Cold War Escapades in the Pacific

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Cold War Escapades in the Pacific

July 20, 2020

There is a lot to read into this moment, but one thing’s clear. The U.S. doesn’t know what time it is.  

The Nimitz Carrier Strike Group steams in formation during a cooperative deployment in the Indian Ocean on July 20, 2020. (U.S. Navy. Donald R. White Jr.)

By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News

First came the Defense Department’s formal request to Congress for a $20 billion check to upgrade its presence across the Pacific. That was last March. A month later the U.S. Navy sent three warships (and ever-faithful Australia one) to the waters off Malaysia because an unarmed Chinese vessel was conducting routine seismic surveys in an area thought to contain significant resource deposits.

Then a two-month pause, at least on the military side. The grandstanding denunciations, bans, bars, and sanctions have continued apace.  

In early July the Pentagon sent two aircraft carrier strike groups into the South China Sea in its latest and largest-ever “freedom of navigation” exercise, just as the Chinese Navy was conducting exercises nearby. Last week came the caker: Mike Pompeo, our Dummkopf secretary of state, asserted that China’s various maritime claims in the South China Sea are “completely unlawful.” 

This was an abrupt departure from Washington’s previous pretense of neutrality on the question of jurisdiction over waters where assertions of sovereignty intersect. It was greeted in some quarters, not least the government-supervised New York Times, as opening the door to war in behalf of those nations — Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei — contesting China’s claims.

What Is Unfolding? 

South China Sea claims map, 2012, by Voice of America. (Wikimedia Commons)

Let us pay attention here. What is and isn’t unfolding before us?

The Pentagon will get its check. Congress debates as we speak how much and when to spend on what it calls our Pacific Deterrence Initiative. The U.S. is about to buy a greatly enhanced, greatly more visible military presence in the western Pacific. Be sure to pay your taxes, readers.

The dispatch of warships to monitor a Chinese scientific vessel was sheer piffle. The Malaysians proved the adults in the room when they told the U.S. Navy to be on its way, thanks very much. Nothing whatever will come of this.

Ditto the carrier group’s escapade earlier this month. Like the silliness off the Malaysian coast, this was in the way of acting out — somewhat in the childish fashion the phrase implies. The element of spectacle is impossible to miss. There is no other meaning to be discerned.  

And Pompeo’s grand assurance that locked-and-loaded America stands aside those looking for a just settlement of the South China Sea question? This is the hollowest display of all. The U.S. has no legal standing in the South China Sea question; it is not party to any of the competing claims. 

As Malaysia just made clear, those that have registered these claims intend to negotiate multilaterally and entertain zero desire to see America instead escalate this into armed confrontation.

New Circumstances

Lieutenants during drill on fast-attack submarine USS Topeka; Naval Submarine Training Center Pacific, Santa Rita, Guam, July 14, 2020. (U.S. Navy, Kelsey J. Hockenberger)

These things said, developments across the Pacific lately do leave us in new and very undesirable circumstances.

There has been talk of “a new Cold War” or “Cold War II” since the U.S. provoked the coup in Ukraine six years ago and then watched its miscalculated project go straight to hell. This is no longer a figure of speech or a “maybe” to be cast in the conditional. We have started a new Cold War with China now (while keeping up the one we’ve got going with Russia). It is on, and there seems no turning back.  

Parenthetically, what a job the ruling class in this country has done on the collective consciousness since the productive tumult of the Vietnam era. Nobody is in the streets as our new Cold War commences. Half or more of those who ought to oppose this travesty are all for it.

This is the frame within which we must understand all the other furnishings — the sanctions, the contemptible attacks on Huawei, China’s market-leading telecoms company, the persecutions of Chinese medical researchers and students —altogether the primitive xenophobia. Sweeping bans on Chinese visitors are now under review, as are plans to block Chinese investments in the U.S. We’re in for the full Monty, it seems. [The Trump administration is also considering ending existing visas and forbidding new ones to members of the Chinese Communist Party.]

