Category: zerohedge

There’s nothing like helping along a good old fashioned health crisis by having people sh*t wherever they want publicly.

The city of Tooting, in London, has been the latest to join the long line of municipalities who are likely doing more harm than good with their Covid restrictions. They have no portable toilets in their town’s common area which has resulted in “an ‘increasingly serious problem of human excrement’, particularly in wooded areas,” according to the Metro UK. 

The problem has gotten so bad, the Friends of Tooting Common group have written to their local council to complain. They are demanding toilets “to avoid unsanitary and inappropriate use of bushes and wooded areas” and have encouraged their local council to provide “clear signage” toward the toilets.

As lockdown measures ease, more people are spending longer areas in the park, “potentially spending the day drinking”, the report says. 

Local Resident Jasmine Dahl told the Metro: “There’s nothing worse than seeing humans’ bodily functions.”

She continued: “I live by Clapham Common and I must see about 10 willies a year with people peeing by trees. Without Portaloos there can be long stretches where there are no loos at all and people are funny about using toilets in shops even more because of the pandemic.”

A council spokesperson responded: “There is no excuse whatsoever for people to treat the common in this way. There are toilets at the café and we are assessing ways in which we can increase provision on the common including the use of temporary Portaloos.”

Authored by Rick Rozoff via AntiWar.com,

White House Press Secretary Jen “Russia will be accountable by the international community“ Psaki announced today that her boss, President Joe “I will continue with every fiber in my being to keep America involved with troops that can shoot and kill” Biden, will make his first overseas trip in June; in fact his first trip outside the country; only the fourteenth trip outside the capital with the exception of visits to his home in Delaware. In over three months in office.

His fairly abbreviated tour will take him to Cornwall for a G7 summit, then to Brussels for a NATO summit and a U.S.–European Union summit. Though it may be difficult to discern when one ends and the other begins. The U.S. (and Canada) + the European Union = NATO.

He’s not had time to visit forty-one states in his own nation (82% of them), but will play the merry summiteer in Britain and Belgium. One must have priorities as leader of the free world.

His are, to cite Psaki, to “highlight his commitment to restoring our alliances, revitalizing the Transatlantic relationship, and working in close cooperation with our allies and multilateral partners to address global challenges….” She added something at the end about America’s interests.

When he arrives in the Belgian capital he’ll deliver on what he was really elected to do, to “affirm the United States’ commitment to NATO, Transatlantic security, and collective defense.” Nothing about American interests at the end of that comment.

When he joins the other twenty-nine NATO heads of state to thunder against Russia and China – which will be the hallmark of his and other attendees’ speeches – and to plot NATO’s further penetration of the planet, as it’s not content with 70 members and partners on all six inhabited continents (with India as the projected big catch) – he’ll follow in the footsteps of his Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was at NATO headquarters in March and again shortly afterward in April, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who was there during Blinken’s second visit. And while Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba was there as well. Odd coincidence as the threat of war between Ukraine and Russia was then in the air.

Having proven his undying loyalty to war and militarism for half a century, Joe Biden is the American president NATO has always dreamed of. Even better than Dwight Eisenhower, who was NATO’s first Supreme Commander Allied Forces Europe.

California, Alaska, New York and Florida, you’ll have to wait. Joe may see you after he returns from NATO’s new billion-dollar headquarters. Bomb Back Better.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

Putin’s address to the Russian Federal Assembly – a de facto State of the Nation – was a judo move that left Atlanticist sphere hawks particularly stunned…

The “West” was not even mentioned by name. Only indirectly, or via a delightful metaphor, Kipling’s Jungle Book. Foreign policy was addressed only at the end, almost as an afterthought.

For the best part of an hour and a half, Putin concentrated on domestic issues, detailing a series of policies that amount to the Russian state helping those in need – low income families, children, single mothers, young professionals, the underprivileged – with, for instance, free health checks all the way to the possibility of an universal income in the near future.

Of course he would also need to address the current, highly volatile state of international relations. The concise manner he chose to do it, counter-acting the prevailing Russophobia in the Atlanticist sphere, was quite striking.

