The EU is being prodded into selling itself into slavery on behalf of Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman says
“A total commitment to supporting the Kiev regime would simply mean immolation [for the EU]. And this proposal is addressed to nations that are debating how they can live through the winter,” Zakharova said, in reference to the energy shortages that EU member states are struggling to confront.
Ukraine’s newly published proposal for Western security guarantees is an invitation for the economic self-immolation of the EU, according to Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The Russian diplomat believes that the proposed international agreement which Kiev released on Tuesday is an economic trap for EU nations set by the US with Ukraine’s assistance.
Most of the measures included in the document “are already being implemented” by Kiev’s backers, but Washington’s EU allies are expected to pledge to keep the Ukraine aid money flowing for the foreseeable future, Zakharova said in an interview on Wednesday. If signed, the ‘Kiev Security Compact’ would mean “harsh slavery” for the bloc from which it would not recover anytime soon, she claimed.
“A total commitment to supporting the Kiev regime would simply mean immolation [for the EU]. And this proposal is addressed to nations that are debating how they can live through the winter,” Zakharova said, in reference to the energy shortages that EU member states are struggling to confront.
Developed EU nations face an economic and humanitarian disaster after taking directions from the US on how to respond to the crisis in Ukraine, according to the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman.
The situation is ironic, she believes, as the EU began as a group of nations that banded together for mutual economic benefit through the deregulation of trade. Now “they are being corralled together” so their lives will become “colder, poorer, and harder,” she said.
This is Washington’s diabolical plan to destroy what was previously called the common European space.
The Ukrainian security proposal was prepared by a group co-chaired by Andrey Yermak, the chief of staff of President Vladimir Zelensky, and former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
The 10-page document outlines NATO-like security guarantees for Ukraine by the US and its allies that would benefit Kiev until it formally joins the Washington-led military bloc. It also calls for continued military and financial aid for Ukraine by the guarantors.
Darned Europe doofuses, why did it not curb the obscene profits from the oil companies before this? Lou
The European Commission has reportedly backpedaled on the gas price cap and is currently working on a mechanism to tax the windfall profits of energy companies. Brussels is also urging EU nations to impose various energy-saving measures to better prepare for peak consumption during the winter. -RT
The West has limited options and none are good for it. They either admit defeat and walk back the sanctions on Russia, or they allow the slaves to starve and freeze this winter. I think we can guess which option they will choose considering they have proven time and time again that they don’t care even a little bit about the slaves.
As winter approaches, Russia seems to have the upper hand. The country has been withholding and cutting natural gas supplies to European Union countries in response to sanctions placed on it over the Ukraine “invasion.”
Because of the EU’s inability to face “reality”, they face a cold and dark winter. Hungary’s State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Trade Tamas Menczer, says that the bloc may rethink restrictions on Moscow as soon as the autumn.
The restrictions imposed on Russian trade to punish it for attacking Ukraine have failed to change Moscow’s behavior and actually rewarded it with increased revenues after they triggered a spike in energy prices, the MP said during an appearance on M1 TV on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the European countries that imposed the sanctions are facing energy shortages. -RT
The Hungarian MP confirmed that his country, which criticized the EU’s drive to decouple the economy of the bloc from Russian energy, opposed the idea of introducing a price cap on gas bought from foreign nations. He called the proposal absurd and impractical, citing Moscow’s promises to cut supplies to customers that try to dictate the price.
Last week, Hungarian Parliament Speaker Laszlo Kover claimed that the EU is the “loser” in the Ukraine conflict due to the economic damage caused by the sanctions and Russia’s response to them.
The European Commission has reportedly backpedaled on the gas price cap and is currently working on a mechanism to tax the windfall profits of energy companies. Brussels is also urging EU nations to impose various energy-saving measures to better prepare for peak consumption during the winter. -RT
“Reality knocks on the door of every country,” Menczer said, explaining why he believes the sanctions will be lifted sooner rather than later. Member states are set to review their sanctions policies later in the autumn. Failure to reevaluate the sanctions will destroy the EU’s economy and the slaves residing there. If the West removes the sanctions, they will be admitting defeat to Russia. So what will the West do?
The West has limited options and none are good for it. They either admit defeat and walk back the sanctions on Russia, or they allow the slaves to starve and freeze this winter. I think we can guess which option they will choose considering they have proven time and time again that they don’t care even a little bit about the slaves.
Here’s your ‘reserve currency’ thought for the day: Every US dollar is a check written on an account that is overdrawn by 30 trillion dollars.
The only thing keeping the USD from vanishing into the ether is the trust of credulous people who continue to accept it as legal tender.
How dumb is that? For decades the US has been running a scam in which it exchanges its fishwrap currency for things of genuine value. (oil, manufactured goods, and labor) But now the Biden troupe has scrapped that system altogether and divided the world into warring camps.
Let me get this straight: The sanctions are actually hurting the US and helping Russia, so the experts think we should impose more sanctions? Is that it?
The EU is sinking into recession, supply lines have been severely disrupted, food shortages are steadily emerging, and gas and oil prices are through-the-roof. By every objective standard, the sanctions have not only failed but backfired spectacularly. Can’t the Biden people see the damage they’re doing? Are they completely divorced from reality?
First published on Global Research on July 7, 2022
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“The ferocity of the confrontation in Ukraine shows that we’re talking about much more than the fate of the regime in Kiev. The architecture of the entire world order is at stake.” Sergei Naryshkin, Director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence.
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Here’s your ‘reserve currency’ thought for the day: Every US dollar is a check written on an account that is overdrawn by 30 trillion dollars.
It’s true. The “full faith and credit” of the US Treasury is largely a myth held together by an institutional framework that rests on a foundation of pure sand. In fact, the USD is not worth the paper it is printed on; it is an IOU flailing in an ocean of red ink.
The only thing keeping the USD from vanishing into the ether is the trust of credulous people who continue to accept it as legal tender.
But why do people remain confident in the dollar when its flaws are known to all? After all, America’s $30 trillion National Debt is hardly a secret, nor is the additional $9 trillion that’s piled up on the Fed’s balance sheet. That is a stealth debt of which the American people are completely unaware, but they are responsible for all the same.
In order to answer that question, we need to look at how the system actually works and how the dollar is propped up by the numerous institutions that were created following WW2. These institutions provide an environment for conducting history’s longest and most flagrant swindle, the exchange of high-ticket manufactured goods, raw materials and hard-labor for slips of green paper with dead presidents on them.
One can only marvel at the genius of the elites who concocted this scam and then imposed it wholesale on the masses without a peep of protest. Of course, the system is accompanied by various enforcement mechanisms that swiftly remove anyone who tries to either break free from the dollar or, God help us, create an alternate system altogether. (Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi come to mind.) But the fact is– aside from the institutional framework and the ruthless extermination of dollar opponents– there’s no reason why humanity should remain yoked to a currency that is buried beneath a mountain of debt and whose real value is virtually unknowable.
It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when the dollar was the strongest currency in the world and deserved its spot at the top of the heap. Following WW1, the US was “the owner of the majority of the world’s gold” which was why an international delegation “decided that the world’s currencies would no longer be linked to gold but could be pegged to the U.S. dollar, “because the greenback was, itself, linked to gold.” Here’s more from an article at Investopedia:
“The arrangement came to be known as the Bretton Woods Agreement. It established the authority of central banks, which would maintain fixed exchange rates between their currencies and the dollar. In turn, the United States would redeem U.S. dollars for gold on demand….
The U.S dollar was officially crowned the world’s reserve currency and was backed by the world’s largest gold reserves thanks to the Bretton Woods Agreement. Instead of gold reserves, other countries accumulated reserves of U.S. dollars. Needing a place to store their dollars, countries began buying U.S. Treasury securities, which they considered to be a safe store of money.
The demand for Treasury securities, coupled with the deficit spending needed to finance the Vietnam War and the Great Society domestic programs, caused the United States to flood the market with paper money….
The demand for gold was such that President Richard Nixon was forced to intervene and de-link the dollar from gold, which led to the floating exchange rates that exist today. Although there have been periods of stagflation, which is defined as high inflation and high unemployment, the U.S. dollar has remained the world’s reserve currency.” (“How the U.S. Dollar Became the World’s Reserve Currency”, Investopedia)
But now the gold is gone and what’s left is a steaming pile of debt. So, how on earth has the dollar managed to preserve its status as the world’s preeminent currency?
Proponents of the dollar system will tell you it has something to do with “the size and strength of the U.S. economy and the dominance of the U.S. financial markets.” But that’s nonsense.
The truth is, reserve currency status has nothing to do with “the size and strength” of America’s post-industrial, service-oriented, bubble-driven, third-world-sh**hole economy. Nor does it have anything to do with the alleged safety of US Treasuries” which– next to the dollar– is the biggest Ponzi flim-flam of all time.
The real reason the dollar has remained the world’s premier currency is because of the cartelization of Central Banking.
The Western Central Banks are a de facto monopoly run by a small cabal of inter-breeding bottom-feeders who coordinate and collude on monetary policy in order to preserve their maniacal death-grip on the financial markets and the global economy. It’s a Monetary Mafia and– as George Carlin famously said: “You and I are not in it. You and I are not in the big club.” Bottom line: It is the relentless manipulation of interest rates, forward guidance, and Quantitative Easing (QE) that has kept the dollar in its lofty but undeserved spot.
But all that is about to change due entirely to Biden’s reckless foreign policy which is forcing critical players in the global economy to create their own rival system. This is a real tragedy for the West which has enjoyed a century of nonstop wealth extraction from the developing world.
