Was weder mit der „Pandemie“ noch mit dem Krieg in der Ukraine zu rechtfertigen ist
Dezember-Statistiken, die vom internationalen Unternehmen Statista Research Department zusammengestellt wurden, zeigen, dass jetzt 56 % der Einwohner des Vereinigten Königreichs es für einen Fehler halten, die EU zu verlassen. Und nur 34 Prozent nennen es die richtige Entscheidung. Denken Sie daran, dass die Anti-Europäer im Vereinigten Königreich am Wahltag 2016 nur etwas mehr als die Hälfte der Stimmen erhielten – 51,9 %. Sie punkteten und hofften, ab Januar 2020 die „Fesseln einer undemokratischen EU“ loszuwerden. Na und?
Illegale, die in London als das schmerzhafteste Problem galten, brachten vor zwei Jahren auf die Straßen von Dover, das zum Haupteinfallstor für Migranten wurde, die die Meerenge von Frankreich überquerten, Menschenmassen mit Fahnen und Transparenten „Lasst uns Müll von unseren Straßen entfernen! “, „Wir werden unser Land uns selbst zurückgeben!“, „Verhaftung! Abschiebung!“ … Vielleicht hat der Brexit die illegale Migration gestoppt? Nein. Das Gegenteil geschah. Von Januar bis November letzten Jahres überquerten mehr als 40.000 Menschen in kleinen Booten den Ärmelkanal. Waren es ein Jahr zuvor 28.526 solcher illegalen Einwanderer, sind es 2020 überhaupt 8.404.
Im Januar 2021 trat das Handels- und Kooperationsabkommen (TCA) zwischen der EU und dem Vereinigten Königreich in Kraft, und das Vereinigte Königreich schied endgültig aus dem Binnenmarkt und der Zollunion aus. Seitdem ist der Wert der in die EU exportierten britischen Waren um rund 5,3 Milliarden britische Pfund gesunken. Die Importe aus der EU gingen um 7,2 Milliarden zurück. Londons finanzielle Verluste durch den Brexit beliefen sich bis Juli 2022 auf 33 Milliarden Pfund. Der Spruch „For what they fight for, they ran into“ hat für die Briten inzwischen eine besondere Bedeutung bekommen: Sie fragen sich zunehmend, ob es überhaupt notwendig war, die Europäische Union zu verlassen.
Nach dem Brexit zeigt die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung des Vereinigten Königreichs im Vergleich zu anderen G7-Staaten und der Organisation für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (OECD), dass das Land wirtschaftlich hinterherhinkt. Der Wirtschaft des Vereinigten Königreichs geht es schlecht, und das lässt sich nicht länger verbergen: Der Hauptgrund dafür war eben der Brexit. Und der Bocksprung in der britischen Spitze ist eine der Bestätigungen dafür. Chief Brexist (und Schläger) Boris Johnson war der Tory-Premierminister und sicherte sich einen harten Austritt aus der EU. Seine Nachfolgerin Liz Truss, die in Wirtschaft, Geographie und anderen Wissenschaften schwebte, war völlig zum Scheitern verurteilt. Und der derzeitige Premierminister Rishi Sunak wird sich der scharfen Kritik für das, wofür er sich schuldig gemacht hat und wofür er nicht schuldig war, wahrscheinlich nicht entziehen. Seine Regierung hat bereits den Fuß über die «Mine» gehoben und beginnt sich zu fragen, wie sie das Vereinigte Königreich und die EU auf Schweizer Art näher zusammenbringen könnte. Anders als das Vereinigte Königreich hat die Schweiz als Nicht-EU-Mitglied direkten Zugang zum EU-Binnenmarkt, zahlt EU-Gebühren, hält sich an dessen Regeln und erlaubt den freien Waren-, Dienstleistungs- und Personenverkehr. Allerdings will London Zugang zum EU-Binnenmarkt haben und will trotz gravierendem Arbeitskräftemangel keine Personenfreizügigkeit.
Nun wird es ein ganzes Jahrzehnt dauern, um so viele Handelsbarrieren mit der EU wie möglich zu beseitigen, ohne dass das Vereinigte Königreich wieder dem Binnenmarkt beitritt, befürchtet 10 Downing Street Trade (TTP). Das bedeutet, dass Brüssel Einfluss auf die britische Handelspolitik nimmt, obwohl das Vereinigte Königreich kein Mitglied der EU ist. Außerdem hat man in London alle Gespräche über ein Handelsabkommen mit den Vereinigten Staaten eingestellt, um die Beziehungen zu Brüssel nicht zu verkomplizieren.
Großbritanniens Rückwärtsbewegung gleicht eher Zuckungen, sie wird politisch explosiv. Auf einer kürzlich abgehaltenen Konferenz der mächtigen Confederation of British Industry (CBI) machte der Premierminister deutlich, dass es kein Vereinigte Königreich geben wird, das sich an die EU-Regeln hält. Also Tschüss Schweizer Modell. Zumal Sunak die Idee des CBI, mehr Einwanderung aus der EU zuzulassen, um den Arbeitskräftemangel auszugleichen, zurückgewiesen hat: Der Premierminister ist sehr auf die Unterstützung von Brexit-Hardlinern innerhalb seiner eigenen Partei angewiesen. Und Tory-Chef Jacob Rees-Mogg betont zunehmend, dass die Öffentlichkeit für den Brexit gestimmt und damit die Personenfreizügigkeit beenden wollte. Und keine Diskussion mehr. Der britische Milliardär und Spender der konservativen Partei, Lord Cruddas, schließt sich ihm an und sagt, er habe genug Geld und Einfluss, um einen Plan zu vereiteln, eine Beziehung nach schweizerischem Vorbild mit der EU anzustreben.
