By 2030 the U.S. Marine Corps will have gone through a major restructuring, most notably eliminating tanks from usage all together and reducing its total number of men. America’s military at home has gone from an expensive but mostly unseen protector during the Cold War to a post 9/11 icon of mandatory worship by the Mainstream Media.
According to the official U.S. manual Defense Support of Civil Authorities of 2019, “The mission of the Department of Defense in a pandemic is to preserve U.S. combat capabilities and readiness and to support U.S. government efforts to save lives, reduce human suffering, and slow the spread of infection.” But the Pentagon and its influential allies in the military-industrial complex have chosen to try to avoid the wider implications of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We’d done some very important things, but we hadn’t proclaimed ourselves as being socialists, or openly proclaimed Marxist-Leninist doctrines. Girón accelerated the revolutionary process.” Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s reflections about Playa Girón, discussed with Ignacio Ramonet during conversations which led to the publication of the revolutionary leader’s autobiography, indicate the magnitude of defeat for U.S. imperialism at the Bay of Pigs invasion which lasted from April 17 until April 19, 1961.
There are growing signs that the coronavirus pandemic will radically alter the geo-political map of the world. The governors, prime ministers, premiers, chief ministers, and administrators of sub-national governments have been almost unanimous in decrying the lack of support from central governments during the current Covid-19 crisis. Not least among these have been the governors of the American states of New York, Michigan, Washington, and other states and U.S. territories.
The Coronavirus Pandemic much like any crisis, in a political sense, opens the doors for new opportunities. It seems as though governments cannot make major changes without a strong boot in the rear from some set of rough circumstances. Like it or not, political action requires a catalyst. Trump, the man who dreamt of Making America Great Again now has the big overarching excuse he needs to push his agenda onto the nation, but the question is just how can the President of the United States use this pandemic to his advantage?
Bloomberg published a stunning piece on April 9th promoting the secession of California from the U.S., in an op-ed by Francis Wilkinson titled Gavin Newsom Declares California a ‘Nation-State’, which resurrected John C. Calhoun in a neo-confederate argument favoring nullification.
From the very beginning I’ve been a staunch critic of President Trump’s “Energy Dominance” policy. And I was so for a myriad of reasons, but mostly because it was stupid.
Not just stupid, monumentally stupid. Breathtakingly stupid.
And I don’t say this as someone who hates Trump without reservation. In fact, I continue to hope he will wake up one day and stop being the Donald Trump I know and be the Donald Trump he needs to be.
It is too early to say when or even whether the siege initiated by the coronavirus will end, but many Americans and Europeans are speculating over what kind of countries will emerge on the other side.
As scary as it is for some to admit even at this stage of the game, the current financial system sits precariously on the edge of a meltdown beyond anything ever recorded in human history. Normally, such a systemic meltdown would generate such turbulence and panic that the masses of complacent subjects would be induced to action in defense of their families and nations, however under current circumstances, the coronavirus pandemic has ensured that no such mass movement, or policy fight has taken shape.
Some have queried how it could be that President Putin would co-operate with President Trump to have OPEC+ push oil prices higher – when those higher prices precisely would only help sustain U.S. oil production. In effect, President Putin was being asked to underwrite a subsidy to the U.S. economy – at the expense of Russia’s own oil and gas sales – since U.S. shale production simply is not economic at these prices. In other words, Russia seemed to be shooting itself in the foot.