Now– due to the economic sanctions on Russia– an entirely new order is emerging in which the dollar will be substituted for national currencies (processed through an independent financial settlement system) in bilateral trade deals until– later this year– Russia launches an exchange-traded commodities-backed currency that will be used by trading partners in Asia and Africa.
Washington’s theft of Russia’s foreign reserves in April turbo-charged the current process which was further accelerated by banning Russia from foreign markets. In short, US economic sanctions and boycotts have expanded the non-dollar zone by many orders of magnitude and forced the creation of a new monetary order.
How dumb is that? For decades the US has been running a scam in which it exchanges its fishwrap currency for things of genuine value. (oil, manufactured goods, and labor) But now the Biden troupe has scrapped that system altogether and divided the world into warring camps.
But, why?
To punish Russia, is that it?
Yes, that’s it.
But, if that’s the case, then shouldn’t we try to figure out whether the sanctions actually work or not before we recklessly change the system?
Too late for that. The war on Russia has begun and the early results are already pouring in. Just look at the way we’ve destroyed Russia’s currency, the ruble. It’s shocking! Here’s the scoop from an article at CBS:
“The Russian ruble is the best-performing currency in the world this year….
Two months after the ruble’s value fell to less than a U.S. penny amid the swiftest, toughest economic sanctions in modern history, Russia’s currency has mounted a stunning turnaround. The ruble has jumped 40% against the dollar since January.
Normally, a country facing international sanctions and a major military conflict would see investors fleeing and a steady outflow of capital, causing its currency to drop….
Huh? You mean the attack on the ruble didn’t work after all?
Sure looks that way. But that doesn’t mean the sanctions are a failure. Oh, no. Just at look at the effect they’ve had on Russian commodities. Export receipts are way-down, right? Here’s more from CBS:
“Commodity prices are currently sky-high, and even though there is a drop in the volume of Russian exports due to embargoes and sanctioning, the increase in commodity prices more than compensates for these drops,” said Tatiana Orlova, lead emerging markets economist at Oxford Economics.
Russia is pulling in nearly $20 billion a month from energy exports. Since the end of March, many foreign buyers have complied with a demand to pay for energy in rubles, pushing up the currency’s value.” (“Russia’s ruble is the strongest currency in the world this year“, CBS News)
You’re kidding me? You mean the ruble is surging and Putin is raking in more dough on commodities than ever before?
Yep, and it’s the same deal with Russia’s trade surplus. Take a look at this excerpt from an article in The Economist:
“Russia’s exports… have held up surprisingly well, including those directed to the West. Sanctions permit the sale of oil and gas to most of the world to continue uninterrupted. And a spike in energy prices has boosted revenues further.
As a result, analysts expect Russia’s trade surplus to hit record highs in the coming months. The IIF reckons that in 2022 the current-account surplus, which includes trade and some financial flows, could come in at $250bn (15% of last year’s GDP), more than double the $120bn recorded in 2021. That sanctions have boosted Russia’s trade surplus, and thus helped finance the war, is disappointing, says Mr Vistesen. Ms Ribakova reckons that the efficacy of financial sanctions may have reached its limits. A decision to tighten trade sanctions must come next.
But such measures could take time to take effect. Even if the EU enacts its proposal to ban Russian oil, the embargo would be phased in so slowly that the bloc’s oil imports from Russia would fall by just 19% this year, says Liam Peach of Capital Economics, a consultancy. The full impact of these sanctions would be felt only at the start of 2023—by which point Mr. Putin will have amassed billions to fund his war.” ( “Russia is on track for a record trade surplus”, The Economist)
Let me get this straight: The sanctions are actually hurting the US and helping Russia, so the experts think we should impose more sanctions? Is that it?
Precisely. Now that we have shot ourselves in the foot, the experts think it would be wise to shoot the other one too.
Am I the only one who is struck by the insanity of this policy? Check out this clip from an article at RT:
“Russia could earn a record $100 billion from gas sales to European countries in 2022 due to the sharp rise in energy prices, French newspaper Les Echos reported this week, citing Citibank analysts.
According to the paper, the projected income from gas sales will be almost twice as much as last year. The analysis does not take into account profits from the sale of other Russian commodities, such as oil, coal, and other minerals.
Les Echos reports that, despite sanctions and warnings of a sweeping embargo on Russian energy, the 27 EU countries continue to send roughly $200 million per day to Gazprom.”(“Russian gas revenues projected to hit new highs”, RT)
So the revenues from gas and oil sales are literally flooding Moscow’s coffers like never before. Meanwhile, energy prices in the EU and America have skyrocketed to 40-year highs.
Can you see how counterproductive this policy is?
The EU is sinking into recession, supply lines have been severely disrupted, food shortages are steadily emerging, and gas and oil prices are through-the-roof. By every objective standard, the sanctions have not only failed but backfired spectacularly. Can’t the Biden people see the damage they’re doing? Are they completely divorced from reality?
Imagine if the Ukrainians use Biden’s new artillery battery (HIMARS) to shell cities in Russia? Then what?
Then Putin takes off the gloves and shuts off the flow of hydrocarbons to Europe immediately. That’s what’s going to happen if Washington continues to escalate. You can bet on it. If Russia’s “Special Military Operation” suddenly becomes a war, the lights across Europe will go dark, homes will begin to freeze, factories will go silent, and the continent will slide headlong into a protracted and painful depression.
Does anyone in Washington think about these things or are they all so drunk on their own press clippings they’ve completely lost touch with reality?
Here’s more from an article at RT:
“Even as the collective West continues to insist – against all observable reality – that the conflict in Ukraine is going well for Kiev, major media outlets are becoming increasingly uneasy with the situation on the economic front. More and more observers are admitting that the embargoes imposed by the US and its allies aren’t crushing the Russian economy, as originally intended, but rather their own.…
“Russia is winning the economic war,” the Guardian’s economics editor Larry Elliott declared on Thursday. “It is now three months since the west launched its economic war against Russia, and it is not going according to plan. On the contrary, things are going very badly indeed,” he wrote…
In a May 30 essay, Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins also said that the embargo had failed…
Did you catch that part about “Russia winning the economic war”? What do you think that means in practical terms?
Does it mean that Washington’s failed attempt to maintain its global hegemony by “weakening” Russia is actually putting enormous strains on the Transatlantic Alliance and NATO that will trigger a re-calibration of relations leading to a defiant rejection of the “rules-based system?”
Is that what it means? Is Europe going to split with Washington and leave America to sink beneath its $30 trillion ocean of red ink?
Yes, that’s exactly what it means.
Uncle Sam’s 30-Year Bender
Proponents of Washington’s proxy war have no idea of the magnitude of their mistake or how much damage they are inflicting on their own country. The Ukraine debacle is the culmination of 30 years of bloody interventions that have brought us to a tipping point where the nation’s fortunes are about to take a dramatic turn for the worse. As the dollar-zone shrinks, standards of living will plunge, unemployment will soar, and the economy will go into a downward-death spiral.
Washington has greatly underestimated its vulnerability to catastrophic geopolitical blowback that is about to bring the New American Century to a swift and excruciating end.
A wise leader would do everything in his power to pull us back from the brink.
*
Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image is from Shutterstock
The original source of this article is Global Research
Agreements totaling $54 billion (3.27 trillion rubles) have been signed at the seventh annual Eastern Economic Forum (EEF), in Vladivostok, this week, TASS reported on Thursday, citing the press service of Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev.
“The economy of the macro-region (Far East) received about 2.7 trillion rubles ($44.2 billion) of investments. More than 100,000 jobs have been created, and now more than 290 agreements have been signed at the forum for a total of 3.27 trillion rubles ($54 billion), which is also a record,” the press service said.
Given the challenges posed by Western anti-Russia sanctions, the importance of the Far East region is growing rapidly, the report added.
This year, within the framework of the forum, three new production facilities were launched in the Far East: a cargo-passenger car-rail ferry in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, the Komandor fish processing plant in Kamchatka, and the Zabaikalsk-Manchuria grain railway terminal in Zabaikalsky Region.
The EEF, which took place from September 5-8 in the Russian Far Eastern capital, attracted business representatives and government officials from more than 60 countries.
“They [Europeans] even believe that it is the bad Russians that have closed the tap of oil and gas, while it is our own leaders in Europe that have stupidly imposed these sanctions that are destroying the European economy. We, Europeans, are bringing stagflation onto our head. Before the people realize it, it will be too late. Macron, [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz, von der Leyen and the like will never admit they were wrong and present excuses,” he asserted.
Charles Gave blasts leaders for “destroying the European economy.”
Predicting that cost of living protests in the Czech Republic and Germany will spread around the continent, a prominent economist warns that European citizens are “mad with anger and it will worsen.”
On Saturday, over 70,000 people took to the streets of Prague to demand an end to weapons supplies and neutrality regarding the conflict in Ukraine.
Numerous demonstrations are also set to take place in major German cities over the next month as energy bills and inflation soar as a result of sanctions on Russia and over dependence on green energy.
“The demonstrations in Prague and Germany are only the beginning. The price of gas and consequently of electricity are driving the European citizens mad with anger and it will worsen,” French economist Charles Gave told Sputnik.
Gave went on to assert that many Europeans aren’t buying the narrative that the situation, which culminated in the shut down of gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, is all Vladimir Putin’s fault.
“The European governments and the European Commission speak of a ‘manipulation’ by Russia, but people perceive very well that the decision to stop importing Russian gas and oil was a European decision, taken by Brussels without even thinking of the impact it will have on the European economy,” he said.
