By Gavin O’Reilly | American Herald Tribune | June 21, 2020
Following last month’s murder in the United States of George Floyd, an unarmed black man suffocated by Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin during what should have been a routine stop, what would initially begin as protests against police brutality and systemic racism in the US state of Minneapolis would soon spread nationwide before developing into an international phenomenon.
Major cities across the United States and Europe all found themselves taking part in solidarity protests as a result of Floyd’s death, with each protest receiving extensive coverage by the mainstream Western media, and the public support of figures from the highest level of sport, media, entertainment and business.
One of the most distinguishing features of these protests so far however, has been the targeting of statues and monuments by anti-racist activists of historical figures who engaged in colonialism and slavery.
In the British city of Bristol, a statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston was toppled by protesters before being thrown into the town’s harbour, while in the United States a similar fate would befell statues of 19th century Confederate figures, Charles Linn and Robert E. Lee. The phrase ‘Churchill is a racist’ was also painted upon a statue of the early-20th century British Prime Minister in London, owing to his white supremacist and Imperialist views.
However, while the anti-racist and anti-Imperialist sentiment behind such actions is surely one that must be applauded, it also begs the question of why a similar ire isn’t reserved for the modern day oppressors and Imperialists; in this case, it being the military industrial complex and war lobbies of both the United States and Britain.
With both nations being the world’s leading exporters of arms, it has been this exact military industrial complex which has played an integral role in the world’s current foremost humanitarian crisis; Western-allied Saudi Arabia’s now five year long war on Yemen, one in which upwards of 85,000 Yemeni children have now lost their lives as a result of the US and British-made bombs.
Military advisors from both countries are also on hand to help direct Riyadh on where to direct its air strikes, with the agricultural sector of the impoverished Arab nation being a favoured target in particular of the Royal Saudi Air Force, resulting in widespread famine in what is already the poorest country in the Arab Peninsula.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, US and British occupation forces still remain in northern Syria and Iraq; with the air forces of both countries on hand to help carve out a Kurdish ethnostate in line with the 1982 Tel Aviv-authored Oded Yinon plan, intended to balkanise Arab states hostile to Israel.
Closer to home, the neo-Nazi junta of Ukraine has also received political and military support from the US and Britain since the 2014 coup seen the government of Victor Yanukovich ousted over his rejection of an EU-trade deal in favour of closer ties with Russia; similar to the situation in Yemen, military advisors from both countries have also been on hand to assist Kiev forces in their war on the breakaway pro-Russian republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the Trump administration has approved the sale of heavy arms to Ukraine since 2018.
However, despite the litany of war crimes this modern-day imperialist foreign policy has resulted in, from the Donbass to the Middle East, the Pentagon, the Ministry of Defence and the factories of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and BAE Systems have so far remained untouched by the current protesters – their anger seemingly reserved for imperialists and oppressors who passed away generations ago instead.