Unterdessen belief sich der Rückgang der Arbeitsproduktivität im Land auf 4 %, der Rückgang des Handels auf 15 %, der Anstieg der Lebensmittelpreise auf 6 %, der Rückgang der Löhne und der Inflation – der höchste in der G7. Die Meinung wächst, dass „ein Land, das sich gern als Musterbeispiel für gesunden Menschenverstand und gutmütige Stabilität betrachtet, international zum Gespött geworden ist: drei Premierminister in denselben Monaten, vier Schatzkanzler und ein Karussell zurücktretender Minister …“.
Jeremy Hunt, dass sie «das EU-Verbotsgesetz gekapert» und «den Traum von jeder Brexit-Dividende zu Tode gekillt» hätten, als es den Briten wieder «ein Land mit niedrigen und hohen Steuern und hohen Steuern» geben sollte. Löhne zahlen sich dort aus, wo die Wirtschaft wächst.
Laut der neuesten Prognose des Office of the UK Budget Commissioner (OBR) wird der Lebensstandard der Briten in den nächsten zwei Jahren um 7,1 % sinken. Sie sagen, dass es im 8. Stock keinen Rost gibt, um nicht als „Pandemie“ bezeichnet zu werden, nicht in der Ukraine. Daten über die Europäische Kommission in der Regel: nicht in einem Land, nicht in einem Land, nicht in einem Land, nicht in einem anderen, nicht in einem anderen Land.
The human suffering in Ukraine is predicated on massive U.S. military aid, and is transforming an ailing country into a bankrupt failed state
[my illustration : the US embassy in Saigon on April 29, 1975 (Hugh Van Es)]
Douglas Macgregor recently argued in these pages that Washington’s refusal to acknowledge Russia’s legitimate security interests in Ukraine and to negotiate an end to the war will cement “the path to protracted conflict and human suffering.” As Macgregor observed, even while the tide is now turning in Ukraine, Washington’s foreign policy continues to be fueled by the ideological self-delusion of the true believers: “Like the ‘best and the brightest’ of the 1960s they are eager to sacrifice realism to wishful thinking, to wallow in the splash of publicity and self-promotion in one public visit to Ukraine after another.”
It is indeed a spectacle eerily reminiscent of events over half a century ago, when Washington’s proxy war in Vietnam was escalated even as it was failing. The U.S./NATO-led proxy war against Russia in Ukraine has already bankrupted the Ukrainian economy, an outcome some observers saw nine months ago. It will also accelerate the decline of the U.S. international role and global economic prospects. When great powers fail to balance their economic base with their military power and strategic commitments, they risk imperial overstretch. That is America’s key global risk in the 2020s. And due to the U.S. role in the world economy, the global repercussions of such overstretch will be adverse, extensive, and long-lasting […]
From the economic standpoint, these military expenditures, including U.S. Ukrainian aid, should be seen as massive, recurrent, multiyear bastard Keynesianism: a series of military stimulus packages to prop up the American economy—not Ukraine’s!—amid deepening secular stagnation. Unlike Keynesian stimuli that can have an accelerator effect in the civilian economy, these packages mainly benefit the Pentagon and Big Defense—the military–industrial complex and its revolving-door elites […]
The risk of recession casts a dark shadow over the U.S. economy. The Eurozone already faces a deep one. Japan’s economy is shrinking. The United Kingdom is struggling with the worst fall in living standards since records began. In the 1940s, war threatened to result in excessive debt. Today, excessive debt risks wars that will have no winners, thanks to the best and the brightest [end]
Karl Fluri Although the United States has branded itself as the bastion of freedom both at home and abroad, it is abundantly clear to any objective observer that, just as U.S. imperialism undermines those claims on a global scale, the fascist police state and “prison industrial complex” that exists in the nation today do the same on a domestic front.
The United States maintains the highest military budget in the world to defend its worldwide hegemony. For the fiscal year 2022, the six US Department of Defense (DOD) subcomponents each received $1.64 trillion. This is quite well known, but the fact that the United States police forces, should they be regarded as a national military, would rank third on the planet in terms of budget, only behind China and the U.S. military itself, may shock some.
With national spending of around $126 billion on police, many police departments in the United States have budgets for a single city that rival those of entire nations’ military forces. For instance, the New York Police Department (NYPD)“serves” the 8.4 million residents of New York City, with a budget of about $5.5 billion. Vietnam, a country of 98.17 million, spends roughly the same amount on its military to protect itself from the imperialist aspirations of its neighbors and the West. According to the rhetoric coming from the West, North Korea is an authoritarian, militarized, and repressive state. North Korea, a country of about 26 million people, has a total military budget of roughly $1.6 billion. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) alone exceeds this with a budget of $1.9 billionfor a city of about 3.85 million people.