The economist blasted European leaders for their obsession with net zero and climate change hysteria, which has left the continent totally lacking in self-sufficiency.
“For the last 15 years, our European leaders have gone into a climate craze, promoting magic mirrors and windmills as the solution. It does not work. These solutions demand the same capacity in gas power plants,” Gave said.
The economist firmly blamed globalist technocrat leaders for sacrificing the interests of Europeans on the altar of prolonging a war that will cause economic devastation.
“They [Europeans] even believe that it is the bad Russians that have closed the tap of oil and gas, while it is our own leaders in Europe that have stupidly imposed these sanctions that are destroying the European economy. We, Europeans, are bringing stagflation onto our head. Before the people realize it, it will be too late. Macron, [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz, von der Leyen and the like will never admit they were wrong and present excuses,” he asserted.
As we highlighted yesterday, police in the UK are preparing for a widespread “breakdown in public order” caused by the cost of living crisis if new Prime Minister Liz Truss doesn’t authorize a big enough government handout.
Truss is set to freeze all energy bills for at least two years at a cost of hundreds of billions of pounds, an expense that will inevitably be passed on to the taxpayer at a later date.
“Your rights are evaporating, your government has failed to provide the bare minimum social safety nets during a very manageable pandemic, your nation’s billionaire class has been growing wealthier and wealthier while most of you would struggle to pay a $1000 emergency bill, but sure, China is your real enemy.”
Ten million Americans declare unemployment in two weeks and all your government does is give you a $1,200 “advance” on your tax return while bailing out corporations with the largest wealth transfer ever, and some of you are still shrieking about Russia and China. Pathetic fucking tools.
Your rights are evaporating, your government has failed to provide the bare minimum social safety nets during a very manageable pandemic, your nation’s billionaire class has been growing wealthier and wealthier while most of you would struggle to pay a $1000 emergency bill, but sure, China is your real enemy.
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Many Americans being plunged into debt and destitution. Many young Americans about to start contemplating joining the military. Many Pentagon officials factoring this in to their future calculations. Poverty has long served as a makeshift draft in the dangerous, dying US empire.
Not that it should surprise any American that this crisis has only wound up benefiting massive corporations, debt slave owners, government agencies and the US war machine. These are the real US government, after all.
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Keep in mind that virtually everything you hear from conservatives and mainstream liberals right now is basically just an irrational lashing out over their entire ideology faceplanting in front of the entire world.
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Governments which prohibit people from providing for themselves without providing for those people do not deserve to exist. There is no legitimate basis for declaring a lockdown in any area without first ensuring that you can adequately provide for everyone whose financial stability is disrupted by this, and if you do it’s perfectly legitimate for the citizenry to resist your lockdown.
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I could probably think of dozens of things the drivers of the US government could stand to gain by deliberately letting this pandemic get a lot worse than it needs to in America.
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The entire Cuomo family is a corrupt political dynasty and the sooner America flushes them down the toilet the better.
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Friendly reminder that more people would trust “authoritative” news outlets about this virus if those outlets didn’t have an extensive history of constantly lying to the public about very important matters. You can’t blame people for being distrustful when you made them that way.
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I personally wouldn’t invest a lot of emotional energy in the hope that things will go back to normal. “Normal” is gone forever. Even before the virus the only consistent pattern we’ve been seeing is things getting stranger and stranger. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
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Covid stats paint an unclear picture since governments likely distort their numbers, testing is sparse and many are asymptomatic. To get a clearer picture of our situation, listen to what medical staff are saying where it’s bad, since overwhelmed hospitals are the primary concern.
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People: May we please have minimal authoritarian responses to this pandemic and adequate protection from poverty?
Governments: No but you may have the exact opposite of those things.
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There isn’t actually any contradiction in the beliefs that (A) the virus is dangerous, (B) mass unemployment is dangerous, and (C) authoritarian government policies are dangerous. There needn’t be any cognitive dissonance holding all three at once; they’re not mutually exclusive.
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Contrary to popular belief, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was not about an oppressive dictatorship but a society getting exactly what it asked for; people were so dumbed down by television that they voted for books to be burned because they didn’t want to be challenged or offended. Worth remembering as people are demanding more authoritarian lockdown measures and snitching on their neighbors for going on a second run.
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Continuing starvation sanctions during a global pandemic is biowarfare.
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I don’t remember voting for a paradigm where powerful governments pour the lion’s share of resources into sabotaging, toppling and destroying nations which don’t defer to their interests. Do you?
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Start-ups and mom-and-pop shops are going bust all over the place and the US government is helping the big corporations sweep them up for peanuts. Time to stop stanning for billionaires my aspirational, entrepreneurial friends. You are mere fleas to them.
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USA: We’re moving more troops to the Middle East.
Middle East: Why?
USA: To protect the troops we already have there.
Middle East: Why were those troops here?
USA: To protect the military bases we have there.
Middle East: And why were those bases here?
USA: Our troops needed somewhere to sleep.
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We should be relaxing at home assured of our financial and medical stability while bankers, debt collectors and arms manufacturers stress about their future.
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I hope all you couples stuck at home together are getting world-transformingly vulnerable with each other and having world-transformingly awesome sex (in that order).
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The post-apocalyptic movies lied to you about human nature. People tend to be more caring and compassionate with each other in a time of great crisis, not less. Please remember this going forward.
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Nobody knows what’s going to happen and anyone who says they do is bullshitting.
There’s no reason to feel confident that anything is impossible anymore, because everything’s changing so quickly and unpredictably. Orwellian dystopia? Maybe. World War 3? Maybe. Nuclear war? Maybe. Revolution? Maybe. Mass-scale awakening? Maybe. Create a new world? Maybe.
And now a new bombshell has emerged: The White House rhetoric of accusing China of spreading the “Wuhan virus” Worldwide has been refuted by both Japanese and Chinese reports. Scientific analysis revealed by Larry Romanoff suggests that the virus was “Made in America”:
“it appears that the virus did not originate in China and, according to reports in Japanese and other media, may have originated in the US. …
Are Americans stupid or just plain evil? “In the meantime, coinciding with the coronavirus lockdown in Italy, 30,000 US troops have been dispatched to the EU, under US-NATO’s “Defend Europe 2020” war games against Russia, in the largest military deployment since World War II. “Could the Defender become the Invader…?”
Trump contends that the coronavirus was “Made in China”. And that China threatens America.
The president of the US wants Americans to believe that the coronavirus pandemic carries the “Made in China” label.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refers to it as the “Wuhan coronavirus.”
“The Big Lie” started on January 30th when the WHO Director General pressured by powerful US economic interests declared a global public health emergency with only 150 “confirmed cases” (by the WHO) outside Chinawith only six cases in the USA. And it was called a pandemic.
“Fake media” immediately went into high gear. China was held responsible for “spreading infection” Worldwide.
On the following day (January 31, 2020), Trump announced that he would deny entry to the US of both Chinese and foreign nationals “who have traveled in China in the last 14 days”. This immediately triggered a crisis in air travel, transportation, US-China business relations as well as freight and shipping transactions.
While the “Made in China” coronavirus label served as a pretext, the unspoken objective was to bring the Chinese economy to its knees.
It was an act of “economic warfare”, which has contributed to undermining both China’s economy as well as that of most Western countries (allies of the US), leading to a wave of bankruptcies, not to mention unemployment, collapse of the tourist industry, etc.
Moreover, Trump’s “Made in China” coronavirus label almost immediately as of early February triggered a campaign against ethnic Chinese throughout the Western World.
Stage 2.0: “Infections Transmitted by Europeans”?
On March 11, a new phase was launched. The Trump administration imposed a 30-day ban on Europeans entering the United States through the suspension of air-travel with the EU (with the exception of Britain).
America is now waging its “economic war” against Western Europe, while using COVID-19 as a justification.
European governments have been co-opted. In Italy a lockdown prevails, ordered by the Prime Minister, large cities in Northern Italy including Milano and Torino have literally closed down.
Confusion, Fear and intimidation prevail.
It’s “Damage Made in America”.
Late February: Financial manipulation characterizes stock market transactions Worldwide.
The stock value of airlines companies collapses overnight. Those who had “foreknowledge” of Trump’s March 11 decision to ban transatlantic flights from EU countries made a bundle of money. It’s called “short-selling” in the derivative market among other speculative ops. Institutional speculators including hedge funds with “inside info” had already placed their bets.
More generally, a massive transfer of money wealth has occurred, among the largest in World history, leading to countless bankruptcies, not to mention the loss of lifelong savings engineered through the collapse of financial markets.
This process is ongoing. It would be naive to believe that these occurrences are spontaneous, based on market forces. They are deliberate. They are part of a carefully designed plan involving powerful financial interests.
COVID-19: “Made in China” or “Made in America”?
And now a new bombshell has emerged: The White House rhetoric of accusing China of spreading the “Wuhan virus” Worldwide has been refuted by both Japanese and Chinese reports. Scientific analysis revealed by Larry Romanoff suggests that the virus was “Made in America”:
“it appears that the virus did not originate in China and, according to reports in Japanese and other media, may have originated in the US. …
In February, the Japanese Asahi news report (print and TV) claimed the coronavirus originated in the US, not in China, and that some (or many) of the 14,000 American deaths attributed to influenza may have in fact have resulted from the coronavirus.