First, the essentials. Russia’s policy “is to ensure peace and security for the well-being of our citizens and for the stable development of our country.”

Yet if “someone does not want to…engage in dialogue, but chooses an egoistic and arrogant tone, Russia will always find a way to stand up for its position.”

He singled out “the practice of politically motivated, illegal economic sanctions” to connect it to “something much more dangerous”, and actually rendered invisible in the Western narrative: “the recent attempt to organize a coup d’etat in Belarus and the assassination of that country’s president.” Putin made sure to stress, “all boundaries have been crossed”.

The plot to kill Lukashenko was unveiled by Russian and Belarusian intel – which detained several actors backed, who else, US intel. The US State Department predictably denied any involvement.

Putin: “It is worth pointing to the confessions of the detained participants in the conspiracy that a blockade of Minsk was being prepared, including its city infrastructure and communications, the complete shutdown of the entire power grid of the Belarusian capital. This, incidentally means preparations for a massive cyber-attack.”

And that leads to a very uncomfortable truth: “Apparently, it’s not for no reason that our Western colleagues have stubbornly rejected numerous proposals by the Russian side to establish an international dialogue in the field of information and cyber-security.”

“Asymmetric, swift and harsh”

Putin remarked how to “attack Russia” has become “a sport, a new sport, who makes the loudest statements.” And then he went full Kipling: “Russia is attacked here and there for no reason. And of course, all sorts of petty Tabaquis [jackals] are running around like Tabaqui ran around Shere Khan [the tiger] – everything is like in Kipling’s book – howling along and ready to serve their sovereign. Kipling was a great writer”.

The – layered – metaphor is even more startling as it echoes the late 19th century geopolitical Great Game between the British and Russian empires, of which Kipling was a protagonist.

Once again Putin had to stress that “we really don’t want to burn any bridges. But if someone perceives our good intentions as indifference or weakness and intends to burn those bridges completely or even blow them up, he should know that Russia’s response will be asymmetric, swift and harsh”.

So here’s the new law of the geopolitical jungle – backed by Mr. Iskander, Mr. Kalibr, Mr. Avangard, Mr. Peresvet, Mr. Khinzal, Mr. Sarmat, Mr. Zircon and other well-respected gentlemen, hypersonic and otherwise, later complimented on the record. Those who poke the Bear to the point of threatening “the fundamental interests of our security will regret what has been done, as they have regretted nothing for a very long time.”

The stunning developments of the past few weeks – the China-US Alaska summit, the Lavrov-Wang Yi summit in Guilin, the NATO summit, the Iran-China strategic deal, Xi Jinping’s speech at the Boao forum – now coalesce into a stark new reality: the era of a unilateral Leviathan imposing its iron will is over.

For those Russophobes who still haven’t got the message, a cool, calm and collected Putin was compelled to add, “clearly, we have enough patience, responsibility, professionalism, self-confidence, self-assurance in the correctness of our position and common sense when it comes to making any decisions. But I hope that no one will think about crossing Russia’s so-called red lines. And where they run, we determine ourselves in each specific case.”

Back to realpolitik, Putin once again had to stress the “special responsibility” of the “five nuclear states” to seriously discuss “issues related to strategic armament”. It’s an open question whether the Biden-Harris administration – behind which stand a toxic cocktail of neo-cons and humanitarian imperialists – will agree.

Putin: “The goal of such negotiations could be to create an environment of conflict-free coexistence based on equal security, covering not only strategic weapons such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, heavy bombers and submarines, but also, I would like to emphasize, all offensive and defensive systems capable of solving strategic tasks, regardless of their equipment.”

As much as Xi’s address to the Boao forum was mostly directed to the Global South, Putin highlighted how “we are expanding contacts with our closest partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BRICS, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the allies of the Collective Security Treaty Organization”, and extolled “joint projects in the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union”, billed as “practical tools for solving the problems of national development.”

In a nutshell: integration in effect, following the Russian concept of “Greater Eurasia”.

“Tensions skirting wartime levels”

Now compare all of the above with the White House Executive Order (EO) declaring a “national emergency” to “deal with the Russian threat”.