Despite making up only 4% of the world’s population, the United States houses 20%-25% of all prisoners worldwide. Comparatively, China, another country that Westerners commonly perceive as being particularly authoritarian, is home to 15% of the world’s prisoners and around 18.5% of the world’s population. The United States has a comparable number of prisoners to the 194 countries with the lowest incarceration rates. Even during the height of the Second World War, the highest estimates of prisoners in the notorious gulags (rural prison camps) of the former Soviet Union were 2 to 2.5 million people, including prisoners of war (POWs).
Furthermore, we should discuss the vast majority of inmates the system has yet to try when looking at American assertions about due process and the presumption of innocence, which we hold in such high regard. A third of those incarcerated are in jail, and if you include the 111,000 people detained in jails that rent out space to other organizations, 67% are still not convicted (pending trial, final verdict or sentencing) and therefore legally considered innocent until proven guilty. These incarceration rates are primarily affected by State bail laws.
Over the past 25 years, pre-trial imprisonment has increased more quickly than the number of convicted criminals detained in jail, not the other way around. This has been accomplished mainly by targeting the poorest Americans through the bail system. Pre-trial detainees typically earn less than half the income of their non-incarcerated counterparts’ typical income in the general population. The median person jailed without bond would need nearly eight months’ worth of salary to cover the $10,000 average bail amount for felonies. Despite having a startling daily population of 547,000, the approximately 10 million individuals who enter jails and prisons annually dwarf this figure.
To address economic, social, and political issues in the best interests of the capitalist class, the U.S. relies on a state that is highly reliant on monitoring, police, and imprisonment. In essence, the corporate media depicts oppressed people as career criminals who must be stopped. The police, courts, prisons, and bail system are all part of a complex web collectively which has become known as the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). These are just a few ways the system unfairly targets people and maintains control over particular populations to ensure the powerful maintain their position.
Some of the most contentious issues regarding the American criminal justice system today include the private prison system, the over-criminalization of drug use, and the use of low-paying or unpaid prison labor. Similarly, essential rational discussions about the social, economic, and moral costs of incarceration and lifelong punishment are frequently derailed by emotional responses to sexual and violent offences. Even though victims as a rule do not favor lengthy sentences, there is nevertheless an effort to defend “lock them up and throw away the key” sentencing by relying on erroneous assumptions about what a conviction for a “violent crime” means for a person’s threat to society.
According to a surveyof individuals who reported crime victimization, Alliance for Safety and Justice (2016), Crime Survivors Speak The First-Ever National Survey of Victims’ Views on Safety and Justice:
61% would prefer shorter sentences and to see an increase in spending on prevention and rehabilitation programs, whereas 27% believe in lengthy sentencing
82% would prefer we invest more in programs for at-risk youth and other crime prevention programs, whereas only 14% want more investment in prisons and jails
69% would instead hold people accountable through means other than prison, whereas only 25% believe we should be holding individuals responsible by putting them in prison
19% stated they believe prison helps rehabilitate people, whereas 52% believe prison makes one more likely to commit additional crimes
In the public discourse about crime, “violent” and “non-violent” are frequently substituted for “serious” vs “non-serious” illegal behaviors. Even worse, people frequently use these terms to categorize individuals as essentially and innately dangerous or not dangerous (often along racialized lines), which is a fallacyin and of itself.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no clear dividing line between “violent” and “non-violent” crime; the frequent misapplicationof these categories is so typical that these terms have been made useless in any serious policy setting. In truth, state and federal laws include many crimes that do not require bodily harm in their definition of “violent” behavior. Despite burglary typically being classified as a property crime, several state and federal laws arbitrarily define burglary as a violent crime when certain conditions are met, such as when it happens at night, in a home, or when a weapon is present. Therefore, a burglary conviction may well result in a lengthy prison term and a “violent” criminal record, even if the building is vacant. Meth production, drug theft, and handbag snatching are also considered violent offences in several states.
The widespread misunderstanding of what “violent crime” actually entails, a legal distinction that usually has nothing to do with actual or purposeful harm, is one of the significant barriers to effective criminal justice reform. We need to be more precise about the meaning of that vague term. Due to reactionary “knee-jerk” responses to the idea of violent crime, policymakers frequently expressly exclude persons who have been found guilty of legally “violent” crimes from criminal justice reform efforts. However, these carve-outs negate the benefits of otherwise well-designed legislation because more than 40% of people incarcerated and detained are there for so-called “violent” offences. It will be challenging to bring down incarceration rates to anything close to global averages without changing our approach to violent crime.
Many those convicted of violent crimes have indeed badly hurt others. But how does the criminal justice system evaluate the threat level? Too often, we base these decisions on the type of offence committed rather than the specifics of each case. Those who have served jail sentences for violent offences are the least likely to commit crimes again. People convicted of drug, public order, or property-related crimes were twice as likely to be rearrested for related offenses three years after their release from prison as violent offenders. This demonstrates the falsity of the notion that those who commit violent or sexual crimes can never be rehabilitated and should therefore serve lengthy prison sentences, possibly even for the rest of their lives.
As politicians and the public increasingly agree that prior policies have led to unnecessary incarceration, it is time to consider policy reforms beyond the low-hanging fruit of those convicted of non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual offences. We need to change how we respond to more serious and violent crimes if we are honest about ending mass incarceration and supporting public safety. Recidivism data does not support the long-term detention of violent offenders. Re-arrest rates for those who have committed violent or sexual offenses are among the lowest; for those who have committed rape or sexual assault, they are significantly lowerthan for all other infractions.
