America’s Own Color Revolution
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 16.06.2020
Color Revolution is the term used to describe a series of remarkably effective CIA-led regime change operations using techniques developed by the RAND Corporation, “democracy” NGOs and other groups since the 1980’s. They were used in crude form to bring down the Polish communist regime in the late 1980s. From there the techniques were refined and used, along with heavy bribes, to topple the Gorbachev regime in the Soviet Union. For anyone who has studied those models closely, it is clear that the protests against police violence led by amorphous organizations with names like Black Lives Matter or Antifa are more than purely spontaneous moral outrage. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans are being used as a battering ram to not only topple a US President, but in the process, the very structures of the US Constitutional order.
If we step back from the immediate issue of videos showing a white Minneapolis policeman pressing his knee on the neck of a black man, George Floyd, and look at what has taken place across the nation since then, it is clear that certain organizations or groups were well-prepared to instrumentalize the horrific event for their own agenda.
The protests since May 25 have often begun peacefully only to be taken over by well-trained violent actors. Two organizations have appeared regularly in connection with the violent protests—Black Lives Matter and Antifa (USA). Videos show well-equipped protesters dressed uniformly in black and masked (not for coronavirus to be sure), vandalizing police cars, burning police stations, smashing store windows with pipes or baseball bats. Use of Twitter and other social media to coordinate “hit-and-run” swarming strikes of protest mobs is evident.
What has unfolded since the Minneapolis trigger event has been compared to the wave of primarily black ghetto protest riots in 1968. I lived through those events in 1968 and what is unfolding today is far different. It is better likened to the Yugoslav color revolution that toppled Milosevic in 2000.
Gene Sharp: Template for Regime Overthrow
In the year 2000 the US State Department, aided by its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and select CIA operatives, began secretly training a group of Belgrade university students led by a student group that was called Otpor! (Resistance!). The NED and its various offshoots was created in the 1980’s by CIA head Bill Casey as a covert CIA tool to overthrow specific regimes around the world under the cover of a human rights NGO. In fact, they get their money from Congress and from USAID.
In the Serb Otpor! destabilization of 2000, the NED and US Ambassador Richard Miles in Belgrade selected and trained a group of several dozen students, led by Srđa Popović, using the handbook, From Dictatorship to Democracy, translated to Serbian, of the late Gene Sharp and his Albert Einstein Institution. In a post mortem on the Serb events, the Washington Post wrote, “US-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-drive, running tracking polls, training thousands of opposition activists and helping to organize a vitally important parallel vote count. US taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milošević graffiti on walls across Serbia.”
Trained squads of activists were deployed in protests to take over city blocks with the aid of ‘intelligence helmet’ video screens that give them an instantaneous overview of their environment. Bands of youth converging on targeted intersections in constant dialogue on cell phones, would then overwhelm police. The US government spent some $41 million on the operation. Student groups were secretly trained in the Sharp handbook techniques of staging protests that mocked the authority of the ruling police, showing them to be clumsy and impotent against the youthful protesters. Professionals from the CIA and US State Department guided them behind the scenes.
The Color Revolution Otpor! model was refined and deployed in 2004 as the Ukraine Orange Revolution with logo and color theme scarves, and in 2003 in Georgia as the Rose Revolution. Later Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the template to launch the Arab Spring. In all cases the NED was involved with other NGOs including the Soros Foundations.
After defeating Milosevic, Popovic went on to establish a global color revolution training center, CANVAS, a kind of for-profit business consultancy for revolution, and was personally present in New York working reportedly with Antifa during the Occupy Wall Street where also Soros money was reported.
Antifa and BLM
The protests, riots, violent and non-violent actions sweeping across the United States since May 25, including an assault on the gates of the White House, begin to make sense when we understand the CIA’s Color Revolution playbook.
The impact of the protests would not be possible were it not for a network of local and state political officials inside the Democratic Party lending support to the protesters, even to the point the Democrat Mayor of Seattle ordered police to abandon several blocks in the heart of downtown to occupation by protesters.
In recent years major portions of the Democratic Party across the US have been quietly taken over by what one could call radical left candidates. Often they win with active backing of organizations such as Democratic Socialists of America or Freedom Road Socialist Organizations. In the US House of Representatives the vocal quarter of new representatives around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib and Minneapolis Representative Ilhan Omar are all members or close to Democratic Socialists of America. Clearly without sympathetic Democrat local officials in key cities, the street protests of organizations such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa would not have such a dramatic impact.
To get a better grasp how serious the present protest movement is we should look at who has been pouring millions into BLM. The Antifa is more difficult owing to its explicit anonymous organization form. However, their online Handbook openly recommends that local Antifa “cells” join up with BLM chapters.
FRSO: Follow the Money
BLM began in 2013 when three activist friends created the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag to protest the allegations of shooting of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin by a white Hispanic block watchman, George Zimmermann. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi were all connected with and financed by front groups tied to something called Freedom Road Socialist Organization, one of the four largest radical left organizations in the United States formed out of something called New Communist Movement that dissolved in the 1980s.
On June 12, 2020 the Freedom Road Socialist Organization webpage states, “The time is now to join a revolutionary organization! Join Freedom Road Socialist Organization… If you have been out in the streets this past few weeks, the odds are good that you’ve been thinking about the difference between the kind of change this system has to offer, and the kind of change this country needs. Capitalism is a failed system that thrives on exploitation, inequality and oppression. The reactionary and racist Trump administration has made the pandemic worse. The unfolding economic crisis we are experiencing is the worst since the 1930s. Monopoly capitalism is a dying system and we need to help finish it off. And that is exactly what Freedom Road Socialist Organization is working for.”
