soil biology and the biological control of pests. This system combines sound ecological management by using on-farm renewable resources and privileging endogenous solutions to manage pests and disease without the use of agrochemicals and corporate seeds.

Agroecology can also offer concrete, practical solutions to many of the world’s problems. It offers an alternative to a prevailing system of doctrinaire neoliberal economics that drives a failing model of industrial agriculture which is having devastating impacts on the environment, rural communities, public health, local and regional food security and food sovereignty.

Agroecology outperforms the prevailing industrial food system in terms of diversity of food output, nutrition per acre, soil health and efficient water use. In addition, by creating securely paid labour-intensive agricultural work in richer countries, it can also address the interrelated links between labour offshoring by those countries and the displacement of peasant farmers elsewhere who end up in sweat shops to carry out the outsourced jobs.

The Declaration of the International Forum for Agroecology by Nyeleni in 2015 argued for building grass-root local food systems that create new rural-urban links, based on genuine agroecological food production. It added that agroecology requires local producers and communities to challenge and transform structures of power in society, not least by putting the control of seeds, biodiversity, land and territories, waters, knowledge, culture and the commons in the hands of those who feed the world.

It would mean that what ends up in our food and how it is grown is determined by the public good and not powerful private interests driven by commercial gain and the compulsion to subjugate farmers, consumers and entire regions to their global supply chains and questionable products( whether unhealthy food or proprietary pesticides and seeds). For consumers, the public good includes more diverse diets leading to better nutrition and enhanced immunity when faced with any future pandemic.

As Florence Tartanac, senior officer at Nutrition and Food Systems Division of the UN FAO, sated in April 2018:

“… agroecological markets bring an increase in the availability of more diverse food, especially of local varieties, that are linked to traditional diets. Therefore, consumers’ awareness should be increased on the importance of diet diversification and its effects on physical and mental health as well as on the positive impacts of sustainable, local and traditional consumption on the social, economic and environmental compartments.”

She made these comments during the second FAO international symposium ‘Scaling up Agroecology to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals’. And it’s a valid point seeing that the modern diet has become less diverse and is driving a major public health crisis in many countries.

Across the world, decentralised, region and local community-owned food systems based on short(er) food supply chains that can cope with future shocks are now needed more than ever.

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

 Dedicated to my friend and Comrade Marland X @CharlieMBrownX

In my last article I dealt with the life of Black Panther Party Founder Huey P. Newton. (image below right) I also discussed the origins of the Black Panther Party or BPP. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the BPP in Oakland California to battle poverty, racism, and police brutality. The BPP was created to police the police and was the first step towards a revolution. They hoped their example would inspire others and after recruiting only a single person Lil Bobby Hutton they began their patrols armed with guns and a law book.

The tactic worked and the party slowly began to expand. In nearby Richmond California the BPP began to win mass support by fighting on behalf of the family of Denzil Dowell who had been murdered by the police. They introduced a 10 point platform calling for socialism and self determination for the Black Community.

When the California Legislature decided to change the gun laws to make it illegal for the Panthers to conduct armed Patrols Bobby Seale led an armed protest that was dubbed by the media as an “invasion.” Bobby and about 20 other Panthers were arrested on trumped up charges on their way home but were soon released on bail.

Then on October 28, 1967 Huey and Gene McKinney were pulled over and got in a shoot out with police after they tried to kill Huey Newton. Newton was wounded and one cop John Frey a notorious fascist was killed and his partner was wounded. Huey was put on trial for his life but the case also catapulted the party to national attention. Soon Black Panther Party branches had formed all over the country. The back to back assassinations of Martin Luther King April 4 1968 and of Lil Bobby Hutton on April 6 1968 lead to an even more massive expansion of the party.

This Article will discuss the history of the Black Panther Party itself. It relies mainly on the definitive history of the Panthers “Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party” by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr. which I highly recommend to anyone looking to learn more about the Black Panther Party. Especially since the topic is far too large to be done justice in a single article or even in a single book.

Whole books have been written about the Panther’s activities in a single city like Oakland, New York, LA, or Chicago and even more memoirs and biographies record the lives of individual Panthers. The authors of “Black Against Empire” seek to disentangle fact from legend and to explain the rise and fall of the Panthers. One could dedicate one’s whole life to studying the party and many actually have. With the same problems that inspired the Panthers poverty, racism, imperialism, police brutality, mass incarceration now worse then ever it is important to revive their heroic example. The Black Panthers provided a blue print for revolution that is still relevant today.

Since last time I dealt with the life of Huey P. Newton this time I’ll begin with a brief discussion of the parties co-founder Bobby Seale. Bobby Seale was born in Dallas Texas October 22 1936. As a boy Seale suffered constant abuse from his father instilling in him a strong hatred of bullies. Even as a child Bobby became a champion of the under dog defending other kids from bullies.

When he was 15 he befriended Steve Brumfield who taught him about the genocide and land theft suffered by Native Americans. They spent a couple of years trying to live as Lakota warriors armed with homemade knives and tomahawks and wandering the hills. From an early age Bobby had learned about guns and went hunting. He ended up joining the air force.

Bobby was inspired by Malcolm X. After Malcolm was assassinated he went on a one man riot throwing rocks. He reconnected with Huey and the two were active members of the Revolutionary Action Movement  or RAM until the two men broke off and formed the Black Panther Party. Bobby lead the armed protest in Sacramento that the media dubbed an invasion. During the protest California’s new Governor Ronald Reagan ran into the Panthers and was so terrified at the sight of them  he ran for his life hid in his office and was doubtless responsible for dispatching the police to arrest them based on whatever charges they could invent. After Huey was locked up Bobby Seale along with David Hilliard were instrumental in the creation of the Panthers survival programs.

The Panthers Survival Programs were one of the most impressive projects they undertook. Building on the national movement that had been created behind the “Free Huey” campaign in Late 1968 Bobby Seale and David Hilliard had decided to create community programs that would immediately begin to improve people’s lives. Hilliard an organizational genius became in many ways the de facto head of the party while Huey was in jail serving as the Panthers Chief of Staff and coordinating the Panthers Nationwide. They pressured local business into donating food, raised donations, and most importantly used the Panthers as an army of volunteers.

Businesses that refused to donate would be held up to ridicule in the BPP paper, Boycotted or worse.  Every Morning the Panthers would wake up before morning and begin preparing food. Often the free Breakfast program fed not only children but their parents. The free Breakfast program also served to teach the kids. While they ate they were taught black history and revolutionary theory, By 1969 they were feeding 10,000 children a day in cities across the country. Soon they expanded the Survival Programs creating free health clinics. They got local doctors and nurses to volunteer their services providing free health care. They managed to Create at least 11 free health clinics.

Such programs also served to raise the revolutionary question why is it that America the richest and most powerful country on the planet is unable to provide food, housing and health care to it’s citizens yet always has hundreds of billions of dollars to wage war on poor people oversees? For a fraction of the cost of the Vietnam War the United States could have ended world hunger. The answer is Capitalism the US was literally waging war on the planet to preserve poverty and inequality so of course they let american children starve.

The Panthers also created their own schools. Thanks to the racist school system Huey Newton had nearly graduated illiterate thus the Panther schools were dear to his heart. The Party itself was a school for it’s members although often new members had been attracted by the parties policy of armed self defense in order to remain in the party they had to follow the parties rigorous political education program reading Mao, Lenin, Malcolm X, Che Guevara.

Many who had been as badly served by the education system as Huey learned to read and think critically thanks to these programs. Massai Hewitt the Panthers Minister of Education traveled the country teaching the Panthers to read and think critically as well as schooling them in revolutionary Ideology.Huey even opened a school the “Ideological Institute” to teach the Panther leaders Philosophy (which Huey loved) reading Kierkegaard and Nietzsche among other thinkers. However they would have preferred to study the theory of Guerrilla warfare.

More Successful were the attempts to create liberation schools. At least 9 schools were founded the most successful was the one in Oakland run by Ericka Huggins and Regina Davis. It grouped students by ability instead of age and would be recognized as one of the best schools in the country. It also insured that the children and often their families received 3 meals a day and even offered housing to some kids.

Students were responsible for discipling themselves. The Panthers also helped to revolutionize the University education system and were far more influential in the student movement then most people recognize. The Kent state shootings were a response to a wave of student strikes that had been called by the Panthers and their new left student allies at Yale earlier that year for example. It was thanks in part to the Panthers that many universities were forced to create not only Black Studies programs, but similar programs for Asian, Latino, and Indigenous studies. It took an uprising at San Francisco State one of whose leaders was a College Professor who had joined the Panthers George Murray to finally force universities to institute long overdue reforms and the campaign at this school was the model for student uprisings across the country.

The Panthers created other social programs as well. They start a bussing program to prisons so that families could visit prisoners. They also developed a “Free Commisary” program donating to prison commissaries so inmates could acquire the necessities. They developed a free ambulance program. They built Free Libraries that offered black literature and history. The Panthers had their own paper with a circulation of 150,000 which both funded the party and kept the black community informed. It was many peoples introduction to the parties ideology and was read around the wold. The Panthers made shoes and handed them out. They created a program to protect senior citizens called SAFE.

The Panthers helped their communities in a hundred different ways their offices were soon flooded with community members seeking help and they would intervene to protect tenants offer legal advice, even start drug treatment programs. The Government found the Panthers community programs even more dangerous then armed self defense as they allowed the Panthers to build strong ties with their local communities. Thus the community programs became targets. Police raided free breakfast programs terrorizing the children, shot up panther offices and even bombed two of their free clinics. They also spread rumors that the Panthers were poisoning the food.

Women often formed the backbone of the community programs and as time went on they would play an increasingly prominent role in the party. There was the controversial Elaine Brown (her lover mentor Jay Kennedy was in the CIA making her suspect) who would rise to lead the party from 1974-76 while Huey was in Exile in Cuba. There was briefly Angela Davis. There was Tupac Shakur’s mother Afeni Shakur.

There was Kathleen Cleaver one of their more popular speakers and the poster child for armed self defense. And of course Assata Shakur still in exile in Cuba after being framed for murder and escaping prison. There was Audrea Dunham who organized the Boston Chapter of the party and who recruited one of the parties most effective leaders Doug Miranda. Another unsung hero was Lyn French in Chicago. Ericka Huggins would found the New Haven Chapter and go on to run the Panther’s school in Oakland with Regina Davis.

In theory the panthers embraced women’s liberation although in practice often old sexist ideas and practices remained. Still it was often the Panther women working behind the scenes who were the ones who really kept the party running. Thus while they didn’t get the recognition they deserved we should remember the thousands of rank and file women who cooked the breakfasts, drove the buses to prisons, edited the paper, ran the schools and did much of the hard work behind the scenes.

The Panthers presented a real challenge to the American empire and it responded predictably with assassinations dirty tricks and at times all out warfare. Unfortunately you’ll have to read “Black Against Empire” if you want a full account of the war against the Panthers there were simply too many bombings of Panther Head Quarters,shootouts with police, attempted frame ups targeting Panther Leaders, disinformation campaigns, blackmail, infiltration, economic warfare, beatings, torture and political assassinations to go into here.

To this day there are Panthers locked in prison on trumped up charges. Only last year one of George Jackson’s disciples the Nicaraguan Hugo “Yogi” Pinell was brutally murdered. The war on the Panthers continues to this day. The recent brutal murder of black lives matter activist Darren Seals is a warning that the US may once again seek to wipe out the potential leaders in general and in the black community in particular. Thus I will discuss three of the Panthers most promising leaders who were assassinated as part of the plan to in J Edgar Hoover’s words “prevent the rise of a black Messiah.”

Three Leaders each with the potential to change history were all assassinated. Their Names were Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, Fed Hampton, and George L Jackson.

I’ll start with the least well known of the three Bunchy Carter. Bunchy knew Eldridge Cleaver from prison and met with Huey Newton and decided to join shortly before Huey was arrested. Bunchy was tasked with forming the Panthers LA branch. Bunchy was no ordinary recruit he was already a legend in LA known as the Mayor of the Ghetto he was the leader of the 3,000 strong Slauson gang. It was then the biggest gang in LA. Bunchy was probably the toughest man in the city of LA and while in prison he had become political first inspired by Malcolm X, and then drawing inspiration from the third world revolution. He was a poet and his poems were recited on street corners all over LA. Thus when he resigned from the Slausons to join the Panthers he brought with him 20 of his toughest men who he called his wolves and the Panther Chapter in LA instantly became a force to be reckoned with.

Bunchy had the potential to Inspire millions of poor blacks to take a revolutionary path. He could have been a bridge between the Panthers and the Gangs converting them from criminals into revolutionaries. Unfortunately he was assassinated along with John Huggins by Ron Karenga’s US organization.

Karenga the inventor of Kwanza was a police informant the assassins were FBI informants and the FBI helped them to escape. Bunchy’s spirit would live on in the LA panthers who would thanks to the tactical advice of Vietnam vet and Black Panther Geronimo Pratt fortify their LA headquarters to withstand a full on Siege. This would come in extremely useful when the LAPD launched a full military assault using the countries first SWAT team created to destroy the panthers. For 5 Hours the panthers managed to repel hundreds of cops firing machine guns, tear gas, and even using dynamite at one point. The cops fired over 5,000 rounds of ammunition. The Panthers fought back with rifles submachine guns and molotov cocktails. Inside the Panthers were inspired to keep fighting by Bunchy’s poem “Mother.”

Fred Hampton was another dynamic Black Panther leader who was assassinated another tragic loss of someone with the potential to inspire millions. Growing up Hampton was both a star athlete and a star student. While still in High School he joined the Civil Rights movement joining the NAACP and leading a strike at his high school. He was a charismatic speaker and was recruited into the new Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party quickly becoming it’s leader. He was a charismatic public speaker who could electrify a crowd.

He also had a major talent for unifying people trusted by both the old and the young, men and women the poor and the middles class and people of every race. He tried to merge the panthers with the P-Stone Rangers a gang that had grown a conscience and begun social programs to aid the local community. Unfortunately this effort was sabotaged by cointelpro which attempted to get the Rangers to turn on the Panthers by spreading rumors the Panthers were planning to assassinate the Rangers leader Jeff Fort.

Luckily Fort and Hampton figured out what was happening before a war erupted. Hampton was fearless during the negotiations standing his ground despite the overwhelming firepower the rangers had managed to amass and which was on full display as Fort’s dramatic way of explaining why the Rangers refused to be absorbed into the smaller Chicago Black Panther Party. More successful were Hampton’s efforts to bridge the racial divide in Chicago in some ways even fiercer than that of the deep south as Martin Luther King had discovered when he tried to hold a march in the nearby town of Cicero Illinois and was greeted by a violent mob worse then any in the south. Hampton created the rainbow coalition which brought together poor whites, latinos, and blacks in a demand for social change. With his ability to unite and inspire people Hampton was a threat and he was brutally assassinated along with Mark Clark in a police raid instigated by the FBI.

He was assassinated the night of December 4 1969. The cowardly police even had an informant drug Hampton so that he lay helplessly asleep next to his 8 Months pregnant girlfriend as they opened fire on the room where he slept the Informant William O’Neal having provided a complete floor plan. Hampton might have survived but the police then shot him at point blank range to finish him off. The police then lied and claimed there had been a shootout but the Panthers managed to expose this lie all the bullets had come from the police. They lead tours of the murder site and soon the transparent coverup had been completely exposed. Hampton was only 19 when they killed him there was no telling what he could have accomplished. Tragically this is exactly why he was murdered. Today his son Fred Hampton jr. is trying to carry on the tradition of his father.

Finally there was George L. Jackson. As a youth he had gotten sucked into a life of petty crime. At 18 he was sentenced to 1 year to life for stealing 70.00 from a gas station. It was in prison that the brilliant George Jackson became politically radicalized joining the Black Guerrilla Family and beginning to study revolutionary theory. He joined the Black Panther Party in prison and began to organize the inmates.

He set up a system where the inmates would all pool their resources and began to transform them from criminals into revolutionaries. He was utterly tough and fearless and won the prisoners respect with his willingness to risk his life defending his fellow prisoners. Unsurprisingly the prison authorities were terrified of his transformation from petty criminal into a revolutionary. His indeterminate sentence made it possible to insure that he would never be released. They tried to have him murdered by other prisoners and he survived over 20 murder attempts.

They also attempted to break him by putting him in a strip cell with no toilet and only a canvas mat for a bed. He refused to be broken winning him even greater respect.  He was an electrifying writer his letters to his friends, family and comrades were collected in a book “Soledad Brother” that became an international sensation. This put his life in even greater danger. George was a threat to the coming mass incarceration system his work exposed the brutal abuses that went on behind prison walls. His work Organizing prisoners aimed to bring down the prison system itself. George was even able to bridge the racial divide in prison uniting black Latino and White prisoners that the system preferred to keep in a constant state of warfare. When the system couldn’t break him it decided to kill him.

His death was part of an escalating series of incidents. First on January 13 1970 a fight broke out in the exercise yard between Jackson’s group and some Nazi prisoners the guard in the tower a notorious racist used this incident as an excuse and opened fire killing 3 of George’s comrades. On Feb 28 1970 The same day the deaths were ruled justified a guard was killed in revenge.

George was blamed along with Fleeta Drumgo, and John Cluchette because it was believed he was the only one capable of carrying it out. Now He was to go on trial for murder and the prison believed it had the leverage via it’s total control of the prisoners lives to force someone to testify against Jackson. George had a younger brother Jonathan Jackson who was inspired by his brothers example to become a revolutionary. He trained himself in combat and martial arts and revolutionary theory.

He dreamed of shooting down a police chopper and began to track and even terrorize the local police. Finally on August 7 1970  he attempted to Free George by walking into a courtroom with a submachine gun freeing the people on trial and taking the judge and DA hostage. He was gunned down and the hostages were killed as he tried to escape in a van apparently the state preferred to kill it’s own rather then risk George’s release. Governor Reagan attempted to use this incident to send Angela Davis to the gas chamber. George poured his rage over his brothers death as well as his love and admiration for the 17 year old into the revolutionary classic “Blood in My Eye” I recommend it to anyone interested in how a history could have gone had the Panthers dared to go on the offensive launching full scale urban guerrilla  warfare.

He reprints sections of his brothers letters holding him up as a revolutionary model. A year later on August 21 1971 the final bloody chapter was written. Unfortunately what actually happened on that day remains a mystery to this day. However George L. Jackson was shot and killed and three guards and two inmate snitches were also dead by days end. The Prison movement had lost it’s most dynamic leader. Even today a prisoner can be sent to solitary confinement for years on end merely for being found with a copy of George L. Jackson’s books. Today the spirit of George Jackson lives on in the continuing struggle by prisoners to end this modern form of slavery. As I write prisoners all over the country are involved in labor strikes against the slave labor exploitation of prisoners. Only last year one of George’s Comrades part of the San Quentin Six Hugo “Yogi” Pinell was brutally murdered in a setup. He had undergone years of torture and beatings in an attempt to break him.

The Panthers focus on the evils of the prison system and the american injustice system were yet another thing that made them ahead of their time and sadly given the explosion in the prison population more relevant then ever. Free the political prisoners like Mumia Abu Jamal, reverend Edward Pinkney and the many panthers and black revolutionaries still being held decades later. End Mass incarceration. Sadly I know from the experiences of a friend that the system still values $70.00 far higher then a black man’s life. Jonathan Jackson’s heroic rescue attempt of August 7 1970 and the martyrdom of George Jackson on August 21 1971 are what inspired the creation of Black August a month to remember black resistance to slavery and imperialism. Less then A month after the death of George Jackson on Sep 9 1971 the Prisoners at Attica staged an uprising demanding to be treated as men not beasts. On September 13 1971 Governor Nelson Rockefeller sent in a thousand national guardsmen killing 28 prisoners and 9 hostages.

The Panther’s influence stretched not only across the country but across the world. They made contacts with revolutionary movements around the globe. They Befriended the North Koreans, the Chinese the Vietnamese. They became allies of the ANC in South Africa and Frelimo in Mozambique. Even in Sweden they found allies and massive support. They helped inspire the creation of the Red Army Faction in Germany. They received support from Cuba. In Algeria they were even recognized as the official representatives of the United States and given all the privileges of diplomats. They gave their support to the Palestinians in their struggle for liberation. They brought the case for black self determination and reparations before the UN.

The Panthers were a truly revolutionary movement. In the face of police brutality and the murder of blacks they formed self defense patrols. In the face of poverty they built community programs that would feed 20,000 children a day. The federal government was forced to massively expand their own social programs in order to compete. They threatened to turn gangs into revolutionary armies. They educated the masses. They brought focus on the american injustice system. They resisted the Mass incarceration state and organized prisoners.

They built alliances around the world. They inspired not only black revolutionaries but asians, latinos, indigenous groups, and the student anti-war movement. What began in October of 1967 as only 3 men Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and Lil Bobby Hutton to police the police grew into a nationwide movement. 50 Years later they still provide a blueprint for revolution that should continue to be studied and put into practice.

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Sources

I Highly recommend “Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party” Which manages to chart the complex history of the Party and provides a great analysis of their rise and fall. I also relied on the DVD series “What We Want, What We Believe: Black Panther Party Library” I Re-read “Blood in My Eye” By George L. Jackson which I also highly recommend. I also relied on the works of Huey P. Newton “Revolutionary Suicide” “To Die For the People” and “War Against the Panthers” as well as Elaine Brown’s “A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story”

The Jericho movement works to free political prisoners

http://www.thejerichomovement.com

Abayomi Azikwe on George Jackson the Attica Uprising and the current resistance by prisoners

http://www.workers.org/2016/09/14/the-1971-attica-rebellion-george-jackson-the-revolutionary-prison-movement-of-2016/?utm_content=bufferc7761&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#.V9tCcHBHarV

Danny Haiphong on George Jackson

http://blackagendareport.com/george_jackson_blood_in_my_eye#sdfootnote1sym

Marland X Reviews “Will You Die For Me? My Life and the Black Panther Party By Flores A. Forbes

https://4strugglemag.org/2010/07/23/book-review-will-you-die-with-me-my-life-and-the-black-panther-party-by-flores-a-forbes/

This article was originally crossposted from Black Agenda Report in 2015.

“If the existing structures of governance and social organization cannot provide justice for Black people, then those structures must be pushed aside – or there will be no civil peace.”

The current campaign against police oppression in Black America is widely dubbed the Black Lives Matter movement, derived from a hashtag created in the wake of 17 year-old Trayvon Martin’s death at the hands of George Zimmerman, in 2013. Young activists in Ferguson, Missouri, originally rallied around placards and chants of “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” to emphasize Michael Brown’s stance when the 18 year-old was extrajudicially executed by Officer Darren Wilson, in August of last year. “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” was limited by the particular circumstances of Brown’s death and, more importantly, widely considered too passive a slogan on which to build a militant movement. “Black Lives Matter” expresses a general sentiment and aspiration, but embodies no substantial political content or direction. Moreover, the slogan is the political property of a particular organization with numerous chapters in the U.S. and abroad, whose positions and priorities are not necessarily representative of the emerging “movement’s” various political tendencies.

In a previous era, neither the SCLC, SNCC, CORE, nor the NAACP or the Urban League could lay claim to the “civil rights” movement, nor was any organization synonymous with “Black Power” or “Black Liberation.” “Black Lives Matter” is even less definitive than the Sixties umbrella terminology, conveying no substantive political objective other than affirming, or achieving, the sanctity of Black lives. It is a vessel waiting to be filled and set on course.

The amorphousness of “Black Lives Matter” is to be expected, given both the incipient movement’s youth – the prospect of a sustained, national campaign against police oppression did not seriously arise until the awakening in Ferguson – and the two-generation-long gap in mass movement experience in Black America. The slogan speaks to the now-generalized Black outrage at police behavior in Black communities, and serves as a banner under which diverse forces have begun to coalesce. It has been a useful umbrella, which is why the term “Black Lives Matter Movement” has served as a catch-all for a broad range of anti-criminal justice protest, including in these pages. However, history will demand more of the new movement than “Black Lives Matter” can provide. Sustained, militant practice informed by increased political clarity will eventually arm the Black awakening with a name that is worthy of a mass “movement.”

“The slogan speaks to the now-generalized Black outrage at police behavior in Black communities, and serves as a banner under which diverse forces have begun to coalesce.”

The logic of the emerging movement is Black self-determination – the principle that Black people have the inherent human right to determine their own destiny – which, in the immediate sense, means control over how they should be policed, and by whom. The venerable slogan “No Justice – No Peace” has served as a workhorse of the current protest, and would be an ideal organizing principle if the implications of the slogan were fully understood, rather than simply mouthed. The slogan takes the political position that the price that Power must pay for continued injustice against Black people is the loss of civil peace. It is a vow by the movement to transform the crisis that is inflicted on Black people into a generalized crisis for the larger society, and for those who currently rule.

“No Justice – No Peace” is consistent with the direct action philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – although not limited by his personal prohibitions against violence. Malcolm’s “by any means necessary” fits just as well.

More than just a threat against Power, the slogan brings clarity of purpose to the participants in the movement. If the existing structures of governance and social organization cannot possibly provide justice for Black people, then those structures must be pushed aside – or there will be no civil peace. The strategies and tactics of the movement must unfold, accordingly.

Recent developments in the Tamir Rice case prove, once again, the impossibility of achieving any semblance of justice from the criminal justice system as configured in the United States. Community leaders in Cleveland availed themselves of a little-used Ohio law that allows citizens to appeal directly to a judge to initiate prosecution of wrongdoers, bypassing the county prosecutor’s office. The law was specifically enacted to prevent the political establishment from protecting its own, as when prosecutors protect the police. A Black municipal judge viewed the damning video of a cop gunning down 12 year-old Tamir from seven feet away only two seconds after exiting his police cruiser – while the vehicle was, in fact, still in motion. Judge Ronald Adrine, who said he was “thunderstruck by how quickly this event turned deadly,”found probable cause to charge the cop with “murder, reckless homicide, negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter and dereliction of duty,” and to charge his partner with negligent homicide and dereliction of duty for not giving the child immediate medical attention.

However, the Ohio law turned out have no legal effect whatsoever. Judge Adrine said he could not himself bring the charges against the policeman; that decision remained in the hands of the county prosecutor, who promptly announced that he would send the case to a grand jury, as usual, with the usual probable results. The legal system is a dead letter for Black people, despite the Ohio law that was designed to remedy prosecutorial collaboration with police and other government agents, and despite the involvement of a sympathetic Black judge.

The federal government provides no recourse for Black people. Cleveland is now under its second U.S. Justice Department consent decree in little over a decade, and remains a killing zone for Blacks, where cops enjoy complete impunity even when they fire dozens of bullets intounarmed Black motorists. Federal consent decrees are designed to get Black people’s consent to a continued reign of terror by local police.

“The legal system is a dead letter for Black people.”

The electoral process has definitively failed to prevent the exponential growth of the Black Mass Incarceration State, in all its murderous aspects. Cleveland was the first major U.S. city to elect a Black mayor, Carl Stokes, in 1967. One of Stokes’ first acts was to put Black former Air Force general Benjamin O. Davis in charge of the police. Davis promptly OK’d the use of dum-dum bullets and took the side of his officers in every dispute over the use of excessive force. In the intervening nearly half-century, the nation’s elected Black leadership has collaborated at every stage of the construction of a criminal justice regime so hostile to the very presence of Black people, that one of out every eight prison inmates on the planet is an African American.

The U.S. legal system does not work for Black people, and the political system that makes the laws of the nation will not change the legal system, except under the most intense, extra-legal duress. Effectively, Black people are outside the law, beyond its protections, and will not get meaningful concessions from Power unless we create a crisis for the system of governance, itself – “by any means necessary,” in Malcolm’s words.

The movement that presently goes under the heading “Black Lives Matter” can find its way to the logic of Black self-determination through the organizing principle of “No Justice – No Peace.” It is a slogan that leads to a place where Black people have the power to decide for themselves if Black lives matter, or not.

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BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].

Do you know who coined the curse, “conspiracy theory” or accusation, “you are conspiracy theorist!” – It was nobody less than the CIA in the 1950s, to silence those who saw through the lie of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. This was a complete lie by US war strategists, to install fear in the population in general and in Europeans in particular and to boost the American Military Industrial complex – and presenting a constant threat to the communist Soviet Union.

A complementary phrase developed in the last years is “fake news” — people who are saying well-founded truths, are being accused of spreading “false news” – and that by the very media that spread the real false news and lies in the first place. A dystopian world indeed, and most of the public doesn’t capture it.

Another denigrating term that has it lately into the vocabulary of the mainstream, “populist”. It refers to people or ideas from the left, the middle or the right – as soon as they don’t stick to the going narrative. By Webster’s definition, a populist is someone who represents the people’s views, a majority view, actually, it’s a very democratic term, because a true leader should represent the people’s views. But media manipulation has made of “populism” something of “lesser intellect” – and, of course, nobody wants to be of “lesser intellect”, hence, it’s become a derogatory term. That’s how the media and psychologically worked propaganda can alter what people would call “my common sense”.

The fear factor is always a crucial element in dividing people, and in corralling them into chambers of fear – which allows anything outside to happen – building up armament, faking an arms race – when there was none. The Soviet Union came out of WWII – where they lost between 25 and 30 million people to save Europe and the world from fascism.

But western history books have it, that it was the United States and her European allies, who foremost defeated Hitler. This false news is continuingly being propagated, last by the recent WWII Victory Celebration on 9 May 2020 – without any consideration of the key role of the Soviet Union – today’s Russia – in defeating the Hitler Nazis.

After this enormous sacrifice, the Soviet Union had no intention nor the resources to build up an army to defeat the west – as was being propagated by the US and then being aped by Europe, hence justifying 40 years of a Cold War, based on FEAR. The Cold War destroyed the natural relationship (trade, diplomatic, cultural) between Europe and today’s Russia.

Today, however, anybody who dares to remind the western media, politicians and friends of the real conqueror of Hitler, namely the Soviet Union – is a “conspiracy theorist” – or someone who spreads “false news”.

The Corona Crisis

The latest example of conspiracy galore, is the corona crisis. What is playing out in front of our eyes, a worldwide lockdown of everything, followed almost by every government of this globe with similar severity, quarantine, confinement at home for almost everyone under the “pretext” of protecting you – the people – from an invisible enemy – a corona virus. And every government KNOWS it is a disaster for the national and world economy – it is social suicide. Yet they go along – with the orders of whom?

As most of us who look for our own sources of information, outside the mainstream dominated, government dictated or supported lies, data collection and statistics on COVID infections, as well as death rates, are vastly inflated and willingly falsified, to increase the fear factor and prolong the all destructive lockdown. See this. This horrendous cheat is not just actively practiced in the US, but also in Europe. A point in case is Italy, see this.

Another case in point is Switzerland. The official Swiss Federal Office of Statistics (BAS, for German “Bundesamt für Statistik”), keeps records of all deaths in the country per week. In the first 18 weeks of 2020 (ending 3 May 2020), there were actually less deaths reported that in the first 18 weeks of 2015 – 25,400 (2020) vs. 26,596 (2015). How is that possible if the official death corona-death toll in Switzerland is 1,642, as of 24 May 2020. In other words, pretty much the same number of people die every year with or without corona. See this.

Since Switzerland has the 8^th highest Covid death-rate in Europe, similar total death figures may most likely be found in other European countries and the US, i.e. virtually unchanged in the first 18 weeks of 2019 and 2020.

Unless solid proof is presented, like by the Italian Member of Parliament and a number of medical doctors, virologists and microbiologists from Italy and other European countries, as well as the US, anybody who refers to the fakeness and unreliability of the statistic is called a conspiracy theorist — a liar. And in some countries people who tell the truth are even liable to fines and legal pursuit. These threats and conspiracy accusations should shut us up. But they don’t and won’t. We want the truth to come out and be known to the entire world.

The World Economic Crisis

We already now realize the damage of unheard proportions. In the first four months of this so-called, WHO-denominated pandemic, we see a global disaster of proportions far exceeding those of 1929-33 and 2008-09. Never in recorded human history has so much misery been created.

Bankruptcies abound, the stock market plunged so far by more than 30% (with some ups and down – called “quick profit taking” by the rich and powerful on the back of the small investors). However, US billionaires increased their wealth during the the first 4 months in 2020 by US$ 406 billion, according to CNBC of 1 May 2020.

Screenshot from CNBC

The universal Covid-lockdown has also caused a meltdown of productive assets, which now become easy prey to be bought by large corporations – unemployment soaring to heights never experienced before by modern humanity, currently at 40 million Americans out of a job. This does not account for those having given up looking for a job or claiming unemployment.

According to Fox Business News, up to 40% may never get back to work. The FED predicts unemployment may reach 50% by the end of the year (in the worst 1929 recession period unemployment attained 25%). These are only US statistics. The situation in more chaotic Europe may be even worse.

The International Labor Office (ILO) announced that within months worldwide unemployment may hit 1.6 billion people, half the globes work force. Many of these people, especially in the Global South have already been at the verge of poverty or under the poverty line, living from day to day, with no savings. Now they are condemned to begging – and many, maybe hundreds of millions, to die from famine, according to the World Food Program (WFP). Many if not most of them have no access to health services, no shelter, or any other form of social safety nets, because the COVID-caused economic collapse has wiped out even flimsy social safety structures poor countries may have set up.

Misery no end. And this is only the tiny tip of the iceberg. The worst is still to come – when in a few weeks or months a clearer picture of what industries will live or die will emerge – and more people will be relegated to economic paupers.