This is directly connected to President Biden – actually the combo telling him what to do, complete with earpiece and teleprompter – promising Ukraine’s President Zelensky that Washington would “take measures” to support Kiev’s wishful thinking of retaking Donbass and Crimea.

There are several eyebrow-raising issues with this EO. It denies, de facto, to any Russian national the full rights to their US property. Any US resident may be accused of being a Russian agent engaged in undermining US security. A sub-sub paragraph (C), detailing “actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in the United States or abroad”, is vague enough to be used to eliminate any journalism that supports Russia’s positions in international affairs.

Purchases of Russian OFZ bonds have been sanctioned, as well as one of the companies involved in the production of the Sputnik V vaccine. Yet the icing on this sanction cake may well be that from now on all Russian citizens, including dual citizens, may be barred from entering US territory except via a rare special authorization on top of the ordinary visa.

The Russian paper Vedomosti has noted that in such paranoid atmosphere the risks for large companies such as Yandex or Kaspersky Lab are significantly increasing. Still, these sanctions have not been met with surprise in Moscow. The worst is yet to come, according to Beltway insiders: two packages of sanctions against Nord Stream 2 already approved by the US Department of Justice.

The crucial point is that this EO de facto places anyone reporting on Russia’s political positions as potentially threatening “American democracy”. As top political analyst Alastair Crooke has remarked, this is a “procedure usually reserved for citizens of enemy states during times of war”. Crooke adds, “US hawks are upping the ante fiercely against Moscow. Tensions and rhetoric are skirting wartime levels.”

It’s an open question whether Putin’s State of the Nation will be seriously examined by the toxic lunatic combo of neocons and humanitarian imperialists bent on simultaneously harassing Russia and China.

But the fact is something extraordinary has already started to happen: a “de-escalation” of sorts.

Even before Putin’s address, Kiev, NATO and the Pentagon apparently got the message implicit in Russia moving two armies, massive artillery batteries and airborne divisions to the borders of Donbass and to Crimea – not to mention top naval assets moved from the Caspian to the Black Sea. NATO could not even dream of matching that.

Facts on different grounds speak volumes. Both Paris and Berlin were terrified of a possible Kiev clash directly against Russia, and lobbied furiously against it, bypassing the EU and NATO.

Then someone – it might have been Jake Sullivan – must have whispered on Crash Test Dummy’s earpiece that you don’t go around insulting the head of a nuclear state and expect to keep your global “credibility”. So after that by now famous “Biden” phone call to Putin came the invitation to the climate change summit, in which any lofty promises are largely rhetorical, as the Pentagon will continue to be the largest polluting entity on planet Earth.

So Washington may have found a way to keep at least one avenue of dialogue open with Moscow. At the same time Moscow has no illusions whatsoever that the Ukraine/Donbass/Crimea drama is over. Even if Putin did not mention it in the State of the Nation. And even if Defense Minister Shoigu has ordered a de-escalation.

The always inestimable Andrei Martyanov has gleefully noted the “cultural shock when Brussels and D.C. started to suspect that Russia doesn’t ‘want’ Ukraine. What Russia wants is for this country to rot and implode without excrement from this implosion hitting Russia. West’s paying for the clean up of this clusterf**k is also in Russian plans for Ukrainian Bantustan.”

The fact that Putin did not even mention Bantustan in his speech corroborates this analysis. As far as “red lines” are concerned, Putin’s implicit message remains the same: a NATO base on Russia’s western flank simply won’t be tolerated. Paris and Berlin know it. The EU is in denial. NATO will always refuse to admit it.

We always come back to the same crucial issue: whether Putin will be able, against all odds, to pull a combined Bismarck-Sun Tzu move and build a lasting German-Russian entente cordiale (and that’s quite far from an “alliance’). Nord Stream 2 is an essential cog in the wheel – and that’s what’s driving Washington hawks crazy.

Whatever happens next, for all practical purposes Iron Curtain 2.0 is now on, and it simply won’t go away. There will be more sanctions. Everything was thrown at the Bear short of a hot war. It will be immensely entertaining to watch how, and via which steps, Washington will engage on a “de-escalation and diplomatic process” with Russia.

