Foreign Aid Makes Corrupt Countries More Corrupt

Source

http://www.strategic-culture.org

James BOVARD

November 4, 2019

Maidan Square, Kiev. Ukraine

Counting on foreign aid to reduce corruption is like expecting whiskey to cure alcoholism. After closed House of Representatives impeachment hearings heard testimony on President Trump’s role in delaying U.S. aid to Ukraine, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declared:

“Numbers don’t lie. It’s even more clear now that President Trump is not the anti-corruption crusader he claims to be.”

Most of the press coverage has tacitly assumed that American assistance is vital to fighting corruption in Ukraine. But that ignores foreign aid’s toxic record and Ukraine’s post-Soviet history.

A 2002 American Economic Review analysis concluded that “increases in [foreign] aid are associated with contemporaneous increases in corruption,” and that “corruption is positively correlated with aid received from the United States.”

That was the year President George W. Bush launched a new foreign aid program, the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). Bush declared, “I think it makes no sense to give aid, money, to countries that are corrupt.” But the Bush administration continued delivering billions of dollars in handouts to many of the world’s most corrupt regimes. By 2004, the State Department had codified what amounted to backtracking: “The MCA is an incentive-based supplement to other U.S. aid programs.” The Bush team found excuses to give MCA aid to some of the world’s most corrupt governments as well, including Georgia.

In 2010, President Barack Obama proclaimed at the United Nations that America was “leading a global effort to combat corruption.” Obama’s “aides said the United States in the past has often seemed to just throw money at problems,” the Los Angeles Times reported. But the reform charade was exposed the following year when the Obama administration fiercely resisted congressional efforts to curb wasteful aid. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that restricting handouts to nations that fail anti-corruption tests “has the potential to affect a staggering number of needy aid recipients.”

The Obama administration continued pouring tens of billions of American tax dollars into sinkholes such as Afghanistan, which even its president, Ashraf Ghani, admitted in 2016 was “one of the most corrupt countries on earth.” And the deluge of aid the Afghan government received only worsened the corruption. As John Sopko, the heroic Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), observed, “We need to understand how US policies and practices unintentionally aided and abetted corruption. We must recognize the danger of dealing with characters or networks of unsavory repute, tolerating contracting abuses, accepting shoddy performance and delivering unsustainable projects.”

The closed House impeachment hearings last week heard from acting U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr., who testified that he “had authority over the bulk of the U.S. effort to support Ukraine against the Russian invasion and to help it defeat corruption.” The Washington Post lauded Taylor as someone who “spent much of the 1990s telling Ukrainian politicians that nothing was more critical to their long-term prosperity than rooting out corruption and bolstering the rule of law, in his role as the head of U.S. development assistance for post-Soviet countries.”

Transparency International, which publishes an annual Corruption Perceptions Index, shows that corruption surged in Ukraine during the late 1990s and remains at obscene levels (though recent years have shown slight improvements). Taylor was ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009, when corruption sharply worsened despite hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid. Ukraine is now ranked as the 120th least corrupt nation in the world—lower than Egypt and Pakistan, two other major U.S. aid recipients. What Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder is to the NFL, Taylor appears to be to the anti-corruption cause.

Bribing foreign politicians to encourage honest government makes as much sense as distributing free condoms to encourage abstinence. Rather than encouraging good governance practices, foreign aid is more likely to produce kleptocracies, or governments of thieves. As a Brookings Institution analysis observed, “The history of U.S. assistance is littered with tales of corrupt foreign officials using aid to line their own pockets, support military buildups, and pursue vanity projects.” And both American politicians and bureaucrats are want to continue the aid gravy train, regardless of how foreign regimes waste the money or use it to repress their own citizens.

If U.S. aid was effective, Ukraine would have become a rule of law paradise long ago. The country’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, may be sincere in his efforts to root out corruption. But it is an insult to both him and his nation to pretend that Ukraine cannot clean up its act without help from Donald Trump. The surest way to reduce foreign corruption is to end foreign aid.

jimbovard.com

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

Omar: US must reconsider billions of dollars of aid to Israel

Source

http://www.presstv.com

Tue Aug 20, 2019

US Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar

Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar has said that billions of dollars of US aid to Israel should be tied to its treatment of Palestinians, urging Washington to reconsider the funds to the Tel Aviv regime which is engaged in the oppression of the Palestinian people.  

Omar on Monday said that Congress should reconsider the annual US aid allocated to Israel after the regime banned Muslim Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from traveling to Jerusalem al-Quds and the occupied West Bank.

“We give Israel more than $3 [billion] in aid every year. This is predicated on them being an important ally in the region and the only democracy in the Middle East. But denying a visit to duly elected members of Congress is not consistent with being an ally, and denying millions of people freedom of movement or expression or self-determination is not consistent with being a democracy,” Omar said at the press conference in St. Paul, Minn.

Omar, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also stated that US aid should be contingent upon Israel’s activity in Palestine.

“We must be asking, as Israel’s ally, that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s government stop the expansion of settlements on Palestinian lands and ensure full rights for Palestinians if we are to give them aid,” Omar said.

US military aid to Israel has skyrocketed over the past several years while the regime’s forces are engaged in blatant human rights violations against Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere.

The United States and Israel signed an agreement in September 2016 to give Israel $38 billion in military assistance over the next decade, the largest such aid package in US history.

Israel announced on Thursday that it would prevent a visit by Tlaib and Omar, both Democratic members of the US House of Representatives, over their criticism of Israel.

The decision by Israel appears to be an unprecedented move against American members of Congress. Even AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, criticized Israel for barring the pair from traveling there.

PressTV-US should stop funding Israel: Republican Senator

US Sen. Rand Paul blocks bipartisan aid bill for Israel, saying the US financial aid to Tel Aviv should not be “forever”.

Omar on Monday expressed gratitude for the “solidarity” from other Democrats who have expressed outrage at Israel’s decision to ban her and Tlaib. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) have called for refraining from visiting Israel until all members of Congress can go.

But Omar urged fellow lawmakers to visit Israel to conduct congressional oversight to see what happens with “millions of dollars” the US sends to Israel in aid.

“It is my belief that, as legislators, we have an obligation to see the reality there for ourselves. We have a responsibility to conduct oversight over our government’s foreign policy and what happens with the millions of dollars we send in aid. So I would encourage my colleagues to visit,” Omar said.

Pepe Escobar: The Dragon lays out its road map, denies seeking hegemony

Source

http://www.asiatimes.com

ByPEPE ESCOBAR

JULY 26, 2019

Chinese soldiers in the PLA Hong Kong Garrison take part in a drill during an open day on June 30 to mark the 22nd anniversary of the return of the city from Britain to China. Photo: AFP

China’s ‘National Defense in the New Era’ white paper shows where the country aims to be by 2049

The key merit of China’s National Defense in the New Era, a white paper released by the State Council in Beijing, is to clear any remaining doubts about where the Middle Kingdom is coming from, and where it’s going to by 2049, the mythical date to, theoretically, be restored as the foremost global power.

Although not ultra-heavy on specifics, the white paper certainly should be read as the Chinese counterpoint to the US National Security Strategy, as well as the National Defense Strategy.

It goes without saying that every sentence is being carefully scrutinized by the Pentagon, which regards China as a “malign actor” and “a threat” – the terminology associated with its “Chinese aggression” mantra.

To cut to the chase, and to the perpetuating delight of China’s supporters and critics, here are the white paper’s essentials.

What global stability?

The Beijing leadership openly asserts that as “the US has adjusted its national security and defense strategies, and adopted unilateral policies” that essentially “undermined global strategic stability.” Vast sectors of the Global South would concur.

The counterpart is the evolution of “the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era,” now playing “a significant role in maintaining global strategic stability.”

In parallel, Beijing is very careful to praise the “military relationship with the US in accordance with the principles of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation.” The “military-to-military relationship” should work as “a stabilizer for the relations between the two countries and hence contribute to the China-US relationship based on coordination, cooperation and stability.”

Another key counterpart to the US – and NATO – is the increasingly crucial role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which is “forging a constructive partnership of non-alliance and non-confrontation that targets no third party, expanding security and defense cooperation and creating a new model for regional security cooperation.”

The white paper stresses that “the SCO has now grown into a new type of comprehensive regional cooperation organization covering the largest area and population in the world”, something that is factually correct. The latest SCO summit in Bishkek did wonders in featuring some of the group’s much-vaunted qualities, especially “mutual trust,” “consultation,” “respect for diverse civilizations” and “pursuit of common development.”

On hot spots, contrary to Western skepticism, the white paper asserts that, “the situation of the South China Sea is generally stable,” and that a “balanced, stable, open and inclusive Asian security architecture continues to develop.”

There should be no illusion regarding Beijing’s position on “Taiwan independence” – which will never deviate from what was set by Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s: “Separatist forces and their actions remain the gravest immediate threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the biggest barrier hindering the peaceful reunification of the country.”

And the same applies to “external separatist forces for ‘Tibet independence’ and the creation of ‘East Turkestan’.” How Beijing dealt with – and economically developed – Tibet will continue to be the blueprint to deal with, and economically develop, Xinjiang, irrespective of the Western outcry over China’s subjugation of more than a million Uighurs.

In regard to the turmoil Hong Kong and the degree it reflects interference by “external forces,” the white paper shapes Hong Kong as the model to be followed on the way to Taiwan. “China adheres to the principles of ‘peaceful reunification,’ and ‘one country, two systems,’ promotes peaceful development of cross-Strait relations, and advances peaceful reunification of the country.”

On the South China Sea, the white paper notes that “countries from outside the region conduct frequent close-in reconnaissance on China by air and sea, and illegally enter China’s territorial waters and the waters and airspace near China’s islands and reefs, undermining China’s national security.”

So there won’t be any misunderstanding, it says: “The South China Sea islands and Diaoyu Islands are inalienable parts of the Chinese territory.” ASEAN and Japan will have to deal with what Beijing says are facts.

No hegemony, ever

While noting that “great progress has been made in the Revolution in Military Affairs with Chinese characteristics” – the Sino-version of the Pentagon’s – the white paper admits that “the PLA still lags far behind the world’s leading militaries. The commitment is unmistakable to “fully transform the people’s armed forces into world-class forces by the mid-21st century.”

Special emphasis is placed on China’s relatively quiet, behind-the-scenes diplomacy. “China has played a constructive role in the political settlement of regional hotspots such as the Korean Peninsula issue, the Iranian nuclear issue and Syrian issue.” The corollary could not be more clear-cut. “China opposes hegemony, unilateralism and double standards.”

Arguably the most important point made by the white paper – in stark contrast with the “Chinese aggression” narrative – is that “Never Seeking Hegemony, Expansion or Spheres of Influence” is qualified as “the distinctive feature of China’s national defense in the new era.”