And on March 12, in a statement to the US Congress (House Oversight Committee), CDC Director Robert Redfield unwittingly “spilled the beans”. He candidly admitted, yes, some cases diagnosed as seasonal flu could have been coronavirus.
When did this occur? In October, November? What is the chronology. It is worth noting that Redfield’s statement is corroborated by both Japanese and Taiwanese virologists. Two countries which are staunch allies of the USA.
Global Times
✔@globaltimesnews
CDC director Robert Redfield admitted some Americans who seemingly died from influenza were tested positive for novel #coronavirus in the posthumous diagnosis, during the House Oversight Committee Wednesday. #COVID19
It is worth noting that the Taiwan virologist (referred to above)
“stated that the US has recently [?] had more than 200 “pulmonary fibrosis” cases that resulted in death due to patients’ inability to breathe, … He said he .. informed the US health authorities to consider seriously those deaths as resulting from the coronavirus, … [He] then stated the virus outbreak may have begun earlier than assumed, suggesting “We must look to September of 2019”. (quoted in Larry Romanoff, op cit)
China’s Foreign Ministry has reacted to CDC Robert Redfield’s statements intimating that the virus could have originated in the US.
“When Did “Patient Zero” Begin in the US?” said China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian.
Of course “WHEN” is the fundamental question.
“How many people are infected, what are the names of the hospitals, It might be US Army that brought epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent, US owe us an explanation”
The World is at the Crossroads of the Most Serious Social and Economic Crisis in Modern History
People Worldwide are being misled. They are told: “It’s going to get worse”. Angela Merkel has stated without a shred of evidence that “70% of the German population could contract coronavirus if more isn’t done to stop its spread.”
In several countries, the economy has closed down. Supermarkets, shopping malls, offices, factories, schools, universities are at a standstill. People are confined to their homes. Fear and intimidation prevail.
In the meantime, coinciding with the coronavirus lockdown in Italy, 30,000 US troops have been dispatched to the EU, under US-NATO’s “Defend Europe 2020” war games against Russia, in the largest military deployment since World War II. “Could the Defender become the Invader…?”
Let’s be clear: The coronavirus pandemic is not the “cause” of this unfolding economic and social crisis. It is the “pretext” for the implementation of a carefully designed “operation” (supported by media disinformation) which destabilizes national economies, impoverishes large sectors of the World population and literally undermines the lives of millions of people. What we are dealing with is “An Act of War”.
While COVID-19 is an important Public Health concern, the lockdown coupled with an ongoing fear campaign does not constitute an effective means to combating the virus, i.e. by providing target medical assistance and health services to those affected.
What Happens Next: The Potential Impacts of a Continued Freeze of US Trade with China
The geopolitics are complex. How will economic events unfold? We will essentially focus briefly on US-China relations.
Those who formulated America’s “undeclared economic war” against China, failed to envisage the potential backlash on the US economy.
It’s an “Economic Harakiri” i.e. “Suicide American Style”
In a matter of months, if normal US-China trade relations and transportation are not resumed, the impacts on the national economies of Western countries could be devastating.
A large share of goods displayed in America’s shopping malls, including major brands are “Made in China”.
“Made in China” is the backbone of retail trade in the USA which indelibly sustains household consumption in virtually all major commodity categories from clothing, footwear, hardware, electronics, toys, jewelry, household fixtures, medical supplies, medicine and prescription drugs,, TV sets, cell phones, etc.
“Made in China” also dominates the production of a wide range of industrial inputs, advanced technology, machinery, building materials, automotive, parts and accessories, etc. not to mention the extensive sub-contracting of Chinese companies on behalf of US conglomerates.
While the US has a powerful and sophisticated financial apparatus (which has the ability to manipulate trade and stock markets Worldwide), America’s Real Economy is in a shambles.
Production does not take place in the USA. The producers have given up production.
The US trade deficit with China is instrumental in fuelling the profit driven consumer economy which relies on “Made in China” consumer goods. Meanwhile China holds a large part of the US public debt which they can readily convert into real assets overnight.
At this juncture of the coronavirus crisis, Beijing policy makers are fully aware that the US economy is fragile and heavily dependent on “Made in China”. Moreover, China has overtaken the US in several high tech areas including 5G.
And with an internal market of 1.4 billion people, coupled with a global export market under the “Belt and Road” initiative, the Chinese economy will have the upper hand.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research. He has taught as visiting professor in Western Europe, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Latin America. He has served as economic adviser to governments of developing countries and has acted as a consultant for several international organizations. He is the author of eleven books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), The Global Economic Crisis, The Great Depression of the Twenty-first Century (2009) (Editor), Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011), The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015). He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at crgeditor@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. The Centre of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post Global Research articles on community internet sites as long the source and copyright are acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original Global Research article. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: publications@globalresearch.ca
Previously, the country’s deputy health minister warned that the US had threatened pharmaceutical companies in order to prevent them from selling medicine and medical equipment to Iran. According to the official, this has created major obstacles for importing crucial drugs, including for patients with special needs.
Chief Justice of Iran Ebrahim Raisi has stated that after failing to pressure the Islamic Republic by orchestrating riots and other means, the US has resorted to “terrorism” by hindering the country’s access to medicine.
“Such measures are not supported by any human or legal right and is a clear sign of economic terrorism and crime against humanity”, Ebrahim Raeisi said.
Raisi urged the international community to remain vigilant about the US actions, which it could use to oppress other the rights of other nations, calling for taking “real action […] against such hawkishness”.
Earlier in December, Iran’s Deputy Health Minister Mohammadreza Shanehsaz warned that supplies of medicine and medical equipment to Iran had been gravely crippled by the US actions.
“[The US] have declared in the letter that they will provide a special line to supply drugs and medical equipment but they use policing methods to threaten the pharmaceutical companies that in case of providing Iran with medicine and medical equipment, they will not be allowed to export to the EU and the US”, Shanehsaz stated.
US Pressure Campaign Against Iran
The US has been pressuring Iran with economic sanctions ever since Washington withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal that saw the removal of international economic measures against the country. Tehran also accused the US of trying to meddle in its domestic politics in November 2019, when protests against sharp rises in fuel prices erupted across Iran.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has vowed to combat the US actions, namely by introducing a $39 billion draft anti-sanctions budget, which will ensure a reduction of the country’s reliance on oil exports that have been crippled by the US sanctions. Rouhani has also not ruled out negotiating with Washington, but only up to a certain point.
“The government is determined to defeat (the enemy) by bypassing America’s sanctions […] or through various means including talks, but will not cross our red lines”, Rouhani said.
The main problem with the US economy is that globalism has been deconstructing it. The offshoring of US jobs has reduced US manufacturing and industrial capability and associated innovation, research, development, supply chains, consumer purchasing power, and tax base of state and local governments. Corporations have increased short-term profits at the expense of these long-term costs. In effect, the US economy is being moved out of the First World into the Third World.
Tariffs are not a solution. The Trump administration says that the tariffs are paid by China, but unless Apple, Nike, Levi, and all of the offshoring companies got an exemption from the tariffs, the tariffs fall on the offshored production of US firms that are sold to US consumers. The tariffs will either reduce the profits of the US firms or be paid by US purchasers of the products in higher prices. The tariffs will hurt China only by reducing Chinese employment in the production of US goods for US markets.
The financial media is full of dire predictions of the consequences of a US/China “trade war.” There is no trade war. A trade war is when countries try to protect their industries by placing tariff barriers on the import of cheaper products from foreign countries. But half or more of the imports from China are imports from US companies. Trump’s tariffs, or a large part of them, fall on US corporations or US consumers.
One has to wonder that there is not a single economist anywhere in the Trump administration, the Federal Reserve, or anywhere else in Washington capable of comprehending the situation and conveying an understanding to President Trump.
One consequence of Washington’s universal economic ignorance is that the financial media has concocted the story that “Trump’s tariffs” are not only driving Americans into recession but also the entire world. Somehow tariffs on Apple computers and iPhones, Nike footwear, and Levi jeans are sending the world into recession or worse. This is an extraordinary economic conclusion, but the capacity for thought has pretty much disappeared in the United States.
In the financial media the question is: Will the Trump tariffs cause a US/world recession that costs Trump his reelection? This is a very stupid question. The US has been in a recession for two or more decades as its manufacturing/industrial/engineering capability has been transferred abroad. The US recession has been very good for the Asian part of the world. Indeed, China owes its faster than expected rise as a world power to the transfer of American jobs, capital, technology, and business know-how to China simply in order that US shareholders could receive capital gains and US executives could receive bonus pay for producing them by lowering labor costs.
Apparently, neoliberal economists, an oxymoron, cannot comprehend that if US corporations produce the goods and services that they market to Americans offshore, it is the offshore locations that benefit from the economic activity.
Offshore production started in earnest with the Soviet collapse as India and China opened their economies to the West. Globalism means that US corporations can make more money by abandoning their American work force. But what is true for the individual company is not true for the aggregate. Why? The answer is that when many corporations move their production for US markets offshore, Americans, unemployed or employed in lower paying jobs, lose the power to purchase the offshored goods.
I have reported for years that US jobs are no longer middle class jobs. The jobs have been declining for years in terms of value-added and pay. With this decline, aggregate demand declines. We have proof of this in the fact that for years US corporations have been using their profits not for investment in new plant and equipment, but to buy back their own shares. Any economist worthy of the name should instantly recognize that when corporations repurchase their shares rather than invest, they see no demand for increased output. Therefore, they loot their corporations for bonuses, decapitalizing the companies in the process. There is perfect knowledge that this is what is going on, and it is totally inconsistent with a growing economy.