The Hegemon may always find a way to deploy a massive P.R. campaign and ultimately claim a diplomatic success in “dissolving” the impasse. Well, that certainly beats a hot war. Otherwise, lowly Jungle Book adventurers have been advised: try anything funny and be ready to meet “asymmetric, swift and harsh”.

In a move that is undoubtedly going to raise all sorts of ethical and scientific questions, scientists have now successfully grown human-monkey chimeric embryos for up to 20 days. The international team of scientists was led by gene expression expert Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte from the Salk Institute in California, according to RT.

Along with his team, he “implanted human stem cells into primate embryos which then grew for up to up to 20 days.”

While the experiment toes many ethical lines, the potential benefits of helping humans understand evolution and biology seem to have outweighed the negatives – for the time being, at least. 

Belmonte said: “As we are unable to conduct certain types of experiments in humans, it is essential that we have better models to more accurately study and understand human biology and disease. An important goal of experimental biology is the development of model systems that allow for the study of human diseases under in vivo conditions.”

The monkey embryos were injected with human stem cells 6 days after they were created, which can “yield multiple different types of tissue, both embryonic and non- or extra-embryonic tissues,” the report notes.

The human cells were still found in 132 chimera embryos 24 hours after implantation. 109 embryos continued to develop after 9 days. After day 19, only 3 embryos remained. After 20 days, all of the embryos had been destroyed. 

Researchers were able to examine the resultant embryos to determine “which communication pathways between the monkey and human cells were viable in the generation of future chimeras and which were not.”

The team said it gave the “utmost attention to ethical considerations… by coordinating closely with regulatory agencies” during their research.

Technology developed by Weizhi Ji and his team at Kunming University of Science and Technology in Yunnan, China has made the attempts at chimeras – which have been ongoing since the 1970’s – possible. 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The FBI has produced 68 pages relating to a Democrat National Committee (DNC) worker who was shot dead in 2016 in Washington, including an investigative summary that appears to suggest someone could have paid for his death.

Seth Rich, the worker, was shot dead in the early morning hours on July 16, 2016, near his home in the nation’s capital.

The murder, which is unsolved to this day, fueled widespread media coverage, especially after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange suggested that Rich was the person who provided internal DNC emails to WikiLeaks. Rich’s family has called the notion that Rich leaked documents to WikiLeaks a conspiracy theory.

The newly released files show top Department of Justice officials met in 2018 and discussed Rich’s murder. They reviewed Rich’s financial records and did not identify any unusual deposits or withdrawals.

Additionally, none of the witnesses interviewed during the investigation reported to authorities anything unusual about Rich’s life prior to the homicide.

One witness saw an individual walking away from the location where Rich was killed but thought Rich was merely drunk so did not alert authorities. They realized something bad had happened when they saw a bloodstain on the ground in the same place the following day, as well as police tape surrounding the scene.

A person whose name was redacted took Rich’s personal laptop to his house, according to one of the newly released documents. The page also indicates that authorities were not aware if the person deleted or changed anything on Rich’s personal laptop.

The FBI came into possession of Rich’s work laptop, the bureau previously revealed.

On another page, it was said that “given [redacted] it is conceivable that an individual or group would want to pay for his death.”

“That doesn’t sound like a random street robbery,” Ty Clevenger, a lawyer, told The Epoch Times.

Law enforcement officials have suggested Rich was the victim of an attempted robbery, according to news reports, though none of his belongings were stolen. They have said no evidence links the shooting to Rich’s employment by the Democratic National Committee.

The files were released this week in a lawsuit filed on behalf of Texas resident Brian Huddleston, who Clevenger represents.

Seth Rich, the voter expansion data director for the Democratic National Committee, in a file photograph. (LinkedIn)

Huddleston sued the FBI after it told him it would take 8 to 10 months in June 2020 to respond to his Freedom of Information Act request. Huddleston asked the FBI to produce all data, documents, records, or communications that reference Seth Rich or his brother, Aaron Rich.

A federal judge earlier this year ordered the FBI to produce documents concerning Rich by April 23. The FBI identified 576 relevant documents but only produced 68 of them to Huddleston.

