America’s Own Color Revolution

globalresearch.ca

America's Own Color Revolution - Global Research

By F. William Engdahl

14-18 minutes

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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 were 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.

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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, exclusively for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook" where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from NEO

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ft.com

Investors want Serbia reforms that break through 'wall of resistance'

Zsuzsanna Hargitai 12 hours ago

6-7 minutes

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In recent years, Serbia has been among the most successful countries in Europe in terms of attracting investment. A combination of political stability, low costs, improving transport links with the EU and its neighbours, and strong human capital have put Serbia on the radar screens of many investors.

Before the coronavirus turned the world upside down, Serbia had enjoyed a period of successful economic expansion. Exceeding already high expectations, the economy grew by 5 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2020. The pandemic put a drastic halt to this upswing, but even in the current turbulence Serbia looks well placed to emerge strongly.

Depending on the way you look at it — globally or regionally — Serbia is a small fish in a large pond or a large fish in a small pond. One of its sources of strength and energy is that, although it represents a relatively small market, it is located along a key logistics corridor between the ports of Greece, Turkey and EU markets to the north.

Today's Serbia has embraced the concept of regional co-operation. This was evident in pragmatic steps like the so called "green lanes" measures in the western Balkans to facilitate the movement of freight across borders during the Covid-19 crisis.

It was encouraging to see the countries of the region respond quickly, decisively and successfully to the health emergency. Timely, well-enforced lockdowns and proportionate measures on domestic and international traffic were effective. The number of Covid-19 cases in Serbia and the region was kept below the levels seen in far richer and better equipped societies.

Covid-19: the response to the health emergency was quick and decisive © Getty

The price of the crisis will still be high. Not only in terms of the loss of life, but also the economic damage that the pandemic has caused. For Serbia, we expect a decline in GDP of 3.5 per cent in 2020 and a rebound of 6 per cent in 2021. Serbia — like any comparable country not already deeply integrated into the EU markets in economic terms — will be unable to deal with the immediate burden alone. But the country has strong fundamentals to build on.

Fiat is producing cars in Kragujevac and Siemens recently started building trams in the country. Last year Barry Callebaut, a leading world manufacturer of chocolate and cocoa products, laid the foundation for a factory in Novi Sad. The energy companies Enlight, Masdar and Taaleri began operating wind farms in 2019.

Work on the assembly line at the Fiat factory, Kragujevac © Reuters

The country is also well placed for foreign companies considering "nearshoring" their suppliers and harnessing Serbia's potential for information and communication technologies.

Serbia has become sophisticated in its promotion of external trade. In London, Düsseldorf and Paris, representatives of the country successfully make the case for why people should invest in Serbia.

But do investors feel equally welcome once they have set foot in the country?

Legacies of the past remain and are holding the country back. These include, for example, the lack of clear policy objectives and strategic decision-making for state-owned enterprises, and the absence of a level playing field in the enforcement of competition rules for all market players. Improved governance, including corporate governance of state-owned enterprises, could add as much as 2 per cent to GDP, according to the IMF.

It is here that the reform process is often hardest to implement — where political loyalties, vested interests and old structures might coalesce to form a wall of resistance on issues from transparent public procurement to recruitment in public administration. As a result, Serbia performs below levels it could achieve and many investors who might help the country make the next leap forward go elsewhere. Meanwhile, many of Serbia's younger generations are drawn to opportunities in other countries, which benefit from their education and skills. After the recent decades of young people leaving their homeland, nobody in Serbia wants to see more such losses of vital talent.

Modernisation: work at Belgrade airport is being carried out under public-private partnership © Shutterstock / paul prescott

Before coronavirus shut borders, it was already clear that the emigration of skilled labour from Serbia had to be reversed. It can be done. Through, for example, improved vocational training by involving private companies in the design of curricula; through providing scholarships, internships and on-the-job training to increase opportunities. Such measures also attract investment and, as an investor and policy adviser, the EBRD is a leading advocate of them.

The EBRD stepped up its support and investment in Serbia in 2019 to more than €515m, from €396m in 2018. Now, to help mitigate the economic impact of Covid-19, it expects to deliver €750m-€850m of new financing in 2020.

We are doubling credit lines and trade financing for small and medium enterprises. Our funding is also helping to build key infrastructure, for example, the modernisation, under public-private partnership with the French construction group Vinci, of Belgrade's Nikola Tesla airport and its expansion into a regional hub.

Looking beyond the Covid-19 crisis, our foreign investors and local corporate clients remain committed to such investments. This signals that Serbia has not only become attractive to private investors but will remain so, when it is needed most.

The writer is regional director, western Balkans, and head of Serbia, at the EBRD

 

ft.com

Pandemic and EU neglect tighten Serbia bonds with China

Valerie Hopkins 12 hours ago

6-8 minutes

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In mid-May, as most European countries were just beginning to contemplate the slow process of reopening national borders in the wake of Covid-19, Serbia's tourism board launched a campaign to attract visitors from China.

President Aleksandar Vucic became the face of the campaign, which the board hoped would "save" the tourist season. Chinese citizens have been able to travel to Serbia visa-free since 2017, a sign of growing ties. In the first half of 2019, the country registered a 36 per cent rise in visitors from China compared to the same period in 2018.

The relationship is not limited to tourism. Serbia's top football league was last year named the "Linglong Superliga" after its sponsor, a Chinese tyremaker. In March 2019 Linglong started work on its first European factory in Serbia's northern city of Zrenjanin. The nearly $1bn project is emblematic of Chinese businesses' view of Serbia, a candidate for EU membership, as a hub for investment.

Since 2012, the western Balkan country of 7m people has received $9.5bn of publicly announced Chinese funding and investment, more than half of China's stated investment in the region. In 2019, Chinese companies announced 16 greenfield projects in Serbia, worth $625m, making China the country's biggest source of such investment, according to fDi Markets, an FT data service. In 2018, Chinese companies accounted for about 20 per cent of all FDI into Serbia.

Serbia is part of China's Belt and Road Initiative and the 17+1 format, a partnership with central and eastern European countries. The western Balkans' largest economy is at the centre of Beijing's "hub and spoke" strategy, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a US think-tank, which described Serbia as a "strategic anchor for China in the [EU's] semi-periphery, where it can invest heavily without EU regulatory burdens and showcase its technological and infrastructure projects to neighbouring states".

