zaterdag 14 mei 2022

If Ukraine Is Winning Why Is The U.S. Requesting A Ceasefire?

 

If Ukraine Is Winning Why Is The U.S. Requesting A Ceasefire?

Yesterday the U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu.

Why?

The U.S. readout of the call says:

On May 13, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu for the first time since February 18. Secretary Austin urged an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication.

Austin initiated the call and the U.S. is seeking a ceasefire in Ukraine!!!

Are we not told that the Ukraine is winning the war? That it will soon push the Russian forces back over the border? The operation to 'weaken Russia', which Austin had publicly announcedtwo weeks ago, does not seem to go that well.

Told ya so!

Gonzalo Lira thinks that the call points to a soon coming collapse of the Ukrainian forces. Let us hope that this is indeed the case because it seems to be the only chance that the war will end soon.

The Ukraine is losing up to 15,000 men per month to the war. The total Ukrainian casualties, dead and wounded, are likely already at 50,000. The weapons the U.S. and others provide, are not sufficient to sustain the war. The Ukraine has only 3 days reserves of diesel and gasoline left. The main parts of its forces are immobile and are getting surrounded by Russian forces. Their situation is hopeless.

The Pentagon of course knows this all and that is why Austin initiated the call and asked for a ceasefire.

The Russia side will not agree to a ceasefire. At least not unless the 'west' offers to take back some of the 6,400 sanction measures it has initiated against Russia.

There are recently a number of other issues that also go in favor of Russia:

  • The economic outlook for Russia is good. It will have a record wheat harvest. Its internal measures to compensate for the results of sanctions are working. Counter sanctions Russia has now initiated against its enemies are starting to become effective.
  • Hungary has blocked European sanctions against Russian oil.
  • Turkey is slowing down if not prohibiting the entry of Kurd friendly Sweden and Norway into NATO.
  • The U.S. weapon deliveries to Ukraine will stop on May 19 unless Congress passes authority for new ones.
  • Senator Rand Paul has held up the required bill with the quite reasonable demand to have a inspector general scrutinize where the $40 billion 'for Ukraine' will be going. The Democrats will certainly dislike that.
  • U.S. gasoline prices have hit a record high.
  • European natural gas prices have also jumped after the Ukraine blocked the flow from Russia through one of the pipelines and while the flow through the Yamal pipeline in Poland has been stopped due to Russian counter sanctions.
  • Le Monde has verified and published a video that shows a Ukrainian 'volunteer battalion', led by a known criminal, torturing Russian prisoners of war.
  • Russia has published new material about the U.S. military biological 'research' in Ukraine. Other countries will also have questions about these activities.

The British Ministry of Defense claims that Russia lost a significant amount of material and men in an attempt to cross the Seversky Donets river. However the aerial pictures publishedby the Ukrainian Defense Ministry show that about half of the destroyed vehicles are BMP-1 with the original small one man turret and the stubby 73 mm gun. Russia is said to no longer have these. All its active service BMP-1 are said to have been upgraded and now have different turrets with 30 mm machine cannons with longer rifles. There must have been a larger battle over the crossing with probably both sides taking heavy losses. Moreover the fighting is now on the western side of the river. The Russian forces thus must have crossed the river in significant numbers.


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Posted by b on May 14, 2022 at 17:02 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/05/if-ukraine-is-winning-why-is-the-us-requesting-a-ceasefire.html




Evidence reveals CIA trained, armed Ukrainian Nazi paramilitary

New evidence reveals CIA trained, armed Ukrainian Nazi paramilitary now leading the fight against Russia

…fom Israel 365 News

[ Editor’s Note: I surely couldn’t pass this up, coming from an Israeli source. No one in the US government or media would dare trash it, so here it is.

It’s a little late, but better than never. We have a long history of reporting on the neo-Nazis and Azov, going back to 2014. When this current fighting is over, there will be time to write a fuller history of it all.

The Cold War foreign intelligence agencies have always been wanting to keep a finger in the destabilization pies of countries by building ‘friendly forces’ with a combat capacity for when the big coup day comes.