The Real Conspiracy

Taking a few steps back – it is clear, it is no coincidence that the entire world is stricken by the same virus and virtually at the same time. That does not happen naturally – but can happen, as it did, when the virus is artificially implanted in every country – and that at the same time. So, there is a diabolical plan behind this so-called corona-crisis which does not even have to be a crisis, if we look at real disease and death rates – not the inflated, fear-inspiring ones (see above, cases Italy and Switzerland).

So, who is behind this all? – Well, without naming names and leaving that guessing up to you, there are several reports and events that have “predicted” such a pandemic. One of the most prominent ones, is the 2010 Rockefeller report – that described in surprising detail what is happening now, and calls it the “Lock Step” scenario. According to the report it should get worse and the current pandemic might be followed by a stronger wave later this year or in 2021. Strangely, the IMF’s economic projections for a “post-Covid economy, foresees 3 scenarios, two of which consider another outbreak in the second half of 2020, or in 2021.

Event 201 on 18 October 2019 in NYC, simulating among other atrocities a corona pandemic that would leave 65 million dead within 18 months (see this). This was the final stroke before the planned outbreak. Let’s just say that the evil masterminds behind this monstrous crisis are a few very rich, power-thirsty psychopaths and their families and cronies. They are planning a One World Government, also called the New World Order, or the One World Order – that has been under preparation since the latter part of the last century. It requires total control over the population and a sizable population reduction.

That’s where the eugenics come in. Many of the Rockefeller club, the “Bilderberg Society” members have been advocating population reduction for decades, including Bill Gates. He even bragged about it when in a 2010 TED talk in Southern California, “Innovating to Zero”, he said, “when we do a real god job vaccinating, we may reduce world population by 10% to 15%.” (see this). He wants to eliminate poverty, literally.

However, talking about it, and connecting the dots of what we are living today – is being labeled as Conspiracy Theory.

Why are Bill Gates’ new corona vaccines possibly killer vaccines? – Here is how it works. The Gates Foundation first created the pharmaceutical company “Moderna” in Seattle, Washington State, not far from his Microsoft empire, basically to produce tailor-made vaccines for the Gates Foundation. Then the foundation gave US$ 20 million to Moderna for the development of a COVID vaccine. A few days ago, Moncef  Slaoas resigned from Moderna’s Board to become White House Director of Operation Warp Speed, a plan to fast-track a COVID vaccine. Nobody seems to bother about the flagrant conflict of interest – let alone the health risk that poses. See Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the subject.

But it gets even better. The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), a little-known agency that is hardly in the news, had, according to Whitney Webb (Last American Vagabond) knowledge of the pandemic outbreak at least since last November, possibly earlier.

This means that President Trump knew about it, but didn’t do anything about it, rather let it happen. His blaming China today for mishandling the corona crisis is a sheer lie and a propaganda bluff to denigrate China’s reputation and her rising economy and solid currency, the yuan – which may soon take over from the dollar as a key world reserve currency.

DARPA is also financially supported by the Bill Gates Foundation. They have been working on new vaccine technologies for several years. The COVID-19 outbreak brought this research work to prominence. DARPA is closely collaborating with Bill Gates in applying this new technology to the vaccine, Bill Gates wants to develop and impose on the world population.

According to Whitney Webb, DARPA and its partners agencies are planning to

“produce DNA and RNA vaccines, classes of vaccine that has never been approved for human use in the U.S. and involve injecting foreign genetic material into the human body. Notably, it is this very class of vaccine, now being produced by DARPA-partnered companies, that billionaire and global health “philanthropist” Bill Gates recently asserted has him “most excited”, relative to other Covid-19 vaccine candidates.”.

This is not conspiracy theory; this is real conspiracy. This sounds more like the Third Reich’s medical trials. The perpetrators were condemned at Nuremberg. In our dystopian world, nobody will be punished, even if thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands will be affected by the Gates WHO-supported rush with an untested vaccine. Though, it would match the eugenics agenda.

The so called (by WHO) COVID-19 “is the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the human race.” It is a multi-generational lie that has become a ‘false normal’, says Dr. Sherry Tenpenny, founder of the Tenpenny Integrative Medical Center. And as a piece of reference enhancing her reputation, she has 20 years of vaccine research experience and her articles are translated in 12 languages.She also appears frequently on radio and TV to educate parents.

“By putting vaccines into our bodies, we are inserting foreign matter, toxins, into our cells, like mercury and aluminum.” In legal terms vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe”. Through pharma lobbying, in 1986 Congress has passed the National Childhood Vaccine Children Act, a law whereby pharmaceutical companies cannot be sued for any damage their vaccines cause, including death. The United States Supreme Court Rules in favor of protecting vaccine makers from State Law Suits (5 May 2020).

Vaccines have enormous side effects, especially in small children, causing various lasting diseases, like peanut allergies, asthma, eczema and – yes – autism.

Particularly harmful vaccines are western-made MMR (measles), polio and DTP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (whooping cough). Russian made vaccines have different compositions and have helped prevent millions from polio and other debilitating, crippling or killing diseases. Since 2002, when revenues from vaccines for US pharma companies amounted to about US$ 8 billion, revenues and profits have skyrocketed to more than 60 billion per year by 2020. Every new vaccine is worth about a billion dollars. Learn more here.

Anybody who speaks out against vaccination, irrespective of the evidence given, is labeled a conspiracy theorist by the media, and often by the pharma-coopted medical society.

People start understanding that Bill Gates and his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) call the shots on public health around the world, especially on vaccination – and now on vaccination against the corona virus. The sinister new vaccines to be developed by Bill Gates in tandem with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), one of 27 agencies of the National Institute of Health (NIH), andsupported by CDC and WHO – and in cooperation with DARPA – are described above. All Gates promoted vaccines are made by western pharma-corporations.

You should know, that the Bill Gates Foundation also generously funds NIAID, NIH and CDC. Both CDC and NIH own several hundred if not thousands of vaccine patents. So, they have a vested interest in promoting vaccination, no matter how much harm they cause to the population.

But this cannot be questioned, let alone criticized – else you will be denigrated as a conspiracy theorist.In fact, western Governments hire psychologists, sociologist and medical doctors to give interviews and talk to the media, on conspiracy theories – in a last-ditch effort to dissuade people from thinking and from believing the truth, if it is presented by non-mainstream media, or simply if it doesn’t correspond to the going political narrative. And many still fall for the lie, but ever more people are becoming suspicious and stick to their own investigated information – and demonstrate and protest, often with civil disobedience, against harsh government measure of police -and often military crackdowns.

They call out against Bill Gates and WHO, a corrupted organization that receives half to three quarters of its annual budget from private donors, mostly the pharma industry, Bill Gates, but also telecom-industries (that’s why WHO has been silent on the potentially nefarious effects of 5G). Bill Gates is the biggest single donor of WHO. Conflict of interest is never discussed in the media. Those who know the truth and don’t hesitate calling it out, are silenced by being called conspirators, liars by the media and – of course, by much of the medical community. In fact, Bill Gates literally calls the shots on matters of public health that affects the entire world.

People – be aware!

Also speaking out against vaccines and the lab produced viruses from which eventually vaccines are derived, is Dr. Judy Mikovits, a long-time NIAID micro-biologist, who has been severely punished by Dr. Fauci for defending her research results which Fauci wanted to hide. Her book, “Plague of Corruption” is currently Amazon’s number one Bestseller. That in itself tells a story of a public awakening.

Referring to her and her numerous interviews, peer-reviewed scientific articles and her book, is called a conspiracy, because even her own outspokenness is called conspiracy  – all in an effort to shut up critics of the current system, of the current new-normal that will soon require universal vaccination (Bill Gates with a sly smile wants to vaccinate 7 billion people in the next ten years). Will it be compulsory? Against most countries Constitutional and Democratic Rights? We don’t know. Sevenbillion is a slight exaggeration, because Russia and China will certainly not vaccinate their people with vaccines produced under Bill Gates funding and supervision.

But even if it is not compulsory, there may be so many “legal” hindrances put in place by western governments that most people eventually will roll over and accept the possibly killer vaccine that Bill Gates and his association of pharmaceuticals (GAVI) supported by WHO, will impose on humanity.

For example, you may not be able to receive or renew your driver’s license, going to concerts, to the movies, to sports events, to fly – and so on. That’s all been talked about and is part of the 2010 Rockefeller Report’s ”Lock Step” scenario , in which we are currently hopelessly navigating – under lockdown and with social distancing’ – so nobody can get together and possibly organize a plot against these draconian inhuman measures.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., JFK’s, nephew, founder of “Children’s Health Defense” an NGO advocacy organization has this to say:

“Bill Gates is the world’s largest vaccine producer and the single largest donor to WHO and the CDC Foundation. Those agencies are now marketing-arms for his vaccine empire.

In January 2019, Gates had WHO declare “vaccine hesitancy” the top “global health threat” (with Ebola, cancer, war, and drug-resistant pathogens), signaling a worldwide Pharma Gold Rush to mandate vaccines to all people.

Acting on behalf of Big Pharma and the Gates Foundation was Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff’s Political Action Committee (PAC). In February 2019, Schiff wrote to Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Pinterest, demanding they censor “vaccine misinformation, “a term meaning all skepticism toward government and industry pronouncements about vaccine safety or efficacy––whether true or not. – “Vaccines are both effective and safe,” Schiff wrote.

“There is no evidence to suggest that vaccines cause life-threatening or disabling disease.”

This was misinformation. A year earlier, Schiff pushed a bill to hike the Vaccine Court admin budget to $11,200,000 to reduce vaccine injury backlogs. The court had already paid out $4 billion for vaccine deaths and disabilities.

Facebook and Pinterest said that they will rely on Gates’s WHO and CDC to say which on-line statements are “misinformation or hoaxes.” Facebook and Google hired “FactChecker” (Politifact) to censor vaccine misinformation. The Gates Foundation is “FactChecker’s” largest funder. In his article, “Fact Checker, a Propaganda Device,” investigative journalist Jeremy Hammond concludes, “Facebook is guilty of misinforming its users about vaccine safety…

They have no problem with lies about vaccine safety and effectiveness, as long as it’s intended to persuade parents to vaccinate their children.”

On May 4, 2017, FactChecker declared as false, Del Bigtree’s statement, “Vaccines include aluminum and mercury, which are neurotoxins, and vaccines cause encephalopathy.”

FactChecker explained, “Current data show vaccines are safe and do not cause toxicity or encephalopathy.” [However], manufacturer’s inserts reveal that many vaccines contain aluminum and mercury, and cause encephalopathy. – Finally, massive gifts to NPR & PBS buy Gates biased vaccine coverage.

This statement is from public media Highwire.

“I’m (Robert Kennedy) not anti-vaccine. I’m against dangerous, shoddily tested, zero liability vaccines with toxic ingredients. If someone came up with a thoroughly tested vaccine that was completely safe and efficient, one that performed as promised, one that made people healthier rather than sicker, I’d be for it. – Indeed, only an idiot would oppose it.

But under no condition, would I support mandatory vaccination. Government has no right to force citizens to take unwanted medicines or to submit to involuntary medical interventions.”

And he adds:

“Google is a vaccine company. It has a $760 million partnership with Glaxo-the world’s largest vaccine maker and similar deals with Sanofi and Merck to mine your medical information. Googles mother company, Alphabet, has 4 vaccines developers working on flu, and other, vaccines.”

Google and Youtube are removing videos from highly experienced doctors, epidemiologists, biologists and virologists – censuring is also the new normal – but they are promoting a billionaire software developer and a 16 year old climate change “expert” about viruses and vaccines — what does that say for the media, for the governments that support and finance the media.

The Strategy behind shouting Conspiracy – Conspiracy Theorist

There is a lot of psychology behind the strategy – leading people to a state of cognitive dissonance, of believing a narrative they know is a fiction, meaning, you know there is something not quite right, but you don’t’ dare questioning it. Why? Because of being called a conspiracy theorist. And why does that matter? Because it is a demeaning term, robbing the accused of his credibility (well thought-out by the CIA in the 1950s). Somebody stamped as a conspiracy theorist, believing in conspiracy theories – in fake news, makes you a lesser person in your friends’ eyes. So, they may avoid you – and if you stick to your opinion, you may gradually move into isolation. Being isolated, no friends, is fear-provoking. So, better believe the official narrative.

The silver lining around this dark cloud is ever more visible and ever brighter.

Be self-assured. Don’t cave in.

Stick to your own research, to your fact-based opinion, regardless of being insulted as a conspiracy theorist. Stand up for what you believe – and do it with passion. Other people also have doubts, and when they see people defending their believes with passion, they may join you. And so, a critical mass grows. And the conspiracy theory strategy loses rapidly power – and fades away. Fading is already visible throughout European and US cities, where tens of thousands take to the streets, defending their civil and human and Constitutional Rights.

These are encouraging signs. Hope never fades – until “we shall overcome.”

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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.

It is more than a coincidence that as the coronavirus (Covid 19) continues to peak and then peak again, millions of Americans remain In Shelter; thereby out-of-the-loop about the most significant political corruption crisis in American history; especially as on-going revelations born out of Russiagate have now found its way into the Obama Oval Office.

Even prior to the election, Donald Trump offended  Democratic sensibility with his garbled syntax, a less articulate vocabulary mixed with flamboyant expressions especially as compared to the more erudite Barack Obama who started war in four countries living in peace in 2008 and institutionalized a Tuesday morning “kill” list.

Since Trump’s election, the Dems have revealed a sense of desperation as they have proven  a willingness to destroy the American republic. They have played the psy op card to perfection with a coordinated campaign of orchestrated chaos in order to manipulate their own  rank n file to spew hate and division.  Using treachery, deceit and Agent provocateurs, the party establishment have created an unprecedented national political  (and health) crisis that is now threatening to boomerang onto one of their own favorite sons.

We  now know that the crisis was  more deeply conceived and coordinated than  any average American could have ever imagined as the FBI and Department of Justice hierarchy, both controlled by embedded Democratic loyalists, pulled out all the stops to bring down a duly elected President.

Some months after the fact, NBC News, reported that three anonymous Obama officials, confirmed that a mere 48 hours after the November 8^th election, Obama and Trump met for 90 minutes in the Oval Office. To conduct such a high level meeting so soon, as absentee ballots were still being counted in some states, seems highly unusual.

Clearly, there was  more than just a passing interest in meeting with a  necessary timeliness that conveyed a level of immediacy, if not urgency.  Sources confirmed that it was Obama who broached  the subject and  warned Trump against hiring Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as being not ‘suitable’ for such a sensitive post.

Having campaigned on normalizing relations with Russia and President Vladimir Putin, Trump appointed Flynn as Director of National Intelligence on November 16.  Given the timeline, Trump had obviously not accepted Obama’s advice and, in fact, appears to have not given the suggestion any serious consideration.   Flynn, who also believed Putin to be more of a potential ally than China, had been Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from  2012 until  2014. He was fired by Obama for ‘mismanagement’ while publicly disagreeing with Obama policy in the Middle East and had a reputation for being critical of the Iraq War.  Clearly, Obama and Flynn have, as yet, an unexamined history.

Since Obama was obviously aware of Flynn’s stature in the Trump campaign, why did he feel the need to malign his appointment?  Knowing how Obama felt about Trump and about Flynn, it is curious that Obama would not have seen an opportunity for Flynn to do damage to Trump’s foreign policy objectives.  Unless, Flynn might have revealed an iota of a personal or political nature about Obama OR more importantly, at what point in the course of his duties as National Security Adviser,  would Flynn have discovered the truth of the Obama Administration’s scurrilous seditious role to undermine and remove Trump as President?

On January 4, 2017, the FBI’s Washington Field Office issued a “Closing Communication” in deciding to close its investigation of Flynn since no evidence of collusion with Russia had been found.   By late January,  the now disgraced Agent Peter Strzok argued against the dismissal.  The necessary paperwork was never filed and the Flynn file remained open.

On January 5, 2017, a key strategic meeting was held in the Oval Office just prior to the Inauguration with President Barack Obama presiding.  Attendees included CIA Director John Brennan, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Deputy AG Sally Yates, FBI Director Jim Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Vice President Joe Biden.

While it appears that the Dossier and Flynn’s  December 29^th conversation with Russian Ambassador Kislyak was  a main topic of interest, there are areas of disagreement and unknowns.  After discussion, Obama dismissed those staffers not part of the incoming Trump Administration with only Yates and Comey remaining.

A recently declassified House Intel Committee testimony quotes Comey as asserting  that it was Obama who raised the issue of Flynn while Yates, according to declassified testimony to the Mueller investigation, also asserted that Obama raised the Flynn matter during their after-meeting and that, for the first time,  Obama informed her of his concerns about Flynn.

In a recently declassified email dated January 20, 2017, Susan Rice added a different version of the event asserting that she and Biden also remained  for the after-meeting and that it was Comey who raised the issue of Flynn, not the President.

An educated guess might be that  the January 5 meeting provided the stark realization that Flynn represented a devastating threat to the Obama Administration’s disinformation campaign and that his presence must be removed from  the Trump White House Soon after the meeting, allegations against Flynn escalated dramatically with an orchestrated attack to massively disrupt Trump’s ability to govern at all levels.  To advance the narrative, such a campaign required the active participation of every layer of the DNC the Democratic Mockingbird media, the intelligence community and the Silicon Valley establishment.

Examples of that  escalation:

• On January 10^th the Steele Dossier was leaked and published by BuzzFeed claiming Trump’s “deep ties’ with Russia as it acknowledged the document was unverified and contained errors.
• On January 12^th the Washington Post published an article revealing the Flynn/Kislyak conversation and introduced the Russian hack/collusion conspiracy into the American political dialogue.

Both were examples of the level of irresponsible journalism that was to come; each explosive and  inflammatory as they set the stage for a never-ending drum beat of manufactured news for the next three years.

• Also on January 12,  VP Joe Biden requested the unmasking of Gen Flynn joining an unprecedented 29 other Democratic officials who had previously requested Flynn’s unmasking.

Written as a prelude to the January 24^th “ambush” interview and recently declassified were scribbled notes by former counter intelligence head Bill Priestap that questioned the criminal entrapment of  Flynn:

         “what is our goal? ..truth/admission or get him to lie so we can prosecute    him or get him fired?”

Unanswered Questions

• On May 7. 2020, the DOJ dismissed charges against Flynn acknowledging that the FBI had ‘no basis’ to conduct the January 24,  interview and given the FBI’s proposed dismissal of Flynn’s case on January 4, what was Comey’s reasoning and when did he decide to initiate the interview?  Why did assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe assure Flynn there was no need for legal counsel to be present?
• Why did Strzok argue against closing the Flynn file since he conducted the January 24^thinterview and later reported to Comeythat there was no evidence that Flynn was lying?  Did the strategy shift as a result of the January 5^thmeeting without Strzok having been been informed?
• Why did Susan Rice have a distinctly different recollection of who attended the January 5^thafter-meeting?  How could three participants fundamentally disagree about what should be an easily obvious fact of who attended?
• What are the specific details of Obama’s participation during the entire January 5^thmeeting?   Why was there an after-meeting  and who attended? Did Obama initiate or approve any further action with regard to Gen. Flynn, President Trump  or the Trump Administration?
• One last question:  What is the status of the official record of the January 5^thmeeting (the audio and the official minutes)?   When will it be declassified and publicly available?

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Renee Parsons  has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and President of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member in the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC. Renee is a student of the Quantum Field.  She may be reached at [email protected].

On 26 May 2020 social media watched a black man (George Floyd) handcuffed and pinned to the pavement pleading to the 4 white American police officers – ‘I can’t breathe’. Onlookers watching George, whose neck was being pressed by a cop’s knee, pleaded for his release.

Smartphones enabled the entire world to watch a human life cut short live.

George was not the only black man to have been unfairly delivered ‘justice’ and he is unlikely to be the last. What unfolded thereafter across US was a cocktail of maladies coming home to roost in a country that has reigned by its supremacist manipulation of wars, elections, governments, foreign political leaders and even terrorists.

What we now foresee is the unfolding of numerous agendas revolved around forthcoming elections abusing protests on behalf of George. America has become a victim of its own manipulations rolled out on other countries now being unleashed at home. The death has also brought to the focus and exposed the double standards of the UNHRC/international human rights organizations and other righteous mouthpieces who remain mum.

George Floyd’s death is bringing to the surface a corrupt and unfair international systems & players that needs to now be replaced while signaling the fall of the American empire.

US population is 328m of which Blacks make up 42m – less than 13% of population but accounts for 30% of US shooting fatalities. The US justice system is such that 6.7million are in some form of correctional centre with 2.2million in prison. “African Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested; once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted; and once convicted, and they are more likely to experience lengthy prison sentences”

UN/UNHRC/Human Rights Groups SILENT

5 days since the murder of George Floyd and not a single statement or condemnation by international entities that does not blink to issue statements if such occurred in other countries. We can recall how UNHRC and entities went to town over Rathupaswela. In US, over 25 states are protesting with riots and curfew imposed and deafening silence from any of these entities.

Minneapolis police station itself has been set ablaze. Vandalism, anarchy, windows of cars & shops broken, looting (while America’s rich got $434b richer from corona handouts), are just some of the horrifying footage being relayed across the world. In Chicago there is footage of cops being dragged through the streets. St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City has graffiti all over it and police cars have been set on fire in Philadelphia. Nashvilles historic court house & city hall has been set on fire. Protestors have even approached White House. The white nations called the Third World as uncivilized!

You can be sure that these entities would be writing a different narrative if what was happening in US was happening in a third world country. Such crass bias and hypocrisy is now exposed.

Yet the silence of the UN/HR groups have sealed their bias and their partiality. Media that has been hounding Sri Lanka twisting and turning every incident to denigrate the majority have little to say except to sensationalize and turn the event into political propaganda for their paymasters. It was social media and alternative media that showed the world the injustice to George proving that mainstream media (both print and electronic) are fast losing their sheen. The day of force-feeding news and brainwashing people by editors and columnists-for-life is waning and their shelf life is now virtually over.

While the oft unspoken racism and segregation that existed institutionally and was said to have been resolved, continues still in the US. America’s lack of compassion for humanity except to lavish so in words was seen in its corona record sheet. Always wanting to be the first in all, US ironically has grabbed gold medal for corona deaths now exceeding 100,000 while equally competitive rich EU nations hold the top 10 slots for most corona deaths. Has the curse fallen upon them or is it mere incompetence coming to light and showing that these rich countries who consider everything as a commodity with a price tag cannot look after their own or will not think twice to even grade who they care for, first. Half of all corona fatalities in Europe have been the old and aged in nursing homes in a Western world where to be old is now regarded as a liability for the political and economic system and they are not needed anymore. Human rights have gone to the dogs today.

Those holding mantle as human rights commissioners by their silence have shown they are simply mouthpieces of euro-centric white supremacist ideology. Who wants a world system that hands justice in different formats depending on the victims colour, race, religion – is what ICC is doing against Africa & how UNHRC has violated its own mandate against Sri Lanka creating legally questionable precedents!

We need a new UN located outside the West where the Third World is still waiting accountability and reparations for colonial crimes. Third World must have a larger say as they continue to suffer via neocolonial crimes by the same colonial violators!

Many are manipulating the situation unfolding in US. It is America’s turn to experience the regime change and manipulations America has been masters of. The masters at regime change and false flags are even experiencing busloads of protestors being transported to create mayhem. All that the US funds in other countries is now being enacted back home!

The country that has been delivering democracy, human rights, rule of law, law & order, justice for minorities, anti-racism, ant-discrimination blah blah blah to the world is now aflame because US is guilty of the very acts US accuses other countries of committing!

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Is this US democracy!

Who will deliver democracy to US now?

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All images in this article are from the author

“This is fuxxing lunacy — conspiratorial madness of the worst kind — but it’s delivered by a Serious Obama Official and a Respected Mainstream Newscaster so it’s all fine,” Intercept journalist Glenn Greenwald fired off in response to a CNN segment blaming “foreign interference” for the still raging George Floyd protests and riots. 

“This is Infowars-level junk. Should Twitter put a ‘False’ label on this? Or maybe a hammer and sickle emoji?” he added. Indeed after three years of national Russiagate obsession was promptly memory-holed given it died a fiery death with the great nothing-burger that was the Mueller investigation, Obama’s former National Security Advisor and later ambassador to the UN Susan Rice appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer to blame it all on the… you guessed it: Russians!

Absolutely Incredible: Obama's Former NSA Susan Rice on CNN talking about the protests and domestic strife

"This is right out of the Russian playbook" pic.twitter.com/luXiPV0bOq

— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) May 31, 2020

“I’m not reading the intelligence today, or these days — but based on my experience, this is right out of the Russian playbook,” Rice said in the interview.

“But we cannot allow the extremists, the foreign actors, to distract from the real problems we have in this country that are longstanding, centuries old, and need to be addressed responsibly.”

Predictably and without asking for a shred of evidence, Wolf Blitzer responded: “you’re absolutely right on the foreign interference.” He further asked her on whether the Kremlin might be trying to “embarrass” the US by “promoting the racial divide in our country.”

“Well we see it all the time, we’ve seen it for years, including on social media where they take any divisive, painful issue… and they play on both sides,” Rice responded, echoing similar prior accusations that somehow supposed ‘Russian intelligence’ putting out anti-Hillary memes on Facebook in 2016 secured Trump the election.

Imagine how hard Americans would laugh if Russian officials and pundits blamed American spies for stoking ethnic tensions in the Caucasus. That's how dumb this stuff looks to the world outside America. https://t.co/6HhOyicdAU

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) June 1, 2020

“I would not be surprised to learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides on social media… [or] that they’re funding it in some way, shape, or form,” Rice added.

Also on Sunday current national-security adviser Robert O’Brien actually floated similar theories, naming China, Iran, and even Zimbabwe, as well as “Russian activists” as seeking to exploit unrest in US cities.

Pressed by @GStephanopoulos on evidence that foreign adversaries are exploiting U.S. unrest, O’Brien points to social media activity from China “coming straight from the government.”

He also names Zimbabwe, Iran and says “there may be Russian activists.” https://t.co/8NuFvYRECl pic.twitter.com/nApMWEuMfs

— ABC News (@ABC) May 31, 2020

In that interview O’Brien was at least pressed for evidence, which predictably he didn’t give, only saying there’s been “trolling by foreign adversaries”.

He pointed to China’s Foreign Ministry mocking US authorities for hypocritically lecturing Beijing on the Hong Kong issue and “freedom” and “democracy”.

As for Rice’s grand conspiracy theories that it’s all about those ever-present ‘pesky Ruskies’ which seem to “show up” for sinister ‘interference’ purposes anytime something “bad” happens in America, it must be recalled that she actually did help destroy an entire country, and had a very direct hand in it.

She was of course among the Obama administration’s chief Libya war architects, pushing hard for military intervention to ultimately overthrow Gaddafi in 2011, resulting in what is still a failed state and renewed major civil war.

In an Olympic level feat of pretzel-twisting, hoax hustler Rice manages to shoehorn the Russians into the narrative yet again! #ObamaGateLizard https://t.co/bEcj0d5Xly

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) May 31, 2020

Some activists on social media accused Rice herself of attempting to hijack and deflate the protest momentum in saying foreigners were behind it:

She's attempting to hollow out the uprising, delegitimize it. I wish these people had even the passing ability to do some introspection. They sound insane.

— #MedicareForAll 🌹 #GreenNewDeal 🌻 (@Real_AnnaBird) May 31, 2020

Russia officially responded to Rice’s claims. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday when asked about the CNN interview:

“We have never interfered in international affairs and we don’t intend to interfere now.”

“Any insinuations that have been mentioned are absolutely wrong, erroneous, and, as far as we understand, such insinuations can in no way reflect Washington’s official position,” said Peskov.

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After a night of heavy-handed riot police response to pockets of youthful protestors in its gentrified downtown, Raleigh mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin announced an absolute curfew on Monday, June 1, 2020, starting at 8:00 pm. Under the curfew, no one is permitted to leave their home or be on the streets for any reason other than a medical emergency throughout the city limits, which stretch over a 150  mile area.

The curfew stands in stark contrast to the more measured response to Covid-19 by the city, which is experiencing a marked spike in infection and deaths after the state of North Carolina’s “Phase 2” reopening last week and acquiescence to the small ReOpenNC movement. ReOpenNC, composed of no more than a handful of people, decried the economic impact on business owners due to the state’s shutdown of non-essential services because of the virus, citing the Constitution and the Second Amendment.

Neither Baldwin nor Governor Roy Cooper, both Democrats, emerged to meet protestors on Sunday night, even though much of the protest was situated directly in front of the governor’s mansion. But Baldwin spoke directly to news outlets during the protest, saying she was “heart-broken” over smashed storefront windows and damage to businesses in the city’s downtown as she vowed to instill a curfew the following morning.

Image on the right: Mary-Ann Baldwin (Source: Twitter)

Raleigh, the State of North Carolina’s capital, has recently seen unprecedented development in its downtown. An area that only a few years ago was composed of government buildings, underused low-rise offices and former warehouses is now packed with gleaming glass towers housing the headquarters of businesses like computer company Redhat, as well as luxury condominiums with upscale shops and restaurants to serve residents on their ground floors. Several construction workers lost their lives in 2015 at the start of the building boom when the mast climber they were on peeled off of the slick glass sides of 12-story Charter Square.

Though downtown Raleigh was all but deserted at night before the boom, it is the ancestral home of historic African American neighborhoods, Shaw University, the nation’s first HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), founded in 1865, and Saint Augustine’s University, on whose grounds stood the former Saint Agnes Hospital, in whose maternity ward African American babies were born until 1960. Local artist Pinkie Strother created a four-story diorama to commemorate Saint Agnes that she donated to the university.

Hargett Street’s new bars and restaurants replaced “Black Main Street” where African American professionals like doctors and lawyers had their offices. Many of the small wooden “shotgun” style houses immediately to the east of downtown have been razed, creating a gap between predominantly African American Southeast Raleigh and downtown.

After peaceful protests in front of the Governor’s Mansion and the State Courthouse all day Sunday, small groups of protestors squirmished with phalanxes of armoured riot police launching tear gas canisters throughout the night. Many of the new glass storefronts lining downtown Raleigh were smashed and small fires were set in several public trash cans.

But one young woman today explained that she came out to the streets Monday for her young child’s sake and his future in a country where he will be judged by his ethnicity.  Saying how she will soon have to teach him how to behave in the event of a police interaction, such as “keep your hands on the dashboard, do not make any sudden movements,” she went on to address the police directly: “My son is not your enemy. I teach my son to be respectful…. Despite everything good about my child, he’s a black man and that’s all they see.”

House Speaker Tim Moore complained that the police response to Sunday night’s unrest was too subdued. “There needs to be a very clear message that lawlessness will not be permitted,” and that Governor Cooper needs to do “a better job.”

But Saige Martin of the Raleigh City Council called for an investigation into police actions during Sunday night’s protests. He recalled how ReOpenNC, a small group objecting to Covid-19 restrictions on movement and business operations, was able to parade around downtown Raleigh carrying machine guns and rocket launchers without police involvement. The governor quickly met with ReOpenNC leader Adam Smith and consequently relaxed the coronavirus restrictions throughout the state.

“We can clean up and repair broken windows, restore lost inventory, but we can never restore the lives taken from us by police violence,” he said.

Martin told reports “right-wing groups were likely present in Raleigh last night” with the intent to “discredit the labor of black organizations and the Black Lives Matter movement.” Speaking by phone to television station WRAL, the Reverend William Barber III concurred, saying,

“A lot of the so-called violence is not the majority, and much of it is infiltration, people trying to discredit the movement.”

But when veteran anchorman David Crabtree asked Barber to disavow the violence, Barber was forthright in his response.

“Segregationists said that Dr Martin Luther King was not being peaceful. People said Moral Monday [the movement Barber now leads] was not peaceful. I was arrested and charged with a crime when I said North Carolinians should be provided with healthcare. Coretta Scott King said that denying healthcare is a form of violence. We don’t take on the violence, we challenge it.”

As Crabtree cut in, Barber concluded,

“When you see the police who is supposed to be a protector of the state and has a badge on with our name on it, it becomes a tipping point. Yes, it’s about George Floyd, but it goes much, much deeper.”

Minutes before the curfew is set to begin, hundreds of protestors have been packed together on the small grassy square around the old State Capitol building at the head of Fayetteville Street. Unable to practice social distancing, many are trying to keep their faces covered with various types of masks to protect themselves from Covid-19. Cars passing along East Morgan Street are honking their support as they continuously circle around the square, waving and calling out from their rolled down windows to compatriots who will soon be subject to arrest. On the other side of the square, about a hundred protestors have sat down silently in the street in front of the governor’s mansion, bracing for what is to come.

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Featured image: George Floyd Mattered graffiti along 38th St in Minneapolis on Wednesday, after the death of George Floyd on Monday night in Minneapolis, Minnesota (Source: Flickr)

Since the Covid-19 shutdown began, the media has framed it as a shutdown of the economy, making resistance to it appear to be about putting profit over life. This is not an accurate description of the shutdown. The shutdown policy is currently disrupting or transforming all of our major social institutions: government, education, health, economics, religion and family. These institutions form the basis of our society, as they provide for our individual and collective needs. Yet each is undergoing massive changes:

1. Government: the disruption of elections from the national to the local level.

2. Education: the disruption of the socialization and education of all of our children; and the preparation of our young adults for professional life.