This is backed up by what could be defined as the distinctive Chinese approach to international relations – to respect “the rights of all peoples to independently choose their own development path,” and “the settlement of international disputes through equal dialogue, negotiation and consultation. China is opposed to interference in the internal affairs of others, abuse of the weak by the strong, and any attempt to impose one’s will on others.”

So the road map is on the table for all to see. It will be fascinating to watch reactions from myriad latitudes across the Global South. Let’s see how the “Chinese aggression” system responds.

Canada’s misguided Venezuela policy and the inhumanity of sanctions

Source

theconversation.com

Author Ruby Dagher

Part-time Professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa and the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University, Carleton University

July 24, 2019 

 

No matter what you believe in or who you believe, there is no denying that what Venezuelans are currently facing is horrific and morally unacceptable.

Mainstream media reports and analyses suggest that the path to stability in Venezuela should be based on a strong moral approach. They believe that Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro’s policies have caused significant economic mismanagement and poor governance.

They often suggest these polices are the source of the current economic and humanitarian crises. Therefore, they urge the international community to promote a change in political leadership in Venezuela or a transformation in the country’s political system.

In this April 2019 photo, Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro raises his fist to supporters rallying at the presidential palace in Caracas.(AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

But those economic, humanitarian and geopolitical analyses are either incomplete or wrong. Such reports typically ignore the devastating costs of external sanctions. The analysis also focuses solely on the actions of the Chávez and Maduro regimes, and misinterpret the legal basis for international intervention.

We need greater balance when discussing the causes of Venezuela’s economic crisis and should question the legitimacy of external interventions.

Economic costs caused by outsiders

The link between the current crisis and Venezuela’s national economic and governance policies and mechanisms is misplaced. The economic costs associated with international economic crises since 2004, along with economic sanctions levied against Venezuela, have been significantly more dramatic.

In the last six years, the Venezuelan economy has experienced significant losses estimated at more than US$114 billion. That’s only $15 billion less than the country’s entire economic production in 2015. Of this amount, $21.45 billion is due to the actions of the United States, and $92.85 billion is due to the secondary effect on the economy of those actions.

Even the United Nations Special Rapporteurs noted that U.S. economic sanctions against Venezuela in 2017 and 2019 are having a serious, harmful impact on the life and health of Venezuelans, causing widespread hunger and other hardships for Venezuelans. They described the impact of these sanctions as a “collective punishment of the civilian population.”

The Special Rapporteur’s August 2018 report links the ongoing health crisis to the actions of the United States, Canada and the European Union. It notes that these actions have “directly and indirectly aggravated the shortages in medicines such as insulin and anti-viral drugs.”

Unauthorized sanctions

These economic measures haven’t been authorized by the UN Security Council. Without the cover of the Charter of the United Nations, the legal basis of these actions is questionable, and they likely constitute an “international wrongful act.”

As well, because these actions obstruct food and medicine imports, they violate international humanitarian and human rights laws.

Venezuela’s self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaidó speaks during a recent protest in Caracas, Venezuela. A few thousand joined him, far fewer than the number who turned out at demonstrations earlier this year. (AP Photos/Leonardo Fernandez)

Applying sanctions on Venezuela is also an infringement upon the country’s sovereignty. This is especially the case since there is no internal legitimate and legal request to do so.

Juan Guaidó has not been recognized as the legitimate leader of the country by the majority of Venezuelans, despite his recognition as interim president by the United States, Canada, several Latin American countries and a number of European nations. Nor does Guaidó hold the national legal political authority as required by the country’s constitution.

Responsibility to protect

The international community’s supposed desire to protect Venezuelans is at the heart of most arguments in favour of international intervention. However, any such intervention is illegal unless it’s supported by or grounded in international law.

Even the Responsibility to Protect, a UN global political commitment to avoid failures in responses to massacres and genocides, cannot override the requirements in the UN Charter related to the use of force. Therefore, any coercive actions under its guise, including those related to sanctions and military actions, require authorization by the UN Security Council.

Serious concerns about human rights abuses or our moral outrage at their occurrence might compel the international community to act. However, how the international community chooses to act must still be legal under international law.

In short, the Responsibility to Protect cannot justify forced political change, regardless of the merits of the leader in question. In fact, it was never intended to do so.

Flawed Canadian policy

Canada has articulated its support for political change and the establishment of democracy in Venezuela. While fighting for democracy is a noble cause, Canada’s attempt to determine the fate of the Venezuelan people is not. And, if history is any guide, the impact of such external meddling is often negative, sometimes catastrophically so.

We need to encourage dialogue among Venezuelans that is aimed at developing an internal solution, even when we disagree with decisions made by the majority of Venezuelans. We also need to abide by the principles of international law in a non-selective manner.

Doing anything less undermines these principles and establishes a less than moral relationship with Venezuela. It also allows Canada to illegally meddle in the country’s internal affairs.

---

Peggy Mason, president of the Rideau Institute, and Roy Culpeper, chair of the Group of 78, co-authored this piece. They are co-signatories to a Civil Society Statement of Concern on the Crisis in Venezuela.

The Johnson Doctrine: The World According to Britain’s New Prime Minister

© AP Photo / Virginia Mayo

Source

sputniknews.com

July 23, 2019

As a former Foreign Secretary and vocal commentator on global affairs, the new British Prime Minister brings to Number 10 Downing Street a set of staunch positions on a number of the most pressing issues in contemporary international relations, from war and peace in the Middle East to climate change.

On the watch of now former-Prime Minister, Theresa May, the UK has largely been absent from international affairs, outside of its perpetual mud-wrestling with the European Union over the fate of Brexit. However, the new guy in Downing Street, Boris Johnson, has pledged to change that.

Although it’s not yet certain whether Mr Johnson is as well-versed in the methods of African dance as Miss May, his unwavering position on Brexit is widely known: that the UK will be leaving the EU by the deadline of October 31st, with or without a deal. It is that dogged determination and certainty that has, in part, accumulated him so much popularity among Brexit supporters.

Yet, beyond the realms of Brussels, what are Boris Johnson’s positions on today’s major international issues?

Iran

Prime Minister Johnson must commandeer the UK foreign policy ship at a time when London faces something of an international crisis in the Gulf. On Friday, July 19, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps captured a British-flagged oil tanker for “security reasons” after Britain recently impounded an Iranian tanker in Gibraltar for purportedly violating EU sanctions on Syria.

Reportedly, doubts exist in the UK foreign policy establishment as to whether Johnson and his team have the mettle to manage the crisis effectively. Some point to what was widely perceived as a major diplomatic gaffe made during his tenure as foreign secretary in which he said that a British-Iranian woman detained in Iran, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, had been teaching people journalism in the country, a statement that Miss Ratcliffe’s family have said was false and worsened her plight. While in 2017 Johnson did travel to Iran to lobby his Iranian counterpart for Miss Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release, he returned home empty-handed.

The new PM also said in a recent interview with Jewish News that he is ready and prepared to restart sanctions against Iran over its recent uranium enrichment breaches of the 2015 nuclear deal. Yet, he has also come out in favour of the deal, saying in 2018 that, “of all the options we have for ensuring that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, this pact offers the fewest disadvantages.”

Somewhat echoing the Trump administration, during his time as Foreign Secretary, Johnson also criticised Iran for, in his words, its policy of perusing “proxy warfare” in the Middle East.

Israel-Palestine

Friends of Israel are likely to cheer at the spectacle of Boris Johnson’s ascendance to Number 10.

During his time at Oxford University, the new Prime Minister spent a summer working on an Israeli Kibbutz, where, by his own admission, he spent a great deal of time “Washing dishes.”

Although he once reportedly described the 1917 Balfour Declaration as “bizarre” and “tragicomically incoherent,” he has pursued a line of almost unwavering support for the state of Israel, saying that its establishment in 1948 was a “historic event, which led to a giant political fact.”

Along with his Muslim heritage, Johnson also has Jewish ancestry too – his maternal great-grandfather was a rabbi from Lithuania.

In terms of forging peace, Mr Johnson has, at least publicly, endorsed the two-state solution by writing that, “for Israel, the birth of a Palestinian state is the only way to secure its demographic future as a Jewish and democratic state. For Palestinians, a state of their own would allow them to realise their aspirations for self-determination and government.”

Climate Change

Back in April of this year, Boris branded Extinction Rebellion protestors as “smug, irritating and disruptive” and added that he is “utterly fed up” with suggestions that their opinions “are more important than my own.”

Speaking during the midst of climate change protests that brought the British capital to a standstill, Johnson said that, “I don’t want some double-barrelled activist telling me that air travel is only to be used in emergencies – when his own Instagram account contains pictures of his recent skiing holiday.”

In terms of policy, Mr Johnson has voted against measures to prevent climate change, including a carbon reduction target for the UK that was presented to parliament in 2016.

Yet, despite those seemingly hostile positions, Mr Johnson has also said that he is sympathetic to the climate change cause, but has told activists to go and “lecture” to China about it instead.

Transatlantic Relations

Prime Minister Johnson, a staunch Atlanticist who has consistently heaped praise upon President Trump, has pledged to repair US-UK relations following the recent publication of a leaked cable in which London’s now former ambassador to Washington, Kim Darroch, described Trump’s White House as “inept” and “dysfunctional.” Mr Darroch resigned soon after.

Johnson has also already made it a hallmark of his tenure to strike up a tantalising post-Brexit trade deal with the US, despite the fact that reports suggest talks on such an agreement have hit a rough patch.

Although he has grand designs for the future of transatlantic relations, Mr Johnson’s opinions haven’t always been welcomed in Washington with open arms. Back in 2016, he suggested that then-President Barack Obama’s lukewarm attitude toward Britain was based on his “part-Kenyan” heritage and thus an “ancestral dislike of the British empire.” Needless to say, this comment didn’t earn him too many friends within and among the Obama administration.

Freeland Responds to Putin: Liberalism Will Prevail! (Nazis Will Help)

The bottom line is that Canada is effectively collaborating with Ukranian Nazis. 

Source

http://www.strategic-culture.org

Matthew Ehret

Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review. He is also the co-founder of the Rising Tide Foundation.

July 10, 2019

© Photo: Wikimedia

The elite attempting to control the world under an “end of history” neo-liberal doctrine have created a mountain of unresolvable paradoxes for themselves in Ukraine since unleashing the anti-Russian Euromaidan color revolution in late 2013 that unseated a pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych government, and replaced it with a Nazi-infested technocratic regime which has played out like a disastrous circus for the past five years.

The paradox created is fairly straight forward: The Euromaidan was always wired to promote the integration of Ukraine into the Euro-Atlantic neoliberal order. When Yanukovych announced his plans to reject that euro integration in favour of joining the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union, some thought there could be no other way but violent regime change. Sounds simple and the plan worked. Within months, Yanukovych was out and a pro-NATO/EU regime was in power.