Chinese companies have bought some of Serbia's largest industrial facilities, including a steel factory in Smederevo, and a copper mine in Bor. Now, Chinese investors are focusing on a wave of digital infrastructure, including a "Safe Cities" project with 1,000 facial recognition cameras in 800 locations, mostly in Belgrade. Of 15 information and communications technology projects in the region, nine were started in 2018 and 2019, mostly in Serbia, according to the CSIS. However, there remains a big discrepancy between projects announced and completed: according to CSIS, only a quarter have come to fruition. "Chinese financing often occurs under opaque conditions and through non-competitive contracts, reinforcing low governance standards and exacerbating endemic corruption, underscoring . . . why western investment was not present at the outset," wrote CSIS.

The investment has come with foreign policy and political alignment. Beijing supports Belgrade's refusal to recognise Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, while Serbia backs China's stance on Taiwan and territories in the South China Sea. In December, Serbia's top official for Kosovo lauded China's "level of protection of minority rights" in Xinjiang, where an estimated 1m Uighurs are believed to be in detention. Last year, Chinese police came to three Serbian cities for joint patrols.

Stefan Vladisavljev, a foreign policy analyst for the annual Belgrade Security Forum, fears that as EU influence is questioned in the region, "the space for malign third actors coming from the outside could increase. I am not afraid of China coming to do damage, but I am afraid of how Serbian officials could misuse the tools they are given."

Serbia has been an EU candidate since 2012, but has completed only two of 35 chapters of its accession protocol, and many accuse it of backsliding on democratic indicators. Independent US-based watchdog Freedom House no longer describes Serbia as a democracy. After the EU updated enlargement methodology in February, many like Mr Vladisavljev, wonder if Serbia will ever join.

Elsewhere in the region, Chinese loans have sent public debt soaring. In neighbouring Montenegro, a Chinese-built and financed highway has raised the country's debt to 80 per cent of GDP.

Covid-19 has brought Serbia closer to China. The western Balkans were originally not exempt from an EU permit scheme for exports of critical medical equipment. President Vucic proclaimed that "European solidarity doesn't exist, that was just a fairytale on paper." The decision "was made by the people who lectured us here that we are not supposed to purchase goods from China". people from around Europe who wanted us to adjust the terms of tenders so that price should not be the primary condition as their [EU] goods were supposedly much better quality. When they needed money, it was like, make tenders and adopt conditions so the European companies can get Serbian money. When there is torment and pain, the Serbian money is no good."

He complained that Brussels was paying close Serbian tenders purely for its own economic hegemony and accused EU leaders of hypocrisy.

In the post-coronavirus battle of narratives, the "global Chinese propaganda was amplified by a Serbian offensive", says Mr Vladisavljev, who noted that in Serbia, it is still unknown how much of the Chinese medical equipment and personal protection was donated compared to how much was purchased.

A poll by the International Republican Institute, a US nonprofit focused on promoting democracy, found in March that 20 per cent of Serbs saw China as the largest donor, and 71 per cent as the most important economic partner. The EU is actually Serbia's largest donor.

After Serbian premier Ana Brnabic called for a monument of appreciation for China, a banner in front of parliament proclaimed: "Serbs and Chinese: Brothers Forever". Serbia now waits to see whether the Chinese tourists will return.

Miners in Bor, eastern Serbia © AFP via Getty Images Chinese and Serbian police officers attend a launching ceremony for their first joint patrol in Belgrade © Alamy

 

truthout.org

Noam Chomsky: Threat of Trump Galvanizing a Militia to Stay in Power Cannot be Ruled Out

George Yancy

20-26 minutes

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As protests against racist police violence rock the country, fascism ascends in the Trump White House and the COVID-19 pandemic persists, this country is at a pivotal moment. I spoke about this flash point in history with Noam Chomsky, known as the father of modern linguistics, who is one of the world's most prominent public intellectuals and the author of over 100 books, including Hegemony or Survival, Failed States, Optimism Over Despair, Hopes and Prospects, Masters of Mankind and Who Rules the World?

In the following interview, Chomsky provides insight on how we can best grapple with the current moment – and prepare for the sobering future.

George Yancy: Before I ask you about COVID-19, I'd like to start by asking your thoughts on the horrible murder of George Floyd and how you understand the protests that have occurred throughout the U.S. and the world. I am especially interested in your response to Trump's rhetoric to deploy the military to suppress a so-called insurrection.

Noam Chomsky: "Horrible murder" is right. But let us be clear about the murders of Black Americans going on right now. The brutality of a few racist policemen in Minneapolis constitutes a small part of the crime.

It has been widely noted that death rates from the pandemic are far higher among Black people. A current study found that "Americans living in counties with above-average black populations are three times as likely to die of the coronavirus as those in above-average white counties. This slaughter of Black people is partly a result of how resources were devoted to dealing with the crisis, mostly "in areas that happened to be whiter and more affluent." But it is rooted more deeply in a hideous record of 400 years of malevolent racism. The plague has been taking different forms since the establishment of the most vicious system of slavery in human history — a prime foundation of the country's industry, finance, commerce and general prosperity — but has at most been mitigated, never brought close to a cure.

American slavery was unique not only in terms of its viciousness, but also in that it was linked to skin color. Within this system, every Black face was marked with the emblem, "Your nature is to be a slave."

Other sectors have been harshly treated. Jews and Italians were so feared and despised a century ago that the 1924 racist immigration law was designed to bar them from the country, sending many Jews to crematoria. In support, racists of the day could plead that we had to protect ourselves from the Jews and Italians running the major criminal syndicates, from creatures like Meyer Lansky and Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel. But they were finally assimilated. The same happened with the Irish.

With Black people, however, it is different. They are deemed permanently unassimilable in a society cursed by racism and white supremacy. For the victims, the effects are compounded by the lasting socioeconomic gaps engendered by the curse, intensified by the neoliberal assault of the past 40 years, a great boon to extreme wealth, a disaster for the more vulnerable.

The slaughter of Black Americans proceeds under the radar. The president, whose malice knows no bound, has been exploiting the focus on the pandemic to pursue his service to his prime constituency, great wealth and corporate power. One method is eliminating regulations that protect the public but harm profits. In the midst of an unprecedented respiratory pandemic, Trump has moved to increase air pollution, which makes COVID-19 far more deadly, so much so that tens of thousands of Americans may die as a result, the business press reports. As usual, deaths are not randomly distributed: "Hardest hit are low-income communities and people of color," who are forced to live in the most dangerous areas.

It is all too easy to continue. The protesters know all of this very well. They need no studies. For many it is their lived experience. The protests are not just calling for an end to police brutality in Black communities, but for much more fundamental restructuring of social and economic institutions.