In short the protests over the alleged police killing of a black man in Minnesota are now being used to call for a revolution against capitalism. FRSO is an umbrella for dozens of amorphous groups including Black Lives Matter or BLM. What is interesting about the self-described Marxist-Leninist roots of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is not so much their left politics as much as their very establishment funding by a group of well-endowed tax-exempt foundations.
Alicia Garza of BLM is also a board member or executive of five different Freedom Road front groups including 2011 Board chair of Right to the City Alliance, Board member of School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL), of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), Forward Together and Special Projects director of National Domestic Workers Alliance.
The Right to the City Alliance got $6.5 million between 2011 and 2014 from a number of very established tax-exempt foundations including the Ford Foundation ($1.9 million), from both of George Soros’s major tax-exempts–Open Society Foundations, and the Foundation to Promote Open Society for $1.3 million. Also the cornflake-tied Kellogg Foundation $250,000, and curiously, Ben & Jerry’s Foundation (ice cream) for $30,000.
Garza also got major foundation money as Executive Director of the FRSO front, POWER, where Obama former “green jobs czar” Van Jones, a self-described “communist” and “rowdy black nationalist,” now with CNN, was on the board. Alicia Garza also chaired the Right to the City Alliance, a network of activist groups opposing urban gentrification. That front since 2009 received $1.3 million from the Ford Foundation, as well as $600,000 from the Soros foundations and again, Ben & Jerry’s ($50,000). And Garza’s SOUL, which claimed to have trained 712 “organizers” in 2014, when she co-founded Black Lives Matter, got $210,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation and another $255,000 from the Heinz Foundation (ketchup and John Kerry family) among others. With the Forward Together of FRSO, Garza sat on the board of a “multi-racial organization that works with community leaders and organizations to transform culture and policy to catalyze social change.” It officially got $4 million in 2014 revenues and from 2012 and 2014, the organization received a total of $2.9 million from Ford Foundation ($655,000) and other major foundations.
Nigeria-born BLM co-founder Opal Tometi likewise comes from the network of FRSO. Tometi headed the FRSO’s Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Curiously with a “staff” of two it got money from major foundations including the Kellogg Foundation for $75,000 and Soros foundations for $100,000, and, again, Ben & Jerry’s ($10,000). Tometi got $60,000 in 2014 to direct the group.
The Freedom Road Socialist Organization that is now openly calling for a revolution against capitalism in the wake of the Floyd George killing has another arm, The Advancement Project, which describes itself as “a next generation, multi-racial civil rights organization.” Its board includes a former Obama US Department of Education Director of Community Outreach and a former Bill Clinton Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. The FRSO Advancement Project in 2013 got millions from major US tax-exempt foundations including Ford ($8.5 million), Kellogg ($3 million), Hewlett Foundation of HP defense industry founder ($2.5 million), Rockefeller Foundation ($2.5 million), and Soros foundations ($8.6 million).
Major Money and ActBlue
By 2016, the presidential election year where Hillary Clinton was challenging Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter had established itself as a well-organized network. That year the Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy announced the formation of the Black-Led Movement Fund (BLMF), “a six-year pooled donor campaign aimed at raising $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives coalition” in which BLM was a central part. By then Soros foundations had already given some $33 million in grants to the Black Lives Matter movement. This was serious foundation money.
The BLMF identified itself as being created by top foundations including in addition to the Ford Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation and the Soros Open Society Foundations. They described their role: “The BLMF provides grants, movement building resources, and technical assistance to organizations working advance the leadership and vision of young, Black, queer, feminists and immigrant leaders who are shaping and leading a national conversation about criminalization, policing and race in America.”
The Movement for Black Lives Coalition (M4BL) which includes Black Lives Matter, already in 2016 called for “defunding police departments, race-based reparations, voting rights for illegal immigrants, fossil-fuel divestment, an end to private education and charter schools, a universal basic income, and free college for blacks.”
Notably, when we click on the website of M4BL, under their donate button we learn that the donations will go to something called ActBlue Charities. ActBlue facilitates donations to “democrats and progressives.” As of May 21, ActBlue had given $119 million to the campaign of Joe Biden.
That was before the May 25 BLM worldwide protests. Now major corporations such as Apple, Disney, Nike and hundreds others may be pouring untold and unaccounted millions into ActBlue under the name of Black Lives Matter, funds that in fact can go to fund the election of a Democrat President Biden. Perhaps this is the real reason the Biden campaign has been so confident of support from black voters. What is clear from only this account of the crucial role of big money foundations behind protest groups such as Black lives Matter is that there is a far more complex agenda driving the protests now destabilizing cities across America. The role of tax-exempt foundations tied to the fortunes of the greatest industrial and financial companies such as Rockefeller, Ford, Kellogg, Hewlett and Soros says that there is a far deeper and far more sinister agenda to current disturbances than spontaneous outrage would suggest.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics.
Iran: E3 unconstructive draft resolution at IAEA meeting mockery of international rules
Press TV – June 16, 2020
Iran has condemned as “unconstructive” a resolution reportedly drafted by the three European signatories to a 2015 nuclear deal for a vote at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s governing board meeting, saying such a resolution makes a mockery of international rules.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s permanent representative to Vienna-based international organizations, urged France, Germany and the UK — also known as E3 — not to complicate the situation surrounding the Iran deal if they cannot fulfill their end of the bargain and help salvage the accord.
The comments came as IAEA Board of Governors started a four-day meeting on Monday, with Iran on the agenda.
According to a Bloomberg report, the resolution prepared by the European trio urges Tehran to “fully cooperate” with the IAEA investigation of its nuclear facilities. It came after the nuclear watchdog’s inspectors claimed they had not been given access to two locations that may have hosted atomic activities two decades ago.
The resolution will have to be presented during the meeting and is expected to win Washington’s backing.
During the Monday session, the IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi claimed that for over four months, “Iran has denied us access to two locations and that, for almost a year, it has not engaged in substantive discussions to clarify our questions related to possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities.”