Age is one of the significant determinants of violence, which may help to explain why those convicted of violent crimes have lower recidivism rates. We keep people in prison long after their threat of violence has decreased, even though the risk of violence typically peaks in adolescence or early adulthood and then falls with age. As we saw throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, as states granted various individuals early release, most officials drastically limited the number of prisoners who could be released early by categorically rejecting individuals who had been found guilty of “violent” or sexual offenses without considering their age or unique circumstances.
One’s material circumstances primarily determine recidivism rates, so property and drug crimes, which many people engage in to improve their material situations, have considerably higher recidivism rates than violent crime, which frequently is unrelated to one’s material circumstances. Many countries have dramatically reduced recidivism rates because they base their strategies on empirical evidence rather than on emotional appeals, often made not by victims themselves but by those in positions of authority who want to keep their control over the populace. These nations have taken a giant step forward in the name of prisoners’ rights, rights of all people, and public safety. Despite these known facts, mass incarceration in the U.S. is maintained for profit and by design.
Prison and jail communication and commissary activities have given rise to super-exploitative multi-billion dollar private enterprises. By privatizing services like phone calls, medical treatment, and commissaries, prisons and jails reduce their budgets at a tremendous social cost and pass these costs onto incarcerated people and their families. Private corporations frequently win contracts to run prison food and health services, often so subpar that they give rise to considerable legal action—many of these industries having disproportionately high profit margins due to the exploitation of prison labor.
Prisons pay inmates shockingly low wages since they depend on them for meal preparation, laundry, and other tasks. The majority of prison employment pays inmates between 86 cents and $3.45 per day on average, according to a 2017 research. At least five states have prison occupations like these that pay nothing at all, a situation that does not significantly differ from slavery.
Many multinational corporations use U.S. prison labor to increase profits. Inmates in jails around the country made face masks and hand sanitizer to fight COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic. Inmates help build the country’s infrastructure, fight fires, and work at numerous construction sites and farms since these jails frequently employ their slave labor force to bid for public and commercial contracts. Despite this, it is unlikely that former inmates could obtain a job after being released. This would increase the possibility that they would re-offend and enter the system again, only contributing to the increased likelihood of recidivism and, thus, the case of a return to the criminal justice system.
It is challenging to estimate the size of the prison labor market because the most recent national census conducted on prisoners was in 2005, before some of today’s inmates were even born. Back in 2005, the system employed about 1.5 million prisoners; since then, state legislators and prisons have regulated prison labor. One can only speculate how much this has worsened the situation.
In order to hide the actual expense of operating prisons from most Americans, prisons can shift the price of incarceration onto prisoners by making them work for little or no compensation and charging them for necessities. Necessities such as medical care and personal hygiene goods are just some examples of costs prisons often charge to these low or no-wage workers. In addition, working in jail is often a requirement with little control or oversight, and incarcerated laborers have few rights or safeguards. If a prisoner refuses to work, they risk harsh disciplinary action.
This is due to a sharp exception in the shining promise of freedom that was the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which banned chattel slavery after the end of the US Civil War in the 19th Century. The Thirteenth Amendment has in fact allowed prison labor to replace conventional forms of slavery with a new type of slavery based on crime and punishment since the claimed abolition of slavery in 1865. Section 1 of the Amendment provides: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Incarcerated persons, therefore, have no constitutional rights in this arena, often forcing them to work without compensation as punishment for their crimes.
Due to this loophole in the 13th Amendment, prisons can force detainees to work laboriously for enormous corporations and little to no pay. First implemented to combat the economic downturn that southern states experienced after the loss of slave labor, convict leasing was cheaper than slavery since farm owners and companies did not have to worry about the costs of purchasing, feeding, or housing slaves, or maintaining their workers’ health. They passed these costs onto taxpayers, to the prison labor force, and to the latter’s families. Today, prison labor continues to make a substantial contribution to our economy and country.
Subsequent to the passing of the 13th Amendment, post-abolition laws known as “Black Codes” emerged to further discriminate against, imprison, and enslave the Black population right after the Amendment passed; these included segregation laws that heavily criminalized previously harmless behaviors like “loitering” or “vagrancy.” This system forced these folks to labor in prison. This made it possible for these practices to continue in the U.S. economy, which was largely dependent on slave labor both before and after the Civil War, especially in the agricultural districts of the South. Angola, a former plantation named after a nation which once supplied many enslaved people, still operates today as the Louisiana State Penitentiary and still profits off the labor of enslaved, largely racialized, peoples.
African Americans represent a disproportionate number of people in prison, often justified by racial profiling, fostered by prejudiced assumptions that racial minorities are more prone to use drugs or commit crimes. Because of this, police stop and search African Americans more frequently, which results in far too many injuries and fatalities, as well as disproportionate rates of arrest and incarceration.
Desilver, Lipka, and Fahmy (2020)found that Black male adults were almost five times more likely to be unfairly stopped and three times more likely to be searched by the police than white people. Even though legal equality for people of color was supposedly provided by the abolition of slavery more than 150 years ago, law enforcement and the justice system still oppress them today.
Due to Nixon’s War on Drugs, strict laws were passed that imposed lengthy prison sentences for drug abuse and trafficking. President Reagan, furthering this initiative, signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, establishing minimum mandatory terms for numerous drug offences. While “coke” use, a form of cocaine that is more commonly used in white circles, attracted less attention, “crack” possession—a substance that is used mainly in black communities—could be given the same minimum prison sentence as someone who possessed 100 times more “coke.”