3. Health: the disruption of ordinary health services from vision, dentistry, and non-Covid needs (cancer, heart disease, diabetes), to the public health oversight of domestic violence and child abuse.

4. Economics: the disruption of the basic processes of working and earning a living.

5. Religion: the disruption of the religious congregations that provide meaning, community and social support to millions.

6. Family: the disruption of parents’ abilities to support their families, and to rely on public schools to educate and care for their children while they do so.

There is not a single social institution that has been left intact by those who are now determining our public policies. At what point do these disruptions, along with the incessant calls for a “new normal,” become a subversion of the institutions we have built and upon which we rely? All this is happening without public discussion, much less consensus.

It is time to stop focusing on the official distraction of minutiae: masks, hand washing and six feet apart, and start seeing how the disruption of all major social institutions is impacting the lives of everyone in America. We came together as a nation to “flatten the curve,” but by now it is clear that, much like the Iraq War, there is no exit strategy. There will be no vaccine for this coronavirus anymore than there is for the common cold, another type of coronavirus. All such viruses mutate constantly. Humans will never be virus free. Death is, and always has been, a tragic part of human life. We have been made fearful of our own mortality.

Will we benefit as a society, by allowing the subversion of our social institutions in the name of fighting something with which we have always lived? What will be the outcome? Whose voices are determining this new normal? Epidemiologists have neither been elected, nor are they equipped to evaluate the complex social, psychological and political ramifications of the public policies with which they are being entrusted.

Science has taught us a great deal, but where are the national voices of psychologists describing the effects of long term stress as they see depression rise and an epidemic of suicides; of social workers commenting on increases in domestic and child abuse now going unreported and uninvestigated; of cardiologists informing about the dangers of sedentary isolation and unhealthy weight gain with the advocacy of binging on Netflix? Where are the pediatricians studying the brain altering effects of excessive screen time for young children or the gerontologists explaining the immunological effects of isolation on the otherwise healthy elderly? Why is epidemiology the only science weighing in on the health of our nation?

As an educator, I ask how we can utterly dismiss the education of our youth so easily. “Distance Learning” is an oxymoron for all except the most mature of young adults. We know that children who fall behind in skills by third grade have higher chances of dropping out of school and ending up in the prison pipeline. The United States already suffers from vast levels of inequality. Education is understood to be the only way out of poverty. I question whether epidemiologists should be allowed to dismiss the entire base of knowledge and laws put in place to safeguard the education of the next generation.

Why is the current disintegration of all social institutions being substituted for the judicious isolation and care of the sick? Who benefits from such large scale disruption of our entire society? The recent protests and riots have called to mind the critical year of 1968 in America and across the world. How many of us recall the 1968 pandemic that killed 100,000 Americans and one million people world wide? I can hear readers saying, “But we’ve already had 100,000 Americans die! This is worse!” I ask them to bear in mind the U.S. population in 1968 was a little over 200 million, as opposed to the current 330 million. When we reach 166,000 deaths we will have about the same per capita death rate in the US as the pandemic of 1968. Is our handling of this pandemic better? Will we be stronger when we emerge?

We have now seen massive gatherings of people across the United States and the world, breaking rules of distancing, isolation and masks. If we do not see  equally massive increases in our hospitals within two weeks, will it affect the official narrative of our epidemiologists? Or will we be asked to continue sacrificing society as we know it?

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Dr. Lisa Mccusker is an educator living in San Francisco, California. She is a graduate of the University of Iowa (1982), and the University of California at Berkeley (MA, 1985 and Ph.D, 1992). She is a veteran high school teacher of Ethnic Studies, US Government and Economics. She also teaches US History and World History to non-English speakers at the high school level.

Featured image is from Morning Star

It is disturbing to hear people who should know better describe the George Floyd riots as anarchism. The riots are not anarchistic, they are nihilistic. The people engaged in looting, arson, and widespread assault have zero comprehension of political philosophy.  

There are, of course, a whole lot of people demonstrating who are not involved in crime and violence. However, these are the dupes, the idealists routinely exploited by the state and its propaganda media. 

Rampaging “anarchists”—many undoubtedly agent provocateurs—are not interested in justice, fairness, nonviolence, and peaceful dialogue. They are providing a pretext to usher in a fascist police state. 

The George Floyd riots are problem-reaction-solution exemplified. After Ronald Reagan initiated his “zero tolerance” drug war, the Pentagon began the process of converting local police departments into “thin blue line” paramilitary gangs paid for by know-nothing taxpayers. 

Black-clad militarized American cops—many veterans of the illegal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria—view citizens as the enemy. This is drilled into them at the academy and every day on the job. It is a gang mentality. 

The propaganda media focus exclusively on the murder of blacks. However, if we consider the statistics, there are numerous victims of police overreaction and sadism who are white. This fact, however, does not serve the agenda, which is the destruction of civil society through irrational political polarization, racism, tribalism, and escalating violence. 

This state of affairs will be exploited to call for a clampdown on political dissent. COVID “contact tracing” is now being used to track down activists and those associated with them. Facial recognition is used to find targeted individuals in crowds. From the start, I said this supposed public safety gimmick would be used to isolate and destroy peaceful activism. 

Now that police are joining protesters, the state will turn up the heat. I believe we can expect a false flag event to justify martial law, primarily imposed in iron-fist fashion in the larger urban areas of America. In order to dovetail with rhetoric pushed out by the media elite, the false flag will be pinned on “white nationalists” and other “extremists” now pigeon-holed by the FBI as far worse than ISIS or al-Qaeda. 

COVID was the first act. It demonstrated that millions of Americans will follow the authoritarian orders of their “representatives” and elected officials. COVID was in part a test run to see how far citizens can be pushed before they react. 

The George Floyd riots represent act two of the COVID-spawned lockdowns. 24/7 propaganda media coverage of burning cities and looting of big box stores around the nation have frightened average Americans and pushed a bad seasonal flu to the sidelines. 

If the chaos continues, there will be citizen demands for law and order. Either by design or ineptitude, local law enforcement has stood down during the riots, failing to protect lives and property. Officials will argue that the ongoing destruction and violence can only be contained by the military. So serious is the threat, local law enforcement is said to be overwhelmed. 

The state has planned this eventuality for decades. After the race riots of the late 1960s, the government established the ADEX list of “subversives,” that is to say activists opposed to the state while simultaneously operating the FBI’s COINTELPRO neutralization campaign against civil rights and antiwar activists. 

The ADEX list is the tiny ancestor of today’s Main Core, a database containing personal and financial data on more than a million people. REX-84, Garden Plot, Lantern Spike, and other military operations were put into place to round up activists and enemies of the state, as former congressman Jack Brooks pointed out during the Iran-Contra hearings. 

It is not clear what the state will do next as part of its latest and greatest psychological operation against the American people. However, as the COVID “plandemic” demonstrated,  all that is needed to keep the plebs in line is fear and division. 

Divide et impera—divide and conquer—has been used for centuries by various authoritarian states, long before Niccolò Machiavelli penned his The Art of War. 

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

Featured image: George Floyd protests in Washington DC, Lafayette Square. (Photo by Rosa Pineda/Wikimedia Commons)

“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you—pull your beard, flick your face—to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you.”—John Lennon

Brace yourselves.

There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by political theater and public spectacle that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware.

Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.

What is unfolding before us is not a revolution.

The looting, the burning, the rioting, the violence: this is an anti-revolution.

A man stands on a burned out car on Thursday morning as fires burn behind him in the Lake St area of Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Lorie Shaull from St Paul, United States via Wikimedia Commons)

The protesters are playing right into the government’s hands, because the powers-that-be want this. They want an excuse to lockdown the nation and throw the switch to all-out martial law. They want a reason to make the police state stronger.

It’s happening faster than we can keep up.

The Justice Department is deploying federal prison riot teams to various cities. More than half of the nation’s governors are calling on the National Guard to quell civil unrest. Growing numbers of cities, having just barely emerged from a coronavirus lockdown, are once again being locked down, this time in response to the growing upheaval.

This is how it begins.

It’s that dystopian 2030 Pentagon training video all over again, which anticipates the need for the government to institute martial law (use armed forces to solve domestic political and social problems) in order to navigate a world 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.

We’re way ahead of schedule.

The architects of the police state have us exactly where they want us: under their stamping boot, gasping for breath, desperate for freedom, grappling for some semblance of a future that does not resemble the totalitarian prison being erected around us.

This way lies certain tyranny.

For just one fleeting moment, “we the people” seemed united in our outrage over this latest killing of an unarmed man by a cop hyped up on his own authority and the power of his uniform.

That unity didn’t last.

Indeed, it didn’t take long—no surprise there—for us to quickly become divided again, polarized by the misguided fury and senseless violence of mobs taking to the streets, reeking of madness and mayhem.

Deliberately or not, the rioters have directed our attention away from the government’s crimes and onto their own.

This is a distraction.

Don’t allow yourself to be so distracted.

Let’s not lose sight of what started all of this in the first place: the U.S. government.

More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government constitutes a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.

Case in point: George Floyd died at the hands of the American police state.

The callous, cold-blooded murder of the unarmed, 46-year-old black man by police is nothing new: for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, police knelt on Floyd’s neck while the man pleaded for his life, struggled to breathe, cried out for his dead mother, and finally passed out and died.

Floyd is yet another victim of a broken system of policing that has placed “we the people” at the mercy of militarized cops who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”

Daily, Americans are being shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, challenge an order or just exist.

I’m talking about the growing numbers of unarmed people are who being shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

Killed by police for standing in a “shooting stance.” Killed for holding a cell phone. Killed for holding a baseball bat. Killed for opening the front door. Killed for being a child in a car pursued by police. Killed for approaching police while holding a metal spoon. Killed for running in an aggressive manner while holding a tree branch. Killed for crawling around naked. Killed for hunching over in a defensive posture. Killed because a police officer accidentally fired his gun instead of his taser. Killed for wearing dark pants and a basketball jersey. Killed for reaching for his license and registration during a traffic stop. Killed for driving while deaf. Killed for being homeless. Killed for brandishing a shoehorn. Killed for peeing outdoors. Killed for having his car break down on the road. Killed for holding a garden hose.

Now you can make all kinds of excuses to justify these shootings, and in fact that’s exactly what you’ll hear from politicians, police unions, law enforcement officials and individuals who are more than happy to march in lockstep with the police. However, as these incidents make clear, the only truly compliant, submissive and obedient citizen in a police state is a dead one.

Sad, isn’t it, how quickly we have gone from a nation of laws—where the least among us had just as much right to be treated with dignity and respect as the next person (in principle, at least)—to a nation of law enforcers (revenue collectors with weapons) who treat us all like suspects and criminals?

This is not how you keep the peace.

This is not justice. This is not even law and order.

This is certainly not freedom. This is the illusion of freedom.

Unfortunately, we are now being ruled by a government of psychopaths, scoundrels, spies, thugs, thieves, gangsters, ruffians, rapists, extortionists, bounty hunters, battle-ready warriors and cold-blooded killers who communicate using a language of force and oppression.

The facts speak for themselves.

We’re being ravaged by a government of ruffians, rapists and killers. It’s not just the police shootings of unarmed citizens that are worrisome. It’s the SWAT team raids gone wrong that are leaving innocent citizens wounded, children terrorized and family pets killed. It’s the roadside strip searches—in some cases, cavity searches of men and women alike carried out in full view of the public—in pursuit of drugs that are never found. It’s the potentially lethal—and unwarranted—use of so-called “nonlethal” weapons such as tasers on children for “mouthing off to a police officer. For trying to run from the principal’s office. For, at the age of 12, getting into a fight with another girl.”

We’re being held at gunpoint by a government of soldiers—a standing army. While Americans are being made to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to exercise their Second Amendment right to own a gun, the government is arming its own civilian employees to the hilt with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorizing them to make arrests, and training them in military tactics. Among the agencies being supplied with night-vision equipment, body armor, hollow-point bullets, shotguns, drones, assault rifles and LP gas cannons are the Smithsonian, U.S. Mint, Health and Human Services, IRS, FDA, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and an assortment of public universities. There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government civilians armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines. That doesn’t even begin to touch on the government’s arsenal, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, and the speed with which the nation could be locked down under martial law depending on the circumstances. Clearly, the government is preparing for war—and a civil war, at that—and “we the people” are the perceived enemy.

We’re being taken advantage of by a government of scoundrels, idiots and cowards. American satirist H.L. Mencken calculated that “Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.” By and large, Americans seem to agree. When you’ve got government representatives who spend a large chunk of their work hours fundraising, being feted by lobbyists, shuffling through a lucrative revolving door between public service and lobbying, and making themselves available to anyone with enough money to secure access to a congressional office, you’re in the clutches of a corrupt oligarchy. Mind you, these same elected officials rarely read the legislation they’re enacting, nor do they seem capable of enacting much legislation that actually helps rather than hinders the plight of the American citizen.

We’re being locked up by a government of greedy jailers. We have become a carceral state, spending three times more on our prisons than on our schools and imprisoning close to a quarter of the world’s prisoners, despite the fact that crime is at an all-time low and the U.S. makes up only 5% of the world’s population. The rise of overcriminalization and profit-driven private prisons provides even greater incentives for locking up American citizens for such non-violent “crimes” as having an overgrown lawn.  As the Boston Review points out, “America’s contemporary system of policing, courts, imprisonment, and parole … makes money through asset forfeiture, lucrative public contracts from private service providers, and by directly extracting revenue and unpaid labor from populations of color and the poor. In states and municipalities throughout the country, the criminal justice system defrays costs by forcing prisoners and their families to pay for punishment. It also allows private service providers to charge outrageous fees for everyday needs such as telephone calls. As a result people facing even minor criminal charges can easily find themselves trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle of debt, criminalization, and incarceration.”

We’re being spied on by a government of Peeping Toms. The government, aided by its corporate allies, is watching everything you do, reading everything you write, listening to everything you say, and monitoring everything you spend. Omnipresent surveillance is paving the way for government programs that profile citizens, document their behavior and attempt to predict what they might do in the future, whether it’s what they might buy, what politician they might support, or what kinds of crimes they might commit. The impact of this far-reaching surveillance, according to Psychology Today, is “reduced trust, increased conformity, and even diminished civic participation.” As technology analyst Jillian C. York concludes, “Mass surveillance without due process—whether undertaken by the government of Bahrain, Russia, the US, or anywhere in between—threatens to stifle and smother that dissent, leaving in its wake a populace cowed by fear.”

We’re being forced to surrender our freedoms—and those of our children—to a government of extortionists, money launderers and professional pirates. The American people have been repeatedly sold a bill of goods about how the government needs more money, more expansive powers, and more secrecy (secret courts, secret budgets, secret military campaigns, secret surveillance) in order to keep us safe. Under the guise of fighting its wars on terror, drugs, domestic extremism, pandemics and civil unrest, the government has spent billions in taxpayer dollars on endless wars that have sown the seeds of blowback, surveillance programs that have subjected all Americans to a surveillance society, and militarized police that have turned communities into warzones.

We’re being robbed blind by a government of thieves. Americans no longer have any real protection against government agents empowered to seize private property at will. For instance, police agencies under the guise of asset forfeiture laws are taking property based on little more than a suspicion of criminal activity.

And we’re being forced to live in a perpetual state of emergency. From 9/11 through the COVID-19 lockdowns and now the threat of martial law in the face of growing civil unrest, we have witnessed the rise of an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security.

Whatever else it may be—a danger, a menace, a threat—the U.S. government is certainly not looking out for our best interests, nor is it in any way a friend to freedom.

When the government views itself as superior to the citizenry, when it no longer operates for the benefit of the people, when the people are no longer able to peacefully reform their government, when government officials cease to act like public servants, when elected officials no longer represent the will of the people, when the government routinely violates the rights of the people and perpetrates more violence against the citizenry than the criminal class, when government spending is unaccountable and unaccounted for, when the judiciary act as courts of order rather than justice, and when the government is no longer bound by the laws of the Constitution, then you no longer have a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

What we have is a government of wolves.

Our backs are against the proverbial wall.

The government and its cohorts have conspired to ensure that the only real recourse the American people have to express their displeasure with the government is through voting, which is no real recourse at all.

The penalties for civil disobedience, whistleblowing and rebellion are severe. If you refuse to pay taxes for government programs you believe to be immoral or illegal, you will go to jail. If you attempt to overthrow the government—or any agency thereof—because you believe it has overstepped its reach, you will go to jail. If you attempt to blow the whistle on government misconduct, there’s a pretty good chance you will go to jail.

For too long, the American people have obeyed the government’s dictates, no matter now extreme. We have paid its taxes, penalties and fines, no matter how outrageous. We have tolerated its indignities, insults and abuses, no matter how egregious. We have turned a blind eye to its indiscretions and incompetence, no matter how imprudent. We have held our silence in the face of its lawlessness, licentiousness and corruption, no matter how illicit.

We have suffered.

How long we will continue to suffer depends on how much we’re willing to give up for the sake of freedom.

America’s founders provided us with a very specific explanation about the purpose of government and a roadmap for what to do when the government abuses its authority, ignores our objections, and establishes itself as a tyrant.

We must choose between peaceful slavery (in other words, maintaining the status quo in servitude to the police state) and dangerous freedom. That will mean carving out a path in which we begin to take ownership of our government, starting at the local level, challenging the status quo, and raising hell—nonviolently—whenever a government official steps out of line.

We can no longer maintain the illusion of freedom.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are at our most vulnerable right now.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

Through its failed foreign policy, the US administration has unwittingly and unwillingly become the greatest supporter of the “Axis of the Resistance” led by Iran. Along with Israel, Washington is, in fact, globally encouraging countries to rebel against its dominance. Israel effectively contributed to the creation of Hezbollah by invading Lebanon in 1982. The US contributed to the creation of Hashd al-Shaabi in 2014 when it refused to help Iraq to defeat ISIS. Both Israel and the US fostered the creation of Syrian resistance groups and pushed President Bashar al-Assad to join the “Axis of the Resistance” by their efforts to create a failed state in the Levant. And, when President Donald Trump offered the Syrian occupied Golan Heights, Jerusalem and the West Bank to Israel, he left no alternative to the Palestinians but to join Iran and become fully dedicated to the “Axis of the Resistance”. Is a third intifada on its way?

Notwithstanding the presence of many senior experts within the US administration, along with numerous strategic studies centres and think-tanks, Washington demonstrates again and again its limited knowledge of Middle Eastern dynamics and local culture. The devastating effect of US foreign policy is uniting many countries and groups in the Middle East under Iran’s umbrella to fight back against US-Israel decisions and operations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said on many occasions that he was the “consigliere” of President Donald Trump in violating international laws and already agreed understandings. Netanyahu advised Trump to illegally revoke the Iran Nuclear deal (known as the JCPOA), to allow Israeli annexation of the Syrian occupied Golan Heights, to recognise Jerusalem as the “only capital of Israel”, to assassinate Iranian Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani- and, most recently, to allow Israel’s “robbery of the century” (the annexation of the West Bank).

To please the powerful Israeli lobby in the US, gaining the votes of American-Israeli Jews, Trump has violated all international laws, offering what was not his to Israel. Netanyahu’s aim is to boost his shaky image domestically: he is accused of corruption and faces jail if he loses his position as Prime Minister. The Israeli PM doesn’t care about the safety of the Israelis and the reactions of Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians, who are today more united than ever regarding their common enemy (Israel) but still far from being united among themselves.

President Mahmoud Abbas is suspending all forms of collaboration with the Americans and the Israelis, particularly on the most sensitive security issues shared with the CIA. Abbas refused to talk to Trump over the phone because the US is no longer considered any kind of partner for peace. This step, even though late, could point the way towards a third intifada, bringing closer the day Israel will move forward in confiscating more Palestinian territory in the West Bank and expelling more Palestinians towards Gaza, Jordan or to the West. This date is not very far away, and likely will come this summer. The Palestinian authority in the West Bank promised to oppress any (Palestinian) civilian uprising even if collaboration with the Israelis has been suspended. But for how long President Abbas can hold back the natural reaction of the people to the Israeli unlawful?

Even the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) is now aware that Israel understands only the language of force: it has no intention of giving any state to the Palestinians. In fact, Israel never planned to leave any piece of land to the Palestinians and was preparing a bridge between the West Bank and Gaza to transfer the inhabitants of the West Bank to Gaza: a second Nakba. No doubt Israel wants to annex the West Bank but also needs to get rid of the Palestinians living there.

The Israeli soft seizure of further Palestinian territory aims to create a new Middle Eastern generation, Christian and Muslims, unconcerned about the right of return of the Palestinians (UNSC resolution 194) and the right to regain their ancestors’ territories usurped in 1948. For the Palestinians, it is important to keep history alive in the memories of all generations because there are millions of Palestinians who live as refugees, without identity, in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East. The West has been quick to provide western passports for Palestinian refugees to encourage the new generation to forget about Palestine and their right to return. This is how Trump-Netanyahu supports the Iranian-led “Axis of the resistance” and its project of rebelling against the US hegemony in the Middle East.

When confronted with the fact of their confiscation of Palestinian territories, Israelis twist their arguments according to the circumstances. Ben-Gurion, the father of the Haganah and the first Prime Minister of Israel, claimed to have taken the land after being attacked by the Arab nations. Israel built its strength with the help of the first terrorist organisation, the Irgun (1937-1948) which committed in 1946 the first “act of Terror” against the King David Hotel killing 90 people, and the 1948 Deir Yassin Massacre killing 107 Palestinian Arabs. Indeed, Irgun terrorist acts are well condemned and documented in counter-terrorism studies as “rewarded terrorism that works” because it (terrorism) led to the creation of a state over the dead bodies of the Palestinians and on the territories of their descendants.

In December 1947, the Haganah broke into Balad al-Sheikh (Tall Ghanan) and slaughtered 600 civilians. The raiding unit’s orders were to ‘kill maximum adult males’, said Benny Morris, an Israeli professor of history at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Most bodies were found in their homes. Four months later, the Haganah attacked Deir Yassin, destroyed Arab homes, and killed around 360 Palestinians, mainly the elderly, women and children. Historian Ilan Pappe has documented that Deir Yassin was but one of many Palestinian villages destroyed in this way.

One month later, in January 1948, the village of Abu Shusha was attacked by the Haganah who killed 30 to 70 Palestinians. Three months later, in May, Iskandaron brigade 33 attacked Tantoura village killing 90 people who were buried in a common mass grave which is today a parking place south of Haifa. Abu Shusha’s remaining inhabitants were expelled. In the same month of May, the Israeli Giv’ati 51^st Battalion captured Sawafir al Sharqiya and Sawafir al Gharbiyya. Benny Morris writes that the Israelis had one order: “To expel the enemy from the villages…to clean the front line… to conquer the villages, to cleanse them of inhabitants- women and children should also be expelled- take several prisoners and burn the greatest possible number of houses”.

The Negev Brigade units raided al Muharraqa and Kaufakha, south of Burayr expelling their inhabitants. Beit Tima, north of Burayr was attacked by the Negev Brigade’s 7^th Battalion killing 20 Arabs. The Negev Brigade attacked Huj, seven kilometres south of Burayr even though the inhabitants were considered friendly and hid the Haganah men from the British dragnet. The same Haganah expelled the inhabitants, looted and then blew up the houses. Everywhere the orders were to “kill, expel those who remain alive and demolish all houses”. The same orders are given even today; Israel’s ethnic cleansing has never ceased.

After the war, In October 1953, Ariel Sharon attacked the village of Qibyah and blew up all houses while the inhabitants were hiding inside, killing between 56 and 69 people. In 1956 Israel attacked Qalqiliya killing 70 people. In the month of October of the same year, Israel committed a massacre of Kafar Qassem in Toul Qarm killing 49 Palestinians. In November of the same year, Khan Younes was attacked south of Gaza were 250 Palestinians were killed. Six days later, the second wave of attack killed 275 Palestinians. In 1990, Israeli soldiers opened fire inside the Grand Mosque of Jerusalem killing 21 civilians. In February 1994, Baruch Goldstein hid behind the column of the Sanctuary of Abraham (al-Haram al-Ebrahimi) and killed 29 (additional 9 civilians were killed by the Israeli army who wrongly believed Jews were under attack) and wounded 28 among those who came to pray before the sun rises. Goldstein is now commemorated in Israel where his grave is now a shrine for pilgrimage.

Every Israeli action and attack carried out aimed to persuade the Palestinians to abandon their territories and leave. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians escaped for fear of being exterminated by the Israelis, allowing the persecutors to locate Jews who came to Palestine from all over the world to steal the Palestinians homes and build new houses over Palestinian owned lands.

The exodus of the Palestinians doesn’t end here: President Trump gave Israel what he doesn’t own, and the world’s media dare not write the truth for fear of losing their jobs or being harshly attacked by the well-organised and apparently all-powerful Israeli lobbies around the world. This is only because the Palestinians in the West Bank agreed to lay down their weapons and gave up armed resistance against the occupation forces. The Israelis, who had been so mercilessly persecuted and killed by the Europeans during World War II, exacted similar crimes against the Palestinians, elderly, women and children, under the “blind” eyes of the apparently impotent international community.

Dozens of United Nations Resolutions were pronounced condemning Israeli acts in Palestine but to no avail. These are resolutions 57, 59, 101, 194, 237, 248, 265, 271, 317, 468, 469, 592, 605, 607, 608, 636, 641, 672, 673, 681, 694, 726, 799, 3414, 3516 and many more related to Palestine pronounced between 1947 and 2016, all rebuffed by Israel. The United Nations condemned the

“persistent violation of the Geneva convention, the Israeli policies and practices, the annexing of parts of the occupied territories, the establishment of settlements and the transfer of alien population, the destruction and demolition of Arab houses, the confiscation and expropriation of Arab properties, the deportation, expulsion, denial of right of return, mass arrests, administrative detention and ill-treatment to Arab population, pillaging of archaeological and cultural property, interference with religious freedom, illegal exploitation of natural wealth, the change of demographic composition”.

Yet, Israel offers itself to the world as the “most democratic” entity in the Middle East.

Israel doesn’t care about the Camp David or Oslo agreements. The Oslo agreement was in Israel’s favour since it forced the PLO to drop its weapons and its armed struggle. Israel wants to occupy all of Palestine- with the exception of Gaza where a resistance was born and where the Palestinians decided to fight back. Iran has now moved in to support the Palestinian cause unconditionally. Iranian officials told the Palestinians that Tehran supports all Palestinian efforts.

The Palestinians, particularly Hamas, went off course for the many years during the war in Iraq and Syria. Many Hamas militants blew up themselves in Iraq fighting against the Shia, although they had been trained by Iran and its allies to fight for the liberation of their territory. In Syria, many Palestinians fought with the Syrian army but many more fought on the side of al-Qaeda and the “Islamic State”, ISIS. Hamas supported the Syrian opposition and stood by Qatar, one of the biggest financiers of the Syrian failed-state project.

However, with the fall of the “new Middle East” and the victory of the central government in Damascus along with its allies, Israel failed in its goal of making ISIS a dominant force in Syria. The Palestinian leadership reviewed their mistakes and decided to remove those responsible for diverting the compass from Palestine to Syria and Iraq.

Iran never ceased its financial support for Palestinian groups working to recover their territory and focused on Palestine rather than Iraq or Syria. Iran explained to the Palestinians that the era when some groups were “a gun for hire” is over and the return to the main path of Palestine can’t be disregarded or exchanged. The Palestinians invested time, money and thousands of men in internal fighting and wars in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Today, Hamas and most Palestinian groups present in Gaza have united their military operational room to fight together against any Israeli attempt to impose a new rule of engagement. Palestinian deterrence is now imposed on Israel: Tel Aviv will be bombed if Gaza is attacked or suffocated so as to threaten the survival of their inhabitants. The spirit of the commanders who fought the occupation forces Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, Yahya A’yash and Muhammad (Abu Khaled) al-Da’if has been revived.

This has pushed Israel to turn towards the weakest part of Palestine, the PLO in the West Bank where its President, unlike Gaza, doesn’t believe in armed struggle to return the occupied territory by the pressure of the armed resistance. This is why Israel finds no reason to offer any concessions to the PLO and will force the Palestinians to move out of their homes, a practice the Israelis have mastered since the 1940s. Israel controls the security, the economy, the construction permissions, the electricity, the water and everything in the west bank since 1967. The colonisation has never ceased and Israel does not care about the international reaction because it claims to dominate the mainstream media worldwide.

When Imam Khomeini called for the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan to celebrate the “Youm al-Quds”, the “day of Jerusalem”, he said “Palestine doesn’t belong to the Palestinians or to the Arabs or to the Muslims or the Christians. It belongs to those willing to adopt the struggle against injustice and against the oppressors”.

The only way left for Palestinians is to surrender, or to themselves impose on Israel what Lebanon won in the year 2000: unconditional withdrawal (of Israel from Lebanon) following 18 years of armed resistance. The price was high but the harvest rich and strategic. Today, the choices of the Palestinians in the West Bank are very limited: there is no point in relying on the international community or the United Nations to change the course of Israel’s plan to annex the West Bank and expel the Palestinians. The Palestinians will have to leave, all of them, or stay and fight. A third intifada is knocking on the door and Iran will stand by it and support it.

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All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated; featured image: A terrorised Palestinian teen girl arrested by six Israeli heavily armed security forces. An estimated 7,000 children have been detained, interrogated, prosecuted and/or imprisoned within the Israeli military justice system.

It would be too simple to regard the latest space venture, funded by Elon Musk, as entirely a matter of vast ego and deeply-pocked adventurism. But it would be close.  The successful delivery of astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken of NASA as part of the joint mission with SpaceX to the International Space Station by the Dragon capsule proved intoxicating for followers and devotees. Behnken was himself keen on the idea of travelling into the heavens away from a messy, trouble-torn planet.  “This is still something that we are going to be successful at, and we’re going to do it in the face of the pandemic.”  Good of him to think so.  

The theme of inspiration in the face of terrestrial disaster is a mammoth one, even if that inspiration tends to avoid earthbound maladies. 

“If SpaceX can pull it off,” wrote an enthralled Miriam Kramer for Axios, “its first crewed flight … will mark a beacon of hope in an otherwise dark time for the world.”

The element of chest thumping was always going to be hard to avoid.  Since 2011, NASA has been relying, with occasional reluctance, on Russia’s Soyuz rockets to get to the International Space Station. The Space Shuttle programme had become extortionately expensive, ballooning to $1.5 bn a flight.  The razor gangs took issue.  The private sector, in other words, has been used to extract US astronauts from the Russian teat.  Those at NASA were thrilled in announcement. 

“This is the first time in human history [NASA astronauts] have entered the Space Station from a commercially made spacecraft.”

Kramer is unsparing in her praise for the effort. It is all patriotism and, as with all things patriotic, silly in its competitiveness.  Despite any intimations of a broader human purpose (from universe to universal), this was done for US interests. “The space program has provided this kind of hope during dark times before.”  A few unfortunate reminders are furnished, including the reading of the book of Genesis by those in the orbiting Apollo 8 capsule on Christmas Eve 1968 “as millions of people watched back on Earth.”

As this was done, the US was also fracturing, bloodied by political assassination (Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy), anti-war protest and racial unrest.  No resolution seemed in sight, at least in the country, so a distracting focus was found.  One of the Apollo 8 crew, Frank Borman, remembered a telegram he and his colleagues received on landing, a true pearler amongst the millions. “Congratulations to the crew of Apollo 8.  You saved 1968.”

This was merely a soppy aside.  During the 1960s, the sceptics gathered and lectured humanity for finding escape from more terrestrial ills which demanded their attention.  Humans were making a mess of things and looking to the skies.  English historian Arnold J. Toynbee had little time for such matters.  “In a sense, going to the moon is like building pyramids or Louis XIV’s palace at Versailles.  It’s rather scandalous, when human beings are going short of necessities, to do this.  If we’re clever enough to reach the moon, don’t we feel rather foolish in our mismanagement of human affairs?”

The sentiment has not changed much, depending on where you are looking for it.  The rot is very much there, and the eyes are looking elsewhere.  Renewable energy advocate Giles Parkinson sees it all as silly extra-terrestrial expenditure, ignoring the obvious problems facing Planet Earth.

“Money that’s thrown at things like space travel, and exploration for oil and gas – that’s money that could also be spent on addressing the climate change issue.”

Musk stands for a different attitude.  Renewables and space are merely ends to be exploited.  He intends cluttering space with 11,943 satellites by 2025, with the hope of putting a total of 42,000.  Like any egomaniac, he must make this all sound purposeful, wrapping it in the rhetoric of the “multiplanetary” society that intends to give every human on Plant Earth speedy Internet access.

Such projects as Musk’s are bound to, and have already interested, the military industrial complex.  Whatever gloss of achievement given, space is very much like the Americas for Christopher Columbus, to be acquired, consumed, and plundered.  Commercialism, industry, and the armed forces are all converging into a soufflé of interests that will carve the heavens for military commanders, egomaniacs and space buccaneers.  Very notably, SpaceX is drawing in its defence contracts. 

It continues to woo and impress the talking heads with more guns than butter.  In 2016, the launch and retrieval by Musk’s company of its Falcon 9 first-stage booster once it had done its job, namely placing a satellite into orbit, induced perorations of praise. 

“Until now,” as Jeffrey Becker wrote at the time, “getting into orbit meant throwing away most of the rocket on the way up in order to place a minute fraction of the total vehicle mass into space, an approach to spaceflight akin to throwing away a 747 after crossing the Atlantic.”  