As is the labor force participation rate. Normally, economic growth results in a rising labor force participation rate as people enter the work force to take advantage of the jobs. But throughout the alleged economic boom, the participation rate has been falling, because there are no jobs to be had.
In the 21st century the US has been decapitalized and living standards have declined. For a while the process was kept going by the expansion of debt, but consumer income has not kept pace and consumer debt expansion has reached its limits.
The Fed/Treasury “plunge protection team” can keep the stock market up by purchasing S&P futures. The Fed can pump out more money to drive up financial asset prices. But the money doesn’t drive up production, because the jobs and the economic activity that jobs represent have been sent abroad. What globalism did was to transfer the US economy to China.
Real statistical analysis, as contrasted with the official propaganda, shows that the happy picture of a booming economy is an illusion created by statistical deception. Inflation is undermeasured, so when nominal GDP is deflated, the result is to count higher prices as an increase in real output, that is, inflation becomes real economic growth. Unemployment is not counted. If you have not searched for a job in the past 4 weeks, you are officially not a part of the work force and your unemployment is not counted. The way the government counts unemployment is so extraordinary that I am surprised the US does not have a zero rate of unemployment.
How does a country recover when it has given its economy away to a foreign country that it now demonizes as an enemy? What better example is there of a ruling class that is totally incompetent than one that gives its economy bound and gagged to an enemy so that its corporate friends can pocket short-term riches?
We can’t blame this on Trump. He inherited the problem, and he has no advisers who can help him understand the problem and find a solution. No such advisers exist among neoliberal economists. I can only think of four economists who could help Trump, and one of them is a Russian.
The conclusion is that the United States is locked on a path that leads directly to the Third World of 60 years ago. President Trump is helpless to do anything about it.
There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief
Business men, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None were level on the mind
Nobody up at his word
-Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower (immortalized by Jimi Hendrix)
Nothing beats the beguiling, stony smiles at the Bayon temple near Angkor Wat in Cambodia’s Siem Reap to plunge us back into history’s vortex, re-imagining how empires, in their endless pursuit of power, rise and fall, usually because they eventually get the very war they had sought to avoid.
The Bayon was built as a state temple at the end of the 12th century by the undisputed superstar of Khmer empires, Jayavarman VII. Its magical narrative reliefs convey a mix of history and mythology while depicting daily life in Khmer society.
We still don’t know today the identity of the faces shown on the temple’s giant stone carvings. They could be a representation of Brahma, or of Jayavarman himself – a practicing Buddhist. What we do know is that the glorious Khmer empire – incomparable in art and architecture, and even benign in the sense that the mandate for power was based on the king’s relationship with the gods, started to fade after the 15th century, dismembered by war against the Thai and later the Vietnamese.
Stony smiles “all along the watchtower”, displayed as a living commentary on the rise and fall of empires, could easily connect, geopolitically, with a touch of Buddhist impermanence, to our turbulent times of Hybrid War. And to the current American empire.
It’s always amusing to observe how US think tanks, such as CIA outlet Stratfor, constantly celebrate success in undermining Russia via this strategy.
Hybrid War on Russia was engineered in 2014 on two fronts: ordering the Persian Gulf petro-poodles to crash the oil price while imposing sanctions after Russia opposed the coup – actually a color revolution – in Kiev. Hybrid War was engineered at a Deep State level as a tool to try to smash Russia’s outstanding recovery since Vladimir Putin was elected to the presidency in 2000. The undisguised Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski-style goal with the Kiev coup was to draw Russia into an Afghan-style partisan war.
Of course, Russia suffered economically – but then slowly recovered, diversifying production and boosting its agricultural capacity. Yet hybrid warfare always ensures that once economic hardship is engineered, a government necessarily becomes unpopular. Then fakes and traitors are unleashed: Alexei Navalny in Russia, or “protests” in Hong Kong that the Deep State dreams would lead to an uprising in Beijing.
A small, radical nucleus of agents provocateurs in Hong Kong, using copycat methods from the Maidan in Kiev, sticks to a single-minded road map: force Beijing to commit a Tiananmen 2.0, thus elevating the all-out demonization of China to the next level.
The inevitable consequence, according to the privileged scenario, would be the “West”, as well as vast sectors of the Global South, boycotting the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative, a complex, multi-layered strategy of economic integration that has expanded well beyond Eurasia.
Hong Kong, an irrelevant asset
In Hong Kong, everything is about money and then, on a secondary level, about China.
China’s annual GDP per capita is in the range of $9,700. Hong Kong’s annual GDP per capita is in the range of nearly $49,000 – higher than Germany and Japan. It is no wonder that no one in Hong Kong wants to be “like China.” So money is a key factor for Hong Kongers to fear “Chinese domination.” Only a few outsiders, such as Thai economist Chartchai Parasuk, highlight this.
Hong Kong is becoming increasingly irrelevant for China. At the time of the World Bank-lauded “Asian tigers,” in the early to mid-1990s, Hong Kong’s share of China’s GDP was a hefty 27%. Today it’s a paltry 2.7%.
Hong Kong has been losing importance to China. File pic: Creative Commons/ Brian H.Y.
Capital has been steadily moving to Singapore, whose annual GDP per capita is now even higher than Hong Kong’s. Real wages are now lower than at the start of the decade. And wealthy Chinese mainlanders are buying everything in sight, thus excluding the average Hong Konger from an upwardly mobile trajectory.
Up to now, Hong Kong’s allure, for China, was its unique position as a free-trade mega-port, the proverbial gateway to the mainland, and one of the world’s top financial markets. But that’s increasingly in the past. Shenzhen, across the border, is already China’s top tech hub, and Shanghai is being slowly but surely configured as the top financial center.
China is also being hit, hybrid war-style, with a rolling trade war plus sanctions. The ultimate American imperial “dream” is to engineer a Chinese vassal. This has nothing to do with trade. There’s no logic of avoiding a trade deficit with China only to see the same products produced in Thailand or India. What’s goin’ on is rather hybrid war all over the spectrum: attempts to destabilize and possibly defeat Russia, China and Iran, the three key hubs of Eurasia integration.
New hybrid politics
The Hybrid War strategy has created our current state of financial warfare. And that inevitably implies blowback. The weaponization of the US dollar is leading Russia, China and Iran as well as Turkey, Syria and Venezuela to seriously turbo-charge their drive towards alternatives. They could be anchored to a basket of commodities, or it could be all about gold. Wily investor Jim Rickards defines Russia, China, Iran and Turkey as the “New Axis of Gold.”
Everything that happens geopolitically and geoeconomically in our turbulent times has to do with the US’ do-or-die imperial struggle against the Russia-China strategic partnership. Only total “victory,” by any means necessary, would assure the continuation of what could be defined as the New American Century.
And that brings us to the necessity of reconstructing Clausewitz’s axiom, according to which, originally, war is a continuation of politics by other means.
Clausewitz argued that war is a real political instrument. Now, Clausewitz remixed should read: Hybrid War is Politics by Other Means.
The means now go way beyond conventional war, as in Khmer empire times. They mix irregular and cyber war; fake news; lawfare (as in Brazil); electoral intervention; and even “diplomacy” (of the gunboat or economic blockade variety, as applied against Iran and Venezuela).
All Along the Watchtower, the song, as written by Dylan and delivered by Hendrix as a hurricane approached, is an ominous portent of Apocalypse Now. Hummed along the stones of the Bayon smiling cryptically at us out of centuries of impermanence-defying history, it seems so fitting for our times of Hybrid War.
Watch out: Pale riders are approaching, as the wind begins to howl.
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This article was originally published on Asia Times.
Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Iran has been subject to crippling U.S. sanctions and military provocations in recent weeks. The most recent U.S. escalation began in mid-July when the U.K., through its territory of Gibraltar, seized an Iranian oil tanker accused of violating E.U.-imposed sanctions against Syria. Iran has since taken three “foreign” tankers into custody and placed seventeen Iranians accused of spying for the CIA under arrest. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the 2020 election buzz has been temporarily drowned out by the deaths of over thirty people in three mass shootings. From Iran to Ohio, the U.S. empire is in a state of decay.
Iran is responding to U.S. imperial decay by defending itself on behalf of the former colonial world, much of which is still under the thumb of neocolonial and imperialist exploitation. The Islamic Republic has been under a state of siege by the imperialist world for over half of a century. Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh was overthrown in 1953 with the help of the CIA. This placed Iran under the autocratic puppet rule of the Shah. The Shah used a secret police force, the SAVAK, to murder, kidnap, and torture of tens of thousands of Iranians. All of this occurred under the supervision of the U.S. and U.K.
The Iranian people overthrew the Shah and re-nationalized the nation’s vast oil reserves in 1979. Washington never forgave Iran for refusing to bow down to its imperial dictates. Iran maintains sovereignty on several fronts. On the domestic front, Iran has developed an advanced military infrastructure capable of defending the country from foreign invasion. On the international front, the Islamic Republic has developed firm ties with Russia, China, Syria, and a litany of nations which has allowed it to modernize its economy. U.S. sanctions have kept Iran’s people without key medical and other resources necessary for survival, but this hasn’t stopped them from defending the self-determination of Iran and allied nations.