And they are receiving remarkable support, as we see not only from actions all over the country but also from polls. An early June poll "found 64 percent of American adults were 'sympathetic to people who are out protesting right now,' while 27 percent said they were not and 9 percent were unsure."

We may compare this reaction to another occasion when similar protests occurred: 1992, after the acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers who beat Rodney King almost to death. A week of riots followed, with over 60 deaths, finally quelled by the National Guard backed by federal troops sent by President Bush. The protests were mostly limited to Los Angeles, nothing like what we are seeing today.

Trump has one overriding concern, his own welfare: How can I use this tragedy to enhance my electoral prospects by firing up the most racist and violent components of my voting base? His natural instincts call for violence: "the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen." And send in the military to teach the "scum" a lesson they'll never forget.

Trump's plan to "dominate" the errant population by violence elicited widespread anger, including bitter condemnation by former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff along with expressions of sympathy for the protestors. Former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen wrote: "As a white man, I cannot claim perfect understanding of the fear and anger that African Americans feel today…. But as someone who has been around for a while, I know enough — and I've seen enough — to understand that those feelings are real and that they are all too painfully founded."

The changes in the past two decades are perhaps a sign that large parts of the population are coming to recognize long-concealed truths about our society, a ray of light in dark times.

We are often told that the United States is the most powerful country in the world. We are fed on a diet of "American exceptionalism." Yet, globally, we have the highest number of deaths due to COVID-19. We were systemically unprepared. How do you explain this incongruity, and what role does Trump play in all of this?

The lack of preparedness has three basic causes: capitalist logic, neoliberal doctrine, and the character of the political leadership. Let's run through them briefly in turn.

After the 2003 SARS epidemic was contained, scientists were well aware that a pandemic was likely and that it might be caused by another coronavirus. They also knew how to take measures to prepare. But knowledge is not enough. Someone must use it. The obvious candidate is the drug companies, which have all the resources needed and huge profits, thanks in no small measure to the exorbitant patents granted them in the mislabeled "free trade" agreements. But they were blocked by capitalist logic. There's no profit in preparing for a possible catastrophe down the road — and as economist Milton Friedman intoned at the dawn of the neoliberal age 40 years ago, the sole responsibility of the corporation is to maximize shareholder value (and management wealth). As recently as 2017, the major drug companies rejected a European Union proposal to fast-track research on pathogens, including coronavirus.

The other candidate is the government, which also has the necessary resources and has played a significant role in developing most vaccines and drugs. But that path is blocked by the neoliberal doctrine that has prevailed since Reagan, who informed us that government is the problem — meaning that decisions must be removed from the government, which is to some extent influenced by citizens, to the unaccountable private tyrannies that were the primary agents (and beneficiaries) of the neoliberal triumph. So, government is barred as well.

The third factor is individual governments. Keeping to the U.S., President George H.W. Bush had established a [President's] Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) to keep the president abreast of important scientific issues. One of President Obama's first acts on taking office in 2009 was to commission a PCAST study on how to deal with a pandemic. It was provided to the White House a few weeks later. The science-oriented Obama administration proceeded to put in place a pandemic infrastructure which planned early response to infectious disease threats. That was in place until Jan. 20, 2017, when President Trump took office, and within days began to dismantle the entire executive branch science infrastructure, including the preparations for pandemic, and indeed moved on to reject science generally from a role in informing policy, reversing the bipartisan initiatives since World War II that have been critical for developing the modern high-tech economy.

To drive further nails into the coffin, Trump disbanded programs in which scientists worked with Chinese colleagues to investigate coronaviruses. Each year, he defunded the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That continued with his budget proposal of February 2020 while the pandemic was raging, calling for further CDC cuts (while raising subsidies to fossil fuel industries). Scientists were systematically replaced by industry officials who would ensure that private profit is maximized whatever the impact on the irrelevant public.

Trump's decisions accord with the judgment of his favorite pundit, Rush Limbaugh, to whom he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He instructs us that science is one of the "four corners of deceit," along with academia, media and government, all of which "exist by virtue of deceit." The guiding maxim of the administration was articulated more eloquently by Franco's leading general in 1936: "Down with intelligence! Viva death!"

As a result, the U.S. was "systematically unprepared" when the pandemic hit.

In February, Trump said that COVID-19 would just disappear, that "one day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear." He was profoundly mistaken and then blamed China, even "racializing" the disease. Some would claim that Trump has blood on his hands because of his gross mishandling of COVID-19. What are your thoughts about this?

Tens of thousands of Americans died as a result of Trump's dedicated service to his primary constituency: extreme wealth and corporate power. His malevolence persisted after the disease struck. A few weeks after discovery of the first symptoms last December, Chinese scientists identified the virus, sequenced the genome, and provided the information to the WHO and the world. Countries in Asia and Oceania reacted at once, and have the situation largely under control. Others varied. Trump brought up the rear. For two crucial months, U.S. intelligence and health officials tried to capture the attention of the White House, in vain. Finally, Trump noticed — possibly when the stock market crashed, it has been reported. Since then it has been chaos.

Not surprisingly, Trump and his minions have been thrashing around desperately to find some scapegoat to blame for his crimes against Americans, oblivious to how many more people he slaughters. Defunding and then pulling out of the WHO [World Health Organization] is a sadistic blow against Africans, Yemenis, and many other poor and desperate people who had been protected from rampant diseases by WHO medical aid even before the coronavirus struck, and are now facing new catastrophes in addition. They are dispensable if it will improve his electoral prospects.

Trump's charge against the WHO, which is too ludicrous to discuss, is that it was being controlled by China. By pulling out, he increases Chinese influence. But it is unfair to criticize him for foolishness. The outcome only underscores the fact that he never cared about this in the first place.

Speaking of responsibility and blood on one's hands, a certain interpretation of individual rights seems to override a collective social responsibility for many in the U.S. who are not observing the recommendations of the WHO and the CDC, including a blatant rejection of wearing masks. What would you say is fueling this anger and lack of responsibility toward the health and safety of others?

Republicans overwhelmingly have faith in the president, no matter how much his actions harm them. His god-like image is amplified by those who surround him, thanks to his successful campaign to get rid of everyone but fawning sycophants, like the second-in-command, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who muses that God may have sent Trump to earth to save Israel from Iran. Pompeo's fellow evangelicals, the largest base of Trump supporters, likely agree. And they hear much the same generally from the Republican Party, which has virtually abandoned any shred of integrity and abjectly worship him whatever he does. Much the same is true of his media echo chamber. Studies have shown that the primary source of information for Republicans is Fox News, Limbaugh and Breitbart. In fact, an interesting dyad has developed: Trump issues some random pronouncement, it is hailed by Sean Hannity as a path-breaking discovery, and the next morning Trump turns to Fox News to find out what to think.

