On April 29, 2020, a 16-year-old African American boy was involved in what institutional staff decided was a dangerous confrontation at a ‘for profit’ child prison run by a politically connected healthcare firm.

The child threw a piece of bread and was crushed to the ground, pleading for air, until his breathing stopped, and he went into cardiac arrest in a full George Floyd moment, one behind locked doors.

About the same time, four African Americans were found hanging in trees, all ruled suicides by police.

There is a tie in here, which we will be developing but first we will look at this Michigan case and gain perspective on a trend in not just racist abuse but in the wider area of child abuse, child imprisonment and human rights violations that are now a part of American society at every level.

From Newsweek:

“A Michigan Department of Health and Human Services investigation found that a teen in the care of Lakeside for Children died after staff members restrained him by putting their weight on his chest and abdomen.

Sixteen-year-old Cornelius Frederick, a ward of Michigan, died on May 1 at a local hospital, following an April 29 encounter with staff members at Lakeside For Children after he threw a sandwich. In response, several staff members approached the teenager and restrained him, Capt. Craig Habel of the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety confirmed to MLive.com. Habel said when staff realized the teen was unresponsive, they called for emergency responders who arrived and discovered he was in cardiac arrest.

According to the executive summary released by MDHHS, “multiple staff participated in this restraint and several were observed on the video with their weight on [Frederick’s] chest, abdomen and legs, making this an unsafe and excessive restraint.” The summary also says the restraint was not part of the treatment plan for the teen, that the staff members reacted “significantly disproportionate” to his behavior and that no one else among other staff, nurses or supervisors stepped in to stop or correct the restraint.

The MDHHS investigation determined 10 violations connected to the facility, including that the staff present waited “approximately 12 minutes” after Frederick was removed from the restraint to call 911, despite policies instructing that emergency responders be called immediately. Additionally, no one administered first aid to the teenager.

The failure to call for paramedics was despite Frederick being “limp and unresponsive,” and concerns over his “coloring and pulse,” the summary said. The nurse in charge who failed to act was fired from her job, the summary said.”

We have seen this before with George Floyd and so many others but these weren’t police, these were “treatment specialists” at a “youth academy,” one of hundreds that warehouse uncounted numbers of American children who will become the next generation of American adults. Good luck with that.

Lakeside Academy in Kalamazoo Michigan is run by Sequel Youth Services, a company that runs dozens of prisons for children around the US as part of an industry that is never reported on, never investigated and that almost got away with murder, but not this time.

You see, three staff members at Lakeside Academy are facing charges in the killing of a child in their care.

The business of America, as much as anything else, is to lock Americans up and to pass laws criminalizing everything. Is this an oversimplification?

Nearly 40 percent of Americans have a criminal conviction of some kind and a vast number, no one knows for sure, are imprisoned or under some aspect of supervision and loss of rights beyond that of normal Americans who are watched all day every day and who enjoy fewer rights and freedoms with every election.

Since 9/11, Americans have increasingly been reclassified as “potential suspects” by not only militarized police but by an internal investigative capability fueled by runaway budgets for the NSA and Homeland Security and, worse still, by regimes that hand out bulk contracts for billions to fake companies set up overnight by political contributors.

Feeding this cycle, always, is the controlled press and a seemingly endless cycle of “incidents,” mass shootings and bombings, that are never really investigated, except, of course, by governmental organizations that have the most to gain by the continuation of these same tragic events.

With America pushing $30 trillion of debt, there isn’t any sector of society that is safe from being thrown into the grist mill of the police state for profit but the most sinister of all is the game being played against America’s children by the same type of people who profit from terrorism and war.

What isn’t known, what isn’t asked about, is the war on America’s children. How many children are “under restraint,” either heavily medicated, watched and “hospitalized” or are in a “corrections environment” for behavioral issues?

With the meltdown in America, millions denying science, millions more addicted to a mix of internet porn and hoaxterism, parenting falls to the wayside. Add to the mix millions more Americans of every socioeconomic level medicated with legal cannabis or alcohol and millions more addicted to opiates and methamphetamine, a generation of young Americans has been tossed out with the trash as it were.

There is no one to notice, not with what is going on.

Monuments are toppled, stores looted, while the media, as usual, does everything to stir the pot. While the “bread and circuses” of street theatre keep John Q. Public both entertained and polarized, what goes on behind the scenes, does so with impunity. So, what does go on?

It is no secret that militarized police exist to, if that John Q. Public were asked, “keep down dissident and unreliable elements of the public.” The racket there, of course, is to create the conflict and then provide the cure, a cure that never cures but only inflames, a war on crime for profit that parallels the equally fake war on drugs for profit that has pushed tens of billions of dollars to politically aligned contracting firms.

The war on terror was much the same, the dollar figures however higher by a decimal point.

It is this environment that has produced the most shameful of all efforts, that of profiting on the breakdown of American society by incarcerating children en masse, locking them up, drugging them, “suiciding them” and, as has been the case over and over, trafficking them for sex as well, all done within an ever more bloated bureaucracy of fake social welfare.

We remind those who have forgotten of the Franklin Affair and the real story behind the scandal at the Presidio, at that time the headquarters of the US Army’s psychological warfare capability.

As early as the 1980s and before, children were being trafficked from day care facilities, from “youth homes,” the precursors of today’s “gulag archipelago” of “academy-prisons” to the child brothels of Washington DC or to the political elites of the US. In an attempt to end investigations into real abuses that have progressed to present day, those involved in this pattern of abusing institutionalized youth were, according to sources, responsible for creating the hoax known as “Pizzagate.”

While trafficking children isn’t new, it is the political mechanisms tied to these scandals of the Reagan and Bush 41 presidencies that gave license to what we may well be seeing in this one lone incident in Kalamazoo Michigan.

A child drugged by his captors can’t fight back, can never testify to abuse and, simply by existing, becomes a business asset for an industry that runs secret prisons for imaginary terror suspects. Here, however, no rendition flights are needed, no street kidnappings, simply friendly judges, useful and corrupt social workers and government officials and a disinterested public.

Will a single killing be taken as the isolated incident which it obviously is not or will something be done?

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of  Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

Observed from outer space, the United States is in a revolutionary turmoil. Fires are burning, thousands of people are confronting police and other security forces. There are barricades, banners, posters, and there is rage.

Rage is well justified. Grievances run deep, through the veins of a confused and socially insecure population, in both cities and the countryside. Minorities feel and actually are oppressed. Indeed they have been disgracefully oppressed, since the birth of the country, over two centuries ago (see my latest report carried by this magazine).

There are some correct words uttered and written; many appropriate sentiments are expressed.

And yet, and yet… It looks like a revolution, it feels like a revolution, but it is not a revolution. It definitely is not! Why?

***

An expert on Communist China, a man who spent many years living and writing books about the most populous country on Earth, Jeff Brown, recently voiced something that immediately caught my attention. He described, accurately, on his China Rising Radio Sinoland, what has been taking place in his native country, United States:

“Protests in the USA, land of Marlboro Man will come to nothing because there is no solidarity, no vision, nor guiding ideology to unite the people in the common struggle against the 1%. Just ask the Black Panthers and Mao Zedong.” 

This is precisely when ‘guiding ideology’ is desperately needed! But it is nowhere to be found.

For years and decades, the US (and European) elites and their mass media, as well as their educational plus ‘entertainment’ outlets, have been systematically de-politicizing the brains of their citizens. Pornography, consumerism, and sitcoms instead of deep, philosophical books and films. Massive – often booze and sex-oriented – travel, instead of roaming the world in search of knowledge, answers, while building bridges between different cultures (even between those of victims and victimizers).

Results are increasingly evident.

Citizens in the Western countries were told that the ideologies, particularly the left ones, became “something that belongs to the past,” “something heavy,” unattractive, and definitely not ‘cool.’ Western masses accepted it easily, without realizing that without the left-wing ideologies, there can be no change, no revolution, and no organized opposition to the regime, which has been plundering the world for several hundreds of years.

They were told that Democrats are representing left-wing, and Republicans, right-wing. Deep inside, many felt it is rubbish. There is only one right-wing political party in the US – Democrat-Republican one. But it was better for the great majority just to ignore its own instincts and swim with the flow.

***

It went so far that most of the people in North America and Europe reached the point when they were not even able to commit themselves to almost anything, anymore, from the Communist movements to marriages and relationships. I recently described this occurrence in my book “Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism.”

There are many explanations for this. One of them: regime created society built on extreme individualism, selfishness, and shallow perception of the world. To organize, to commit, actually requires at least some discipline, effort, and definitely great dedicated effort to learn (about the world, a person, or a movement) and to work hard for a better world. It is not easy to become a revolutionary when one is positioned on a couch, or a gym, or while banging for hours every day into a smartphone.

The results are sad. Anarchism, consisting of countless fragmented approaches, is increasingly popular, but it will definitely not change the country.

When leaders of the ‘revolutionary commune’ in Seattle were approached by sympathetic journalists and asked about their goals, they could not answer. These were, undoubtfully, people with good intentions, outraged by racism, and by the killing of innocent people. But do they have plans, strategy, an organization to overthrow the system which is literally choking billions of lives on all continents? Definitely not!

On June 11, 2020, RT filed a report about the situation in Seattle:

“A few different organizations have different demands, and no one speaks for everyone, but everyone’s trying to get together,” Simone clarified, implying that the much-discussed list of “demands” that have circulated for the past few days don’t represent the wishes of the entire community. However, there are a few lines of commonality running through the settlement.

“Everyone’s upset. We all came here in unity, just over the fact that cops need accountability,” he said, declaring that his decision to join the demonstration was about “trying to send a message and get accountability held.”

“Now we’re here – let’s get the dialogue going,” Simone continued, unwilling to commit to taking over other precincts, expanding the Zone, or any of the ambitious demands made by others in the group.”

***

Russian Bolsheviks had it clear, and the same could be said about their followers. Before the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution, they spent years and decades educating people all over their vast country. Some of the greatest thinkers and writers, including novelist Maxim Gorky and poet Vladimir Mayakovski, were participating in the “project.” Even simple peasants were easily grasping the reality of their dismal existence while getting inspired by some of the greatest minds of their nation. If not for the Cold War and West’s brutal interference, the Soviet Union would survive and thrive until this day.