Here’s the rub: The only way to activate a violent overthrow required the unleashing of vast networks of third generation neo-Nazis to carry out the sort of dirty work which no one else had the stomachs to handle.

While anti-Russian sentiment wasn’t difficult to come by in western Ukraine, finding people with the shameless bloodlust to kill and be killed could only be rallied from among such networks that had been led to believe that the real villain of WWII was Stalin and not Hitler. Today these networks have come to dominate the military, police, and bureaucracy of Kiev under such names as the Azov Battalion, Svoboda (Socialists/Nationalist Party), Right Sector, and National Corps. With the rise in influence of such fascist networks, laws were passed resulting in Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera becoming a national hero, nazi-styled book banning of authors who don’t acquiesce to the state’s official narrative of history, and state support for fascist training camps for children.

Hence the uncomfortable paradox: fascist droves of neo-Nazis have gained international notoriety with the World Jewish Congress, US Holocaust Memorial Museum and human rights organizations writing letters of condemnation of the countless violent attacks on the LGBT community, feminists, and Jews which have multiplied since 2014– often with the complicity of the state police and military.

But of course that cannot be admitted or else the entire game is up, and so by maintaining the lie, ever greater mountains of uncomfortable fallacies build upon each other creating a castle on sand whose collapse is now beginning to be felt.

Calling out this castle on the sand in the clearest terms, President Vladimir Putin gave an interview prior to the G20 in Osaka exclaiming that the problems and paradoxes facing today’s world are traceable to a singular root cause: the breakdown of the paradigm of liberalism.

A Clash Between Paradigms

Speaking to the Financial Times in the Kremlin, Putin said:

“The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population… I am not trying to insult anyone, because we have been condemned for our alleged homophobia as it is. But we have no problems with LGBT persons. God forbid, let them live as they wish. But some things do appear excessive to us. They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles. I cannot even say exactly what genders these are, I have no notion. Let everyone be happy, we have no problem with that. But this must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.”

Defending the principle of morality against the collapsing liberal order which denies truthfulness in favor of mass opinion, Putin said: “Deep inside, there must be some fundamental human rules and moral values. In this sense, traditional values are more stable and more important for millions of people than this liberal idea, which, in my opinion, is really ceasing to exist.”

As much as some took these words as a breath of fresh air, certain political figures treated those words as poison.

Canada’s Ukrainian-Nationalist Rhodes Scholar Chrystia Freeland was among those who took the most visceral offense to Putin’s message when she spoke to a crowd of confused technocrats during the third Ukraine Reform Congress in Toronto Canada (July 2-4^th) stating: “Putin is not hiding what he’s up to. He thinks that the liberal idea, the whole way that we live, the whole notion of how we built our society- THAT’S what he’s opposed to! The reason why Canada takes the positions we do is because we do not agree that the liberal idea is dead.”

Freeland’s Global Affairs website stated the purpose of the conference and Canada’s relationship to Ukraine in the following terms: “Following the Revolution of Dignity in early 2014, Ukraine’s government committed to implementing democratic and economic reforms in line with its European aspirations. Russian aggression, which started in 2014 with the illegal invasion and occupation of Crimea, has drawn Ukraine into a bloody conflict in the east of the country. This conflict has placed significant pressure on the Ukrainian government’s ability to carry out its reforms.”

During the conference, agreements were made to provide money for gender reforms, anti-corruption legislation, integration of the private sector in the government and Canada’s refusal to recognize Russian-issued passports to Eastern Ukrainians. Forty-five million dollars in aid was added to the $785 million already spent on Ukraine’s plastic surgery with a focus on “stopping Russian aggression” and “ensuring the irreversibility of reforms” (whatever that means).

Canada also announced that its programs to train Ukrainian police and military would be extended until 2021 and 2022 respectively. This once again puts Canadian armed forces directly into a situation where they are collaborating with neo-nazi forces such as Vadym Troyan, Serhiy Knyazev, Andry Biletsky, and Dmytro Yarosh.

Nazis and Banderites Exposed

Vadym Troyan acted as Chief of Police of Kiev region from November 16, 2016- February 8, 2017 where he was responsible for the purge of all forces loyal to former President Yanukovych. Troyan was replaced with current Chief of Police Knyazev who is collaborating closely with the Canadian officials in the creation of Ukraine’s national police academy. After being replaced by Knyazev in 2017, Troyan became the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Kiev where he currently oversees the Azov-affiliated National Corps who define themselves as the reserves of the Ukrainian armed forces, yet whose stylized swastikas embedded in their logos betray their true allegiances. It should be noted that Troyan is an unrepentant Banderite who made his name as a leader of Azov and the Patriot of Ukraine (founded in 2005 to create a national socialist state of Ukraine which was incorporated into Azov in 2014.) For those who believed Knyazev was any better, those beliefs were put to rest when he exclaimed on television “I apologize. I am a Banderite too! Glory to Ukraine!”

Dmytro Yarosh (former Right Sektor leader) is now a leader of the National Corps Party, and is the current commander of the Ukraine Volunteer Army being trained by Canadian military personnel.

Andriy Biletsky is the leader of National Corps (the political party created by Azov in 2016), former commander of Azov and co-founder of Svoboda. Azov has introduced over 10 000 members to the “national militia” which is tightly integrated with the Ukrainian army. Biletsky has stated that his mission is to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade against the semite-led untermenschen.”

One of the key Nazis leading this process is Andriy Parubiy, Chairman of the Rada (parliament) who has interfaced closely with Freeland for years. Parubiy is a co-founder of the National Socialist Party (Svoboda) and a leading figure behind the deployment and protection of right-wing storm troopers around the nation.

Although Canadian officials have made efforts to play dumb around these inconvenient facts, Colonel Brian Irwin (Canada’s military attaché in Kiev) was caught meeting with officers from the Azov Battalion.

So when Canada proudly announces that it will extend operation UNIFIER to train Ukraine “security forces” until March 31 2022, or announces that Freeland successfully changed Canada’s laws to permit providing “lethal aid” to Ukraine in 2017, we should really think about who is actually benefiting. What should come as a particularly disturbing shock is that the “lethal aid” provided to Ukraine by private Canadian arms manufacturers has never been made public with Global Affairs responding with the evasive answer “for reasons of commercial confidentiality , the department does not comment on any application of permits [to sell weapons to Ukraine].” The closest thing to an answer from a government official has been Trudeau’s statement at the Toronto conference “we already see the investments from Canadian companies in the production of ammunition in Ukraine”.

Zelinsky and Trudeau: Two Actors in Over their Heads

Both Justin Trudeau and Volodymyr Zelensky presented a spectacle at the Toronto event, as both statesmen have gained well-earned reputations for having compensated for their lack of political credentials by having been actors. In the case of Zelensky, he played a president on television before getting elected, while Trudeau served as a 2^nd rate high school acting teacher before Liberal Party controllers decided to use him as their plaything to sweep into power in 2015.

As Trudeau pledged continued support for the NATO Contact Point Embassy of Kiev which it co-controls with Britain, Zelensky stated: “I hope that Canada will continue to be a conductor of Ukraine on the way to full membership in the alliance”. Proving his comedic reputation well earned, Zelensky ended his Toronto speech saying “it is a great honour for Ukraine that such a powerful state like Canada supports Ukraine with such devotion.”

Canada as Posterchild of Liberalism

Even though an ugly picture has been presented, one question was not addressed which should be on your mind: Why Canada?

Why has Canada played such a prominent role in Ukraine’s post-Soviet existence and especially since the launching of the Nazi-led Euromaidan? Why is this relatively unpopulated monarchy so actively making enemies with nations like China, Russia, and even America?

To answer that question, it is useful to revisit the statement on liberalism eloquently given by Putin. “Liberalism”, by its very essence denies truthfulness in favor of “popular opinion”. Under a “liberal” geopolitical order, whoever controls “popular opinion” controls the forces defining humanity’s existence. What liberals cannot admit is that mankind is the only species whose existence is not merely bounded by genetic instincts or environmental conditions alone.

Of course, technocrats, behaviorists and oligarchs wish to believe that is all we are, but the reality as Putin so clearly stated, is something more. We are a species defined by qualities that transcend matter and are tied to principles of conscience, reason, and aesthetics.

As a nation founded upon British Aristocratic principles of hereditary power (Canada is a monarchy after all), the role selected for this northern nation in the wake of WWII, was to become a “Middle Power” who would act as counterweight to the shifting centers of gravity during the Cold War as it slid from communist Russia, Cuba or China towards Capitalist America or Europe, at one time befriending Nixon or Carter and another time befriending Castro or Mao.

Trudeau’s total lack of principle made him the perfect puppet in a time when keeping British Canada close to all sides of the Great Game was most useful for the British. Above, Pierre Trudeau gets chummy with Castro, Chairman Mao, Thatcher, and Reagan

In the years since Freeland and Justin Trudeau’s ascendancy to the throne, Canada’s use in a geopolitical “great game” has been one of corralling flocks of sheep towards emotionally-driven policies such as de-industrializing to fight global warming, promoting self-enslaving free trade acts, “democratic” regime change and in some cases, risking outright nuclear war.

This has taken the form of Canada’s guiding role in the Lima Group of Latin American nations against Venezuela, the “Alliance for Multilateralism”, the defense of WTO-run order or rallying the nations to fight man-made climate change. The common denominator amongst all of these Canadian-led initiatives is a total lack of substance and religious belief that nations can be bent by the “force” of popular opinion. Liberalism.

The Father of Modern Liberalism Revisited

I’d like to end this report with a bone-chilling quote from a leading architect of the currently collapsing liberal world order named Lord Bertrand Russell. This celebrated “logician, and architect of the Cold War wrote a very ugly yet influential book called The Impact of Science on Society in 1952 where he stated:

“I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology. Mass psychology is, scientifically speaking, not a very advanced study, and so far its professors have not been in universities: they have been advertisers, politicians, and, above all, dictators. This study is immensely useful to practical men, whether they wish to become rich or to acquire the government. Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called “education.” Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part…

This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship…The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray. Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”

Although it took some decades for Russell’s blueprint to “make its great strides”, the very fact that its success has led to society’s self-destruction should be a sufficient proof that this philosophy (merely a repackaged paganism for the modern age) is not only obsolete as Putin says, but constructed in defiance of the true nature of mankind as a species of reason, morality and free will destined for something much greater than liberals can ever imagine.

The Sorry State of Canadian Democracy

“The Liberals and Conservatives are essentially opposite sides of the same coin, both supporters of the global status quo as envisioned by the corporate powers.”