Another Ruinous Cold War 

Those who recall the first Cold War will know well enough the burdens we are to bear, all the lost opportunity. Those who don’t are about to learn. This is going to prove as ruinously wasteful and cripplingly distorting of the American worldview as it was the last time around.

Dreamy hawks in the John Bolton mold or “end times” kooks such as Pompeo seem to entertain fantasies of an open conflict with the Chinese. And true enough, we will now live again with the nerve-wracking prospect of war by accident or error. But this war will otherwise remain cold — this for the simple reason anyone with sense in Washington knows the U.S. cannot possibly win a war with the People’s Republic.

U.S. service members assigned to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency carry a transfer case during a repatriation ceremony, Da Nang, Vietnam, July 8, 2018. (U.S. Navy, Claire Farin)

Forget about Tennyson and the Light Brigade: The Pentagon will instantly reason why if ordered to do or die for some pointless, certain-to-fail engagement with Chinese forces, which are increasingly well-armed almost entirely in response to incessant U.S. assertions of power in East Asia.  

Does anyone seriously think the U.S. military, no matter how expensively equipped, would engage the mainland in behalf of the Malaysians, the Vietnamese, the Filipinos, or Bruneians? Out of the question. This is not about those people. It isn’t about securing sea lanes, either: They are secure. It is about the forlorn project of maintaining U.S. primacy in the Pacific — and a more unwinnable campaign one cannot think of.

It is now engraved in the American consciousness that the U.S. won the first Cold War when the Soviet Union collapsed. I have never subscribed to this version of the outcome. The Soviet Union collapsed due to internal dysfunctions that long predated the Cold War. And the U.S. lost plenty during those decades, a Pyrrhic victory if ever there was one.       

No such mythology will hold this time. America is already losing its second Cold War go-around. Let us consider two good measures of this reality.

China & Iran’s Strategic Partnership 

Indo-Pacific region. (Wikimedia Commons)

Just as the Pentagon was parading an immense flotilla in the South China Sea earlier this month, we learned that China and Iran are about to enter a 25–year “strategic partnership” that will (1) rescue the Islamic Republic from the ravages of Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign and (2) significantly extend China’s Belt and Road Initiative into the Middle East. Oilprice.com had the story in detail; its report is here.  

This is a breathtaking accord in its extensive provisions. In tranches of hundreds of billions of dollars, beginning with $400 billion in the first five years, China is to invest in Iran’s energy, petrochemical, transportation, manufacturing, transportation, electricity and infrastructure sectors. All this will be linked to Belt and Road terminal cities in western China via the Central Asian republics. China will also get discounts of up to a third on purchases of Iranian energy and will be allowed to pay in non-dollar currencies.

An agreement of this kind has been in on-and-off negotiations for four years, the lurching progress due in part to China’s concerns about U.S. sanctions. Now Beijing seems to shrug at such threats — an interesting turn in itself. Unexpectedly, Tehran agreed last week to extend the accord to air and naval military cooperation. Russia also folds into these added provisions. This is what the Americans get for sabotaging the 2015 accord governing Iran’s nuclear activities.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, and President Vladimir Putin meeting with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, 2017. (President of Russia)

Now let’s consider the ever-elaborating relationship between China and Russia. This has been gaining in depth and breadth since Moscow and Beijing signed a $400 billion natural gas pact in May 2014 — three months after the U.S.–cultivated coup in Kiev, not coincidentally. At this point all the two sides seem to talk about is strengthening ties and increasing cooperation.

U.S. conduct is propelling this partnership, as both sides make clear. It was the Ukraine coup that prompted Moscow to turn eastward, and it is Pentagon’s constant provocations in East Asia that has Beijing turning in the other direction.

“The U.S. has lost its mind, morals, and credibility,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi said over the weekendin a conversation with Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart. This refreshingly direct remark followed by a week a telephone exchange between Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, in which the former reportedly said the two nations “should stand firmly against hegemony and unilateralism.” Whatever could they be talking about?

