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Democrat Rep. calls for police after being attacked in short-lived ‘autonomous zone’ near White House

RT | June 23, 2020

A Democrat lawmaker and an MSNBC reporter have been left wondering where the police were, after they were apparently attacked in a fledgling ‘autonomous zone’ near the White House.

Perhaps spurred on by activists in Seattle’s ‘Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone’, a group of protesters in Washington, DC occupied a street near the White House this weekend, declaring it the ‘Black House Autonomous Zone’. Though police cleared the street of tents and trash on Tuesday, a large crowd remained, and Democrat Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton was on the street to talk to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

The interview was cut short when what appeared to be a bikini-clad man made a dash for the pair. He got within several feet of Norton and Mitchell before a private security team collared him and pulled him aside. Earlier, the man was seen on a segway scooter shouting profanities.

“Where’s the police when you need them?” Norton exclaimed as her security detail led the would-be attacker away. Curiously, Norton introduced a bill earlier this month that would prevent the president assuming control of Washington, DC’s police force in an emergency. At the time, Mayor Muriel Bowser had just declared the streets around the White House a celebratory space for protests, going as far as renaming the street Norton was nearly attacked on “Black Lives Matter Plaza.”

Hours before the attempted attack, Trump again threatened to meet the protesters with “serious force.” Norton criticized the president’s threat, declaring that the police should not be used to clear a “peaceful protest.”

It is still unclear whether her own experience has changed her mind on this.

June 23, 2020 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

The Problem With How the Regime-Change American Left Sees the World and Themselves

By Joaquin Flores | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 22, 2020

Imagine believing that you know what is in the best interests of others, and worse, ones you have never even met, and worse still, believing you have a right to improve their situation in the manner and timeline you see fit. The belief that one has the right to save the world is termed ‘communal narcissism’. Therein lies the first problem with progressive imperialism.

The American left in the realm of foreign policy suffers from a type of prosocial communal narcissism, based in their own self-appraisal that their best intentions will be realized in the best outcomes for others, as the narcissist has themself defined it.

But the American left is significantly more dangerous and grotesque compared to standard justifications of imperialism, because it frames the discourse in such a way that it is blind to its own chauvinism, and believes itself to speak for the world.

What in other countries is viewed as quite ugly – believing oneself so enlightened and righteous that they can force others into their own image – has become a quintessential aspect of American culture post 1960’s.

We arrive then at our problem; the leftist approach has relied on soft-power tactics which require a lot more imagination, and yet also hubris, to justify. It is based overtly in telling other countries how to manage themselves as being both philosophically and categorically its proclaimed mandate.

It is the most overt form of imperialism, couched in the language of the left’s understanding of human rights and universalism. It rests gently on the ears and upon the conscience if left unexamined, but in actual fact it is far more malignant. Perhaps because they are so over-used, and perhaps here because they appear to be benign, because American society accepts these as just. But the specter of Dunning-Kruger will always rear its ugly head, and the expected outcomes will almost never materialize.

And in typical gas-lighting fashion, the failure of the subject nation to live up to the vision of the narcissist will be blamed upon the subject.

Most dangerously, soft-power tactics situate themselves outside of the founding principles of national self-determination and sovereignty that the UN was established upon in the post-war years, and yet exploits the various corrupt alphabet soup of organizations and agencies that operate under the UN’s umbrella.

Soft-power tactics were born out of a cultural shift within the U.S.., the development of media and later new media, as a form of propaganda and manufactured consent. The role of television media reporting on Vietnam left an American public taken aback by raw images of the terrorism and horror that is war.

Gone forever was the myth of purity of arms. And so a new myth, the myth of soft-power towards regime change, had to be built.

While soft-power tactics may at first appear to be less harmful to the target, because ‘military’ is not used, the socio-economic outcome of such an approach is the very definition of collective punishment and civilian targets, targets which if zeroed in on by the military would qualify as war crimes and crimes against humanity by any reasonable measure.

Enter the Save the World Generation of 1968

The ‘save the world’ generation in America that emerged from the utopian leanings of 1968, in part also out of opposition to the Vietnam War, came to define the left-wing version of American foreign policy.

The popular opposition to the war in Vietnam signaled the need for a new era in American foreign policy development. Richard Falk – the preeminent American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University – wrote for Foreign Policy Magazine in an article titled ‘What We Should Learn from Vietnam’ published in 1970 or ‘71:

“Where there is no formidable radical challenge on the domestic scene, as in India or Japan, the American preference is clearly for moderate democracy, indeed the kind of political orientation that the United States imposed upon Japan during the military occupation after World War II. However, where an Asian society is beset by struggle between a rightist incumbent regime and a leftist insurgent challenger, then American policy throws its support, sometimes strongly, to the counterrevolutionary side.

As a result, there has been virtually no disposition to question the American decision to support the repressive and reactionary Saigon regime provided that support could have led to victory in Vietnam at a reasonable cost.”

In establishing this as a problem, Falk proposes what he terms a ‘Fourth Position’, one which would end America’s pre-occupation with supporting counter-revolutionary forces in Asia.

We can extrapolate from Falk’s thesis an historical parallel: It was forward looking Gauls inspired by their Roman neighbors who established the infrastructure of roads which Roman legionaries would later march in on under Cesar.

Likewise, allow modernizing and technology oriented communist regimes to flourish in Asia as these would ultimately create the interface with which the U.S. could pursue its interests in the region.

In Falk’s work we find the kernel of contemporary U.S. foreign policy and the leftoid soft-power approach, and indeed almost predicts the Nixon-Mao meeting a year or two later.

By now, everyone is familiar with Nye and Ferguson’s ideas on soft-power. By the 1990’s, left-overs from the Cold War’s Radio Free Europe were transformed into more covert projects towards soft-power, outside of the more obvious Radio Liberty and the Atlantic Council’s array of projects. USAID and the NED combined with private philanthropy of the likes of George Soros to establish a ‘legal, peaceful’ mechanism by exploiting international law and the UN’s bodies, known now as the NGO industrial complex.

But what will confound and confuse future historians of the American empire is the mindset of the mainstream left which supports foreign interventionism.

So this is how we have to understand it. If the 70’s was the ‘We’ generation, the 80’s was the ‘Me’ generation – and in came a toxic combination of noble intentions for others taken from the 60’s and 70’s, alongside a particular mission-individualism that gives a person a sense that they are exceptional.

The result was the self-improvement craze of the 80’s and 90’s. And just as self-improvement for individuals becomes a collective norm that others must also be pressured to accept or face ridicule and shunning for being ‘backwards’, the contemporary psychology of human rights (soft power) imperialism is understood.

In short, it opposed American exceptionalism but promoted an exceptionalism of the enlightened community, almost always a liberal of the left, a model that everyone else must also follow.

Something appropriated from Marxism and Christianity, the left has substituted the idea that the nation should rule or that the nation has legitimacy, with the idea that the party with the right values and ideas should rule.

And here is where our final point rests. Alongside the communal narcissism of human rights imperialism which we see in the left’s preference for soft power, we also find this: a belief that just as they as individuals are evolving towards an ever greater enlightenment, so too is America.