The same could be said about the great revolutionary struggles of China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Venezuela, where hundreds of millions of tremendous works of philosophy, fiction and poetry have been distributed, for free, to both peasants and workers, who easily understood and got inspired by them. In China, in the 1930s, the entire so-called “Shanghai School of Cinema” was born, a true socialist-realism movement that helped to educate the Chinese public about the state in which it was forced to exist.

Big and successful revolutions were constructed and then supported by the educated urban and rural poor, who were awaken and consequently outraged by their position in the society.

***

The rebellion in the United States is strategically shallow. There are no great leaders, no cultural figures leading it, no extraordinary educators.

Without any doubt, there are clear reasons for rage and resistance. Racism is one tremendous one.

And, there are other ones: US society, in general, is tired as it is depressed. As it is confused. The country is robbing, literally looting the entire Planet. It tortures people in various countries. Rainforests are burning in Indonesia, Brazil, and Congo to satisfy demands for more palm oil and other raw materials. US citizens are consuming as no other nation under the sun does. They entertain themselves, often living frivolous, empty lives. And yet, almost no one seems to be happy there; no one satisfied.

People know something went essentially wrong, but they are not sure precisely what it is. Or, who should really be blamed?

There is an acute lack of solidarity. And everything is happening impromptu.

Are the ‘members of the majority’ in the US truly kneeling because they are in unison with the oppressed minorities and the brutalized non-Western world? Or are they “trying to save their own skin,” and at the end, keep the status quo intact, as has happened in Australia and their basically insincere “We Are Sorry!” 2008 movement?

There’s no strong “front,” there is no revolutionary program.

It appears that the country is not ready, not prepared, for a huge job of re-defining itself.

Insecurity is due to the lack of free medical care, education, and subsidized housing. Most of the people are in debt. Depression is, at least partially, due to overconsumption of intellectual and emotional junk. There is plenty of fundamentalist religions, but almost no discussion about how to improve life in this world.

Segregated, atomized, and otherwise, fragmented society seems to be unable to give birth to a truly compassionate, egalitarian national project.

Many US citizens see themselves as “victims.” Ethnic minorities definitely are. Are the others, too? Who is the victim, and who is the perpetrator? On which side of the scales sits a regular middle-class family, compliant and, by global comparison, heavily indulged in overconsumption? So far, there is no open discussion on this topic. In fact, it is being avoided by all means.

There seems to be at least some consensus that 1% of the richest is to blame, as well as the entire corporate and political system, and also banks. But what about the majority; those individuals who keep voting the system, those who are making sure to ignore imperialism, racism, inequality?

Many questions should be asked, particularly now, but they are not. The very uncomfortable questions they are.

But without asking them, without searching for honest answers, there is no way forward, and no true revolution possible.

The neo-liberal system created entire nations that cannot think independently and creatively. US is definitely one of them. People were bombarded with propaganda slogans that they are free, enjoying liberties. But when the day to act arrived, there has been nothing substantial in terms of new, revolutionary ideas. Just one enormous void. Nothing that could inspire the nation and the world.

The outrage over the brutal police killing propelled millions of people to the streets. The mood has been truly rebellious, revolutionary, geared for big changes.

But then, nothing!

Revolution is being postponed. Postponed for how many years?

The truth is – there are no shortcuts. Those who sincerely want to change the United States will have to follow the revolutionary formula from other countries. The formula is mainly based on education, knowledge, and determined, selfless work for the country and the world, called “internationalism.”

Unless the US comes up with an absolutely new strategy, formula, but right now, frankly, it seems to be extremely far from coming up with it!

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s the creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that has penned a number of books, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries Saving Millions of Lives. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

Following Trump’s first formal rally of the 2020 election, ‘Monday morning quarterbacks’ report that the president is furious with his staff and in particular his election team: only one third of the anticipated attendees showed up to a huge amphitheater. (Apparently, many deliberately bought tickets with no intention of attending…) Many devotees may have stayed home for fear of catching the Corona virus, however, the fact that they didn’t take advantage of the outdoor ‘overflow’ area either, suggests Trump’s support may be eroding. Since he was elected, I have often thought he would eventually resign. Here is what I wrote on April 18, 2018, on my website:

I’m going out on a limb here, but as of two days ago, I’m beginning to think that Donald Trump will resign rather than be impeached or removed for incapacity under the 25th amendment.

It’s hard to imagine him sitting down with Mueller.  With his volatile temper, I believe he will throw in the towel alleging that Washington cannot be reformed and that he is not going to allow the hard work of a lifetime in business to be thrown away for a ‘basket of ungratefuls’.”

The United States has changed more in the two years since that post than at any period that I —- with my limited eye-witness experience — can remember. Civil war is openly recognized as a possibility, as the Democratic Party continues to sacrifice its progressive wing to the dictates of Wall Street. With 16% of the population leading the way on the back of Martin Luther King — and increasingly, the Black Panthers — the United States is being dragged kicking and screaming toward the social democracy that has ensured decent lives for Europe’s working class since the end of World War II.

Since that time, the world has been America’s oyster, as the saying goes, but that time is over as it witnesses White Supremacist workers abandoning Donald Trump for failing to deliver.

The latest book on the Trump White House, in stores today, having survived a judicial challenge, is by the former National Security Advisor and uber-hawk, John Bolton, and it is the most authoritative of the steady stream of tell-alls by former Trump staff and government officials, all of which have questioned his fitness for ‘the highest office in the land’. As someone who was ‘In the Room Where it Happened’ Bolton, no white lily, emphasizes Trump’s anti-social, but also, his unpredictable personality, and it was like living inside a pinball machine. I believe that rather than risk another embarrassment such as the one in Tulsa Oklahoma, on the weekend when Black America remembers the destruction of a ‘Black Wall St’ by white mobs in 1921, Trump will ‘go with his gut’ and resign.

He will say something like:”Why should I be stuck in this swamp, when I could be building beautiful buildings in sunny Istanbul — and even frigid Moscow”, leaving America’s White Supremacists to pick up the pieces of their campaign to ‘take America back’ to the time of their unchallenged rule.

The early twenty-first century saw the culmination of an Americanized world. But a hundred years after Western efforts to stop the Russian Revolution in its tracks were defeated in the White Russian Civil War, of 1917 – 1923, America’s black population has not only come into its own, it has empowered the non-Caucasian world majority of eighty-four over sixteen.

Should Trump throw in the towel, Attorney General William Barre is the ‘Musketeer’ least likely to survive. As he fires the Attorney General of New York’s famed ‘Southern District’ who is investigating Trump’s tax returns and other ‘hot button’ issues related to the presidency, a perfectly-timed article, describes him and his brothers as famous bullies at a New York private prep school. Meanwhile, America’s allies will worry less about Barre’s mockery of its vaunted ‘rule of law’ than about National Security under the other two, Secretary of State Pompeo and John Bolton.

A President who listens to his gut is unlikely to ‘stick around’ indefinitely on a sinking ship, nor will he be concerned with the reaction of his gun-toting base, as American cities and towns seek to reform their police forces amidst America’s long-overdue racial reckoning.

Deena Stryker is a US-born international expert, author and journalist that lived in Eastern and Western Europe and has been writing about the big picture for 50 years. Over the years she penned a number of books, including Russia’s Americans. Her essays can also be found at Otherjones. Especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

Protests, stemming from an internal crisis, have once again erupted in Lebanon. In light of worsening corruption throughout the country, prices of staple foods are rising despite the government’s attempts to stop the Lebanese pound from decreasing in value. Demonstrations are taking place in Beirut, Tripoli as well as other towns and cities. Protesters have been blocking roads with burning tires while police and army forces have been trying to drive them out. Activists have set local bank branches on fire and are demanding the government step down.

Some observers have pointed out that the main reason for the protests, which restarted after an interlude caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, was a rumor about a record fall in the value of the Lebanese pound (to 7,000 LL to $1.00) despite the fact that the news was subsequently proven false (the national currency rate, in fact, remained the same – about 1,500 LL to $1.00).

Riad Salamé, the Governor of Banque du Liban (the central bank of Lebanon) since 1993, who the demonstrators hold primarily responsible for the crisis and the purported fall in the value of the Lebanese pound, has said he was not to blame for the country’s economic woes and has alleged that a systematic campaign to discredit him was being waged.

In reality, there are a number of reasons for the renewed demonstrations in Lebanon. Unquestionably, the financial crisis and corruption at the highest levels of government are quite serious issues fueling the protests. Lebanon desperately needed investments and a stable economy in order to rebuild itself after the civil war (which had lasted from 1975 to 1990) ended. One of the approaches used to attract such investments involved pegging the Lebanese pound to the US dollar (at the exchange rate of approximately 1,500 LL to $1.00), thus stabilizing the national currency and lowering the risk of devaluation, as well as ensuring relatively high deposit interest rates. Initially, all of these measures resulted in large capital inflows into the banking sector. As a consequence, for almost two decades, Lebanon was a safe haven in comparison to the highly volatile Middle East. The nation’s economy greatly benefited from this instability because countries of the region experiencing political crises or Arab Spring uprisings preferred to deposit their funds in prosperous and high-yield banks in Lebanon. The influx of foreign currency and money transferred by numerous members of the Lebanese diaspora ensured the flow of necessary funds into Lebanon. External loans that the country took out also played an important role.

However, after the economic crisis of 2008, the situation in the nation began to quickly deteriorate. Investments from nations in the region into Lebanon’s banking sector declined, and imports began to grow while exports remained low. All of these mistakes in managing the country’s economy led to a constantly increasing national budget deficit. As a result, in 2018, it exceeded 10% of the GDP, and the central bank’s dwindling foreign currency reserves meant that it was more difficult to preserve the fixed exchange rate. After servicing foreign loans became a problem, the Lebanese government was forced to make a decision to slash spending on social needs and impose new taxes, such as a much hated levy on WhatsApp calls. And this led to social unrest, protests and resignation of top government officials. On January 27, the Parliament of Lebanon passed the 2020 budget amid a financial crisis and anti-establishment protests. The new budget aimed to reduce the “deficit to around 7 percent of gross domestic product”.