The FBI has declined to speak about the lawsuit. Attorneys for Rich’s parents did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The documents show that some reporting on Rich’s death was wrong, such as an ABC News report that claimed the FBI was not involved in investigating the murder.

Clevenger said he found concerning how the government apparently does not know whether anything was deleted from Rich’s personal laptop.

The documents were largely redacted but the information that did get through “shows that their whole narrative is falling apart,” he added. “It’s a step in the right direction.”

The attorney plans to ask U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant, an Obama nominee, to produce unredacted copies for his perusal. The judge could rule that some redactions were improper.

Defendants could also face repercussions for not producing all of the documents they have concerning Rich, including fines.

U.S. Attorney Andrea Parker, who is representing the FBI, told the judge in a court filing this week that the bureau can only process 500 pages per month for each Freedom of Information Act request. She asked the court to give the bureau additional time to produce all of the relevant records.

Clevenger told the judge in a court filing this week that the private sector routinely processes 500 pages or more per day and that the government should be afforded no more than two weeks to produce the remaining 1,063 pages.

For years readers have read our countless notes on Boston Dynamics‘ four-legged Spot robot. Now there’s a new robo-dog in town, and its name is “AlphaDog.” 

Chinese tech firm, Welian, has developed the Chinese version of Spot called AlphaDog, which is already on sale for $2,400. Compared to the $74,500 price tag of Spot, this robo-dog is more affordable than the US version. 

AlphaDog’s design is similar to SPOT – and it even has the same name as an early Boston Dynamics prototype from a decade ago. While SPOT is positioned for commercial use, AlphaDog has been geared towards consumers.

“It’s really very similar to a real dog,” Ma Jie, chief technology officer at Weilan, told AFP. 

AlphaDog is more agile and faster than Spot. The robot moves at speeds up to 9 mph or about 2.5x faster than SPOT. It uses sensors and artificial intelligence to maneuver around obstacles and complete tasks. 

“It can predict the friction and height of the ground (to) adjust its height, adjust the stride frequency, and adapt to the environment,” he told AFP.

Welian integrated AlphaDog with 5G technology to make it carry out tasks autonomously. At the moment, the company has sold 1,800 units to developers and tech enthusiasts. 

It remains to be seen what AlphaDog will become as developers and tech enthusiasts begin experimenting with the robot. Many of these folks have been drooling over SPOT for nearly half a decade but could not obtain one due to lack of business credentials and price. 

What appears evident is that robot dogs will be integrated into society and the corporate world to complete tasks for humans. It’s only a matter of time before these machines are outfitted with weapons for war. 

… and already Spot has been tested by the French military. 

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The White House on Friday ended the Trump-era policy of fining illegal immigrants who have failed to leave the United States, claiming there is no evidence they work.

Authorities with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rescinded two orders, which were used during the Trump administration, on collecting financial penalties and issuing fines to illegal immigrants. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will also work with the Treasury Department to cancel the existing debts of illegal immigrants who had been fined.

“There is no indication that these penalties promoted compliance with noncitizens’ departure obligations,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement on Friday.

“We can enforce our immigration laws without resorting to ineffective and unnecessary punitive measures.”

ICE stopped issuing the fines on Jan. 20, the first day President Joe Biden took office. Friday’s announcement from Mayorkas essentially formalizes the policy change.

Former President Donald Trump in 2018 used the Immigration and Nationality Act to issue fines after the federal government had not done so for decades. At one point, the administration was fining illegal immigrants up to $500 every day they remained in the United States after being told to depart. According to reports, some illegal immigrants had fines of up to $500,000.

During the start of his term in 2017, Trump signed an order that promised “as soon as practicable, and by no later than one year after the date of this order,” the federal government can collect “all fines and penalties that the Secretary is authorized under the law to assess and collect from aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”

But according to Friday’s release, DHS said it reviewed “detailed data regarding the issuance of such fines since 2018” and was “clear to Secretary Mayorkas and Acting [ICE] Director Tae Johnson that the fines were not effective and had not meaningfully advanced the interests of the agency.”