When Iran stands up to the U.S. and its imperial allies, it isn’t merely defending itself. Iran is defending the rest of the world’s peoples. Iran has given critical aid to the Syrian government in its righteous fight against foreign-sponsored “jihadist” mercenaries. Iran has also been a key ally of Venezuela; which, like Iran, has suffered gravely because of U.S. sanctions. Iran’s seizure of foreign oil tankers and CIA agents shows that it is not afraid of the U.S. or its allies. U.S. imperialism is in decay and cannot assert hegemony in the old way. There are no CIA-backed coups in the cards and a full-scale attack on Iran would be political suicide not just for Trump, but for the entire U.S. and E.U. political establishment which has rapidly seen its political legitimacy dwindle over the last several decades.
Just as the U.S. is unable to operate in the same way around the world, mass shootings in the U.S. represent a domestic example of a militarized, racist Empire in decay. White America has historically acted as the foot soldiers in the Empire’s system of racialized social control dating back to the original sin of slavery. Slave patrols, lynch mobs, and their modern manifestations in the American police and prison state are historical byproducts of a ruthless system of profit rooted in the white supremacist dehumanization of Africans in America. For several centuries, most white Americans relished in the benefits conferred to them by a system that placed Black and anyone else deemed a sub-human race to the bottom of the class structure. Only in the last forty to fifty years since Black Americans forced concessions upon the state has it been distasteful to publicly rejoice in the fruits of white supremacy.
Mass shootings demonstrate the U.S.’ descent into barbarism. In 2017, in response to the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Democratic Party presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg remarked on Twitter that “I did not carry assault weapons around a foreign country so I could come home and see them used to massacre my countrymen.” Democratic Party representative Steve Cohen deleted a similar tweet not long after the most recent string of mass shootings in California, Ohio, and El Paso “You want to shoot an assault weapon? Go to Afghanistan or Iraq. Enlist!” Such responses to white violence in the U.S. reveal the double standard inherent in the logic of white superiority and imperial violence. Mass shootings that disrupt the mythical tranquility of white society represent a crisis worthy of response while institutionalized mass murder in the form of military intervention is characterized as a necessary and heroic act.
A social system predicated on white supremacy, empire, and a declining capitalist economy inevitably brings about conditions of depravity like those seen in the recent mass shootings. Fascism festers when capitalism forces those who have become comfortable with certain conditions, such as the presence of (white) jobs, into a state of precarity. That’s why the El Paso shooter’s manifesto can simultaneously condemn both U.S. political parties and automation while taking out murderous rage on undocumented immigrants. Economic and political violence is supposed to be reserved for subhuman “savages” such as indigenous peoples, undocumented migrants, and Black Americans. The chickens have come home to roost in White America and it should come as no surprise in an alienated, heavily surveilled society that one of the responses is violence at the barrel of the gun.
Much of the world, including large sections of the U.S. population, is no stranger to U.S. imperial violence. Black Americans and indigenous peoples native to what is now the U.S. mainland are murdered by law enforcement nearly every day in the United States. Iraq lost over one million people during the U.S. invasion beginning in 2003. Iran lost one million itself in the war two decades prior when the U.S. supplied Iraq with chemical weapons to invade the Islamic Republic post-revolution. An empire in decay only becomes more violent and ruthless in its attempt to maintain hegemony. The U.S. has killed over 40,000 Venezuelans in one year’s worth of sanctions. And with China and Russia labeled the greatest threat to U.S. “national security,” the threat of a global war of nuclear proportions looms over humanity like a storm cloud.
The U.S. has long been on the path to barbarism. Iran’s resistance to U.S. imperialism provides an international example of heroism and is a continuation of the anti-colonial struggle of the 20th century. Mass shootings and global provocations are a sign of an empire that is even more dangerous because it is dying. Only by joining in this struggle can exploited and oppressed sections of the U.S. population achieve true peace and justice in our lifetime. Without mass resistance to white supremacy and war, the U.S. empire threatens to devour itself alive and will no doubt attempt to take the rest of us with it.
“The disregard for existing norms and a loss of trust may combine with the unpredictability and turbulence of the colossal change. These factors may lead to a systemic crisis, which the world has not seen yet,” he said.
“We don’t need trade wars today or even temporary trade ceasefires. We need a comprehensive trade peace,” the president stressed.
The global economy is facing a threat of spiraling protectionist measures that can lead to a devastating crisis, Vladimir Putin warned. Nations must find a way to prevent this and establish rules on how the economy should work.
The Russian president spoke out against the growing trend of using unilateral restrictions to achieve economic advantage, as he addressed guests of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday.
“The system of multilateral cooperation, which took years to build, is no longer allowed to evolve. It is being broken in a very crude way. Breaking the rules is becoming the new rule,” he said.
In addition to traditional forms of protectionism such as trade tariffs, technical standards and subsidies, nations are increasingly using new ways to undermine their competition, like unilateral economic sanctions. And nations which thought they would never be targeted by such measures for political reasons are now being proved wrong, Putin said.
“The ability to impose sanctions arbitrarily and with no control fosters a temptation to use such restrictive tools again and again, right and left, in every case, regardless of political loyalty, talks about solidarity, past agreements and long cooperation,” he said.
Putin called for a change of course, for free trade to be defended, and for rules-based regulation of the global economy, which would alleviate the chaos resulting from the rapid technological transformations arising from the development of digital technology.
“The disregard for existing norms and a loss of trust may combine with the unpredictability and turbulence of the colossal change. These factors may lead to a systemic crisis, which the world has not seen yet,” he said.
He stressed that there is a need for transparent universal rules as well as an inclusive mechanism, which would allow those rules to be amended in a way that would be accepted by the international community.
“We don’t need trade wars today or even temporary trade ceasefires. We need a comprehensive trade peace,” the president stressed.
“Competition, clash of interests, has always been, is, and will always be, of course. But we must be respectful towards each other. The ability to resolve differences through honest competition rather than by restricting competition is the source of progress,” Putin added.
The speech comes amid turbulent times for the global economy, in which the nationalist policies of US President Donald Trump have pitted America against other nations which his administration believes to be enjoying unfair advantages in trade. Trump has threatened China, European nations, Canada, and Mexico with trade restrictions, demanding the perceived misbalances be fixed.
The US has also intensified its use of economic sanctions, targeting Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other nations with various punitive measures.
As many as 13 million people are expected to sign a petition opposing the US economic blockade of Venezuela and the “genocidal, racist, xenophobe” Donald Trump, according to the Bolivarian government.
Tables have been organised in public squares in cities across Venezuela gathering names for the petition, which will be sent to United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were the first to sign the petition at the No More Trump rally in Caracas on Saturday.
He said:
“This is a fight for peace against the sanctions imposed by the United States, and the power of the dollar … For 20 years Venezuela has had a popular government. Today, we Venezuelans have dignity and are spiritually united.”
The national drive was launched yesterday and will last until September 10.
Millions signed a similar petition in February when a US-backed coup attempt was launched by president of the illegitimate national assembly Juan Guaido.
He declared himself interim president of Venezuela. But his attempts at launching armed insurrection have failed, with the army and the people of Venezuela remaining loyal to Mr Maduro.
The failure to garner internal support is believed to be behind the executive order signed by US President Donald Trump on August 5 freezing Venezuelan state assets in the US.
The latest measures amount to a near-total blockade and were branded a “criminal act” by Mr Maduro at the Caracas rally.
Government supporters gather for a rally to protest against economic sanctions imposed by the administration of US President Donald Trump, in Caracas, Venezuela, on Saturday (Source: Morning Star)
Sanctions are estimated to have caused 40,000 deaths between 2017 and 2018, according to the Washington-based Centre for Economic & Political Research.
Its report published in April found that Venezuelans were deprived of “lifesaving medicines, medical equipment, food and other essential imports” due to the US embargo.
The non-aligned movement (Nam) has discussed measures to counter the impact of US global sanctions, with 21 countries now included on Washington’s sanctions list.
A gathering of 120 Nam countries met in Caracas last month, issuing a statement that affirmed that only Venezuela can decide its fate. It warned that US sanctions were in breach of the United Nations charter.
The meeting agreed to develop an international financial system independent of US control. President of the general assembly Maria Fernanda Espinosa told those gathered that the Nam was an important strategic partner for the UN, making up two thirds of its total membership — and 55 percent of the world’s population.
“Multilateralism and international law are the only effective formula to achieve a sustainable and lasting peace,” she said.
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The original source of this article is Morning Star
Leading English-language news organizations have provided extensive and dramatic coverage of anti-government protests in Venezuela, but mostly ignored large-scale rallies against US sanctions, which took place over the weekend.
Tens of thousands of Venezuelans flooded the streets of the country’s capital, Caracas, on Saturday to denounce the economic blockade and sanctions imposed by the US. Many were wrapped in national flags and sported red shirts, typically worn by the supporters of the government. The rallies were held under the slogan ‘No More Trump’.
Una vez más, el pueblo venezolano sale a las calles de Caracas y de todo el país a exigir al gobierno de Estados Unidos que cese sus agresiones y sanciones a la Patria. #NoMoreTrump#NoMásTrumppic.twitter.com/tWWuJwanhW
The mainstream media stayed largely silent on the massive anti-sanctions rallies. This is a striking contrast to the extensive and often dramatic coverage the leading English-language news organizations have provided during anti-government protests, led by opposition leader Juan Guaido.
No de películas y cómics falsos que hacen creer que se puede plagar la América de miseria en nombre de la libertad.@realDonaldTrump No podrás con los hijos de Tupac Amaru.#NoMoreTrump#NoMasTrump
CNN gave a brief mention to the ‘No More Trump’ protests on its Spanish-language website, CNN en Espanol, but the company’s English-language service, CNN International, ignored the story altogether. As did the New York Times, whose weekend coverage passed over Venezuela entirely, but found space for an opposition march in Moscow.