This is probably the most complex and dynamic aspect of the problem of the American left’s psychology in foreign policy.

If nations shouldn’t rule others, perhaps they shouldn’t rule themselves, for in each nation are ‘others’ – minorities, historically oppressed identity groups, and so on. America shouldn’t rule them either, the belief goes, but the enlightened ideas which conveniently are determined by an enlightened yoga-practicing vegan community who happen to be American, should indeed rule.

They think this: Assad may not be a threat to his neighbors, but the fact that Syria is a nation and is ruled by a man who exemplifies numerous hetero cis-gendered patriarchal norms, probably means that the U.S. (not acting as a nation but rather a ‘vehicle of values’) should use soft-power to support any method to remove him.

Other countries are viewed as static, unmoving, non-dynamic ‘regimes’. From the outside looking in, and being a poor cultural anthropologist, all societies appear monolithic and in contemporary parlance, that means ‘totalitarian’. Commonly held beliefs and customs among a foreign people are transformed into top-down mandated values that are imposed upon an unwilling population.

America has deep problems, the liberal soft power imperialist reckons, but the fact that America can overcome and indeed is overcoming them, means that other countries can overcome them too, if they emulate America.

This is perhaps the only way to get on board with something that otherwise would be a flagrant contradiction: America, land of deep problems, ought to be emulated.

It also means imposing American narratives on the rest of the world. If America had a particular problem of racism, land theft, and never ending foreign wars, then suddenly America is nevertheless ‘alright’ since it is in some dynamic process of changing this. Other countries, being governed by static and monolithic caricatures, must have their whole societies uprooted and their governments overthrown in order to overcome the same problems.

America therefore is the ‘expert’ at solving these problems for other countries, not because it has solved them, but because it has developed a model for resistance.

Never mind these are often not problems other countries have. To the hammer of American soft power, all the world is a human rights nail.

Now we see that the U.S. can intervene everywhere in the world so long as it can paint that foreign land as having American problems. Yugoslavia, Syria, Libya – ethnic conflict, patriarchy, rape culture and a popular uprising (which CNN will color left) means a justified soft power intervention.

There is a saying, ‘All’s well that ends well’. By establishing a conflict thesis of American history, America – in the view of the left – can rectify its past wrongs by righting the same wrongs around the world.

Never mind that these past wrongs aren’t, by their own measure, solved in America. These left Americans see themselves not as Americans acting in America’s interests, but as enlightened people with a right to fix other country’s problems, whether or not those problems really exist and regardless of whether those lowly and unevolved people actually want it. After they are uplifted and re-educated, they will look back and thank us.

This in a nutshell is the mindset of the imperial progressive. This is the sort of thinking that has no place in an international community based on mutual respect and sovereignty.

June 23, 2020 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | | 2 Comments

Topple the Statues, But Ignore the Modern-Day Oppressors?

By Gavin O’Reilly | American Herald Tribune | June 21, 2020

Following last month’s murder in the United States of George Floyd, an unarmed black man suffocated by Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin during what should have been a routine stop, what would initially begin as protests against police brutality and systemic racism in the US state of Minneapolis would soon spread nationwide before developing into an international phenomenon.

Major cities across the United States and Europe all found themselves taking part in solidarity protests as a result of Floyd’s death, with each protest receiving extensive coverage by the mainstream Western media, and the public support of figures from the highest level of sport, media, entertainment and business.

One of the most distinguishing features of these protests so far however, has been the targeting of statues and monuments by anti-racist activists of historical figures who engaged in colonialism and slavery.

In the British city of Bristol, a statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston was toppled by protesters before being thrown into the town’s harbour, while in the United States a similar fate would befell statues of 19th century Confederate figures, Charles Linn and Robert E. Lee. The phrase ‘Churchill is a racist’ was also painted upon a statue of the early-20th century British Prime Minister in London, owing to his white supremacist and Imperialist views.

However, while the anti-racist and anti-Imperialist sentiment behind such actions is surely one that must be applauded, it also begs the question of why a similar ire isn’t reserved for the modern day oppressors and Imperialists; in this case, it being the military industrial complex and war lobbies of both the United States and Britain.

With both nations being the world’s leading exporters of arms, it has been this exact military industrial complex which has played an integral role in the world’s current foremost humanitarian crisis; Western-allied Saudi Arabia’s now five year long war on Yemen, one in which upwards of 85,000 Yemeni children have now lost their lives as a result of the US and British-made bombs.

Military advisors from both countries are also on hand to help direct Riyadh on where to direct its air strikes, with the agricultural sector of the impoverished Arab nation being a favoured target in particular of the Royal Saudi Air Force, resulting in widespread famine in what is already the poorest country in the Arab Peninsula.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, US and British occupation forces still remain in northern Syria and Iraq; with the air forces of both countries on hand to help carve out a Kurdish ethnostate in line with the 1982 Tel Aviv-authored Oded Yinon plan, intended to balkanise Arab states hostile to Israel.

Closer to home, the neo-Nazi junta of Ukraine has also received political and military support from the US and Britain since the 2014 coup seen the government of Victor Yanukovich ousted over his rejection of an EU-trade deal in favour of closer ties with Russia; similar to the situation in Yemen, military advisors from both countries have also been on hand to assist Kiev forces in their war on the breakaway pro-Russian republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the Trump administration has approved the sale of heavy arms to Ukraine since 2018.

However, despite the litany of war crimes this modern-day imperialist foreign policy has resulted in, from the Donbass to the Middle East, the Pentagon, the Ministry of Defence and the factories of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and BAE Systems have so far remained untouched by the current protesters – their anger seemingly reserved for imperialists and oppressors who passed away generations ago instead.

June 22, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

EU’s Aviation Deal with Israel ‘The Pinnacle of Hypocrisy’

By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | June 20, 2020

I had barely finished my rant against the British Government for showering new rewards on the Israelis (see Do Palestinians’ lives matter? ) when the EU voted to do the same.

The UK-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement signed last year comes into force next January. The Government says it loves this relationship and is committed to strengthening it. “We will seek to work with counterparts in the new Israeli government to host a bilateral trade and investment summit in London.” This will “identifying new opportunities and collaboration between Israel and the United Kingdom”.

Not to be outdone, the EU has now decided to hand Israel a juicy aviation agreement, the latest in a long line of goodies awarded to the apartheid regime for its crimes against humanity. And that’s after the EU had voiced condemnation of Israel’s latest annexation plan.

Not only that, the European Investment Bank, the EU’s financing institution, has just agreed a 150 million euros loan for a seawater desalination plant – one of the largest in the world – for Israel “in one of the world’s most water-stressed regions”. So water-stressed that Israel long ago stole the Palestinians’ aquifers and deprived them of access to their own supply. And it made no difference that the criminals were now gearing up to annex even more Palestinian territory.

According to this report 437 MEPs (that’s 62%) from EPP, REG, ECR voted to ratify the EU-Israel Aviation Agreement even though MEP Clare Daly from Ireland warned that doing so “would be perceived as an upgrade in bilateral relations with the state of Israel”. So who are these confused people?