There is a lot to read into this moment. The world is much changed since Cold War I ran its course. Emerging nations now form alternative poles of power. Western markets are no longer the only markets to which these nations can turn. Old dependencies are breaking, new alliances forming. As argued severally in this space, parity between the West and non–West is a 21st century imperative. This is how it will come to be.

America’s leaders and many Americans, though not all by any means, avert their eyes as the world beyond our shores urges these realities upon us. Washington simply does not want to know what time it is. We are not, in consequence, destined to go gently into our new century, when at last we are forced to join it. We will have our new Cold War, and we will lose it.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century” (Yale). Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist.His web site is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site. 

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/07/20/patrick-lawrence-cold-war-escapades-in-the-pacific/

WHITNEY WEBB

Alleged Salas Family Assailant Previously Worked for US/Israeli Intelligence-Linked Firm

The alleged gunmen who killed the son of Esther Salas, the judge recently assigned to the Epstein-Deutsche Bank case, worked for a company of corporate spies and mercenaries with ties to intelligence and also to Deutsche Bank.

BYWHITNEY WEBB

JULY 21, 2020

11 MINUTE READ

The news of the shooting of the husband and son of Esther Salas, the judge recently assigned to oversee the Jeffrey Epstein – Deutsche Bank case, caused shock and confusion while also bringing renewed scrutiny to the Epstein scandal just a week after Epstein’s main co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, was denied bail in a separate case. 

The case Salas is set to oversee is a class action lawsuit brought by Deutsche Bank investors who allege that Deutsche Bank “failed to properly monitor customers that the Bank itself deemed to be high risk, including, among others, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.” The case came after the New York state Department of Financial Services had settled with Deutsche Bank over the bank’s failure to cut ties with Epstein-linked accounts, resulting in Deutsche Bank paying a $150 million fine. Deutsche Bank, unlike other financial institutions, failed to close all of its accounts linked to Epstein until less than a month prior to his arrest last year, even though the bank had identified him as “high risk” yearsbefore.

Beyond the tragedy of Sunday’s shooting, which claimed the life of Salas’ only child, the quick discovery of the death of the main suspect, Roy Den Hollander, of a “self-inflicted” gunshot to the head before he could be arrested or questioned by authorities has led to speculation that there is more to the official narrative of the crime than meets the eye.

With law enforcement sources now claiming that Esther Salas was not the intended target of the attack and some media reports now suggesting that Den Hollander’s motive was related to his dislike of feminism, it appears there are efforts underway to distance Sunday’s tragic shooting from Salas’ recent assignment to the Epstein case, which occurred just four days before the tragic shooting. 

The most likely reason for any such “damage control” effort lies in the fact that both U.S. law enforcement investigations and mainstream media reports have consistently downplayed the connections of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual trafficking and financial crimes to intelligence agencies in the U.S. and Israel. Similarly, Roy Den Hollander previously worked for a New York firm has been described as a “private CIA” with ties to those countries’ intelligence agencies and, also, ties to Deutsche Bank.

A Private CIA

According to his website, Den Hollander once worked for Kroll Associates Moscow Office, where he “managed and upgraded Kroll’s delivery of intelligence and security in the former Soviet Union” from 1999 to 2000. A few years prior, Kroll had won a considerable bid from the Russian government to locate money allegedly “spirited out of the country by the directors of state enterprises when they realized that privatization was inevitable.” The Kroll executives in charge of the Russian portfolio prior to Den Hollander were E. Norbett Garrett, a former CIA station chief in Cairo and Kuwait, and Joseph Rosetti, former chief of security for IBM. During that period and prior to his hiring at Kroll, Den Hollender worked as a lawyer in Russia regarding “legal and business issues, including international financing and marketing” and married a Russian woman he met during his time there that he subsequently claimed was part of the “Russian mafia.”