Gharibabadi dismissed the claims in the reported resolution and said, “While Iran is cooperating extensively and constructively with the agency, submitting a resolution with the purpose of asking Iran to cooperate and fulfill the two demands of the IAEA is regrettable and a totally unconstructive move.”
He criticized the European trio’s double standards on Tehran’s nuclear program and said such a resolution is being put forth by the countries that “either possess nuclear weapons or play host to such destructive and deadly weapons.”
Such a move, Gharibabadi said is “a mockery of international norms and rules governing disarmament and non-proliferation regimes.”
Gharibabadi also called on all members of the IAEA Board of Governors to exercise vigilance and avoid taking any “political and hasty” measures in order for Iran to continue cooperation with the Vienna-based agency.
“Naturally if such a resolution, which clearly serves American goals, is approved, the Islamic Republic of Iran will have to take the necessary measures accordingly,” he noted.
The Iranian envoy further stressed that the new IAEA request is founded on the claims raised by the Israeli regime, which is an enemy of Iran.
Tehran’s transparent cooperation with the agency “does not mean that we should agree to every request from the IAEA on the basis of delusional claims of our enemies,” he emphasized.
Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with six world states — namely the US, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China — in 2015.
However, Washington’s unilateral withdrawal in May 2018 and the subsequent re-imposition of sanctions against Tehran left the future of the historic agreement in limbo.
Iran remained fully compliant with the JCPOA for an entire year, waiting for the co-signatories to honor their commitments.
As the European parties failed to do so, the Islamic Republic moved in May 2019 to suspend its JCPOA commitments under Articles 26 and 36 of the deal covering Tehran’s legal rights.
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
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).
TSA to take mug shots of domestic air travelers
By Edward Hasbrouck | Papers, please! | June 8, 2020
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has officially although quietly announced that, as it has planned for years, its deployment of mug-shot machines at airport checkpoints will move from pilot projects to the new normal for domestic air travelers.
According to a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) released last week, the TSA plans to integrate facial recognition into the Secure Flight profiling, scoring, and control system used by the TSA and other linked agencies to decide who is, and who is not, “allowed” to pass through TSA checkpoints to exercise their right to travel by airline common carrier.
Cameras to photograph would-be travelers’ faces will be added to each of the stations at airport checkpoints where TSA employees and contractors currently scan would-be passengers’ travel documents (boarding passes and, if they present ID, ID documents).
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in collaboration with airlines and airport operators, already collects photos of many international travelers. CBP has been moving in fits and starts toward making mug shots mandatory even for U.S. citizens traveling internationally. As of now, mug shots are still officially “voluntary” for U.S. citizen international travelers, although many U.S. citizens have reported not being allowed to opt out. But last month, as we noted in an earlier blog post, the CBP official in charge of deployment of facial recognition said CBP plans to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for mandatory facial recognition of international travelers before the end of this year.
We expect that, consistent with the TSA’s “biometrics vision for all commercial aviation travelers”, deployment of facial recognition at TSA checkpoints for domestic air travelers will follow the same steps as have been followed by CBP in rolling out facial recognition for international air travelers: first pilot projects, then universal deployment of “optional” mug-shot cameras at airports (on an allegedly “opt-out” basis), then increasingly adverse treatment (delay, more intrusuive and in time of pandemic dangerous groping, etc.) of those who opt out, and eventually — if most travelers “voluntarily” submit to mug shots — denial of travel to those who don’t. The PIA doesn’t say how soon any of this will happen.
The time to say “no” is now, while you still can. Don’t consent to being photographed at TSA checkpoints or airline check-in counters or kiosks. For your own safety as well the protection of your civil liberties, don’t remove your mask! TSA checkpoints, check-in counters, and all kinds of kiosks are among the places at airports where transmission of contagious diseases is most likely. We are very interested in hearing from any traveler who is ordered to remove a face mask.
The TSA claims that domestic air travelers will be allowed to “opt out” of facial imaging, but it will be up to you to spot the cameras and stay out of their field of view. Notably, the TSA’s Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) doesn’t say what, if any, notices will be posted for travelers to see before they come into range of the mug-shot cameras.
The required notices are dictated by the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) and the Privacy Act, but the TSA has ignored both of these Federal laws in its facial recognition plans.
Even if a “collection of information” (including biometric information) by a Federal agency such as the TSA is voluntary, the PRA requires that it be approved in advance by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and assigned an OMB control number. That OMB control number and other notices specified by the PRA must be provided to all individuals from whom information is to be collected.
Pursuant to the PRA, no penalties may be imposed for failure or refusal to provide information unless these approval and notice requirements are complied with.
The PIA for facial imaging at TSA checkpoints doesn’t cite an OMB control number, and so far as we can tell, there is none. If TSA checkpoint staff ask you to take off your face mask so that they can take your mug shot, ask for the OMB control number for this information collection and a copy of the applicable Paperwork Reduction Act Notice.
The TSA says that facial images collected by the TSA “will be retained for no longer than 24 hours after the flight departure time.“ But regardless of how long this data is retained, any retention of personal identified information such as mug shots is prohibited by the Privacy Act unless the agency has previously published an applicable System Of Records Notice (SORN) in the Federal Register. Operation of a system of records without proper notice is a crime on the part of the responsible agency officials.
The new PIA for the TSA’s facial recognition scheme for air travelers claims that the data collected would be covered by the Secure Flight SORN promulgated in 2015. But facial images collected at checkpoints are not among the categories of information listed in the SORN as included in that system of records.
The bottom line is that the TSA facial recognition scheme described in the latest PIA would violate both the PRA and the Privacy Act. To the extent that it would require or induce travelers to remove their face masks, it would exacerbate the pandemic hazards of travel to the health of travelers and airline, airport, and TSA staff and contractors.