In addition, the Lebanese government decided to request financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). May 13 saw the start of the first round of talks between the IMF and Lebanon, which is seeking some $10 billion in aid. However, organizations such as the IMF do not simply give but lend money to countries in need. For instance, Ukraine is one of “IMF’s four largest borrowers” making it dependent on money from this international donor. Since negotiations on the loan to Lebanon depend on the voting power of IMF members, such as the United States, China, France, Germany, the UK and other countries (that have the largest quotas), it is quite clear that these nations will subsequently gain effective tools for influencing politics in Lebanon and will use them to achieve their own interests, including those related to the “resolution” of crises in the Middle East. It is, therefore, reasonable to expect that efforts will be made to push factions loyal to Iran out of Lebanon. In fact, US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea has, on more than one occasions, hinted this was part of US policy in the nation. Another means of applying pressure on Lebanon the United States is likely to use is, unquestionably, the Caesar Act (or the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act) that targets individuals and businesses, including those from Lebanon, who provide funding or assistance to Bashar al-Assad’s government.

According to some, Israel has undoubtedly contributed to the rising tensions in Lebanon, stemming from the aforementioned challenges. During a government session at the beginning of June, Prime Minister of Lebanon Hassan Diab accused Israel of trying to create discord in the nation “in order to cover up its plan to annex the West Bank”.

It is also important to add that, recently, certain Western forces, with the aid of Israel, have, on more than one occasion, purportedly tried to further destabilize the situation in Lebanon and cause as much conflict in the nation as seen during its civil war (1975–1990). Clearly with tacit agreement from Washington, Israel has repeatedly violated Lebanon’s air space to carry out air strikes in Syria, thus prompting Damascus to raise tensions in the region. On June 11, Al-Manar reported that “four Israeli spy drones” had entered Lebanon’s airspace and flew over areas of Beirut. In addition, Israeli gunboats infiltrated Lebanon’s territorial waters off Ras Al Naqoura Crossing (an international border crossing between Naqoura, Lebanon and Rosh HaNikra, Israel).

Lebanon has, on more than one occasion, filed complaints with the UN Security Council against repeated Israeli violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty and airspace so that it could, for instance, carry out missile strikes targeting military facilities in neighboring Syria. According to news outlet Al Bawaba, on June 3, Prime Minister of Lebanon Hassan Diab, speaking at a meeting with the ambassadors of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, said that, in the year 2020, Israel incursions had “reached 374 on land, 386 at sea”, and “250 in the air” in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701. The fact that on May 13, the day US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Israel, multiple Israeli aircraft entered Lebanese airspace (as reported by Lebanon’s National News Agency) but the violations were not criticized by the American official suggests that the United States, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, condones Israeli actions of such nature.

In the absence of a commensurate response from the UN Security Council to provocative steps taken by Israel, at the beginning of June, a number of Middle Eastern media outlets claimed that the Israel Defense Forces were moving more troops and resources to the Israeli border with Lebanon. On June 2, Lebanon-based newspaper The Daily Star reported that Israeli and Lebanese servicemen were “seen engaged in a tense stand-off” after two Israeli “Merkava” tanks, believed to be involved in military exercises, had “crossed the technical fence on their side of the border with Lebanon”.

Such incidents are reminiscent of the start of the Second Lebanon War in 2006. The conflict was precipitated by a Hezbollah cross-border raid in response to reports about Israel’s plans to target the militant group. Hezbollah fighters “launched diversionary rocket attacks toward Israeli military positions near the coast and near the border village of Zar’it as well as on the Israeli town of Shlomi” (in the north of the country). At the same time, the militants “attacked a patrol of two Israeli Humvees patrolling the border near Zar’it”.

Perhaps, nowadays, the United States and Israel are hoping to provoke another armed conflict by stoking tensions in Lebanon and prompting Hezbollah to respond to Israeli violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty. The two nations could then not only divide up the Middle Eastern region as they see fit, but also provide justification for Israel’s territorial claims.

Vladimir Platov, Middle East expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Lying about world history is one of the main weapons of the Western imperialists, through which they are managing to maintain their control of the world.

European and North American countries are inventing and spreading a twisted narrative about almost all essential historic events, be they colonialism, crusades, or genocides committed by the Western expansionism in all corners of the globe.

One of the vilest fabrications has been those which were unleashed against the young Soviet Union, a country that emerged from the ruins of the civil war fueled by the European, North American, and Japanese imperialist interests. Foreign armies and local violent gangs were destroying countless cities and villages, robbing, raping, and murdering local people. But determined acts to restore order and elevate the Soviet Union from its knees, dramatically improving lives of tens of millions, was termed in a derogatory way as “Stalinism”. The label of brutality was soon skillfully attached to it.

Next came the Great Patriotic War (for the Soviets), or what is also known as the Second World War.

The West miscalculated, hoping that Nazi Germany would easily destroy the Soviet Union, and with it, the most determined Communist revolution on earth.

But Germany had, obviously, much bigger goals. While brutalizing Soviet lands, it also began committing crimes against humanity all over Europe, doing precisely what it used to do in its African colonies, decades earlier, which was, basically, exterminating entire nations and races.

While the United States first hesitated to intervene (some of its most powerful individuals like Henry Ford were openly cooperating with the German Nazis), the European nations basically collapsed like the houses of cards.

Then, unthinkable took place: indignant, injured but powerful, enormous the Soviet Union stood up, raised, literally from ashes. Kursk and Stalingrad fought as no cities ever fought before, and neither did Leningrad, withstanding 900 days of blockade. There, surrender was not an option: people preferred to eat glue and plywood, fighting hunger, as long as fascist boots were not allowed to step on the pavement of their stunningly beautiful city.

In Leningrad, most men were dead before the siege was lifted. Women went to the front, including my grandmother, and they, almost with bare hands repelled the mightiest army on earth.

They did it for their city. And for the entire world. They fought for humanity, as Russia did so many times in the past, and they won, at a tremendous cost of more than 25 million soldiers, civilians, men, women, and children.

Then, Soviet divisions rolled Eastwards, liberating Auschwitz, Prague, planting the red Soviet flag on top of Reichstag in Berlin.

The world was saved, liberated. By Soviet people and Soviet steel.

The end of a monstrous war! Entire Soviet cities in ruins. Villages burned to ashes.

But new war, a Cold War, a true war against colonialism, for the liberation of Africa and Asia was already beginning! And the internationalist war against racism and slavery.

No, such narrative could never be allowed to circulate in the West, in its colonies and client states! Stalin, Soviet Union, anti-colonialist struggle – all had to be smeared, dragged through the dirt!

***

That smearing campaign first against the Soviet Union and then against Russia was conducted all over Europe, and it gained tremendous proportions.

Mass media has been spreading lies, and so were schools and universities.

The foulest manipulations were those belittling decisive role of the USSR in the victory against Nazi Germany. But Western propaganda outlets also skillfully and harmfully re-wrote the entire history of the Soviet Union, portraying it in the most nihilist and depressing ways, totally omitting tremendous successes of the first Communist country, as well as its heroic role in the fight against the global Western colonialism and imperialism.

***

Since the end of WWII, Italy has been in the center of the ideological battle, at least when it comes to Europe.

With its powerful Communist Party, almost all great Italian thinkers and artists were either members or at least closely affiliated with the Left. Partisans who used to fight fascism were clearly part of the Left.

Would it not be for the brutal interference in Italy’s domestic politics by the US and UK, the Italian Communist Party would have easily won the elections, democratically, right during the post-war period.

Relations between the Italian and Soviet/Russian people were always excellent: both nations inspired and influenced each other, greatly, particularly when it comes to arts and ideology.

However, like in the rest of Europe, the mainstream media, the propaganda injected by the Anglo-Saxon polemicists and their local counterparts, had a huge impact and eventually damaged great ties and understanding between two nations.

Especially after destructions of the Soviet Union, Italian Left began experiencing a long period of profound crises and confusion.

Anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propaganda started finding fertile ground even in such historical bastions of the Italian Left like Bologna.

***

With the arrival of the 5 Star Movement and the radical, traditional Left-wing fractions concealed inside it, the millions of Italian citizens began waking up from their ideological lethargy.

I witnessed it when speaking at the legendary Sapienza University in Rome, shoulder to shoulder with professor Luciano Vasapollo, a great thinker and former political prisoner.

I was impressed by young Italian filmmakers, returning to Rome from Donbas, arranging countless political happenings in support of Russia.

Rome was boiling. People forgotten by history were resurfacing, while the young generation was joining them. My friend Alessandro Bianchi and his increasingly powerful magazine, L’Antidiplomatico, were bravely standing by Venezuela and Cuba, but also by Russia and China.

Still, Mr. Bianchi kept repeating:

“These days, very few Italians understand what happened during WWII. It is a tragedy, real tragedy…”

And then, recently, L’Antidiplomatico informed me that it will be publishing, in order to celebrate the April 25 and May 9 anniversaries, an essential book put together by the Soviet Information Bureau, by the academics, with notes and inside information by Joseph Stalin. It was fired right after the end of WWII: “Falsifiers of History. Historic Information.” (In Russian: “Fal’sifikatory istorii. Istoriceskaja spravka.”)

Now in Italian, the book will be called “Contro la falsificazione della storia ieri e oggi” (Fabrizio Poggi: “Against the Falsification of History Yesterday and Today”).

The powerful editorial work of Mr. Poggi is unveiling the truth, and counter-attacking the Western Anti-Soviet propaganda.

Throughout this work, “The Anglo-American claims about the alleged Berlin-Moscow union against the ‘western democracies’ and a “secret pact between the USSR and Hitler to divide all of Eastern Europe” were clearly dismantled. The falsity of the rhetoric which is repeatedly used today in virtually all Western countries is exposed here, step by step.