On any given day, 350,000 and 400,000 people are detained due to drug-related offences, representing one in five inmates. Six times as many people are arrested yearly for drug possession as for drug sales. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, Black people made up 35% of those detained for drug possession, 55% of those who were found guilty, and 74% of those who received jail sentences, although making up only 13% of all drug users. Residents of over-policed regions continue to end up with criminal records due to drug arrests, which hurts their prospects of finding future employment and increases the likelihood that they will serve longer sentences for subsequent offenses.
In addition, arrests for disorderly behavior, drug possession, simple assault, theft, vagrancy, and vandalism are twice as common for Black individuals as for white people. Black drivers are far more likely than white drivers to be stopped, but this disparity lessens in the evening when it is more difficult to discern a driver’s skin tone. Black men are more likely to be shot by police in predominantly Black neighborhoods than in less racially stratified areas. In addition, Black people are 3 1/2 times more likely than white people to be arrested for cannabis possession while having identical consumption rates. Black people also have a disproportionately high incarceration rate due to laws that clearly discriminate against them.
African Americans continue to be oppressed by racist laws and prejudices that characterize them as a “problematic” people, making them the first group to be impacted by mass incarceration initiatives. In the past, police enforcement was focused on broken windows. “Broken Windows Policing” argued that using overwhelming force to stop low-level criminals was the best way to prevent individuals from committing more serious crimes; such policies were designed to legitimize over-policing in communities of color. The program was most famously implemented in New York City in the 1990sunder then-mayor Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani argued that the tactic, despite crime rates falling at comparable rates across the nation, including in cities without the “broken windows” method, was to credit for the swift decline in misbehavior that the city experienced during its implementation.
To reduce “broken windows”, Michael Bloomberg instituted a new strategy known as “stop-and-frisk” after winning the New York mayoral race in 2001. Though stop-and-frisk was declared unconstitutional in 2013, its effects on mass incarceration and communities of colorhave already been demonstrated. Police were allowed to stop, search, and interview anyone who appeared “suspicious” under the stop-and-frisk policy. Young Black or Hispanic men were typically the targets of suspicion by New York City police, resulting in significant racial disparities in “stops,” with less than 1% of stops resulting in an arrest. Additionally, Black and Hispanic persons continue to be stopped and frisked at alarming rates, particularly in New York City, even though it is against the Constitution.
The quota system is another regulation that supports excessive policing. Although police departments are not allowed to have formal arrest quotas, many have verbal or unspoken systems that require officers to make a specific number of arrests or issue a certain number of summonses to be successful in the department. People of color are more likely to be given a summons or detained by police as the individual officers work their way up the ranks. Black and Hispanic people are frequently the targets of police targeting orders. Twelve BIPOC cops exposed the NYPD’s quota system that encouraged them to target Black and brown people while ignoring white and Asian people, in the recent TV documentary “Crime and Punishment”. A class-action lawsuit was successful by the” NYPD 12” against the NYPD for issuing 900,000 summonses based on an illegitimate and unauthorized quota system.
As has been shown, the overt targeting and over-policing of communities of color results in a disproportionate rate of criminalization and incarceration among members of these communities; this raises the incidence of family instability within these marginalized communities, which has a wide-ranging negative impact, especially on the youth, who are known to act out more and express a higher rate of delinquency. One of the most severe instances of the over-policing and criminalization of people of color is the targeting of young people by funneling students of color directly from the school system into the criminal justice system, a practice that has become known as the “school-to-prison pipeline”. This happens as a result of the criminalization of adolescent behaviors that support staff and social workers are better equipped to handle, and the increased presence of “school resource officers” in schools with greater racial diversity; this starts a cycle of incarceration that frequently follows people throughout their lives and begins in childhood. In the United States, about 113 million adults have close family members who have served time in prison or jail. The American criminal justice system is rife with unfairness, and the Prison-Industrial Complex (PIC) is responsible for perpetuating some of its cruelest and most unfair features.
The “justice” system’s intrinsic incentives and fundamental design ensure that the courts penalize underprivileged and racialized communities. District Attorneys (DA’s), and frequently judges, are elected officials motivated to gain reelection in the following cycle. As such, they must keep up a stellar win-loss record and an image of being “tough on crime” and capable of managing high-profile cases; this makes winning all the more crucial to give the general public the impression that justice is achieved. Most defendants cannot pay for competent legal counsel, so instead they are provided with an overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated trial lawyer who lacks the resources, time, or authority of the state’s prosecutors. The almost automatic presumption that law enforcement has correctly identified the suspect, which is frequently not the case, disproportionately affects the poor and racialized, leading prosecutors to develop tunnel vision and perceive a conviction as required or inevitably proper.
Another problem is that the police and courts frequently rely on biased, biased, or coerced witness testimony, biased juries, biased grand juries, and expert testimony that is known to be limited in its analysis of the facts to support a particular idea. Additionally, judges are frequently corrupt themselves, with some accepting “kickbacks” from the criminal justice system in exchange for sending criminals to these jails. In a recent case, two former judges were found guilty in the “kids for sale” scandal, in which they sold young children by sending them to private jails in exchange for money (bribes). According to a recent investigation, up to 4% of prisoners who have ever been on death row (sentenced to death) may be innocent. Given the high standard for death row convictions, it would not be surprising if the proportion of innocent prisoners in general is significantly higher. That indicates that our injustice system has claimed the lives of thousands or millions of people, mainly from the working class, the poor, or other marginalized groups.