The event did get some attention from Latin American public broadcaster Telesur, as well as other smaller left-leaning publications such as the British Morning Star, but they were outliers in the world press.
President Nicolas Maduro had earlier called on “all Venezuelans” to gather at the city’s squares to sign a manifesto, decrying US pressure and affirming the will to “defend independence, peace and sovereignty” of the country. The government said it expects to collect more than 13 million signatures by early September, after which the document will be delivered to the UN as proof of what people think about the sanctions.
In January, opposition politicians declared Guaido, who leads the nation’s parliament, ‘acting president’ of Venezuela, challenging Maduro. The move was dismissed by the government. The opposition has since staged several large-scale protests, some of which spiraled into riots and clashes with police. More than 100 protesters have died in the ensuing violence.
Guaido is openly backed by the US, its allies in Europe and the majority of South American states, including Venezuela’s neighbors, Colombia and Brazil. Nations like China, Russia, Iran and Turkey continue to recognize Maduro as the legitimate leader of the country.
Imagine just for a moment, the World would stand up in unison, sick and tired of the aggressive killer arrogance of the United States and her vassals – and their joint war-force called NATO – and this World, our World, what’s left of it when you deduct Washington and its Brussels allies, would at once block every shipment of everything destined for the ports of the United States of America; every sea port, airport and road port. Hermetically. Nothing would enter. Nothing, no food, no medicine, no electronics, no cars – no nothing. And nothing could leave. No exports, no petrol, no grains, no meat, no pharmaceuticals and foremost, no weapons. Nothing.
And now, take your mind a step further – and imagine the same – exactly the same, a total and full blockage of Israel – nothing would enter, no food, no fuel, no medication, no machinery and especially no weapons – and nothing would leave; a full and total blockage.
This would of course be totally illegal; illegal and unacceptable, by any international law, by the standards of the UN Charter, by the Human Rights Laws and Directives – by any ethical values of human morals. Wouldn’t it? – Yet, this is exactly what these countries are doing, have been doing for decades, sanctioning to strangle and murder entire populations into death or submission. The US with Cuba; Israel with Palestine. And the coercion and strangulation go on, unabated.
The longest embargo – illegal, inhuman and outright criminal – Washington imposed on Cuba – 60 years. Because Cuba has chosen socialism as her form of state and government. Cuba survived and will never give in to the tyrant of the north.
Now the US is expanding her palette of killing by impunity to dominate and subjugate nation after nation which they do not consider bending sufficiently to the dictate of their masters. Venezuela has been targeted for two decades, ever since former President Hugo Chavez was democratically elected in 1998; and Iran, ever since the US-imposed Shah was deposed in 1979 – exactly 40 years ago – by Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Both Venezuela and Iran are rich in natural resources, especially hydrocarbons but also in gold, rare earths and other precious metals and stones.
Contrary to what one would like to imagine, international world bodies, like the United Nations and her sister and associated organizations remain just about silent. When a high-level official utters some benign criticism of the US or Israel – it flairs up for a moment in the ‘news’, then it disappears again, as if it never happened. And indeed, nothing happens. They – the US and Israel – go on with their crimes in impunity.
The latest is an open declaration of economic warfare by Washington, a total embargo on Venezuela; the embargo is now being turned into a naval blockade. Similar steps are to be taken for Iran. That literally means that no merchandise – no matter how vital for survival, like food and medication, is allowed into Venezuela. Three days ago, the US seized, totally illegally, a cargo ship attempting to deliver food and medication to Venezuela – in the Panama Canal, territory which the US does not own or control anymore.
The ship was carrying soy cakes, from which Venezuela was to produce food. Never mind, that the cargoes are fully paid for by Venezuela. And this seems to be just the beginning. Vessels leaving Venezuela with petrol deliveries to client countries are also targeted for blockage, thus confiscating, or rather stealing, Venezuela’s main source of income on which she intends to survive and feed and provide health care for her people. This, in addition to the more than 130 billion dollars total Venezuelan assets confiscated – stolen – by the US worldwide.
And nobody says beep. Almost. Yes, there are some collective protests by countries in solidarity – like key members of the Sao Paulo Forum, as well as more than 60 members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM – total 120 members) that have become especially active in recent years in defense of Venezuela within the United Nations. Protests and protest declarations also take place by ALBA members, a Latin American trade alliance (ALBA – Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, 11 members [Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, Ecuador, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Grenada and the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis]).
>But most interesting are the hypocrites, those who write and scream that Venezuelans are starving to death, that the Maduro government neglects its people – yet these accusers-in-falsehood – let the US and her vassals strangle Venezuela and steal her foreign assets, including foreign reserves and gold, food and medical imports – they are saying zilch, nada, nothing. Just watching.
To top it all off, the Human Rights Commissioner, Madame Michelle Bachelet, Hypocrite-in-chief, who recently visited Venezuela, at the invitation of President Nicolas Maduro, on a Human Rights mission, and who delivered a devastating report about Venezuela’s HR, full of lies, half-truths and outright omissions, not mentioning with one word the US inspired coup attempts, the US-funded opposition and its bloody atrocities perpetrated on the Chavista population, and the strangulating and starving by the US and US-dictated European sanctions – Madame Bachelet now came forward condemning the naval blockade. Great. But she did not stand up against the deadly embargo by the US and the European Union. – What credibility remains for the Human Rights Commission? – The world can see it – it’s all bought, coerced into submission, like so many other UN agencies by the Murderers Inc.
If we are not careful, they are soon going to rule the globe. Thanks god, for Russia and China – which are also subjects of US-EU sanctioning and targeted for take-over. But they are a tiny little bit too big and too strong for this sort of games by the decaying US empire and her obedient rats on the sinking ship.
Similarly, the European Union – despots as they have been for hundreds of years as colonialists in Africa, Asia and Latin America – and continue in a modern colonial role through economic control of much of Africa – this very EU, has been sanctioning Venezuela for years on the orders of Washington, naturally, who else? – Now they condemn the naval blockade, but continue their routine sanctions regime.
According to a study carried out by the Washington DC based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), under guidance of Mark Weisbrot, CEPR co-director and Jeffrey Sachs, economics professor, Director, Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University, New York, US and EU sanctions have cost some 40,000 Venezuelan lives. This mainly since August 2017, when Washington escalated its unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela and her state oil company, PDVSA, cutting them off international financial markets.
Yes, the world would have plenty of reasons to stand up and dish out similar naval and air blockades against the US and Israel. Just as a teaser to begin with, and if that doesn’t send a strong enough wake-up message, perhaps such embargoes should be considered on a longer-term indefinite scale. It’s illegal. But we are living in a world where international laws don’t count – where laws are made, as we go, by the self-declared hegemon, the US of A, and her symbiotic Middle East ally, Israel. – So, why not nudging the legal, moral and ethical order back into balance?
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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
The original source of this article is Global Research
“The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has always been a euphemism to permit a European cover for American imperialism. Since its formation in 1949, NATO has long been used as a stalking horse for US aggression towards the Soviet Union, and latterly, the Russian Federation. “
The US-led NATO alliance this week designated a whole new hemisphere to itself for “security” operations. No longer merely an “Atlantic” organization, it’s assuming the role of policing the Pacific. Quite a self-promotion.
NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking during a visit to Australia, talked about “the need” to deploy military forces in Asia-Pacific to counter the “rise of China”.
With laughable double-think, Stoltenberg declared: “This is not about moving NATO into the Pacific, but this is about responding to the fact that China is coming closer to us.”
Right. So are there Chinese warships patrolling European waterways, or Chinese missile systems being established along America’s borders? No, the Norwegian former prime minister, who is the civilian boss of the US-led military alliance, “rationalized” his claim about China “coming closer to us” with the following alleged “offensive” behaviour.
“[China] Investing heavily in critical infrastructure in Europe, increased presence in the Arctic and also increased presence in Africa, and in cyberspace,” he added, as quoted by Reuters.
In other words, in Stoltenberg’s view, China’s legitimate development as an economic power is somehow a malign security threat. How dare China do that!
Never mind that cash-strapped European governments have actually welcomed Chinese capital investment for building new telecoms infrastructure, as have many African nations who view China as a much more viable strategic partner after decades and centuries of US and European exploitation of that continent.
China is, in effect, being criminalized by the NATO talking-head for simply becoming a global economic powerhouse. And in that way, Stoltenberg is showing just how abject a lackey he is to his ultimate bosses in Washington.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has always been a euphemism to permit a European cover for American imperialism. Since its formation in 1949, NATO has long been used as a stalking horse for US aggression towards the Soviet Union, and latterly, the Russian Federation. The US-dominated alliance should have been abolished years ago when the Cold War officially ended in 1991. Rather, it has continued to expand, doubling in size to now include some 29 member states.
A U.S. fighter jet takes off from the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan for their patrol at the international waters off South China Sea Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2019
Now it is expanding its imperialist flunkey-role to target China, in total obeisance to US President Donald Trump’s policy of aggression towards Beijing. Note how Stoltenberg dutifully adopts and spins the Trump administration’s twisted narrative accusing China of being an “emerging threat” to global security.
The reality is the US is the primary threat to world security from its unhinged aggression towards China and simultaneously many other countries, including Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Syria.
With regard to China, Washington’s hostility is propelled by its demise as a global economic power. Accusing China of “currency manipulation” and “unfair trading practices” is just a pretext for justifying unlawful American militarism towards Beijing in a desperate attempt to salvage the chronic economic failure of US-style capitalism.