Surveys of public opinion reveal the consequences. A Pew poll in April, when Trump's responsibility for the growing disaster was beyond serious debate, found that 83 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners rated Trump's response to the outbreak as either excellent or good (as compared with 18 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners). They are listening to a president who had been comparing the virus to "regular flu," and who in mid-April tweeted instructions to his supporters to "LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!" The 2nd Amendment has not the slightest relevance, but Trump knows what buttons to push. He was, transparently, urging his troops to take up arms, part of his more general attempts to encourage armed protestors to violate orders in states with Democratic governors (like Virginia), at a time when there were almost 50,000 recorded deaths.

Let's kill more Americans, not just Yemenis and Africans, if it will improve my electoral prospects. "Down with intelligence! Viva death!"

When we exclude the Astroturf operations and the fervent loyalty of the voting base, it's not clear that much is left of an appeal to "individual rights" in any meaningful sense.

Nor is it clear that the protestors are overriding social responsibility. They evidently don't see it that way. They would be appalled at the idea that what they are doing is similar to people with assault rifles running around the streets shooting randomly, though the comparison is apt. They do not think they are endangering anyone. Rather, they are following their revered leader in protesting an effort by the radical left, maybe on instructions from China, to destroy their elementary rights and even to take away their guns.

All further signs that the country is in deep trouble — and in the light of U.S. power, the world with it.

Apart from Trump's incompetence, what needs to be done globally so that we might both prevent another pandemic and what must we do to be better prepared in the future?

I don't feel that "incompetence" is quite the right word. He's quite competent in pursuing his primary goals: enriching the very wealthy, enhancing corporate power and profit, keeping his base in line while he stabs them in the back, and concentrating power in his hands by dismantling the executive branch, and so intimidating congressional Republicans that they timidly accept almost anything. I didn't hear a peep from them when Trump fired the scientist in charge of vaccine development for daring to question one of the quack cures he is promoting. There is dead silence from these ranks as he carries out his purge of inspector generals, who impose some controls on the swamp he has created in Washington, also insulting one of the most respected Republican senators, 86-year-old Chuck Grassley, who devoted his long career to establishing this system.

It is an impressive achievement.

What has to be done globally is to follow the advice that scientists are providing. A new pandemic is likely, probably worse than this one because of global warming, which may become climate roasting with another four years of the Trump plague. Steps have to be taken to prepare for it, the kind that were recommended in 2003 and were in small part pursued until Trump wielded his wrecking ball. There should be international cooperation in seeking coronaviruses and other potential hazards, developing the scientific understanding needed for rapid development of vaccines and drugs to alleviate symptoms, and implementing contingency plans to be put in place if a pandemic strikes again.

For the U.S. in particular, that means extricating the society from neoliberal dogma, which has had bitter consequences in the domain of health (and many others). The business model for hospitals, with no waste or spare capacity, is an invitation to disaster. More generally, the highly inefficient privatized health care system is a terrible burden on the society, with double the costs of other developed countries and some of the poorest outcomes. A recent Lancet study estimates its annual cost at almost $500 billion and 68,000 extra deaths. It is outrageous that the U.S. cannot rise to the level of other societies and instead relies on the most cruel and costly system of universal health care: emergency rooms. If you can drag yourself to one you can get care — followed perhaps by a healthy bill.

The same neoliberal dogma prevents the National Institutes of Health from proceeding beyond essential research and development for drugs to testing and distribution, bypassing the private companies and implementing the provisions of U.S. law, constantly ignored, which require that drugs produced with government assistance (virtually all) be available to the public at reasonable cost. The most careful studies of these matters that I know of are by Dean Baker, who estimates enormous savings with no loss of innovation if such measures are introduced (see his book Rigged, available free).

This is only a bare beginning. There are deep social, cultural and institutional problems that should be addressed.

Assuming that the November election is close, do you see Trump deploying the ruse of voting fraud to remain in power? If that happens, what do you foresee in terms of this playing out politically?

Trump and associates are already pushing that scam energetically, not for the first time. They know that they head a minority party and must resort to deceit and fraud to maintain political power. And for them, a lot is at stake. Another four years would enable them to guarantee that their far-right policies will prevail for a generation no matter what the population wants. That's been the goal of the McConnell strategy of placing the judiciary, top to bottom, in the hands of young far-right jurists who can block programs that are in the public interest. Loss of the current opportunity might doom their project. For Trump personally, the prospects of loss may be severe, even if he is psychologically capable of accepting it like a normal human being. He may be vulnerable to serious legal charges if his immunity is lost. And with the Republican Party having surrendered to his authority, North Korean-style, he faces few impediments. We can leave the rest to the imagination.

I realize that this sounds dystopian, but who is to say that Trump, out of sheer lust for power, will not galvanize a militia to back his desire to stay in power? Any thoughts?

Can't be ruled out. As widely recognized, the country is facing a longer-term constitutional crisis. The Senate is a radically undemocratic institution, to a lesser extent the electoral college. For demographic and structural reasons, a small minority of white, Christian, rural, traditional, often white supremacist voters can maintain control to an extent even beyond what racist Southern Democrats exercised before Nixon's "southern strategy" brought them into the Republican fold. And this is virtually unchangeable by constitutional amendment. It's not out of the question that in Trump's hands, the impending crisis may come about very soon.

Noam, I know that you prefer not to talk much about yourself, but at 91 how are you personally dealing with our surreal historical moment living under COVID-19?

In narrow personal terms, it's not a severe difficulty for my wife and me. For many others, it's a radically different story. The moment is indeed surreal. The future will be shaped by how we emerge from the crisis. The forces that are responsible for it, and for the neoliberal assault on the population that has, demonstrably, intensified it sharply, are not sitting back quietly. They are working relentlessly to ensure that what emerges is a harsher and more authoritarian version of what they had created in their own interest. There are popular forces seeking to grasp the current opportunities to reverse the disasters of the recent past and to move forward to a far more humane and decent world. And, crucially, to confront the far more severe crises that are looming.