“ICE intends to work with the Department of Treasury to cancel the existing debts of those who had been fined,” said the news release.

“The rescission marks ICE’s latest move toward focusing its limited resources on those posing the greatest risk to national security and public safety in accordance with the current guidance on civil immigration enforcement and removal priorities,” it added.

After Biden took office in January, his administration moved to rescind several Trump-era orders, including the “Remain in Mexico” policy and halting construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall—although the pause in wall construction is being reviewed by the Government Accountability Office as to whether it violated the Constitution’s provision that Congress has the power to allocate funds.

Republicans have pounced on Biden’s orders, saying the move—in combination with the administration’s messaging—has encouraged illegal immigrants and unaccompanied minors to stream across the border, where tens of thousands are being housed in makeshift Border Patrol and Health and Human Services facilities, military bases, and other emergency holding sites.

The American Lung Association has released its 22nd annual State of the Air Report. Statista’s Niall McCarthy details that it found that 135 million Americans live with polluted air that is putting their health and lives at risk. It also found that the burden is not being shared equally with people of color 61 percent more likely to live in a county with polluted air than white people. While some parts of the country made improvements with 14.8 million fewer Americans inhaling unhealthy year compared to last year, the threat of particulate air pollution is worsening.

Close to 1.1 million Americans were found to be living in areas with unhealthy levels of PM2.5 pollution compared to last year’s report.

Microscopic PM2.5 particles emanate from many sources such as diesel engines, coal-fired power plants, wildfires and wood-burning stoves. They can cause a range of health issues including asthma attacks, heart attacks, strokes and the development of lung cancer while, more recently, they have also been linked to worse outcomes in Covid-19 patients. Every year, the report ranks U.S. cities across two categories of air pollution – short-term particle pollution and year-round particle pollution. 54.4 million Americans fall into the first category and have to live with dangerous spikes in short-term particle pollution, primarily due to residential woodburning and wildfire smoke.

20.9 million Americans have to live with year-round particle pollution, the second category. Based on the the National Air Quality standard for year-round particle pollution, counties scoring below 12 were given “Pass” grades while those scoring above were “failed”.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Once again, Bakersfield, California, was named the worst U.S. city for year-round particle pollution despite the fact that it managed to improve its levels of short-term PM2.5. It was followed on the list of worst-performing cities by Fresno-Madera-Hanford and Visalia, both of which are also in California. Poor air quality has been a problem for years in California and the state retained its distinction of having the worst performing cities in the report, with 10 of the 25 most polluted cities in the country.

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

President Biden announced last week that he planned to remove all combat troops from Afghanistan by September, which he says will mark the end of what is now a twenty-year war in the central Asian country.

A week earlier, the US and Iraq reaffirmed a deal to withdraw “any remaining combat forces” from Iraq, and to further wind down the US involvement there, which dates back to the 2003 invasion.

In both cases, of course, the stated plans to end military intervention have been framed in polite language designed to make it look like the US is leaving on its own terms—and also to allow the US regime some level of plausibility when it claims “mission accomplished.”

In reality, of course, both Iraq and Afghanistan are just two more wars that the United States has lost in a long list of botched military interventions dating back to Vietnam and Korea. Moreover, these withdrawals signal the US’s continued geopolitical decline in a world that is becoming multipolar and highly motivated to bring to a final end the US’s vanishing “unipolar moment.”

But what exactly do we mean by “lost” in this context? Well, by the standards of the objectives presented by the US regime itself when these wars began, these wars are complete failures.

For example, we were told Iraq and Afghanistan would become “democracies” where Western-style human rights are protected and valued.

That was the humanitarian justification.

We were also told these countries would become reliable allies of the United States, sort of like Germany or Japan.

That was the geopolitical justification.

The US has failed on both fronts.

The Failure of Global Democracy

When the United States first invaded Afghanistan, following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the US regime claimed the mission was both a punitive and a strategic one. The military intervention was, we were told, designed to punish and disable the Taliban regime, which was fostering terrorist training camps of the sort that supposedly led to 9/11.