When people don’t have money, but have low self esteem, it’s a big draw for them to become a player on the world stage. One just needs a suitable enemy to rage against. It took some time for NATO to grow this current Ukraine war, and here it is.

The only people who seen to be benefiting from it so far are the usual grifter types that always crawl out from under their rocks in times like these… Jim W. Dean ]

Jim's Editor’s Notes are solely crowdfunded via PayPal
Jim's work includes research, field trips, Heritage TV Legacy archiving & more. Thanks for helping. Click to donate >>

First published May 13, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s accusation that Ukraine advocated Nazism, the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion seemed proof of his claim. But further research seems to implicate the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in establishing and funding the white supremacist paramilitary.

Sputnik News, a Russian state-owned news agency that is now inaccessible in the US, reported last week that Putin’s claims of ties between the US government and the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion were true.

Formed in 2014, the Azov Special Operations Detachment is a right-wing extremist, neo-Nazi, formerly paramilitary, unit of the National Guard of Ukraine, based in Mariupol, in the Azov Sea coastal region.

2016 report issued by the Office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights details accusations against the Azov movement’s use of torture and other war crimes in the ensuing conflict after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

The battalion’s sources of funding have always been unclear but the report cited the battalion’s online claims of receiving training from foreign military forces including those of Canada, Germany, the US, and the U.K.

SOURCEIsrael 365 News


https://www.veteranstoday.com/2022/05/13/israeli-media-confirming-cia-trained-ukrainian-nazi-paramilitary/

Joods Israelische Politie Terreur

 De gekte wordt steeds groter in de zelfbenoemde 'Joodse staat' Lees maar:

Bas Paternotte

@baspaternotte

De Palestijnen hebben het lijk dus gestolen. WTF!

Plans for the funeral procession of Shireen Abu-Akleh were coordinated in advance by the Israel Police together with the Abu-Akleh family

Maar dit is weer een geheel nieuwe draai, het oorspronkelijke argument was dat de Joods-Israelische politie met stenen was bekogeld, en zich daardoor genoodzaakt voelde de Palestijnen die de grafkist droegen zo hard mogelijk te slaan dat de kist bijna op straat viel. 



“Zo zie je of iemand een groot geslachtsdeel heeft”

Uroloog Piet Hoebeke verklapt: “Zo zie je of iemand een groot geslachtsdeel heeft”

Uroloog Piet Hoebeke kwam woensdag langs in ‘De Cooke & Verhulst show’. Gert Verhulst en James Cooke vroegen hem of je de grootte van iemands geslachtsdeel kan raden. En dat kan blijkbaar.

Helaas voor de geïnteresseerde dames, en wellicht ook heren. De uitzending is niet in het buitenland beschikbaar. Alleen de Vlamingen weten het nu, de rest van de wereld tast nog in het duister. 

Who has the biggest penis in the world? Jonah Falcon or Roberto Esquivel Cabrera?

TIJEN BUTLER MARCH 5, 2019 
Jonah Falcon world's biggest penis

Jonah Falcon using his hands to show how big his penis is. (Youtube/TLC)

Jonah Falcon still holds the record for the biggest penis in the world but rival Roberto Esquivel Cabrera remains convinced he should have the title.

Falcon, who is openly bisexual, is known to have the biggest penis in the world. However, Cabrera believes he has eclipsed Falcon’s size as his measurements go beyond that of the record-holder’s.

Falcon, a 47-year-old American, has been known for his record-breaking penis size for 20 years, since 1999.

Watch this video to find out all about the well-endowed Falcon: 

To date, it is officially the largest known human penis on record as it 9.5 inches when flaccid and grows to 13.5 inches when fully erect.

His manhood has helped him bed various A-list celebrities including Oscar winners and porn stars.

However, it’s not all glory for Falcon. He was once stopped by US Transportation Security Administration officials in San Francisco because they thought he was carrying something large and dangerous.