Founded by Jules Kroll in 1972, Kroll Associates would later become known as the “CIA of Wall Street” and “Wall Street’s Private Eye” and was alleged to be an actual front for the CIA by French intelligence agencies, according to theWashington Post. Part of the reason for this nickname, which was once a boasting point for top Kroll executives, owes to the fact that the firm frequently hired former CIA and FBI officers, as well as former members of MI6 and Mossad. K2 Intelligence, the successor to Kroll Associates founded by Jules Kroll and his son Jeremy in 2009, has similar hiring practices, counting former FBI and NSA officials among its ranks alongside former high-ranking members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency. Kroll also boasted ties to the Bush family, with Jonathan Bush (George Bush Sr.’s brother) serving on its corporate advisory board, and Kroll was also employed by Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign.

Though it is mainly involved in corporate security and investigations, Kroll has also frequently investigated targets of Washington foreign policy, including Saddam Hussein, and was also the company tapped to “reorganize” Enron in 2002. Kroll Associates also has long been a subject of scrutiny for those that question the official narrative on the attacks of September 11, 2001, given that the company was put in charge of security for the World Trade Center complex from 1993 bombing up through the 2001 attacks and has no shortage of ties to companies and individuals that profited from the attacks. Kroll itself experienced a “surge in business” following the events of 9/11, a day when its top executives all avoided going to work despite ostensibly providing security for the complex. 

A similar “surge in business” for Kroll followed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq after the company’s investigations into Saddam Hussein’s and the Bath Party’s finances had been used as partial justification for the military incursion. Kroll became a major provider of mercenaries along with companies like Blackwater and DynCorp to the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation through its subsidiary Kroll Security International. Its clients included the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which has long fronted for the CIA, and also provided mercenaries for the war in Afghanistan.

Kroll executives over the years have commented to the press on their reputation as a “private CIA” and have also noted the advantages of being a “private” as opposed to “public” intelligence agency. For instance, E. Norbett Garrett, the former CIA official turned Kroll executive, told The New Yorker in 2009 the following:

“Garrett explained the disparity between what Kroll could do and what the C.I.A. could in a place like Sudan. “They have to rely on public and covert sources,” he said. “But we can go straight to Salah Idris. He’s our client, after all. We can go straight to his friends. We can be manipulated, of course, shown incomplete information, and sometimes we have to walk away from a case if we don’t trust somebody. But we definitely have some advantages.”

Kroll Associates and the Epstein Network

Aside from Kroll Associates’ own role as a private intelligence firm, it is also worth pointing out that Jules Kroll had an odd meeting with Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, shortly before his death, alleged by most Maxwell biographers and his family to have been a homicide. Roughly two weeks before his death, Kroll met with Maxwell at New York’s Helmsley Palace Hotel. According to a 1992 article in Vanity Fair, “Maxwell had ushered Kroll and two other men out onto the patio so that their conversation could not be overheard or bugged,” with Maxwell allegedly seeking to hire Kroll to uncover “people out to get him, to destroy his empire, to cripple him financially, and to destroy his life and business in any way they could.” 

The article further notes that “the meeting broke up with Maxwell’s promising that he would send Kroll what he called “a memorandum of suspicions and unexplained events.” “Maxwell was working on this compendium,” said the  [anonymous] participant [in the meeting], “when he met his death.” Kroll Associates was never formally hired.”

Much more recently Kroll came under scrutiny after being hired by disgraced media mogul Harvey Weinstein alongside the “private Mossad for hire” firm Black Cube. Weinstein had been instructed to hire Black Cube by Ehud Barak, the former Israeli military intelligence head and Israeli Prime Minister with close ties to Jeffrey Epstein and a frequent visitor of Epstein’s residences. Weinstein hired Kroll to harass and cyberstalk women who had accused him of sexual assault. Weinstein was a one-time business partner of Jeffrey Epstein’s and the testimony of Epstein victim Maria Farmer strongly implies that Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein “shared” women, and potentially underage girls, with the film producer. The Daily Beast later reported that Epstein had used his ties to Weinstein to impress and recruit potential victims and at least one of those victims landed a role in a film produced by a Weinstein-owned company due to Epstein’s ties to Weinstein.