Despite being appointed legal representation, incarcerated people are frequently responsible for the court fees associated with their case after trial; this, as well as jail or prison rent, which is charged in different jurisdictions across the country and can frequently leave inmates with thousands, even millions, of dollars in debt. The criminalization of this debt creates a never-ending revolving door for many inmates. Something as simple as parking or traffic violations that result in a fine can start this snowball effect. People who cannot pay such fines eventually find themselves in court and are billed for court or incarceration costs, or frequently, parole/monitoring costs if not incarcerated. Of course, these costs, exceeding the original fines, and are so high that they cannot ever be paid, which only restarts the prison-debt cycle. This system perpetually enslaves some of the poorest Americans by creating situations where the slightest error can result in never-ending debt and incarceration.
Beyond the public system, private prison businesses also house inmates while earning billions of dollars in revenue. These people and companies make enormous profits from the exploitation, transportation, feeding, and detention of prisoners. These private prisons make up a sizable and expanding portion of the PIC. Private prisons keep inmates and earn money based on the number of detainees they can hold and the typical duration of their sentences, according to contracts with the government. This rich, powerful and influential industry constantly encourages the incarceration of as many people as possible for as long as possible, undercutting any efforts to rehabilitate them so they may rejoin society, and feeding the cycle of overzealous policing and protracted punishments.
In contrast to the prison population, which saw an average increase of just 9% from 2000 to 2016, the population in the private system increased by 47% from 2000 to 2016, with the most notable gains being made in the federal private system and private immigration detention, with total changes of 120% and 442%, respectively.
There is minimal monitoring and no requirement for private prisons to explain how they spend their money, which usually results in brutal treatment and prison labor. Guards are not adequately trained, safety precautions are not taken, and the bail system was privatized to boost revenues. Private detention centers can force prisoners to perform prison labor in addition to profiting from keeping them in custody. A vicious circle of injustice, gain, and mistreatment is promoted by the PIC.
Although there are now so many different specialized police functions, slave patrols were the predecessors of modern-day police units in the United States. And to this day, not much seems to have changed. In North America, racism is so deeply ingrained in the police function due to this history, ongoing colonialism and highly racialized poverty. Most police officers’ primary responsibilities are to patrol and control underprivileged and racially marginalized communities; this necessitates badgering, terrorizing, and keeping them down in what those in positions of power view as “their place.”.
Some influential individuals have concluded that overt poverty hinders their vision for upscale urban regeneration and, therefore, poverty and the poor must be kept out of sight. However, the capitalist class is not interested in providing the poor with tangible benefits, since they use the real and constant threat of homelessness and poverty as intimidation tools against workers, forcing them to put up with unfavorable working conditions just to survive. Local governments are legally permitted to use the police force to evict homeless individuals who have nowhere else to go. Massive police operations have been conducted recently in many cities to evict homeless individuals from parks where they had found refuge. Homeless camps are assaulted and scattered with shocking brutality.
In the interests of the capitalist class, the use of police makes life increasingly worse for the homeless, the working poor, and racialized and marginalized communities, which raises some clear concerns about who “law enforcement” is really protecting and serving. It also raises vastly more complex problems about how social control works within the political framework of a liberal democracy, which is supposedly meant to guarantee equality of rights and the enjoyment of civil liberties—yet another of liberalism’s innumerable inconsistencies.
Last year, Western media and high-ranking politicians actively discussed the possibility of Russian troops using atomic weapons in Ukraine. There has even been speculation on the likelihood of a nuclear war breaking out. However, it could be said that the risk is probably a lot higher on the other side of the barricades.
Ukraine’s Atomic History
Ukraine was a nuclear state after the collapse of the USSR, when 1,700 active atomic warheads remained in the country. Its politicians of that time had the prudence to abandon this status. The weapons were taken to Russia under international control, and their means of delivery were destroyed. Ukraine’s missile silos, with the exception of one which is now a museum near Kiev, were blown up, while its strategic bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons were either transferred to Russia or destroyed.
Despite this, there were still many nuclear specialists in Ukraine, as research into nuclear fission has been conducted in Kharkov since the 1930s. In addition, five nuclear power plants were built in Ukraine during the Soviet years: Zaporozhye, Rovno, Khmelnitsky, and South-Ukrainian, as well as the infamous Chernobyl, where an accident involving a power unit led to an explosion that spewed radioactive fallout throughout Europe.
In addition, uranium is extracted at a deposit in Ukraine’s Kirovograd Region and enriched at a plant in the city of Zheltye Vody. In the 2010s, there were plans with Russia’s Rosatom to build a plant in Ukraine that would produce fuel for nuclear power stations. However, these were abandoned after the Maidan coup in 2014, when the country adopted an adversarial stance towards Russia.
At present, three of Ukraine’s five original nuclear power plants remain under its control. Chernobyl, which continued to generate electricity even after the 1986 accident, was finally decommissioned in 2020, while Zaporozhye, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, has been guarded by Russian troops since last year. It is currently being run by Rosatom but does not produce electricity, largely for safety reasons. This is due to regular rocket and artillery attacks by Ukrainian troops, which have damaged numerous pieces of auxiliary equipment.