Source

In spite of the “writ” not having been “dropped” Canada is already in full election mode.  Of course, politicians are always electioneering as their main purpose once in power is to stay in power in order to reap its rewards and benefits.  Otherwise, instead of politicians running the country we could simply let the bureaucrats do their uncelebrated mundane work of the daily running of the country.  Unfortunately, it is not that simple as the rules and policies the bureaucracy follows are put out by various political parties – massaged and manipulated over time – and not  put out on the basis of “universal values” or “constitutional values” whatever they may be.  In the meantime, electioneering has started with the many policies, plans, promises, platitudes, and homilies being announced for consumption by the incumbents and wannabes.

Within domestic affairs and identity politics are many topics used to shape and steer discussions in attempts to sway the popular will.  What is seldom discussed – and very little understood, are the actions and belief systems that really underlie our society.  In a broad perspective Canada’s position as a neoliberal, austerity imposing, capitalist member of the western elite, the western U.S. sponsored empire, is seldom if ever questioned.

It is seldom discussed because the true powers that be – the elite powers of those within the Washington consensus group of institutions – the bankers, financial officers, and corporate managers of the large private and public businesses and institutions – do not want it discussed.  They do not want ‘democracy’ to be more than a superficial status.  Their control of monetary policy, their centralized control of the media steers the world the way they want it to operate and be perceived, making our democratic institutions essentially a rubber stamp for their economic dominance.

Our institutions operate within the parameters acceptable to the corporate greed towards ever-increasing profits at the expense of the global environment, and at the expense of the global citizenry.  While science has long warned about climate change and environmental pollution of all kinds – a very real occurrence – even those who pay attention to it are so entwined within societies’ structures that very little is done about these scientific concerns.  Along with that, part of the same underlying paradigm are increasingly vast disparities in income and wealth levels both domestically and in other countries.  A small group of super elites control vast amounts of wealth and thus power, generally working together to secure their realm.

If this broad if somewhat short generalized view is used as the lens through which to view Canada’s political parties, there are rather few underlying differences between the parties as seldom if ever are the underlying factors questioned..

Essentially it all comes down to maintaining the status quo of western financial dominance of the world, its resources, and people.  The Liberals and Conservatives both actively support the military industrial complex that is the not so hidden fist keeping – or trying to – control of the world’s governments.  Perhaps they present it differently, the Conservatives wanting to put the military out to “punch above its weight” while the Liberals soften the blow with “rule of law” and “peacekeeping forces,” both serving the empire well.  Few question it – from Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria to Ukraine, Canada willingly supports the empire.  Venezuela reveals the ultimate ugliness of it all as Canada has for decades – with notables such as Ben Rowswell and Allan Culham (former ambassadors), and Chrystia Freeland (current Foreign Minister) – openly advocating the overthrow of a duly elected government.  How democratic!

Israel serves as another example of an empire under non-democratic control.  A government that denies twenty percent of its population the same civic status as the ethnic religious majority, that guards 1.8 million people in an open air prison on survival rations only, and that has created a series of militarily ruled or controlled bantustans is not democratic.  Yet there is no Canadian political party that decries this situation, all fearful of the domestic religious vote (Christian and Jewish) and the repercussions of not supporting the empire’s outpost in the Middle East.  For the latter, it is truly not so much fear of what might happen but an overwhelming blind willingness to support the dominant power of the west.

All major parties – Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats, and Greens – support the fully outdated position of wanting a two-state position, while Israel continues to ignore all those dead positions and continues building illegal settlements on occupied territory while the rest of the world turns away.  Israel is not the only place where Canadians uphold the status of the West’s military control of wealth and resources.

Throughout Africa, through much of the Middle East, Canada’s military-business connections help maintain the extraction of wealth through current supra-national corporate models of governance.  So-called “free trade” agreements, onerous World Bank predatory lending, and IMF “structural adjustment programs” (debt and more debt) maintains control of many governments and many supposedly sovereign economies.  In essence, globalization is about controlling the world’s wealth while guarding the people – the workers, labourers – behind sovereign borders.  Canada is in full partnership with all this.

Canada’s Adventures in Neoliberal Imperialism Continue

Blowback – refugees, poverty, and the environment

Obviously, all is not well with globalization as millions of people attempt to escape the worst of its violent dangers and impositions.  The large displacement of people in the Middle East and Africa  is placing pressure on Europe as refugees continue to arrive en masse when escaping domestic mayhem.  The same holds true in the Americas as thousands of Hispanic/indigenous people attempt to travel to the U.S. in order to escape the violence and corruption and despotism at home.  Most of that violence is caused by the economic impositions of globalization combined with the history of U.S. interventions to control governments that objected to U.S.corporate dominance.

Blowback from globalization also has an impact on the Canadian domestic scene.  Hyped up fears of terrorism have increased the powers of the security state (with much learned from Israel’s control of its Palestinian population) and increased the unjustified glorification of the Canadian military both through the media and with a larger budget.  Canada is a member of the “five eyes”, the family members inheriting the British empire and who now share information and security methodologies.  Another form of blowback are the heightened fear of terrorism ad “other” – mainly focussed on refugees with a Muslim background but extending out to the created fears generated by identity politics.  These fears and prejudices are used in different ways to control the domestic electorate, a diversion from the reality of the overall non-democratic governance of the military-financial- corporate powers.

Two other perspectives can view this same phenomenon – income disparity/poverty and global environmental change.

Most everyone pays lip service to poverty.  Many offer solutions on a small scale through NGOs acting on small targeted goals in specific areas – actions that certainly aid a small number of people but in no way address the source of poverty.  Musicians sing about it, politicians talk about it, the media keeps us focused on these feel-good/do-good attempts without addressing the underlying causes (and note, poverty does not equate to terrorism).  Until the base structures of western globalization are deconstructed or contained (or collapse) poverty will continue its destructive pathways – malnutrition, starvation, poor health, serfdom, wage slave labour, exploitation et al.  Poverty, other than small domestic pockets, many of indigenous people, does not register on Canada’s domestic political scene.  However, climate change and global warming do have an impact.

At this point, it is mainly different parties and different jurisdictions arguing about how to control carbon output using some form of establishment acceptable monetary initiatives (cap and trade, carbon tax).  Extrapolating from current trends all that money manoeuvering will have little impact due to the nature of our profit-oriented consumer culture.  As one small but important factor consider Canada’s export of garbage, plastic waste, and e-waste to poorer less developed countries in Southeast Asia.  Those outlets now are closed and very little of our waste/garbage is actually recycled or reused.  Most is incinerated at 1400 degrees Celsius with the subsequent volatile gases dispersing through the atmosphere.

Canadian consumer culture continues its money habits of purchasing stuff, and “planned obsolescence stuff” continuing the degradation of the environment both from chemical pollution and carbon-induced warming.  Global warming, while obviously important and becoming more and more a political and media talking point hides the dangers of thousands of chemical products behind a smokescreen (quite literally).

Canadians who think they are “green” and want to eliminate poverty, need to consider the following. Are you really willing to accept the huge changes necessary in order to achieve a clean sustainable world –  i.e., far less consumption, less travel, less stuff, no more debt purchases?  The latter is very difficult because while the wealth of the top elites has risen dramatically, wages have stagnated over the past several decades.  Simply using the “3 Rs” will not do it unless the reduce aspect is taken to its necessary full extension.

Consider also Canada’s military.  Can you recognize our actions in Libya, Syria, Ukraine and maybe soon Venezuela and Iran as being part of U.S. corporate elites striving for full control?  Do you support Canada’s role within the globalization paradigm of controlling other countries economies through predatory financial practices, up to and including the use of mercenaries to protect corporations against indigenous protests?

Do you support the U.S. military actions – overt and covert – used to maintain the economic dominance of the super elites and their global corporations?  Do you support the many western interventions in the Middle East considering the terrorists we are supposedly fighting have been used, supplied, and trained in part by the western military and political establishments?  More broadly, ask what role the 800+ military bases, the dozen or so carrier groups, play in attempting to subordinate the rest of the world to our non-sustainable demands.  The U.S. military is the largest institutional user of oil in the world.  In 2007 it ranked as the 35th largest sovereign user, and ranks 3rd globally on a per capita basis.  Canada is a large part of the U.S. empire and plays a large role in creating poverty, terror, and environmental disasters around the world through our support of their military adventurism.

In other words, if you support the military as it is currently used, you achieve nothing against poverty and your green colour is a veneer over the actual economic lifestyle choices you make.

The veneer is readily maintained by mainstream media, the vast majority of which is owned and financially controlled by the military-financial-corporate elites. It combines a willful ignorance of our predations with massive amounts of diversions.  One of the main diversions includes all the propaganda associated with the various wars of control and the manipulation of the terrorist “threat”.  The diversions extend well beyond through all aspects of consumerism – the entertainment of movies, film, television, the internet in all its aspects through to major sports activities, and on to leisure and holiday consumption.  As corporate profits rise and wages stagnate, consumers rely heavily on debt to achieve the advertised/propagandized ideals of the good life.  All the debt, trillions of dollars, simply feeds more money and power to the controllers of a corporate financialized economy.

Back to Canadian political parties

In Canada, these issues present a serious problem as to which party or candidate to support.  The Liberals and Conservatives are essentially opposite sides of the same coin, both supporters of the global status quo as envisioned by the corporate powers.  The supposedly “left” New Democrats similarly follow this status quo, are not very green, and tend to move to the right once the political dollars become a more central interest.  That leaves the actual Greens, although they are not as green as they would like to be perceived – support for U.S. actions, support for Israeli actions, with no real action plan regarding environmental changes addressing our military supported consumer society lowers their credentials as a truly ‘green‘ party.

The Liberals quashed their election reform agenda after realizing it could negatively affect their majority control in parliament.  In opposing moves they announce a climate “emergency” then a day later approve a 12-14 billion dollar pipeline project to move tar sands – diluted bitumen or dilbit, but not oil – to an ecologically sensitive coastline.  Given Canada’s current economic-political fight with China, it is a bit ridiculous to think China will buy more of our dirty oil.  Economic health as determined by a high energy consumer economy does not go together with a good environment.

The Conservatives acquiesced on the lack of electoral reform for the same reason.  They are pro big oil, frequent climate change deniers although a recent policy statement recognized that, yes, after all these years of working against the idea, global warming is happening.  They offer no real solutions other than a variant on the inefficient cap and trade idea, but with no stated costs or implementation factors.

The two smaller parties offer little.  The NDP has failed to truly distinguish themselves from the two larger parties, creating policy positions frequently accepted and adopted (if not implemented) by the Liberals and for which the Conservatives cry “socialism” over.  The Greens have some initiatives in the right direction but with their support of the military and of government attempts to change foreign governments, they have yet to create a policy that will change the momentum/inertia of a debt-ridden, consumer-based, media biased, military/corporate society.

Other than perhaps voting for the lesser evil of the group, a spoiled ballot or no vote at all are the better options.

Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Jim Miles, Global Research, 2019

China Removes Its Ambassador From Canada, Decides Canucks Are Too Nuts Under Technocrat Trudeau Regime

“the reason why some people are used to arrogantly adopting double standards is due to Western egotism and white supremacy – in such a context, the rule of law is nothing but a tool for their political ends and a fig leaf for their practicing hegemony in the international arena” Ambassador Lu

Matthew EHRET

Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review.

June 21, 2019

China Removes Its Ambassador From Canada, Decides Canucks Are Too Nuts Under Technocrat Trudeau Regime

As the international financial system is becoming increasingly shaped by the spirit of cooperation and long term development shaped by China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the greater Russia-China alliance, Canada’s adherence to the “old liberal order” has caused the Asian giant to make a tough decision: Remove its Ambassador Extraordinary Plenipotentiary Lu Shaye from the Northern Monarchy until saner heads become a factor in Canadian politics.

This has left the already beleaguered government of Justin Trudeau (and Chrystia Freeland… let’s not kid ourselves here) in an embarrassing situation as Trudeau’s requests to meet with Xi Jinping at the upcoming G20 have gone ignored for the past several days. Freeland has announced that her many requests to speak with China’s Foreign Minister have similarly gone unheeded.

Since attaining power in 2015, the Liberal Government has demonstrated nothing but constant belligerence to China. Many then watching the Canadian political scene had hoped that Trudeau would continue the pro-China traditions which his father initiated in 1970 and which paved the way to China’s opening up under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping a few years later.

This did not occur.

Rather than adapt to the shifting current of the times which calls for nations to reject “each against all” geopolitics and instead join a new win-win framework driven by the Belt and Road Initiative model of development, Canada has only dug its heels ever deeper into the ground in defense of the sinking Titanic of Globalization. This was seen by Canada’s unrelenting support for the COP21 depopulation agenda, the anti-China Trans-Pacific Partnership, the anti-Russia/China NATO missile shield, and anti-everybody WTO system.

Once the Chinese government made their disapproval of Canada’s behavior known with the December 2017 rejection of the Canada-China special relationship, Trudeau and Freeland were assigned to take on a more aggressive tone against China, first by blocking the sale of Canada’s Aecon to China due to “security risks” in May 2018, arresting Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou in December 2018, firing a pro-Chinese ambassador in January 2019 and mobilizing international support against China’s human rights abuses due to China’s arrest of two Canadians on espionage charges and the death penalty given to a Canadian drug smuggler.

How a low level “middle power” like Canada ever gained the hubris to believe that it could intimidate a country like China is a mystery, but it happened.

Now Xi Jinping has sent a clear message that it will no longer tolerate a mosquito who thinks it is a dragon trying to bully China any longer. China’s ambassador Lu Shaye has done everything for 3 years to offer Canada the opportunity to join the Belt and Road Initiative and open up to a new system of cooperation with China’s investment into decayed North American infrastructure. In a recent Ottawa event Ambassador Lu said:

“China and Canada could engage in third-party market cooperation, create a kind of synergy and achieve triple-win by combining the needs of developing countries, China’s production capacity, and Canada’s advantages in capital and technology. Canada is one of the members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which provides favourable conditions for the country to participate in the Belt and Road facility connection.”

With the total rejection of these peace offerings, Lu Shaye has induced Canada to demonstrate where its true allegiance lay. Once Canada’s true colors were exposed, Ambassador Lu himself, breaking with the typical protocols of subtle and polite diplomatic conduct for which the Chinese are well known, called out the “racist, Five Eyes Intelligence network” which is really trying to run the world. In January 2019 Ambassador Lu described the hypocrisy of the western technocratic elite who attack China saying:

“the reason why some people are used to arrogantly adopting double standards is due to Western egotism and white supremacy – in such a context, the rule of law is nothing but a tool for their political ends and a fig leaf for their practising hegemony in the international arena”

Now with Canadian elections fast approaching and finding only anti-Chinese vitriol even among the Conservative Party of Andrew Sheer (the only contender against Trudeau), China has decided that Ambassador Lu can be more productive if re-deployed to France where greater opportunities for BRI-cooperation can be found. Of course, China’s wish that Canada take part in the BRI and its new Arctic extension remains firmly on the table awaiting only a sane political leadership to arise and accept this ticket to the future.

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

US must invade Venezuela to scare Iran and North Korea: Senator Graham

This buffoon and his entire family should be sent to the front line of the next fake US war. Fair is fair.

Source

http://www.presstv.com

Sat Jun 15, 2019

US Sen. Lindsey Graham during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on May 1, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by AFP)

A hawkish Republican senator has suggested that the United States should take military action against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro so countries opposing the US are intimidated and surrender to Washington’s demands.

To handle foreign conflicts “we need points on the board,” Senator Lindsey Graham, who is a close ally of President Donald Trump, was quoted as saying on Friday by Fox News.

The warmonger from South Carolina told Fox News that the US needed to resolve its issues with other countries using military actions.

The Chair of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary suggested using US military force to resolve America’s conflicts with countries opposed to US foreign policy.

“Do what Reagan did in Grenada. Put military force on the table … start with your own backyard,” he suggested.

Graham implied that after the US military invasion of Venezuela, other Latin American counties, as well as countries opposed to US foreign policies such as  North Korea and Iran, would be intimidated and give in to US demands.

“Fix Venezuela, and everybody else will know you’re serious,” Graham, who is a notorious supporter of US interventionism, suggested to the Fox News host.

Graham has in the past repeated his call for US military intervention in Venezuela. Last month, as representatives of the Venezuelan government and opposition forces were meeting in Norway for talks on resolving the political crisis in the Latin American country, the Republican senator dropped another Grenada reference aimed at scaring government representatives.

In 1983, Reagan ordered US troops to invade the small Caribbean island nation of Grenada, resulting in an easy victory for the Americans.

Venezuela halts services at consulates in Canada until it ‘regains sovereignty in foreign policy’

“Venezuela hopes that Canada will soon recover sovereignty over its foreign policy to foster a better climate for dialogue and mutual respect for the benefit of both peoples.”

Source

http://www.rt.com

9 Jun, 2019

Protest against American attempts at a ‘regime change’ in Venezuela and Canada’s complicity in the campaign, Toronto, 16 September, 2017. © Global Look Press / ZUMA Press / Creative Touch Imaging Ltd

Venezuela will no longer provide services at its consulates in Canada in response to Ottawa shutting down its embassy in Caracas. Canada must stop toeing the US line in its foreign policy, it said.

Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Arreaza announced on Saturday a temporary suspension of all services at the country’s consulates general in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. All of their functions will fall upon the embassy in Ottawa, the ministry said in a statement.

ALSO ON RT.COMCanadian FM plays good cop to US, promising Cuba ‘part to play’ in Venezuelan democracy

The diplomatic scale-down comes in retaliation to the Canadian government’s recent decision to temporarily close its embassy in Caracas and redirect all consular assistance to its embassy in Colombia.

The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry slammed the move, calling it a “political decision” that is “far from being administrative” and reflects Ottawa’s “continued hostility” towards and “disciplined subordination to the aggression of the Trump administration against the Venezuelan people and its democratic institutions.”

The ministry accused Ottawa of supporting the “perverse financial blockade” Washington has imposed on Caracas in an act of “economic war.” The crippling economic sanctions are estimated to have already cost the Latin American country’s economy over $130 billion.

Venezuela hopes that Canada will soon recover sovereignty over its foreign policy to foster a better climate for dialogue and mutual respect for the benefit of both peoples.

Canada was among the first to embrace self-proclaimed ‘interim president’ Juan Guaido, the opposition leader behind the failed coup attempt of April 30, with Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland calling Maduro’s government a “regime fully entrenched in dictatorship,” as it recognized Guaido’s authority in January.

At a joint press conference with her Cuban counterpart on Friday, Freeland copied Washington’s talking points as she reaffirmed Canada’s support for Guaido, noting that she has “much respect” for the US-backed opposition politician, while calling for a “peaceful transition” through “free and fair elections” in Venezuela.

Like the US, which sees Cuba as the main sponsor of Maduro’s government, Freeland suggested that it would have “a role to play” in the transition process, but did not elaborate.

Canada has slapped Venezuela with a barrage of punitive sanctions, targeting over a hundred Venezuelan officials for “undermining democratic institutions.”

Trump Gives Away What Is Not His or Israel’s

Source: Trump Gives Away What Is Not His or Israel’s – American Herald Tribune

ahtribune.com

BY Jeremy Salt

March 22 ,2019

Trumpery: dictionary definition, ‘articles of little or

no value.’ As applied to cheap jewelry, vulgar, garish

and tasteless. As applied to paintings, trompe l’oeil, ‘to deceive the eye,’ from the French verb tromper, to deceive.

 

Hubris grips Israel. Absolute power has had its usual effect of absolute corruption, of morality, legality, and justice as well as the money deals that have enriched corrupt Israeli politicians.

No one dares stop Israel.  Not the UN and not western governments. They can but they don’t or they won’t.  Israel can kill Palestinians on the West Bank, in Jerusalem, in Gaza, without any meaningful intervention by the ‘international community.’  

On the West Bank, a corrupt Palestinian Authority has done much of its dirty work, administering the occupied territory on behalf of the occupier, not the occupied.  In East Jerusalem, it has acted as the conduit for the sale of Jerusalem properties to Zionist settlers, with straw men, Palestinians, and bogus companies set up to transfer properties without owners knowing that the real purchasers are Zionist settlers.

Most of the money for these purchases comes from the US, where Donald Trump has now followed up his “recognition” of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital with his “recognition” of the occupied Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory.

He did this in a tweet, without telling the relevant arms of his own administration beforehand. The State Department was taken by surprise and so was everyone else, except the Israeli government. It knew because Trump had passed on the word. Behind the scenes, John Bolton and the US ambassador to Israel, David Freedman, effectively Israel’s American ambassador to Israel, worked to set this up.

The parallel to Trump’s unilateral White House action is US recognition of Israel in 1948.   Because of the probability of extreme bloodshed, early in 1948 the US had backed away from the 1947 partition plan and was seeking a UN trusteeship over Palestine.   That was the policy followed until Truman upended it on May 14 by recognizing Israel de facto, without informing the State Department or the US delegation at the UN.

The UN Secretary-General had been informed, and it was in the wastepaper basket in his office that the screwed-up ticker tape message sent to him was found.  The US delegation ’s head, Warren Austin, was so disgusted he walked out of the UN building and left it to his deputy to make the formal announcement of recognition.  The enraged Cuban delegation threatened to pull Cuba out of the UN.  

The US has never been an honest broker but at least in the 1940s and 1950s, there were sensible people who recognized the great dangers for the US in supporting Zionism and the state of Israel.  

Loy Henderson, a senior State Department official, responsible for Middle Eastern policy, wrote that support for a Jewish state would violate US policy of allowing a majority vote by the population of any territory to determine its form of government.

He warned that support for Israel would involve the US “in international difficulties of so grave a character that the reaction throughout the world as well as in this country will be very strong.”