In addition, Kroll’s long-time executive Vice President for Operations, James Bucknam, was previously chief adviser to former FBI director Louis Freeh and is now CEO of the Freeh Group. Freeh has since become notorious for having been hired by Epstein associate, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, to “investigate” the Epstein scandal, and was also involved in the cover-up of the Penn State child molestation and abuse scandal. Freeh was also director of the FBI when the Bureau declined to investigate accusations regarding Leslie Wexner, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein and their involvement in the sex trafficking of minors, first reported to the FBI in 1996 by Maria Farmer.

The Kroll – Deutsche Bank “Revolving Door”

After “retiring” from Kroll associates, Jules Kroll created a credit-rating agency, a field he had called just years earlier “a heck of a racket.” Named the Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA), the firm was envisioned by Kroll as a “credit-rating agency on steroids,” but has failed to make a dent in the market shares of the so-called “Big Three” credit-rating agencies: Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service, and Fitch Ratings. 

Though it hasn’t managed to become a dominant force in credit ratings, KBRA has managed to be profitable and to have produced something of a “revolving door” between its senior management and Deutsche Bank executives. For instance, KBRA’s top executive in Europe, Mauricio Noé, had previously been a Managing Director of Deutsche Bank’s London branch. In another example, Vice President for Credit Structuring at Deutsche Bank in New York, Ian Ross, was previously employed by KBRA and Yee Cent Wong, managing director of KBRA for CMBS, was previously Vice President of the Credit Solutions Group at Deutsche Bank Securities. Another managing director of KBRA, Bill Baneky, had previously served as Deutsche Bank’s Vice President and National Relationship Manager. One of KBRA’s senior managing directors, Rosemary Kelley, is also a former Deutsche Bank Vice President, while another, Ken Kockenmeister, was Deutsche Bank’s Director for Large Loan Securitization and Underwriting.

While they may not be the “biggest” credit-rating agency, KBRA analysts and executives frequently speak to media outlets where they comment on the state of various businesses, Deutsche Bank among them. Given the amount of overlap between Deutsche Bank and KBRA, it is unsurprising that KBRA has lobbied in the press on Deutsche’s behalf. For instance, KBRA analyst Christopher Whalen told Business Insider in 2016 that “The problem with Deutsche Bank may be the end of Merkel’s career,” adding that “The question is does she want to be remembered for doing the right thing — which is to provide support for the bank and diffuse the situation — or does she want to be remembered for standing by when one of the largest banks in Europe failed?”

Jeffrey Epstein’s Links to Deutsche Bank

Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Deutsche Bank go back decades, and potentially earlier. After working for Bear Stearns earlier in his career and then as a so-called “financial bounty hunter” with ties to intelligence-linked arms dealers and Wall Street, Epstein set up a Ponzi scheme with Steve Hoffenberg called Tower Financial, which collapsed in 1993 and subsequently landed Hoffenberg 20 years in prison. Epstein’s name, despite being a clear co-conspiractor, was suspiciously dropped from the case during the trial. Hoffenberg subsequently alleged that Epstein used his ill-gotten gains from Tower Financial alongside a series of suspect loans from Deutsche Bank to create his investment company.

Hoffenberg subsequently told The Observer the following:

“His lead bank is Deutsche Bank, Germany, that runs the lead on his financial trust company. They run the platform in the trading of the currencies for Epstein and with Epstein. He’s never disclosed to the investors that provide the money to Deutsche Bank his true legacy, that’s securities fraud.”