Not only that, he has said that the size has ruined his career as an actor in Hollywood.

Who is Roberto Esquivel Cabrera? Does he have a bigger penis than Jonah Falcon?

Falcon’s record came into question when Cabrera caught media attention. The Mexican man claims he actually has the biggest penis in the world.

Roberto Esquivel Cabrera

Cabrera claimed its extraordinary length has left him plagued with medical issues resulting in him not being able to seek employment or provide for himself, reports TMZ.

However, radiologist Dr Jesus Pablo Gil Muro, who has examined Cabrera, has thrown the world record claim into question.

Dr Muro said: “When he came here to do a CT scan, my first impression was that it was a unique and unusual case. I had never seen a patient like Roberto.”

But when the medical expert came to inspect the supposedly largest penis in the world, Cabrera refused to take off all the bandages to show him.

Then, a CT scan made a shocking revelation.

He said: “What the CT scan showed was that there is a very large foreskin. It goes just before the knee.

“But the penis itself is about 16 to 18cm from the pubis.”

While that is larger than the average penis, it’s still half the size of Falcon’s member.

Dr Muro continued: “So, it doesn’t go all the way through the foreskin.

“The rest of the tissue found there is just foreskin, blood vessels, and some inflammation of the skin.”

penis xray Roberto Esquivel Cabrera

“He was obsessed with the penis length,” added Dr Muro.

Despite proof regarding his foreskin and actual penis length, the wannabe record holder is convinced it’s the world’s biggest penis.

Cabera feels he deserves it. He said: “I am famous because I have the biggest penis in the world. I am happy with my penis, I know nobody has the size I have.”

Competitor Falcon has slammed Cabrera for his false claim.

It’s said that Cabrera even used weights to stretch his manhood.

Due to all of the technicalities, the Guinness Book of Records won’t name Cabrera meaning that in 2019, Falcon’s title remains.

Will anyone even bigger pop up soon?

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/03/05/who-has-the-biggest-penis-in-the-world-jonah-falcon-or-roberto-esquivel-cabrera/

NOS Propaganda over Israelische Terreur


Zoals bekend is de pro-Israel lobby bij de NOS goed vertegenwoordigd, en dus krijgt de Nederlander de volgende propaganda van de staatsomroep voorgeschoteld:

De uitvaartplechtigheid van de journalist was in een christelijke kerk in de oude stad. De Israëlische politie zegt dat ze geprobeerd heeft om een 'fatsoenlijke' begrafenis mogelijk te maken. 'Helaas probeerden honderden mensen al voor het begin de openbare orde te verstoren,' zegt een woordvoerder tegen The Times of Israel.

Dat begin was het ziekenhuis van waar de stoet te voet met de kist naar de kerk wilde gaan. 'Toen de kist het ziekenhuis uit gedragen zou worden, werden er stenen naar agenten gegooid en werden agenten gedwongen om in te grijpen,' zegt de politie. Ook zouden nationalistische Palestijnse spreekkoren te horen zijn geweest.

https://nos.nl/index.php/artikel/2428666-israelische-ordetroepen-gebruiken-geweld-bij-begrafenis-al-jazeera-journalist


Gelukkig zijn er volop beelden die laten zien dat de Joods-Israelische politie en in haar voetspoor de NOS liegen. Bovendien klopt ook de formulering niet. Ik citeer:

Toen de kist het ziekenhuis uit gedragen zou worden, werden er stenen naar agenten gegooid en werden agenten gedwongen om in te grijpen,' zegt de politie. Ook zouden nationalistische Palestijnse spreekkoren te horen zijn geweest. 