But, not surprisingly, Washington then decided it was going to stay in Afghanistan for a long time. The voters were soon told to brace for a generational war, one that could last decades. After twenty or twenty-five years, though, we were told Afghanistan would become a liberal democracy where women could walk around in miniskirts and the youth would spend their days studying poetry and engineering at universities. Afghanistan, we were told, would end up like postwar Germany and Japan—outposts of Western liberal democracy.

Needless to say, the Pentagon never mentions that anymore. Even after twenty years, the political situation in Afghanistan can perhaps be most accurately described as an ongoing series of wars between warlords, with US-supported warlords on the “good” side. The idea that these US-aligned warlords represent the side of human rights, though, is wishful thinking at its most extreme.

Two years after the occupation of Afghanistan began, the promises of “global democracy” became even more grandiose as the regime tried to grow support for the Iraq invasion. The Bush administration pushed a grand vision for the entire region with claims that a new democratic Iraq would serve as the launching point for a total makeover of the Middle East, which would soon become a region of liberal democracies. The US repeatedly claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was something of a reincarnation of Hitler—rather than the run-of-the-mill dictator he was—and suggested that once Hussein was gone freedom and justice would flower throughout the region.

That didn’t happen. Indeed, even if life improved for some Iraqis—such as the Kurds—life became far worse for countless other Iraqis. As noted by NPR in 2018, as a result of the Iraq War,

Iraq devolved into one of the most dangerous and corrupt countries in the world. With an estimated 500,000 killed in war and violence since 2003, few families have been left untouched. Although security has improved immensely, corruption remains entrenched.

“The majority of people before—Sunni and Shiite—did not like the [Hussein] regime,” says [General Najm al-Jabouri]. “But many people, when they compare between the situation under Saddam Hussein and now, find maybe their life under Saddam Hussein was better.”

Today, Iraq’s standard of living remains crippled by the US invasion, and the democratic government amounts to a regime that is little more than a group of competing kleptocracies.

Moreover, the US invasion paved the way for the rise of religious extremism in Iraq, which led to the near-total destruction of Iraq’s Christian population—which had enjoyed legal protection under Hussein.

Rather than spread notions of liberal democracy and human rights in the region, the US regime has only doubled down in its support for the most repressive regimes. The US remains an enthusiastic supporter of the Saudi regime, one of the most despotic and blood-soaked regimes on earth today. The US has been propping up the military dictatorship in Egypt. Through its interventions in Libya and Syria, the US has taken the side of terrorists and Islamic zealots who traffic young women for sex slavery and enforce the most draconian sorts of Islamic law—something much more rare under the Hussein regime, or under the secular regime still ruling in Syria.

The US’s regime change in Iraq supercharged al-Qaeda and ISIS, leading to humanitarian crises in northern Iraq and eastern Syria.

The Failure of Regime Change

But even if the US failed miserably on installing new human rights–loving regimes across the region, at least the US’s “national interests” are now much safer thanks to regime change. Right?

Well, not quite. Although Washington now claims that it is leaving Iraq and Afghanistan on good terms with the local regimes, the fact is that the US is leaving in power a great many enemies who are more than happy to see the US leave. And in many cases, the US strengthened those with an interest in undermining Washington’s interests.

In Afghanistan, for example, the anti-US warlords (i.e., Taliban-aligned groups) aren’t going away, and are likely to even increase in power as the US leaves. This, after all, is the central claim made by those who oppose Biden’s withdrawal plan. The US leaves behind an Afghanistan where anti-US powers are likely to quickly rush in and fill the power vacuum.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, the main “accomplishment” of the removal of Sunni-aligned Saddam Hussein was to grow the power of the Shia minority. This now means the growth of Iran-aligned Shia militias, which are avowedly opposed to the US regime.

In other words, the US could maintain a foothold in both countries indefinitely, but it could only do so through old-fashioned—and very costly—military occupation. That’s certainly not what Washington promised twenty years ago.

With all its fanciful promises for fundamentally changing the calculus in the Middle East, the US has not come even close to shifting the balance of power toward the US by creating a new block of pro-US “democracies.” Mostly, the US has sown chaos in the region, paved the way for terrorist groups, and reaffirmed support for some of the worst dictators and regimes in the region.