We will recover from the pandemic, at a terrible cost. We will not recover from the ongoing melting of the polar ice sheets and the other consequences of the roasting of the earth that will make many of the areas of human habitation unlivable before too long if we continue on our current course. Another four years of the Trump malignancy will sharply increase the difficulties of dealing with this impending catastrophe — even if we escape the threat of terminal nuclear war that Trump is escalating by dismantling the arms control regime that offered some protection and racing to develop new and more dangerous means of destruction that undermine our diminishing security.

https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-trump-has-adopted-a-viva-death-approach-to-the-presidency/

sputniknews.com

French Court: People Die of Depleted Uranium Irradiation in Kosovo

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4-5 minutes

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Europe

19:26 GMT 05.06.2020Get short URL

The public has again drawn attention to the issue of how depleted uranium, which NATO used during its aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 to bomb Kosovo, affects the human body.

The Court of Appeal in the French city of Ren has sustained the claim by the widow of gendarme captain Henri Friconneau, who served in Kosovo in 2000; the woman claimed that her husband had died of depleted uranium irradiation. According to the Serbian expert, this precedent could mark the beginning of a campaign for truth, similar to the one that has been going on for years in Italy.

After four years of lawsuits, Friconneau's widow has managed to prove the true cause of her husband's death. There are many similar stories in Italy, where families of soldiers who died or received serious illnesses in Kosovo have been for years conducting and winning suits against the state, despite an active rebuff from the Italian authorities.

Dusan Gujanicic from Belgrade Institute for Political Studies pointed out that the Friconneau case is the first case of its kind in France that the press has at least showed interest in. According to him, the case could become a precedent that would provide the families of French soldiers who died of depleted uranium irradiation in Kosovo with legal and moral grounds to demand confirmation of the true causes of their death.

"As for the French citizens, we have to monitor the situation. I can't name the exact number of people who could file claims, but I expect something similar to happen in the foreseeable future," he said.

However, according to him, one shouldn't expect the number of lawsuits in France to exceed the number of similar cases in Italy, since French soldiers were much less exposed to depleted uranium: they served in Northern Mitrovica, while Italians were deployed in Metohija, on the border with Albania, where depleted uranium bombings were the most active.

"Considering this case, now it is our state and our diplomacy that lead the game. They should as much as possible commit to explaining to the whole world that what happened in Yugoslavia was a real humanitarian catastrophe. All Serbian organizations that can somehow influence the development of the situation should join this campaign," Gujanicic said.

According to him, it is Serbia's concern to push the truth through into French public opinion; and the media play a huge role here, they should monitor the consequences of the Friconneau case and report them.

Gujanicic believes that Serbia should encourage the families of the French military to seek the truth in court so that France talks as much as possible about the Yugoslav humanitarian disaster.

The Serbian political scientist stressed that one shouldn't have any illusions that the Friconneau case would soon become the number one news in the French and world media, but it could still have consequences if the case gets maximum media publicity.

"This is a long-term, exhausting struggle, and the results won't appear overnight. At the same time, one shouldn't forget about the resistance on the part of certain state and near-state structures, such as the one faced by the families of Italian military personnel, some of whom spoke about pressure and intimidation by the authorities," he recalled.

Despite the fact that the expert believes that it's too early to make concrete and far-reaching conclusions, he is convinced that Ren court's decision can serve as a legitimate basis for raising the question of the effects of depleted uranium.

 

Nationwide George Floyd riots are the price of liberalism

nypost.com

Nationwide George Floyd riots are the price of liberalism: Devine

Miranda Devine

6-8 minutes

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The tragedy of the riots sparked by George Floyd's death was brought home by a distraught elderly black woman interviewed by the local ABC affiliate in her ruined south Minneapolis neighborhood.

"These people did this for no reason," wept Stephanie Wilford, who lives in an apartment next to where shops were looted and burned Friday night. "They went straight to . . . every store over here that I go to. I have nowhere to go now and I have no way to get there because the buses aren't running."

The violence "is not going to bring George back. George is in a better place than we are. I'm going to be honest, I wish I was where George was."

But liberal agitators don't care about Stephanie and the poor urban communities that have been destroyed in the four-day orgy of self-congratulatory violence they sanctioned.

They are too busy dreaming up fantasy scapegoats.

Videos abound on social media of shadowy figures, dressed in black, systematically smashing store windows, but not looting, cutting through fences outside police stations, but not pushing the fences over; softening defenses for the rioters.

These are the domestic terrorists who have hijacked peaceful protests across the country. Attorney General Bill Barr described them in his Saturday press conference as "outside radicals and agitators [who] are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate and violent agenda.

"In many places, it appears the violence is planned, organized, and driven by anarchistic and far-left extremists, using Antifa-like tactics."

This is why Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison pretends that the external agitators in Minneapolis' riots were Trump-voting "white supremacists," because the former DNC deputy chairman is one of those in his party who has normalized Antifa as a useful part of the political process.

See his twitter feed of January 2018, when he posed for a selfie at a bookstore holding "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook" and wrote: "I just found the book that strikes fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump."

No wonder he and the rest of Minnesota's Democratic leadership are trying to offload blame for their persistent policing failures.

Invariably, it is cities run by soft-on-crime Democrats where police forces betray the people they are supposed to protect.

The Minneapolis police force is the creature of a city that has had Democratic mayors for almost 50 years.

As former Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Fox News over the weekend, "Don't elect progressive Democrats if you want to be safe."

All you need to know about Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is that he made the decision for police to evacuate the Third Precinct station, allowing it to be overrun by rioters and burned to the ground.

For four nights, criminals ransacked his city and terrorized its residents while the police were nowhere to be seen.

Instead of nipping the violence in the bud, Frey set a terrible precedent, allowing the contagion to spread across the country.

"Brick and mortar is not as important as life," he blithely told a press conference Thursday night as the city burned.

It's just property, say liberals who have never known a life without plenty. But the property they dismiss so easily can be a life's work, like the sports bar in Minneapolis into which Korboi Balla, a black firefighter, had poured his life savings. It was destroyed a few days before he was due to open this week.

Stores and businesses are a community's lifeblood, and many will never come back, causing more misery for the most vulnerable.

In any case, the policing vacuum also unleashed terrible violence.

There are videos all over social media of mobs chasing defenseless people, knocking them unconscious and kicking them in the head as they lie on the ground. Looters punched a store owner in the head and beat her with planks of wood in front of her husband. A man reportedly trying to protect his store with a sword was beaten senseless.

Bad people exist. That's why the vulnerable need police forces, which, for some perverse reason progressives keep trying to disempower.

With five months left until the election, Democrats are trying to capitalize on mayhem and disharmony to make President Trump look bad.