Waarom staat er dat 'nationalistische spreekkoren te horen' waren als argument voor de politie-terreur? Wat bedoelt de NOS te zeggen? Dat 'nationalistische spreekkoren' niet mogen van de zionistische politie? Zo ja, waarom niet? Zo nee, waarom staat het er dan? Heeft de NOS-correspondent ter plaatse gezien of er stenen werden gegooid? Zo ja, waarom heeft hij dit niet gemeld? Zo nee, waarom neemt de NOS klakkeloos dan de politiebewering over? Bovendien, waarom worden de dragers van de kist op hun bovenbenen geslagen? Die hebben toch geen stenen gegooid? Zo ja, waarom meldt de 'politie' dit niet? Ik heb zelf meerdere keren gemerkt hoe bevooroordeeld net name joodse correspondenten in Israel via de Nederlandse media logen of feiten verzwegen. Kan er nu eens een Palestijnse correspondent worden aangesteld? Of mag dit niet van de joodse lobby in Nederland? 



Joods-Oekraïense vrouw wordt tijdens de holocaust in Kiev met knuppels opgejaagd naar de plaats waar zij wordt vermoord. 


Mass Protest Is Rising — Can It Confront Global Capitalism?

 

Mass Protest Is Rising — Can It Confront Global Capitalism?

The world has entered an epoch of escalating class struggle and mass popular protest as the global economy teeters on the verge of recession and international tensions reach the boiling point in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Revolt took off around the globe in the aftermath of the 2008 world financial collapse that put an end to two decades of the “globalization boom.” Popular insurgencies have since escalated on the heels of the pandemic and, although particular movements may rise and fall, there is no letup in sight. The first four months of 2022 saw mass labor strikes and unionization drives breaking out in industries and countries around the world.

Meanwhile, civil strife and political conflict are spreading. As inequality increases exponentially and mass hardship and deprivation spread, global capitalism appears to be emerging from the contagion in a dangerous new phase, placing the world in a perilous situation that borders on global civil war.

In the two years leading up to the COVID-19 outbreak, more than 100 major anti-government protests swept the world, in rich and poor countries alike, toppling some 30 governments or leaders and sparking an escalation of state violence against protesters. From Chile to Lebanon, Iraq to India, France to the United States, Haiti to Nigeria, and South Africa to Colombia, mass popular struggles appeared in some instances to be acquiring an anti-capitalist character (although others were driven by right-wing sentiments). Anti-capitalist struggles brought together students, workers and often migrant workers, farmers, Indigenous communities, anti-racists, prisoners and activists against mass incarceration, democracy and anti-corruption activists, those struggling for autonomy or independence, anti-austerity campaigners, environmental advocates, and so on.

However, the “global spring” of 2017-2019 was but a peak moment in the popular insurgencies that spread in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse — a veritable tsunami of proletarian rebellion not seen in decades. The mass uprisings that followed the Great Recession, among them Occupy Wall Street (which started in the U.S. and sparked similar movements in dozens of countries), the Arab Spring, and the Greek workers movement, captured the worldwide popular imagination. Some of these struggles suffered setbacks and defeat. Still, the global revolt ebbed and flowed throughout the 2010s but did not die down, and a fresh wave broke out in 2017.

The pandemic lockdown pushed protesters off the streets in early 2020. But the lull was momentary: Within weeks of the lockdown, protesters were out in force again despite the quarantine and the dangers of public congregation. Alongside these mobilizations, protests against the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 sparked an anti-racist uprising that brought upwards to 25 million mostly young people into the streets of hundreds of cities across the country, the single largest mass protest in U.S. history. Many Black Lives Matter protesters called for the defunding of police departments — and for investment in a broad range of social services and supports. This call for expanding a social safety net posed a direct challenge to neoliberal capitalism, which funnels state dollars out of working class communities and social welfare programs and into policing, “defense,” and corporate welfare. Moreover, the BLM protests spurred solidarity actions throughout the world as 2020 wore on.

The Pew Research Center has been conducting ongoing polls in the U.S. on views toward capitalism and socialism (although, of course, what people understand to be capitalism and socialism is not clear). According to its 2019 poll, a full 42 percent of U.S. respondents had a favorable view of socialism, although the Pew poll did not break down responses by age groups. But a 2018 Gallup poll found that 51 percent of those aged 18-29 had a favorable view of socialism. Seen in historical context, another Gallup poll found that support for socialism stood at 25 percent in 1942 among the U.S. population overall whereas this increased to 43 percent in 2019.