The Trump administration is brazenly trying to vandalize China’s economic development with punishing trade tariffs backed up with the mailed fist of militarism.
Pentagon chief Mark Esper last week gave notice that the US intends to install ground-based medium-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific. Conveniently, that move came only days after the Trump administration announced its official withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia.
Washington is giving itself a license to ring-fence China with nuclear and other ballistic missiles, which would have been banned under the INF Treaty.
The US and its NATO camouflage are escalating the danger of war in the Asia-Pacific through an unprecedented military buildup in the region. This week, the US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan sailed through the South China Sea in the same week that the Trump administration ramped up its trade war with Beijing. In the name of “freedom of navigation”, the US has been steadily increasing its warship presence near Chinese territory (in an analogous way to what it is doing in the Persian Gulf against Iran). Ironically, but with no intention of irony, American publication The Hill reported the USS Ronald Reagan was “a show of strength against Chinese aggression”.
The absurd double-think of the Americans and their NATO minions with regard to China is echoed in similar outlandish claims that Russia is posing a threat to European security – omitting the fact that Russia’s proximity is because NATO has relentlessly moved its forces up to Russia’s borders.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is holding a press-conference.
Jens Stoltenberg and other European cheerleaders for American aggression are probably the most execrable specimens imaginable. The out-of-control warmongering by Washington against the rest of the world is so flagrant and audacious. And yet we see the pathetic spectacle of toadies like Stoltenberg turning reality on its head, thereby fueling the danger of wars while, no doubt, calculating his next highly-paid job at some future pro-NATO think-tank.
And typically, Western corporate-controlled news media report Washington and NATO’s absurd propaganda claims against China, Russia and others, as if worthy of serious consideration, instead of exposing them with the disdain that such warmongering propaganda deserves. What next? China and Russia are “threats” because they merely exist?
Views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
In promoting destructive “Western values,” hardline academic Samuel Huntington once said the following:
“The West must exploit differences and conflicts among Confucian and Islamic states to support in other civilizations groups sympathetic to Western values and interests — to strengthen international institutions that reflect and legitimate western interests and values (sic).”
Likeminded academic hardliner Bernard Lewis originated the clash of civilizations phrase in his 1990 essay titled “The Roots of Muslim Rage, saying:
“(W)e are facing a mood and movement in Islam far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations.”
Today the clash applies to all nations unwilling to bend to US interests. There’s no “clash” with the Saudis and other despotic Muslim/Arab states allied with the US war OF terror — nor with nations worldwide bending to its will.
In his scholarly works, Edward Said explained notions of colonizers and the colonized — the US-dominated West v. other parts of the world.
In The Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad said
“the conquest of the Earth which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion, a slightly flatter noses than ourselves is not a pretty thing, when you look into it too much.”
Modern-day US manifest destiny is all about controlling planet earth, its resources and populations by whatever it takes to achieve its objectives — imperial rage and Pax Americana enforced dominance by another name.
Irreconcilable difference define Sino/US relations. The US prioritizes militarism and warmaking, along with pressuring, bullying, and threatening other nations to bend to its will.
China favors cooperative relations with other nations, along with economic, financial, and technological development to grow the nation into a preeminent power on the global stage.
Both countries are rivals, not partners, the US wanting Beijing’s goals undermined to further its own, toughness its favored strategy in dealing with all independent nations it doesn’t control.
Diplomacy and reason with Washington don’t work, considered a sign of weakness, not strength.
The Trump regime’s war on China by other means heads toward becoming more serious than already.
On Thursday, his State Department called Beijing a “thuggish regime” in response to personal information released about a Hong Kong-based US official.
The unacceptable remark followed a complaint by China’s Hong Kong-based Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs over US official Julie Eadeh’s meeting with individuals involved in the city’s US-supported protests.
They’ve been ongoing for months, aiming to destabilize China, a common US tactic against nations it doesn’t control, including color revolution attempts to topple sitting governments.
China state media called demonstrations and related violence a “conspiracy with the West.”
China’s Global Times (GT) earlier said the city’s “future won’t be held hostage by (the) opposition and its Western supporters,” adding:
“(I)nternational forces have increasingly collaborated with the opposition in Hong Kong.” In May individuals involved visited the US to meet with House Speaker Pelosi and Pompeo, clearly discussing anti-Beijing strategy.
“Washington has been particularly active in meddling in Hong Kong affairs…to pressure China,” said GT.
The US is collaborating with opposition elements, its longstanding practice in sovereign independent countries it doesn’t control, a flagrant international law violation.
Beijing’s Hong Kong foreign ministry office demanded the US “immediately make a clean break from anti-China forces who stir up trouble in (the city), stop sending out wrong signals to violent offenders, refrain from meddling with Hong Kong affairs, and avoid going further down the wrong path.”
Days earlier, the State Department expressed strong support for Hong Kong protesters — unrelated to “freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly.”
On Friday, the People’s Daily, China’s official broadsheet, said Beijing “made it clear that it will not allow this situation to continue,” adding:
“Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region gives the central authorities ample methods and sufficient strength to promptly settle any possible turmoil should it occur.”
“It would be wise if both the radical protesters and the foreign forces colluding with lawbreakers in Hong Kong” understand this and cease their disruptive actions.
What’s going on is part of the Trump regime’s war on China by other means, including unacceptable tariffs, Pentagon South China Sea provocations near Beijing’s territorial waters, the same thing near its airspace, enlisting support from regional nations against Beijing, and advancing America’s military footprint in the Indo/Pacific.
Washington treats all parts of the world like its own, heightening global tensions, risking confrontation with nations able to defend their interests if belligerently challenged.
The US Info/Pacific agenda, strengthening military, economic, and political ties with Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar, Singapore and Vietnam is an unacceptable effort to form an Asia/Pacific-type Lima Group against China.
Hostile US policies against the country haven’t worked and won’t likely ahead.
Instead of fostering cooperative relations China, Washington is alienating its ruling authorities, biting off more than it can chew against a nation able to defend against whatever toughness the US employs.
Escalating war on China by other means is a losing strategy — what geopolitical know-nothing Trump and hardliners surrounding him don’t understand — harming the US and world economies by their unacceptable actions.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
China has lashed out at the US for warning Beijing over its support for Venezuela, urging Washington to stop its bullying actions across the world.
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the remarks on Wednesday in an online statement released in reaction to a warning by US National Security Advisor John Bolton that China and Russia must stop their business with the government in Caracas.
The Chinese spokesperson described the comments as “a wanton interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs.”
“China urges the US to… let the Venezuelan people decide their own future and immediately stop the bullying actions of suppressing other countries at every turn,” she added.
Bolton said on Tuesday that Washington could impose sanctions on any international company for conducting business with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“We are sending a signal to third parties that want to do business with the Maduro regime: proceed with extreme caution,” Bolton said in a summit on Venezuela in the Peruvian capital Lima.
The measure means that international companies will have to choose whether to access the US and its financial system or do business with Maduro, he noted.
His remarks came after US President Donald Trump ordered a freeze on all Venezuelan government assets in the US and barred transactions with its authorities.
China has had close relations with Maduro over the years and is one of Caracas’s main creditors.
Venezuelans are suffering from a lack of basic necessities under US sanctions. According to United Nations statistics, a quarter of Venezuela’s 30-million-strong population is in need of humanitarian aid.
Washington has imposed several rounds of sanctions against the oil-rich country to oust Maduro and replace him with opposition figure Juan Guaido, who declared himself “interim president” earlier this year.
Since May, the government of Maduro has engaged in negotiations with the opposition led by Juan Guaido in a bid to resolve sharp political differences.
A new report shows Russia has halved its use of US dollar in trade with India and China. (AFP photo)
A new report suggests Russia has been considerably successful in its pledge to remove the US dollar from trade with others, adding that the greenback has been replaced by local currencies in nearly half of Moscow’s transactions with leading partners India and China.
The RT television network said in a report on Wednesday that Russia had been paid back in its national currency ruble in more than 75 percent of its exports to India as of the end of the first quarter of 2019.
The report said Russia’s trade settlements with China was also shifting toward a pattern of using currencies other than the US dollar, adding that rubles and euros were now the dominant means of such settlements with Beijing.
It added that the share of the US dollar in Russia’s settlements with India and China had reduced from more than 87 percent in the first three months of 2018 to less than 48 percent in the similar period this year.
Russia’s success in de-dollarizing the economy comes as the greenback has traditionally dominated Moscow’s trade with leading partners.
The RT report said that the use of local currencies instead of the dollar in Russia’s trade with other countries had quadrupled in early 2019 compared to the same period last year.
It also added that Russia was moving quickly to ditch the dollar from trade with the European Union countries.
The report comes against the backdrop of efforts by Russia to make its economy immune from the impacts of sanctions and punitive measures adopted by the United States.
Russia has been slapped with rounds of economic embargoes and bans since 2014 when a political crisis erupted in Ukraine, leading to the rise of a pro-Western government in the neighboring country.
Russia and countries like China, Iran and Venezuela, who have suffered from US sanctions, have repeatedly declared that they want to fully ditch the greenback from their economic interactions with the rest of the world.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
© AFP 2019 / CHRISTOPHE SIMON
TRUMP! Nuestro Heroico Pueblo salio a las calles en rechazo a las sanciones criminales impuestas por los EEUU. 
Venezuela no se rinde, ni se doblega, juntos ¡Nosotros Venceremos! 
Tales from the Conspiratum 