From a human perspective, the latest SpaceX venture may not have been as enthralling as others.  There was little in the way of romance, and much in the way of brattish bravado from Musk.  But make no mistake about it.  The commercial world is stretching its corporate tentacles into space, and wishes to go a very long way.

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

Featured image is from Hudson Institute

Chief Justice of India
5, Krishna Menon Marg
New Delhi, 110011
India

..

We, the undersigned, demand the release of public intellectuals and social justice activists, Prof. G.N. Saibaba and Varavara Rao, who are imprisoned in fabricated cases and vulnerable to the infection of COVID-19 in the overcrowded Maharashtra prisons. Indian Professor G.N. Saibaba is currently languishing in prison in India without access to proper medical care or his wheelchair. Professor Saibaba is 90% disabled with post-polio syndrome and yet the jail authorities have continually refused to provide him with assistance in moving about, even for basic bodily functions like going to the bathroom. He suffers from a number of life-threatening ailments (including acute pancreatitis, cardiac complications, hypertension, impacted gallbladder stones, fainting spells, and more) and has lost most of the functioning of both his hands since being imprisoned. The continued negligence of jail authorities is effectively a death sentence for him during the Covid-19 pandemic. We are calling on the government of India to immediately release Professor G.N. Saibaba from prison on medical bail so that he can receive proper medical treatment and be protected from the Coronavirus outbreak.

Professor Saibaba was abducted and arrested on May 9, 2014 as he left the campus of Delhi University. Police claimed that they had found documents and correspondence allegedly proving his connections with the CPI (Maoist), a banned political party in India. However, in the court proceedings against Saibaba, they were not able to produce clear evidence of this charge or the charge that he was “waging war against the state.” Commenting on the conviction, Amnesty International stated that it “believes that the charges against G. N. Saibaba are fabricated and that his trial did not meet international fair trial standards.” Regardless of the credibility or otherwise of the trial and conviction, Professor Saibaba is entitled to proper medical care and medical bail. Now with Coronavirus spreading like wildfire through the Indian prison system, this life sentence could very well become a deathsentence.

Professor Saibaba is confined to a wheelchair as he suffers from post-polio syndrome, which inhibits the use of his legs. Despite his disability, he remains tireless social justice activist and a committed human rights defender. A recent report from Scholars at Risk noted that Saibaba “worked with activists and movements to investigate and struggle against the national and multinational corporations, which extract resources from the region at the cost of the environment and displacement of indigenous communities.” Many, including internationally acclaimed author Arundhati Roy, have speculated that Professor Saibaba was arrested because of his activism and his courageous defense of the human rights of the oppressed.

In addition jail authorities have not permitted him to send or receive letters in his native tongue, Telugu. Even when his mother came to visit him, they insisted that he speak to her only in English despite the fact that she does not speak English. Now she is on her deathbed, battling terminal cancer, while her son languishes in jail, a political prisoner denied medical care as well as the ability to communicate with many of his loved ones.

The courts denied Saibaba’s recent application for parole during this pandemic. They claimed that his brother (with whom he would stay if released), was living in a Covid-19 containment zone; however, this is not true. What’s more, it seems likely that he is at higher risk of contracting COVID- 19 in jail.

Now Professor Saibaba lies in jail, frequently falling in and out of consciousness and unable to even go to the toilet without assistance, which he is routinely denied. We are deeply disturbed by the cruelty with which the Indian government and the judicial system are treating Saibaba. As his jailers have repeatedly demonstrated their inability or unwillingness to provide proper medical care to him, and because the Coronavirus is now spreading through the Indian prison system, we the undersigned call for the immediate release of Professor G.N. Saibaba from prison.

The 80-year-old poet Varavara Rao is an eminent public intellectual and ardent civil rights activist. For the past 60 years he has shown a firm commitment to working for the oppressed. Over the decades, the Indian state has been trying to silence his voice implicating him in many phony cases. In the past 45 years, 25 false cases were foisted against him. He spent about 8 years in prison while awaiting trial, but was acquitted in all prior cases. In November 2018, Varavara Rao was once again arrested, this time as part of the nation-wide crackdown of public intellectuals by the Modi government in relation to the infamous Bhima Koregaon case. He is currently imprisoned in the Taloja jail, Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra, awaiting trial. Many international scholars and acclaimed organizations such as PEN International have called for his release.

Even after 18 months of judicial custody, no charges have been filed against him. It is important to note that Maharashtra has been identified as the epicenter of the Coronavirus outbreak in India. Moreover, the government admitted in a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) case in the Mumbai High Court that one inmate recently died of Covid-19 in the Taloja jail. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Varavara Rao, who is suffering from multiple medical conditions, is in a very vulnerable medical condition.

Recently, May 28, 2020, Varavara Rao fainted in the jail and admitted in JJ Hospital, Mumbai, when his condition became critical. The government responded recklessly and he was sent back to jail on June 1st, 2020 after some preliminary treatment to stabilize his condition. The government did not even allow his family members to visit him in the hospital or talk to him over the phone. Given this disturbing situation, Varavara Rao’s wife filed a petition in the National Investigation Agency (NIA) court to release him on bail. But, the court refused to release him. Yet, Article 21 of the Indian Constitution guarantees the right to life to all citizens, including prisoners.

Considering G.N. Saibaba’s and Varavara Rao’s deteriorating health condition and the outbreak of COVID-19 in prisons, we strongly believe that there is a potential danger to their lives. We demand you to release them immediately on bail to restore their right to live.

Thank you.

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Viewing the COVID-19 pandemic as a purely exogenous shock, Canadian economists and policymakers have tended to predict a quick return to economic growth once health restrictions are lifted. As an account of current events, this turns a blind eye to the uneven forms of adjustment produced by years of neoliberal cutbacks and how these both make a quick recovery unlikely and impose the burden of loss on care workers, racialized populations, and the working class more generally. Moreover, such framing of events warns of a new age of hyper-austerity when the health crisis abates, as governments either use debt to justify rollbacks or passively embrace financial discipline. The further erosion of public planning and investment this would entail makes avoiding another lost decade and addressing the environmental crisis ever more difficult to imagine. And yet, while many progressive commentators have called out these contradictions, not enough has been done to rethink the operation of key neoliberal institutions and put forward practical reforms that ultimately challenge their class constitution.

This reflects above all in the reluctance to see the Bank of Canada (BoC) as anything more than a neutral arbiter of the nation’s financial and monetary stability. Despite the bank’s obvious economic power and the key role it continues to play backstopping fiscal intervention during the pandemic, there has been very limited debate about its evolving responsibilities and the opportunities and limits these pose for democratic reform and just transition. At work here is the assumption that the bank is a relatively static and purely technocratic institution with limited political capabilities. Starting from this position, we can be easily fooled into ignoring the bank’s institutional adaptability and political saliency, and into thinking it can be magically reborn as a progressive institution.

Against Neutrality  The Bank of Canada from 1938 to 2020

The Bank of Canada has important monetary and financial system responsibilities and “far-reaching powers” that can “wield a heavy (if indirect) influence on people’s day-to-day lives,” but it lacks the democratic accountability of other policy institutions (Berg 2018: 2). The bank’s “independence” means that the government sets its basic priorities, but does not interfere in day-to-day operations. As a result, the bank’s six-member Governing Council essentially controls the decision-making process.¹ Particularly important is that the Bank of Canada Act, the statute governing the bank’s operations, provides a wide interpretation of its central authorities: the bank is responsible for regulating currency and credit in a way that “protects the external value of the national monetary unit” and “promotes the economic and financial welfare of Canada.”

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The flexibility provided by the Bank of Canada Act has been a key source of the BoC’s organizational plasticity, since it provides space for institutional learning and trial-and-error experimentation, and allows adaptation to changing policy ideas as well as wider economic shifts. While there are no clear dividing lines, we can separate the bank’s development following nationalization in 1938 into three distinct periods. From 1938 to 1974, the bank tended to accommodate fiscal policy expansion by purchasing a relatively large share of government treasury bonds (Ryan 2018).² This prevented private financial markets from disciplining public borrowing through high interest rates, and allowed the government to fund its obligations cheaply, thereby setting the conditions for the development of social citizenship rights through the post-war expansion. During this period, the bank associated inflation with variations in aggregate demand and often utilized the Philips curve, which predicted an inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment, to make policy decisions: “the predominant view… was that a focus on the demand side of the economy was entirely appropriate for understanding aggregate fluctuations and changes in inflation” (Ragan 2011; Crow 2009).

This changed following 1974 amid the development of new economic ideologies and class relations, which aimed to liberate sections of the economy from government intervention and saw Keynesian demand policies as a barrier to free market prosperity. The rise of a new international monetary framework stressing the removal of post-war financial and monetary constraints was essential as well, since it established new broad constraints on the bank’s actions. Like other central banks, the BoC gradually adopted a quantity theory approach to inflation and began targeting money supply growth. As the bank forced governments to fund debt through private channels and no longer passively absorbed treasuries by issuing money, government debt rapidly outpaced real output growth (Protopapadakis and Siegal 1986).

While the bank stopped monetary targeting in 1982, marking the end of monetarist experimentation, this helped set the stage for its commitment to price stability in 1988 and the development of its inflation targeting regime three years later. The period from 1975 to 2007 thus marked the bank’s so-called “modernization,” characterized by its acceptance of orthodox economic theory and commitment to maintaining inflation at or near two per cent.³ More significant than these ideational and policy commitments were the economic relations they reflected and supported. At its core, this period signified a turning point in the bank’s approach to labour, as its low inflation target insured a degree of “slack” in the economy and a level of unemployment that held wages relatively stagnant.

The period following 2007 heralded another qualitative shift in the bank’s institutional development, as the financial crisis shifted the terms of monetary intervention and exposed major contradictions in the bank’s inflation agenda. Indeed, as interest rates fell to nearly zero in 2009 and remained persistently low in the post-crisis period, deflation now emerged as a key threat to financial stability, and the bank’s conventional policy tools no longer seemed up to the task of steering the economy. This was reinforced by the performance of global financial markets, which had proven far more volatility and far less rational than the bank anticipated. In this context, the bank searched for new ways to influence market outcomes, closely following the innovative policies developed elsewhere, and modified the terms of its inflation targeting approach by making it more “flexible” and “symmetrical.”⁴ This basically softened its low inflation objective by accepting a longer inflation targeting horizon⁵ and expressing equal concern about the inflation rate falling below two per cent.

But the major change took shape in 2016 when the bank renewed its inflation targets and added crisis-era innovations developed by the Federal Reserve and other central banks, such as large-scale asset purchases and funding for credit, into its policy toolkit. As much as these programs fit within the bank’s lender-of-last-resort responsibilities, this move toward unconventional policy involved the development of new institutional capacities and a high degree of policy learning. More importantly, although such programs were forward-looking, they involved an adjustment in the bank’s relationship to the financial system and “a giant increase in [its] power and responsibility”: behind the new modes of interaction with key financial institutions and ways of transmitting liquidity these measures entailed, stood a greater preoccupation with the stability of the financial system and a wider view of its role in the economy (Tooze 2020).

Thus, while the transformation of the bank’s policy tools and goals over the past decades is more complicated than can be described here, we can see it as both cautiously innovative and far-reaching. The bank adapted to changing circumstances and economic power relations from the 1970s through to the present, developing new institutional capacities to discipline labour and manage increasingly complex financial processes, whereby it greatly increased its economic influence and altered the terms of its relationship to private and public financial markets. Whether deliberately or not, this established the essential conditions for the financialization of Canadian capitalism, leading public policies “to become more accommodating to both domestic and foreign investment” (Davis and Kim 2015: 217; Stockhammer 2004).

Putting aside these wide-ranging impacts, what is primarily notable about the bank’s most recent policy shifts is that they have important distributive consequences. The bank trivializes the impact of its policies when it measures them solely in terms of overall economic performance and dismisses their wider political implications. According to the BoC’s own analysis, in fact, low inflation targets favour the interests of lenders over borrowers (Bank of Canada 2016: 15).⁶ This is consistent with a wider body of political science research which ties inflation targeting to growing inequality and the declining power of unions and labour organizations during the neoliberal period (Kirshner 2001, Blyth; Panitch and Gindin 2012). The large-scale asset program also shows clearly the distributive consequences and non-neutrality of central bank policy. This strategy aims to push investment out along the risk curve by “encouraging” the acquisition of a broad range of financial products and therefore attempts to improve financial conditions by boosting asset values and reducing longer-term interest rates (Bank of Canada 2015: 2). Such “rebalancing” of private portfolios increases access to credit while exacerbating existing patterns of wealth inequality, as asset inflation disproportionally favours those with large concentrations of financial wealth (Bank of Canada 2015: 2; Montecino and Epstein 2015).

All this cautions against associating the political independence of central bank policy with the political neutrality of its policy decisions and speaks to how the bank’s evolution under neoliberalism reflects the “institutional victory” of “certain groups and coalitions over others” (Kirshner 2001: 58; Blyth 2016). Moreover, we can see the Bank of Canada faces real constraints stemming from the international monetary system that impose clear limits on policy development: privatized currency markets and the global mobility of capital link Canada’s economic well-being to financial and monetary stability and to the bank’s credibility in fighting inflation. Yet neither these constraints, nor its anti-democratic orientation, suggest that the bank has reached the end of its history or is incapable of adjusting to new conditions.

Austerity and Public Banking

On April 1, the Bank of Canada began a major bond-buying program, following the tracks of the US Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world. Reminiscent of the bank’s post-war investment strategy, this program provides at least $5-billion per week (and certainly upwards of $200-billion in cumulative total, depending on how long the program lasts) to support the federal government’s recent spending plans. On top of this, it has increased the share of treasury bills it acquires at primary auctions to 40% and created new purchase programs to support provincial and corporate debt markets.⁷ Yet while the bank has made it easier for governments to fund deficits and lowered the cost of debt, there is a major contradiction in its rescue strategy: whereas the thrust of the bank’s policies have aimed at supporting credit conditions in the near term, the deficits governments accumulate will have long-term political implications, especially since the additional debt load will not build new productive capacity. Making matters worse, the bank has not committed to any form of yield curve control to ensure that government funding costs remain low in the years following the crisis, nor provided forward guidance regarding provincial debt markets, despite provinces having broad responsibility for health, education, and social services.⁸ This is consistent with the actions of other central banks who have framed similar interventions as “temporary short-term source[s] of additional funding” and explicitly rejected using monetary financing in the long-term (Elliot 2020; Bailey 2020).⁹

As the health crisis abates, then, Canadian governments will be forced to contend with unprecedented budget shortfalls and the need to use private markets as their main source of financing. Such conditions are likely to produce a new age of hyper-austerity: even if public debt markets are vastly different following the pandemic, governments will face pressure to reduce spending and to limit debt and will encounter the same conservative forces and logics that proudly restrained public investment following 2008 (Foroohar 2020). Preventing this is no doubt a top priority, not least because such policies would further erode the public planning capacities which allow governments to coordinate the distribution of labour and scare resources to strategically important sectors of the economy, and address pressing community and environmental needs. But this is not simply about adjusting the terms of fiscal policy by demanding governments accept budgetary shortfalls or raise the top income tax rate. Such demands are necessary but not sufficient, for they fail to address the discipline imposed on governments by private debt holders in the form of higher interest rates or investment strikes, and how even the threat of such outcomes can be mobilized to reduce the size and scope of government intervention in the economy.

Here we must acknowledge that while there is no simple solution to these underlying pressures in the near-term, the Bank of Canada has unique institutional capacities that can limit financial discipline and pre-emptively de-rail austerity measures. Utilizing these would require more innovative thinking and unconventional policies that further reimagine the bank’s relationship to private and public markets. More broadly, it would require social mobilization aimed at dislodging the bank from its neoliberal proclivities, and the articulation of specific demands regarding the bank’s role in supporting public investment that reset the terms of its cautious approach to policy innovation. These demands must acknowledge the constraints imposed by capital liberalization and financial interconnectedness, while offering the ability to develop democratic planning capacities that set the conditions for additional change in the future.

A logical starting point is calling for the bank to provide more comprehensive support to provincial and subnational governments, given they face unheard-of budget shortfalls and lack the revenue tools available to the national government. As Harold Chorney once suggested, no doubt aware it was one of the goals in creating the Bank of Canada, this might entail “allowing the provinces access to their relative share of the central bank’s debt acquisition capacity” (Chorney 1999:199). A more ambitious strategy involves the development of a new public bank, backstopped, but independent from, the BoC, that aims to support public investment and give governments access to cheap credit over the long-term.¹⁰ This would transform debt into a public asset while addressing two central constraints facing the BoC. First, such a bank could be democratically organized, with local branches across the country linked to regional and national offices capable of coordinating decisions and ensuring investment is efficiently allocated to projects Canadian’s truly prioritize. Second, it would avoid the potential or perceived limits on monetary financing created by the international monetary system and by the bank’s need to maintain credibility.

Needless to say, a public investment bank of this nature could play a key role in the decarbonization of the economy and in addressing the environmental crisis more generally, especially since it could engage in “loss making operations” as well as “highly subsidized programme lending” (Marois and Gungen 2019). It could also invest in equities with the aim of influencing corporate governance strategies, and support other kinds of publicly mandated investment in strategic industries. Finally, it would create space for democratic control over investment and allow some escape from the power relations within private debt markets, which give lenders control over the terms of public borrowing.

Thus, even if the return of austerity politics following the crisis is still far from certain, it is important to underscore the Bank of Canada’s adaptability and non-neutrality, and remind ourselves of the progressive opportunities this institution offers, even within the constraints imposed by neoliberal globalization. As the COVID-19 crisis has provided an x-ray of the precarious and vulnerable working conditions underpinning economic growth and exposed the vast socio-economic fault lines produced by years of cutbacks and market-friendly policies, it has provided powerful evidence about the feasibility of innovative spending programs and put central banks “in the political crosshairs” (Politi 2020). Taking the opportunity to rethink the bank’s role in the economy and the still one-sided view of its political and institutional capabilities, suggests extending its responsibilities may in fact push us closer to addressing today’s overlapping political, economic, and health crises.

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This article was adapted from an earlier essay published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives(CCPA).

Scott M. Aquanno is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ontario Tech University. He has published widely on monetary policy development and the political economy of finance and globalization.

Sources

• Bailey, A. (2020) “Andrew Bailey: Bank of England is not doing monetary financing,” Financial Times, April 5.
• Bank of Canada (2015) “Framework for Conducting Monetary Policy at Low Interest Rates,” Bank of Canada, December.
• Bank of Canada (2016) “Renewal of the Inflation Control Target,” Bank of Canada, October 24.
• Berg, R. van der. (2018) “Balancing the Independence and Accountability of the Bank of Canada,” Library of Parliament, November 23.
• Blyth, M. (2016) “Global Trumpism: Why Trump’s Victory was 30 Years in the Making and Why It Wont Stop Here,” Foreign Affairs, November 15.
• Braunstein, E. and J. Heintz (2008) “Gender bias and central bank policy: employment and inflation reduction,” International Review of Applied Economics, 22(2).
• Crow, J. (2009) ‘Canada’s Difficult Experience in Reducing Inflation: Cautionary Lessons. Commentary 299, Toronto: C.D. Howe Institute.
• Davis, G. and S. Kim (2015) Financialization of the Economy, Annual Review of Sociology, 41: 203-221.
• Elliott, L. (2020) “Bank of England to finance UK government Covid-19 crisis spending,” The Guardian, April 9.
• FMC (2020) “Protecting vital municipal services: Urgent federal recommendations to address the financial crisis in our cities and communities due to COVID-19,” Federation of Canadian Municipalities, April 23.
• Foroohar, R. (2020) “We are entering a new age of American austerity,” Financial Times, April 19.
• Kirshner, J. (2001) “The Political Economy of Low Inflation,” Journal of Economic Surveys, 15(1): 41-70.
• Marois, T and A.R. Gungen (2019) “A US green investment bank for all: Democratized finance for a just transition,” The Next System Project, September 19.
• Montecino, J.A and Gerald Epstein (2015) “Did Quantitative Easing Increase Income Inequality,” Institute for New Economic Thinking, Working Paper 28.
• Panitch, L. and S. Gindin (2012) The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire, New York: Verso.
• Politi, J. (2020) “Fed’s bailout role could put it in political crosshairs,” Financial Times, April 24.
• Protopapadakis, A. and J.J. Siegel (1986) “Are Government Deficits Monetized? Some International Evidence,” Business Review: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, November/December.
• Ragan, C. (2011) “The Evolution of Canadian Monetary Policy: Successful Ideas Through Natural Selection,” eds. Gorbet, F. and A. Sharpe, in New Directions for Intelligent Government in Canada, Ottawa: Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
• Ryan, J. (2018) “The Bank of Canada Should be Reinstated to its Original Mandated Purposes,” Canadian Dimension, March 21.
• Stockhammer, E. (2004) “Financialization and the slowdown of accumulation,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 28(5): 719-741.
• Thiessen, G. (2000) “Can a Bank Change? The Evolution of Monetary Policy at the Bank of Canada 1935-2000, lecture given to the Faculty of Social Science University of Western Ontario, October 17.
• Tooze, A. (2000) “The Death of the Central Bank Myth,” Foreign Policy, May 13.

Notes

1. The Bank of Canada is a crown corporation owned by the national government. However, it operates at arm’s length and is relatively insulated from political intervention. The Minister of Finance appoints the members of the bank’s Board of Directors and is represented on the board by the Deputy Minister of Finance (as a non-voting member). Subject to the approval of Cabinet, the board selects the bank’s Governing Council, which “sets monetary policy and strategic direction” (Berg 2018: 3). While Cabinet also has the power to dismiss the bank’s directors and governors, this cannot be done for political reasons.
2. This period could be further divided. For example, the bank’s activities from 1938 to 1950 were more focused on keeping interest rates low and shaped by the currency restrictions established by the Bretton Woods system in 1944. The government of Canada moved to a flexible exchange rate system in 1950 and removed important controls on foreign investment and foreign exchange (Thiessen 2000).
3. The bank also established a “control range of 1 to 3 per cent around this target” (Bank of Canada 2016: 2)
4. Typically, the Bank of Canada influences economic output by adjusting its policy rate. This impacts the price of short-term credit and alters spending habits in the economy. At zero (or near zero) interest rates, the bank no longer has the same capacity to stimulate the economy, since consumer rates cannot drop below zero. The bank refers to this as the effective lower bound (ELB).
5. This is the time-period for returning inflation to two per cent. According to the bank’s 2016 inflation targeting report, “different interest rate paths could be broadly consistent with achieving the inflation target over a reasonable horizon” (Bank of Canada 2016: 3).
6. Beyond this, a 2018 report prepared by the Library of Parliament found “evidence that lowering inflation may disproportionately increase female unemployment rates” (Berg 2018: 2).
7. In addition to these unconventional measures, the bank has reduced its policy rate 150 basis points.
8. Yield curve control involves targeting a specific longer-term rate on the yield curve. This is typically accomplished through forward guidance and bond purchases, and involves central banks purchasing whatever volume of bonds is necessary to achieve the target rate. Conventionally, the Bank of Canada influences economic conditions by setting short-term interest rates in the overnight market. Forward guidance involves communicating the anticipated future course of monetary policy with the aim of influencing market/public action.
9. Monetary financing often refers to the process whereby central banks purchase government debt to fund deficits and support government programs.
10. This could also involve dramatically altering and expanding the mandate of the Canada Investment Bank. While the CIB focuses on long-term economic growth, is not democratically organized and is severely limited in terms of its financing and lending capacities.

Featured image is from The Bullet

It is interesting to watch how the folks in Congress and the White House have been using the at-least- somewhat self-generated crisis over COVID-19 to serve as cover for legislation and other activities that many Americans just might object to. They are assuming that the public is so consumed with the virus, as well as with the riots over the police killing of George Floyd, that it is not paying attention to other high crimes and misdemeanors that the government might be engaged in.

There are three rather interesting stories that have received minimal attention from the mainstream media during the past several weeks that one might think are worthy of press coverage and even of some genuine debate in Congress. A little light shed on some important issues might actually help the public to understand the probable consequences of certain unwise or unnecessary actions undertaken by the federal government.

The first story relates to the Senate vote approving the USA Freedom Re-Authorization Act of 2020 (H.R. 6172). The renewal is particularly important because the act includes some features of the expired Patriot Act that have been exploited by government to surveil Americans without regard for the Fourth Amendment right to be free from searches without a clearly established probable cause that is related to a criminal investigation. It also includes endorsement of the powers of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court (FISA), which was the weapon used without any real justification by the Russiagate co-conspirators in the FBI, the White House and the National Intelligence Office in their illegal surveillance of Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.

The so-called Freedom Act’s reauthorization had been cynically delayed to avoid any attempts to include protections for individual rights in the document. As it stands, under Section 215 the legislation will continue to permit large scale collection of personal and private information as well as bulk collection relating to American citizens. Individuals who are being spied upon on by the Act cannot be made aware that they are being scrutinized and the government is meanwhile under no obligation to limit its searches, being permitted to obtain literally “any tangible thing” to include phone records, tax returns, medical and other health information, gun registrations, internet search history and even library records. Any information collected by the government can be retained and used for five years.

H.R. 6176 passed the Senate but it then had an amendment attached and went back to the House of Representatives for re-approval before being returned to the upper house. Waiting for it in the House is another amendment sponsored by congressmen Zoe Lofgren and Warren Davidson, which would compel the government to obtain a warrant to collect an individual’s internet history. It is a small enough step, and it may fail to pass, but it is at least limited recognition by some legislators of government overreach. In any event, the process whereby the legislation is being approved is nearly invisible even though it is something that can affect the freedoms enjoyed currently by all Americans.

The second bit of government-by-deception inevitably relates to America’s best friend Israel. One recalls that Congress frequently returns from recess and finds that its first order of business is doing something for the Jewish state, pandemic or no pandemic. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently passed, without any public discussion or floor debate, the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2020.

The purpose of the Senate bill, S.3176, is to codify into law the military aid, inclusive of extra funding for missile defense, committed to by the United States for Israel in a 2016 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Readers will recall that the package, negotiated by President Barack Obama, uniquely guarantees $3.8 billion per year for ten years. S-3176 was introduced to the upper chamber and co-sponsored by boy-Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who enthused

“I was proud to reintroduce this bipartisan bill that strengthens our nation’s strategic security alliance with Israel, a vibrant democracy that faces growing and unprecedented threats to its security and stability.”

When the original MOU was issued, Senator Lindsey Graham remarked that he and other Senators would regard the annual payment as a minimum, that Israel would still expect, and receive, special authorizations as needed. S.3176 would appear to reflect that pledge by Graham, as it includes revised language stating that the annual payment would be “not less than” the $3.8 billion.

The bill also extends Congressional permission for the Pentagon to increase “forward-base” weapons stockpiles in Israel, which the Jewish state can now access as needed without having to provide any notice or seek any approval. Beyond that, the lengthy document is positively dripping with more money for Israel in the form of various co-production and cooperative schemes that will bring absolutely no benefit to the United States.

After the Senate bill is approved in its final form, which will occur imminently, it would then need to reconciled with a similar but possibly even more extreme bill passed by the House in July 2019 by a voice vote, also without any debate or discussion. The House version was introduced by passionate Zionist Congressman Ted Deutch, Democrat of Florida. It would allow Donald Trump or whoever succeeds him to determine that if “Israel is under an existing or imminent threat of military attack” the White House could “direct the immediate transfer to Israel of such defense articles or services the President determines to be necessary to assist Israel.” In other words, the president acting alone could involve the United Starts in a war on behalf of Israel without any approval process, only relying on what Israel is telling him or her about an alleged impending threat.

Finally, there is the latest outrage over Iran. Secretary of State Pompeo has completed his demolition of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) dealing with the Iranian nuclear program, a process which was begun by his boss shortly after taking office. Pompeo has now indicated that any foreign companies and businesses that continue to work at Iranian nuclear facilities under the authority of the JCPOA will be subject to economic sanctions. Astonishingly, the companies in question that include some from China, Russia and Western Europe, have been working to dismantle some of Iran’s former nuclear powerplants to make them usable for other purposes. It was a development that was permitted under the JCPOA and was intended to make sure that Iran would have only limited downstream capability to ramp up its production of enriched uranium. Also, the presence of foreign companies would serve as a guarantee that Iran would not engage in any cheating on the agreement.

Ironically, if the intention of Pompeo and Donald Trump truly is to eliminate Iran as a possible nuclear weapon proliferator, it is now taking steps that are actually counter-productive as the latest move could easily suggest to the Iranian leadership that there is no hope in dealing with the United States, possibly motivating them to begin a secret weapons program.

Pompeo explained in a statement that he could not permit the work to continue because Iran has been “…expanding proliferation sensitive activities. A regime that just days ago invoked ‘the Final Solution’ and which regularly threatens to wipe Israel off the map must never obtain a nuclear weapon…nuclear extortion will lead to increased pressure on Iran and further isolate the regime from the international community.”

As usual, U.S. interests are subordinated to those of Israel, even in a statement that is essentially incoherent. U.N. inspectors believe that Iran might currently have enough enriched uranium in its stockpile to construct one small bomb, but the infrastructure is lacking and it would be a long and laborious process to actually come up with anything usable, so the whole Pompeo pretext is little more than a fabrication. Of course, the Trump Administration’s actual motive might be to provoke the Ayatollahs into doing something reckless so that Washington could play victim and claim grounds for attacking Iran either independently or jointly with Israel. With so many bad things going on simultaneously in the United States, a little hot war in an election year might well be welcomed by the Trump Administration.

So, it appears that Congress and the White House are up to their usual tricks operating in the shadow created by coronavirus. Americans will lose even more of their rights in all probability and only Israel will benefit from still more handouts from the U.S. Treasury as well as shortsighted moves that will inevitably bring about a war between Washington the Tehran.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

Featured image is from TUR

Na base aérea de Nellis, no Nevada – anuncia o Pentágono – começará em Julho, a construção de uma rede experimental 5G que ficará operacional em Janeiro de 2021. Nesta base ocorreu, no passado mês de Março, o Red Flag, – o exercício aéreo mais importante dos Estados Unidos – com a presença de forças alemãs, espanholas e italianas. Estas últimas também incluiam caças F-35 que – comunica a Força Aérea – foram “integradas com os melhores activos da aviação americana”, de modo a “aproveitar ao máximo o potencial dos aviões e dos sistemas de armas fornecidos”, compreendendo, seguramente as armas nucleares.

No Red Flag 2021, provavelmente já estarão em funções para serem testadas num ambiente real, as redes móveis 5G formadas por torres que podem ser montadas e desmontadas em menos de uma hora para serem transferidas rapidamente, de acordo com as operações em curso. A base de Nellis é a quinta seleccionada pelo Pentágono para testar o uso militar da 5G: as outras encontram-se no Utah, na Geórgia, na Califórnia e em Washington.

Um documento do Serviço de Pesquisa do Congresso (National Security Implications of Fifth Generation 5G Mobile Technologies, de 22 de Maio de 2020) explica que esta tecnologia de transmissão de dados móveis, da quinta geração, pode ter “inúmeras aplicações militares”. Uma delas diz respeito a “veículos militares autónomos”, ou seja, veículos robóticos aéreos, terrestres e navais, capazes de realizar missões de ataque autonomamente, sem sequer serem pilotados à distância.

Este processo requer o armazenamento e processamento de uma enorme quantidade de dados que não podem ser executados só a bordo do veículo autónomo. A tecnologia 5G permitirá que este tipo de veículo use um sistema externo de armazenamento e processamento de dados, semelhante ao Cloud actual  para armazenagem de arquivos pessoais. Este sistema pode possibilitar “novos conceitos operacionais militares”, como o do “enxame” no qual cada veículo se liga automaticamente aos outros para realizar a missão (por exemplo, de ataque aéreo a uma cidade ou de ataque naval a um porto).

A 5G permitirá fortalecer todo o sistema de comando e controlo das forças armadas dos Estados Unidos à escala mundial:actualmente – explica o documento – usa comunicações via satélite, mas, devido à distância, o sinal leva algum tempo a chegar, causando atrasos na execução de operações militares. Esses atrasos serão praticamente eliminados pela 5G. O mesmo terá um papel decisivo, em particular no uso de armas hipersónicas que, também equipadas com ogivas nucleares, viajam a velocidades superiores a 10 vezes superiores à do som.

A 5G também será extremamente importante para os serviços secretos, tornando possível sistemas de controlo e espionagem muito mais eficientes do que os actuais. “A 5G é vital para manter as vantagens económicas e militares da América”, salienta o Pentágono. Particularmente vantajoso é o facto da “tecnologia 5G emergente, disponível comercialmente, oferecer ao Departamento de Defesa a oportunidade de usufruir este sistema a custos mais baixos para as suas exigências operacionais”. Por outras palavras, a rede comercial 5G, criada por empresas privadas, é usada pelos militares dos Estados Unidos com um custo muito menor do que seria necessário se a rede fosse construída apenas para fins militares. O mesmo também acontece noutros países.

Compreende-se, portanto, que o contencioso sobre a 5G, em particular entre os Estados Unidos e a China, não faz parte só da guerra comercial. A tecnologia 5G cria um novo campo de corrida aos armamentos, que acontece não tanto no plano quantitativo, mas no qualitativo. Esta realidade é silenciada pela comunicação mediática e amplamente ignorada até pelos críticos desta tecnologia, que concentram a sua atenção nos possíveis efeitos nocivos à saúde.