Police Killings are a Political Tactic
By Rob Urie | CounterPunch | June 15, 2020
As the spark that lit a fire, the murder of George Floyd was horrifyingly, sickeningly ordinary. According to the scant data on police killing of citizens that is available, about three people are killed by the police in the U.S. every day. And despite the protest movements Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street, this number has remained about constant in recent years through Democratic and Republican administrations. This persistence stands in contrast to the political ‘branding’ of the mainstream political parties where difference is claimed, but little is evident.
The place of Mr. Floyd’s murder in the ordinary working of American governance makes it the catalyst, not the cause, of current protests. The background circumstances of economic calamity suggest that political tensions will continue to rise as unemployment and economic desperation exert a toll on social stability. The horror of Mr. Floyd’s murder should get outraged citizens into the streets regardless of broader circumstances. But with history as a guide, it is these broader factors that are creating the political moment. This highlights the urgency of acting while there is an opening.
Graph: according to this credible— because it is unofficial, source, the total number of citizens killed by police per year has held steady at about 1,100 over the last decade. Ironically, given the scale and scope of the current rebellion, the number of blacks killed by the police has been falling over the last few years— meaning that the killing of whites has been rising. Illustrated here is the trend in blacks killed by the police by year. Source: mappingpoliceviolence.org.
The disproportionate targeting of blacks by the police is given needed context when the data is organized by economic class. Poor and working-class whites are arrested and incarcerated at about the same rate as poor and working-class blacks. By its nature, this data says nothing about history. But it does offer structural and political insights. To the prior, history informs the present, it doesn’t define it. To the latter, 1) the frame of race divides people who otherwise have shared class interests and 2) poor and working class ‘allies’ are struggling for their own freedom from police violence, whatever their intentions.
What this arithmetic of disparity implies is that a larger proportion of blacks than whites are poor and working class. One interpretation is that race defines economic opportunity, which is overly generous to how capitalism works. Whatever people’s sentiments, slavery, convict leasing and Jim Crow had economic explanations. Some people, call them capitalists, make themselves rich by making and keeping other people poor. Here is a dry, academic and partial explanation of how poor people are kept poor in the present.
The current focus on police violence is roughly analogous to explaining foreign entanglements like wars through the actions of foot soldiers and technicians rather than through the strategic and tactical goals of state leaders. And explanations of police power like police unions and white supremacy ignore modern history at the peril of their purveyors. The film 13th offers key insights into this history from a black liberal perspective. Richard Nixon created the carceral state to imprison the political enemies of capital.
As writer Dan Baum reported in Harper’s in 2016, Mr. Nixon created the ‘war on drugs’ to give state and local police a state-sanctioned (‘legitimate’) reason to arrest and imprison the counterculture left and blacks. Whatever Mr. Nixon’s sentiments regarding race, his goal was straightforwardly political— to use state power to arrest and imprison his political enemies. And his strategy worked. Through the war on drugs, the U.S. created the largest gulag system to imprison real and potential opponents of official state policy in human history.
This ‘political’ explanation of the carceral-police state strains the brains of Democrats who spent four decades arming, militarizing and supporting the police to combat ‘crime.’ That it is overwhelmingly poor and working people in prison who were sent there on drug charges supports Mr. Baum’s claim. As his source, Nixon aide John Ehrlichman, added, Mr. Nixon clearly understood that 1) ‘crime’ related to drugs was a political designation intended to 2) put the entire counter culture— which at the time included a large black nationalist movement, in prison.
The political question related to ‘crime’ wasn’t: what socially destructive behavior should be punished? It was: what laws can be enacted that will specifically target the political enemies of establishment interests to prevent them from mounting effective political challenges to it? To state the obvious, some of the most dangerous and socially destructive drugs (alcohol and tobacco) were kept legal to be distributed at a profit. And as ‘conspiracy theory’ as the charge still reads, decades of evidence place the CIA as the distribution center of the American narcotics trade.
What Mr. Nixon accomplished was twofold: he created the largest gulag system in world history and he gave a federal purpose to otherwise disparate and locally funded police departments. This is where Bill Clinton picked up. Through the liberal frame, Mr. Clinton’s deregulation of the banks, cutting of social spending and build out of the carceral state were unrelated acts. But even within a neoliberal frame, these are related as a carrot and stick approach to force people to adhere to the emerging neoliberal order. The requirement to work or starve was intended to recover the Dickensian conditions of early capitalism in ways that Ronald Reagan only dreamed of.
Another way to understand deregulation is as reducing the number, scale and scope of laws that constrain corporate behavior. Capital was freed by Bill Clinton as he used the class-proxy of ‘crime’ to increase violent state repression of poor and working people. By giving the police immunity for their actions, Mr. Clinton made violent crime a state-sponsored enterprise. Within the range of available options, he reduced social spending in poor neighborhoods, choosing instead to criminalize poverty. The Democrats have been the party of Wall Street ever since.
As with race in an earlier era, incarceration was made the marker that defines a super-exploitable class. The incarcerated— overwhelmingly from the poor and working class, were made to pay for their incarceration, often by working for private corporations at below-market wages; were the last hired and the first fired after being released from prison, and they were excluded from political participation through prohibitions on felon voting. These practices tie in history to convict leasing and Jim Crow— and liberal Democrats supported them.
Furthermore, what bearing would police reforms have on the political purpose of the carceral system? This purpose is determined by oligarchs and the agents of capital, not cops. Reforms will only be adopted and kept in place as long as to the broader political and economic goals of the oligarchs are met. For instance, the New Deal was jettisoned the moment it could be plausibly argued that it constrained capital. As for the Voting Rights Act, after blacks were given the right to vote, capital took over the electoral system.