Revealingly, yet another poll found that support for socialism in the U.S. jumped by nearly 10 percent among young people in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. This poll found that a full 60 percent of millennials and 57 percent of Generation Z supported a “complete change of our economic system away from capitalism.” Worldwide, a 2020 poll found that a majority of people around the world (56 percent) believe capitalism is doing more harm than good. On a national level, according to the poll, lack of trust in capitalism was highest in Thailand and India (75 percent and 74 percent, respectively), with France close behind (69 percent). Majorities rejected capitalism in many Asian, European, Gulf, African, and Latin American countries. In fact, only in Australia, Canada, the U.S., South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan did majorities disagree with the assertion that capitalism currently did more harm than good.

Masses expressed this anti-capitalist sentiment in an escalation of protest during the pandemic itself. A palpable radicalization appeared to take place among workers and the poor, a heightened sense of solidarity within and across borders that intensified during the pandemic. In the U.S., for instance, no less than 1,000 strikes ripped across the country in the first six months of the contagion. Workers mounted protests to demand their safety. Meanwhile tenants called for rent strikes; immigrant justice activists surrounded detention centers; anti-incarceration organizers demanded the release of prisoners; auto, fast-food and meat processing workers went out on wildcat stoppages to force factories to shut down; homeless people occupied empty houses; and health care workers on the front lines demanded the personal protective equipment they needed to do their jobs and stay safe. For the most part wildcat strikes were organized not by union leadership but from the rank and file.

COVID-19 was thus the lightning bolt before the thunder. “Just a few weeks after lockdowns were widely imposed, protests began to reemerge,” noted the Carnegie Endowment. “Already in April [2020], the number of new protests rose to a high level; approximately one new significant anti-government protest every four days.” And there was no letup to mass protest in 2021, fueled, in the words of the Endowment, by an increasingly authoritarian political landscape and “rising economic insecurity” that “brought public frustration of the boiling point.” It added that many countries that did not previously appear in the tracker registered protests that year. Then, as the global class struggle heated up, the first four months of 2022 saw mass labor strikes breaking out in industries and countries around the world.

Devastating Effects of Capitalist Globalization

In all of their diversity, many of these fights had — and have — a common underlying denominator: an aggressive global capitalism in crisis that is pushing to expand on the backs of working masses who can tolerate no more hardship and deprivation. Capitalist states face spiraling crises of legitimacy after decades of hardship and social decay wrought by neoliberalism, aggravated by these states’ inability to manage the COVID contagion and the economic free-fall it triggered. The extent of polarization of wealth and power, of deprivation and misery among the world’s poor majority, already defied belief prior to the outbreak. In 2018, just 17 global financial conglomerates collectively managed $41.1 trillion dollars, more than half the gross domestic product of the entire planet. That same year, the richest 1 percent of humanity led by 36 million millionaires and 2,400 billionaires controlled more than half of the world’s wealth while the bottom 80 percent — nearly 6 billion people — had to make do with just 5 percent of this wealth.

Worldwide, 50 percent of all people live on less than $2.50 a day and a full 80 percent live on less than $10 per day. One in three people on the planet suffer from some form of malnutrition, nearly a billion go to bed hungry each night and another 2 billion suffer from food insecurity. Refugees from war, the climate crisis, political repression and economic collapse already number in the hundreds of millions as the social fabric is torn apart and whole communities collapse in peripheral areas. The pandemic followed by the repercussions from the Russian invasion of Ukraine have heightened these conditions even further.

The international development agency Oxfam reported this past Januarythat during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic the 10 richest men in the world more than doubled their fortunes, from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion, while 99 percent of humanity saw a fall in their income and 160 million more people fell into poverty. The World Food Program (WFP) reported in May that “the outlook for global acute food insecurity in 2022 is expected to deteriorate further relative to 2021,” a year which, according to the WFP, “surpassed all previous records.” The war in Ukraine “is likely to exacerbate the already severe 2022 acute food insecurity forecasts, given the repercussions of the war on global food, energy and fertilizer prices and supplies.”

Hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of people, have been displaced from countrysides in the Global South in recent decades by neoliberal policies, social cleansing and organized violence such the “war on drugs” and the “war on terror,” both of which have served as instruments of mass displacement and for the violent restructuring and integration of countries and regions into the new global economy. Those displaced stream into the megacities of the world that have become ground zero for mass protests.

The International Labour Office reported that 1.53 billion workers around the world were in “vulnerable” employment arrangements in 2009, representing more than 50 percent of the global workforce, and that in 2018 a majority of the 3.5 billion workers in the world “experienced a lack of material well-being, economic security, equality opportunities or scope for human development.”

As digitalization now drives a new round of worldwide restructuring it promises to extend the precariatization of workers who have employment and also to expand the ranks of humanity excluded from the labor market, while the climate crisis will generate water and food shortages, displace hundreds of millions more, and increase exposure to natural disasters.

This social crisis is explosive. It fuels mass protest by the oppressed and leads the ruling groups to deploy an ever more omnipresent global police state to contain the rebellion of the global working and popular classes. As the global civil war heats up in the post-pandemic world, the social fabric is coming undone. The crisis generates enormous political tensions that must be managed by the ruling groups in the face of societal disintegration and political collapse in many countries. It animates geopolitical conflict as states seek to externalize social and political tensions and accelerates the breakdown of the post-World War II international order, increasing the danger of international military conflagration (witness the Ukraine conflict).

Pandemic Repression and Global Police State

COVID-19 was in certain respects a blessing in disguise for the ruling class. The contagion forced protesters off the streets momentarily and gave capitalist states a respite with which to gather their repressive forces and deploy them against restive populations. The wave of repression and brutality unleashed by these states against their own citizens simply cannot be explained by the need for these states to keep them safe. To the contrary, the pandemic provided an expedient smokescreen with which to push back against the global revolt.

The case of India is revealing. Up to 150 million workers went on strike in January 2019. This was followed later that year by months of protest against proposed changes to a citizenship law that would discriminate against Muslims and by a second general strike in 2020 that brought out 250 million workers and farmers — the single largest labor mobilization in world history. The pandemic curfew imposed by the government conveniently undercut the civic uprising. When the government began to impose strict local lockdowns as the virus spread, it singled out neighborhoods identified with the protests. In these areas, heavy police barricades locked in residents for weeks. The government also forced tens of millions of striking migrant workers to march to their home villages for lockdown there, enduring on the way pitiless state repression, involving extreme dehumanization, deaths in custody, and mass arrests (all this while Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India, increased his wealth by $12 million per hour during the pandemic).

In the United States, a wave of worker mobilizations that spread even before the COVID-19 contagion, led by a number of mass teachers strikes in 2018 and 2019, exploded during the pandemic, thanks to dismal working and unsafe working conditions in schools amid the pandemic.

The monumental 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings were met with particularly brutal state repression. Fearful of losing control, the ruling groups left no holds barred in unleashing the state’s repressive apparatus against the largely peaceful protesters, leaving at least 14 dead, hundreds of wounded and some 10,000 arrested. (I myself participated in the protests in my city of residence, Los Angeles, where I witnessed the use by militarized police and national guard units of tear gas, stun grenades, taser guns, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and batons against protesters.)

Governments around the world centralized the response to the pandemic and many declared states of emergencies, in effect, imposing what some called “medical martial law.” Such centralized coordination may have been necessary to confront the health crisis. But centralization of emergency powers in authoritarian capitalist states was used to deploy police and military forces, to censure any criticism of governments, to contain discontent, heighten surveillance and impose repressive social control — that is, to push forward the global police state. In country after country, emergency powers were used to selectively ban protests on the grounds that they spread COVID-19, harass dissidents, censor journalists and scapegoat minority groups. At least 158 governments imposed restrictions on demonstrations.