Ale Bianchi, the publisher, explains:

“The translation presented here is preceded by an introduction, edited by Poggi himself, which mentions the main issues of the period before the Second World War: Polish-German relations, the role of France and Great Britain and their relations with the USSR, Munich Conference, etc., all used by Western propagandists to advance the theory of “equal responsibility” of Nazi Germany and the USSR for the outbreak of the Second World War.”

I asked Mr. Bianchi about the main purpose of launching the book in Italy, and he answered without hesitation:

“To defeat the anti-Soviet propaganda and also propaganda related to the Second World War.”

***

In many ways, Fabrizio Poggi’s “Against the Falsification of History Yesterday and Today”), is not just a book. It is a movement, which will consist of discussions, lectures, interviews.

Top Italian intellectuals will, no doubt, participate. Many essential topics will be revisited. The truth will be revealed.

This could be a new chapter in cooperation between the Italian and Russian thinkers and progressive leaders, in their common struggle for a better world!

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s the creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that has penned a number of books, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries Saving Millions of Lives. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

As an American, it’s hard to admit things are not as they seem. Democracy, that ideal we were taught as children to worship, it turns out to be only a fancy idea. Like all the other noble, fancy, ideas in history, the illusion of true freedom makes these edges of our existence warm and safe. Even while we live in a deadly, cruel, and unpredictable world. American’s are supposed to be different. Or so we were told. But we are no different from citizens of any ancient empire.

I was reading this morning a story on the Wall Street Journal, which is supposed to be a financial newspaper. The title, especially given the situation in the world now, slapped me hard across the face. The title read:

“Pandemic Upends Putin’s Plans to Raise Russia’s Dwindling Birthrate”

“What are they wishing for here?” this is what I asked myself. For, you see, this is what editorial is, a mirror into the desired effect. As journalists or analysts were are trained to present cases and Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper trains its cause toward the destruction of the evil billionaire’s enemies. And the Australian born American media mogul hate Vladimir Putin and Russia. He wants the Russian people to die out, and his scribes spend their days writing a bible about how it can happen. Come on, it’s not so difficult to see.

You can’t read the whole story of wonderful infertility in Russia. Because the Wall Street Journal has a paywall. This fact not only ensures that Murdoch gets his twenty pieces of silver, but it also certifies that the audience of bankers, brokers, and politicians who consume WSJ content get what they want. An old testament to a world where Russia is a history chapter in the New World Order’s religion of greed and chaos.

But why? Doesn’t every American wonder how we’ve managed to go nowhere in the more than seven decades since World War 2? Black lives still don’t matter in the US? And neither do, red, yellow, brown, Slavic, Celtic, Christian, or Muslim ones anywhere. And least of all, do Russian children matter – but why? When did Russia attack America? Where are the dead and buried in America’s wars with the USSR or Russia? Are the memorial cemeteries secret? Has the liberal order that’s run things hidden from us the very premise on which we base our almost religious fear and hatred of a people?

No. There are no battalions of dead warriors from the Russo-American war. Because there never was such a war. I wonder why we can’t ask “why” on that one? Oh, I am sorry. It’s because Australian-American billionaires and golf playing American presidents protected us from the evil Putin and the war-hungry Ruskies! Yeah, I forgot.

I want to end this observation today with a couple more questions. First, and foremost, how can we Americans stand idly by and watch the foundations of our country destroyed? How can we fight amongst ourselves over problems that should no longer exist, while the purveyors of every evil we ever fought against, they are thriving in their ivory towers? Second, how did we get to be so mean and nasty? Or, were we always hoping Russians or Iranians or Chinese people would have more hardship? And Murdoch, the man referred to as “the man whose name is synonymous with unethical newspapers,” is but one of the privateers hell-bent on taking his share of Russia if Putin fails.

I won’t delve too deeply into Murdoch’s Russian ventures but ousted oligarch Sergei Pugachev and many others align with the News Corp dictator. The thrives Putin uncovered and banished from Russia are the henchmen who would butcher her people for their gold. Here’s where it started, back in 1998, when News Corp. made the move to influence Russia the way it influences the west. You may recognize another famous name from the UPI story, which begins:

“Media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has entered the Russian market, joining with Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky in a venture holding exclusive rights to sell advertising time on two major Russian television networks, ORT Channel 1 and TV-6.”

Murdoch, Ted Turner, and other media moguls had their sights on expanding their propaganda/advertising businesses into Russia back when. Eventually, Vladimir Putin’s straight game of preserving Russia for Russians ran contrary to their plans, they pulled out, and we see the revenge they take every time we pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV.

In America, and in much of the so-called “west”, a subculture of thought, academia, journalism, and business has taught anti-Russia narrative for generations now.

However, what concerns me is not deep think, Cold War policy still going on behind the scenes in Washington and Moscow. What bothers me is how we Americans allow such unfair and improper relations to go on. Russia was never a real enemy, only a contrived perceptual opponent made so by our imperialist drive for control. The United States, more than any other country in the world, has become rich and powerful at the expense of the world, not alongside the world. This is an incontrovertible truth. But a truth any “Trumpster” would fight to the death to hide. We create so much harm and destroy so much goodwill believing in these lies. We condone things like races of people just “dying out” – and THIS is what those headlines mean.

This is not the country I went into the armed forces to defend. This is not the country may parents, grandparents, and ancestors pledge allegiance to their entire lives. Americans are not supposed to be unfair, cruel, bad sports, and ruthless. We’re just not supposed to be.

While I am following closely various discussions on Western mass media and social media, simultaneously engaging in several direct exchanges, one overwhelming leitmotif that I see is clearly emerging: “What is happening in the United States (and the UK, France and other parts of Western Empire) is not really about the race. Let us protest peacefully, let us not allow ‘rioting’ to continue, and above all, please let us not single out the white race, Western culture as a sole villain. Let us have peace, love each other… Then things will miraculously improve; terrible occurrences will soon go away.”

I have worked and lived on all continents, from far away island nations of South Pacific (Oceania), to Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. Of course, I lived in Europe and North America, too.

Colonialism, neo-colonialism, imperialism – these are all my topics. Seriously! I have been studying them, investigating them; I wrote and made various documentary films about them. On several occasions I came very close to losing my life, confronting them.

My conclusion after all that I saw and experienced and survived? You can probably guess it:

“To claim that the race is not what has been, for centuries, dividing our Planet, is outrageous hypocrisy. Or deranged wishful thinking. Or something much worse: it is calculated blindness that serves only the ruling, white group of people.”

To make it blunt: Our Planet has been reduced to only two races: White and “the other”!

On top of it, the color of one’s skin is not always identical to what the West, in general, perceives as the Caucasian/white race. To be “white” is the state of mind. It means: belonging to the culture which perceives itself as “superior”. The culture which sees itself as ‘exceptional’, and somehow ‘chosen’ to judge and advice the entire humanity.

It also means ‘a state of indoctrination and obedience, as well as lack of intellectual courage’. All this, in exchange for the privileges; fabulous privileges! “Plunder the world, and live well above your means; live grotesquely plush life! And while you are living it, do not forget to whine, demand more, and keep repeating that ‘you are also exploited and, actually, a very poor victim’”.

Denying the privileges is part of racism, too, as it demonstrates unexpectable spite for the real victims! Or, perhaps, self-imposed blindness.

Citizens of some countries, such as Russia, Cuba, and Turkey, may look mainly ‘white’, but they are actually not. They are not invited to the ‘club’, because their mindset is different because they are not submissive because they think on their own.

***

Such conclusions may not be popular in New York, London, Paris, or Berlin. Especially not now, when the United States and the entire West are in turmoil.

The culture which was built on blood, bones, rape, and theft, ‘culture’ shaped by more than 500 years of colonialist terror, is now turning, twisting, and trying to justify itself. It tries to survive while staying in a driving seat. Countless editorials penned by both ‘conservative’ and so-called ‘liberal’ scribes are carpet-bombing the pages of newspapers at both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Fear of perhaps mortally injured beast – Western regime and its citizens – is delectable by its repulsive stench, and it stinks for miles.

Suddenly, most of the so-called ‘progressive’ publications do not want to hear from those writers and thinkers who are shooting powerful projectiles in the form of highly uncomfortable truth. Actually, in the West, there are hardly any true “left-wing” sites or magazines left, of course with some shining exceptions. What is really progressive these days? I don’t want to name the sites or publications here, but you are most likely aware of which ones I am talking about: they almost exclusively carry the stuff written by the Western/white men, for other white men’s consumption! They never cross the line: their criticism of the Western white-dominated world is half-hearted, “peaceful”; in short cowardly.

A white man is an individual who has been brought up and indoctrinated in a certain way, who thinks, speaks, and writes in a manner that is expected from him or her by the Western regime.

And all these ‘non-whites’, all over the world, including the minorities in the Western countries, are expected to sit on their asses, shut up and listen to him or her, but mostly him. And of course, to obey. Or else!

Or else: they will be verbally attacked and humiliated, eventually, they will get sanctioned, their governments were overthrown, countries invaded. There will be corpses all over, the stench of burning flesh, overflowing mass graves. And ‘at home’, in the West? Bullets shot at their eyes, or necks squashed by military or police boots.

So, what actually happened a few weeks ago to Mr. George Floyd, has been constantly happening to non-white people all over the world, to the entire communities and countries.

Then, suddenly, people, all over the world, had enough!

Almost everywhere, not just in China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Enough of being treated as some lower, subservient races. Enough of being treated like a scum; brutalized, killed like Mr. Floyd!

***

Now, in the West, both liberal and conservative media is making noises, claiming that Mr. Floyd was “not a saint”, that he used to serve some time in prison.

What can I say? People, in general, are not saints. People and countries. Very often, circumstances make them behave in a very nasty matter. But if you are raised as a second-class citizen, if you are beaten, day and night, by your own regime, are you expected to turn out to be a romantic poet? Get real!

Our countries, non-Western ones, are not always behaving like saints, either. But they are still better, much better, than those that have been murdering hundreds of millions in their colonies!