Following that point, Epstein’s financial activities, aside from his Deutsche Bank-enabled investment vehicle, were publicly conducted through Bear Stearns (until its 2008 collapse) and J.P. Morgan. When J.P. Morgan dropped Epstein as a client, he again turned to Deutsche Bank in 2013, becoming a client of the bank’s private wealth division in New York. Anti-money laundering compliance officers at the bank’s branches in New York and Florida subsequently flaggedEpstein’s accounts in 2015, in 2016 and again in 2019, creating suspicious activity reports regarding the movements of large amounts of funds tied to Epstein-linked accounts outside of the U.S. 

However, the bank did not fully terminate their relationship with Epstein until June 2019, just a few weeks prior to his arrest last year. Epstein was believed to have dozens of accounts with the bank at one point and those accounts were shut down slowly over a period of several months beginning in late 2018.

Ties that Bind

The narrative emerging that Den Hollander was motivated to kill Esther Salas’ husband and sons due to his hatred of feminism is a rapid attempt to explain away a story that clearly warrants further investigation, albeit into avenues that mainstream media and powerful individuals in the public and private sectors prefer remain untouched.

As the heinous act targeting the Salas family has shown, individuals with a lot to lose are willing to go to the farthest extremes to keep the ties of Epstein to the financial sector and to intelligence out of sight and out of mind. Indeed, just last December, Epstein’s personal banker at Deutsche Bank, Thomas Bowers, the chief of Deutsche Bank’s Private Wealth Management division in New York from 2012 to 2015, was found dead in his home. His death was quickly ruled a suicide by hanging. Bowers had also signed off on “unorthodox” loans, not just for Epstein, but Donald Trump, who has his own ties to the Epstein scandal.

While some have been quick to point out that Trump (as well as his son-in-law Jared Kushner) could stand to lose from potential revelations in the Epstein-Deutsche Bank trial, there are other key power-brokers tied to both Epstein and Deutsche Bank who could also be feeling the heat. For instance, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who became close to Epstein in the early 1990s and subsequently connected him to the Clinton White House and later to Alan Dershowitz, is intimately involved in the Deutsche Bank Microfinance Consortium. 

Aside from Epstein’s use of the money, Deutsche Bank has been notorious for years as a cesspool of money launderingfor organized crime networks, paying $14.5 billion in fines in just seven years for official action taken against the bank by several governments. It is highly likely that the brutality of what happened outside the Salas family home on Sunday is more related to Deutsche Bank than Epstein, as numerous powerful individuals have ties to the embattled bank. 

Even the recent move by Attorney General William Barr to remove SDNY District Attorney Geoffrey Berman from his post appears to be more related to Berman’s efforts to investigate Deutsche Bank than the Epstein scandal, as some have alleged. This is because Barr’s new pick for Berman’s old job counts Deutsche Bank among his former clients and notably defended the bank in a recent anti-money laundering probe, whereas Berman was investigating the bank (albeit for political reasons that took aim at the bank’s dealings with Trump). 

While Epstein’s egregious and criminal actions targeting minors have now become public knowledge, in role in facilitating white collar crime, money laundering and financial frauds on behalf of corporations, governments and oligarchs remains sorely under-covered, despite his role in such activities preceding and continuing after his involvement in an intelligence-linked sexual blackmail operation. 

It arguably remains one of the key components of the Epstein scandal, yet the most poorly understood and most under-investigated. If anything, the tragic events at the Salas family home on Sunday, and what appears to be a rapid yet shoddy cover-up of the shooter’s ties to Kroll Associates and actual motives, reveal that Epstein’s financial ties are more frightening to certain powerful individuals and institutions than his trove of sexual blackmail.

• Deutsche Bank
• Esther Salas
• Kroll
• maxwell
• Ron den Hollander

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Whitney Webb

Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for Mint Press News. She currently writes for The Last American Vagabond.

http://unlimitedhangout.com/2020/07/reports/alleged-salas-family-assailant-previously-worked-for-us-israeli-intelligence-linked-firm/

“Wall of Moms” Mobilizes to Protect Protests From Police Violence

Portland: “Wall of Moms” Mobilizes to Protect Protests From Police Violence

Chanting, “Feds stay clear! Moms are here!,” groups of women congregated at the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse and other locations in Central Portland. They were met with tear gas, flashbangs, and pepper round bullets, injuring many.