All of this was bought and paid for by thousands of US lives and hundreds of thousands of lives in the invaded countries. And by trillions of US dollars. 

The last twenty years have been little more than the US regime spinning its wheels, all while condemning millions to a new reality of greater death, disability, and poverty.

It’s not over yet, though. The fact some announcements have been made about ending wars doesn’t mean they’re really over. There’s no time frame for the final removal of combat troops from Iraq. In Afghanistan, the US may not be ending the war at all, but only shifting toward a war fought by US-employed mercenaries.

In any case, the global political situation has become expensive and hostile to the point that it now makes sense to at least ostensibly bring these conflicts to an end. Also, now that the average American voter is barely paying attention—and that the US is facing an economic crisis and weak recovery—it has become politically expedient to forget about those old wars, presumably with an eye to starting a new one with Russia. 

Former Arizona police officer-turned conservative political commentator Brandon Tatum unloaded on President Biden and the press for politicizing the Derek Chauvin trial, and insists that so-called ‘systemic racism’ is simply manufactured by politicians and the media to earn votes and make money.

“I think we’re living in the twilight zone,” Tatum said of the Chauvin trial. “This conviction, in my personal opinion, did nothing for our country. People are living a lie. I mean this is one police officer, one person in the community, they found him guilty, this was the swiftest justice I’ve ever seen in my life. The day after the film came out he was arrested. He was tried. 10 hours of deliberation, he was convicted. I’m not really sure why people are acting like this is monumental.

“Also, he did not get a fair trial in my personal opinion. There was a lot of obstruction that happened. They paid the family out $27 million before the jury could be selected. I mean, they’re going to have a case in appeal. I don’t know why people are celebrating and I don’t know why this is such a big focal point other than – people are making money off of the pain of people in our country.”

The BBC host then asked Tatum if he was upset over this “landmark” case?

“This is not a landmark case, this is a political agenda,” Tatum shot back. They’re pushing laws in our country. Policing in America is not inherently racist. We don’t live in a racist country. This was an interaction between a police officer that I thought did the wrong thing, and a black man who was on drugs high, resisting arrest, and ended up being killed by that police officer. That’s as simple as it can be. The President of the United States got out and made a fool of himself trying to promote racism in a simple police encounter that the officer got convicted on.

“So you reject President Biden’s comment about systemic racism and it being a stain on the whole nation?” the host replied.

“Yes, President Biden is an idiot in my personal opinion, and he’s just talkin’ because he’s a politician. Systemic racism – I mean if you look at Joe Biden himself, he spoke at a Klu Klux Klan-member’s funeral and did the eulogy of Robert Byrd … We don’t have a problem with racism in our country, we have a problem with people not following the law. We also have a problem with politicians making up things so they can get re-elected. And that’s exactly what has been happening. That’s why you never see anything change. They’re lying to us.

The host then tried using woke racial statistics, arguing: “So the rate of people being killed by police – the rate is higher amongst black people than amongst the rest of the population. How do you account for that if that isn’t a systemic racism problem?“

Tatum shut that down with force, replying: “First of all that’s not true, twice as many white people are killed by police every year. Twice as many white people are killed unarmed by police every year – you just don’t see it. There’s a gentleman named Tony Timpa. I bet nobody has any idea who Tony Timpa is. Tony Timpa was murdered in the same fashion as George Floyd was killed, but because he was white, we don’t hear about it and nobody cares about it. Nobody’s talking about police reform when he was suffocated and killed. But they only talk about it because George Floyd is black.

“Black people commit over half of violent crimes in this country, and only make up 13 percent of the population. They commit over half of the murders in this country, but only make up 13 percent of the population – and we can agree that 13 percent of the population aren’t the criminals. There’s only a small fraction of the black community that’s doing this. So that explains why police are in the black communities more, and that explains why black people are incarcerated more. They are making up lies saying that it has anything to do with racism.

“Do you understand that there’s black police officers too that patrol many of these majority-black cities? Are they racist? No, that’s not the case. They’re just making things up in my personal opinion, and they’re riding a wave of dead black people in order to make money and get political leverage.”

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