In many countries, governments required citizens to carry documents verifying their “right” to be out of their homes during the lockdown. The idea seems to have been merely to get populations accustomed to producing papers on demand, to ask permission to exist in public space. In the Philippines, strongman President Rodrigo Duterte issued shoot-to-kill orders for anyone defying the stay-at-home lockdown, while his government stepped up its campaign of extra-judicial killing of thousands of supposed criminals. In Latin America, charged Amnesty International, governments turned to arbitrary, punitive and repressive tactics to enforce compliance with quarantine measures and clamp down on popular protest. “Added to the structural challenges and massive social and economic divides present prior to the pandemic, these measures only combine to perpetuate inequality and discrimination across the continent.” Such repression was widespread around the world. As I detail in my new bookGlobal Civil War: Capitalism-Post Pandemic, in country after country the pandemic provided capitalist states with a convenient pretext to crack down on the global revolt, tighten systems of mass surveillance and social control, and pass emergency legislation that gave them sweeping powers to repress the protest movements that had reached a crescendo on the eve of the outbreak.

While a major government response may have been necessary from a public health point of view, it became clear that the “new normal” as the world emerged from the pandemic would involve a more extensive global police state, including permanent mass surveillance and a new biopolitical regime in which states could use “public health” as a new pretext for keeping a lid on the global revolt. States used what international relations scholar Kees van der Pijl referred to as a “bio-political emergency” to further normalize and institutionalize state surveillance and repressive control in a way reminiscent of the aftermath of the 2001 attacks. In the wake of those attacks, 140 countries passed draconian “anti-terrorist” security legislation that often made legal the repression of social movements and political dissent. The laws remained in place long after the 2001 events.

Political Violence Pandemics

A recent report by Lloyd’s of London, a global insurance and financial conglomerate, warned that “instances of political violence contagion are becoming more frequent” and headed towards what it terms “PV [political violence] pandemics.” It identified so-called “super-strains” of political violence. Among what Lloyd’s deems as these super-strains are “anti-imperialist” “independence movements,” social movements calling for the removal of an “occupying force,” “mass pro-reform protests against national government[s],” and “armed insurrection” inspired by “Marxism” and “Islamism.”

State responses to this “political violence” are big business. According to a 2016 report, Global Riot Control System Market, 2016–2020, which wasprepared by a global business intelligence firm whose clients include Fortune 500 companies, in the next few years there will be a multi-billion-dollar boom in the worldwide market for “riot control systems.” The report forecast “a dramatic rise in civil unrest around the world.”

Historically, labor militancy and mass protest unfold in waves, calibrated to capitalist expansion and crises, wars and major political changes. The ruling groups managed to beat back the last major cycle of worldwide mobilization from below, in the 1960s and early 1970s, through capitalist globalization and the neoliberal counterrevolution. But this time circumstances are different. Global capitalism is reaching limits to its expansion, given the ecological meltdown and the escalating threat of nuclear confrontation. The crisis is unprecedented and also existential. In addition, the global economy and society are more integrated and interdependent than ever, and global communications connect communities in resistance with one another across borders and on a planetary scale.

Short of overthrowing the system, the only way out of the social crisis for the mass of humanity is a reversal of escalating inequalities through a radical redistribution of wealth and power downward and through drastic environmental measures. The challenge for emancipatory struggles is how to translate mass revolt into a project that can challenge the power of global capital and bring about such a radical redistribution. To date, the global revolt has spread unevenly and faces many challenges, including fragmentation, absorption by capitalist culture, and for the most part the lack of coherent left ideology and a vision of a transformative project beyond immediate demands. To effectively fight back, disjointed movements must find ways to come together into a larger emancipatory project, and develop creative strategies to push such a project forward.

https://truthout.org/articles/mass-protest-is-rising-can-it-confront-global-capitalism/

Jewish Fascism in Israel

 

Peter Flik en Chuck Berry-Promised Land

mijn unieke collega Peter Flik, die de vrijzinnig protestantse radio omroep de VPRO maakte is niet meer. ik koester duizenden herinneringen ...