Tag: Cynthia McKinney

Unipolarity’s Shield:  Two Criminal Heads of State Hold the World Hostage

Posted on by Cynthia McKinney in Read What Cynthia Is WritingTagged , , , , , , ,

AN OPINION EDITORIAL BY CYNTHIA MCKINNEY, PHD

It is February 28, 2026 and the unthinkable has just been unleashed on the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Bombs are falling and missiles are being launched.  Innocent people are dying.  And two rogue states are at it again:  Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and now Iran, the latest in a long chain, are their victims.  I’m talking about the United States (U.S.) and Israel.  Between them, these two states have not only dropped more bombs on their targets than any other state, but the U.S. has also actually used its array of A,B,C weapons:  atomic (against Japan in World War II), biological (against Korea and China in the Korean War, and against Cuba in the U.S. war against Castro’s Cuba) and chemical (against Vietnam, Iraq, and Yemen).  While this unipolar moment, Pax Americana, was supposed to bring peace and democracy and freedom and liberty to the world, instead it has brought constant war and today, the threat of another global conflagration.  And just as these two states have found each other in their global criminal enterprise, so, too, is the case with their leaders, having been found guilty of crimes by their local courts.  How does this happen and how can these two hold the world hostage for World War III?  That is the source of my confoundment today.

*Netanyahu’s guilty verdict is pending completion of his trials once Israel is no longer at war . . .

Unipolarity and What it Means Today

After World War II, the United States was the most powerful state on the planet with its economic and industrial might and its technologically superior military with global reach.  Rather than use this dominant positioning to promote peace, the U.S. used it to enforce a universal culture in every corner of the world, even to countries that didn’t want it.  Economically, the world became a colony of the U.S. and the military was its enforcement wing, used against any and every state that sought to prioritize its sovereignty.  The one President who spoke out about the world not needing a Pax Americana was murdered in broad, open daylight—sending a powerful message to those who succeeded him.  Thus, every U.S. President since John F. Kennedy, with the sole exception of President Jimmy Carter, has bombed another state during his tenure.  That demonstrates that unipolarity can and has become a structural nightmare: a system exactly the opposite of that enshrined in the U.S. Constitution:  one of checks and balances and dispersed—not concentrated—power.  Unipolarity is a global order that has  no effective check on the power of its leader, even when that leader is a convicted felon.  Even worse, unipolarity extends its protective shield to the hegemon’s primary ally, in this case Israel, allowing Israel to operate with the same impunity as the U.S.  By removing all external constraints on the superpower and its inner circle, unipolarity does not prevent world war; it actively enables the very leaders most desperate to start one.  Today, this means that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu own the world with no effective constraints on their power or their use of force.

Two Criminal Profiles, One Shared Logic

Donald Trump was convicted in May 2024 on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records—a domestic criminal conviction that, in many other countries, would have disqualified him from office.  But the U.S. Constitution does not bar felons from the presidency, and no international body can overrule that.  By 2026, Trump had returned to the White House as the first convicted felon to serve as U.S. president.  His personal desperation—the threat of prison, the humiliation of conviction, the fear of what comes after when there is no sovereign immunity—drove Trump even closer to his donors who wanted an Israel-first foreign policy and that then became a driver of U.S. military policy.  Trump’s situation is compounded by his complicity in the crimes of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, whose criminal empire extended even to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home.  Therefore, Trump is both pushed by his donors who want to protect Israel from its neighbors at all costs and pulled by his fear of Epstein’s shadow, always lurking behind every stage.

Benjamin Netanyahu has been on trial since 2020 for corruption.  Israeli courts have not yet reached a verdict, but the threat of conviction hangs over him.  He has repeatedly used wartime emergencies to delay legal proceedings, weaken judicial oversight, and argue that “you cannot judge a prime minister in the middle of seven wars.”  Unipolarity makes this strategy viable because Donald Trump, and almost any U.S. President, will veto any international condemnation and shield Israel from consequences; Netanyahu faces no pressure from the world’s hegemon to de‑escalate.  No other external forces can stop can stop him.  His domestic legal jeopardy and his aggressive foreign policy are two sides of the same coin.