Back to the film 13th for a moment. After presenting the half-baked assertion that Bill Clinton was forced by the political zeitgeist to take up Richard Nixon’s program of (re) racializing policing and the carceral system, it was clearly and accurately stated that Mr. Clinton was directly, and almost singularly, responsible for the willful destruction of millions of black and brown lives through his buildout of the carceral and police states. Mr. Clinton’s defense— that violent crime was a real problem, ignores the role that his patrons played in neighborhood destruction and the resulting social carnage that led to this outcome.
The film (13th) also provides a string of dim, thuggish, prattle from Donald Trump where he incites violence against ‘outsiders’ at his political rallies in his proto-fascist manner. This ties to his Nixonian threat to use the U.S. military to ‘dominate’ protests and protesters through violent repression. This in turn led to a rash of ‘Reichstag fire’ type analogies that treat Mr. Trump’s threats as facts while reducing the actual history of liberal Democrats building the largest gulag system in world history to a momentary lapse in judgment.
This public exploration of the liberal id was followed by well-placed editorials in the establishment press arguing that ‘Donald Trump is no Nixon— he is much worse.’ Here is Richard Nixon discussing with Nelson Rockefeller how to murder as much of the captive population of Attica prison, including prison guards, as was logistically possible just before Mr. Rockefeller did so. In addition to creating the American gulag system to imprison his political opponents, Mr. Nixon expanded the U.S. war in Vietnam to Laos and Cambodia, gratuitously slaughtering untold innocents in a war known to have been lost a full decade earlier.
That the Clintonite architect of the modern police and carceral states, Joe Biden, is the establishment Democrat’s candidate for president demonstrates their commitment to their neoliberal program. Joe Biden wrote key parts of the 1994 Crime Bill and the Patriot Act, and he dedicated his career to empowering the police while exempting them from accountability for their actions. After Bill Clinton, Joe Biden is the national political figure most responsible for the police practices that led to the murder of George Floyd.
In terms of emerging political alliances, the distance between words and actions is a political strategy. By analogy, the actions of white liberal Democrat Amy Cooper in using the NYPD for social leverage in her dispute with black birdwatcher Christian Cooper are instructional. By Ms. Cooper’s own words, she isn’t racist. Her use of race was transactional— race (and gender) are social levers, she wanted social leverage in her confrontation with Mr. Cooper, so she used them. The police were the social device at her disposal.
This is corporate logic— Ms. Cooper was a financial executive before she was publicly exposed for abusing Christian Cooper. It is also the mode of operational logic that dominates the Democrat’s political culture. The national Democrats who conceived and promoted the 1994 Crime Bill used its racial subtext for political leverage much as Ms. Cooper did. Ms. Cooper was careful to use politically correct terminology to demonstrate that while she was using race and gender to her advantage, she isn’t racist. #Resistance liberals used ‘Russia’ and ‘Putin’ in similar fashion to discredit their political opponents.
With regard to the current alliance of convenience between protesters, the establishment press and national Democrats, it was only a few weeks ago that the latter were lauding the American political police— the FBI, as the saviors of freedom and democracy in the Russiagate fraud. That the FBI was behind the scenes in the murders of Black Panther Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, suggests that protecting freedom and democracy isn’t precisely its mandate. Through its Cointelpro program, the FBI worked with Richard Nixon— and subsequent administrations, to disrupt, thwart and otherwise destroy organized opposition to state policy.
Closer to home, the FBI was ‘deeply involved’ in the vicious police repression that was used to shut Occupy Wall Street down in an organized multi-state operation. To bring this back to Mr. Nixon’s service to capital in creating the modern carceral-police state, the FBI coordinated with the large Wall Street banks that the Obama administration was still in the process of bailing out when its assault on the peaceful protesters of OWS took place. For those who may have forgotten, Wall Street bank J.P. Morgan made a $4.6 billion contribution to the NYPD pension fund as OWS gained political strength.
Events have moved past the murder of George Floyd as establishment hacks try to extinguish the flames with ham-fisted theatrics. I had a hard time not vomiting at the sight of craven Democrats dressed in kante garb kneeling in Kaepernick fashion to show solidarity with the people they have dedicated their careers to selling out to the highest bidder. Given that ‘we’ were in a similar place in 2015, with near daily high-profile murders of unarmed youth at the hands of the police that they had empowered, and they did nothing. To save the suspense, they engage in theatrics in place of taking meaningful action, not in addition to it.
With capitalism in its deepest crisis since 2009, and possibly since the 1930s, the current political moment is fraught. As was demonstrated by the Covid-19 pandemic, the existing powers are incapable of governing. What they are capable of is massive transfers of social wealth to the already rich and political repression. If capital is perceived to be threatened, look for self-preservation to come in the form of political violence no matter which party holds the White House. One might ask what happened to Bernie Sander’s ‘coalition,’ which I supported for tactical reasons (to head off environmental calamity [?!?] ). Bernie Sanders is a Democrat. That is what happened.
Japan halts plans to deploy Aegis Ashore missile shield, citing costs & technical issues
RT | June 15, 2020
Tokyo has stopped bringing the US-made Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense sites online on Japanese soil, one month after it suspended plans to deploy an installation in the country’s east following opposition from locals.
The Japanese Defense Ministry has suspended the deployment of the Aegis Ashore systems in Japan, Defense Minister Taro Kono announced on Monday, according to the Kyodo news agency. Without going into detail, Kono attributed the U-turn to overwhelming costs and unspecified “technical problems.”
Kono did not say how long the plans would stay on the backburner. Japan’s military was planning to activate two Aegis Ashore sites, in the Akita and Yamaguchi prefectures, by the year 2023.
The two locations would cover the country’s airspace from both east and west, according to the news agency.