Implicação de grande importância, que deve ser combinada ao uso militar desta tecnologia, financiada sem o conhecimento dos usuários comuns dos telefones móveis da quinta geração.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

5G, nuovo campo della corsa agli armamenti

Alla base aerea Nellis in Nevada – annuncia il Pentagono – inizierà in luglio la costruzione di una rete sperimentale 5G, che diverrà operativa nel gennaio 2021. In questa base si è svolta lo scorso marzo la Red Flag, la più importante esercitazione aerea degli Stati uniti, cui hanno partecipato forze tedesche, spagnole e italiane.  Queste ultime erano composte anche da caccia F-35 che – comunica l’Aeronautica militare –  sono stati  «integrati con i migliori assetti dell’aviazione americana» così da «sfruttare al massimo le potenzialità dei velivoli e dei sistemi d’arma in dotazione», compresi sicuramente quelli nucleari.

Alla Red Flag del 2021 saranno già probabilmente in funzione, per essere testate in un ambiente reale, reti mobili 5G formate da torri montabili e smontabili in meno di un’ora per essere rapidamente trasferite a seconda dell’operazione in corso.

La base Nellis è la quinta selezionata dal Pentagono per sperimentare l’uso militare del 5G: le altre si trovano nello Utah, in Georgia, in California e nello stato di Washington.

Un documento del Servizio di ricerca del Congresso (National Security Implications of Fifth Generation 5G Mobile Technologies, 22 maggio 2020) spiega che questa tecnologia di quinta generazione della trasmissione mobile di dati può avere «numerose applicazioni militari». Una di queste riguarda i «veicoli militari autonomi», ossia i veicoli robotici aerei, terrestri e navali in grado di effettuare autonomamente le missioni di attacco senza neppure essere pilotati a distanza.

Ciò richiede l’archiviazione e l’elaborazione di una enorme mole di dati che non possono essere effettuate unicamente a bordo del veicolo autonomo. Il 5G permetterà a questo tipo di veicolo di usare un sistema esterno di archiviazione ed elaborazione dati, analogo all’odiernoCloud per l’archiviazione personale di file. Tale sistema può rendere possibili «nuovi concetti operativi militari», come quello dello «sciame» in cui ciascun veicolo si collega automaticamente agli altri per effettuare la missione (ad esempio di attacco aereo a una città o attacco navale a un porto).

Il 5G permetterà di potenziare l’intero sistema di comando e controllo delle forze armate statunitensi su scala mondiale: attualmente – spiega il documento – esso usa le comunicazioni satellitari ma, a causa della distanza, il segnale impiega un certo tempo per arrivare, causando ritardi nell’esecuzione delle operazioni militari. Tali ritardi saranno praticamente eliminati dal 5G. Esso avrà un ruolo determinante in particolare nell’uso delle armi ipersoniche le quali, dotate anche di testate nucleari, viaggiano a velocità superiore a 10 volte quella del suono.

Estremamente importante sarà il 5G anche per i servizi segreti, rendendo possibili sistemi di controllo e spionaggio molto più efficaci di quelli attuali. «Il 5G è vitale per mantenere i vantaggi militari ed economici dell’America», sottolinea il Pentagono.   Particolarmente vantaggioso è il fatto che «l’emergente tecnologia 5G, commercialmente disponibile, offre al Dipartimento della Difesa l’opportunità di usufruire a costi minori di  tale sistema per le proprie esigenze operative». In altre parole, la rete commerciale del 5G, realizzata da società private, viene usata dalle forze armate statunitensi con una spesa molto più bassa di quella che sarebbe necessaria se la rete fosse realizzata unicamente a scopo militare. Ciò avviene anche in altri paesi.

Si capisce quindi che il contenzioso sul 5G, in particolare fra Stati uniti e Cina, non fa parte solo della guerra commerciale. Il 5G crea un nuovo campo della corsa agli armamenti, che si svolge non tanto sul piano quantitativo ma su quello qualitativo. Ciò viene taciuto dai media e largamente ignorato anche dai critici di tale tecnologia, che concentrano la loro attenzione  sui possibili effetti nocivi per la salute.

Impegno questo di grande importanza, che deve però essere unito a quello contro l’uso militare di tale tecnologia, finanziato inconsapevolmente dai comuni utenti dei cellulari di quinta generazione.

Manlio Dinucci

This carefully research article first published in 2016 shows that Black Lives Matter has been funded by philanthropists and corporate foundations including Soros’ Open Society Initiative  and the Ford Foundation which has links to the CIA.

The underlying objective is ultimately to control Black Power.

How can activists take an effective and meaningful stance against neoliberalism and racism when their NGO is funded by the financial establishment.

“Manufactured Dissent”.  The philanthropists  are “funding dissent” with a view to controlling dissent.

The Rockefellers, Ford et al have funded the “anti-globalization movement” from the very outset of the World Social Forum (WSF).

The WSF is said to have transformed progressive movements, leading to what is described as the emergence of the “Global Left”. Nonsense.

Wall Street foundations support the protest movement against Wall Street? How convenient.

We are dealing with a network of corporate funding of so-called “progressive” organizations. This networking of funding dissent is a powerful instrument.

Real progressive movements have been shattered, largely as a result of the funding of dissent.

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A campaign is ongoing across America. Black Lives Matter (which is playing a key role in combating racism and the police state) is funded by the same financial interests which are behind the deadly lockdown: WEF, Gates Foundation, Rockefeller et al.

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The Movement for Black Lives has started turning to foundations for funding. But the history of the Black Power movement offers a cautionary tale about the warping effects of liberal philanthropy’s soft power.

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In 2016, the Ford Foundation, the nation’s second-largest philanthropic foundation, announced a major new initiative to support the Movement for Black Lives — the network of fledgling organizations that coalesced as #blacklivesmatter to protest the police killing of black people across the US.

Offering over $40 million in “capacity”-strengthening funding to M4BL organizations over six years, the foundation’s support came at a new stage for Black Lives Matter. Moving beyond protest to institutionalize its social vision, the Movement for Black Lives had crafted an ambitious policy platform to take on state violence writ large. Ford’s announcement followed its work with (and $1.5 million donation to) Borealis Philanthropy, which in 2015 established the Black-led Movement Fund to attract and consolidate major gifts from other liberal funders, most notably George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and support the movement even longer term.

But there was a catch: foundation officers framed their support of M4BL as a response to the murder of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge during a period of otherwise nonviolent protests against the police killings of two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. Highlighting the “larger democratic principles at play,” Ford officials explained that the

“officers died while protecting the right to freedom of expression and peaceful protest, and are inexorably linked to Philando Castile and Alton Sterling.” These moments of violence, they warned, had “the potential to either deepen empathy and understanding among Americans or divide us even more sharply along lines of race, ethnicity, and gender . . . Now is the time to stand by and amplify movements rooted in love, compassion, and dignity for all people.”

Holding the Strings

From 1966 until the mid-1970s, Bundy’s foundation led the way on social development, partnering with other elite liberals and black activists on a number of initiatives that are today considered among Black Power’s major legacies.The foundation helped plan and underwrite black community control school demonstrations in New York City, including the infamous one in Brooklyn’s Ocean Hill-Brownsville, and funded the Black Power incarnation of the Congress of Racial Equality. It pioneered the community development corporation, a model that continues to predominate in public-private efforts to spur economic growth in inner-city neighborhoods. And it bankrolled all-black and even radically Afrocentric performing arts organizations for the cultural uplift of ghetto residents.Yet despite their high profile, these initiatives did little to mitigate the plight of poor urban communities. Working from the postwar liberal premise that economic and political power were unlimited in the US — bottomless resources that, with minor fixes, could be shared without conflict among all members of society — the foundation looked to black behavioral pathology, rather than structural racism, as the primary source of racial inequality. The foundation’s nationalism and racial ideology thus prevented it from gaining a clear-sighted understanding of the problem, let alone its solution.And it enforced that myopic understanding with pecuniary discipline. When grantees betrayed the foundation’s social vision or agenda, they got cut off. The most overtly liberationist Black Power beneficiaries, like those in Cleveland CORE and New York’s community control movement, saw their funding slashed or curtailed when their demands and actions for self-determination created more, rather than less, social conflict.

Increasingly, the foundation became more partial to the cultural wing of Black Power, which was often involved in less contentious endeavors. But even in these cases, more radical projects, like that of the leftist theater director Douglas Turner Ward and his Negro Ensemble Company, faced a funding hammer that relentlessly chipped away at their aims for social transformation.

Out of the rubble of this experimentation, the Ford Foundation found the right vehicle for its assimilationist goals. While it institutionalized black arts and black studies within the nation’s cultural and educational establishment, Bundy’s foundation also promoted a program of black leadership development (fostered through initiatives like making community development corporations the incubators of black “public entrepreneurs”) and an ambitious college scholarship program (which played a significant role in expanding the black professional class).These efforts — not liberationist ventures that butted up against the foundation’s conciliatory ethos — were the concrete and lasting accomplishments of the Ford Foundation’s efforts. In fact, this model of elite affirmative action paved a path of least resistance against the claims of Black Power, one that would be followed by the federal government (starting with the Nixon administration), corporate America, and public and private institutions across the United States.By that point, the foundation had long since abandoned any remnant of an ambitious social-development agenda. Despite ongoing ghettoization, the nation-threatening conflict and disorder of the riots had faded away — and so had the urgency of dealing with the fundamental problems facing inner-city communities. The foundation’s goal was clear: fostering individual minority leadership to ensure that, in spite of ongoing racial inequality, African Americans could be represented appropriately in the nation’s public life.It had thus found its answer to the problem of racial inequality, and the nation had been saved once again from the fundamental contradiction between the liberal creed and social reality.

The Limits of Liberal Philanthropy

The Ford Foundation’s engagement with Black Power proved to be at best constricting and at worst destructive for most of its grantees. It spawned a new regime of race management that has served the nation’s elites, not black freedom. It helped lay the seed for the “progressive neoliberalism,” which celebrates elite multiculturalism and promotes “diversity” while ignoring or masking structural inequalities.Nevertheless, there are good reasons why black activists took the money, then and now. For one thing, it’s hard to turn down such magnificent sums.

For another, the Ford Foundation is one of the few foundations (and by far the richest) ready to fund black activism. One could even argue that progressive social movements can’t afford to reject philanthropic funding because they have to compete in a plutocratic political environment shaped by the ideological convictions of conservative billionaires and grandiose schemes of high-tech magnates. For example, criminal justice reformers have worked with George Soros, Ford’s partner in the Black-led Movement Fund, who has helped bankroll their efforts.But foundation imperatives will likely clip the wings of radical dreamers today, just as they did in the 1960s and ’70s.

Again, the Ford Foundation is instructive. The foundation’s current president, Darren Walker, is the embodiment of its decades-long strategy of elite racial liberalism. Walker, a black, gay Southerner who was born in poverty, rode the “mobility elevator,” as he put it, “fast and hard, and as far as I wanted to go,” to become a lawyer, investment banker, and philanthropic leader, thanks in part to the Great Society’s Head Start and Pell Grants program. He leads an organization whose senior staff and trustees are remarkably diverse in terms of race, gender, and sexuality (and who haven’t had a white male president since Bundy resigned in 1979).

To his credit, Walker is working hard to make the foundation’s elite multiculturalism finally bear fruit for more than a fortunate few. In 2015, he positioned the foundation outside of the philanthropic mainstream by refocusing all of its grant-making to address the causes and consequences of inequality, dedicating $1 billion to the effort. In announcing this shift, he declared a “new gospel of wealth” in which he frankly acknowledged that the fortunes that create philanthropy are deeply implicated in inequality, and urged his fellow philanthropists to ask, “Why are we still necessary?” The foundation has since broken with its formerly ironclad financial orthodoxy by investing a small percentage of its endowment for social impact, not just financial return.

Walker’s foundation is also notably humble in this age of overbearing, top-down “strategic” philanthropy by Silicon Valley “disruptors”; unlike many of his peers he refutes the philanthropist’s fantasy that “foundations are central protagonists in the story of social change, when, really, we are the supporting cast.” Following up on this credo, the foundation has offered long-term institutional support to “anchor” organizations, like M4BL, and then promised to step back, offering the grantees security and freedom from the “proposal economy” that sucks up the energy and so often redirects the program and mission of nonprofits. In the world of philanthropy these are not trivial interventions, and Walker’s leadership deserves some praise.

But McGeorge Bundy also stretched the limits of philanthropy’s innate conservatism by expanding the range of its social responsibility, dabbling in social investment and promising not to interfere in the work of the foundation’s Black Power grantees. And despite its brave talk about philanthropists’ connection to inequality, Walker’s “gospel” includes an “obligation to capitalism,” in which he dreams of “bridg[ing] the philosophies of [Adam] Smith, and [Andrew] Carnegie, and [Martin Luther] King,” by “bending the demand curve toward justice” — a heretical blending of market fundamentals with the maxim King made famous. Needless to say, he doesn’t reckon with King’s later understanding of the intertwining of American capitalism and racial inequality, an understanding at the core of M4BL’s platform.

Walker asks his fellow philanthropists to “leverage our privilege to disrupt the levers of inequality,” not to eliminate either the privilege or the levers. No matter how multicultural its leadership or reformist its agenda, the Ford Foundation and liberal philanthropy writ large remain within and committed to the systems that spawned their creation and that undergird the American political economy. As many Black Power activists learned fifty years ago, immersion into that liberal funding stream can inexorably redirect their quest for freedom.

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Karen Ferguson is associate professor of history and urban studies at Simon Fraser University and author of Top Down: The Ford Foundation, Black Power, and the Reinvention of Racial Liberalism and Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta.

Featured image: Future Ford Foundation president McGeorge Bundy visiting South Vietnam in 1965. (Source: Francois Sully / Flickr)

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Combat Troops Coming to US Streets?

By Stephen Lendman, June 02, 2020

On Monday, Trump threw more fuel on a national inferno of public rage instead of showing leadership to calm things by pledging transformational change to serve all Americans equitably.

Last week, he inflamed things by tweeting: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

Focus on Looting Detracts From Racism

By Robert Fantina, June 02, 2020

What this writer finds troubling is the focus away from the systemic racism that is inherent in U.S. governance, and plainly manifested by the U.S. police force, toward a ‘blame the victim’ mentality that allows the government to maintain business as usual. As yet another unarmed, defenseless Black man is brutally murdered, on video, for all the world to see, it is the protesters and the destruction resulting from the demonstrations that are being condemned by all ‘mainstream’ news outlets.

Floyd Murder Sparks Violent Protests in US – Citizens at Breaking Point with Police State Oppression?

By Joachim Hagopian, June 02, 2020

The brutal oppression and slaughter of darker skinned people on this earth for centuries has colored human history blood red, the same color we all bleed. Conquering, colonizing, slaughtering and inhumanely exploiting races deemed “inferior” or “weaker” that happen to possess darker skin pigment is sadly an entrenched historical fact. That “the great melting pot land of the free” called America has always been at the epicenter of this raging battlefield over race should come as no shock. After all, America’s roots were founded on racism from its very genesis, first with the genocide inflicted on the indigenous race calling the Western Hemisphere its home for centuries, and then the barbaric uprooting of a darker skinned race from its African home for nearly four centuries of legalized enslavement. If that’s not tragically diabolical enough, the fact is, out of the 244-year history of the United States, it’s been warring almost exclusively against virtually every nonwhite nation on earth throughout its entire existence – 93% of the time to be precise.

Anti-Racist Demonstrations Continue Despite Escalating Government Repression

By Abayomi Azikiwe, June 02, 2020

Even though Minnesota Governor Tim Walz ordered the National Guard into the Twin Cities, it would take a full mobilization of these military forces which spread out around the unrest areas utilizing teargas, pepper spray, igniting concussion grenades and the random firing of rubber bullets into large crowds of people to clear the streets. In Minneapolis there has been at least one death since the rebellion and demonstrations erupted. Many others have been arrested and abused by the police. Journalists and bystanders are routinely arrested and held without being charged for hours.

A Superpower in Chaos

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, June 02, 2020

Minneapolis could not have happened at a worse time for the US elites. While violence perpetrated against African Americans by White police officers has happened a number of times before, its occurrence right in the midst of a huge health emergency that has already claimed more than a 100,000 lives and a related massive economic disaster that has robbed 30 million people of their jobs, is truly unprecedented. The mayhem and chaos accompanying the violence have spread to a number of other cities right across the United States of America.

African American Mayors and Sheriffs Stand Among George Floyd Protestors in Central North Carolina

By Danica Jorden, June 02, 2020

Walking in the crowd was Fayetteville mayor Mitch Colvin. Wearing a promotional polo shirt and plain pants, he was a nondescript member of the group, without retinue or escort. With Rakeem Jones’ help, Colvin and a coalition of other regional mayors and sheriffs quickly decided to refrain from visible police presence as they organized their towns’ participation in the mounting protests sweeping the country.

“Let’s Burn the Whole Thing Down”: Death, Protest and George Floyd

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, June 01, 2020

With the United States topping the global chart in coronavirus deaths, with numerous parts of the country easing lockdown restrictions as unemployment has surged, the release over the week became atavistic, vengeful.  Mixed in were also protests of desperate sadness and anger, with sentiment very much against violence as a weapon of choice.  Police were attacked but in other cases, notably that of Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson in Flint, Michigan, they joined protests and expressed a wounded solidarity.

Author’s Note

This interview was first published in November 2011. It focussed on the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, both of which were funded by corporate foundations.

Who is behind the protest movements in the US?

Who is behind the movement against racism and poverty in America. 

We are dealing with a network of corporate funding of so-called “progressive” organizations.

This networking of funding dissent is a powerful instrument. It constitutes the basis whereby the economic elites retain control over the protest movement. 

The Occupy Wall Street Movement as well as the World Social Forum are funded by Wall Street. 

You cannot organize a meaningful mass movement against the Empire and then ask the Empire to pay for your expenses. 

And today Black Lives Matter has taken a firm stance in leading the campaign against Racism and Social Inequality.

Black Lives Matter, however, is generously funded by corporate charities and foundations ( Soros, Ford, et al) which are firmly committed to neoliberalism.

That has to be addressed. 

It’s called “Manufactured Dissent”. 

Michel Chossudovsky, May 1st 2016, updated June 2, 2020

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[Potent News] We’re here with Michel Chossudovsky, and we’re having a little chat. I believe we were talking about, basically, the protests that are happening here that were started up by the Adbusters initially. I’ve got a couple of questions. Are you encouraged by what you see happening with the protests?

[Michel Chossudovsky] Well, I’m encouraged by the fact that people across the United States and Canada are rising up against an economic and political agenda. And they are the victims of the neo-liberal agenda. I’m not encouraged by the way this Occupy Wall Street movement is proceeding, because it was initiated by a couple of organizations: Adbusters, which is a magazine in Vancouver, and the other one was Anonymous, a social media hactivist website, which does not reveal its identity in any way.

I think the problem is that these promoters of the Occupy Wall Street movement have been actively planning a whole network of activities across America with social media, websites, and so on, for several months. In fact, the Occupy Wall Street website was launched back in, I think, in July [2011]. We don’t know who these people are. When we go to their websites, there’s no contact information. We don’t know who the leaders are. These are shadow leaders.  [scroll down for complete transcript of interview]

PART I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fLDkilPSEs

PART II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtgM7eLdRRI&feature=related

PART III

On the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

How do the Rich Enrich themselves at the Expense of the 99%

War on Libya 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z63jeEusOsU&feature=related

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Transcribed from the videos by Tara Carreon, American Buddha Online Librarian

[Potent News] We’re here with Michel Chossudovsky, and we’re having a little chat. I believe we were talking about, basically, the protests that are happening here that were started up by the Adbusters initially. I’ve got a couple of questions. Are you encouraged by what you see happening with the protests?

[Michel Chossudovsky] Well, I’m encouraged by the fact that people across the United States and Canada are rising up against an economic and political agenda. And they are the victims of the neo-liberal agenda. I’m not encouraged by the way this Occupy Wall Street movement is proceeding, because it was initiated by a couple of organizations: Adbusters, which is a magazine in Vancouver, and the other one was Anonymous, a social media hactivist website, which does not reveal its identity in any way. I think the problem is that these promoters of the Occupy Wall Street movement have been actively planning a whole network of activities across America with social media, websites, and so on, for several months. In fact, the Occupy Wall Street website was launched back in, I think, in July. We don’t know who these people are. When we go to their websites, there’s no contact information. We don’t know who the leaders are. These are shadow leaders.

“Leaderless Movement”: Occupy Wall Street WS  Confronts “Organized Wall Street”

Now what’s coming out of the Movement is, “We don’t need leaders; we are the leaders.” But in effect, any organization that challenges Wall Street, and wants to yield some form of concrete results, has to have a very solid organizational structure. You don’t go and fight against Wall Street, because Wall Street is organized. Wall Street is a whole structure: institutions, banks, insurance companies, linked up to intelligence, and then linked up to the U.S. government. So if you want to change the tide, you have to organize, and you have to organize in a very solid way.You have to have a program.

Unseat the Leaders Who are Supporting Wall Street

You can’t just have a program that says, “Please Mr. Bush, or Mr. Obama, or whoever happens to be in power, could you be more gentle, have less wars, could you tax the rich?” You don’t demand of a system which is in crisis, and should be replaced and reformed, you don’t ask the leaders to act on your behalf. That’s rule no. 1.

Those leaders have to be unseated because they are the problem. They are not the solution. And it’s no use presenting a shopping list of demands, and then submitting it to the U.S. government, or to Wall Street, or to Warren Buffett.

Wall Street Supports Occupy Wall Street

Now, what troubles me in this Movement is that there is a covert element with organizations such as Anonymous and Adbusters, as well as their main websites. Who is behind it? Who is financing it? I recall that immediately when the Movement got going, that several prominent personalities came to the support of Occupy Wall Street. And these were people like Warren Buffett, Howard Buffett, Ben Bernanke, and Al Gore. Now these people, from my standpoint, do not constitute the solution to the crisis, they are the cause. They are the actors behind this crisis. Warren Buffett is the third richest man on planet earth, and his sympathy for the Movement should be viewed with some suspicion. That’s the way I see it.

Now I should also mention another organization which is OTPOR!

OTPOR! was an organization involved in Serbia in the year 2000. It was not a pro-democracy organization, it was actually an organization which shunted the 2000 elections in which Kostunica, who was the runner-up together with Milosevic, would have won in any event. But they prevented the second round of elections from occurring. And they essentially established the conditions for regime change. That was a colored revolution.

And OTPOR! subsequently became a consulting firm, which is called CANVAS. It’s non-violent forms of action which were implemented in a large number of countries. CANVAS, it’s logo is the clenched fist. And they were involved in Georgia; they were involved in various former Soviet republics; they were involved in Iran; they were involved in Egypt, and in Tunisia. They’ve provided consulting to so-called revolutionary groups. But they are also backed by Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy, which are U.S. foundations closely allied both with the State Department on the one hand, the U.S. Congress, as well as U.S. Intelligence. So that in effect, CANVAS is really acting as a consulting arm of the U.S. Intelligence apparatus supporting a training program of CANVAS.

Now we know that the Egyptian leaders of the protest movement of the so-called Arab Spring, they were trained in Belgrade. They were trained by OTPOR! And it should come as no surprise that the clenched fist was used also in Egypt. And it was used in a number of countries. It’s of interest that the name of the resistance movement in Georgia was “Enough.” And in Egypt, the Kifaya movement, also in Arabic, means “Enough.” So that in fact, you find the same names, the same logos, the same catch phrases in several countries. And this is no coincidence, because CANVAS is operating as a professional consulting arm assisting the movements in various countries.

Now what this suggests is that this movement, at least the grassroots of this movement, who are committed people — we have to acknowledge that; these are people we should support, people in the street, people who are unemployed, students who can’t pay their tuition fees, people who are committed to social change — we must support them. But they are being manipulated by a framework which from the very outset is pernicious, because it’s based on links to the seat of power. In other words, if its linked to the National Endowment for Democracy, or to Freedom House, or to the CIA, it cannot have an independent stance in challenging Wall Street.

And then the question is, “Who is funding this undertaking?” You cannot challenge Wall Street, and then ask Wall Street to pay for your travel expenses. And that is not something that is not limited to these events in New York City and around the United States. It’s something that has characterized progressive movements for a long, long time.

Trade unions have been infiltrated, their leaders invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos, then you also have other organizations such as those that joined the World Social Forum, or the People’s Summits. All those organizations are funded by tax-free foundations.

The World Social Forum

I’ve been looking into the World Social Forum, which was created some ten years ago. It started off in Brazil. And the World Social Forum was in effect funded by the Ford Foundation. Now we know that the Ford Foundation has links to the CIA. And many of the organizations didn’t realize that by being funded by the Ford Foundation, their hands were tied. The Ford Foundation would set the outer limits of dissent. And this is what I call “manufactured dissent.” It’s when the elites, through their tax-free foundations, will go in, and they will support limited forms of dissent which do not threaten their fundamental interest, which is the interest of making money and enriching themselves and so on.

So you have an expression of support to this Occupy Wall Street Movement which is coming from various corners, and which is also supported by Establishment figures, and which is receiving a fair amount of media coverage. I recall events where you had mass rallies in Washington, D.C., and anti-war movements against the U.S. government, and there was a total media blackout. There was simply absolutely no coverage. And also in Egypt, there was coverage initially of the events at Tahrir Square when people were getting rid of Mubarak, but once they started mobilizing against the new regime, which in effect was Mubarak without Mubarak, because the same military establishment were calling the shots, well then the media simply didn’t cover those events.

Egypt and The Arab Spring

And what I also noticed in the case of Egypt was that at no time were the main organizations, which consisted of Kifaya, the April 6th movement, and the Muslim Brotherhood, at no time did they actually challenge the macro-economic reforms of the IMF and the World Bank, the neo-liberal agenda, which were imposed on Egypt starting in 1991 at the height of the Gulf War. And I so happened to be in Egypt at that very moment. I was in the Minister of Finance’s office. And that was imposed. And you had that whole period, over a period of 20 years, when the country was subject to these deadly macro-economic reforms, leading to the destruction of agriculture, and the massive unemployment in the public sector.

And that framework remains today. It hasn’t changed. In fact, it’s gotten worse, because in effect, in the wake of Tahrir Square, the Egyptian economy ran into certain difficulties, particularly with increased levels of external debt. And so the clenched fist of the IMF and the World Bank is still there. And the protest movement did not, from my standpoint, change the fundamental relationship which exists within Egyptian society, which is the whole state apparatus that is controlled by external creditors, as well as by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Military. That we know.

So Tahrir Square cannot be presented as a model of pro-democracy protest, because essentially they have achieved virtually nothing. And they have achieved nothing precisely because the main groups — Kifaya, April 6 and Muslim Brotherhood — are controlled precisely by the U.S. Government. U.S. and British Intelligence in relation to the Muslim Brotherhood — that relationship is well established — and the links between the April 6th Youth Movement and the U.S. Embassy are well-documented. So you cannot run a revolution against the Empire — which is Washington — and then ask the Empire to give you money through its various foundations to fund your resistance against the Empire. It doesn’t make sense.

And Occupy Wall Street is in a very similar situation. First of all, it is using Egypt and Tunisia as a model. They are not a model. They are failures. They are colored revolutions which have manipulated the grass roots, and which have led these countries into coup de sac, into a status quo. So the end game of the protest movement is the status quo. It’s a semblance of democratization, but in effect, what happens is that the people in power who are in positions of government are replaced by other people who are in effect playing the same role on behalf of the U.S. and the external creditors of those countries.

Now there was one thing which disturbed me in a statement by Occupy Wall Street. I recall that there was a statement by a number of personalities, including Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, and Vandana Shiva among others. And part of the statement was alright. But then they said they had to fight against “a global al-Assad, a global Gaddafi”, and that these dictators personified the IMF and the World Bank. They said the IMF and the World Bank are behind this agenda, and they are treating us in the same way Gaddafi and al-Assad are treating their people. Now that kind of comparison is totally misleading because it is demonizing the IMF and the World Bank through the image of a political personalities, rather than focusing on the IMF and the World Bank as economic demons in their own right. [In fact the objective of this misleading comparison is to demonize Assad and Gadaffi, M.Ch.]

[Potent News] A two-part question here. First, how can we keep this movement as pure as possible as opposed to a media spectacle that is coopted? And what would you advise for people whose hearts are in the right place, and want to make a difference?

Organized Protest. Confronting Wall Street requires a Strong Organizational Structure

 [Michel Chossudovsky] Well, I think a movement which is confronting the World Economic Order, the New Economic Order, has to be organized across the land not solely in terms of street events, it has to have an organizational structure in towns, and cities, and villages, and workplaces, and parishes, in universities and colleges. In other words, all the various entities of civil society. It also has to permeate mainstream organizations such as trade unions and human rights organizations. It has to have a very strong organizational structure which can confront the corporate agenda. Corporations are very well organized, but they still constitute a minority. Now if the 99% want to ultimately reverse the tide, they have to organize. They have to have strong leadership. They have to have a program. And they are not there to make demands. They are there to question the legitimacy of the corporate agenda. They are there to unseat these powerful actors whose legitimacy actually is sustained by a very crooked and fraudulent apparatus. So that’s what you have to tackle.

The Tobin Tax: Taming the Speculators

I recall many years ago when the World Social Forum started up, there was another movement which was called ATTAC, which was one of implanting a tax on speculative transactions. It was called the TOBIN tax. And everybody joined the bandwagon of the TOBIN tax. saying we have to put a tax on speculative activities, and use the proceeds of this tax to help the poor.

I was opposed to that for various reasons, but more fundamentally, if you want to get rid of highway robbery, you don’t put a tax on highway robbery. If you want to get rid of speculation, which is ultimately the instrument for transferring wealth, you do not provide legitimacy to the speculators by taxing him 1%, or whatever, of his transactions. You freeze those transactions. And that is something that can be achieved. In other words, their whole series of speculative instruments on Wall Street which affect, let’s say the price of food, the price of oil and which are impoverishing people worldwide.

Putting a Freeze on Derivative Trade

Now, how do you reverse the tide? You put a freeze on derivative trade. You don’t tax the speculator. The speculators were the first people to endorse the TOBIN tax. Why? Because they’re stealing from the 99% by using very complex financial instruments. And if a tax is imposed, the legitimacy of their undertakings is not questioned. They pay the 1% tax that is used to compensate the people who have been expropriated and impoverished as a result of their actions, and it provides a human face to the speculative onslaught. That is what is behind this complicity of people like Warren Buffett and Ben Bernanke in this Occupy Wall Street movement. You do not reverse the tide by taxing the rich. You have to tax the rich, but ultimately you have to address the broader question of how do these people enrich themselves at the expense of the 99%.

NATO Atrocities in Libya

[Potent News] So one last question. Apparently, yesterday at the conference at the university [St Mary’s University, Halifax] there, apparently was someone doing the video that was actually shedding light on what’s actually happening in Libya. I heard that one of the people there cried and walked out. How important do you think it is to be able to gain the strength to face what is being done in our world and often in our name?

[Michel Chossudovsky] Well, I think in Libya, atrocities have been committed by NATO. Thousands of people have been killed. The media is not reporting those atrocities. It has a responsibility as media, as journalists, to report the facts on the ground. But that is not happening. In fact, it’s the reverse: they are obfuscating. They are acting as a camouflage, as a cover-up. And they are providing a human face to the rebels, which are in large part are made up of al-Qaeda militia. This is not a pro-democracy movement. And what has happened is that the media has supported this war.

NATO: “We are running out of bombs”

Without the media, they could not have run this war, because they would not have been able to camouflage the impacts of those bombings. Anyone who has a minimal understanding of fighter aircraft knows that if you have 10,000 strike sorties, with a dozen missiles on each of these fighter planes, you’re going to kill a lot of people. You’re talking above 50,000 bombs. And it’s certainly worth noting that already in the month of April [20111], after one month of bombing, NATO has said, “We’re running out of bombs.” They’re running out of bombs?! That’s an incredible observation against a country of 6 million people. And then they would make the same statement, “We haven’t killed anybody.”

So people don’t analyze necessarily that data which comes out from NATO. Every week they will publish the number of strike sorties. But the military analysts working for the mainstream media, who know the planes, who have an understanding of war, and of the impacts of advanced weapon systems, they have a responsibility to report those, to analyze them. They are not doing it.

Killing Gaddafi. Destroying an Entire Country  

And yes, atrocities are being committed. But what I find disturbs me is that when you go to Occupy Wall Street, they say we must implement pro-democracy following the example of our brothers and sisters in Libya. And they are referring to the transitional counsel which is made up of a bunch of criminals, and which does not represent the Libyan population.And then they present Gaddafi as the enemy of democracy.

I’m not particularly a fan of Gaddafi, but Gaddafi is not the enemy of democracy, it’s the United States of America, which in the course of the last 100 years has supported dictatorships all over the world. And now they say we’re pro-democracy. The fact is, if they don’t like a particular head of state, or head of government in the case of Gaddafi, they go in and they kill him, and they kill the members of his family, and his grandchildren. And that is not the way you implement democracy. You implement democracy by respecting the sovereignty of countries, and the rights of people in those countries to decide on how they want to run their own affairs.

Libya Had the Highest Standard of Living in Africa

And I think it’s important for the record that Libya was one of very few countries in the world that did not obey the diktats of Washington and the IMF. And as a consequence of that, whether we like Gaddafi or not, the figures published by the United Nations, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization, confirm that the standard of living in Libya is the highest in Africa. There’s full employment, there’s almost 100% literacy, 50% of students who graduate from high school go to university, and it is by African standards an advanced welfare state. Whether we like the political regime or not, we have to acknowledge that.