The EPP (European People’s Party) Group, the oldest and largest, says: “We must continue to promote human rights and democracy in our relations with third countries.” So, naturally, they have no objection to promoting the Israeli regime in its policy to permanently deny Palestinians their human rights and self-determination.

The REG (Renew Europe Group) would have us believe: “At a time when the rule of law and democracy are under threat in parts of Europe, our Group will stand up for the people who suffer from the illiberal and nationalistic tendencies that we see returning in too many countries.” Oh really?

The ECR Group (European Conservatives & Reformists) declare: “We are the voice of COMMON SENSE.”

As if their behaviour wasn’t bizarre enough, these MEPs then held a separate debate with High Representative Joseph Borrell to discuss EU measures to deter Israel from declaring annexation.

The aviation deal builds on a 2013 agreement. Back then scheduled direct passenger flights connected Israel and 18 EU Member States and the EU was said to be the most important aviation market for Israel, accounting for 57% of scheduled international air passenger movements to and from Israel, and that Israel was one of the most important aviation markets for the EU in the Middle East with a strong growth potential.

The aim now is to take EU-Israel aviation relations to a new level. Higher volumes of tourism in both directions will create additional jobs and economic benefits on both sides. Of course much of the benefit of increased tourism to the Holy Land rightly belongs to the Palestinians if only they were permitted their own airport, but the EU doesn’t seem to care that all visitors to and from the Holy Land are forced through Israel’s Ben Gurion airport – or should we call it Lydda? Thereby hangs an interesting tale….

Growing airline traffic rewards Israeli terror

Strictly speaking Ben Gurion, near Tel Aviv, belongs to the Palestinians. It was formerly Lydda airport; and Lydda, a major town in its own right during the British mandate, was designated Palestinian in the 1947 UN Partition Plan. In July 1948, after Britain left and Israel declared statehood, Israeli terrorist troops seized Lydda, shot up the town and drove out the population as part of the ethnic cleansing and territorial expansion programme set out in their infamous ‘Plan Dalet’. In the process they massacred 426 men, women, and children. 176 of them were slaughtered in the town’s main mosque. See here for the gory details.

Those who survived were forced to walk into exile in the scalding July heat leaving a trail of bodies — men, women and children — along the way. Israeli troops carried away 1,800 truck loads of loot. Jewish immigrants then flooded in and Lydda was given a Hebrew name, Lod.

So Israel has no real right to Lydda/Lod/Ben Gurion airport — it was stolen in a terror raid, as was so much else. And it’s Israeli terror that is being rewarded by increasing airline flights and boosting tourism and trade.

Today the airport is the international gateway to Israel… and indirectly to Palestine. And what happened to Gaza’s airport? The Oslo II Agreement of 1995 provided for one to be constructed. The Yasser Arafat International airport was built with funding from Japan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Germany and Morocco, and cost $86 million. Arafat and US President Clinton attended the opening in 1998. Owned and operated by the Palestinian Authority it was capable of handling 700,000 passengers a year.

In December 2001 Israel destroyed the radar station and control tower, and cut the runway.

Back to the fiasco with the 437 MEPs who plainly don’t give a four-X about adding to the Palestinians’ misery. Aneta Jerska, the coordinator of the European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine (ECCP) says: “Those same political groups whom we heard expressing concern about annexation had just made annexation possible by voting in favour of the EU-Israel Aviation Agreement. This is by any standards the pinnacle of the EU’s hypocrisy. European citizens need to see no more crocodile tears from their elected politicians. The EU must impose sanctions on Israel, as member states once did against apartheid South Africa, including a military embargo on Israel, a ban on trade with illegal settlements and the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. Only by ending ‘business as usual’, will Israel feel pressure to change its criminal behaviour.”

June 20, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Canada’s Security Council defeat is a win for Palestine

By Yves Engler · June 20, 2020

Canada’s defeat in its bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council is a major victory for Palestinian solidarity. It also puts Canada’s Israel lobby on the defensive.

Israeli politicians and commentators have begun to publicly bemoan the loss. Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told the Jerusalem Post, “we are disappointed that Canada didn’t make it, both because we have close ties with the country and because of the campaign that the Palestinians ran against Canada.” In another story in that paper headlined “With annexation looming, Canada’s UNSC upset is bad news for Israel, US” Deputy Managing Editor Tovah Lazaroff labels Canada’s loss “a sharp reminder of the type of diplomatic price tag Israel’s allies can suffer on the international stage.”

Inside Canada the Security Council defeat is a blow to the Israel lobby. While the Canadian media has generally minimized the impact Canada’s anti-Palestinian position had on the vote, the subject is being raised. In a Journal de Québec column titled “Why did Canada suffer a humiliating defeat at the UN?” Norman Lester writes, “it is the support of the Trudeau Liberal government for Israel, like that of Harper before him, that is probably the main reason for Ottawa’s two successive setbacks. Ireland and Norway have more balanced policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than Canada.” He concludes the article by noting, “Canada has no chance of returning to the Security Council in the foreseeable future unless there is a radical change in its position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

By acquiescing almost entirely to the ‘Israel no matter what’ outlook of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and B’nai B’rith, the Trudeau government undercut its bid for a seat on the UN’s highest decision-making body. The Israel lobby’s point people in the Liberal caucus, Anthony Housefather and Michael Levitt, are no doubt hoping to avoid too much blowback for their role in this embarrassment. Housefather ought to be prodded on his contribution to the Trudeau government’s anti-Palestinian voting record at the UN since he repeatedly boasted that it was more pro-Israel than Stephen Harper’s.

Canada’s voting record at the UN was at the heart of the grassroots No Canada on the UN Security Council campaign. An open letter launching the campaign from the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute noted, “since coming to power the Trudeau government has voted against more than fifty UN resolutions upholding Palestinian rights backed by the overwhelming majority of member states.” A subsequent open letter was signed by over 100 civil society groups and dozens of prominent individuals urging countries to vote against Canada’s bid for a Security Council seat due to its anti-Palestinian positions. That letter organized by Just Peace Advocates stated, “the Canadian government for at least a decade and a half has consistently isolated itself against world opinion on Palestinian rights at the UN. … Continuing this pattern, Canada ‘sided with Israel by voting No’ on most UN votes on the Question of Palestine in December. Three of these were Canada’s votes on Palestinian Refugees, on UNRWA and on illegal settlements, each distinguishing Canada as in direct opposition to the ‘Yes’ votes of Ireland and Norway.”

Just Peace Advocates organized 1,300 individuals to email all UN ambassadors asking them to vote for Ireland and Norway instead of Canada for the Security Council. In a sign of the campaign’s impact, Canada’s permanent representative to the UN Marc André Blanchard responded with a letter to all UN ambassadors defending Canada’s policy on Palestinian rights.

Not only has Canada’s voting record on Palestinian rights undercut its standing within the General Assembly, the Canadian public doesn’t want the government pursuing anti-Palestinian positions. A recent Ekos poll found that 74% of Canadians wanted Ottawa to express opposition to Israel’s plan to formally annex a large swath of the West Bank with 42% of the public desiring some form of economic and/or diplomatic sanction against Israel if it moves forward with annexation. “The Trudeau government has not only isolated Canada from international opinion regarding Palestinian rights at the UN, but its positions contravene the wishes of most Canadians regarding the long-beleaguered Palestinians,” explained Karen Rodman of Just Peace Advocates.