Don’t they understand, in Washington, London, and Paris, why those millions of people, from Tokyo to Buenos Aires, from Africa to Asia, are now marching in support for the African-American people? It is because all of us, outside Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand, are somehow related to Mr. Floyd!

Yes, we read those phony essays. We observe those cynical little smiles on the faces of the people who are denying racial and racist division of the world. Individuals who are defending the status quo, the rule of that tiny minority over the planet, so they could maintain their advantages.

Some defenders of status quo are now going as far as claiming that the rebellion against the white rulers is actually some sort of dark conspiracy theatre, triggered by the well-concealed business elites, or that it is connected to COVID-19; but above all, that it is not spontaneous at all.

It is clear, where they really stand and what they want to achieve.

It is never “them”. It is always somebody else. They keep pointing fingers at some invisible bankers, or the minorities in their own countries. You know precisely what I mean. As long as it is not them! But it is all much simpler: most of Europe and North America are constructed on white racism. And so is imperialism, colonialism. Citizens in the West are voting right-wing scum, voluntarily, and consistently. Can you imagine a genuine North American or European “internationalist”? Maybe a few. Perhaps 1%. Not more! So, the proverbial gold keeps flowing in. And billions of non-whites are rotting alive, in all corners of the globe.

My friends, my comrades, all over the world, are now opening their eyes, realizing what is happening in the United States and its colonialist daddy: Europe. Many of them, of course, already knew. At least they knew something. But those who did not, are now wide awake, getting well aware of the brutality of the Western regime, as well as of the racist nature of the “global arrangement”.

Those who were, for centuries, manufacturing consent, justifying and glorifying colonialism, imperialism, racial discrimination, as well as Western supremacy, can suddenly do nothing to stop the avalanche of awareness.

This may be the beginning of the end of segregation, of global apartheid. Just the beginning of the true struggle for equality.

A knee of a beefy white racist cop in Minneapolis, which had cut the supply of air, killing an African-American person, somehow managed to trigger that avalanche.

Nobody wants to live like this. Oppressed nations do not want to be threatened this way by those white Western cynics and nihilists: like Clinton and Trump, Navarro, Pompeo, and others. What a hellish troop of third-rate violent people!

Oppressed minorities inside the empire, be they of African descent, Hispanics or Chinese, are sick of the vicious and repulsive racism. Mostly, they are frightened to speak. But now, day by day, they are gaining courage.

***

The United States of America has been built on the genocide of the non-white people. The great majority of native folks had been slaughtered so the small number of the first and brutal European settlers could thrive.

This is “to some extend” known fact, but learning in-depth what really happened to the original inhabitants of ‘America’ has been thoroughly discouraged. Word ‘genocide’ is hardly ever uttered, in connection with the first chapters of U.S. history. Actually, it is taboo.

Slavery has been turned into folklore. Millions, tens of millions of broken, methodically destroyed human lives, is hardly ever presented in its real, nightmarish authenticity. People in Africa were hunted down like animals, tortured, raped, killed, and shipped like cattle to the so-called ‘free’ and ‘democratic’ “New World”.

Does a country constructed on such macabre foundations have really any moral right to call itself ‘free’? Can it be allowed to police the world? It is as if you would allow that murder cob who killed Mr. Floyd, to run a nation!

And those states which are now forming Europe? Their citizens are the descendants of those who were hunting down millions of human beings. Offspring of those who perpetrated and then got rich on such mass-slaughters as those of the Namibians, or people who used to inhabit what is now known as Congo.

When dragged to the broad daylight, it is all very, very uncomfortable, isn’t it? Better to sweep the truth under the carpet, and talk about “love”, “goodwill”. And then keep robbing and murdering as before, far away from the cameras!

This way, nothing would ever change.

Repeating over and over again: “race does not matter; it is actually all about class”, could make those who are in control of the world feel good about themselves, even sometimes sorry for themselves, which is actually their favorite state of mind. But it is a terribly hypocritical and deceptive position. And it has to be unveiled if there is ever to be justice!

***

On 3 June 2020, UN News, published an essay condemning the situation in the United States:

“Voices calling for an end to “the endemic and structural racism that blights US society” must be heard and understood, for the country to move past its “tragic history of racism and violence”, the UN Human Rights chief said on Wednesday.

“The voices calling for an end to the killings of unarmed African Americans need to be heard”, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said in a statement. “The voices calling for an end to police violence need to be heard”.”

Ms. Bachelet, a Chilean, knows precisely what she is talking about! She knows what it is to have someone’s knee choking your aorta. Her father, an army General during the socialist era of President Salvador Allende, was murdered after the US-sponsored coup led by Augusto Pinochet. Ms. Bachelet herself was kidnapped and tortured.

She looked ‘white’, but obviously not ‘white enough’ for Washington and its local assassins.

What is truly significant is that even the United Nations (usually subservient to the US) is now unwilling to remain silent.

***

Race ‘issues’ have to be addressed. Racism, inside the national boundaries, as well as on the global scale, has to be fought against, by all means.

The depressing state of our planet is a result of racism.

Look at the map of the world at the beginning of the 20th century, and you will see: a great majority of the nations were colonized by the West. Colonialism is one of the most evident forms of racism. It humiliates victims, it robs them of everything: of culture, dignity, land.

To a great extent, most of the world is still being colonized. Even right now, as this is being written.

Almost the entire Planet is brutally controlled by the racist West-centric education system, and by the mass media which is controlled by the White boy’s Western narrative. Things have been arranged, so that the people in non-Western countries have been ‘learning’ and ‘getting informed’ about themselves from the Western curriculums and the fraudulent sources disseminated by the US and British media outlets. That is grotesquely racist, isn’t it?

Close to 10 million people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in just a quarter of a century. It is because they have coltan, uranium, and other essential raw materials, desired by the West. But also, because to the West, their black lives matter close to nothing. My film, “Rwanda Gambit”, is clearly addressing the issue. But who cares? In the West, they rather watch porn, instead of learning the greatest genocide of the 20th Century, which they helped to trigger! And who cares about the West Papuans, who are murdered with almost the same intensity by the Indonesians, on behalf of their Western masters? After all, the West Papuans are blacks, therefore matter nothing.

On those millions, mountains of corpses, huge companies, and even entire countries are thriving, prosper. While their CEOs and Presidents are talking rubbish about some ‘corporate responsibility’ and love for democracy.

And most of the white Europeans, Canadians, Australians, have to sacrifice very little, in order to live their obnoxiously luxurious lives.

Isn’t this racist?

The entire arrangement of the world is!

Soon, it will be impossible to hide behind all those lies.

I work at the frontlines. Where human bodies are crushed by all that “love” of the white colonialism and racism, directly but also indirectly. Racist violence is the most repulsive and the creepiest thing on Earth.

I want it to end; once and for all. I don’t care if some shops get looted or trashed in the process. Peaceniks who are crying over them are mostly sitting in their plush living rooms, watching censored news. They do not see those tens of millions of victims of racism rotting in tropical heat, floating on the surfaces of polluted rivers, thousands of kilometers away!

Images of Mr. Floyd being murdered, slowly and sadistically, is as close as they ever got to reality.

For centuries, they did all they could in order not to see.

Now they are running out of excuses.

Not to see, not to fight against the endemic global racism is a terrible crime. A crime that has been taking place for more than 500 years. The crime against humanity.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s the creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that has penned a number of books, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries Saving Millions of Lives. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

One thing is clear, a majority of American people are unwilling to accept the brutal killing of African Americans by police. What is also clear is that a minority, and it is a strong and very well armed, albeit ignorant and brutal minority, that encourage police crimes and from whose numbers police are too often recruited.

The explosion happening now in the US was predicted, since 9/11 the American people have become “terror suspects” within their own country, a nation no one recognizes, a surveillance state, a police state, a nation drowning in corruption and one now ruled by a dictator.

It has become popular nowadays to blame Israelis and Jewish organizations for turning American police forces into militarized thugs. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) just requested that American Jewish organizations stop supporting Israeli military training for American police, a major source of income for Israel.

This has been a factor, with police trained to treat citizens as terrorists leading to military type assaults on peaceful protests in dozens of American cities. Worse still, of course, Trump tried to unleash the combat power America used to crush Iraq on the American people and only stopped when confronted by a possible military coup.

As easy a target as Trump may be or blaming Israel, America’s problem with police brutality is not only an old one but one tied to wider problems of broad corruption within America’s social and economic way of life dating back to the earliest days of the republic.

Today

We are watching Americans across the nation in numbers unimagined standing against police brutality. Every American who isn’t wealthy and powerful, risks prison, possibly though totally innocent.

American courts serve the rich, judges are appointed by the rich, police exist to fill the courts and fill privately owned “for profit” prisons which pours cash into the same people who appoint the judges.

Nation of Crooks?

Nearly half of Americans have some kind of criminal record, due not so much to actually being a criminal but rather to the excess of laws in America.

Thousands of laws are enacted each year, endless thousands, everything is criminalized, for the poor at least.

America is coming apart. It isn’t Trump though his presidency with 110,000 dead from the mishandling of a pandemic and another 100,000 dying, is shattered as is the nation that allowed him to seize power.

The police are now, officially, the enemy, but Americans are finally figuring a few things out. Cities like Flint, Michigan and others have police forces who are joining demonstrators. Others, they are something different, and it is the failing, not of the police officers themselves, but of the inherent corruption of America’s system of government.

Police corruption and brutality has turned America into a sewer for those who live on limited resources, who live on the fringe of America’s laws, for those who can’t insulate themselves from being targeted.

Color and race, ethnicity, are huge factors in America. “DWB,” is called “Driving While Black,” and any person of color who has been in an automobile in America knows what this means, you don’t travel while “black” without being stopped by police and being berated or even assaulted and arrested.

Too often “DWB” ends in a police killing.

“White Blindness” may be Ending

It is impossible for someone not of color to understand. I look to my own limited experiences as I try to explain to others what I am only barely grasping for myself. My own first brush with discrimination was during the 1960s when I served in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War (and in Vietnam).