But he is the avowed law-and-order president who vowed Saturday: "My administration will stop mob violence, and we'll stop it cold."

Just as the 1968 riots led voters who were worried about social disorder to choose Richard Nixon as president, the 2020 riots are likely to play in Trump's favor.

Pols' slams at police shameful

Four NYPD cops were almost burned alive when a Molotov cocktail was thrown at their car on the weekend. Another officer was smashed in the face with a brick. On Saturday night alone, 33 cops were injured in pitched battles with anti-police protesters.

NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan described it as "an organized attempt to attack police" with bottles, bricks, Molotov cocktails and brass knuckles.

Considering the mortal danger they faced, the officers' restraint was remarkable.

At one point, when two police SUVs were surrounded by protesters trying to block their passage, cops decided not to be sitting ducks for another Molotov and gingerly drove though the mob.

There were no reports of serious injuries, but that didn't stop Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demanding the cops be "brought to justice."

Unlike in Minneapolis, the NYPD's forceful action stopped the city from being ransacked and burned to the ground and probably saved lives.

But instead of thanking them, Gov. Cuomo slams their behavior as "disturbing" and wants to investigate them.

Shame.

Cuo bro's act is wearing thin

It took a pandemic for the CNN audience to cotton on to the fact that Chris Cuomo is a vainglorious chump.

Maybe it was the tone-deaf back-slapping routines with his brother, the "luv gov," that did it, with nary a mention of all the nursing-home deaths that could have been avoided.

Or maybe it was his hypocrisy instructing viewers to wear masks while famously refusing to wear one himself when he actually was infected with COVID-19.

Either way, Fredo lost 50 percent of his audience in the last two months. Now they know; it's unlikely they'll come back.

 

jpost.com

A Republic of Kosovo is not what the Balkans needs

By ALEXANDAR NIKOLIC   MAY 31, 2020 02:45

7-8 minutes

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The dispute over the autonomous region of Kosovo and Metohija should be resolved in compromise, not unilateral action.

Kosovo's President Hashim Thaci, Croatia's Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium February 16, 2020

(photo credit: ARIS OIKONOMOU/POOL VIA REUTERS)

One of the two essential rules in Roman law's concept says: audi alteram partem – let the other side be heard. Having grown up in the Jewish community of Belgrade, I sometimes feel vilified by the unbalanced approach that appears occasionally in the mainstream foreign media or even in Israel, by authors like Akri Çipa ("The new Israeli government should finally recognize Kosovo," The Jerusalem Post, May 23, 2020). The feeling of being the underdog doesn't abolish this essential rule, to the contrary, it strengthens it. Çipa's advocating against Israel's principled foreign policy, in favor of its recognition of the so-called Republic of Kosovo, is continuously and systematically biased.

It is well known that the Jewish people and their only state, the State of Israel, suffered for decades from manipulative and maliciously hostile reporting, perhaps more than any other nation throughout the world. Consequently, Israelis are expected to identify and be wary of such tailor-made attempts to whomever they may be directed, and indeed they were. The State of Israel is sovereign nation, and its leaders' evaluations and decisions in all areas, including foreign policy, are made in their best interests.

The Israeli constellation of disputes and, unfortunately, even conflicting relations with some countries – not only in the region – requires the firm opposition to any solution involving coercion and preconditions, therefore establishing damaging precedent that could be used tomorrow against Israel itself.

Regarding the status of the disputed autonomous region of Kosovo and Metohija, Israel supports the straightforward negotiations between Belgrade and Priština, and the solution which should result from compromise. In general, as far as the western Balkan region is concerned, the Jewish state proved to both initiate and be innovative in developing balanced relations and cooperation in all fields, especially in the economy. The continuous and highly principled Israeli stance on the Kosovo and Metohija issue is not only the result of this prudent approach, but also of the affirmation of the policy based on the highest principles in foreign relations and international law.

National interests are not to be challenged by shifting personae in government, which Çipa advocates, not in a systematically functioning and democratic country such as Israel. Similarly to Israel, many other countries in the world, including five EU members – Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia and Spain – are opposed to the unilateral Albanian secession of the southern Serbian province. Just like Israel, none of these countries could accept a biased and unilateral solution, which creates precedent and violates the international law.

In the past two years, not even a single government has recognized "Kosovo." On the contrary, 18 countries have withdrawn or suspended their recognition. It clearly demonstrates the problematic issue of the "Kosovo" status, and the declining trend toward the support of the Kosovo Albanian stance. Today, less than half of the UN members have established relations with Priština. Recent votes in various international organizations over "Kosovo" membership ended devastating for them, even to the extent of taking the step of withdrawing their own applications.

HOW MANY Israelis are willing to accept a disastrous forced solution over the holy city of Jerusalem? Even those who are ready to compromise are determined that concessions should be accomplished in the final stage of direct negotiations between the two sides of the political dispute, thus complying with the very basic juristic principles. Similarly, Kosovo and Metohija is the cradle of Serbian national identity. Its monasteries: Visoki Decani, Pec Patriarchate and Gracanica are among the medieval living guardians of Serbian spiritual, cultural and historical heritage.

By arbitrary allegations Çipa tries to highlight only Kosovo Albanian suffering in 1999 and to demonize Serbia at the same time. He skillfully avoids the atrocities committed by the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, including human organs trade, which includes more than serious allegations. Much worse, articles, such as this one written by Çipa, which attempt to establish linkage with the Holocaust, try to silence the shameful facts of Kosovo Albanian Ballists' collaboration with the Axis powers and try to hide it behind the noble behavior of many Albanians in Albania. They omit to mention the atrocities done by the Kosovo Albanian 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg (1st Albanian), the mountain infantry division of the Waffen-SS. Needless to remind esteemed Jerusalem Post readers that those units fought against Yugoslav partisans who were overwhelmingly ethnic Serbs.

The State of Israel welcomed the Serbian compensation law for heirless Jewish property as a model for other countries, and in recent months we witnessed a list of promotive and moving acts by Belgrade: the law on the Memorial Center "Staro sajmište," a yellow flag bearing the Shield of David flying from the official residence of the President – Novi Dvor, or 'New Palace' in Belgrade – the day before the Fifth World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem and that Belgrade's major bridges, buildings and fountains were colored in Israeli Blau-Weiss (blue and white) in tribute to Israel Independence Day. Above all, the address of the President of the Republic of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee reaffirms the warm relations and mutual understanding between Israel and Serbia.