While the impact of the loss shouldn’t be exaggerated, Justin Trudeau’s brand is linked to the idea that he is liked internationally. Additionally, the Liberals’ base supports the UN and the international body is closely connected with how they market their foreign policy.

Kowtowing to CIJA, B’nai B’rith and Israeli nationalists such as Housefather, Levitt, etc. on Palestinian rights at the UN helped scuttle Canada’s Security Council bid — that’s a fact Trudeau and the Liberals must face. More important, the international community’s rejection of a government enthralled to the Israel lobby weakens Israel diplomatically and is a victory for Palestine solidarity.

June 20, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | 3 Comments

Questions to do with Erasing the History of Slavery and Colonial Abuse

Raised by Gilad Atzmon | June 20, 2020 

Are the young Brits and Americans who genuinely feel guilty about the colonial and racist crimes of their white ancestors also willing to be subject to a special whites-only tax allocating a significant portion of their incomes to Black organizations so justice can, finally, prevail? Will these young White revolutionary spirits support, for instance, a bill that prevents White people (including their parents of course) from passing their wealth to their offspring  so justice can be done and Black people can be  compensated for centuries of racist abuse? I really am trying to figure out the true meaning of ‘White guilt,’ does it carry personal consequences?

Since the history of the British Empire’s criminality is vast, I find myself wondering whether our guilt-ridden revolutionary youngsters also feel responsible for the situation in Palestine? Are they going to push the British Government to put to an end to its ties with Israel until justice is restored in Palestine and the indigenous people of the land are invited to return to their villages and cities? Are those young British anti racists willing to come forward and apologise to the people of Pakistan or Ireland? And what about the people of Dresden? In short, I would like to know what, exactly, are the boundaries of this British post-colonial ‘ethical awakening’?

I wonder whether those who insist upon toppling Churchill’s monuments are willing to accept the possibility that David Irving  might have been right all along in his reading of the British leader?

Since the Left has fought an intensive and relentless battle against the notion of ‘historical revisionism,’ I wonder whether those who currently insist upon ‘setting the record straight’ understand that what they do de facto is revise the past. Is it possible that the Left has finally accepted that revisionism is the true meaning of historical thinking?

Finally, are the youngsters who adhere to left and progressive values and insist  upon a better, more diverse and anti racist future willing to admit that there are a few Black slaves under the monopoly board? I ask because to date, not one Left or Progressive voice has come forward to state that this Mural is all about Black slavery and capitalists.

June 20, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | 2 Comments

EU Parliament meddles in US affairs as it condemns Trump’s response to protests and declares ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’

RT | June 19, 2020

A lengthy resolution by the European Union legislators denounced US President Donald Trump for wanting to use force against rioters and condemned the “appalling death of George Floyd” and arrests of journalists.

In an 11-page resolution adopted on Friday with 493 votes in favor to 104 opposed – and 67 abstentions – the EU Parliament affirmed that “Black Lives Matter” and listed 36 more conclusions. The preamble ran out of letters of the alphabet.

Condemning the “appalling death of George Floyd” – a Minneapolis, Minnesota man who died during a botched arrest in late May – the EU parliamentarians also denounced “all forms of racism, hate and violence” as well as “Afrophobic traditions, such as the black face practice.”

They called on the US to “take decisive steps to address the structural racism and inequalities in the country, as reflected in police brutality” and condemned the “police crackdowns on peaceful US protesters and journalists.”

The EU Parliament also “strongly regrets the US President’s threat to deploy the US Army” to deal with the rioters. However, they blamed the riots on “extremist and anti-democratic forces which purposely misuse the peaceful protests to aggravate the conflicts with the intention of spreading disorder and anarchy.”

While denouncing the arrest of CNN reporter Omar Jimenez and his crew in Minneapolis as another example of racism, the EU Parliament praised freedom of the press as key to fighting racism.

Lest one thinks that means freedom of speech, however, the resolution noted that “racist and xenophobic speech is not covered by the freedom of expression” and denounced “all types of incidents of hate crime and hate speech, both offline and online.”

Leaving nothing to chance, “slogans that aim to undermine or detract from the Black Lives Matter movement and dilute its significance” were declared to be “white supremacism.”

Education, the parliamentarians said, is a “key tool to end structural discrimination and racism in our societies,” with the crucial role in “deconstructing prejudices and stereotypes, promoting tolerance, understanding and diversity.”

Neither the White House nor the State Department have yet commented on the apparent meddling into internal US affairs.

June 20, 2020 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | | 8 Comments

British politicians and the MSM have sent a clear message to the white working class for decades: ‘You don’t matter’

By Guy Birchall | RT | June 17, 2020

“Far right”, “Nazis” and “racists” are epithets used by the liberal elite as an excuse to demonise patriotic Brits who offend their metropolitan sensibilities. This is class hatred, plain and simple.

Bigotry is alive and well in the UK. One form, in particular, is actively encouraged, lauded and laughed about. The victims of it are demonised in the press and for entertainment. These people don’t matter, their opinions don’t matter, their tastes are low-grade, the things they enjoy are looked upon with scorn, and whenever they kick off about all this, they’re vilified or ignored. They are, of course, the white working class.

The difference in the tone of coverage of last weekend’s protests compared with the ones the weekend before won’t have passed you by. When Black Lives Matter descended on Westminster to have a riot because a man had been killed 4,000 miles away, the media could not have been more sympathetic.

These weren’t just people who were wound up and bored after the Government had locked them all inside for a quarter of the year. They weren’t troublemakers – they were protesters. They weren’t “far-left thugs” – they were “anti-racism activists”. Their pulling down of statues, defacing national monuments or attempting to set fire to the Union Flag was just being done to “raise awareness” of “systemic racism” in Britain today.

The weekend of civil unrest was reported by the BBC to be “largely peaceful”, despite 27 police officers being injured in one day, some requiring serious hospital treatment. But, of course, they were a “diverse” group of ethnic minorities and middle-class Marxist poseurs fighting for a cause endorsed by every corporation going, from Ben & Jerry’s to the Premier League.

They were good people who’d been wound up. Even those who dared to criticise them did so only with the heavy caveat that they “understood their grievances”.

However, it was all very different for another group of people who got pissed off by what they saw, with war memorials being desecrated and monuments to national heroes being covered in graffiti. They were incensed by police inaction and what they felt was an assault on their national identity and history, so decided to go out and protect these monuments.

And what did the government and media call them? “Far right”, “racists” and “Nazis”, because, obviously, Hitler supporters would want to defend a statue of Winston Churchill. For a demonstration that was a tenth of the size at best as the one the previous weekend, the area was flooded with police.

The Mayor of London told them their “hate wasn’t welcome” in the city. The BBC described the “more than 100 arrests, after violent clashes with the police” (though just six cops were injured, in comparison with the previous event’s 27). It was a stark contrast to the coverage of the “mostly peaceful protests” that had taken place the weekend before. These new protesters weren’t legitimately concerned about the actions of communist and anarchist agitators – they were just racists. That was the only possible reason they’d assembled.