However, residents and local politicians in Akita rebelled against hosting the compound on their lands. They insisted that Aegis operations would take a toll on locals’ health and protested that it would likely become a high-priority target were an armed conflict to break out around Japan
The missile defense systems, designed by a number of American companies including Lockheed and Raytheon, were sold to Japan along with other defense equipment back in January 2019, with the deal totaling an estimated $2.15 billion.
Japan has been one of a few nations tapped to host Aegis Ashore. Far away from the Pacific, one such site has already entered service in Romania, while another is under construction in Poland – right on Russia’s doorstep.
Moscow considered the Aegis deployment an immediate threat to its security, with defense experts claiming the system’s launchers – officially defensive in nature – could easily be converted to fire offensive munitions like Tomahawk cruise missiles.
It also voiced concern over the Japanese deployment plans, saying that placing Aegis Ashore in Japan would “adversely affect the Russian strategic containment arsenal.”
A View From Afar
By Auslander for The Saker Blog | June 15, 2020
It is interesting to watch a full blown coup come to life. The responsibility for this coup can be laid directly at the feet of President Donald John Trump for having the absolute gall to defeat Hillary Diane Rodham in an open and free election in 2016. Of course the falsely defeated Rodham, ringed by her ever more strident and blindly faithful minions including the world wide media, immediately began to strike back even as the final vote counting was at hand. The rallying cry? “Impeach Trump!!!” This ‘impeach’ movement was ongoing for months before Donald Trump took the oath of office in 2017, but for me it was a head scratcher, how could he have done anything to warrant impeachment before he was even sworn in as President? Somehow no one in the feckless media had the brains to ask that question, ergo they have all been bought and paid for.
But scream they did, every day and all day, but behind the scenes they were planning and planning well. When they finally did manage to get an impeachment article against the president through Congress it didn’t fly, but that didn’t matter, the plans were well afoot and ready for one spark to go national and global. That ‘spark’ was the death of one man in police custody, actually in the process of being put in police custody, and his death became the cause for the coup to spring to life. As planned. It matters not what the spark was or who, if anyone, died, the fact is the well planned and financed coup grew exponentially in hours.
So, just as US was coming off the ‘Chinese pandemic’ and the country was in shut down with severe financial and cultural repercussions, the country exploded. As was planned. Having watched months of the debacle in Kiev in late ’13 through early ’14, I instantly recognized the tactics and organizations, just as I recognized them at the Krim Rada Riot on, if memory serves, 24 February ’14 when the orcs tried to take Rada. The same well organized units, readily identifiable ranks and easily identifiable units with various tasks. While the actors have morphed from ‘banderites’ to ‘antifa’, it’s the same tactics now well honed after the trial runs on the left coast two years ago. The media is in lock step with the coup participants and screaming bloody murder all day every day and now, as planned, the chaos has expanded to west Europe, albeit nothing like what is happening in US.
Make no mistake, this is an organized, violent and bloody coup d’etat against the sitting President of the United States of America. President Trump is being artfully hemmed in by ever increasing and ever more violent events and is to the point, if one listens to the ever patriotic media, damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. Case in point, the little area in Seattle which is now ‘liberated territory’. Liberated from what no one knows, but the mayor of Seattle and the governor of Washington State both seem to be in favor of this little dab of US territory owned by openly self identified fascists and devolving by the minute into ever deeper chaos and anarchy. No President can allow or condone these actions by armed insurgents, so President Trump will have to act. The problem is there are some problems in the upper echelon ranks of the US Armed Forces, a couple of whom don’t seem to remember who is the CiC of the Armed Forces of the United States of America and also seem to have forgotten their oath to defend USA from all attacks both foreign and domestic. So be it. A very few, read one or two, senior officers have openly disavowed their oaths and have turned against the President. This is not good, it will bring confusion and hesitation in the Field Grade and Company Grade officers if and when they are issued orders to quash this open and blatant attack in the Sovereign States of the United States of America. As planned. Any coup will find spineless upper echelon officers who can be bought or blackmailed, comes with the events.
As such, again make no mistake, the rank and file and company grade officers and NCO’s, the actual fighters, will stand with the President. The take down of that little spit of land in Seattle, and the other quasi ‘liberated’ areas in other states, will be violent and bloody. As planned. The political party in opposition to President Trump would rather bring civil war, real civil war with all it’s resultant death and destruction, to the United States of America rather than see President Trump win another election. This is typical of the ‘liberal’ and ‘woke’ echelons who consider themselves the elite and proper guiders of our country rather than what the voters will decide. It will not work and when the dust settles and the blood in the streets is washed down the gutters, the country we knew will be changed forever. I do not know that the ‘new’ United States of America will be, but I can assure I’m standing here in a peaceful and quiet community watching this organized and chaotic coup run it’s course with mouth agape. One can only hope the bloodshed will not be ‘too’ serious, but every life is precious and many more innocents, either misguided fools or true innocents, will die. As someone once said, damn their eyes, damn their souls, back to their lord Satan where they belong.
Auslander – http://rhauslander.com/
Russian court finds ex-US marine Paul Whelan guilty of espionage, sentences him to 16 years in prison
By Bryan MacDonald | RT | June 15, 2020
Eighteen months after he was arrested in a Moscow hotel room and accusing of spying, a Russian court has handed down a 16 year jail term to Paul Whelan, a national of four western countries: Canada, Ireland, the US and the UK.
The 50-year-old defendant, who has described the trial, partly held behind closed doors, as a “sham,” protested his innocence throughout the process. After Monday morning’s verdict, he immediately stated that he intends to appeal. There have been suggestions that Whelan could be returned to the US in a prisoner swap.
His lawyer has named Viktor Bout and Konstantin Yaroshenko – two Russians jailed in the US – as potential candidates. Bout, who Russia considers a ‘political prisoner,’ is serving a 25-year term for arms dealing. Meanwhile, Yaroshenko was arrested in Liberia in 2010 in what the Russian Foreign Ministry described as a “kidnapping” and brought to the US. He had never set foot in the country before. Russian authorities have repeatedly complained about the harsh conditions and lack of medical care he has received in US prison.