If in uniform, here in the US, it was common to be heckled by people driving past who would often throw things from their cars. There was a stinging feeling there, one I had never known but suddenly realized those around me of color had suffered all their lives. I had never known; I still didn’t know but I had an idea and I didn’t like it one bit.

After the military, while a graduate student, I served as a police officer for over two years, seemingly a lifetime. Since that time, I have worked with police in dozens of nations as an intelligence liaison for counterintelligence/counterterrorism and run a critical incident response team looking into such issues as terror attacks in Kenya, gas attacks in Syria and airline mishaps over Ukraine.

What is always clear is that police are the face of government.

In America, the police have become an untrusted face in too many communities, one feared not only by people of color but by others as well.

In fact, the vast arsenal of military weapons that white Americans largely control are, to a significant extent, intended as protection against militarized police.

That said, let’s move to the US and why we have seen not hundreds of thousands but millions marching, not just against the police and injustice but against the Trump regime and, in particular, Attorney General William Barr.

A Failed Presidency Like No Other

Trump and Barr are notorious for their politics of division, playing Jews against Muslims, black against white.

First of all, police are supposed to protect and serve, investigate crimes and hold themselves as an example. Many do, perhaps most. This is a hard job, emotionally exhausting, and requires exceptional mental stability and interpersonal skills to perform.

Many thousands with these attributes serve as police and do so with distinction. Most, however, do not. Many, very many, are openly corrupt, brutish, ignorant, openly prejudiced and deeply jaded.

Rural America has always been a breeding ground for extremism, for racism and corruption. Rural communities often lined with churches and overt signs of order are home to a subtext of hate and criminality.

This is where America’s out of control police come from, raised on isolation, bigotry and fear.

I will give examples from my 20 years as an investigator for a law firm owned by a close friend. Investigative work, other than by the government, is unaffordable unless, as was the case here, done pro bono (without cost).

If someone is arrested, the evidence against them, if given by police, cannot be challenged. Few judges challenge police and bringing up the record of a corrupt police officer to question their testimony is.

One case, still in appeal, happened in Wauseon, Ohio. In one case, a collision on a rural highway left one woman dead, and two injured. Cars collided head-on at high speed. One driver, a young woman, was arrested and charged with murder. Police said she fell asleep, hit a guard rail and her car careened sideways at very high speed, executed a 90-degree spin and struck an oncoming vehicle.

As was later proven, what the police described was not only false, their investigative conjecture required an outright abandonment of all principles of Newtonian physics.

The accused, a young lady of modest means, an unmarried mother, faced 20 years in prison based on police assertions. Police on the scene, who investigated, reported the findings of an investigation that didn’t yet happen to local news who declared her guilty on TV, radio and print media.

Police have always used the media who reports, in almost all cases, what they are told to report, with no questions asked. Police in America are never questioned, not ever, not until only a few days ago.

While the young woman was pinned in her car with several broken bones, massive blood loss and other injuries, she was chastised by first responders and refused medical care, which only arrived after 45 minutes anyway, something falsified in reports.

Then when in an ICU, she was interrogated by police while in a semi-conscious state on IV Fentanyl. It was this testimony police used to back up a later to be proven faked accident investigation. Testimony by medical personnel that the young lady was incoherent and legally unable to even make medical care determinations for herself was blocked by a judge, no rationale or case law was given. It never is.

Then a state investigator from the Ohio Highway Patrol was called in, one with impressive credentials and 20 years’ experience and his investigation confirmed everything told to the press.

However, a real forensic examination revealed something else as did talking to witnesses. There was a third car that fled the scene, that was telling, but more.

Cars have “black box” recorders which log speed, steering and breaking. Both cars had them and when the results were downloaded and run through a European based physics simulator, most advanced in the world, the wild story given by the investigator was shown to be 100% fabricated.

This was done with series of dramatic animations and a wealth of data, just like is used in airline crashes.

It seemed that the woman in the 2nd car, who survived but her passenger was killed, one seen as the victim, had been on a cocktail of hypnotic sedatives including high doses of Ambien, narcotic pain relievers and anti-psychotics, enough to prohibit driving, and legally make her drunk/impaired.

The animations showed her car careening into oncoming traffic, using data from her car’s black box, showing her steering, losing control and simply plowing into the oncoming car without breaking or even letting up on the accelerator.

This was withheld and the evidence, physics analysis, witness testimony, medical records, toxicology and black box driven animations, all disallowed because it contradicted police testimony that would now show that hundreds, perhaps thousands of other accident investigations had been faked.

Appealing this travesty, were the case not pro bono, would cost tens of thousands of dollars and take more than two years, as has been proven out.

Parallel to the investigation of the accident, experts investigated Wauseon police and prosecutor and the state expert.

Over the years, thousands of totally faked accident reports had been fabricated and false testimony had been given countless times under oath by “police accident experts.”

What happened in this accident and others also applies to both criminal and civil cases as well, every case that involved the courts, with or without police or prosecutor, was subject to bias, be it economic, racial or other.

Justice simple died quietly and there was no one to speak up.

Suppression of evidence, falsification of evidence was part of every criminal case in this jurisdiction and in almost all others, not just in Ohio but across the US.

When we go past this, let’s look at another issue. Currently, the US Civil Rights Commission is investigating a nationwide scandal involving African American women with children who are arrested.

Few, really almost none, are ever tried but always plead guilty. Why? First of all, their children are taken. They are then “over-charged,” with prosecutors piling charge upon charge even if evidence is scant or even non-existent, as is too often the case.

Those arrested are held in jail, months, even up to a year, for crimes that would have no sentence whatsoever in many cases and are told they can only be released if they plead guilty.

Pleading innocent in an American court can get you a year of pre-trial detention and only a guilty plea can get you released. Might this explain why millions and millions of Americans are now convicted felons?

The answer, as of 2016 was 110,000,000 or 44% of the US population.

Conclusion

What had been bad after 9/11 became worse under Trump as extremist elements felt bolstered by racist rhetoric from the White House. What was broken for decades, even centuries, has come to a head as the corrupt and brutal of America’s unequal system have been running rampant with White House backing.

Behind this is a climate of fear, not of crime or poverty but of police and that fear, as we are seeing, is everywhere in America.

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of  Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

There is no doubt that colonialism and racism sit at the root of America’s domestic problems. The push to dominate others abroad is directly linked to the belief that those who are different at home should also be dominated.

There are still Americans alive today that remember segregation laws that denied black Americans their basic rights and dignity. Before that, there was outright slavery.

Even today, racism is still institutionalized. It also permeates American culture, laying just beneath a superficial layer of tolerance and equality.

This is not just about white people who remain racist against blacks and other minorities – a product of America’s terminally ill culture – it is also about fundamental racism that still very much sits at the heart of American foreign and domestic policy – against not only blacks, but virtually every race on the planet from Africans to Asians to even Slavs.

The US is a nation that encourages its people to hate entire groups of people abroad to help justify otherwise unjust wars. Arabs, Chinese people, Russians – are all vilified with bigotry and hatred sanctioned by mainstream American culture. It isn’t hard to see why in a nation like this, hatred for other groups is easily justified in the minds of racists and the unjust.

Not Just Police in America – Racism is a Key Feature of US Foreign Policy 

It was under US President Barack Obama that the US decimated the North African nation of Libya, deposing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi – a champion of African dignity and progress and the champion of tens of thousands of blacks from all over Africa who travelled to Libya to find work and a better life – work and a better life Gaddafi provided them until he was brutally murdered and his government replaced by heavily armed, racist terrorists backed by the US and its European allies.

US-backed militants in Libya would hunt down Libya’s black population, killing them, torturing them, and even enslaving them in open air slave markets – a spectacle one might have believed was unthinkable in the 21st century – but something made possible by America, its foreign policy, and its deeply rooted racism and sense of supremacy – despite having a “black” president at the time.
President Obama is hardly the only one to blame – he simply picked up where others left off – and his successor, US President Donald Trump is simply next in line to carry forward systemic US injustice worldwide. The fact that President Obama was black made no difference and simply helps illustrate how while superficial milestones are waved in America’s face – the fundamental rot of injustice, racism, and supremacist thinking persists.

When a nation is able to justify denying one group of people their dignity, worth, and rights as human beings it is a slippery slope that easily leads to other groups likewise being stripped of their humanity and abused.

If Black Lives Matter – They Must Always Matter, Everywhere, All the Time 

Any case of police brutality is tragic and needs to be addressed -a problem in its own right. If officers killed George Flyod because he was black, it represents an additional problem that must also be addressed.

If Americans genuinely believe black lives matter – then they need to commit to fighting injustice against them, and all other victims of American racism and supremacy. If they speak up only when it is popular and “trending” it’s as good as not speaking up at all.

If they are silent when America is mass murdering blacks overseas, killing brown people across the planet, or attempting to normalize racism against Asians – Chinese people in particular – they are complicit in the very sort of deeply rooted, institutionalized racism that underpins US foreign policy and the globe-spanning industrialized injustice it represents – and the very sort of racism that manifests itself as injustice against blacks at home.

America needs genuine opposition to racism. Not opportunistic posturing.

US politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pose as dedicated to racial equality and fighting racism – yet she regularly finds herself in support of US military aggression abroad which exclusively targets nations populated by black, brown, and Asian people.

Her most recent display of supreme hypocrisy was her support of US meddling in Hong Kong – an extension of the British Empire’s seizure from and subjugation of this Chinese territory.

The British Empire – of course – also pursued its foreign policy based entirely on the belief that white Westerners were superior to all others and that it was their right – even duty – to impose British “civilization” upon “heathen” races – China was no exception to this belief.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may or may not appreciate that her support for US meddling in Hong Kong helps continue this disgraceful tradition and agenda – believing instead that supporting “democracy” in Hong Kong is not simply the same brand of Anglo-American racism merely repackaged for more sensitive global audiences. But she is supporting racism, supremacy, and hegemony all the same.

Black lives will never matter as long as “Black Lives Matter” remains a hollow political slogan shouted by interests easily able to ignore or even support injustice purveyed by the US against others abroad – including blacks.