Secretary of State George Marshall opposed partition and wrote that if Truman recognized Israel, he would vote against him in the next elections.  

Truman’s double-dealing was to repeated by Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s when he told the Israeli ambassador, Yitzhak Rabin, that he need not worry about being forced into signing the nuclear-non proliferation treaty in return for the supply of US planes and tanks.   

Johnson would make sure they would be provided without any conditions, blindsiding his own officials, who thought they were going into negotiations with a strong hand, only to be treated with discourtesy by Rabin.  

Israel got the lot then, the tanks and the planes and the freedom to develop nuclear weapons without having to sign the NPT, and it has got the lot ever since.  Military and economic grants have now reached unprecedented levels.  On top of the $3.8 billion aid, Israel will receive for 2019 it is now the beneficiary of a ten-year $38 billion ‘defense’ package, signed into law in August 2018.  

These sums of money, enabling the occupation of Palestine and the killing of Palestinians, are augmented by smaller grants, $50 million here or $50 million there, the icing on an enormous and very tasty cake. Israel still has the freedom to develop nuclear weapons without US interference.

In December 2017, Donald Trump “recognized” Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, on the same day that Zionist snipers were killing unarmed Palestinians along the Gaza fence line.  He has now followed this by “recognizing” the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory.

The banality of the man is summed up in the means of communication, not a White House press conference, not a State Department communique, but a tweet, the same conduit he uses for talking about his children or abusing his political opponents or telling the world how great the Mexican wall will be. 

Of course, there can be no “recognition” because both East Jerusalem (‘at least’ as there is no good reason to separate the occupation of the east in 1967 from the occupation of the west in 1948) and the Golan Heights are occupied territories in fact and under international law.   

With these two announcements, the US has finally ruled itself out as any kind of honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians.  It never has been, of course.  Some presidents tried hard to bring balance into the relationship – Jimmy Carter for example – but all eventually caved in.

The Golan Heights is part of Syria.  In 1967 it was seized by Israel during its war against Egypt and Syria.  This was no “pre-emptive” attack as the Zionists have claimed ever since but a blitzkrieg aimed at destroying Arab military capacity, destroying Egypt’s leader, Gamal Abd al Nasser and seizing the rest of Palestine. 

The seizure of the Golan involved the expulsion of 90,000-130,000 Syrians and Palestinians. Some fled, others were driven out but, just like 1948, no one was allowed back.  About 100 villages were destroyed and ploughed over.

In 1974, after a war which Egypt and Syria would have won on the battlefield had not Anwar al Sadat betrayed the Syrian president, Hafez al Assad, new lines of demarcation were drawn up on the Golan, leaving about 70 percent in the hands of the Zionists. 

Before withdrawing from some of the territories they had occupied, Zionist units deliberately destroyed the city of Quneitra. It was never rebuilt, the ruins standing as testimony to the complete bastardry of the army which had occupied it.

Since that time Israel has filled the occupied Golan with about 30 settlements and 25,000 settlers. Archaeological relics are plundered, the Golan’s vital water resources are drained off and Israeli and foreign tourists contribute to the economy of occupation.   In recent years the occupied Syrian communities, mainly Druze, have had to put up with wounded terrorists being transported across their land from Syria to receive treatment in Israeli hospitals.  On occasion, they have attacked these convoys.  Most Druze remain committed to their Syrian identity.

In his tweet, Trump wrote that the “recognition” of the occupied Golan as Israeli is important to “regional stability.” The opposite is true, of course. ‘Regional stability’ is even more seriously threatened. With these announcements, Trump has put his administration entirely in Israel’s pocket. 

Trump may well give Netanyahu’s election prospects a boost by turning his tweeted intention into a formal policy statement before the Israeli elections in early April.  Both the Jerusalem and the Golan declarations, however, are a sign that Israel and its lobbyists in the US have seriously overplayed their hand and that in buckling to their pressure, Trump has worsened Israel’s standing in the US.    

The US groveling to Israel over many decades would now seem to have reached its apogee. All that remains is the plan being cooked up by Trump, John Bolton, Jared Kushner, and David Freedman, in continuous consultation with the Israeli government, to bury the Palestinian question forever.

Americans are aware more than ever of how Israel dictates US foreign policy.  Jewish Americans know it in increasing numbers, especially on university campuses. They have the same moral consciousness as anyone else and are appalled by Israel’s atrocious record over many decades. They are distancing themselves both from Israel and Zionism and of course, they completely abhor the Netanyahu government and Israel’s even more openly racist and fascist parties.

Two Muslim members of Congress have recently sharpened the debate with exposure of the lobby’s vote-buying political influence.  Senior Democrats, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have declared they will not be attending the annual AIPAC conference in Washington on March 24-26.  In years gone by, such defiance by a US politician would be regarded as suicidal but not now. This is partly the measure of how the wind is blowing in the US.

Trump’s two declarations end all illusions.  Even in the minds and the hearts of those who desperately cling to the hope of a genuine peace process, there can surely be no hope left.   One would have to be completely deluded to see something in nothing.  What is left is surrender or resistance. Either you or us.  Not a peace of the brave as pronounced on the White House lawns in 1993 but a peace of the grave.

Many Palestinians never thought peace with Israel was possible. They have been proven right. Those who continued to place their trust in the “international community” or in the application of international law or the bona fides of the Israeli government have been proven wrong. George Habash read the situation correctly back in the 1950s and 1960s. Hasan Nasrallah reads it correctly now. 

The abandonment by the US of the remnants of a peace process that was never a peace process in the first place creates grave dangers, not regional stability, especially when taken in the context of a possible Israeli war with Hizbullah or Iran or on both of them.

The US has left the supporters of a genuine peace process with nothing in their hands.  There is no two-state solution in sight, only a bogus one-state ‘solution’ which turns all of Palestine into Netanyahu’s apartheid Jewish state.  

If Palestine, any part of it, is to be redeemed, only the option of force seems left for those who will not surrender. After more than seven decades of chicanery, lies, and brutality from Israeli governments, this conclusion would be self-evident.

It is not a question of wanting it or wishing for it.  Force is abhorrent but there has never been a time in history when an occupied people have not resisted the occupier to the utmost limits of their endurance.   

Both the Palestinians and the Zionists conform to the historical pattern, one as the occupied and the second as the occupier. Israel thinks it can break the Palestinians down by the application of brute force but after more than seven decades it has still not succeeded.  Instead, in the minds of many, it has only strengthened the lesson that what has been taken by force, ultimately can only be taken back by force.

When there is no peace, no remote possibility of peace, the pendulum must swing back to war.  When it comes, and sooner or later it will come, Israel is going to take such punishment that it might finally see reason, if by then it is not too late to see reason.  It would be better to see reason before the event but that is not going to happen.

Hizbullah has the capacity to inflict great damage on Israel.   The Iron Dome and the Arrow anti-missile ‘defense’ systems will stop only a fraction of the volume of missiles that will pour into Israel in the event of war with Hizbullah or the war with Iran which Netanyahu has wanted for years.  Even Hamas now says it has rockets that can reach any part of Israeli territory. Even if Israel ‘wins’, a nebulous concept in the context of such a destructive war, it will be seriously wounded. 

Israel’s greatest defense system would have been to reach a generous settlement with the Palestinians long ago but what it has actually settled for is ideology, the fulfillment of the Zionist dream that is a Palestinian nightmare, and the continued theft of Palestinian land over the security of its Jewish citizens. 

They are in the Middle East and want to stay there.  They want a future for their children, but what kind of future is on offer from Israel’s racist politicians, settlers and rabbis?  The answer?  The same kind of violent future that is on offer for the Palestinians.  Is this the choice any sane person would want to make?

WRITER

Jeremy Salt

Jeremy Salt has taught at the University of Melbourne, Bosporus University (Istanbul) and Bilkent University (Ankara), specialising in the modern history of the Middle East.  His most recent book is “The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.)

Is this the Age of Anxiety? The Age of Stupidity? The Age of Hybrid War?

Asia Times

By Pepe Escobar 
in Bangkok
Special to Consortium News

Is this the Age of Anxiety? The Age of Stupidity? The Age of Hybrid War? Or all of the above?

As right populism learns to use algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) and media convergence, the Empire of Chaos, in parallel, is unleashing all-out hybrid and semiotic war.

Dick Cheney’s Global War on Terror (GWOT) is back, metastasized as a hybrid mongrel.

But GWOT would not be GWOT without a Wild West scarecrow. Enter Hamza bin Laden, son of Osama. On the same day the State Department announced a $1 million bounty on his head, the so- called “UN Security Council IS and Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee” declared Hamza the next al-Qaeda leader.

Since January 2017, Hamza has been a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the State Department – on par with his deceased Dad, back in the early 2000s. The Beltway intel community “believes” Hamza resides “in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.”

Remember these are the same people who “believed” former Taliban leader Mullah Omar resided in Quetta, Baluchistan, when in fact he was safely ensconced only a few miles away from a massive U.S. military base in Zabul, Afghanistan.

Considering that Jabhat al-Nusra, or al-Qaeda in Syria, for all practical purposes, was defined as no more than “moderate rebels” by the Beltway intel community, it’s safe to infer that new scarecrow Hamza is also a “moderate”. And yet he’s more dangerous than vanished fake Caliph Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi. Talk about a masterful example of culture jamming.

Show Me The Big Picture

A hefty case can be made that the Empire of Chaos currently has no allies; it’s essentially surrounded by an assortment of vassals, puppets and comprador 5^thcolumnist elites professing varied degrees of – sometimes reluctant – obedience.

The Trump administration’s foreign policy may be easily deconstructed as a crossover between The Sopranos and late-night comedy – as in the whole episode of designating State Department/CIA regime change, lab experiment Random Dude as President of Venezuela. Legendary cultural critic Walter Benjamin would have called it “the aestheticization of politics,” (turning politics into art), as he did about the Nazis, but this time it’s the Looney Tunes version.

To add to the conceptual confusion, despite countless “an offer you can’t refuse” antics unleashed by psychopaths of the John Bolton and Mike Pompeo variety, there’s this startling nugget. Former Iranian diplomat Amir Moussavi has revealed that Trump himself demanded to visit Tehran, and was duly rebuffed. “Two European states, two Arab countries and one Southeast Asian state” were mediating a series of messages relayed by Trump and his son-in-law Jared “of Arabia” Kushner, according to Moussavi.

Is there a method to this madness? An attempt at a Grand Narrative would go something like this: ISIS/Daesh may have been sidelined – for now; they are not useful anymore, so the U.S. must fight the larger “evil”: Tehran. GWOT has been revived, and though Hamza bin Laden has been designated the new Caliph, GWOT has shifted to Iran.