July 20th, 2020

By  Alan Macleod  

Despite a widely-condemned federal crackdown, Portland’s anti-racist police brutality protests show no signs of abating. Last night a group of local moms dressed in white and yellow tried a new tactic; placing themselves between law enforcement and protesters in order to prevent more violence. Chanting, “Feds stay clear! Moms are here!,” groups of women congregated at the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse and other locations in Central Portland. They were met with tear gas, flashbangs, and pepper round bullets, injuring many.

Oregon’s largest city has been the site of particularly intense struggle over the past week, as the Trump administration has tried to neutralize ongoing demonstrations that began in late May. Last week, federal agents were deployed to that end. Viral video shows masked, anonymous units emerging from an unmarked minivan and seemingly abducting people off the street randomly. A disabled veteran, Christopher David, was also attacked, federal officers beating him with clubs and macing him at point-blank range. “They just started wailing on me,” David told The Independent, after images of the attack hit social media, turning him into an overnight local celebrity.

Washington’s move to bring in federal agents to Portland was roundly condemned, especially by local politicians, including the mayor, who deemed it irresponsible and escalatory, demanding that they be withdrawn. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has justified its actions, claiming that “violent anarchists” have taken over and destroyed the city, although the only examples of destruction it provided were stone throwing, graffiti, and a broken fence, leading to questions of whether a federal intervention was truly necessary.

Nevertheless, the DHS has declared the move a successful one, its acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli telling NPR that he intends to take the tactic nationwide:

With as much lawbreaking [that] is going on, we’re seeking to prosecute as many people as are breaking the law as it relates to federal jurisdiction. That’s not always happening with respect to local jurisdiction and local offenses. But, you know, this is a posture we intend to continue not just in Portland but in any of the facilities that we’re responsible for around the country.”

In June, Portland temporarily suspended the use of tear gas by police and blocked police from using physical force on journalists. However, federal agents are not subject to the same laws. On Saturday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced it was taking the Trump administration to court over its actions. “Federal agents are terrorizing the community, threatening lives, and relentlessly attacking protesters demonstrating against police brutality. This is not law and order. This is lawlessness — and it must be stopped,” they announced, adding that they should be removed from the city. The lawsuit is aimed at stopping the feds from wantonly attacking journalists and observers.

“I’ve been documenting violent and militarized police responses to protests in Portland for more than four years, but nothing prepared me for the unrestrained brutality I’ve witnessed and experienced in recent days,” said the ACLU’s Doug Brown. “While some federal officers had already been in the streets, we now have additional militarized special ops officers occupying the streets of downtown Portland, bent on inflicting pain and terror on people who believe Black Lives Matter.”

In June, the Scottish parliament voted 52-0 to ban the sale of tear gas, rubber bullets and other weapons of oppression to the United States. Nevertheless, police in Portland continued to use near-lethal force. Last Saturday, police officers shot 26-year-old protester Donovan LaBella in the face from close range. Labella survived but needed facial reconstruction surgery, including the insertion of a titanium plate into his face.

The immediate spark for the protests was the police killing of unarmed black man George Floyd on May 25. Footage of a Minneapolis police officer choking Floyd to death for over 8 minutes went viral, causing a worldwide protest movement. Hundreds of cities in all 50 states launched their own demonstrations. Polls show that the majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s decision to confront rather than co-opt the protests. Despite this, the order to move federal agents into Portland appears to be an intensification of the conflict rather than an attempt at de-escalation.

Feature photo | Black Lives Matter protesters gather outside the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse, July 19, 2020, in Portland, Ore. Noah Berger | AP

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

https://www.mintpressnews.com/portland-wall-moms-mobilizes-protect-protests-police-violence/269613/

Ghislaine Maxwell Sexual Blackmail