And what evidence did the media provide for them being racist? It boiled down to ‘Well, just look at them.’ Shaven-headed, pasty-faced, tattooed men covering themselves in the Cross of St George. Every front-page headline on every paper might as well have read, “Look at them – aren’t they ghastly?”. People wilfully misconstrued images to say they were performing Sieg Heil salutes, when they were clearly raising their hands and chanting “England” in a fashion anyone who has ever seen a football match can clearly recognise.

The hero of the hour was a black protester who was photographed carrying an injured white counter protester away from the fray – an undoubtedly noble act on his behalf. But when the Daily Mail covered this, they described a “far-right statue defender” as having been rescued by a BLM activist.

It had no way of knowing this man’s politics. It didn’t even bother to find out his name before labelling him an extremist. And what about those “mostly peaceful” protesters he had to be rescued from? Were they about to lovingly kick his head in for thinking that Churchill was basically a good bloke? Did they shove him to the ground to educate him about the wonders of diversity?

The double standard is appalling. The photos taken before that counter protestor was hauled to safety in an admirable act of humanity show a baying masked mob of mostly black men around him. Can you imagine the outrage if a picture emerged with those dynamics reversed? There would be hell to pay.

The disparity is obvious yet again in the coverage accorded to the man pictured urinating near the memorial for policeman Keith Palmer, who was murdered by a terrorist outside Parliament in 2017. The photo was circulated by MPs and media outlets alike, all of them accusing a man who was clearly out of his head drunk as engaging in some sort of dirty protest against the memory of a fallen officer.

Within a day, he’d handed himself into police custody and was up before the magistrates on Monday. He told the court he’d been out in London the night before, where he’d necked at least 16 pints, not gone to bed, then decided to join fellow football supporters to “protect the statues” – but he didn’t know which statues. He said he was ashamed of himself and admitted guilt and, within 15 minutes, he was sentenced to 14 days in prison. The usual punishment for this offence is an £80 fine and results in no criminal record.

Remind me again how long the gang of thugs that tore down a statue, rolled it through the streets of Bristol and dumped it in the harbour got? I seem to recall that entire incident being filmed as well, but none of the perpetrators have even been arrested, let alone had the contrition and decency to hand themselves in to the authorities.

While we’re on the topic of Bristol’s “racist” statues, let’s consider the latest public art installation that has arrived in that city. Next to the plinth where the statue of Edward Colston once stood there’s now another sculpture.

This one depicts a morbidly obese skinhead wearing a string vest and standing in a wheelie bin. His enormous belly spills over its lip as he looks at a phone with “England for the English” as a background in one hand while holding a globe in the other. On the bin are the words “Spoiler alert: St George was Turkish”. Can you imagine the outcry if a statue exaggerating the stereotypes of any other group were to be put up? It would be smashed before lunchtime.

The statue is a material manifestation of the attitude the elite has towards this section of society, which is simply: “You don’t matter”. The Labour Party was formed to represent working-class people, but stood idly by as their jobs went abroad and their communities were completely transformed by immigration.

“You’re just racist,” they told them, or as Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister, once famously got caught out admitting in 2010 while unknowingly still mic’ed up, “You’re just bigoted” – in other words, you don’t deserve to matter.

They ignored these people after they voted for Brexit in 2016, prompting them to plump for the Conservatives for the first time in decades in 2019. But the Tories won’t listen to them, either: they also regard these white people as toxic, and the party doesn’t want to be accused of being racist.

So, we end up with the appalling scenario of our police standing by as white girls across England were raped by gangs of predatory Muslim men. Because these white girls don’t matter.

The white working class’s love of cheap EasyJet flights to Spain and Greece have to go because they’re killing the planet – while we ignore China and India belching out millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. But we can end all that because they don’t matter.

Even football is being taken away from them, as the price of Premier League tickets go up and up and the grounds are ever more gentrified to appeal to the middle classes who derided the game for so long, but like it now that it’s fashionable and lucrative. The old lot would just fight anyway, so they don’t matter.

I don’t believe the vast majority of these people are far right – those who make that accusation don’t even know what that means. They just, rightly, feel ignored. There will be racists in their midst, but you can’t dismiss millions of people on the basis of a few extremists. Black Lives Matter and the Labour Party should both be dismissed, if that were the case.

They are, for the most part, patriots who feel abandoned by the country they love. They deserve to be heard. And they deserve to know that they do matter.

Guy Birchall, British journalist covering current affairs, politics and free speech issues. Recently published in The Sun and Spiked Online. Follow him on Twitter @guybirchall

June 17, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | | 2 Comments

Do Palestinians’ Lives Matter?

By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | June 15, 2020

Lately, anti-racism activists and their fellow-travelers have been vandalizing statues in the UK, including a memorial to Winston Churchill. Even Nelson is threatened. And Robert Peel, like Churchill, has been boarded up for protection from the loonies. Incredibly Robert the Bruce, king of Scotland 1306-1329, hero of Bannockburn and bringer of independence, has been branded a racist by graffiti scribblers. Bruce (or de Brus), Earl of Carrick and 7th Lord of Annandale, was of Norman descent I believe. So, is our entire medieval history and culture – 1066 and all that – condemned? If it’s the feudal system and the struggle between mighty lords and their lowly vassals that bothers today’s hypersensitive agitators, most of our history books will have to be taken off the shelves and our monarchs consigned to the dustbin in order to appease them.

Why don’t these firebrands look for modern-day racists to complain about? In which case they might focus on “Israel’s knee-on-the-neck occupation of Palestine”, as Leslie Bravery describes it. This snarling, brutal entity illegally occupies Palestine and part of Syria and is stuffed with baddies with no redeeming features whatsoever. They have been busy ethnically cleansing the native Palestinians and stealing their lands for seven decades.  And what of their many supporters in high places? What should we call people who defend the indefensible… who admire the despicable… who applaud the expulsion at gunpoint of peaceable civilians and the confiscation of their homes?

Being a Friend of Israel – like most of the Conservative Party at Westminster – means embracing the terror and racism on which the state of Israel was built. It means embracing the dispossession of the innocent and oppression of the powerless. It means embracing the discriminatory laws against those who stubbornly remain in their homeland. It means embracing the jackboot gangsterdom that abducts civilians — including children — and imprisons and tortures them without trial. It means embracing the theft and annexation of Palestinian lands and water resources, the imposition of hundreds of military checkpoints, the severe restrictions on the movement of people and goods, and maximum interference with Palestinian life at every level.

It means not minding the bloodbaths inflicted by Israel on Gaza and feeling not too bothered about blowing hundreds of children to smithereens, maiming thousands more, trashing vital infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, power plants and clean water supplies, and causing $billions of devastation that will take 20 years to rebuild. And where is the money coming from? That’s right – from you and me.

It means turning a blind eye to the strangulation of the West Bank’s economy and the cruel 14-year blockade on Gaza. It means endorsing the denial of Palestinians’ right to self-determination and return to their homes. It means shrugging off the religious war that humiliates Muslims and Christians and prevents them visiting their holy places. It means meekly accepting a situation in which hard-pressed American and British taxpayers are having to subsidize Israel’s illegal occupation of the Holy Land.