Deeply rooted racism in the US is just one of many symptoms of an overall desire for hegemony and the notions of racial, political, and cultural supremacy that underpin it. Until this is addressed, racism will continue, with only the most superficial and unsustainable efforts made to stop it.

As long as America believes it is better than all others abroad – able to justify exploitation, coercion, and even military aggression to assert itself and pursue its “interests” – racism and injustice will persist at home. The same corporate-financier interests driving US injustice abroad see the US population – white and black – as merely another market segment to use and abuse – to divide and conquer – to put under itself for its own benefit.

Black lives matter, whether they are being strangled by a racist white cop in America or being bombed by US warplanes in Libya. Once Americans can unite in both understanding and opposing this across-the-board racism and injustice, something might actually be done about it besides kicking the can down the road for a few more months until the next video of police abuse emerges online.

America will not heal its domestic hatred and divisions if it remains built entirely on projecting and profiting from hatred and division abroad. It was no coincidence that legendary champions for equality like Martin Luther King Jr. were both opposed to racism and injustice at home and ceaselessly opposed  to American aggression and hegemony abroad. The two are linked by the common thread of fundamental injustice. Until they are both exposed and smashed completely, they will both continue.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

150 years ago, on April 21, 1870, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, alias Lenin, was born. According to many, he was the greatest revolutionary of all times, a man who gave birth to both internationalism and anti-imperialism.

It is time to “revisit Communism”. It is also time to ask some basic, essential questions:

“How is it possible that a system so logical, progressive, and so superior to what is, up till now, governing the world, failed to permanently overthrow the nihilism and brutality of capitalism, imperialism and neo-colonialism?”

***

Without any doubt, you have been told many horrifying things about Communism, especially if you have been living in the West, or in one of the countries that are fully under the control of the centres of anti-Communism: Washington, London or Paris.

You have been forced to read, again and again, about “Stalinism”, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and the Khmer Rouge genocide. You have, again and again, been served an elaborate cocktail of half-truths, outright fabrications, as well as twisted interpretations of the world history.

The chances are, you have never been to Russia, China or Cambodia; you haven’t done any serious research there.

You have been told that Cambodia is the best example of savage Communism. You never realized that Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge extremists were fully supported by the United States, and not by the Soviet Union and never foolheartedly by China; that they were never actually really “Communist” (I did a detailed in-country research, and even Pol Pot’s personal guards told me that they had no idea about Communism, and only reacted to the monstrous U.S. carpet bombing of the Cambodian countryside, and to the capital’s collaboration with the West). In that period, most people died as a result of precisely that carpet-bombing by the USAF B-52’s, and as a result of a famine. And the famine came after millions of peasants were displaced by the savagery of the bombing, and by the unexploded substances left in the fields, all over the countryside.

It never occurred to you, that one survey after another, conducted in Russia, still shows that the majority of the people there, would like to have the Communist Soviet Union back. And even in the former Soviet Muslim-majority states, including Kirgizstan and Uzbekistan, a tremendous majority of the people I encountered there, remembered the Soviet Union era as some golden age.

And the so-called Soviet occupation of Afghanistan? I have worked, filmed and reported there, on three occasions, relatively recently. Outraged by the on-going Western occupation of their country, countless Afghan people told me stories, illustrating the contrast between their tolerant, progressive and optimistic socialist era, and the present-day horror, during which their country has sunk to the lowest level in Asia, according to both UNDP and the WHO. I worked in Kabul, Jalalabad, Herat, Bagram; the same stories, and the same nostalgia for the Soviet teachers, nurses, engineers.

Showered by the relentless Western propaganda, one never really realized how popular the Communist Party of China is in its own country, and how the Communist ideology is supported in Vietnam, Laos and North Korea.

If one goes to their friendly local bookstore in North America, Europe or even in Hong Kong, not to speak of Australia, the chances are is that all one will find there would be tomes written by anti-Communist Chinese or Russian ‘dissidents’, people that have been living off Western grants, receiving countless awards so they can spend all their energy on smearing Communism, and glorifying anti-revolution. Writers such as Svetlana Alexievich, who received the Nobel Prize for literature, for spitting on the graves of the Soviet soldiers who died defending Afghan socialism.

Films one would be allowed to watch, on commercial film channels, would not be any different than the books one had been encouraged to read.

Anti-Communism in the West and in its colonies, is a tremendous industry. It is easily the greatest and on-going propaganda campaign in the history of the world. Its metastasis has been spreading even into the core of the Communist and socialist countries themselves.

All of that is because the Western, imperialist countries know perfectly well that their empire can only survive if Communism collapses.

It is because the very essence of Communism is the perpetual struggle against imperialism.

False but very effective slogans, like bugs, that are being implanted into one’s brains. They are repeated constantly, sometimes hundreds of times a day, without one even noticing: “Communism is dead!” you have been told. “It is outdated, boring.” “China is not Communist, anymore.” “Communism is grey. Life under communism is controlled, and it is monotonous”. “People under Communism have no freedom, and no liberties.”

The opposite is the truth. Building, selfishly and enthusiastically, a new and better society, for the people, is definitely more satisfactory (and “more fun”), than rotting in the constant agony of fear: worrying about mortgages, student loans, and medical emergencies. Competing with others, stepping on others, and even ruining other human beings. Living empty, sad, selfish lives.

***

Absurdly, paradoxically, Western propaganda constantly accuses Communism of violence. But Communism is the biggest adversary of the most violent system on Earth, which is Western colonialism/ imperialism. Hundreds of millions of human beings have already vanished as a result of it, throughout the centuries. Hundreds of advanced cultures have been ruined. Entire continents have been plundered.

Before Soviet Communism, before the USSR itself, there was no true and powerful opposition to Western imperialism. Colonialism and imperialism were taken for granted; they were “the world order”.

The Soviet Union and China helped to de-colonize the world. Cuba and North Korea, two Communist countries, fought bravely and successfully, and brought independence to Africa (something that the West has never forgotten nor forgiven).

But fighting for freedom and for the end of colonialism, is not violence; it is defence, resistance and a struggle for independence.

As a rule, Communism does not attack. It defends itself, and it defends countries that are being brutalised. In my future work, I will address two “exceptions”; and explain two cases which are constantly misinterpreted by right-wing propaganda: Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

But back to the so-called “Communist violence”.

My friend and comrade, the legendary Russian intellectual and professor, Aleksandr Buzgalin wrote in his recent work, “Lenin: Theory as Practice, Practice as Creativity” (to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Lenin):

There is a principle at work here: it is not the socialist revolution that provokes mass violence, but the bourgeois counter-revolution, that begins when capital realises that it is losing its property and power. In response to the generally peaceful and in many cases legitimate victory of the left, capital unleashes savage, barbaric violence. The left is then faced with the question of whether to answer this violence or not. If you go to war, then from that point the laws of war apply, and hundreds of thousands are sent to their deaths, planned in advance, so that millions might be victorious. That is the logic of war.

The revolution was carried through. It was victorious. In the broader perspective, the victors were not so much the Bolsheviks as the Soviets, in which the majority supported the Bolsheviks’ position. The revolution was substantially peaceful, prevailing almost without bloodshed. The fiercest fighting occurred in Moscow, where those killed on both sides numbered a few thousand. Beyond that, the picture was of a “triumphal procession of Soviet power” (this heading in Soviet textbooks was no accident). In the winter of 1917-1918 the relationship of forces saw half a million members of the workers’ militia, the Red Guard, pitted against a few tens of thousand White Guard members in the south of Russia. Everything was quiet until the counter-revolution received vast sums of money from the Triple Alliance (primarily from Germany) as well as from the Entente, and all these imperialist countries launched aggression against the young Soviet power.

This is a brilliant take by Aleksandr Buzgalin. I have addressed this topic on many occasions, but never so coherently. And this applies to countless examples, all over the world, where the West first provoked and brutally antagonized socialist or communist countries, then accused them of cruelty, and finally “liberated” them in the name of freedom and democracy, literally raping the will of their people. All this just so European and North American imperialism would survive and thrive.

Let’s recall just a few examples: the USSR, 1965 Indonesia, 1973 Chile, 2019 Bolivia. The biggest attempt to date: to divert, destabilize and overthrow the enormously successful Chinese system. But there are, of course, countless other examples, in all corners of the globe.

***

Ron Unz, the publisher of The Unz Review, wrote in his report “American Pravda: Our Coronavirus Catastrophe as Bio-warfare Blowback?”, recalling his thoughts, in 1999, when China protested about the NATO bombing of its Embassy in Belgrade:

“But when I considered that the Chinese government was still stubbornly denying the reality of its massacre of the protesting students in Tiananmen Square a decade earlier, I concluded that unreasonable behavior by PRC officials was only to be expected…. 

Such at least were my thoughts on that matter more than two decades ago. But in the years that followed, my understanding of the world and of many pivotal events of modern history underwent the sweeping transformations that I have described in my American Pravda series. And some of my 1990s assumptions were among them.

Consider, for example, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, which every June 4th still evokes an annual wave of harsh condemnations in the news and opinion pages of our leading national newspapers. I had never originally doubted those facts, but a year or two ago I happened to come across a short article by journalist Jay Matthews entitled “The Myth of Tiananmen” that completely upended that apparent reality.

According to Matthews the infamous massacre had likely never happened, but was merely a media artifact produced by confused Western reporters and dishonest propaganda, a mistaken belief that had quickly become embedded in our standard media storyline, endlessly repeated by so many ignorant journalists that they all eventually believed it to be true. Instead, as near as could be determined, the protesting students had all left Tiananmen Square peacefully, just as the Chinese government had always maintained. Indeed, leading newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post had occasionally acknowledged these facts over the years, but usually buried those scanty admissions so deep in their stories that few ever noticed. Meanwhile, the bulk of the mainstream media had fallen for an apparent hoax.

Matthews himself had been the Beijing Bureau Chief of the Washington Post, personally covering the protests at the time, and his article appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, our most prestigious venue for media criticism.”

On top of it, what Western mainstream media was describing as a group of “freedom fighters” and “pro-democracy movement”, had a substantial number of radicals in its ranks, even outright racists, that were protesting against the presence of black Africans on Chinese university campuses. They demanded a ban on their relationships with the Chinese women. And they were fully supported and at least partially funded by the West, simply because of their savage, aggressive, fundamentalist anti-Communism.