And what has happened with the bombings over a period of several months since March [2011], is the destruction of a country, of its water system, of its food supplies, of its schools, its hospitals, its universities. Because these are being bombed, and we have evidence that they are being bombed. And if the Occupy Wall Street movement is a significant pro-democracy movement in the USA, Canada, and the Western world, it should take a stance against those NATO bombings. It should not present NATO as the role model, and all the rebels as the role model.

And that is precisely what was implied in some of those statements made by Occupy Wall Street that ultimately we should support our brothers and sisters in Libya who are fighting against Gaddafi. Those brothers and sisters are essentially al-Qaeda. They don’t represent the majority of the population, which ironically was supportive of the government. I mean, there’s opposition within all of those societies, but broadly speaking that society, that country had a project, had a high standard of living, had an educated population, and the result of this seven months of bombing has been to destroy a country. And it’s certainly not a role model for Occupy Wall Street.

Occupy Wall Street Must Take a Stance against War

And so Occupy Wall Street has to take a stance not only against Wall Street, but against all the wars which are led by Wall Street, by the oil companies, by Washington, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Palestine, in Libya, and in other parts of the world where they come in, in the Congo, in Rwanda, in Somalia, which is characterized by The Agenda. It’s the Agenda of going off the terrorists, going off to al-Qaeda. But then we discover that al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA, and that al-Qaeda in effect are the foot-soldiers of NATO in Libya. It’s the Libya Islamic Fighting Group which constitutes the main paramilitary force.

And then we discover that in Syria, the gunmen involved in the confrontation with the government forces are paid mercenaries who are Selafists, al-Qaeda-affiliated, and they are also supported by Western Intelligence. And this is an insurgency which purports to destabilize a sovereign country. Whether we like al-Assad or not, I respect the right of the Syrian people to decide on their own future without the intrusion of armed gunmen paid by foreign powers. And that is what is happening.

And the media also has the responsibility of reporting what’s going on in Syria. And when they have protesters armed with heavy machine guns, they have the responsibility to acknowledge that; because that’s not a protest movement, that’s an insurgency.

[Potent News] Thank you for joining us and donating your time Professor Michel Chossudovsky. Thank you very much.

[Michel Chossudovsky] Thank you very much. Delighted.

Annex

The Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS) was launched by Adbusters, a Vancouver based NGO.

Adbusters is funded by the Tides Foundation. The latter is in turn funded by a large number of corporate foundations and charities, including the Ford Foundation, Gates Foundation  and the Open Society Institute. Ford is known to have links to US intelligence. 

While Tides makes its name by facilitating large pass-through grants to outside groups, many of Tides’ grantees are essentially activist startups. Part of Tides’ overall plan is to provide day-to-day assistance to the younger groups that it “incubates.

(https://www.activistfacts.com/organizations/225-tides-foundation-tides-center/)

Wall Street foundations support the protest movement against Wall Street? How convenient. 

Russia has intensified its military involvement in the Syrian conflict.

On May 30, Syrian state media announced that it had received a batch of MiG-29 multirole fighters from Russia. Damascus did not provide details regarding the number of the received jets, but said that they are entering service with the Syrian Air Force on June 1. They are set to conduct regular patrols in Syrian airspace. Prior to the delivery, the Syrian Air Force had at least 20 MiG-29 jets.

Moscow is also working to expand its military infrastructure. On May 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a directive tasking the Defense Ministry, in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry, with holding negotiations with Syria on transferring more real estate and water territory to the Russian military’s possession. Russia currently has two permanent military bases in the war-torn country — the Hmeimim air base in Latakia province and a naval facility at the port of Tartus on the Mediterranean Sea.

The intensification of Russian support to the Damascus government comes as Turkey continues its military buildup in northwestern Syria. On May 30, May 31 and June 1, the Turkish Army deployed additional troops and equipment, including at least four M110 self-propelled howitzers, in Greater Idlib.

The configuration of Turkish military positions and Ankara’s attitude towards Damascus demonstrate that Turkey is not going to use these force against Idlib terrorists.

Rather, these reinforcements are needed to secure their safety in the event of any advance by the Syrian Army. On May 30, pro-government sources even claimed that Turkish artillery carried out several strikes on positions of the Syrian Army near Urem al-Kubra.

In response to the Turkish posture, the Syrians created additional fortifications at their positions in Saraqib and Ma`arat al-Nu`man as well as the Zawiya Mountain. Pro-militant sources also claim that the army from time to time conducts limited precision strikes on militant positions along the contact line in southern Idlib.

On top of this, late on May 31, an unidentified unmanned combat aerial vehicle delivered a series of airstrikes on militants’ positions on the al-Zawiya Mountian. At least 3 militants were reportedly killed. The material damage remains unclear.

On May 30, ISIS cells targeted a Syrian Army vehicle with an IED and then shelled it near al-Sukhna. 3 soldiers were allegedly killed. The anti-ISIS raid that came in response to the attack led to no results. On the next day, reports appeared that an officer and a soldier were killed in two separate ISIS attacks in the provinces of Homs and Deir Ezzor. Over the past weeks, government forces have contributed notable efforts to hunt down ISIS cells hiding in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert. Despite this, the terrorist threat still remains high in the area.

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In his book titled “The Psychology Science (1966),” psychologist Abraham Maslow said the following:

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

Others made similar comments. It reflects how the US operates domestically and abroad, what’s gone on throughout its history — notably post-WW II, waging endless wars on humanity for control over planet earth, its resources and populations.

The US is addicted to war and its state-sponsored horrors, ordinary people suffering most — including on militarized US streets, cops armed with battlefield-type weapons for use in defending privilege against popular change.

In his book titled “Terrorism and War,” historian/anti-war activist Howard Zinn said war is the most extreme form of terrorism.

In public comments, he said the “feeling I get when I wake up in the morning (is that) I’m living in an occupied country.”

“A small group of aliens have taken over the country and are trying to do with it what they will” — referring to the US ruling class.

Stressing that “(n)o human is alien,” he said “that’s true, except for the people in Washington.”

“They’ve taken over the country…driven us into…disastrous wars…sucked up the wealth of this country and g(ave) it to the rich…ruining the environment” at the same time.

Its “nuclear weapons” can kill us all. “(H)ow has this been allowed to happen? How have they gotten away with it? They’re not following the will of the people.”

“If the American people really knew history, if they learned history, if the educational institutions did their job, if the press did its job in giving people historical perspective, then a people would understand” they’re being lied to, manipulated, exploited, and greatly harmed by the self-serving policies of the US ruling class at the expense of most others.

Americans are ruled through the barrel of a gun. Baseball isn’t the national pastime.

It’s endless US preemptive wars against invented enemies. Domestically and abroad, core US policy reflects Orwell’s dystopian “vision of the future…”

It’s no longer one day. It’s now: “a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

The root cause of rage in US streets is institutionalized racism, inequality, and injustice.

Privileged interests are served exclusively at the expense of vital social change gone begging.

At a time of economic collapse, deepening main street Depression conditions, mass unemployment, growing millions without healthcare coverage, and ruling class indifference toward public health, welfare, and jobs creation to put people back to work, tinderbox conditions exploded nationwide.

African American George Floyd’s killing by four Minneapolis cops — not one, three others involved not charged or arrested — sparked what’s going on.

If not that, it would have been something else because of pent up rage against a hugely unjust system.

It’s getting worse, not improving, in the United States of Special Interests at the expense of the great majority — exploited, not served, by the privileged few.

On Monday, Trump threw more fuel on a national inferno of public rage instead of showing leadership to calm things by pledging transformational change to serve all Americans equitably.

Last week, he inflamed things by tweeting: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

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

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020

On Monday, he called on state governors to get tougher on protesters, ignoring blood in the streets already.

The vast majority of protesters are peaceful, exercising their constitutional free expression and assembly rights, along with petitioning the government on city streets for redress of legitimate grievances.

Small numbers alone are involved in unacceptable violence and vandalism.

On Sunday and Monday, I saw the results of what’s happening on Chicago’s North Michigan Ave., its Magnificent Mile — a sight I never could have imagined throughout the half century I’ve lived in the city’s Streeterville neighborhood.

The entrance to my own residential building on a side street is boarded up, no one allowed in except residents, a county deployed security guard in the lobby overnight to protect the property from vandals.

Upscale shops along the avenue on both sides of the street are boarded up, including Walgreens’ flagship pharmacy, temporarily closed, a problem for neighborhood residents needing prescriptions filled.

The surreal scene looks like something out of a Hollywood horror film, including mostly empty streets that overflow with people and vehicular traffic during normal times — cops now patrolling them.

Despite opposition by Dem governors over Trump’s threat to send combat troops to restore order to US streets through the barrel of a gun, he may choose this option anyway, saying:

“If the city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residence, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.”

According to USA Today, “(m)ilitary helicopters, vehicles and personnel began to descend on the streets of Washington, DC, Monday night, hours after…Trump promised to ‘dominate the streets.’ ”

ACLU National Security Project director Hina Shamsi called his threat to deploy federal troops to US city streets “irresponsible and dangerous,” adding:

“No level-headed governor is asking for an even more militarized response to civilian protests against police brutality and systemic racism — for good reason.”

“There are already many reports of civilian police and some state National Guard forces engaging in serious abuses, and the deployment of military personnel, who are generally not trained for civilian law enforcement, only escalates the risks.”

“This president must not cause the country and its people even more harm.”

Despite the risk of making a bad situation worse by taking this step, he can do it according to 19th century federal law — by federalizing National Guard forces and/or deploying Pentagon combat troops to US city streets.

According to the 1978 Posse Comitatus Act, he cannot deploy federal troops to “execute the laws…except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.”

Under the 1807 Insurrection Act, he can order what Posse Comitatus prohibits.

He can act on his own “to suppress an insurrection, domestic violence, (an) unlawful combination or conspiracy” — with or without a request by state or local authorities.

He can also deploy federal troops domestically to restore order if federal, state, or local laws are breached in the streets.

Nine earlier US presidents invoked the Insurrection Act, deploying federal forces to local communities to restore order.

They included Thomas Jefferson in 1808, Rutherford Hayes (1878), Grover Cleveland (1894), Woodrow Wilson (1914), FDR (1943), Dwight Eisenhower (1957), JFK (1962 and 1963), LBJ (three times in 1968), and GHW Bush (1989 and 1992).

By federal law and precedent, Trump can deploy federal troops to US cities as president and commander-in-chief.

Eisenhower did it to protect the rights of nine Black Arkansas students to be educated in Little Rock High School — enforcing the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling.

Jack Kennedy did the same thing, enforcing desegregation orders in Mississippi and Alabama.

A major difference between earlier federal troop deployments to US communities and what Trump may order is the extent of what he may do — potentially affecting many US locations compared to specific ones alone earlier short-term.

Another major difference is that taking this step will challenge the right of thousands of aggrieved Americans — demanding equity and justice they deserve, denied by them the nation’s ruling authorities.

On Monday, Public Citizen president Robert Weissman said

“(a)t this moment…it feels like the country is plummeting into a kind of deranged chaos” — noting unacceptable “inequalities” in the country, adding:

Trump’s “calls for violence against protesters, using racist tropes, makes our country far more dangerous.”

“His denunciation of protesters as ‘terrorists’ not only threatens civil liberties, it encourages violence not just by law enforcement, but by right-wing groupings — violence that will surely be directed primarily at people of color.”

“And his threat to deploy the military in our cities is a frightening warning of his existential threat to” fundamental freedoms.

“Against the backdrop of the daily (COVID-19) death toll and the worst unemployment since the Great Depression, Trump stands ready to divide us and spread chaos.”

“He may well believe, with reason, that chaos is his best hope for political survival.”

Ongoing protests in US cities for the past week are all about rage against the system.

Police brutality symbolizes hugely unfair and unjust governance at the federal, state and local levels.

Rage in the streets is happening at a time of economic collapse with unprecedented numbers of working-age Americans without jobs, students out of school because of COVID-19 related lockdowns, more normal life nationwide greatly disrupted and harmed by the nation’s ruling authorities.

Human deprivation, despair, and anger over government dismissiveness toward public health, welfare, and fundamental rights explain what’s going on in US cities nationwide.

If violently quelled and order restored without addressing the root cause of public anger, it’s just a matter of time before things will explode again.

When people lose hope, they lose it because there’s nothing more to lose.

Psychology Today earlier asked: “What happens when hope is lost?

“Reading our newspapers recently is like waking up in some kind of Orwellian nightmare,” the report said, an untenable situation.

“A man who takes pride in spreading lies, hatred and fear across borders is” is the US president, surrounded by a cadre of militant warmongers, indifferent toward the rights and welfare of ordinary people everywhere.

Instead of transforming hope into positive change, policies of the nation’s ruling class crushed it.

When despair turned to rage replaces hope, how things are today in the US, dreams of a better life become nightmares.

It shows by what’s going on, thousands taking to the streets to vent pent up rage against the system.

Small numbers involved in violence and vandalism are world’s apart from the vast majority of peaceful protesters.

They’re expressing justifiable anger against a nation serving the privileged few alone at the expense of most others — including during a state of economic collapse when vitally needed federal help is absent.

That’s the stuff revolutions are made of. If not now, ahead if major inequities aren’t corrected.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is by Fibonacci Blue/Flickr

On Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The standard Western canonical sources of record, namely international institutions, non-governmental organizations and media outlets, practically universally contend that all three countries are authoritarian or even tyrannical regimes, denying their peoples’ basic democratic rights. The current COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that the reverse is true.

Cuba has led the world as an example of human and scientific solidarity, while Venezuela and Nicaragua have clearly protected their people’s well being better than their neighbors. But the same North American and European governments falsely accusing Venezuela and Nicaragua of tyrannical repression, have themselves addressed a complex public health problem by mobilizing police forces to enforce aggressive, ill-conceived restrictive measures against populations deliberately cowed by fear.

For their part, Cuba and Venezuela have overcome the COVID-19 crisis despite cruel, illegal, unilateral extortion measures seeking purposefully to diminish popular support for their governments. So far, Nicaragua has faced somewhat less aggressive financial coercive measures, but they have still seriously affected the country’s ability to access resources to address the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. These criminal coercive measures denying the basic rights of people in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela have proven of little interest to the Organization of American States, or to unjustifiably prestigious human rights NGOs like Amnesty International or the International Federation for Human Rights and of no interest at all to chronically mendacious Western news media. Since these sources also form the basis for much academic research, their false witness in turn contaminates the historical, economic and social science record.

In the case of Nicaragua, reporting in North America and Europe on the country’s policy against COVID-19 follows identical patterns to false Western reporting of the violent failed coup attempt of 2018. Back in 2018, the media and NGO disinformation offensive in support of the violent failed coup attempt from April 18th to July 17th insistently repeated two main lies. The first lie was that the sandinista government used lethal force to repress spontaneous peaceful protests supported by a majority of Nicaragua’s people. The second lie began even before the coup attempt was defeated in mid-July, namely, that  in Nicaragua opposition activists suffered unjust persecution for crimes of which they were falsely accused.

No impartial review of the available sources supports these two falsehoods. Opposition representatives and the international media spreading their lies, deliberately avoid addressing many unanswered questions about numerous lethal opposition crimes of violence. The enduring false witness of Amnesty International’s reports on Nicaragua reflects the typical human rights à la carte culture of all the main international human rights institutions especially the consistent doubletalk on Nicaragua in relation to concerns about freedom of expression. This inherent breakdown in conventional reporting standards inevitably also results in examples of academics compounding those institutional, NGO and media falsehoods, leading to a systematic contamination and corruption of the historical record.

Similarly, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Nicaragua’s US controlled opposition has also insistently emphasized two main lies. Firstly, that the sandinista government has been negligent and incompetent, doing nothing to prepare for the pandemic. Secondly, that it has systematically hidden a disporportionately high number of people dying from the virus, while silencing responsible critics recommending quarantine measures. In fact, Nicaragua has been very successful in the careful balance it has struck protecting its population fom the virus while facilitating relatively normal social and economic life. This contrasts sharply with the way its northern neighbors, particularly El Salvador and Honduras have tended to use COVID-19 as pretext for repression.

In regional terms, Nicaragua’s preventive community approach to health care has emerged as model for how an impoverished country can control the virus while ensuring that social and economic life continue. However, Nicaragua’s US funded opposition suppress that regional context, focusing on false accusations which their propaganda outlets often illustrate with audiovisual material or photographs from other countries, just as they did in 2018, for example using photographs from Ecuador of bodies awaiting burial. In effect, the current opposition psychological warfare offensive is simply another stage of the US government inspired endless push for regime change.

Opposition aligned doctors are promoting a false campaign on COVID-19 in Nicaragua, setting up spurious medical associations and a propaganda  “observatory” spreading false information and statistics. They claim falsely that the government’s Ministry of Health is rigging data when in fact it is impossible in a small country of just 6.5 million people to hide cases of COVID-19. Like its revolutionary allies in Cuba and Venezuela, Nicaragua’s government is battling both COVID-19 and disinformation aimed at destabilizing and damaging the economy, exactly the same opposition objectives as in 2018, resulting from their chronic inability to win democratic elections.

In both the failed coup attempt in 2018 and in the current psychological warfare campaign, the fundamental tactic has been to deploy cynical reporting dressed up as concern for human rights. Opposition politicians in Nicaragua hysterically calling for quarantine measures have deployed the same “guided by science” demagoguery as their counterparts elsewhere. In fact, as even Richard Horton of the “Lancet” journal of medical science has conceded, “Scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world…” further noting, “Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours”. His own editorial practice as regards Nicaragua confirms that frank admission, despite a belated effort to give both sides of the current story.

From Ukraine, Syria and Iran to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, examples abound of Western institutions, NGOs and news media bearing false witness. Bodies such as those of the United Nations, the European Union and the Organization of American States have cynically misreported events, falsely seeking to justify efforts at illegitimate, coercive regime change by the United States and its European allies. Over time, the persistent false witness embodied in phony, faithless reporting crystallizes into false memory, becoming for all practical purposes the canonical historical record for the great majority of people living in North America and Europe.

It often seems that no amount of rational argument can roll back a dominant irrational narrative deployed via wholesale false coverage from mainstream news media, reinforced by mass deception campaigns on social media. However, Nicaragua demonstrated in 2018 that a large number of people can certainly be fooled and bewildered for a short while, but only for a matter of weeks. President Daniel Ortega and his sandinista government team trusted Nicaragua’s majority to understand their own material and national interests in 2018, just as they know they can do now, as they work to overcome COVID-19. Whatever Western history books may end up saying, Nicaragua’s people have repeatedly elected their authorities based on their lived experience of the country’s broken, perverse, US-owned opposition and the formidable strength of  the sandinista model of national development.

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Featured image: Cuba’s “Henry Reeve” medical brigade arrives in Nicaragua (Photo: La Voz del Sandinismo)

It has been 75 years since the surrender of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II in Europe. Amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Russia postponed its annual Victory Day celebrations last month due to the health crisis as did other former Soviet states, with the sole exception of Belarus which went ahead with its gathering at the insistence of President Alexander Lukashenko who has taken a mitigated response to the outbreak similar to Sweden and in contrast with the rest of Europe.

Initially, Western media were disappointed by the relatively small amount of cases in Russia, but now that its infections have risen to second behind only the United States except with a significantly smaller death rate, the Kremlin has been accused of concealing its true mortality statistics. This allegation has also been hurled at China, when the discrepancy is likely explainable by the differences in criteria for the recorded causes of death between countries, along with an epidemic of pre-existing respiratory diseases in the U.S. which has an inferior healthcare system. Predictably, when Moscow sent a plane loaded with unconditional medical aid to the U.S. to help with the fight against COVID-19, the Anglo-Americans interpreted it as a threat because warmongering is the only language they speak.

Prior to its deferral, U.S. President Donald Trump initially entertained the idea of attending the 75th anniversary Victory Day commemorations in Moscow before caving in to pressure from his advisors who thought it too potentially damaging to his reelection bid, with National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien tapped to be the American delegate at the events. Even though no evidence was found of ‘collusion’ between Trump and the Kremlin by the special counsel investigation of the alleged Russian election interference in support of his 2016 campaign, the 45th commander-in-chief remains dogged by a portrayal that he seeks to curry favor with Russian President Vladimir Putin. How the Democrats manage to reconcile this with the subsequent impeachment over his allegedly colluding with the Ukrainian government is beyond comprehension.

Even though Trump’s rhetoric has occasionally embraced the idea of détente with Moscow, his policies have been arguably even more hawkish than his forerunners. Even though the former businessman-turned-politician has often leveled harsh criticism of NATO, the alliance has only expanded during his tenure to fifteen countries with the accessions of Montenegro and the renamed North Macedonia as member states. The U.S. is now supplying arms to Ukraine in its eastern conflict against Russian-backed rebels, a move Obama declined and the temporary suspension of which got Trump impeached. The U.S. has not only withdrawn from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty which ended the Cold War but also recently pulled out of the Treaty on Open Skies reconnaissance agreement, with the New START Treaty likely to be scrapped next. The Trump administration has even been considering lifting a moratorium on nuclear testing for the first time in decades, a dangerous development that could push the hand of the doomsday clock closer to midnight. Yet despite restoring a doctrine of mutually ensured destruction, mass Trump-Putin derangement syndrome persists.

While no World War II ceremonies were held in Red Square, the White House did use the occasion on social media to credit the U.S. and Great Britain solely for the defeat of Nazi Germany which set off a fierce backlash online. This was the latest instance in an ongoing campaign of historical falsification by the West which culminated in a controversial European Union resolution last year. Then again, from the very beginning of Germany’s unconditional capitulation, the U.S. tried to take undeserved credit for the Allied victory starting on May 7th, 1945, when the initial version of the ceasefire text was signed in Reims, France. The parties were Alfred Jodl, Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht , and U.S. General William Bedell Smith, Dwight Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff, while the Soviet attaché in France, General Ivan Suslaporov, was present as a witness. Upon learning this development, a furious Stalin quickly realized that the Soviets were being backstabbed in a Western propaganda move. After all, the USSR had sacrificed not only the most troops but civilians during the war and seized the capital of the Third Reich, so why should the location of surrender be in France without the most senior German and Soviet officers as signatories?

The first surrender document also reneged on what had been agreed to by the Allies in July of the previous year that the German state would be liquidated and its war criminals subject to extradition. In fact, it did not even truly specify the surrender of German troops at all, stating units were “to remain in the positions occupied at that time.” The Soviets would later discover this was because the British were actually mulling over the rearmament of German divisions for an invasion of the USSR in the aborted Operation Unthinkable just as the Red Army was liberating Berlin. When the final Instrument of Surrender was formally signed at Moscow’s insistence by German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov the following evening in the German capital, this time it included conditions of immediate surrender while Keitel was reportedly even surprised at the presence of the Allied delegation as witnesses.

By some estimates, more than 50% of every Soviet household lost a family member in the Great Patriotic War. In spite of the unprecedented large-scale destruction and incalculable loss of life, the perseverance in the Soviet victory against the German invaders was in keeping with history where in previous centuries Russia had been conquered several times — but never defeated. Even the first and arguably most successful attempt by the Mongol Empire back in the 13th century during the Kievan Rus state still resulted in a Mongol retreat after the destruction of several Russian cities. In the 17th century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had it’s turn when it invaded the Tsardom of Russia in the Polish-Muscovite War which resulted in territorial losses and a two year occupation until a popular revolt finally drove the Poles out. A century later, Charles XII sent the Swedish army in the Great Northern War to overtake Russia but were driven south where the Swedes eventually suffered a defeat by Peter the Great in the Ukraine.

In the following decades, Sweden would repeatedly attempt to regain its lost territory, including starting the Russo-Swedish War of 1788–1790 by some historical accounts using possibly the earliest known instance of a ‘false flag’ operation when King Gustav III ordered a squad of Swedish troops to don Russian military uniforms and stage an attack one of their own outposts. Eventually the Russian Empire would retake Finland from the Swedes who would continue to decline as a world power, but not long before Napoleon Bonaparte would send the Grande Armée in half a million French soldiers to invade the Russian Empire in 1812. This time their foes would actually capture an evacuated Moscow and proclaim a French victory, but the Russian strategy of attrition warfare and scorched-earth tactics eventually forced Napoleon to withdraw — a tactic they would revive to defeat the Nazis a century later. To guarantee a defeat of the French Empire, this time Russia pressed onward until Napoleon fully surrendered in Paris and vacated his throne.

The following century, not even the collective strength of the Allied intervention in 1918 during the Russian Civil War could vanquish Moscow. The invading coalition included American participation whose own Civil War in the 1860s had received Imperial Russian help on the Union side with an armada of warships and the U.S. acquiring Alaska from Moscow in the aftermath. Following the Russian Revolution and the end of its involvement in World War I, the Bolsheviks withstood not only the Whites but their backers in the Allied Powers whose invasion at one point consisted of more than a dozen European countries occupying various Russian territories before the White Movement collapsed and the Allies were forced to withdraw. In the ensuing decade when Adolf Hitler rose to power, it was Western industrialists and bankers which violated the Treaty of Versailles and invested in German rearmament while gifting Czechslovakia and its millions in gold to Hitler in the hopes he would eventually turn east and attack the Soviets, a strategy which backfired when Moscow signed a non-aggression pact with Berlin in August 1939 and the Nazis turned westward toward Poland.

The treaty of non-belligerency between Moscow and Berlin would last less than two years, as the ultimate geopolitical goal of Nazi Germany was to expand the Lebensraum and drive to the east in the ‘Generalplan Ost’ to colonize the USSR while exterminating and deporting its millions of slavic inhabitants. Launched in June 1941, Operation Barbarossa would become the largest and most deadly military operation in the history of human civilization, with as many as 27 million Soviet citizens losing their lives as a result of the military bombardment and crimes against humanity. The German invasion extended over most of the European portion of Soviet territory, capturing Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states. However, after the long and devastating battle of Stalingrad in southern Russia, the Wehrmacht beat a retreat back to Berlin where they were finally conquered by the Red Army, in the same way the French invasion of Russia in 1812 imploded and Napoleon was pushed back to Paris. Given all this history, it is understandable why Russia would have security concerns about the expansion of NATO on its borders in violation of what Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and the George H.W. Bush administration verbally agreed to at the end of the Cold War.

The barbarity of the German invasion still haunts the Russian national psyche and collective memory to this day. The atrocities committed by the Nazis against slavs in Eastern Europe was not limited to conventional warfare, but included human experiments on prisoners of war and Allied nationals in germ warfare research. Contrary to popular imagination, it was actually slavs who were the biggest victims of the Nazis, a reality always downplayed in the sacred cow of the conventional holocaust narrative where the full range of groups who perished are regarded as inferior by the Zionists who have made the Palestinians atone for Germany’s sins ever since. At Dachau, Nazi scientists conducted malaria research and experiments on Polish, Russian, and Yugoslav subjects who were exposed to infected mosquitoes and then inoculated with lethal doses of synthetic drugs. While some of the high-ranking scientists and war criminals were convicted in the Nuremberg Trials, many like Kurt Blome evaded justice and were acquitted after intervention by the U.S. who subsequently recruited them for their bacteriological expertise in the Cold War. The work begun by the Nazis became the basis for the American biowarfare program and its legacy continues in the many bio-laboratories dispersed around Eurasia today.

During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, China and the U.S. have each pointed the finger at one another as being the source of the coronavirus as a possible biological attack. While both countries are signatories to the multilateral Biological Weapons Convention, it is only the U.S. which has a history of germ warfare, from the U.S. army deliberately distributing smallpox-infested blankets to Native Americans to the Korean War where the entomological warfare tactics of the Imperial Japanese Unit 731 were duplicated by the U.S. to drop disease-carrying bombs on North Korean and Chinese targets. On the face of it, Washington suspended its program in 1969, limiting any research and development to ‘bio-defense’ alone. However, there is evidence showing the U.S. is in non-compliance with the restrictions in the gene-editing and modification research of disease-carrying insects conducted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for use by the military. While there is no clear proof that the U.S. government is working on biological weapons, the ostensibly defensive pretext for the billions spent on bio-security is likely shielding the actual offensive purposes behind such research and technology.

Russia has also stated that the origins of the coronavirus are unknown and has backed calls for an independent inquiry — for good reason. Not only has the expansion of NATO included the deployment of missile systems on its borders, but there is currently an overabundance of shadowy U.S.-controlled installations conducting research in bacteriological agents under the guise of medical research in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The Bulgarian investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva has extensively documented the suspicious activity of the U.S. military and its dozens of secret bio-labs overseas, particularly those in the Republic of Georgia and Ukraine. In April, the U.S. Embassy in Kiev confirmed the presence of such laboratories in the country, prompting the Ukrainian political opposition torebuke the Western-puppet government allowing it to be used as a virtual petri dish. More disturbingly, in recent years the Kremlin has also sounded the alarm about the the U.S. Air Force’s medical branch collecting large amounts of ethnic Russian DNA samples, arousing suspicion that the Pentagon is seeking to create genetic-specific bioweapons. Contrary to what one might assume, the ability to create such instruments of war is not out of the realm of possibility and scientists have warned of it for years.

It has become abundantly clear that ‘we the people’ are being subjected to a divisive and derisive ‘leadership’ pantomime of truly global proportions and we cannot any longer simply hope some sanity will emerge to change this situation. 

Stand back for a moment and admire the view. Politicians, civil servants, billionaires, bankers, telecom chiefs, pharmaceutical CEO’s – you name them – are all acting as though the standard procedures of responsibility and the rule of law have been abandoned and anyone wearing a suit or uniform – and displaying an air of importance – can now step in and make up the rules as they go along.

The Covid Contrivance has provided the necessary fear cover to enable “Satanic” forces to declare an open day. Behaviour patterns are being ‘directed’ through the application of behavioural psychology, social engineering and undisguised indoctrination procedures. The net affect is that people can receive completely contradictory information communicated by some ‘figurehead’ and yet remain transfixed by his/her instructions and carry them out – with barely any need for coercion.

It is a process of mass hypnosis which is keeping this demonic show on the road. Put anyone of these mind-bent/mind-bending authority figures in the psychiatrist’s chair and with little hesitation, he/she would be diagnosed as clinically insane. Yet, my friends, these are the very people we have allowed to dictate our futures.

We have witnessed, on a daily basis, politicians and self styled ‘experts’ tell their audience stories in which there is absolutely no underlying logic or rationale to what they are saying; however the instruction is clear – ‘obey!’ – and to a far too large degree, people do. What is on show here is a paralysis of servitude wedded with political correctness. A deadly and dastardly combination if there ever was one. 

What is termed ‘the new normal’ is supposed to be based upon this model of  fear based uniformity.

But what does ‘the new normal’ mean in the context of this present Covid parody? The impression one gets is that it means politically obedient zombies walking around in 5G WiFi operational zones which suck the oxygen out of their blood molecules – while continuing to wear masks that afflict them with ‘apoxia’. The combination making them barely able to breathe.

All this while still failing to question the fact that they must maintain their observation of ‘the rules’. Well, if this is the new normal, the ‘old normal’ mess we are accustomed to will start looking like Shangri-La!

Let us explore what further kind of theatre might develop out of such a scenario. Perhaps ‘the new normals’ on recognising they are having a serious problem breathing, will decide they need to go to the doctor for a diagnosis of their condition. Once arriving in the surgery they find their doctor happily branding the very latest ‘made in China’ Covid-19 test kit which, on being put to use, informs the customer that he/she is ‘asymptomatic’ and has tested ‘positive’ for having antibodies against CV-19. A diagnosis which simply leads to nobody knowing what to do next, other than going home and turning on the TV to await the next important pronouncement from Big Brother. 

Whatever that turns out to be on the surface, underneath it will be a message concerning the further imposition of a New World Order depopulation programme.

A purely factual assessment of what’s going on has the affect of simply re-enforcing the underlying insanity at work within this mind bending comedy of errors.

But are they errors?

My conclusion must be that they are not. The social engineering and mind control techniques being employed are time tested and known to be effective. And because the implementers are so sure of the effectiveness of these tools, they are playing with humanity in much the same way as a cat plays with a mouse en route to killing it.

However, the difference between a human being and a mouse is that the human has the God given ability to become ‘aware’ of the threat being perpetrated against human kind and to take action to counter that threat. Once we become aware that we are being cynically played with – rather than ‘looked after’ – as governments would make us believe – our natural reaction is to be outraged!

It is precisely this outrage we should all be feeling at this critical juncture. The latest demonic attempt to hoodwink a large segment of the population of the planet is more than just a nasty kink in the road, it is a hiatus in which the future of humanity itself hangs in the balance. Our reaction to this global in your face exploitation is going to determine the future for generations to come. 

The work we have at hand to expose and reverse this diabolical situation is now an absolute imperative for each and every one of us. Suddenly we all have the same job and it is not one anyone is going pay us to do.

That job is nothing less than fighting for the retention and restoration of a fundamental value system for mankind. A resolute insistence on holding the line for the maintenance of liberty, dignity and humanity. Drawing upon the inner courage necessary to fight our way out of this physical and psychological corner we have been so complicit in allowing ourselves to be backed into.

The possibility of meekly offering ourselves up as victims of some satanic corporate/billionaire sponsored sect called ‘government’ is more monstrous than the monsters themselves. 