In December 2018, former US marine Whelan was detained in the Russian capital’s five-star Metropol Hotel after he accepted a USB device from an undercover FSB officer. Prosecutors said the flash drive included information related to active-duty members of Russia’s secret service. Whelan’s defense said he was the victim of a sting.
His legal team insisted Whelan believed he was receiving a flash drive containing photos of a joint event he set up with a Russian friend, rather than highly classified information.
Whelan has been a frequent visitor to Russia since the mid-2000s, and he reportedly appeared on the security service’s radar as a possible intelligence threat several years before his arrest.
His family have rubbished claims he’s involved in espionage, describing him as a travel enthusiast and visited Moscow for a wedding. Whelan maintained an account on Russian Facebook-clone VKontakte where in January 2019, according to ABC News, his 55 “friends” were almost exclusively young men, most of whom seemed to have some sort of connection to the armed forces posted on their page. Only three were women.
Following the illegal American and British-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Whelan served in the US Marine Corps Reserve for five years, holding the rank of staff sergeant. In January 2008, he was court-martialled for “larceny” and later given a “bad conduct” discharge. Until 2016, he was senior manager of global security and operations at Kelly Services, an American office staffing company. Whelan has also worked as a police officer in the US. Born in Canada, he was living in Michigan before his arrest in Russia.
The US Ambassador to Moscow, John Sullivan spoke outside the court building. “The United States demands that US citizen Paul Whelan be released immediately,” he said. “His conviction is a mockery of justice, the world is watching.”
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov indicated on Monday that Moscow might be open to a prisoner swap deal. “We have repeatedly proposed options where it would be possible for those US citizens who are serving sentences in Russia to be exchanged for Russian citizens who are serving sentences on far-fetched and unlawful charges (in the US),” he told Ria Novosti. “I have no reason to speculate on what may happen next, these ideas have been offered to the Americans many times.”
Sullivan said that the US was not looking for an exchange, but rather “justice” for Whelan.
A notable feature of the saga has been restrained reporting from the US press, which typically would give a case of this nature massive coverage. For example, at lunchtime on Monday, the New York Times buried the story in its “other news” section under the neutral headline “Russian Court Sentences Paul Whelan, an American, to 16 Years on Spy Charges.” This has raised eyebrows in Moscow media circles.
Battle For the Arctic Heats Up
By James Corbett – corbettreport.com – June 13, 2020
An incredible event took place this week: A Russian tanker docked at the Port of Jiangsu on China’s east-central coast, offloading its cargo of liquefied natural gas from the Yamal LNG plant in Russia’s north.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “James, that’s not so incredible. Tankers regularly carry LNG from Russia to Asia via the Suez Canal in the winter months!”
Oh, yes, of course, my dear, well-informed reader. But here’s the rub: This was no ordinary tanker, but the Christophe de Margerie, an ice class LNG tanker designed to transport gas along the summer route across the Arctic.
“But James, the summer route doesn’t open until July!”
Exactly. This was a test to see whether the trip could be started nearly two months early. The Christophe de Margerie launched from the Port of Sabetta in Russia’s frozen north on May 18th and hooked up with the Yamal, a nuclear icebreaker, which escorted it through the Arctic passage. Together, the ships were able to trim nearly 4,000 nautical miles off the regular winter shipping route, which takes the cargo on a circuitous journey around Europe and through the Suez Canal before arriving in Asia.
Make no mistake: This event may not have received as much coverage as the other groundbreaking stories of 2020 (or any coverage at all, other than the reports in a handful of sites specializing in such matters), but it is important. In fact, it speaks to the fact that the Arctic is increasingly becoming a geopolitical prize . . . and a potential flashpoint for future military conflict between the superpowers.
The latest sign that the Arctic is the next up-and-coming geopolitical hotspot comes from the chambers of the Arctic Council. While “the Arctic Council” sounds like the fictional body overseeing Santa’s North Pole operations, it is in fact a very real intergovernmental forum that brings together eight Arctic states (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the US) to discuss regional issues. Although the council’s website likes to highlight the group’s work in “enhancing cooperation in the circumpolar North,” it has increasingly become a place for the US and Russia to ramp up their Cold War 2.0 rhetoric.
The council’s latest ministerial meeting in Finland provides a case in point. At the meeting, US Secretary of State Mike “Lie, Cheat and Steal” Pompeo focused on what he sees as the greatest threat to the region’s security: Russian militarization.
“No one denies Russia has significant Arctic interests. [. . .] But Russia is unique. Its actions deserve special attention, special attention of this Council, in part because of their sheer scale. But also because we know Russian territorial ambitions can turn violent.”
If there’s a better case of the pot calling the kettle black, I’m hard-pressed to think of it. Whatever one may make of Russia’s moves in the Arctic of late—Moscow’s attempt to reopen its Arctic bases, its quest to modernize and expand its military deployment in the region, and even (GASP!) its push to build a bigger fleet of icebreaking vessels than the US—Washington can hardly claim that its own intentions in the region are completely peaceful. Ever since Bush signed off on National Security Presidential Directive 66 (NSPD 66) on “Arctic Region Policy” in 2009, there has been no room for doubt about the US government’s intentions in the region.
NSPD 66, issued in the waning days of the Bush presidency, declared that the US has “broad and fundamental national security interests in the Arctic region.” According to the document, these claimed interests include “missile defense and early warning; deployment of sea and air systems for strategic sealift, strategic deterrence, maritime presence, and maritime security operations; and ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight.” Ever since the directive was signed, there has been a concerted push to assert American military dominance throughout the circumpolar North.