When we mix this with the recent India-Pakistan scuffle, a wider message emerges. There was absolutely no interest by Prime Minister Imran Kahn, the Pakistani Army and the Pakistani intelligence, ISI, to launch an attack on India in Kashmir. Pakistan was about to run out of money and about to be bolstered by the U.S., via Saudi Arabia with $20 billion and an IMF loan.

At the same time, there were two almost simultaneous terrorist attacks launched from Pakistan – against Iran and against India in mid-February. There’s no smoking gun yet, but these attacks may have been manipulated by a foreign intelligence agency. The Cui Bono riddle is which state would profit immensely from a war between Pakistan and Iran and/or a war between Pakistan and India.

The bottom line: hiding in the shadow of plausible deniability – according to which what we understand as reality is nothing but pure perception – the Empire of Chaos will resort to the chaos of no-holds-barred hybrid war to avoid “losing” the Eurasian heartland.

Show Me How Many Hybrid Plans You Got

What applies to the heartland of course also applies to the backyard.

The case of Venezuela shows that the “all options on the table” scenario has been de facto aborted by Russia, outlined in an astonishing briefing by Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, and then subsequently detailed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Lavrov. (Wikimedia Commons)

Meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj at a crucial RIC (part of BRICS) summit in China,Lavrov said,“Russia keeps a close eye on brazen US attempts to create an artificial pretext for a military intervention in Venezuela… The actual implementation of these threats is pulling in military equipment and training [US] Special Forces.”

Lavrov explained how Washington was engaged in acquiring mortars and portable air defense systems “in an East European country, and moving them closer to Venezuela by an airline of a regime that is… rather absolutely obedient to Washington in the post-Soviet space.”

The U.S. attempt at regime change in Venezuela has been so far unsuccessful in several ways. Plan A – a classic color revolution -has miserably failed, in part because of a lack of decent local intelligence. Plan B was a soft version of humanitarian imperialism, with a resuscitation of the nefarious, Libya-tested responsibility to protect (R2P); it also failed, especially when the American tale that the Venezuelan government burnt humanitarian aid trucks at the border with Colombia was a lie, exposed by The New York Times, no less.

Plan C was a classic Hybrid War technique: a cyberattack, replete with a revival of Nitro Zeus, which shut down 80 percent of Venezuela’s electricity.

That plan had already been exposed by WikiLeaks, via a 2010 memo by a U.S.-funded, Belgrade-based color revolution scam that helped train self-proclaimed “President” Random Dude, when he was just known as Juan Guaidó. The leaked memo said that attacking the Venezuelan power grid would be a “watershed event” that “would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate.”

But even that was not enough.

That leaves Plan D – which is essentially to try to starve the Venezuelan population to death via viciously lethal additional sanctions. Sanctioned Syria and sanctioned Iran didn’t collapse. Even boasting myriad comprador elites aggregated in the Lima group, exceptionalists may have to come to grips with the fact that deploying the Monroe doctrine essentially to contain China’s influence in the young 21^stcentury is no “cakewalk.”

Plan E—for extreme—would be U.S. military action, which Bolton won’t take off the table.

Show Me the Way to the Next War Game

So where do all these myriad weaponizations of chaos theory leave us? Nowhere, if they don’t follow the money. Local comprador elites must be lavishly rewarded, otherwise you’re stuck in hybrid swamp territory. That was the case in Brazil – and that’s why the most sophisticated hybrid war case history so far has been a success.

In 2013, Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks revealed how the NSA was spying on Brazilian energy giant Petrobras and the Dilma Rousseff government beginning in 2010. Afterwards, a complex, rolling judicial-business-political-financial-media coup ended up reaching its two main objectives; in 2016, with the impeachment of Rousseff, and in 2018, with Lula thrown in jail.

Now comes arguably the juiciest piece of the puzzle. Petrobras was supposed to pay $853 million to the U.S. Department of Justice for not going to trial for crimes it was being accused of in America. But then a dodgy deal was struck according to which the fine will be transferred to a Brazilian fund as long as Petrobras commits to relay confidential information about its businesses to the United States government.

Mattis: Wrote on hybrid war in 2005.

Hybrid war against BRICS member Brazil worked like a charm, but trying it against nuclear superpower Russia is a completely different ball game. U.S. analysts, in another case of culture jamming, even accuse Russia itself of deploying hybrid war – a concept actually invented in the U.S. within a counter-terrorism context; applied during the occupation of Iraq and later metastasized across the color revolution spectrum; and featuring, among others, in an article co-authored by former Pentagon head James “Mad Dog” Mattis in 2005 when he was a mere lieutenant general.

At a recent conference about Russia’s military strategy, Chief of General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov stressed that the Russian armed forces must increase both their “classic” and “asymmetrical” potential. In the U.S. this is interpreted as subversion/propaganda hybrid war techniques as applied in Ukraine and in the largely debunked Russia-gate. Instead, Russian strategists refer to these techniques as “complex approach” and “new generation war”.

Santa Monica’s RAND Corporation still sticks to good ol’ hot war scenarios. They have been holding “Red on Blue” war games simulations since 1952 – modeling how the proverbial “existential threats” could use asymmetric strategies. The latest Red on Blue was not exactly swell. RAND analyst David Ochmanek famously said that with Blue representing the current U.S. military potential and Red representing Russia-China in a conventional war, “Blue gets its ass handed to it.”

None of this will convince Empire of Chaos functionary Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who recently told a Senate Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon will continue to refuse a “no first use” nuclear strategy. Aspiring Dr. Strangeloves actually believe the U.S. can start a nuclear war and get away with it.

Talk about the Age of Hybrid Stupidity going out with a bang.

Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times. His latest book is “2030.” Follow him on Facebook.

Russia and China Are Containing the US to Reshape the World Order

Perhaps the time has come for the world to impose sanctions on the USA until it let’s the world breathe.

The United States seems to be losing its imperialistic mojo most significantly in Asia and the Middle East, not only militarily but also diplomatically and economically.

Source: Russia and China Are Containing the US to Reshape the World Order

http://www.strategic-culture.org

Federico PIERACCINI

Feb 19, 2019

Fortunately the world today is very different from that of 2003, Washington’s decrees are less effective in determining the world order. But in spite of this new, more balanced division of power amongst several powers, Washington appears ever more aggressive towards allies and enemies alike, regardless of which US president is in office.

China and Russia are leading this historic transition while being careful to avoid direct war with the United States. To succeed in this endeavor, they use a hybrid strategy involving diplomacy, military support to allies, and economic guarantees to countries under Washington’s attack.

The United States considers the whole planet its playground. Its military and political doctrine is based on the concept of liberal hegemony, as explained by political scientist John Mearsheimer. This imperialistic attitude has, over time, created a coordinated and semi-official front of countries resisting this liberal hegemony. The recent events in Venezuela indicate why cooperation between these counter-hegemonic countries is essential to accelerating the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar reality, where the damage US imperialism is able to bring about is diminished.

Moscow and Beijing lead the world by hindering Washington

Moscow and Beijing, following a complex relationship from the period of the Cold War, have managed to achieve a confluence of interests in their grand objectives over the coming years. The understanding they have come to mainly revolves around stemming the chaos Washington has unleashed on the world.

The guiding principle of the US military-intelligence apparatus is that if a country cannot be controlled (such as Iraq following the 2003 invasion), then it has to be destroyed in order to save it from falling into Sino-Russian camp. This is what the United States has attempted to do with Syria, and what it intends to do with Venezuela.

The Middle East is an area that has drawn global attention for some time, with Washington clearly interested in supporting its Israeli and Saudi allies in the region. Israel pursues a foreign policy aimed at dismantling the Iranian and Syrian states. Saudi Arabia also pursues a similar strategy against Iran and Syria, in addition to fueling a rift within the Arab world stemming from its differences with Qatar.

The foreign-policy decisions of Israel and Saudi Arabia have been supported by Washington for decades, for two very specific reasons: the influence of the Israel lobby in the US, and the need to ensure that Saudi Arabia and the OPEC countries sell oil in US dollars, thereby preserving the role of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.

The US dollar remaining the global reserve currency is essential to Washington being able to maintain her role as superpower and is crucial to her hybrid strategy against her geopolitical rivals. Sanctions are a good example of how Washington uses the global financial and economic system, based on the US dollar, as a weapon against her enemies. In the case of the Middle East, Iran is the main target, with sanctions aimed at preventing the Islamic Republic from trading on foreign banking systems. Washington has vetoed Syria’s ability to procure contracts to reconstruct the country, with European companies being threatened that they risk no longer being able to work in the US if they accept to work in Syria.

Beijing and Moscow have a clear diplomatic strategy, jointly rejecting countless motions advanced by the US, the UK and France at the United Nations Security Council condemning Iran and Syria. On the military front, Russia continues her presence in Syria. China’s economic efforts, although not yet fully visible in Syria and Iran, will be the essential part of reviving these countries destroyed by years of war inflicted by Washington and her allies.

China and Russia’s containment strategy in the Middle East aims to defend Syria and Iran diplomatically using international law, something that is continuously ridden roughshod over by the US and her regional allies. Russia’s military action has been crucial to curbing and defeating the inhuman aggression launched against Syria, and has also drawn a red line that Israel cannot cross in its efforts to attack Iran. The defeat of the United States in Syria has created an encouraging precedent for the rest of the world. Washington has been forced to abandon the original plans to getting rid of Assad.

Syria will be remembered in the future as the beginning of the multipolar revolution, whereby the United States was contained in military-conventional terms as a result of the coordinated actions of China and Russia.

China’s economic contribution provides for such urgent needs as the supply of food, government loans, and medicines to countries under Washington’s economic siege. So long as the global financial system remains anchored to the US dollar, Washington remains able to cause a lot of pain to countries refusing to obey her diktats.

The effectiveness of economic sanctions varies from country to country. The Russian Federation used sanctions imposed by the West as an impetus to obtain a complete, or almost autonomous, refinancing of its main foreign debt, as well as to producing at home what had previously been imported from abroad. Russia’s long-term strategy is to open up to China and other Asian countries as the main market for imports and exports, reducing contacts with the Europeans if countries like France and Germany continue in their hostility towards the Russian Federation.

Thanks to Chinese investments, together with planned projects like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the hegemony of the US dollar is under threat in the medium to long term. The Chinese initiatives in the fields of infrastructure, energy, rail, road and technology connections among dozens of countries, added to the continuing need for oil, will drive ever-increasing consumption of oil in Asia that is currently paid for in US dollars.

Moscow is in a privileged position, enjoying good relations with all the major producers of oil and LNG, from Qatar to Saudi Arabia, and including Iran, Venezuela and Nigeria. Moscow’s good relations with Riyadh are ultimately aimed at the creation of an OPEC+ arrangement that includes Russia.

Particular attention should be given to the situation in Venezuela, one of the most important countries in OPEC. Riyadh sent to Caracas in recent weeks a tanker carrying two million barrels of oil, and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has taken a neutral stance regarding Venezuela, maintaining a predictable balance between Washington and Caracas.