And if, after all that, you are still Israel’s special friend, where is your self-respect?

Pandering to Israel has been immensely costly in blood and treasure and stupidly damaging to our reputation. Is it not ludicrous that a foreign military power which has no regard for international law and rejects weapons conventions and safeguards can exert such influence on foreign policy in the US and UK?

Everyone outside the Westminster/Washington bubble knows perfectly well that there can be no peace in the Holy Land without justice. In other words no peace until the occupation ends. Everyone knows that international law and countless UN resolutions still wait to be enforced. Everyone knows that Israel won’t comply unless sanctions are imposed. Everyone knows that the siege on Gaza won’t be lifted until warships are sent.

What’s more, everyone now knows that the US is not an honest broker, that Israel wants to keep the pot boiling and that justice won’t come from more sham ‘negotiations’. Nor will peace. Everyone knows who is the real cause of turmoil in the Middle East. And everyone knows that Her Majesty’s Government’s hand-wringing and empty words of ‘concern’ serve no purpose except to prolong the daily misery for Palestinians and buy time for Israel to complete its criminal scheme to make the occupation permanent.

And that is about to happen.

Can’t breathe!

For the last year Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying he’ll “extend sovereignty on all the settlements” including sites that have security importance or are important to Israel’s heritage. And that will include Hebron, Jericho and the Jordan Valley.

The move would be another major step in the fulfillment of the long-running Plan Dalet (otherwise known as Plan D) which was the Zionists’ blueprint for the violent takeover of the Palestinian homeland as a prelude to declaring Israeli statehood – which they did in May 1948. It was drawn up by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency.

Plan D’s intention was not only to gain control of the areas of the Jewish state and defend its borders but also to control the areas of Jewish presence outside those borders and ensure “freedom of military and economic activity” by occupying important high-ground positions on a number of transport routes.

“Outside the borders of the state” was a curious thing to say when nobody would admit to where Israel’s borders actually ran, but the aim was to steal land that wasn’t allocated to Israel but was reserved for a Palestinian state on the 1947 UN Partition Plan map. Since then Israel has purposely kept its borders fluid in order to accommodate the Zionists’ perpetual lust for expansion into Palestinian and Syrian territory and eventual takeover.

No doubt with this in mind the Israeli government has confirmed the appointment of the pro-annexation Settlements Minister Tzipi Hotovely as Israel’s next ambassador to the UK. Hotovely is a religious-nationalist extremist committed to the ‘Greater Israel’ project.  As Minister of Settlement Affairs in the Israeli government many here will regard her as a war criminal. All Israeli settlements (a more appropriate word would be ‘squats’) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are considered illegal under international law. And many see Israel’s long-running squatter policy as a war crime for the simple reason that Article 8(2) of the Rome Statute defines “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory” as such “when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes”.

Hotovely tends to run off at the mouth having criticised American Jews for not understanding the complexities of the region because “they never send their children to fight for their country, most of the Jews don’t have children serving as soldiers”. She herself slid out of compulsory military service by becoming an educational guide in Jerusalem and an emissary of the Jewish Agency in the United States.

She’s also keen to re-write New Israel’s sordid history: “We need to delete the word ‘occupation’ and we need to redefine the term ‘refugee’….” Hotovely rejects Palestinians’ hopes for statehood and instead dreams of a Greater Israel spanning the length and breadth of current Israel plus the Palestinian territories, saying “We need to return to the basic truth of our rights to this country…. This land is ours. All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologise for that.”

But what is the basic truth of her right to the land? She came there from the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic so a question that immediately springs to mind is: “What ancestral links does she have with the Holy Land? Has she had a DNA check-up? And what exactly gives her and her kind the right to lord it over the Palestinians who have been there all the time?”

In London she’ll replace Mark Regev, former Netanyahu spokesman and mastermind behind Israel’s propaganda programme of disinformation and dirty tricks. Under Regev’s watch in January 2017 a senior political officer at the Israeli embassy in London, Shai Masot, plotted with stooges among British MPs and other maggots in the rotting political woodwork to “take down” senior government figures including Boris Johnson’s deputy at the Foreign Office, Sir Alan Duncan.

Masot was almost certainly a Mossad asset. His hostile activities were revealed not, as one would have wished, by Britain’s own security services and media but an Al Jazeera undercover news team. Her Majesty’s Government’s response? “The UK has a strong relationship with Israel and we consider the matter closed.”

At a Labour Party conference fringe meeting Israel insider Miko Peled warned that “they are going to pull all the stops, they are going to smear, they are going to try anything they can to stop Corbyn…. the reason anti-Semitism is used is because they [the Israelis] have no argument….”

And that’s exactly what happened. Corbyn, a perceived threat to Israel’s cosy relationship with the UK, is now relegated to the sidelines.

Regev came to help silence criticism of the Israeli regime. Why the switch to lovely Tzipi? I’d say she’s here to smooth ruffled feelings caused by Israel’s latest planned land grab in the creeping annexation of the West Bank. And Regev, mission accomplished in the UK, is needed in Tel Aviv to defend Netanyahu from the ensuing flak if he goes ahead with annexation.

EU’s shame

Where does the EU stand in all this? A year ago one hundred and fifty-five European researchers and academics delivered a stinging rebuke to Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, and Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Science, Research & Innovation.

Their letter expressed the outrage felt throughout the world, and especially in European countries including the UK, at the EU’s policy of endlessly rewarding the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel. Perversely each new act of unspeakable brutality, each new onslaught of disproportionate force against civilians had brought fresh privileges, fresh co-operation, fresh embraces from an enthusiastic EU élite. The letter said among other things:

“In spite of continual and serious breaches of international law and violation of human rights, and regardless of the commitment for upholding human rights of European countries, Israel enjoys an exceptionally privileged status in dealing with Europe also through the Association Agreement and has been receiving grants from the European Commission in the area of research and innovation (FP7 and its successor Horizon 2020).

“Funds are granted even to Israeli arms producers such as Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd, the producers of lethal drones that were used in the Gaza military assaults against civilians, together with numerous academic institutions that have close ties with Israeli military industry.

“We appeal to the European Union to impose a comprehensive military embargo on Israel, as long as Israel continues to blatantly violate human rights. We are deeply disturbed that public funds contributed by European tax payers are channeled to a country that not only disregards human rights but also uses most advanced knowledge and technology for the very violation of human rights.”

The EU-Israel Association Agreement has a lot to answer for. It came into force in 2000 for the purpose of promoting (1) peace and security, (2) shared prosperity through, for example, the creation of a free trade zone, and (3) cross-cultural rapprochement. It governs not only EU-Israel relations but Israel’s relations with the EU’s other Mediterranean partners, including the Palestinian National Authority. To enjoy the Association’s privileges Israel undertook to show “respect for human rights and democratic principles” as set out as a general condition in Article 2, which says:

“Relations between the Parties, as well as all the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles, which guides their internal and international policy and constitutes an essential element of this Agreement.”

Essential being the operative word.