This push by Uncle Sam to militarize the region has included such moves as:
- Deploying an aircraft carrier in the Arctic Circle for the first time since the height of the Cold War;
- Deploying attack submarines throughout the region;
- Forming the US’ northernmost F-35 fighter squadron at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska;
- Signing bilateral deals with allies to increase military cooperation in the region; and
- Expanding NATO operations and exercises in the area.
In fact, as might be noted, every single member of the Arctic Council bar Russia is a NATO ally, so the claim of Pompeo and his fellow NATO warmongers that they are on the defensive in the region is even more preposterous.
But never fear, China (aka the West’s new favorite bogeyman) is here!
. . . Wait, did I say “never fear”? Scratch that, I mean always fear!
Yes, the latest strategy employed by the NATO allies to push their military agenda in the Arctic is to point to the burgeoning Sino-Russian alliance as a menacing force in the region. Just this week Tobias Ellwood, the head of Britain’s Defense Select Committee, warned that “Russia and China’s warming relations in the Arctic are the largest threat to security in the region.” After all, they’re doing horrible things like . . . forming a new Arctic trade route. And shipping natural gas through the Bering Strait in May. (“The horror! The horror!“)
It should come as no surprise to my regular listeners that this move to open up yet another front in the Forever War is also a great excuse to line the pockets of the military contractors in the Military-Industrial-Governmental-Media complex. Defense industry trade organizations like the IDGA are already holding networking events to bring together contractors and government agencies looking to expand Arctic operations, and the armaments industry is just beginning to warm up to the possibilities of conquering the deep freeze.
So far, the Trump administration has continued this boondoggle, with the Dissembler-in-Chief penning a new presidential memo just this week extolling the urgent need for icebreakers and Arctic bases to (say it with me) counter the Russian threat in the region.
As always, we’d better hope that all this talk of militarization is just another excuse to siphon money from Joe Taxpayer to the MilIndGovMed cronies. Because if this isn’t just more hot air from the political puppets in Washington, then a new front has just been opened up in the next ginned up world war scenario.
Better get your long johns ready, just in case.
Iran to react if US prevents lifting arms embargo as per nuclear deal: President Rouhani
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani addresses a cabinet session in Tehran on June 14, 2020. (Photo by IRNA )
Press TV | June 14, 2020
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani says the country will not remain indifferent and will show suitable reaction if the US tries to prevent lifting of arms embargo against the Islamic Republic, which will end this year in accordance with the landmark nuclear deal that Tehran clinched with six world powers back in 2015.
During past months, Washington has stepped up calls for the extension of a UN arms embargo on Iran, which will expire in October under UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorses Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The administration of US President Donald Trump has threatened that it may seek to trigger a snapback of all sanctions on Iran if its attempts to extend the arms embargo fail.
The landmark nuclear deal was reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries — the US, Britain, France, Russia and China plus Germany — in 2015. However, in May 2018, US President Trump unilaterally pulled his country out of the JCPOA and re-imposed the sanctions that had been lifted against Tehran and began unleashing the “toughest ever” fresh sanctions.
While the US is no longer a party to the JCPOA, it has launched a campaign to renew the Iran arms ban — in place since 2006/2007 — through a resolution at the Security Council, but Russia and China are most likely to veto it.
Addressing a cabinet session on Sunday, Rouhani said, “The termination of the arms ban [on Iran] … is one of the important achievements of the JCPOA and if Americans want to question this achievement, other big countries know what our reaction will be.”
The Iranian president also expressed hope that “all countries who are members of the United Nations Security Council and the Board of Governors” of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), would be aware of “the US planning with regard to these plots.”
“We, for our part, will be successful in this regard and will weather these plans that the United States has made for Iran,” he noted.
Posting a tweet in early June, Iran’s UN ambassador said the US’ call for an extension of the UN Security Council’s arms embargo on Tehran lacked legal standing in international law.
Majid Takht-e Ravanchi said the US ambassador to the UN “wrongly” believes the US retains the right to initiate snapback of sanctions under the UN Security Council Resolution 2231.
“WRONG: US cannot be a JCPOA ‘Participant’, since Donald Trump ceased US participation,” the Iranian ambassador noted, referring to Trump’s 2018 decision to withdraw his country from the Iran nuclear deal in violation of the Resolution 2231.
In the middle of May, China and Russia also rejected US plans to extend a UN arms embargo on Iran along with a probable push to trigger a return of all sanctions on Tehran at the UN Security Council.
The “US has no right to extend an arms embargo on Iran, let alone to trigger snapback,” China’s UN mission wrote in a tweet.
“Maintaining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is the only right way moving forward,” he added.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov vehemently rejected the plan as a “cynical” measure plunging the UN Security Council into crisis.
“The conclusion is that the next crisis in the UN Security Council and the UN as a whole is imminent, taking into account this US stubbornness,” he said, adding, “Washington will not have an easy road here in any case.”
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Tuesday that the US has already pulled out of the international nuclear agreement and cannot currently use its former membership of the deal to seek a permanent arms embargo on Tehran.
“The United States has withdrawn from the JCPOA, and now they cannot claim that they are still part of the JCPOA in order to deal with this issue from the JCPOA agreement. They withdraw. It’s clear. They withdraw,” Borrell said.
The EU believes that the JCPOA plays a key role in maintaining regional and international security and has made efforts to keep the pact alive despite US pressure.
Borrell is tasked with supervising the circumstances surrounding the implementation of the nuclear deal so he can help resolve disputes between its signatories.
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How Rothschild Banking Clan Uses Its Vast Wealth to Influence World Events and Control Governments
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 15.09.2024
How powerful is the Rothschild banking family? How did they amass their fortune? Just how rich are they? Do they secretly control the world? Sputnik explores. … continue
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