Israelis are present in numerous fields of the Serbian economy and investments, with encouraging growth trends, with so many described Belgrade as one of the safest and most pleasant destinations of their vacations. If Serbia was the very first state in the world to affirm the Balfour Declaration in writing, via descendant of the glorious Serbian Sephardi community, (Lt.-Col.) David Albala 1886–1942, let Israel persist in being among nations refusing to accept coercion over Belgrade.

The writer is the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Serbia in Israel, and can be contacted at alexn@gaon.com

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b92.net

The Balkans will be one of the US main fronts, so they want the Kosovo issue resolved

5-7 minutes

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Laris Gaiser, a Slovenian analyst and geopolitics professor, claims that the Balkans will become focal point to great powers in the forthcoming months

Source: Kosovo online Thursday, May 21, 2020 | 09:40

He also states that the influence of the United States will be strengthened, while Chinese foreign policy will face the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, pointing out that the appointment of Lajcak and Borrell as special envoys for the dialogue on Kosovo is a wrong move on the part of EU.

"With the current crisis, the Balkans will become even more important for the great powers. Global frictions between China and the United States will intensify, and given that China wanted to exert pressure through the Balkans and Central Europe in order to destabilize the EU and NATO systems, it is normal that Washington will now try to strongly oppose this by using Chinese weaknesses. Chinese foreign policy will suffer long-term consequences due to the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Balkans will become one of the main fronts for the United States. Under such a scenario, I think the U.S. would want the Kosovo knot to be resolved quickly", he told Kosovo Online.

Asked whether it is now possible to expect a conference that was prepared by official Paris and Berlin before the pandemic, he answered that it is unlikely.

"The conference could be possible, but it is unlikely that it will be organized soon. The EU has suffered a crisis within the crisis and must stabilize first. Due to the lack of an appropriate response to the Italian and Spanish crises, the EU has strengthened the general perception of the importance of individual countries, failing to become anchored in our common destiny", he says, adding:

"COVID-19 has accelerated the process of reshaping the international order. The EU and the EC used to be important projects for the United States after World War II. Now Brexit, along with German dominance in Europe, is the reason for Washington's deeper, renewed engagement in our regional balance of power. The conference is welcome as a clarification on options, but any future conference on Kosovo will be far from the French-German idea present prior to the pandemic".

 

World-leading Jewish rights group urges Bosnia authorities to ban Bleiburg mass

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World-leading Jewish human rights group, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, has urged Bosnian authorities to ban the recently announced Catholic Mass for the Bleiburg killings when tens of thousands of Croatian pro-Nazis were killed by the then Yugoslav authorities.

Honouring "the genocidal Ustasha state (Independent State of Croatia - NDH) is not only an insult to its victims and their families, but also to all those who opposed the crimes committed by the Ustasha," the Center said in their Thursday statement, referring to the World War II Croatian puppet pro-Nazi regime.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the events at Bleiburg, a small Austrian town on the border with Slovenia, where thousands of members of the Nazi-allied fascist Ustasha regime, together with pro-regime civilians, had surrendered to the British forces in the closing stages of World War II, only to be turned over to communist Partisans who then sent them on a death march back to Yugoslavia.

14.05.2020.

The Catholic mass in Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina - which during World War II was part of the fascist Nazi-allied Independent State of Croatia (NDH) - had been announced as a replacement for the open-air gathering normally held at Bleiburg itself, due to the restrictions imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Ustasha regime, which ran the Nazi-allied NDH on the territory which comprised much of present-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1941 to 1945, persecuted ethnic minorities, including Serbs, Jews, and Roma. At its main extermination camp at Jasenovac, official estimates say that more than 80,000 people had perished, including some 20,000 children up to 14 years of age.

Croatian nationalists, on the other hand, see the controversial annual event as a symbol of their suffering under communism in the former Yugoslavia before they fought a war for independence in the 1990s.

The central commemoration ceremony in Sarajevo is scheduled to be performed by Archbishop Vinko Puljic, the highest-ranking clergyman of the Catholic Church in Bosnia. A parallel event is to be held at a graveyard in the Croatian capital.

http://ba.n1info.com/English/NEWS/a433924/World-leading-Jewish-rights-group-urges-Bosnia-authorities-to-ban-Bleiburg-mass.html

theguardian.com

US intelligence agencies under pressure to link coronavirus to Chinese labs

Patrick Wintour

6-7 minutes

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Senior figures in the Trump administration have put pressure on US intelligence agencies to provide evidence to support claims that the coronavirus outbreak originated in state-run laboratories in China, a report in the New York Times claims.

Intelligence analysts fear Donald Trump is looking for propaganda to be used in the escalating blame game over whether China covered up the crisis or even generated the virus in its laboratories – a theory that remains unproven.

Most scientists who have studied the genetics of the coronavirus provided by China say the overwhelming probability is that it jumped from animal to human in a non-laboratory setting, as was the case with previous pandemics.

The office of the director of national intelligence said in a statement on Thursday that it had concluded that the virus was "not manmade or genetically modified", but said that officials were still examining whether the origins of the pandemic could be traced to contact with infected animals or an accident at a Chinese lab.

"The intelligence community [IC] also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the Covid-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified," said the statement. "The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."

In recent days Trump and his allies have sharpened their rhetoric on China, accusing it of failing to act swiftly enough to stop the spread of the virus or sound the alarm about the outbreak.

Those reported as pushing US intelligence agencies to lend credence to the theory that the virus was created in Chinese labs include the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, the deputy national security adviser, Matthew Pottinger, and Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence.

In numerous TV interviews, Pompeo has said China suppressed information on the virus and withheld key facts from the World Health Organization, and he has hinted that he believes the virus originated in Chinese laboratories.

But the suggestion that intelligence agencies are being put under pressure to produce evidence represents a step up from such comments. Such a finding would turn the international disaster into something akin to biological warfare, or a lab accident of catastrophic proportions.

More than 1 million people have been infected and more than 60,000 have died in the US from the virus, adding political urgency to Trump's desire to shift blame for the crisis on to China.

China has been resisting an international inquiry into the origins of the outbreak in Wuhan and, under pressure, says it is a matter for the WHO to investigate. The proposal is unlikely to mollify Trump, who has condemned the WHO as Chinese-centric and has suspended US funding from the UN agency pending a review.

Chris Patten, the former governor general of Hong Kong and a long-term critic of Chinese efforts to control democracy in the former colony, has joined the calls for an international inquiry, accusing China of initially covering up the outbreak.