Therefore, in today’s unipolar world, U.S. President Donald Trump could stop Netanyahu, but his own problems force him to shield a sitting prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on trial for corruption while he escalates toward regional war.  Donald Trump, with his own problems, attacks Iran, strategic partner of both Russia and China, and escalates toward global war.  Together, these two criminal heads of state demonstrate the lethal logic of unipolarity.

Unipolarity Is a Trap, But Multipolarity Is No Panacea

As the world sits on a precipice between total catastrophe and the dawn of a “New World Order,” multipolarity has been positioned as the next great hope for mankind:  delivering us from the dirges of a unipolar world that has come to this.  But, can we really expect multipolarity, governed by the same malignant forces to deliver anything to us but another form of despotism wrapped in a new language for a new age?  I think not.  Multipolarity would only multiply the havens of impunity.  Breaking the cycle will not come from rearranging power among states but from dismantling impunity itself.  Universal jurisdiction must ensure that no leader, however mighty, can hide behind borders.  The International Criminal Court must be empowered to prosecute crimes without exception, and the veto that has paralyzed the United Nations must be abolished so justice cannot be strangled by politics.  Yet institutions alone are not enough.  It is an empowered global civil society—citizens across continents refusing to be silenced—that must demand accountability, insisting that no man’s desperation can outweigh humanity’s survival.  Only when people themselves rise to enforce justice will the world escape the trap of unipolarity and the false promise of multipolarity.  Until then, we remain at the mercy of criminal leaders who gamble with our future.  The choice is stark:  either humanity breaks the cycle of impunity, or the cycle of impunity breaks humanity

Unipolarity Is a Trap, Multipolarity Is No PanaceaDownload

Kosovo or Kurdistan? The U.S. “Pivot to Asia” and the Geopolitics of “Rohingya-Land”

Posted on by Cynthia McKinney in Read What Cynthia Is WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , ,
Rohingya-Land?

ABSTRACT

Kosovars and Kurds represent two poles along the continuum of identity, nationalism, and self-determination as mediated by U.S. geostrategic goals. The Rohingya, most of whom are Muslim, like Kosovars and Kurds, have their identity intact. But, as a part of its “Pivot to Asia,” how might U.S. geostrategic goals in the region use the Rohingya nation while it struggles for recognition and self-determination? And what policies could the state of Bangladesh implement to blunt the effects of those goals? These are the questions this paper seeks to answer.

We begin with the one constant with which all countries big and small must contend: the foreign policy of the United States of America (U.S.). The world witnessed the U.S. create a state— as the Serbs would say, from the heart of Serbia—the Republic of Kosovo. Despite its characterization by some as a “narco-state” and its lack of universal international recognition, its biggest champion is the United States and that affords it positions in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and a growing economy since its unilateral declaration of independence from pro-Russia Serbia in 2008.

The desire of the Kurds for statehood has not fared as well. Divided among Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, Kurdish goals for recognition and self-determination have been used by the U.S. to deadly effect. In its latest effort at regime change—in Syria—the U.S. dangled the prospect of the creation of Kurdistan and enlisted Kurdish help in the armed struggle against Syria’s President, Bashar Al-Assad—until U.S. regional priorities changed, leaving the well-armed, battle-tested Kurds with several difficult choices. Kurdistan remains a dream.