If you ‘get’ the urgency of this message, don’t just nod your head knowingly and retire contentedly into the armchair in front of the TV screen. That level of hypocrisy can only serve to greatly extend the prison sentence. 

Throw out the TV as I did twenty years ago – along with the cell phone – in recognition of the fact that they are indeed Big Brother technologies. Technologies that have played an unprecedented role in the mass dumbing down of an entire generation and the eclipse of millions of once thoughtful and creative individuals, from one end of the planet to the other.

Mankind is being tested. At this epoch making time we are all being set an examination. One which will reveal the emergence of the true human and the submergence of the fake look-alike. To quote Aldous Huxley

“That we are being propelled in the direction of Brave New World is obvious. But no less obvious is the fact that we can, if we so desire, refuse to co-operate with the blind forces that are propelling us” (1955, Brave New World Revisited).

“If we so desire”, says Huxley. But now, some 65 years later and in the midst of a near totalitarian take-over encompassing criminal acts of physical and psychological exploitation, we do not have the luxury of choice. We are surrounded, so break-out we must. No choice. 

As I have said before and will repeat, the challenge we are faced with is unprecedented, so the response we are called upon to manifest must be equally unprecedented. We are breaking new ground here, and what lies in front of us is bursting with extraordinary liberating portent.

During the immediate weeks, months and years ahead we have this unparalleled opportunity to break-out of centuries of servitude to cold, calculating masters of deception who count on our remaining forever on our knees to their pronouncements. But their game plan is unravelling and we are increasingly alert to its intentions.

By seizing this auspicious moment and rising up in defiance against all attempts to impose a culture of death over the celebration of life, we will be demonstrating our deepest instinct for the power of love to overcome all expressions of hate.

Love is, after all, the one force which has always been – and will always be, the God given prerogative of mankind to make gloriously manifest.

Every action we take in standing-up against the dark forces of occupation on this planet, is a true expression of our love of Life. Once enough of such actions are made manifest, the light will most surely break through!

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Julian Rose is a writer, organic farmer, international activist and holistic practitioner/teacher. Two of Julian’s books ‘Creative Solutions to a World in Crisis’ and ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ are particularly prescient reading for this time. See www.julianrose.info for more information. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from American Friends Service Committee

How is it possible that anyone could go hungry in the world’s richest country?

The scourge of neoliberal indifference toward public welfare caused the disturbing reality.

It’s the American way, supported by both right wings of the one-party state — Dems as dismissive toward what just societies cherish as Republicans.

The nation’s resources increasingly go for global militarism, endless wars on humanity, enforcing homeland police state harshness, and open-checkbook handouts to corporate America.

Ordinary people have no say over how they’re governed, no way to secure “the General

Welfare (and) Blessings of Liberty” as the Constitution mandates.

Nor can they “petition the Government for a redress of grievances” so fundamental rights guaranteed by the nation’s founding document are enforced.

The nation’s ruling class ignores them, serving themselves and other privilege interests at their expense.

That’s what “America the beautiful is all about” — enforced by police state harshness “from sea to shining sea.”

The American dream is a mirage — an insult to the hungry, food insecure, homeless, and impoverished.

Only asleep can ordinary people believe it, as the late George Carlin explained.

Operating nationwide, Feeding America (FA) “is the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization.”

It expressed shock “that anyone in America” goes hungry.” Yet it’s a national epidemic at all times — today at an unprecedented level because of economic collapse, the nation’s ruling class making an untenable situation worse by indifference toward vital public needs.

In a late May report, FA analyzed hunger and food insecurity “for the overall population and children by state, county and congressional district.”

At a time when America’s billionaires never had things better, FA estimates that about 54 million people in the world’s richest country (1 in 6), including 18 million children (1 in 4) face the specter of hunger.

FA CEO Claire Babineaux-Fontenot said the following:

Economic collapse in the US triggered by COVID-19 “continues to impact the lives and livelihoods of our neighbors nationwide, putting millions of additional people at risk of hunger while continuing to hurt people already familiar with hardship,” adding:

“The long-term effects of COVID-19 may be substantial, but the Feeding America network of 200 food banks and over 60,000 partner food pantries and meal programs has a footprint in every community to help serve our neighbors during this time.”

“(F)ood banks are facing a ‘perfect storm’ of surges in demand, declining food donations, fewer volunteers and disruptions to our operating procedures.”

It’s an untenable situation made worse by no help from Washington to address the most basic of public needs.

Hunger and food insecurity are highest in inner-city America, communities ravaged by unemployment, underemployment, and deep-seated poverty in more normal times — conditions far worse today because of economic collapse.

America’s least advantaged communities have endured over a decade of main street Depression conditions — festering today at an unprecedented level in the United States of I Don’t Care.

They’re exacerbated by neoliberal harshness when greatly enhanced social justice programs are needed, along with federal jobs creation initiatives.

What’s vital at a time of great public duress is ignored by the nation’s ruling class, things likely to worsen ahead, not improve, the nation’s most disadvantaged hardest hit with no relief coming.

Will it take a national convulsion, far exceeding what’s now going on nationwide, to change things?

Self-liberated from slavery, noted abolitionist, statesman, and social activist Frederick Douglas explained the following:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will.”

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress…Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.”

“The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions…have been born of earnest struggle.”

“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.”

Nothing in America will change without sustained mass activism in the streets nationwide for equity and social justice denied the vast majority Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow Americans by the nation’s ruling class.

A nonviolent/ordinary people-led social revolution for transformational change is needed.

It won’t come any other way — from the grassroots bottom up, never top down in the US or anywhere else.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

As people of conscience in the United States rage against the institutional racism most recently demonstrated in the savage, brutal murder of George Floyd, President Donald Trump and a government-compliant media are struggling to take control of the narrative.

This writer views a variety of sites to glean not only what is going on in the world, but also the different ways in which it is all being interpreted. With the current civil unrest, he sees some ‘news’ outlets criticizing Trump, his response and the responses of other government officials (see CNN news), and other programs condemning the protesters (see FOX News). These difference are subtle, not stark. Real analysis is available, but not always easy to find.

What this writer finds troubling is the focus away from the systemic racism that is inherent in U.S. governance, and plainly manifested by the U.S. police force, toward a ‘blame the victim’ mentality that allows the government to maintain business as usual. As yet another unarmed, defenseless Black man is brutally murdered, on video, for all the world to see, it is the protesters and the destruction resulting from the demonstrations that are being condemned by all ‘mainstream’ news outlets.

Certainly, the arrest of the savage police officer who killed Mr. Floyd is a positive step. But National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien states that “I don’t think there is systemic racism” in the U.S. police force, despite the evidence that clearly contradicts that view. One would like to believe that O’Brien is merely naïve and not racist himself, but that would stretch the imagination beyond any reasonable boundaries. Clearly, he is part of the problem.

Why do protests against racist murders and against racism itself turn violent? Are the protesters, as Trump has said via ‘Tweet’, thugs? Trump has praised white supremacists, and now threatens to designate the loosely organized anti-fascist group, Antifa, as a terrorist organization (designating a domestic organization a terrorist group is probably not legal, but that hardly matters to Trump).

The rage at the brutal murder of Mr. Floyd is only the tip of the iceberg, bringing to the fore the centuries old, generational oppression of people of color in the United States. Education and employment opportunities for them are far more limited than for whites. While the public education system in the U.S. is dismal compared to any other industrialized nation, for people of color living in urban areas, schools are plagued with violence due to unregulated guns, abject poverty, and the racist ‘war on drugs’, not to mention the despair these factors cause. Police officers constantly harass the residents, apparently hoping to scare them into ‘staying out of trouble’, not caring that such harassment only feeds the hatred that so many people have for law enforcement representatives. And employment opportunities are generally limited to fast food restaurants, or other menial jobs.

Children, youth and adults stuck in areas that the government ignores because, after all, these are brown and Black people, can clearly see what they are missing. They are not ignorant of the fact that their white peers in more prosperous areas grow up with cell phones, computers and name-brand clothing. They know, as they toil over a grill in a fast food establishment, that their peers are studying at colleges and universities and, if working in fast food, are only doing so temporarily to have spending money until they finish school. They see the new cars sold to graduating seniors to whom finance companies are happy to extend credit. As older adults, they see the many things their children are missing in the ‘land of opportunity’, because for Black and brown people, that opportunity simply doesn’t exist.

People of color are stopped and killed for routine traffic violations (Philando Castile, age 32, was executed in Minnesota because a bulb in the taillight of his car had burned out); for being in their own home (Atatiana Jefferson, 28, was executed in her Texas home after a neighbor, concerned that her front door was open late at night, called police for a wellness check); for playing with a toy gun (Tamir Rice, 12, (yes 12!) of Cleveland, was shot immediately when police officers arrived on the scene), and countless other reasons, too numerous to name here.

So when a Michael Brown or an Eric Garner dies simply because a white cop decides to execute him, rage at the injustice erupts, but not only within Black communities, but among people of conscience regardless of race. Pictures from the current unrest show Black, white and brown people joining together to vent their anger against a society that allows these executions to continue. And if some of that rage results in the perennial victims of U.S. oppression looting stores, it must be seen not as the problem, but as one manifestation of the much larger and insidious problem of U.S. racism. Desperation to have what is dangled in front of someone, but which is out of their reach, is not a crime. The institutional, government-supported circumstances that put them in that situation is.

The late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that “A riot is the language of the unheard”. It is long past time that the prosperous minority in the United States started listening to the unheard majority. Destruction and looting are the only vocabulary the disenfranchised have, and if not heard, will only get louder.

A complacent public must not fall for the government distraction, supported by much of the press, that the victims are at fault. That public must take responsibility for the injustices done in their name, and work to alleviate them. Failure to do so will be our shame, and future generations will so name it.

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Robert Fantina is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Pixabay

A scientific study published today concludes that natural life-support systems crucial to the survival of humanity could collapse if action isn’t taken to save wildlife populations.

The study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined 29,400 species of terrestrial vertebrates for which data are available and determined that 515 species of mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles are down to fewer than 1,000 individuals each. The authors warn that extinction is accelerating and that these irreversible losses could contribute to the collapse of human civilization.

“This new study shows yet again that the very survival of humanity is at stake if we don’t end the heartbreaking wildlife extinction crisis,” said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’re no longer looking at the loss of obscure species that most people aren’t interested in. We’re looking at biological annihilation if we don’t act to save life on Earth.”

The study, Vertebrates On the Brink as Indicators of Biological Annihilation and the Sixth Mass Extinction, was authored by Gerardo Ceballos, Paul Ehrlich and Peter Raven.

More than 400 vertebrates have already gone extinct in the past 100 years. Animals recently lost in the United States include the Tacoma pocket gopher, South Florida rainbow snake, dusky seaside sparrow and black-faced honeycreeper. U.S. land vertebrates on the brink of extinction include the Humboldt marten, Sierra Nevada fisher, eastern red wolf, Kauai ‘Akepa, Maui parrotbill and Attwater’s prairie chicken.

In a statement unusual in a scientific journal, the authors move beyond science and state that is a “moral imperative” for humans to take action to stop extinction.

“Extinction is a political choice,” said Curry. “We’ve reached a crossroads where our own future is at stake if we don’t move away from fossil fuels and end wildlife exploitation, and at the same time, necessarily, address poverty and injustice. Meanwhile the tone-deaf Trump administration has gutted nearly 100 environmental regulations, including the Endangered Species Act.”

The United Nations has warned that one million species are at risk of extinction. The authors of today’s study support the U.N. estimate and conclude that future rates of extinction are probably underestimated. They support estimates that one-fifth of all species are in danger of extinction by midcentury, and half or more by 2100, if governments don’t take action to stop extinction.

In January the Center released a plan for Saving Life on Earth. The plan calls for the United States to become a global leader in protecting wildlife by declaring the extinction crisis a national emergency, creating new protected areas, and prioritizing wildlife protection over other uses of public lands.

“The response to the coronavirus outbreak has shown us that rapid change is possible and that funding is available to address the extinction crisis,” said Curry.

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His decision to walk away from the Open Skies Treaty is part of a pattern aimed at converting the bipolar era arms control regime into one which could unrestrain the US and hold China down.

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US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the vital if obscure Open Skies Treaty (OST) represents a tangible and symbolic step towards the deconstruction of the international arms control regime between the major nuclear powers, an escalation of a new arms race, and the continued attempt to bind and freeze Chinese military power.

It is also another material gift to the largest arms manufacturing firms which have benefitted enormously from Trump’s destabilising rhetoric and actions undermining peace and security in numerous world regions. Finally, it is an ideological-electoral move to further assuage his far right and paleo-conservative ideological cronies, and his loyal America First voter bank.

Thus far, the Trump administration has withdrawn the United States from several significant international institutions and agreements that were the hallmark of its post-1945 global strategy. While other postwar administrations withdrew wholly or partially from such organisations, or sometimes refused to join when US sovereignty was considered at stake, no previous administration has philosophically and methodically challenged the very idea of the international.

Under Trump, there has been a veritable bonfire of global alphabet agencies: One of his earliest acts upon taking office in January 2017 was to disown the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Since then, the US has withdrawn from the Paris climate accord, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), UNESCO, the INF treaty, and the JCPOA. Most recently, of course, the US has accused the World Health Organisation (WHO) of China-centrism, promptly defunded it during the worst global pandemic since 1918 and has just announced the US withdrawal from the global body. The message could hardly be more starkly conveyed.

In addition, we might note US threats to other international bodies unless their members comply with demands for greater resourcing or funding. NATO is a prime example. The World Trade Organisation is also in the administration’s cross-hairs.

And the violation of international law – on asylum seekers, refugees, and the assassination of foreign leaders, for example – indicates the other front on which the US is acting unilaterally in a systematic fashion.

None of the above is new in and of itself, of course. What is new is the systematic, concentrated, and determined character of the zero-sum thinking at the heart of the Trump administration. This suggests a basic philosophical shift – not to withdrawal from world affairs, not towards ‘isolationism’. – but in mentality towards the ‘global’.

President Trump is a national Darwinist. In world politics, he represents a survival-of-the-fittest mentality, a reverence for power as the arbiter of disagreements. Hence, US power is being systematically weaponised – the dollar, the international payments system, the “whole-of-society threat” and ‘response’ to China, the US market, trade tariffs to incentivise greater investment inside the US, the threat of withdrawal from international treaties when others exercise independence. And US military predominance is adding a ‘space force’ to its plans, to add to its cyber and other forces.

Another international regime unravelling

In the mid-1950s, Moscow rejected President Eisenhower’s proposal to allow aerial reconnaissance flights over each other’s territory. Towards the end of the Cold War, President George H.W. Bush pushed for negotiations on the proposal between NATO and Warsaw Pact countries. After painstaking negotiations, the Open Skies Treaty entered into force on January 1, 2002, with 34 states party to the treaty.

The OST aimed to establish a regime of unarmed observation flights over the territories of state parties to assure they are not preparing for hostile military action. It was a confidence-building measure that worked.

Yet, some say Trump apparently grew uneasy with the OST when a Russian aircraft flew directly over his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, in 2017. With due notice of 72 hours, the plane was legally permitted to fly through the restricted airspace under the treaty.

As ever, Trump’s idiosyncratic behaviour is encased within a strategic logic – record levels of US military spending including on new nuclear missile systems and forces can now no longer be observed by Russia. And allegations of Russian violations of the OST – that Russia excludes over-flights in Ossettia, South Abkhazia, and the enclave of Kaliningrad, for strategic reasons – though correct, have been tolerated for over a decade. They could have formed the basis of discussions between the signatory powers.

Since 2002, the US has undertaken three times as many over-flights of Russia than vice versa. In 2019, for example, the US made 18 such flights compared to seven by Russia. Given the sophistication of US satellite technologies, however, it has clearly decided that such over-flights are either unnecessary or that the OST regime needs to be broken and replaced with a comprehensive global treaty that also includes China.

This is another move that undermines, if not dismantles, the existing nuclear arms-control regime, breaking the confidence-building mechanisms that reduced the threat of nuclear exchange. This may well lead to greater misunderstanding between Russia and the US. This happened at the height of the Cold War in 1960, for example, when the erstwhile Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 spy plane on a reconnaissance mission over its territory.

However, the OST move is also ‘red meat’ to Trump’s far right ideological allies, the GOP leadership, and to his political base. In an election year, “Trump-stands-up-to-Russia” and moves to pressure China takes the heat out of the impeachment decision and allegations that he’s been ‘soft’ on Russia, too cosy with Putin, and with Xi Jinping.

Nuclear agreements melting down, an eye on China?

In May 2018, Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA), despite Iran’s compliance with its protocols and conditions, including the most intrusive inspection regime administered by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Again, the other major signatories, including Germany, France, China, and Russia, objected to US withdrawal but to no avail.

In August last year, the Trump administration completed the process of withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, leaving the nuclear arms control regime in the lurch. One aim is to extend the agreement to include China’s cruise missiles.

It is now pretty clear that President Trump will seek an exit from the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the only remaining agreement to ensure that the United States and Russia limit their deployed nuclear missiles to 1,550 each. This pact is due to expire in February 2021. It could hardly be clearer that the aim is to seek a new trilateral pact that includes China. The basic idea is to bring Beijing’s nuclear arsenal under control and to curtail any desires to attain nuclear parity with Washington. But Beijing is not interested; its nuclear arsenal (numbering in the hundreds) is tiny in comparison with the US and Russia (numbering in the thousands).

But such a move would be in line with the longer-term strategic aim of simultaneously containing, engaging and now, rolling back, China’s great power capabilities and ambitions, real, imagined, or potential, to knock the US from its sole superpower position.

The idea of a winnable nuclear war remains

But there is one other factor that should be borne in mind. The idea of a winnable nuclear war – however horrific it may sound – has never been fully excised from US strategic thinking. Ever since the dropping of two atomic bombs over Japan in 1945, and the ever-present talk of using tactical or low yield nuclear bombs over North Korea in 1950-53, the very idea of containable, limited nuclear war remains embedded. A so-called low yield nuclear bomb is the equivalent of the size that annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The US has around 1000 low yield bombs in its stockpile – about 150 of them deployed in Europe. President Trump has indicated a desire to attach low yield nuclear warheads to submarine-launched ballistic missiles, thus multiplying America’s nuclear arsenal.

While such weapons have been available for decades, they have never been used.

Having low or high yield nuclear weapons is either a reflection of ‘mad man theory’ – a rational irrationality – or it’s for real: and that’s the point. It keeps everyone guessing. As Charles Kupperman, Trump’s former  deputy national security adviser, argues: “a nuclear war is winnable in the classical sense if one side emerged the stronger, even if there were tens of millions of casualties.”

American paleo-conservatives want to integrate the nuclear with non-nuclear military options to legitimise the use of strategic nuclear weapons in a “limited” way.  Donald Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) released in early 2018, brought low-yield nuclear weapons back into the nuclear debate. It stated that the US was not averse to resorting to the use of nuclear arms in response to “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks,” against it. The NPR approved the production of a low-yield nuclear warhead, increasing nuclear tensions. Trump favours an aggressive nuclear policy and is willing to rock the boat moored to mutually-assured destruction (MAD).

More recently, it is rumoured that the US is considering conducting nuclear tests again for the first time in decades. Administration sources suggest, without evidence, that Russia and China are already conducting low yield nuclear tests, to justify their possible shift of position. It is also suggested that the threat of new nuclear testing, which would violate the de facto compliance by all nuclear powers (except North Korea) of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty of 1996, would give the US leverage to force Russia and China to trilateral talks to hash out a new agreement.

For Trump, the moves are driven by personal preference – he gets more headlines; a geopolitical great game; material gain to arms firm donors to his re-election campaign; a sop to the Republican leadership; encouragement to his far right nationalist unilateralists; and gives his voters something to shout about. And he can call Joe Biden “soft on China” – “Beijing Biden”.

It’s win-win politics, for him. The only problem is that the fate of the world then rests on unilateral American decision-making.

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Inderjeet Parmar is professor of international politics at City, University of London, a visiting professor at LSE IDEAS (the LSE’s foreign policy think tank), and visiting fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford.

Dr Atul Bhardwaj is an honorary research fellow in the department of international politics at City, University of London. He is the author of  India-America Relations (1942-62): Rooted in the Liberal International Order (Routledge, 2018)

Featured image is from Syria News

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

How many times are we going to see another appalling episode of racist white cops maliciously murdering another unarmed black man, before we realize this repugnant injustice fueling our anger at this point is multilayered, penetrating to the core of what’s gone wrong in this world.

The brutal oppression and slaughter of darker skinned people on this earth for centuries has colored human history blood red, the same color we all bleed. Conquering, colonizing, slaughtering and inhumanely exploiting races deemed “inferior” or “weaker” that happen to possess darker skin pigment is sadly an entrenched historical fact. That “the great melting pot land of the free” called America has always been at the epicenter of this raging battlefield over race should come as no shock. After all, America’s roots were founded on racism from its very genesis, first with the genocide inflicted on the indigenous race calling the Western Hemisphere its home for centuries, and then the barbaric uprooting of a darker skinned race from its African home for nearly four centuries of legalized enslavement. If that’s not tragically diabolical enough, the fact is, out of the 244-year history of the United States, it’s been warring almost exclusively against virtually every nonwhite nation on earth throughout its entire existence – 93% of the time to be precise.

So this piercing, volatile issue of difference in skin color still remaining a deep, unresolved bloody thorn in America’s psyche since its very inception is hardly surprising. The surprise is how little progress has been made toward healing this open wound. Many believe anti-white racism is on the rise, especially so called victims of white male bashing, which has partially led to Trump’s ascendancy. But of course the 21^st century scourge of racism enflamed by Covid-19 is not unique to just the United States alone, just because this Empire nation of nonstop war and never resolved race issues is currently in freefall in its waning reign as world’s richest, most powerful country. Racism has been an unresolved worldwide human phenomenon that’s existed for as long as the conquering long boats began arriving on distant shores over a millennium ago.  

Justice for 46-year old George Floyd should be a unifying catalyst for oppressed people the world over to get behind a grassroots movement of universal justice against all institutionalized racism, demanding fundamental change, not just heat of the moment passion that dies out in a few days’ time, until the next in-our-face disgrace splashes across our computer screens and headlines. Former 6-term Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney recommends a viable potential solution: 

I propose the establishment of a permanent, independent board, similar to the National Transportation Safety Board, empowered with all necessary authority to investigate and impose solutions, including prosecution, to end criminal police behavior and prosecutorial misconduct.

Two months before George Floyd was asphyxiated to death by police in Minneapolis, in Louisville, Kentucky EMT worker Breonna Taylor was killed in on a botched search warrant when police were breaking into her home and her boyfriend fired thinking it was a home invasion robbery which resulted in indiscriminate gun spray needlessly killing Breonna. A month before that in February it was a young black jogger Ahmaud Arbury in Georgia gunned down by two white men.

The resultant violence erupting in cities across America of looting and rioting this last week has led to 4,000 arrests nationwide, symbolizing the growing frustration and anger of people everywhere, reacting to this latest unacceptable murder allowed to viciously repeat itself ad nauseam against people of color. The mass protests are spreading to Dublin, London, Berlin and Toronto. But this reactionary wave to white thugs in blue uniform callously beating and ending another black man’s life is more intense this time around, complicated by the pent up hostility and rage resulting from the protracted Coronavirus lockdown.  

In recent years the US has become a divide and conquer battleground between the polarizing Trump presidency versus the Obama-Clinton-Bush Deep State enemy camp, the right vs. the left, conservative vs. liberal, Republican vs. Democrat, white vs. nonwhite, blue state vs. red state, blue pill vs. red pill, USA vs. Russia, China and Iran, patriots vs. Gates, Fauci, WHO, CDC and the global elite, and on and on the battle lines are being drawn. Obama national security advisor Susan Rice and others are even regressing back to the tired dead-end game of blaming Russia for the riots. George Siros forces that predatorily exploit these tragic deaths as opportunity to foment global destabilization and regime change with an ultimate agenda towards a fascist totalitarian Marxist world dictatorship has been surging for years now and divisively pitting races, classes, religions, Western vs. Eastern nations against each other, ever since Trump won the 2016 election.

In the past George Soros has paid out-of-state Antifa provocateurs to incite violent chaos and civil unrest. Initial reports claim that out of state agitators were stoking the flames of unrest in Minneapolis and other cities. Trump’s threatening to place Antifa on the terrorist list. There’s nothing all that new in today’s horrifying events except one huge elephant in the room, the Coronavirus lockdown unleashed purposely to collapse the world economy, criminalize dissent, remove Trump from office and mandate vaccination rollout. 

Today’s violence and turmoil cannot be separated from the surrounding backdrop of government sponsored militarized police state oppression and violence directed against citizens of all colors spreading to virtually every nation worldwide. A calculated plan to militarize US police forces with weapons from lost US wars while training American police in Israel since IDF is so experienced in its genocidal practice against Palestinians. The global lockdown that’s gripped humanity for months now perpetrated by a centralized elite has imposed imprisonment and enforced isolation planet-wide over a bogus engineered Coronavirus pandemic. The ruling international crime cabal is seeking absolute tyrannical control over the global masses through a falsely overblown bioweapon designed to depopulate the planet.

Never before has the exasperated sentiment of the fictional newscaster character Howard Beale from writer Paddy Chayefsky’s prophetically profound 1976 film “The Network,” been more apropos: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” The American populace is an incendiary powder keg about to blow sky high, creating mass political and financial upheaval that’s certain to spread worldwide.

By design, the planetary controllers have used their induced crisis to destroy the global economy, and inflict life and death hurt on millions, if not billions of people across the globe. It’s been planned since the 2010 Rockefeller viral playbook. The global supply chain breakdown is underway and in a domino crashing effect, food shortages and hyperinflation could make the Great Depression look like a bad hair day.

With every planned and staged false flag crisis, global oligarchs controlling the national governments through bribery and sexual blackmail and the global economy through monopolized debtor theft move another step closer to their long coveted one world government tyranny. They’ve been calculatingly dumbing us down through mass media propaganda brainwashing, a broken education system pushing sexual identity confusion and communist collectivism, chemically processed GMO dead food, heavy metal poisoning through decades of geoengineering, fluoride in the water supply system, ecocide degradation ushering in the earth’s sixth and first manmade life extinction. For several years in a row Americans lifespan has been decreasing. Meanwhile, for decades the cabal has deceitfully been pushing the Malthusian overpopulation myth, killer virus scares and the global warming/climate change hoax due to manmade increasing carbon dioxide emissions as their arsenal of deployed weapons of mass destruction. Homicidal global genocide against humanity has long been their murderous agenda.

Through one orchestrated crisis after the next, vis-à-vis Gladio-like strategy of tension, the cabal uses through Machiavellian means theHegelian Dialectic formula of “problem-reaction-solution” in order to ratchet up their draconian control matrix. The elite has utilized this pandemic to deceitfully create fear and panic to more easily control the masses by over-exaggerating the virus danger as the identified problem. The reaction component has been to falsely inflate worldwide deaths attributed to Covid-19 in order to come close to fulfilling the initial logarithm model that was exceedingly high by intentional design. The mandatory vaccine as cabal’s solution increases biometric control over the masses. All the while, these extreme draconian measures effectively demolish what’s left of our constitutional rights and freedoms, and finish off obliterating our next to no rights of privacy through increased invasive electronic biometric surveillance, and without our consent, insidiously collect massive data to track our every move, expression, expense, habit and conveniently lock up the dissidents and non-compliers.

Already the most monitored and surveilled population in the history of humankind, we’ve been intrusively violated beyond our awareness. Again without consent or proper testing, we’re having 5G crammed down our radiated, throats and compromised immune systems. And now we are being herded and kept in curfew lockdown, indefinitely imprisoned on house arrest. And when we can venture out we’re seeing unprecedented checkpoints and travel restriction, warrantless search and seizure violations, mandatory vaccination now pending as the eugenics depopulation agenda, free of all death and injury liability. Our corrupted sciences and overpriced universities are corporatized propaganda mills, Big Pharma controls all our med schools and grotesquely unaffordable healthcare system while through deceptive advertising killing millions drug pushing killer opioids.

It’s time to fight back by not allowing ourselves to be further divided and conquered, allowing hate, blame and ignorance to keep us fighting amongst ourselves, too weak and too blind to unite and defeat the real enemy – the financial elites which control the banking system are pulling strings to finance both sides to every conflict and war. 

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Featured image: Mural portrait of George Floyd by Eme Street Art in Mauerpark (Berlin, Germany) (Photo by Singlespeedfahrer via Wikimedia Commons)

Four years ago, Rakeem Jones was punched unawares by John McGraw at a Donald Trump rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina on March 8, 2016, as police looked on. Today Jones, a young black man who wears his hair in long twists, was outside in the brutal humidity of an incipient Southern summer. Exhausted and probably saving his energy for the day ahead, Jones said simply, “You can talk and you can talk, but then you got to do something.”

Hundreds had already gathered at noon, walking along Fayetteville’s main artery, Skibo Road. Despite the dripping heat, despite the threat of Covid-19 spreading in groups and gatherings, many felt compelled to make their presence felt and their voices heard after the callous murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Aubery and Breonna Taylor at the hands of white police officers.

Walking in the crowd was Fayetteville mayor Mitch Colvin. Wearing a promotional polo shirt and plain pants, he was a nondescript member of the group, without retinue or escort. With Rakeem Jones’ help, Colvin and a coalition of other regional mayors and sheriffs quickly decided to refrain from visible police presence as they organized their towns’ participation in the mounting protests sweeping the country.

Emotions were high in Raleigh, the state capital about an hour north of Fayetteville, at 6:56pm, where the protest had already grown from 900 to 3,000.  Suddenly one group of protestors let out of a collective scream and ran to join another group turning onto Salisbury Street, which had not been cleared of vehicular traffic. Still the police, barely noticeable, did not interfere, as the two groups merged in and around the honking cars and noisily returned to the march’s preordained path.

By 7:00 pm, the hour at which organizers agreed to end the gathering, Raleigh police instead emerged to shut down Raleigh’s eight lane Capital Boulevard in both directions, allowing protestors to fill the main road into the city from its northeastern suburbs.

The sheriff of Wake County, where Raleigh is located, is Gerald Baker and he explained how drones were surveying the crowds and undercover officers were present on the streets. He quickly added, “It’s not about enforcement, but safety.” Fayetteville Police Chief Gina Hawkins reiterated the sentiment, saying she instructed officers to stand down.

Durham County Police Chief Clarence E. Birkhead issued a statement in which he described how he felt when he joined the force 35 years ago, “to help diversify a profession that had few people of color, like me, in its ranks.” He also led a restrained police presence throughout today’s protest in his city, citing safety while “protecting free speech.”

“Let us be resolved to fight for justice for all here in Durham,” he wrote. “Let us commit to stand up or kneel down when injustices are identified.”

Meanwhile back in Fayetteville, Rakeem Jones was interrupted as he spoke to a reporter on Hay Street. Smoke could be seen coming out of broken second story windows in the city’s historic Market House, and Jones ran to literally put out the flames. Market House has recently been the subject of debate, with calls to remove its outline from official Fayetteville correspondence because of its ties to the slave trade. Constructed in 1832, Market House sits atop the square where African people were once sold to European colonists. A plaque reads, “In memory and honor of those indomitable people who were stripped of their dignity when sold as slaves at this place.”

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This article was originally published on ZNet.

Featured image is by Fibonacci Blue/Flickr

When the videotaped public execution by a white Minneapolis police officer of African American George Floyd, 46, was posted in social media, a firestorm of opposition, protests and rebellion swept throughout the United States and internationally.

In just a matter of one day, the streets of Minneapolis and later the twin city of St. Paul were ablaze with militant demonstrations and denunciations.

These manifestations spread to other cities by May 27 where the response to the calls for marches and rallies were meet with enthusiasm and persistence. From the western states of California and Washington to the east coast with cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. there has been widespread unrest where people gathered and blocked streets and highways while others engaged in direct action related to property damage and arson attacks.

Chicago rebellion during May-June 2020 in response to the police execution of George Floyd

Atlanta, Georgia responded to the police execution of Floyd by demonstrating in the downtown area and laying siege to the Cable News Network Center. CNN and other corporate television and print networks have consistently distorted the actual circumstances surrounding the demonstrations seeking to create divisions between those utilizing nonviolent tactics against others carrying out attacks on visible symbols of exploitation and oppression including multi-national chain retail outlets, banks and police vehicles.

The forms of resistance in Minneapolis-St. Paul represent a sophisticated level of opposition to racism and state repression. The Third Precinct police station was destroyed on May 28 while the following day unrest spread to neighboring St. Paul where over 200 businesses were impacted by the rebellion.

Even though Minnesota Governor Tim Walz ordered the National Guard into the Twin Cities, it would take a full mobilization of these military forces which spread out around the unrest areas utilizing teargas, pepper spray, igniting concussion grenades and the random firing of rubber bullets into large crowds of people to clear the streets. In Minneapolis there has been at least one death since the rebellion and demonstrations erupted. Many others have been arrested and abused by the police. Journalists and bystanders are routinely arrested and held without being charged for hours.

These repressive tactics by police agencies and the National Guard are being encouraged at the highest level of government. United States President Donald Trump has castigated governors for not enacting more drastic measures against the demonstrations. Beyond the suggestion that those damaging and taking private property from businesses should be shot on sight, the administration has offered to deploy federal troops in an effort to halt the unrest.