The calls for an inquiry have been strongest in Australia, leading to a diplomatic confrontation between the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the Chinese ambassador to Australia, Cheng Jingye. The calls have also been supported by Winston Peters, New Zealand's foreign minister.

Peters said: "It is very hard to conceive, no matter what country it is, of there not being a desire from every country around the world – including the country of origin – for an investigation to find out how this happened."

Jingye has warned of a Chinese boycott of Australian goods and services.

Beijing has been caught in a bind, with its diplomats sometimes saying it is not even clear whether the virus originated in China, contending that it is a legitimate matter for inquiry by scientists, but then rejecting an international inquiry into the source of the outbreak. Chinese diplomats distinguish between an international inquiry, which they say is likely to be a political blame game, and a dispassionate examination by WHO scientists.

Critics of China counter that the WHO's record shows it has neither the will nor the investigative powers required to look deep into the entrails of the Chinese Communist party and expose any cover-up. The WHO is dependent on the cooperation of its member states for access and has no mechanism to punish countries that keep its officials in the dark.

Proposals have been floated for the WHO to be given the power to impose sanctions on countries that are not transparent with it, but this proposal would need to pass the WHO's general assembly, and would require nation states handing over a degree of sovereignty to a multilateral body.

The Chinese ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, delivered a lengthy rebuttal to the prospect of an international inquiry last week. "You're talking about independent investigation. It's up to the WHO. We support the WHO. We believe we should play by international norms and international rules, not by some other countries' rules. Some other country even sues China at its local court. It's absurd,"he said in remarks to the Asia Society in London.

"This is not the first time that some politicians want to play world police. This is not the era of 'gunboat diplomacy'. This is not the era when China was still in a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. This is the third decade of the 21st century. Those people cannot understand it. They think they still live in the old days when they can bully China and the world. If the WHO does not act their way, they stop their support and criticise the WHO to be 'China-centric'. That's simply not right.

"So we are calling for international cooperation. That's the only weapon and only way out to win this battle against the virus. Not by scapegoating, not by playing games, not by politicising the virus, not by spreading a political virus."

 

Predictions: What Will Happen Next in the Corona Crisis?

Predictions: What Will Happen Next in the Corona Crisis?

By James Corbett, April 26, 2020

There is a second wave of Covid-19 coming in the next few months. We don't have to speculate about this. Not only have we heard this from all manner of politicians and health "authorities" over the past few months, but it was an integral part of MIT Technology Review's now-infamous "We're not going back to normal" article, which revealed how the waves of lockdown and release were going to restructure our lives and condition us into the Corona World Order. And, lest there be any doubt that this is an important part of the plandemic narrative, Bill Gates just reaffirmed it in his latest "GatesNotes" on "The first modern pandemic."

 

washingtontimes.com

Let Bill Clinton's failed Kosovo strategy wither amid the COVID-19 pandemic

J. Michael Waller

7-9 minutes

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ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Like a political cult's fantasy park, a 10-foot statue of a waving Bill Clinton leers over Bill Clinton Boulevard not far from the Hillary clothing boutique. A metal bust of President Clinton's former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, lurks in the park nearby. Out of town, near an American military base, a 20-mile stretch of road is named after Joe Biden's late son. A congressman from the Bronx, Eliot Engel, not only got his own boulevard but earned his face on a postage stamp.

It sounds like a freak show for The Swamp, and it's real. All made possible with $2 billion of the American taxpayers' money. Add an extra big bill for American troops there — not to protect the place from foreign invaders or to secure American vital interests — but to keep the locals from killing one another. The freak show is called Kosovo.

Kosovo is a never-ending mess. Its own people, a mishmash of irreconcilable cultures, historically can't get along without some form of dictator or military occupation. Each side ethnically "cleanses" itself of the other in a civil war horror between ethnic Albanian Muslims and ethnic Serbian Christians. The Albanian majority forced out most of the Christians — hardly anyone in the world cared — and declared independence from Serbia. 

The breakaway landlocked province has zero strategic value to the United States. Less than half the area of Vermont, Kosovo is home to a population almost the size of the Bronx. It's a babel of five official languages with two alphabets. Eighty percent of its young people don't work. Kosovo's most famous exports are jihadists.

Just over two decades ago, Kosovo's bloody civil war against the Christians and the Christian Serbs' tough response prompted Congressman Engel to persuade Ms. Albright and Mr. Clinton to use American force to defeat the Christian side. Mr. Clinton used NATO as a fig leaf to run a bombing campaign affectionately called "Madeleine's War" supposedly to stop the bloodshed. 

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The humanitarian bombing brought autonomy to Kosovo, but the bombs weren't enough: An Islamist insurgency, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), ran guerrilla operations on the ground to shape the new rebel government. Many U.S. officials at the time considered the KLA as an Islamist terrorist group, but Mr. Engel wasn't perturbed. He used his seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee to sponsor legislation to fund the KLA. That arguably helped earn Mr. Engel his picture on a Kosovo postage stamp.

After the war, the locals proved once again that they couldn't get along and needed an armed babysitter. Mr. Clinton brought in American troops with European allies flying the NATO banner, and absurdly invited Russian troops to "help." The awkward hybrid nearly resulted in a NATO military confrontation with Russia.

With the United States and allied ground forces providing militarized child care, a "peace process" dragged on for years, during which the secessionist province broke from Serbia in 2008 and declared independence thanks to U.S. troops, who ensured that the peace process would continue stalling endlessly.

Seeing that Russia had taken advantage and renewed its centuries-old ties with Serbia, with the Chinese in pursuit for a European foothold, the Trump administration has been trying to pull the United States out of the Kosovo mess and woo Serbia westward. Serbia, though small, remains a hub linking southeastern and central Europe, and a partial land bridge from central Europe away from the Russian- and Turkish-dominated Black Sea, toward the Mediterranean.

But Kosovo-backers want nothing of it. Recently in pandemic-shuttered Washington, scripted talking-point recyclers are bleating for attention to save the Clintonian status quo. One of them took a break from the lockdown to call Kosovo "the most pro-American country in Europe." Another hailed the microstate as "the most pro-US country on the globe." 

That might be true as long as the stupid Americans continue to pump in cash and provide military protection from the hated Christians. But it doesn't quite reconcile with Kosovo's status as the West's biggest per-capita recruitment ground for jihadist terrorists.

Now, longtime partisans of the Clinton machine are lamenting that "America's Kosovo strategy is melting down."

It's about time. 

• J. Michael Waller is senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC. Follow him on Twitter @JMichaelWaller.

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