Without Representation

Dore labels America a “failed state.”

A lot of armed and angry citizens are about to be thrown out into the streets. This has the potential to destabilize the entire country.

 

Not Welcome on TV: America in Revolt

 

State Terrorism Across America

Joe Giambrone
June 1^st, 2020

At Dissident Voice, Activist Post

 

In a blizzard of destruction, assaults on peaceful demonstrators, provocateurs, lies, cover-ups, and fascist proclamations, America teeters at a tipping point. The murder, by police, of George Floyd, has sparked a jaw-dropping response across America. Police in many locations have behaved as instigators and perpetrators of savage violence against citizens attempting to exercise their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and to assemble to demand a redress of grievances.

African-Americans have over 400 years of grievances to fall back upon. The video footage is undeniable, outrageous, and the crime perpetrated with the complicity of other officers acting under color of authority. The murder of George Floyd will go down in history, but the end results remain unclear and desperately in need of political leadership to turn this into a positive push for justice reform.

Many police have also targeted and maimed journalists, who are also supposed to be protected under the First Amendment. We are now living in a chaotic military occupation, under a militarized police army that behaves as if the Constitution no longer exists.

The most dangerous development yet has been the fascistic Trump junta’s attempt to label “Antifa” as a terrorist organization, vowing to scapegoat them and persecute any members they are able to track down. This is classic fascism in action, another opportunity to seize power, divide the population, demonize, and declare new emergency measures—as the Nazis did repeatedly throughout the 1930s.

In 18 USC §242, all the officers involved in the killing of George Floyd could be charged with “Deprivation of rights under color of law,” but Trump’s Attorney General Barr has instead announced an arguably illegal war against U.S. protesters, labeling them as “outside radicals” and then deliberately failing to define “outside” of what exactly? Right-wing conspiracists have already gotten much mileage from spreading paranoia about alleged “outsiders” coming into small towns such as my own.

This divide and conquer strategy, demonization, and the emergency-measures agenda is exactly what Trump has been waiting for. He studied his Hitler.

Unfortunately for us, his predecessors had already empowered the state with police militarization and the 2012 repeal of Posse Comitatus, by none other than Barack Obama. The US empire has long considered the USA a potential “battle space” to be controlled by the military, should the servant class attempt to disrupt the status quo. This past weekend it finally happened.

We are seeing a complete failure of politics to bring accountability to violent, criminal police officers. Numerous complaints had been lodged against the murdering officer over the years but predictably ignored. The pattern nationwide is to protect police from citizen complaints, rather than to protect citizens from dangerous, violent police offenders. An undercover investigation by CBS News revealed repeated intimidation of citizens who try to file police misconduct complaints.

Trump, Barr, big city mayors, and governors have all jumped on the “law and order” bandwagon, thereby placing the blame onto protesters and thus circumventing the very issue they are out in the streets to protest. This is the state’s playbook: distraction, changing the tune, changing the game. Even those like Bernie Sanders, who Tweeted about the need for police reform have entered no legislation on the matter into Congress. Where’s your bill, Bernie?

That’s the red flag that nothing will change. The public is to be terrorized and literally beaten into submission, sent back to work, and examples made of a few unfortunates. This is state terror. It happens with the approval and complicity of far too many citizens. Too many don’t oppose tyranny until it kicks in their own door.

 

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Joe Giambrone publishes Political Film Blog and more.

OINK

 

Things are double-plus ungood in the Reich.

I used to try and give cops the benefit of the doubt.  The job is difficult; there are a lot of assholes in the world to deal with; armed and dangerous population; etc.

But, their response has overwhelmingly been to attack US citizens who are upset about police murdering people in cold blood in broad daylight. They are as bad as any occupying army.

This shit will not stand.

Police Erupt in Violence Nationwide

 

Like something out of a zombie movie. With spray paint. Los Angeles #riots2020 pic.twitter.com/NmtlgR7Hvb

— Murad Gazdiev (@MuradGazdiev) May 31, 2020

 

The Shock Doctrine (film)

Secret Intelligence Plans for Coronavirus

The CBP’s pandemic response document, obtained by The Nation, reveals that the CBP’s pandemic directive “allows the agency to actively surveil and detain individuals suspected of carrying the illness indefinitely.”

This is another unconstitutional power grab.

Following this order, HHS officials with the appropriate security clearances held meetings on coronavirus response at the department’s Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF), which are facilities “usually reserved for intelligence and military operations” and — in HHS’ case — for responses to “biowarfare or chemical attacks.” Several officials who spoke to Reuters noted that the classification decision prevented key experts from participating in meetings and slowed down the ability of HHS and the agencies it oversees, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to respond to the crisis by limiting participation and information sharing.

 

US Intel Agencies Played Unsettling Role in Classified and “9/11-like” Coronavirus Response Plan

 

Your legal rights in a quarantine, explained

Current Syrian Situation

 

 

Kurds agree to Russian-brokered plan to allow Assad into their territory

 

Stupid headline from Telegraph: “allow Assad into their territory.”

Hours after the US said it was withdrawing all of its troops from northern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said it had reached an agreement to allow Bashar al-Assad’s troops into their territory.

…France and Germany both announced they were halting arms sales to Turkey but the UK did not match their announcements.

Trump Junta Targets its own Staff!

Trump’s brand of “freedom,” if you had any doubts:

Upon entering Spicer’s office for what one person briefed on the gathering described as “an emergency meeting,” staffers were told to dump their phones on a table for a “phone check,” to prove they had nothing to hide.

Sean Spicer targets own staff in leak crackdown

 

Ship of Rats

 

He’s made White House gossip great again.

Turmoil at the National Security Council, From the Top Down

Three weeks into the Trump administration, council staff members get up in the morning, read President Trump’s Twitter posts and struggle to make policy to fit them. Most are kept in the dark about what Mr. Trump tells foreign leaders in his phone calls. Some staff members have turned to encrypted communications to talk with their colleagues, after hearing that Mr. Trump’s top advisers are considering an “insider threat” program that could result in monitoring cellphones and emails for leaks.

Israel’s Role in the Destruction of the Middle East – “A Clean Break”

The “neo-con” clique in Washington has always been tied to the state of Israel and acting in concert with Israeli strategy for the region.

So if you wonder why the Democrats are also on board this insane plan, here is your answer.

US Caught Faking It in Syria

Oded Yinon, who had formerly worked at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, published an article in which he outlined the strategic approach his country needed to take in the coming years.

What follows are some excerpts from Israel Shahak’s English translation of that text:

“Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon….

Iraq’s … dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria…

Yinon’s vision reappeared in the now infamous“Clean Break” document from 1996, authored by a consortium of US and Israeli “strategic thinkers” that included Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David and Meyrav Wurmser, which was meant to serve as a foreign policy blueprint for the first administration  of Benjamin Netanyahu.”

EU Refugee Crisis & Cover-Up

Putin’s Message to America

A Plea for Caution From Russia

What Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria

By VLADIMIR V. PUTIN

 

Published: September 11, 2013 1848 Comments

MOSCOW — RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.

Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations. This internal conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world.

Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all.

From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law. We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.

No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect.

The world reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This is logical: if you have the bomb, no one will touch you. We are left with talk of the need to strengthen nonproliferation, when in reality this is being eroded.

We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.

A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action.

I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive, as we agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, and steer the discussion back toward negotiations.

If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues.

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

Vladimir V. Putin is the president of Russia.