Trump blamed the “radical left” for the demonstrations and rebellions saying that the proliferation of protests make the state governments appear weak. Although the president initially stated that the Justice Department would conduct a thorough investigation into the Floyd killing, there was no mention of the systematic racism within law-enforcement agencies around the U.S.

During the conference call with the governors on June 1, Trump was quoted as saying:

“You have to dominate, if you don’t dominate you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you. You’re going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have every one of these guys on tape. Why aren’t you prosecuting them?” The tougher you are, the less likely you’re going to be hit.”

Demonstrations in Washington, D.C. have been held right outside the White House. In other areas of the nation’s capital, extensive property damage and arson attacks were carried out by angry youth. On June 1, military personnel from Fort Bragg, North Carolina were deployed to the city.

Trump has evoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 allowing for the deployment of federal troops domestically. The same Act was utilized during the 1992 rebellions in the aftermath of the acquittal of four white Los Angeles police officers in the brutal beating of Rodney King.

As of early June, thousands of National Guard soldiers are patrolling the streets of U.S. cities while demonstrations are continuing. Curfews are being imposed in Minneapolis-St. Paul and a host of other cities including New York City and Detroit.

The Escalation of Crowd Control Weapons and Tactics

In Detroit on May 31, the corporate –imposed Mayor Mike Duggan, gave a four-hour notice of a citywide curfew from 8:00pm to 5:00am. This was done after two straight days and nights of demonstrations which concluded during the evening hours with provocations by the police. The curfew has been extended for an entire week beginning on June 1. More people marched for the fourth day from the area around the police headquarters into the southwest side of the city violating the curfew.

The city administration is attempting to protect the private property interests of the leading capitalists such as Quicken Loans and Illitch Holdings. The two firms have taken over large swaths of land in downtown Detroit. Such corporations rely on tax breaks and revenue captures as a means of subsidizing their profitmaking operations. On the first night of the demonstrations, May 29, a 21-year-old youth was killed by gunfire under suspicious circumstances. Police say that the death was unrelated to the protests yet further investigation into the shooting is required in order to make a definitive conclusion.

Just 45 minutes after the curfew went into effect on May 31, riot police charged the youth-dominated crowd gathered outside police headquarters on Third Street downtown. The police used teargas, pepper spray, pellets and rubber bullets. There were unjustified arrests while several participants along with journalists were hit by the gas and rubber bullets. Several journalists were detained after they had identified themselves as media workers. (See this)

New York City demonstrations against police brutality and the murder of George Floyd

New York City police were shown on television networks attacking demonstrators and journalists. Thousands have taken to the streets of the city in various boroughs since the beginning of the mass outrage in response to the police execution of Floyd. The Democratic Governor Cuomo and Mayor DeBlassio, announced a curfew on June 1 after law-enforcement agents have been documented in engaging in brutal behavior towards the demonstrations.

Despite the declaration of a curfew thousands remained in the streets of New York City. In areas such as Manhattan, widespread property destruction and the seizure of consumer goods was the order of the night. The same situation prevailed in California where from Los Angeles to Oakland the unrest was not subsiding.

New York City police attack anti-racist demonstrators

In Louisville, Kentucky where Breonna Taylor, 26, an emergency medical technician, was killed in her apartment by the police exercising a search warrant at the wrong address on March 13, demonstrations have become larger since the videotaped police execution of George Floyd on May 25. On the evening of May 31, police officers opened fire on a group of people not involved in the demonstrations killing a local small business owner David McAtee, 53. The following day the chief of police was terminated as the city attempted to halt further disturbances.

A report on the incident published by vox.com claimed that police and National Guard were fired upon from the area and the security forces responded by shooting into a crowd of people in a parking lot. Nonetheless, this same article noted that:

“Several sources say the crowd in the parking lot was not actually protesting when police arrived. One bystander told reporters they were not engaged in protest and were merely out past the city’s curfew. And McAtee’s sister told WAVE 3 News that McAtee and others meet in the area every Sunday night for food and music, and that her brother was serving food. According to NBC, Conrad did not specify who shot the man. However, the Louisville news station WLKY is reporting that he was shot by law enforcement. Police say they are collecting video and investigating the killing. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has ordered an independent investigation by state police. ‘Given the seriousness of the situation, I have authorized the Kentucky State Police to independently investigate the event,’ he said in a statement Monday (June 1).”

Prior to the law-enforcement killing of McAtee, on May 31, seven people were shot during mass demonstrations in Louisville just three days before. The mayor of the city stated that the shooting had nothing to do with law-enforcement. The following day on May 29, two journalists were hit with pepper balls even after they had complied with police instructions in regard to positioning and movement.

Atlanta’s Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms criticized the demonstrations downtown on May 29 saying that violent acts discredited the legacy of civil rights in the city. However, that very same night, two Historically Black Colleges and University (HBCU) students were attacked without provocation by several Atlanta police officers. Two of officers were fired after a video of the assaults on the two students from Morehouse and Spellman were aired on the news as well as social media.

Officers were captured breaking the windows of the vehicle the two students, Messiah Young and Taniyah Pilgrim, were riding, in addition to slashing the tires, tasing them and placing both under arrest. Pilgrim was admitted to hospital and later released while at the time of this writing, Young is still being held by the local authorities.

According to BET.com, a social media post about the status of the two students said:

“As of yesterday (May 31), Taniyah was released and is now home with a family member. Messiah is still in custody at the Fulton County Jail. He is being charged with eluding/flee police and driving without a license. His court hearing is today at 2pm.’” The Spelman College student government association released a statement of support on social media.”

Meanwhile Indianapolis police have attacked demonstrations prompting retaliatory actions against property. News reports say that 30 businesses have been damaged. Four people were shot over the May 30-31 weekend, one fatally. Police claim that their officers were not responsible although this has not been verified independently. (See this)

Indianapolis rebellion leave two dead at the hands of the police

Ruling Class Propaganda on “Outside Agitators” and “Radical Leftists”

The general tone of the corporate media talking points since the advent of the widespread mass discontent over racist police violence is designed draw a wedge between demonstrators seeking an end to racist violence. The commentators from the ruling class news outlets seek to isolate those considered outside agitators and radicals.

Even the notion that white supremacists are carrying out attacks under the protection of masks and darkness is being advanced to stoke confusion and mistrust. These corporate entities are attempting to shape how the African American people and their allies feel about the police execution of Floyd and the epidemic of law-enforcement misconduct.

Obviously these talking points are aimed at ending the demonstrations through contrived demoralization and outright state repression. This line says that there are “good protesters” and bad ones. Nonetheless, the underlying systematic problems of racism and national oppression are never addressed.

Only when there is a revolutionary structural transformation in the U.S. can the historical problem of racism be eradicated completely inside the country. The current wave of mass demonstrations and rebellions could constitute a renewed struggle to end the exploitative system in the U.S. leading to a society based upon genuine equality, economic justice and social liberation.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated

Minneapolis could not have happened at a worse time for the US elites. While violence perpetrated against African Americans by White police officers has happened a number of times before, its occurrence right in the midst of a huge health emergency that has already claimed more than a 100,000 lives and a related massive economic disaster that has robbed 30 million people of their jobs, is truly unprecedented. The mayhem and chaos accompanying the violence have spread to a number of other cities right across the United States of America.

What has sparked outrage among thousands of Americans (and not just those of African descent) was the way in which an unarmed Black civilian, George Floyd, suspected of using a counterfeit banknote was killed by a White police officer. The officer had pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for 5 to 9 minutes forcing him to plead that he could not breathe until he went silent and limp. The officer has now been charged with third degree murder though a lot of the protesters are demanding that three other police personnel who were with him at the time of the incident should also be punished.

If there is a lot of anger among thinking, caring Americans about the Floyd incident, it is mainly because they know that discrimination against African Americans is still pervasive and is a manifestation of the larger marginalisation of the community. True, through education there has been some mobility for groups within this minority especially in the decades following the civil rights movement but large segments remain trapped at the bottom of the heap.  The current economic devastation has underscored the vulnerability of these segments just as the coronavirus pandemic has also revealed how the poor and disadvantaged in the US and elsewhere are more likely to be the victims of the scourge than others.

That the US is not really able to protect the well-being of the poorer and weaker segments of society is obvious when we look at the situation of yet another minority, the Hispanics. In the last few decades their economic and social burdens have been exacerbated by an irrational fear of their alleged demographic challenge to the White majority. This fear was exploited successfully by candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election as it will be manipulated again in the forthcoming November 2020 election through issues such as building a wall to protect the US’s southern border.

There is a third minority, better positioned than the first two, which is also the object of racist attacks from time to time. Broadly classified informally as ‘Asians,’ they are often equated with Americans of Chinese origin. Since the coronavirus crisis and president Trump’s attempt to pin the blame upon China, the harassment of Chinese and Chinese looking Americans has escalated. Indeed, verbal and even physical abuse of members of the community has been going on for a while given the constant negative targeting of China by some US elites on a variety of issues ranging from trade and technology to alleged human rights violations and suppression of minorities. Though independent research has shown that there is a great deal of distortion and exaggeration in these allegations, they appear to have impacted upon ordinary Americans through community and social media.

Why China is subjected to such vile treatment, it is not difficult to understand. The US elites and a section of the media see the ascendancy of China as a challenge to US dominance and control of the planet, or US hegemony, and are therefore determined to tarnish and subvert China. Other countries which are independent-minded and unwilling to submit meekly to US power are also often targeted. Sometimes, prejudice against a particular religion or specific ethnic communities — this is true of the prevailing attitude of certain segments of American society towards Islam and Muslims — tends to warp inter-community relations.

The US pursuit of global hegemony has affected adversely the rights and interests of millions of Americans in a number of ways. By spending so much on the military — in 2019 it was 732 billion US dollars — and maintaining some 800 military bases encircling the world, the US has sacrificed the essential needs of its people such as well-equipped hospitals and schools. Gross neglect of the economic and social rights of the people has emerged as a tragic reality for everyone to witness when the nation is confronted by a twin health and economic crisis of gigantic proportions.

Indeed, given its wealth, the US failure to enhance the rights of millions of its citizens including the underclass within the White majority is simply criminal.  In the domestic arena, as in international politics, it is the height of hypocrisy of the US political elite to present itself as a champion of human rights and democratic rule. In fact, on a number of occasions in international politics —- Iran 1953; Chile 1973; Palestine 2006; and Egypt 2013 —– the elite had directly and obliquely participated in the suppression of democratic principles.

Today, through the two crises that have overwhelmed the superpower and the righteous anger vented in the streets of the nation by ordinary citizens of all shades —- anger that stems from centuries of contempt and scorn heaped upon a people —- the truth about the elites’ lack of respect for human rights and human dignity is exposed for all to see. Will this lead to some sincere soul-searching especially among young Americans?

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Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

Six hundred physicians recently signed a letter to President Trump calling for an end to the coronavirus lockdowns. The physicians wrote that, far from protecting public health, the lockdowns are causing “exponentially growing negative health consequences” for millions of Americans.

Since the lockdowns began, there have been increases in alcoholism, drug abuse, and domestic violence. There has also been an increase in calls to suicide hotlines. This is a direct result of the mass unemployment and limitations on people’s activities resulting from the lockdowns. As long as millions of Americans are sitting at home wondering how to survive until the government says they can go back to work — assuming the lockdowns did not drive their employers out of business, there will be more substance abuse and suicides.

At the start of the lockdowns, Americans were told to stay away from emergency rooms and doctors’ offices to avoid exposure to coronavirus. This has led Americans to neglect their health. US hospitals have seen a 40 percent decline in the number of patients admitted for severe heart attacks since March. Does anyone believe that the coronavirus panic just happened to coincide with a miraculous decline in heart attacks?

Physicians have also become unable to help many stroke victims who coronavirus lockdowns have kept from seeking medical assistance.

Early in the coronavirus panic, hospitals were told to cancel elective procedures to ensure space was available for an expected wave of coronavirus patients. But hospitals were not overwhelmed by coronavirus patients. Beds and other resources were unused.

According to the American Hospital Association, this has cost healthcare providers tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue. Inner-city and rural hospitals that already operate on slim profit margins are especially hard hit by the financial impact of the lockdowns. These hospitals may have to cut back on services. Some may even close. This will make it even more difficult for rural and inner-city Americans to obtain quality, affordable healthcare.

Postponing needed surgeries will have serious consequences. Many patients whose surgeries have been delayed will find that their once easily treatable conditions now require intensive and expensive care.

Some people are forgoing disease management and checkups that could keep them from developing more serious problems. The coronavirus lockdowns have even caused the canceling of chemotherapy treatments.

According to the physicians’ letter to President Trump, the coronavirus lockdowns are preventing 150,000 Americans a month from finding out they have cancer. Skipped routine cancer screenings mean cancer is not detected in an early stage, when it is most easily treated.

The coronavirus lockdowns have upended the lives of Americans to “protect” them from a virus with a 0.2 percent fatality rate, with the majority of those fatalities occurring in nursing homes and among people with chronic health conditions. Instead, the rational response would be to protect the vulnerable, and let the rest of the people live their lives. But politicians and government-anointed “experts” do not respond rationally to a “crisis,” especially when a panicked reaction can increase their power and prestige.

The lesson of the unnecessary lockdowns is clear: Government bureaucrats and politicians, even the media’s beloved Dr. Fauci, must be stripped of the ability to infringe on our liberty and prosperity.

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On May 27, the political movement Italia Libera submitted a constitutional bill to the Supreme Court of Cassation demanding a referendum for Italy to leave the EU. After years of discussions, the foundation stone was laid for Italians to debate whether they want to remain in the EU or follow the United Kingdom out of the bloc. The draft bill presented by Italia Libera to the Supreme Court of Cassation is entitled “Call for a referendum on the withdrawal of the state from the European Union.”

Effectively, Italia Libera has demonstrated that it is possible to follow an institutional path to allow citizens to decide whether they want to remain in the EU or not – and for those who want to leave, now is the best time considering the massive decline in popularity for the bloc after their abandonment of Italy when it was at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic.

Gian Luca Proietti Toppi, a lawyer involved in the bill, said that it is necessary to reach ordinary Italians and “open their eyes to the harmful effects of participating in a Union without a soul and based only on finance. It is clear that with the filing of the 50,000 signatures necessary to start the parliamentary process of the proposal, a broad debate will open on the opportunity to exit the cage of the EU and the Euro.”

He continued to explain that

“the effects of liberating the old continent from this bureaucratic and oppressive superstructure will certainly be complex to manage. However, Italia Libera, who is the first promoter of the Committee that collected the signatures needed, has already put experts and academics to work to draw up a plan that will secure the savings of Italians and from the debt.”

Although he did not mention the EU’s abandonment of Italy during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, he did emphasize how the bloc financially exploits Italy, just as it does to all of Mediterranean Europe with the exception of France.

There are many positive aspects to the EU, most notably the free movement of people and a coordinated effort to fight crime through Europol, but these multilateral agreements can exist without a European Parliament and domineering institutions based in Brussels and Strasbourg. As Toppi explained, Italy imagined the EU to be “a community of peoples and not of bankers.” It is for this reason that they announced the bill on the same day an unprecedented European Union Recovery Fund became official. This fund was only established because of the backlash received due to the bloc’s initial disinterest in assisting already struggling economies of the EU that were being further devastated financially by the pandemic.

With widespread southern European dissatisfaction with how the EU abandoned its supposed liberal ideals, particularly Germany, in favour of serving inward self-interests, bloc leaders are now playing catch up. President of the European Commission and Angela Merkel’s right-hand man in previous German governments, Ursula Von Der Leyen, and the President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, who was also a former member of the Troika of bankers, announced the unprecedented measures to assist Europe through its financial woes. This time they promised real aid that would not completely decimate state structures and entire economies like what happened to Greece, Spain, Portugal, and to a lesser extent Italy, for the entirety of the 2010’s. The Governor of the Bank of Italy expects a 13% drop in GDP in 2020, and for this reason Toppi emphasized that Italy does not need any further indebtedness which will increasingly put Italy in the hands of international speculators.

However, Italians remember that Lagarde announced on March 13, just as coronavirus was truly beginning to overwhelm hospitals, that the pandemic was an Italian problem only. This was the catalyst that saw ordinary Italians begin to remove EU flags from public display and replace them with Russian and Chinese flags in gratitude to the significant assistance that these two countries gave to Italy when it was abandoned by Brussels and Berlin.

An “Italexit” would be a bigger blow to the prestige of the EU then Brexit. Italy, as a G20 country, uses the Eurodollar unlike Britain which maintained currency sovereignty and continued to use the pound. Therefore, to prevent the strong possibility that Italy in the coming years could leave the EU, Brussels and Berlin must take note of its political failures and work to design a new community that has respect for national sovereignty and identity, and on the basis of reciprocity. It is not acceptable that Germany remains the dominant country of the EU and effectively rules over the European Commission, the European Central Banks, the European Court of Justice and the European Parliament.

A Europe free of unscrupulous bankers, self-referential bureaucrats and inadequate politicians is at the forefront of those pushing for their respective countries to exit the EU or call for its reformation. However, for this to be achieved, a major state must lead the charge, and it appears that Italy will take on this mantle and could very well be the first Eurodollar state to leave the EU if drastic reformations are not made. And Italian exit will surely have a domino effect felt all across Europe.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Why is the media so preoccupied with Sweden? And why is the media so determined to prove that Sweden’s approach to the coronavirus is wrong? Are we supposed to believe that the same MSM that promoted every bloody coup, intervention and war for the last 30 years has suddenly become a selfless advocate for elderly Swedes fighting off a lethal infection?

That’s baloney. The reason the media publishes roughly 15 articles blasting Sweden for every one article voicing support is because the media has a stake in the outcome. The media wants to dispel the idea that there is any alternative to the authoritarian lockdown approach. Thus, the Swedish model– that leaves parts of the economy open and trusts people to follow the government’s “distancing” guidelines — has to be obliterated. That’s what’s really going on. The media has no interest in a smallish north European country of 10.4 million people. What they care about is the example that Sweden is setting for other countries around the world. If those other countries follow suit and settle on an approach that is based on science and trust rather than politics and coercion, then the elitist plan to prolong the crisis and restructure the economy begins to unravel. So, Sweden must be annihilated. It’s that simple.

The first line of attack against Sweden is its “death rate” which is significantly higher than its neighbors in Norway or Denmark. And while there are only 4,395 deaths in Sweden today as opposed to over 100,000 in the United States, the information is always presented in the most sensationalist terms, like this goofy clip from the National Review:

“There have now been ten times as many COVID-19 deaths in Sweden than Norway on a per capita basis. According to the Worldometers website, 435 out of every one million Swedes have died from the virus, while the virus has killed 44 out of every million Norwegians.” (National Review)

Wow, “435 out of every one million Swedes have died from the virus!” Those barbaric Swedes, they’re killing their own people!

This is alarmist nonsense. Think about it: “435 out of every million” is just 1 in every 2,500. Is that enough to justify the shutting down of the economy and suspending civil liberties? Of course, not. And, keep in mind, the great majority of these fatalities are among people that are 70 years-old and up with underlying health conditions. Like everywhere else, roughly 90% of Covid fatalities occur among the over 60-crowd with co-morbidities”.

So I put this question to you: Is one death in every 2,500 sufficient reason to strangle the economy and put the country under house arrest?

The answer is “No”. The lockdown was not only a mistake, it was a fear-fueled, knee-jerk reaction to the exponential spike in Covid-positive cases for which policymakers were completely unprepared. So, instead of consulting a broader range of experts with varying opinions on the topic, the Trump administration adopted the Chinese model that was supported by Dr Fauci and the Vaccine Mafia. As as result, 40 million Americans have lost their jobs, every sector of the economy is in freefall, and the US is headed for another Great Depression. In contrast to this madness, Sweden’s infectious disease experts developed a sensible, science-based plan which was laid out in an article by Dr. Johan Giesecke at The Lancet. Here’s an excerpt:

“It has become clear that a hard lockdown does not protect old and frail people living in care homes—a population the lockdown was designed to protect. Neither does it decrease mortality from COVID-19, which is evident when comparing the UK’s experience with that of other European countries…

These facts have led me to the following conclusions. Everyone will be exposed to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, and most people will become infected. COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire in all countries, but we do not see it—it almost always spreads from younger people with no or weak symptoms to other people who will also have mild symptoms. This is the real pandemic, but it goes on beneath the surface, and is probably at its peak now in many European countries. There is very little we can do to prevent this spread: a lockdown might delay severe cases for a while, but once restrictions are eased, cases will reappear. I expect that when we count the number of deaths from COVID-19 in each country in 1 year from now, the figures will be similar, regardless of measures taken.

Measures to flatten the curve might have an effect, but a lockdown only pushes the severe cases into the future —it will not prevent them. Admittedly, countries have managed to slow down spread so as not to overburden health-care systems, and, yes, effective drugs that save lives might soon be developed, but this pandemic is swift, and those drugs have to be developed, tested, and marketed quickly. Much hope is put in vaccines, but they will take time, and with the unclear protective immunological response to infection, it is not certain that vaccines will be very effective.

In summary, COVID-19 is a disease that is highly infectious and spreads rapidly through society. It is often quite symptomless and might pass unnoticed, but it also causes severe disease, and even death, in a proportion of the population, and our most important task is not to stop spread, which is all but futile, but to concentrate on giving the unfortunate victims optimal care.” (“The Invisible Pandemic”, The Lancet)

As you can see, the Swedish team that developed the policy was not “gambling” with Swedish lives as the idiot media likes to say. They were applying decades of science to a problem that required them to make tough decisions about the best way to navigate an epidemic for which there is no known cure and no effective treatment. And their choice was clearly the right one. They elected to keep the economy open as much as possible while making every effort to protect the old and vulnerable. It was an excellent plan despite the notable failures in its implementation, the biggest of which was the surge of fatalities at the rest homes which has been nothing short of a catastrophe. More than half of Sweden’s death toll comes from these homes for the elderly, while a whopping 4,200 of the 4,386 people who have died from the virus have been over 60. That is NOT a misprint. (See Sweden’s official state statistics here) A mere 186 people under 60 have died from the infection.

While these statistics may be shocking, they don’t suggest the policy was wrong, only that there wasn’t enough effort put into protecting the elderly. So, is it fair to blame Sweden for its higher death rate?

Of course, it is, provided we allow sufficient time to see whether the lockdowns actually prevented deaths or if they just postponed them until the restrictions were lifted. That’s the only way we’ll know for sure whether they worked or not. Some experts predict that the percentage of deaths will balance out in the long-term and that Norway and Denmark’s fatality rate will look very similar to Sweden’s. But only time will tell.

It’s also worth noting that Belgium, Spain, United Kingdom, Italy and France all lead Sweden in terms of “deaths per million”, which is the standard metric for measuring the success or failure of a particular approach. So why is Sweden –which has 405 deaths per million– so savagely raked over the coals, while Belgium–that has 817 deaths per million — gets off scot-free? It’s because Belgium hasn’t veered from the official lockdown policy which achieves the elitist dream of universal martial law. Sweden rejected that option which is why the agenda-driven media has hung a bullseye on it’s back.

Did you know that the Norwegian Prime Minister admitted that the lockdown was a mistake? It’s true, here’s what she said:

“Last Wednesday night, Norway’s prime minister Erna Solberg went on television to make a confession: she had panicked at the start of the pandemic. Most of the tough measures imposed in Norway’s lockdown were steps too far, she admitted. “Was it necessary to close schools?” she asked. “Perhaps not.”

She isn’t the first Norwegian official to acknowledge that the lockdown wasn’t necessary. On May 5th, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) published a briefing note reporting….“Our assessment now… is that we could possibly have achieved the same effects and avoided some of the unfortunate impacts by not locking down, but by instead keeping open but with infection control measures,” Camilla Stoltenberg, NIPH’s Director General said in a TV interview earlier this month….

(“Norwegian Prime Minister Admits Lockdown Was Mistake” Lockdown Skeptic)

Interesting, eh? So while Norway is invariably used to prove that Sweden “got it wrong”, Norway’s own PM thinks they “got it right”. It’s no surprise that this story didn’t appear anywhere in the western media.

And, did you know that the UK Government has released the classified minutes from the SAGE (The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) meetings which show that the government’s decision to lockdown the country was not based on science but on politics? Check it out:

“…at no point did SAGE discuss anything resembling a full lockdown. Indeed, SAGE noted at a meeting on March 10th that banning public gatherings would have little effect since most viral transmission occurred in confined spaces, such as within households….

In other words, Boris Johnson and his advisors were not following “the science” when they took the decision to lock down the country on March 23rd – they weren’t acting on any specific recommendations by SAGE. Nor can the Government claim this is one of the options that was discussed at SAGE meetings and it was basing its decision, in part, on SAGE’s analysis of the impact of a full lockdown. That option was not discussed at any of the meetings before March 23rd. In this respect, it was a political decision.” (“Was the Government Really Following “the Science”? Lockdown Skeptics)

There it is in black and white, the British lockdown isn’t science-based anymore than the American lockdown is science-based. The policy was adopted by hysterical politicians who overreacted to a public health crisis for which they were totally unprepared. That’s what these classified SAGE documents prove.

No “Herd Immunity” after all?

“Sweden’s chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, has been widely criticized for claiming that Sweden would achieve “herd immunity” by the end of May. “But a recent study found that just 7.3 percent of Stockholm residents tested positive for coronavirus antibodies at the end of April. “I think herd immunity is a long way off, if we ever reach it,” Bjorn Olsen, professor of infectious medicine at Uppsala University, told Reuters.” (National Review)

But there’s more to this story than meets the eye. Not everyone who is exposed to the virus manifests an antibody response. According to Sunetra Gupta, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, (who produced a rival model to Ferguson’s back in March.)

“The antibody studies, although useful, do not indicate the true level of exposure or level of immunity. First, many of the antibody tests are “extremely unreliable” and rely on hard-to-achieve representative groups. But more important, many people who have been exposed to the virus will have other kinds of immunity that don’t show up on antibody tests — either for genetic reasons or the result of pre-existing immunities to related coronaviruses such as the common cold.

The implications of this are profound – it means that when we hear results from antibody tests the percentage who test positive for antibodies is not necessarily equal to the percentage who have immunity or resistance to the virus. The true number could be much higher. Observing the very similar patterns of the epidemic across countries around the world has convinced Professor Gupta that it is this hidden immunity, more than lockdowns or government interventions, that offers the best explanation of the Covid-19 progression:

“In almost every context we’ve seen the epidemic grow, turn around and die away — almost like clockwork. Different countries have had different lockdown policies, and yet what we’ve observed is almost a uniform pattern of behaviour which is highly consistent with the SIR model. To me that suggests that much of the driving force here was due to the build-up of immunity. I think that’s a more parsimonious explanation than one which requires in every country for lockdown (or various degrees of lockdown, including no lockdown) to have had the same effect.”

Asked what her updated estimate for the Infection Fatality Rate is, Professor Gupta says, “I think that the epidemic has largely come and is on its way out in this country so I think it would be definitely less than 1 in 1000 and probably closer to 1 in 10,000.” That would be somewhere between 0.1% and 0.01%”. (“Sunetra Gupta: Covid-19 is on the way out”, unherd.com)

Gupta makes a important point, but it needs to be better explained. If, for example, “just 7.3 percent of Stockholm residents tested positive for coronavirus antibodies at the end of April”, that does not mean that only 7.3% of Stockholm residents are immune. No. Some people have an innate immunity (due to their genetic makeup) or have “existing immunities” linked to prior infections like Sars. Gupta believes that immunity is more widespread than is evident by the results of antibody tests. This suggests that the percentage of Stockholm residents that are immune could be much greater than we think. Given the virulence of the infection, as well as the interaction of the city’s population, Stockholm could be very close to herd immunity already. The decline in “new cases” strongly suggests that immunity is blocking the spread of the pathogen which means the virus is gradually dying out. If that’s what is currently taking place, then Sweden will likely be spared a “second wave” of the pandemic.

Sweden’s Economy; Not so hot

Sweden’s economy is expected to contract at a rate that is comparable to that of its neighbors. . Check out this excerpt from an article at NPR:

“Even without a nationwide lockdown, the Sweden’s economy has taken a hit as people continue to follow their government’s guidelines and stay at home….Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, provided two potential scenarios for the country’s economic outlook in 2020.

“Despite the comprehensive measures both in Sweden and abroad, the economic consequences of the pandemic will be considerable. The consequences for the economy will vary depending on how long the spread of infection continues and on how long the restrictions implemented to slow it down are in place,” the Riksbank said in a statement in April.

Both scenarios predict a rise in unemployment rate and a contraction of the country’s gross domestic product. The central bank expects unemployment to rise from 6.8% to 10.1% and GDP to shrink by up to 9.7% this year as result of the pandemic.” (“Sweden won’t reach herd immunity in May”, NPR)

Bottom line: Sweden is going to face a deep recession just like the countries that implemented harsher measures. So what was gained by bucking the trend?

Maybe nothing, but I expect it will be much easier and less costly for Sweden to gear-up to full capacity than any of the lockdown states. And Sweden will not have to deal with disruptive shutdowns due to sporadic outbreaks like we’ve seen recently in Germany, South Korea and China. In fact, this could be a recurrent problem in countries that put their hopes in contact tracing or quarantines. In contrast, Sweden bet the farm on old-fashioned immunity developed through controlled exposure of younger, low-risk people who strengthened their own natural defenses by interacting with their friends and families as they normally would. It’s clear, they made the only sensible choice.

Sweden has shown that it’s possible to counter a deadly pandemic and preserve personal freedom at the same time. They alone have triumphed where others have failed.

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We bring to the attention of our readers the Summary of this important leaked report conducted on behalf of Germany’s Ministry of the Interior.

Click here for the complete report in German.

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b. Aufgrund Einschränkungen der Klinikverfügbarkeiten (und Behandlungsmöglichkeiten) verschobene oder abgesagte Folgebehandlungenvon (z.B. an Krebs, Schlaganfall oder Herzinfarkt) Erkrankten:

Die negativen Wirkungen von unterbrochenen Versorgungsstrukturen bei Tumorpatienten, seien es Krebsnachsorge oder auch unterbrochene Krebsvorsorgeprogramme, wie beim Brustkrebs, liegen auf der Hand, denn diese Maßnahmen haben ja ihren Nutzen in langen Studien belegt und sind auf dieser Basis eingerichtet worden.

Es ist auch hier von jährlichen Behandlungszahlen in Millionenhöhe auszugehen. In einem Teil der Fälle werden die Verfügbarkeitseinschränkungen der Kliniken ebenfalls zum vorzeitigen Versterben von Patienten führen. Eine Prognose dieses Effekts ist schwierig. Experten, die sich dazu äußerten, gingen von bis zu mehreren tausend zusätzlichen Toten aus, die bereits in März und April 2020 verstarben oder noch versterben werden.

c. Bei der Versorgung von Pflegebedürftigen (in DEU insgesamt 3,5 Mio. Menschen) sinkt aufgrund von staatlich verfügten Beschränkungen das Versorgungsniveau und die Versorgungsqualität (in Pflegeeinrichtungen, bei ambulanten Pflegediensten sowie bei privat / innerfamiliär durchgeführter Pflege). Da erwiesenermaßen das gute Pflegeniveau in DEU viele Menschen vor dem vorzeitigen Versterben bewahrt (das ist der Grund dafür, dass dafür so viel Geld aufgewendet wird), wird die im März und April 2020 erzwungene Niveauabsenkung vorzeitige Todesfällen ausgelöst haben. Bei 3,5 Mio. Pflegebedürftigen würde eine zusätzliche Todesrate von einem Zehntel Prozent zusätzliche 3.500 Tote ausmachen. Ob es mehr oder weniger sind, ist mangels genauerer Schätzungen nicht bekannt.

d. Zunahmenvon Suiziden (bisherdurchschn.9.000proJahr); Gründefürdie Zunahme von Suiziden: langeandauernde erhebliche Beeinträchtigung aller Lebensbedingungen, die für psychisch instabile Persönlichkeiten kritisch werden können; aber auch mit zahlreichen Suiziden als Reaktion auf die wirtschaftliche Vernichtung von Existenzen ist zu rechnen; diverse Berufsgruppen, die sich ihrer Belastung durch die gesellschaftlichen und persönlichen Veränderungen und ihrer persönlichen (Mit)Verantwortung nicht gewachsen fühlen.

e. Zusätzliche Todesfälle durch Herzinfarkt und Schlaganfall

Über die letzten Jahre und Jahrzehnte wurden integrierte Konzepte entwickelt, die erfolgreich die Morbidität und Mortalität beeinflusst haben und darauf beruhen, dass möglichst frühzeitig (im Krankheitsverlauf), möglichst rasch (Zeit bis zur Versorgung) und möglichst kompetent eine Versorgung erfolgt. Diese inter-sektoralen/- disziplinären Ketten sind in vielfacher Weise geschädigt (ambulante Versorgung, Ressourcenentzug) und leiden auch maximal darunter, dass bedingt durch einseitige und übertriebene Informationspolitik die Betroffenen unberechtigter Weise Corona mehr als diese Erkrankungen fürchten und Warnzeichen unterdrücken und auch befürchten mit diesen Erkrankungen in der derzeitigen Corona-Fixierung im Krankenhaus nicht gut behandelt zu werden. In Konsequenz suchen derzeit viele Betroffene nicht/zu spät den Arzt auf, was bei diesen Erkrankungen erhöhte Morbidität, verschlechterte Rehabilitation und erhöhte Mortalität bedeutet.