The Chinese government does not even want to touch this subject, anymore. They feel that, faced with massive Western propaganda, they cannot get through with their take on the story; in brief, that they have lost the narrative.

Now fast-forward to 2019 and 2020. Hong Kong. Again, what we are witnessing there is outrageous and extremist anti-Communism. Fascist protesters that are marching, destroying public property, and attacking the Police, all under U.S, U.K and German banners, are hailed by the Western mass media as “pro-democracy activists”. They are physically attacking the supporters of Beijing. They are paid, they are glorified. I have talked to them on many occasions. They are fully, thoroughly brainwashed. They know nothing about facts. They deny the crimes committed by the British and the U.S. colonialists. They admire everything Western, and they despise their own country.

The West has been told to view them as “revolutionaries”. And it promotes them as revolutionaries, all over the world!

Another group unleashed against the Communist China, are the Uyghurs. Many of these people have joined terrorist organizations in Idlib, Syria, in Indonesia, and elsewhere. Or more precisely, they were injected there. The reason? To harden them on the battlefields, so that they could one day return to China, and try to break Communism, as well as the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), the most internationalist mammoth project on Earth. I have covered their activities in Syria, Indonesia, Turkey and elsewhere. I have written extensively about the atrocities they have been committing. But the anti-Communist propaganda is often too massive and too “professional”. It manufactures a “bullet-proof narrative”. It portrays the Uyghurs as the victims!

***

Ask the common men and women of the streets of London, Paris or New York, what they know about Stalin’s era, or the famines in the early years of the USSR, or in Communist China?

99.99% know nothing. Where these famines took place, or why? But they are absolutely certain that they took place. No doubts, whatsoever. No doubts that they happened “because of Communism”. Westerners are intellectually obedient, like sheep. Most of them do not question the propaganda unleashed by their regime. Are they really “free”?

The famine in the Soviet Union actually took place because the young revolutionary country was totally devastated by the Western and Japanese invasions, which tried to break and plunder the country. British, French, U.S., Czech, Polish, German, Japanese invasions, to name just a few.

But ask, for instance, the Czechs, how much they know about their Legions that controlled the Trans-Siberian railroad, on their way from Europe to Vladivostok. Plundering, rape, and mass killing. I tried. I asked, in Prague and Pilsen. They thought I was a lunatic. The Legions are portrayed as heroic, in their history books. A bullet-proof narrative. No doubts there.

And “Stalinism”? This author is planning to write much more on this subject. But here, just in brief: What kind of country did Stalin really inherited? It was a country thoroughly plundered by foreign invaders, a country devastated by civil war. A country where the anti-revolutionary forces have been, until recently, financed by the U.K., France, U.S. and others. As a result of this brutal civil war unleashed from abroad, criminal gangs roamed all over the vast lands, and inside cities.

From the beginning, the Russian Communists wanted peace, the brotherhood of nations, and peaceful development for its people. I wrote in 2017, in my book “Great October Socialist Revolution. Impact on the World and Birth of Internationalism”:

“The revolutionaries wanted to end all wars immediately. Russian soldiers left their trenches, and embraced their enemies. “We are all brothers!” they shouted. “We were forced to fight each other by ruthless monarchs, priests and businessmen. We should battle real enemies, not each other! Proletariat of the world, Unite!” But the Western officers and commanders were determined: they forced their men back to the trenches, accusing them of treason, pushing them to the battlefields.

Most significantly, the countless foreign invasions were overwhelming of both several major Russian cities and the countryside. As always throughout the previous centuries, the Europeans never thought twice before putting their military boots on Russian soil. In a way, Russia was treated and perceived as a ‘barbaric’ nation that could be attacked, colonized and plundered at will and without much justification, not unlike all those countless unfortunate nations all over the world: located in South America and Central Asia, in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Oceania. Many Russians looked like whites, like Europeans, but to the Westerners, they were never “white enough”, never really part of the culture of the conquerors and plunderers. Russia always had its own soul, its way of thinking and feeling, its distinct manner of acting and reacting.”

In my book, I revisited the subversion tactics of Western imperialism and militant anti-Communism:

“The essence and strategy of Western imperialist subversion is essentially very simple: identify all strong and weak points of the country that you are attempting to murder, and try to comprehend its ideology. Study and learn all about its progressive leadership: its plans, and all that the revolution is trying to do for the people: like giving them freedom, equal rights, improved life expectancy, high standards of education, medical care, housing, infrastructure, arts and overall a decent quality of life. Then, attack where it hurts the most: use direct interventions, sabotage, terrorist assaults, or sponsor extremist and even religious fundamentalist groups, in order to spread fear and insecurity to slow down the process of social change and economic growth. Hit so hard that at some point, the democratic revolutionary system will have to react, simply in order to protect its people, their achievements, and even their bare lives. Wherever the West tries to destroy a socialist country, be it Nicaragua or Afghanistan in the 80’s, it first targets hospitals and schools, in order to demolish the great social achievements of the government, and to spread hopelessness among the population. Then it hits even harder, to trigger a strong government reaction, and then immediately declare: “You see, this is the real face of socialism or communism! You want a revolution? Fine: what you get in the package will be this: oppression, political trials, gulags, a lack of freedom, and even some brutal executions!” Use widely, weapons like disinformation and negative propaganda, so the revolution in a progressive but cruelly terrorized country would never have a chance to really influence the rest of the world, and even at home it will begin to suffer after being put under too much pressure…

…Such hideous tactics of the West, deeply injured the Soviet Union before WWII, but it failed to destroy the country.”

***

The Chinese famine took place partially because during the Japanese occupation, the Imperial Army disrupted the food chain supplies, as well as the system of farming, which had been formed and developed throughout thousands of years. Japan was interested in only one thing: how to feed its troops that were occupying a massive part of Asia.

In both cases, Western propaganda made people believe that the real cause for the loss of lives in Russia and China was Communism! The brainwashing has been so successful, that even in Russia and China, millions of people have been fully indoctrinated by these countlessly repeated lies coming out of the West.

But ask in London, whether people know anything about the fact that under the British occupation of India, tens of millions of people died from starvation; victims of the famines triggered by London, for many reasons, one of them being an attempt to lower the population. Over 50 million Indian people, cumulatively, died in these famines, between 1769 to 1943, in British administered India.

Should we, as a result, ban the British political system? I am convinced that we should! But that is usually not what the people of the world, including the victims of the British colonialist barbarity, are demanding.

So, back to the British or French public. What do they know about their past, and even about their neo-colonialist present? They only know what they have been ordered to believe. In brief: they know nothing. Zero. Only fairytales. But they are convinced that they are well informed. And that they have the right to lecture the world.

They know absolutely nothing about the USSR, and about China. They have no clue about why North Korea and Cuba are being continuously demonized (as mentioned above, they both, hand in hand, liberated Africa from Western colonialism).

I have lived and worked all over Africa, for years, made films, and written countless essays. The Cuban and North Korean involvement, enormously positive, internationalist and undoubtedly Communist, from Namibia and Angola, from Egypt to Mauritius, has been very well documented. But say it in a Parisian café or a London pub, and jaws will drop. Blank stares, emptiness.

Even that “Anti-Communist left” consisting of anarcho-syndicalists and Trotskyists (really mostly British and U.S. brands of pseudo revolutionaries), knows nothing, or wants to know nothing, about true revolutionary Communism.

***

On 23 April, 2020, Brasil de Fato quoted the Venezuelan Vice-Minister Carlos Ron:

“It is very interesting in North American culture, to believe in “manifest destiny”, to think that they have a messianic mission. They believe that their mission is to end communism in Latin America, so they will overthrow Venezuela, Cuba and everything that is red, because all that is red is communist.”

In Indonesia, an entire failed, miserable and depressing religious state is based on anti-Communist dogma. Nobody clearly understands there, why they are anti-communist, but the more they are ignorant about the subject, the more aggressively they act; banning all Communist concepts and lexicon, building anti-Communist ‘museums’, and producing anti-Communist films. After killing millions of Communists on behalf of the West, anti-Communism has become the essence of their existence. In the past they even used to ban the Chinese and Russian languages. All just to silence the past, when President Sukarno and the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia), before the US-backed 1965 coup, were building a great, progressive, socialist and non-aligned nation.

In fact, in much of Southeast Asia, perhaps the most grotesquely turbo-capitalist part of the world, Communism has been banned, or at least demonized. The result: confused, consumerist, religious and dismal nations. Communist Vietnam is the shining star, but it is never portrayed as such, definitely not abroad.

***

Let us celebrate the 150th birthday of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin!

Let us celebrate it by revisiting history, and the present.

The most brutal political system is Western imperialism, colonialism. It has already murdered hundreds of millions of people, all over the world. This fact should be repeated again and again.

The goal of Western propaganda has always been to equate Communism and Fascism, the two most antagonistic systems in history, in the world. It was the Soviet Communist system, which smashed Nazism to pieces, saving the world, at an enormous cost of approximately 25 million human lives.

Only Western imperialism can be compared to German Nazism. The two are made of the same stuff.

To me, to many of us, Communism means the perpetual struggle against Western interventionism, colonialism.

In this terrible moment in human history, it is important to clearly understand this reality.

If Communism were to be defeated, it would be the end of the struggle for freedom. Only the powerful, centralized, ideologically-sound Communist system can fight and liberate the human race from colonialist shackles, from savage capitalism, and an nihilist empty existence.

Propagandists tell you insane lies, that Communism is outdated and boring. Don’t believe them: it is the most upbeat, still young, and optimistic arrangement of the world. And unlike imperialism and capitalism, Communism is constantly evolving. Not in Europe or North America, but in the rest of the world.

Just look at the West and its colonies. Look at the misery and deprivation brought on humanity by the Western oppressive dictatorial regime. Happy birthday, Comrade Lenin! The struggle continues!

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s the creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that has penned a number of books, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries Saving Millions of Lives. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”