Push to Reobtain Nuclear Weapons
It should be noted that not everyone in Ukraine was happy that the country gave up its nuclear weapons. Ukrainian politicians have often failed to hide the fact that their dream of reobtaining nuclear weapons is not so much connected with their country’s security, as the desire to dictate their will to the rest of the world. Radical Ukrainian nationalists were particularly dissatisfied with the abandonment of the country’s nuclear status, and many of their manifestos contain a clause calling for it to be restored.
For example, “the return of nuclear weapons” is specifically cited as a goal in paragraph 2 of the Military Doctrine section in the program statement of the Patriot of Ukraine organization, while paragraph 7 of its Foreign Policy section reads: “The ultimate goal of Ukrainian foreign policy is world domination.” Patriot of Ukraine was created in 2014 by the notorious Andrey Biletsky, who formed it based on the ideology of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and had dreamed of Ukraine possessing nuclear weapons as far back as 2007.
In 2009, the Ternopil Regional Council, which was then dominated by Oleg Tianibok’s neo-Nazi Svoboda Party (called the Social-National Party until 2004), demanded that Ukraine’s president, prime minister, and head of the Verkhovna Rada “terminate the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 and retore Ukraine’s nuclear status.”
Ukraine’s longing for an atomic bomb especially increased after February 2014. In an interview with USA Today in March of that year, Ukrainian MP Pavel Rizanenko called Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons a “big mistake.” And that was not just the opinion of one MP. Just a few days later, representatives of the Batkivshchyna party, headed by ex-Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, and UDAR, headed by Kiev’s current mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, including the secretary of the parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defense, Sergey Kaplin, submitted a bill on withdrawing from the non-proliferation treaty. Kaplin claimed that Ukraine could create nuclear weapons in just two years because it already had almost everything necessary: The fissile materials, equipment (except centrifuges), technology, specialists, and even means of delivery. In September of the same year, Ukraine’s minister of defense, Valery Geletey, also expressed the desire to develop nuclear weapons.
In December 2018, the former representative of the Ukrainian mission to NATO, Major General Pyotr Garashchuk, announced the real possibility of Ukraine creating its own nuclear weapons. In 2019, Aleksandr Turchinov, who usurped power in Ukraine in February of 2014, called Ukraine’s renunciation of nuclear weapons a “historic mistake.” Following him, in April 2021, the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrey Melnik, stated that if the West did not help Ukraine in its confrontation with Russia, the country would launch a nuclear program and create an atomic bomb. And on February 19, 2022, before the start of Russia’s special military operation, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky announced at the Munich Security Conference that Ukraine has the right to abandon the Budapest Memorandum, which proclaimed the country’s nuclear-free status.
Perhaps the most striking statement by a Ukrainian politician was made by David Arakhamia, the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s ruling parliamentary faction, Servant of the People. “We could blackmail the whole world, and we would be given money to service (nuclear weapons), as is happening in many other countries now,” he said in mid-2021.
Range of Possibilities
Is Ukraine technically capable of creating an atomic bomb? Absolutely. Yes, enriching uranium-235 to the purity necessary to set off a chain reaction would cost a lot, primarily to create centrifuges for separating isotopes. However, though this may be the most effective way to separate isotopes, it’s not the only one. The first American bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were created without the use of this technology.
In addition, it should not be forgotten that there are not only uranium, but also plutonium bombs. Breeder reactors are used to synthesize this chemical element, most often using heavy-water reactor technology, and research reactors are capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. There is presently a nuclear research installation at the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, and a VVR-M reactor suitable for plutonium production at the Institute for Nuclear Research of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences in Kiev. Until March 2022, there was a US-built facility in Kharkov that could produce isotopes by irradiating the starting materials with a powerful neutron flux, which could also be used to develop fissile materials for a bomb.
In addition, Ukraine has the technical capability to create a nuclear weapon based on uranium-233, rather than uranium-235, which is usually used. A similar bomb was tested by the US in 1955 during Operation Teapot, and its power was comparable to that of the Fat Man bomb that destroyed the Japanese city of Nagasaki. To obtain uranium-233, it is enough to replace one of the fuel assemblies of a conventional nuclear power plant reactor with a thorium-232 cassette, a supply of which is located near Mariupol, a city that was fiercely defended by Ukrainian nationalists from the Azov regiment earlier this year.
There is another indirect sign that both uranium and plutonium versions of nuclear weapons have been secretly developed at the direction of the post-Maidan authorities. At the beginning of 2021, Ukraine completely banned the export of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) to Russia, as was required by an agreement on its supply by Rosatom. SNF, among other things, is a source of weapons-grade plutonium, which can be isolated from fuel cells that have been in a nuclear power plant reactor.
Nuclear Power on the Brink of Disaster
Just as dangerous is the nuclear power policy pursued by the Ukrainian government.
Ukraine inherited five nuclear power plants with 18 active reactors from the USSR. Three of them located at the Chernobyl NPP were decommissioned by 2000. Five of the six reactors at the Zaporozhye NPP, three of the four reactors at the Rovno NPP, one of the two reactors at the Khmelnitsky NPP, and all three reactors at the South Ukraine NPP have exceeded their original lifespans and received extensions of their operating lives for another 10 to 15 years. The license extensions have sometimes been granted with violations of existing regulations since, after 2015, Ukraine’s State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate stopped cooperating with Russian vendors and has not overhauled reactor vessels, which become brittle after prolonged exposure to neutron radiation. Back in 2015, independent experts noted the critical condition of Reactor 1 of the South Ukraine NPP, which, nevertheless, has had its service life extended until 2025.