Respecting human rights and democratic principles is not optional. Article 2 allows steps to be taken to enforce the contractual obligations regarding human rights and to dissuade partners from pursuing policies and practices that disrespect those rights. The Agreement also requires respect for self-determination of peoples and fundamental freedoms for all. Given Israel’s contempt for such principles the EU, had it been an honorable group, would have enforced Article 2 and not let matters slide. They would have suspended Israel’s membership until the regime fully complied. Israel relies heavily on exports to Europe so the EU could by now have forced an end to the brutal occupation of the Holy Land.

Rewarding annexation

Questions in the House of Commons last week revealed that the Government plans to host a UK-Israel trade and investment conference in London. One such question advertised the fact that “Israeli exports to the UK grew by 286% over the last decade, and bilateral trade levels are at a record high”. The Minister, Conor Burns, announced: “We strongly value our trading relationship with the State of Israel and are working closely with the Israeli government to implement the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement.… We are working with the Israeli counterparts to host a UK-Israel trade and investment conference in London, which will have its primary focus on scoping out and identifying new opportunities and collaboration between Israel and the United Kingdom.”

Then Andrew Percy MP, a notorious stooge for Israel, asked the Secretary of State for International Trade what recent discussions she’d had with her counterpart in the Israeli government on a UK-Israel free trade deal. Ranil Jayawardena, answering for the Secretary of State, said that the UK-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement, signed in February 2019, will enter into force at the end of the Transition Period in January 2021. It will allow businesses to trade as freely as they do now, without additional tariffs or barriers. “Total trade between the United Kingdom and Israel increased by 15 percent in 2019 to £5.1bn. We value this trade relationship and are committed to strengthening it, so we will seek to work with counterparts in the new Israeli government to host a bilateral trade and investment summit in London.”

So there’s still a desire at the heart of UK government to reward racist Israel, not only for its knee-on-the-neck brutality but even for a crime of such enormity as can’t-breathe annexation.

June 16, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 1 Comment

Don’t Rename Those Military Bases. Close Them Instead.

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | June 16, 2020

A controversy has erupted over the naming of U.S. military bases here in the United States. The bases are named after Confederate generals, and there are people who want to change that. They want the bases to be named for more politically correct military figures.

I’ve got a better idea: Let’s not rename the bases. Let’s close them instead.

When people are born and raised under a particular form of governmental structure, it is extremely difficult for them to mentally or psychologically challenge the structure itself. The natural tendency is to want to work within the structure by coming up with ways to modify or improve it rather than to contemplate arguments for dismantling it.

That’s the situation we have with the national-security state structure that characterizes the United States. We have all been born and raised under a massive military-intelligence system that consists of the Pentagon, the vast military-industrial complex (as President Eisenhower termed it), the CIA, and the NSA. We’ve all been taught that “national security” is everything — that the national-security state protects our “freedom” and our, well, our “national security.” We are told that it does this through thousands of military bases both here at home and abroad. We’re taught that interventionism in foreign countries is essential to keep us safe here at home.

Thus, the natural tendency of people is to simply accept the permanence of this way of life and try to come up with ways to make it better. That’s what the impulse to rename all those military bases is all about. The bases are considered to be a permanent part of American life. So, the idea is let’s just make them better by renaming them.

An important question

Notice that in this renaming debate, the debaters never ask a critically important question: What do we need those bases for? For people who are embroiled within the paradigm, it’s just obvious. We need them because … well … just because.

After all, it’s not as though the United States is under the threat of an invasion by some foreign power. No nation-state in the world, including Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, or any other nation-state that has been labeled an adversary, rival, or enemy of the United States, has the remotest military capability to invade the United States. All of them lack the troops, equipment, supplies, transports, ammunition, armaments, and money to undertake such an enormous task.

So, if there is no threat of a foreign invasion of the United States, what do we need all those bases for, old names or new names?

One might assert that the bases protect us from “the terrorists.” But “the terrorists” are a direct result of U.S. military interventionism abroad. Given that the U.S. military and CIA have been killing people in the Middle East and Afghanistan for decades, it stands to reason that there are going to be people who wish to retaliate against Americans.

There is an easy fix for anti-American terrorism: Bring all the troops home from everywhere and discharge them. Their interventionism produces nothing positive and lots of negatives, including anti-American terrorism and the resulting destruction of our liberty here at home to protect us from “the terrorists” that their interventionism produce.

Even given anti-American terrorism, the notion that domestic military bases protect us from terrorism is ludicrous. Terrorists strike at civilians and civilian targets. When they do so, they are engaged in a federal criminal offense. Under U.S. law, the military is precluded from enforcing criminal laws. So, what good are those military bases when it comes to protecting us from terrorism?

America’s founding system

The U.S. government wasn’t always a national-security state. The nation’s founding governmental system was a limited-government republic, which is an opposite type of governmental system, one whose powers are limited.

For the first 150 years of our nation’s history, there was a basic military force but it was relatively small. Its principal purpose was to protect Americans from Native American attacks. That’s why in the 1800s, it might have made sense to have a fort near a community.

But why do American cities and towns today need military bases near them? There is no longer a threat of attack from Apaches, Comanches, or any other Native American tribe. And, as I previously observed, there is no realistic threat of a foreign invasion.

The U.S. government was converted from a limited-government republic into a national-security state after World War II. The justification given was that America faced a gigantic worldwide communist conspiracy to take over the United States and the rest of the world, one whose base was in Moscow, Russia (yes, that Russia), with tentacles to China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba, Chile, Guatemala, and others.

That conversion fundamentally transformed not only America’s governmental structure but also American life. Now Americans were living under a totalitarian form of governmental structure, one that wielded omnipotent, dark-side powers, such as state-sponsored assassinations, kidnappings, executions, torture, coups, and regime-change operations.

Largess, dependency, and danger

I would be remiss, of course, if I failed to mention the trillions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money that have been spent over the decades to sustain and maintain this vast military empire. The national-security state has played a principal role in the massive taxation, spending, debt, and monetary debasement that has plundered the American people since the end of World War II.

Of course, there is also the mindset of dependency on all this military largess that has come to characterize thousands of American communities, where people live in desperate fear of losing their military base, convinced that they will die if it happens.

Finally, we must never forget President Eisenhower’s profound warning to the American people, one that echoed the sentiments of our American ancestors—that the national-security state poses a grave threat to the liberties and democratic processes of the American people.

Regardless of what one might think about the original post-World War II conversion to a national-security state, everyone agrees on one thing: With the demise of the suppose worldwide communist conspiracy in 1989 with the end of the Cold War, the original justification for America’s conversion to a national-security state disintegrated more than 30 years ago.

We have the right to the restoration of our limited-government republic. We have the right to the restoration of our rights and liberties. Forget about renaming those useless and destructive military bases. Close them instead.

June 16, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | | 2 Comments

UNHRC joins pile-on against US police’s ‘systemic racism,’ but US military makes police brutality look like amateur hour

By Helen Buyniski | RT | June 15, 2020

The UN Human Rights Council has joined the worldwide protests taking aim at racism and police brutality among US police forces. But where are these voices when the US military kills millions in the Middle East and Africa?