Click Below to View Or Download the Presentation:

Kosovo-or-KurdistanDownload

Truth Foretold, Specious Journalism, And Spurious Assertions: The Case of Jonathan Bernstein, Bloomberg View, and The Charlotte Observer

Posted on by Cynthia McKinney in Press ReleasesTagged , , , , , , , , , ,

While it is true that I was “booted” by pro-war Democrats who worked in concert with like-minded Republicans, your assertion of my being booted for “peddling conspiracies” deserves a deeper look. My booting, by the way, resulted in the GOP takeover of my home State of Georgia, an outcome that seemingly makes both pro-war Democrats and Republicans (now called “globalists”) comfortable. Therefore, I want to take a deeper look at what I did “peddle:”

 

  1. That Presidential candidate George W. Bush worked with his Florida Governor brother, Jeb, to orchestrate election theft in the 2000 Presidential election. Now that the public has caught up with the facts that I put on the table in 2000 and 2001 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdPhXuTzQeI), this position is supported by evidence that is available to all;
  2. That President George W. Bush received warnings about an impending attack on the US (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-directors-documentary-911-bush-213353) and actively blocked an investigation (http://edition.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/01/29/inv.terror.probe/) into the September 11, 2001 attacks. Now that the public has caught up with the facts that I put on the table in 2001, this position is supported by evidence that is available to all;
  3. That the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund (https://www.vcf.gov/faq.html) was really set up to thwart 9/11 wrongful death lawsuits because it prevented victims’ survivors from getting justice in US Courts; I felt that victims and victims’ survivors should be able to sue the culprits as well as receive support from the Fund. The President recently vetoed legislation that would allow lawsuits to move forward against Saudi Arabia and Congress just overrode his veto. Fourteen years later, I am pleased that, once again, my position has been supported by evidence that has been clearly available to all for at least a decade;
  4. That the US was not justified in attacking Iraq in 2003. The most thorough investigation into the 2003 decision to go to war against Iraq is the Chilcot Report (http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/the-report/) which found that war was not the last option and that U.S. allegations of Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq were not justified. Now that the public has caught up with the facts that I put on the table in 2002, this position is supported by evidence that is available to all;
  5. That the then-Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, failed to perform his job during Hurricane Katrina and that thousands needlessly died because he failed the Gulf States and the country. After joining with Republicans and writing a Congressional Report on the subject that is available to the public (www.nola.com/katrina/pdf/mainreport.pdf), my position is supported by evidence that is available to all;
  6. That a specific allegation had been made to my Congressional Office that thousands of bodies had been dumped in Louisiana swamps after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Now, we know that 9/11 human remains were dumped in a landfill (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/us/panel-recommends-more-oversight-and-training-at-dover-mortuary.html?_r=0) with such action having been deemed “dereliction of duty,” so who has conducted an independent investigation into what happened in Louisiana, in particular, with respect to body disposal?
  7. That racism exists in Capitol Hill Police Department similar to what exists in other police departments around the U.S. and that I was a victim of that discrimination after I supported a lawsuit filed by Black police officers after one of their superior officers used the word “nigger.” Black police officers have been waiting fifteen years for justice and recently held a demonstration in support of their claim (http://www.rollcall.com/news/policy/former-capitol-police-call-attention-discrimination-lawsuits). One need only hear the moving testimony of the U.S. Senate’s lone Black GOP Member and his interactions with the Capitol Hill Police (http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/floor-speeches/tim-scott-black-republican-emotional-powerful-dramatic-race-speech-targeted-capitol-police) to understand that my experience was surely possible. Now, again—after the fact— that the public has caught up with the evidence that I put on the table in 2006, my position is supported by evidence that is available to all, sadly now most of all, the family of Keith Lamont Scott and all of those young people who were just recently in Charlotte’s streets.

 

If only the press had decided to investigate my assertions rather than castigate me for making them! Maybe things would be far different than they are today in Iraq, Libya, Louisiana, and elsewhere. But, instead of investigation of the inconvenient or unpleasant facts that I repeatedly put on the table, the response was a frenzy of specious journalism and spurious assertions where true journalism was needed. Your column, with mention of my name, is an example of that. Such “reporting” is precisely why Trump’s attacks on the media resonate so well with the American and global public. The polling data on the public perception of the U.S. media is a damning indictment of the role the media has played in this country for too many years. That is why the U.S. public more and more now seeks its information from foreign media outlets, the internet, “alternative” media, and less and less from “newspapers” like yours.

 

Cynthia McKinney, Ph.D.