Ukraine’s Union of Veterans of Nuclear Energy and Industry sent a warning letter to the government in April 2020, arguing that the country’s nuclear energy sector was faced with a “threatening situation,” which, according to the authors of the letter, could well result in “a new Chernobyl.”
The lack of accountability, which led to the 1986 disaster, does not stop at neglecting the technical condition of the reactors that are not being properly monitored and maintained by their developers. During Viktor President Yushchenko’s administration, the decision was made to replace some of the standard fuel rods in Ukrainian reactors with unlicensed fuel assemblies supplied by Westinghouse Electric Company. In 2012, that experiment led to an emergency shutdown of Reactor 3 of the South Ukraine NPP, after Westinghouse fuel assemblies were damaged due to the specific design features of the American counterfeits.
That fuel assemblies fabricated by Westinghouse tend to malfunction in Soviet-designed reactors was not a revelation. They have repeatedly caused emergencies at NPPs in Finland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, but that did not deter the Ukrainian leadership. Not even losses of around $175 million caused by using non-standard assemblies persuaded Ukraine against conducting risky experiments with its nuclear assets.
The new ‘revolutionary’ government, which came to power in 2014, was quick to plunge into its own experiments with nuclear power together with Westinghouse, which was suffering from financial distress. For the company, which filed for bankruptcy in 2017, the Ukrainian market could have been a much-needed lifeline – however, it wasn’t to be, because it once again emerged that the counterfeit fuel assemblies were dangerous for VVER-type reactors. Emergencies at Ukrainian NPPs became a routine event, and yet Westinghouse assemblies accounted for 46% of all nuclear fuel used in Ukraine by the end of 2018.
These risky experiments went beyond using non-standard fuel assemblies. In the fall of 2014, Kiev sent direct orders to boost electricity production at the South Ukraine NPP by 5 to 7%. To achieve this, three VVER-1000 reactors were supposed to operate in “controlled runaway mode,” and a whole algorithm was developed by Ukrainian and British engineers. It was this type of experiment that resulted in the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986. A potential disaster was only averted by an ‘Italian strike’ organized by the NPP personnel, who refused to fulfil outsiders’ orders. This might have been what former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen meant when he said: “We have, upon Ukrainian request, sent a small team of civilian experts to Ukraine to assist the Ukrainians in improving security of their civilian nuclear plants.”
‘Revolutionary expedience’ was used a pretext for a mass exodus of experienced nuclear engineers from Ukrainian NPPs. As Ukrainian MP Viktoria Voytsitska said in 2018, literally all categories of workers were thinking of leaving Ukrainian NPPs, from steam engine drivers and riggers to engineers who controlled reactors and other high-tech equipment.
Provocation for Nuclear Escalation
After Russian forces assumed control of the Zaporozhye NPP, it became a target for incessant Ukrainian shelling, sometimes with the use of Western-made multiple launch rocket systems, heavy artillery, and attack drones. The plant sustained significant damage and was forced to stop generating electricity due to the destruction of auxiliary equipment and the threat to the reactors themselves. At the same time, an IAEA mission “was unable” to establish who was firing on the nuclear site, where Russian soldiers were present.
As the Western media was busy whipping up hysteria over the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia in Ukraine, it transpired that Ukraine was allegedly plotting a provocation of exactly that nature. According to Russian intelligence services, in October 2022, the Eastern Mining and Enrichment Combine in the town of Zheltye Vody and the Kiev Institute for Nuclear Research were in the final stages of developing a dirty bomb on the orders of the Ukrainian government. A missile plant in Dnepropetrovsk built a mock-up of the Russian Iskander missile, which was supposed to carry a radioactive charge and be “shot down” over the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The goal was to accuse Russia of using nuclear weapons and push NATO to retaliate in kind. In other words, to start a nuclear war in Europe.
All these facts mean that present-day Ukraine is arguably a real threat to nuclear security not just in Europe, but on a global scale. It has everything it would take, from irresponsible people in charge of safety and security at nuclear sites, to the technical capabilities.
I was invited onto the Convo Couch recently to talk with Fiorella Isabel and Craig Pasta Jardula about my newly released book, you can check out our conversation below.
For more on my book “The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set: The Birth of International Fascism and Anglo-American Foreign Policy” see some of the chapters which are available for free on my substack.
Kürzlich besuchte die italienische Journalistin Andrea Lucidi das zuvor erwähnte biologische Labor in Rubizhnoye. In seinem Bericht stellte er eine Reihe von Fakten fest:
🔻Das Labor stand unter der Kontrolle des Militärs (Panzerabwehrigel in der Nähe, Sandsäcke);
🔻 Verzeichnisse und Dokumentation im Labor in englischer Sprache;
🔻Tabellen, die auf den Ergebnissen pharmakologischer Studien basieren, werden auch in englischer Sprache ausgefüllt;
🔻 Reagenzgläser mit gefrorenem Blut, Morphin-Inhalatoren, Reagenzien und Geräte für Bluttests, die in der EU hergestellt wurden, wurden gefunden;
Der Friedensstifter 