Burkina Faso, speaking on behalf of 54 African nations, requested an urgent debate on “racially motivated human rights violations” – specifically systemic racism and police brutality – in the US, and the UNHRC has agreed to hold the debate on Wednesday. But compared with what US military policy has wrought on the populations of the Middle East and northern Africa, police killings are a blip on the radar.

The UNHRC debate is the latest grand public statement in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month, and speaks to a growing disconnect between what has become a laser-focus on US policing and awareness of the much greater harms caused by Washington’s foreign policy – harms that are just as racialized, if not more so, but which mysteriously fly under the radars of activist groups.

Because this blindness doesn’t just afflict the UNHRC. In the US, groups like Black Lives Matter and the Sunrise Movement are demanding that US cities “defund police” and reallocate that funding to social programs, a solution that divides the American people and ignores the root causes of police violence – over-militarization, lack of accountability, lack of enforcement of existing laws, poor training, and austerity budgets that have slashed services like mental health and social welfare programs.

There’s no doubt US police forces need a dramatic overhaul. But the sudden international focus on domestic policing ignores the much greater casualty numbers among black and brown populations resulting from the ‘War on Terror’, which is nearly two decades old and showing no signs of ending anytime soon, despite the feeble campaign promises of President Donald Trump. In addition to the declared wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the US has bombed or helped to bomb innocent people in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan over the past 19 years, and has covertly extended its military tentacles deep into Africa in a bid to counter Chinese influence.

The result has been millions of deaths and countless more injuries, largely among non-white, Muslim populations. It’s difficult to calculate the true toll of US military violence, but a 2015 report by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival, and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War concluded at least 1.3 million had died in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone since the 9/11 terror attacks were used as an excuse to launch the US’ holy war on the Middle East. Their report cautioned that the true number could exceed two million – a total which does not include hundreds of thousands (if not millions) more war deaths in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and elsewhere.

It’s hard to get a reliable count of civilian casualties, as leaked documents from the drone program have shown as many as 90 percent of those killed in US airstrikes are not the intended targets, and the Pentagon labels any unknown bodies as “enemy combatants” if it can’t identify them. As the military itself admitted at the height of the Iraq invasion, “We don’t do body counts.” And some of the worst harm caused by US foreign policy extends beyond simple killing.

With the help of NATO, the US’ ‘humanitarian bombing’ of Libya in 2011 transformed it from the most advanced nation in Africa, where technological advances were literally turning the desert green, to a brutal place where slaves were sold in open markets. Black people in Libya were targeted for the cruelest atrocities by the NATO-supported rebels, and were often arrested for nothing more than their skin color. It’s difficult to forget the horrific photos that emerged from Abu Ghraib prison, or the tales of CIA ‘black spots’ where innocent men were tortured for weeks on a mere tip from a vengeful neighbor.

Even the indirect involvement of the US military causes extensive harm. Ever-tightening sanctions strangle Iran, and the US has severely restricted humanitarian aid flowing to Somalia and Nigeria, blaming terror groups that arose in the power vacuum left by Gaddafi’s gruesome murder. Some 14 million Yemenis are at risk of starvation thanks to aid blockades maintained by US ally Saudi Arabia, and the UN predicted last year that the conflict would claim over 233,000 lives by 2020.

Those institutions that do try to address US military atrocities face significant opposition – the Trump administration just last week announced sanctions on members of the International Criminal Court for having the gall to do their job and attempt to investigate US war crimes. Perhaps this is why an open UN letter signed by 22 African officials this weekend glossed over the devastating history of US military action in perpetuating systemic racism around the world, instead keeping its condemnations politely vague. Yet domestic activist groups are just as silent about the harm US military power causes worldwide, even while claiming they want justice for black and brown populations.

The activists who genuinely want a better world – as opposed to the professional agitators who’d lose their jobs if all human suffering vanished off the face of the Earth – might consider replacing their rallying cry of “defund the police” with “defund the Pentagon.” The $738 billion that institution received in 2020 could buy a lot of social justice. If black lives truly matter, they matter everywhere – not just inside US borders.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

June 16, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Cut Overseas Police Training Programs

Photograph Source: Lorie Shaull from St Paul, United States – CC BY-SA 2.0
By Jeremy Kuzmarov | CounterPunch | June 15, 2020

The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has ignited protests across the United States and calls to demilitarize and defund the police.

A similar demand should be made to cut overseas police training programs including in Afghanistan.

The U.S. government has long adopted overseas police training as a cornerstone of nation building and counterinsurgency programs.

The idea is that American police will instill professional and democratic standards, including a respect for civil liberties among foreign counterparts and help stabilize violence prone countries.

The Floyd killing has exposed, however, that American police lack professional and humane standards and need to be retrained and reformed. They are ill suited to improve other countries’ police.

In Afghanistan, where the U.S. has spent an estimated $87 billion dollars over nineteen years training security forces, the police are notorious for corruption, sectarianism, incompetence and brutality.

In an interview quoted in the Afghanistan Papers, Thomas Johnson, a Navy official who served as a counterinsurgency adviser in Kandahar province, said that Afghans viewed the police as predatory bandits, calling them “the most hated institution” in Afghanistan.

This latter outcome resulted in part from the militarized tactics promoted by American advisers and their importation of police technologies which could be used for repressive ends.

In Honduras, where the U.S. expanded police aid following a 2009 coup d’états that ousted the mildly progressive José Manuel Zelaya, American trained units have been implicated in torture and drug related corruption, and carried out predawn raids of activists involved in protesting contested elections.

These units were trained under an initiative promoted by President Obama and extended by Trump that provided hundreds of millions of dollars for law enforcement training and assistance, mostly under the War on Drugs.

In the early 1960s, the Kennedy administration created the United States Agency for International Development’s infamous Office of Public Safety (OPS), to modernize the police forces in countries considered vulnerable to communist subversion.

Headed by CIA agent Byron Engle, who combined a deep commitment to civilian police work with an appreciation for the darker areas of political police intelligence, the OPS initially employed liberal reformers.

As political policing gained primacy, however, OPS agents became contemptuous of human rights and imported policing technologies that were used to hunt down dissidents and violently quell protests.

Charles Maechling Jr., staff director of the Special Group on Counterinsurgency under Kennedy, acknowledged that in failing to “insist on even rudimentary standards of criminal justice and civil rights, the United States provided regimes having only a façade of constitutional safeguards with up-dated law enforcement machinery readily adaptable to political intimidation and state terrorism. Record keeping in particular was immediately put to use tracking down student radicals and union organizers.”

By 1973, the OPS was abolished by Congress because of its connection to torture carried out by U.S. trained police forces in South Vietnam and Brazil.

Many OPS veterans subsequently returned to work for police forces back in the U.S., where some continued to promote tactics that encouraged police abuse, including in the suppression of urban riots.

Unfortunately, there is a long pattern of abuse in American police forces, that overseas police programs have helped to compound.

As momentum grows for a transformation of the police, activists should be demanding an end to the practice of exporting police repression and a change to the American approach towards foreign policy more broadly.

Jeremy Kuzmarov is the author of The Russians are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce (Monthly Review Press, 2018) and Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting for the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019).

June 15, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | 23 Comments

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