These joint initiatives, led by Moscow and Beijing, are aimed at reducing the use of the US dollar by countries that are involved in the BRI and adhere to the OPEC+ format. This diversification away from the US dollar, to cover financial transactions between countries involving investment, oil and LNG, will see the progressive abandonment of the US dollar as a result of agreements that increasingly do away with the dollar.

For the moment, Riyadh does not seem intent on losing US military protection. But recent events to do with Khashoggi, as well as the failure to list Saudi Aramco on the New York or London stock exchanges, have severely undermined the confidence of the Saudi royal family in her American allies. The meeting between Putin and MBS at the G20 in Bueno Aires seemed to signal a clear message to Washington as well as the future of the US dollar.

Moscow and Beijing’s military, economic and diplomatic efforts see their culmination in the Astana process. Turkey is one of the principle countries behind the aggression against Syria; but Moscow and Tehran have incorporated it into the process of containing the regional chaos spawned by the United States. Thanks to timely agreements in Syria known as “deconfliction zones”, Damascus has advanced, city by city, to clear the country of the terrorists financed by Washington, Riyadh and Ankara.

Qatar, an economic guarantor of Turkey, which in return offers military protection to Doha, is also moving away from the Israeli-Saudi camp as a result of Sino-Russian efforts in the energy, diplomatic and military fields. Doha’s move has also been because of the fratricidal diplomatic-economic war launched by Riyadh against Doha, being yet another example of the contagious effect of the chaos created by Washington, especially on US allies Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Washington loses military influence in the region thanks to the presence of Moscow, and this leads traditional US allies like Turkey and Qatar to gravitate towards a field composed essentially of the countries opposed to Washington.

Washington’s military and diplomatic defeat in the region will in the long run make it possible to change the economic structure of the Middle East. A multipolar reality will prevail, where regional powers like Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran will feel compelled to interact economically with the whole Eurasian continent as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

The basic principle for Moscow and Beijing is the use of military, economic and diplomatic means to contain the United States in its unceasing drive to kill, steal and destroy.

From the Middle East to Asia

Beijing has focussed in Asia on the diplomatic field, facilitating talks between North and South Korea, accelerating the internal dialogue on the peninsula, thereby excluding external actors like the United States (who only have the intention of sabotaging the talks). Beijing’s military component has also played an important role, although never used directly as the Russian Federation did in Syria. Washington’s options vis-a-vis the Korean peninsular were strongly limited by the fact that bordering the DPRK were huge nuclear and conventional forces, that is to say, the deterrence offered by Russia and China. The combined military power of the DPRK, Russia and China made any hypothetical invasion and bombing of Pyongyang an impractical option for the United States.

As in the past, the economic lifeline extended to Pyongyang by Moscow and Beijing proved to be decisive in limiting the effects of the embargo and the complete financial war that Washington had declared on North Korea. Beijing and Moscow’s skilled diplomatic work with Seoul produced an effect similar to that of Turkey in the Middle East, with South Korea slowly seeming to drift towards the multipolar world offered by Russia and China, with important economic implications and prospects for unification of the peninsula.

Russia and China – through a combination of playing a clever game of diplomacy, military deterrence, and offering to the Korean peninsula the prospect of economic investment through the BRI – have managed to frustrate Washington’s efforts to unleash chaos on their borders via the Korean peninsula.

The United States seems to be losing its imperialistic mojo most significantly in Asia and the Middle East, not only militarily but also diplomatically and economically.

The situation is different in Europe and Venezuela, two geographical areas where Washington still enjoys greater geopolitical weight than in Asia and the Middle East. In both cases, the effectiveness of the two Sino-Russian resistance – in military, economic and diplomatic terms – is more limited, for different reasons. This situation, in line with the principle of America First and the return to the Monroe doctrine, will be the subject of the next article.

Venezuela: The U.S.’s 68th Regime Change Disaster

“Unbeknownst to most Americans, Chavez was well loved by poor and working class Venezuelans for his extraordinary array of social programs that lifted millions out of poverty. Between 1996 and 2010, the level of extreme poverty plummeted from 40% to 7%.”

Source: Venezuela: The U.S.’s 68th Regime Change Disaster

http://www.counterpunch.org

by Medea Benjamin – Nicolas J. S. Davies

February 6, 2019

 

Hugo Chavez and US war criminal

In his masterpiece, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, William Blum, who died in December 2018, wrote chapter-length accounts of 55 U.S. regime change operations against countries around the world, from China (1945-1960s) to Haiti (1986-1994).  Noam Chomsky’s blurb on the back of the latest edition says simply, “Far and away the best book on the topic.” We agree. If you have not read it, please do. It will give you a clearer context for what is happening in Venezuela today, and a better understanding of the world you are living in.

Since Killing Hope was published in 1995, the U.S. has conducted at least 13 more regime change operations, several of which are still active: Yugoslavia; Afghanistan; Iraq; the 3rd U.S. invasion of Haiti since WWII; Somalia; Honduras; Libya; Syria; Ukraine; Yemen; Iran; Nicaragua; and now Venezuela.

William Blum noted that the U.S. generally prefers what its planners call “low intensity conflict” over full-scale wars. Only in periods of supreme overconfidence has it launched its most devastating and disastrous wars, from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq.  After its war of mass destruction in Iraq, the U.S. reverted to “low intensity conflict” under Obama’s doctrine of covert and proxy war.

Obama conducted even heavier bombing than Bush II, and deployed U.S. special operations forces to 150 countries all over the world, but he made sure that nearly all the bleeding and dying was done by Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis, Somalis, Libyans, Ukrainians, Yemenis and others, not by Americans.  What U.S. planners mean by “low intensity conflict” is that it is less intense for Americans.

President Ghani of Afghanistan recently revealed that a staggering 45,000 Afghan security forces have been killed since he took office in 2014, compared with only 72 U.S. and NATO troops. “It shows who has been doing the fighting,” Ghani caustically remarked. This disparity is common to every current U.S. war.

This does not mean that the U.S. is any less committed to trying to overthrowing governments that reject and resist U.S. imperial sovereignty, especially if those countries contain vast oil reserves. It’s no coincidence that two of the main targets of current U.S. regime change operations are Iran and Venezuela, two of the four countries with the largest liquid oil reserves in the world (the others being Saudi Arabia and Iraq).

In practice, “low intensity conflict” involves four tools of regime change: sanctions or economic warfare; propaganda or “information warfare”; covert and proxy war; and aerial bombardment. In Venezuela, the U.S. has used the first and second, with the third and fourth now “on the table” since the first two have created chaos but so far not toppled the government.

The U.S. government has been opposed to Venezuela’s socialist revolution since the time Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998. Unbeknownst to most Americans, Chavez was well loved by poor and working class Venezuelans for his extraordinary array of social programs that lifted millions out of poverty. Between 1996 and 2010, the level of extreme poverty plummeted from 40% to 7%. The government also substantially improved healthcare and education, cutting infant mortality by half, reducing the malnutrition rate from 21% to 5% of the population and eliminating illiteracy. These changes gave Venezuela the lowest level of inequality in the region, based on its Gini coefficient.

Since Chavez’ death in 2013, Venezuela has descended into an economic crisis stemming from a combination of government mismanagement, corruption, sabotage and the precipitous fall in the price of oil. The oil industry provides 95% of Venezuela’s exports, so the first thing Venezuela needed when prices crashed in 2014 was international financing to cover huge shortfalls in the budgets of both the government and the national oil company. The strategic objective of U.S. sanctions is to exacerbate the economic crisis by denying Venezuela access to the U.S.-dominated international financial system to roll over existing debt and obtain new financing.

The blocking of Citgo’s funds in the U.S. also deprives Venezuela of a billion dollars per year in revenue that it previously received from the export, refining and retail sale of gasoline to American drivers. Canadian economist Joe Emersberger has calculated that the new sanctions Trump unleashed in 2017 cost Venezuela $6 billion in just their first year. In sum, U.S. sanctions are designed to “make the economy scream” in Venezuela, exactly as President Nixon described the goal of U.S. sanctions against Chile after its people elected Salvador Allende in 1970.

Alfred De Zayas visited Venezuela as a UN Rapporteur in 2017 and wrote an in-depth report for the UN.  He criticized Venezuela’s dependence on oil, poor governance and corruption, but he found that “economic warfare” by the U.S. and its allies were seriously exacerbating the crisis. “Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns,” De Zayas wrote. “Twenty-first century sanctions attempt to bring not just a town, but sovereign countries to their knees.” He recommended that the International Criminal Court should investigate U.S. sanctions against Venezuela as crimes against humanity. In a recent interview with the Independent newspaper in the U.K., De Zayas reiterated that U.S. sanctions are killing Venezuelans.

Venezuela’s economy has shrunk by about half since 2014, the greatest contraction of a modern economy in peacetime. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that the average Venezuelan lost an incredible 24 lb. in body weight in 2017.

Mr. De Zayas’ successor as UN Rapporteur, Idriss Jazairy, issued a statement on January 31st, in which he condemned “coercion” by outside powers as a “violation of all norms of international law.”  “Sanctions which can lead to starvation and medical shortages are not the answer to the crisis in Venezuela,” Mr. Jazairy said, “…precipitating an economic and humanitarian crisis…is not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of disputes.”

While Venezuelans face poverty, preventable diseases, malnutrition and open threats of war by U.S. officials, those same U.S. officials and their corporate sponsors are looking at an almost irresistible gold mine if they can bring Venezuela to its knees: a fire sale of its oil industry to foreign oil companies and the privatization of many other sectors of its economy, from hydroelectric power plants to iron, aluminum and, yes, actual gold mines.  This is not speculation. It is what the U.S.’s new puppet, Juan Guaido, has reportedly promised his American backers if they can overthrow Venezuela’s elected government and install him in the presidential palace.

Oil industry sources have reported that Guaido has “plans to introduce a new national hydrocarbons law that establishes flexible fiscal and contractual terms for projects adapted to oil prices and the oil investment cycle… A new hydrocarbons agency would be created to offer bidding rounds for projects in natural gas and conventional, heavy and extra-heavy crude.”

The U.S. government claims to be acting in the best interests of the Venezuelan people, but over 80 percent of Venezuelans, including many who don’t support Maduro, are opposed to the crippling economic sanctions, while 86% oppose U.S. or international military intervention.

This generation of Americans has already seen how our government’s endless sanctions, coups and wars have only left country after country mired in violence, poverty and chaos. As the results of these campaigns have become predictably catastrophic for the people of each country targeted, the American officials promoting and carrying them out have a higher and higher bar to meet as they try to answer the obvious question of an increasingly skeptical U.S. and international public:

“How is Venezuela (or Iran or North Korea) different from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and at least 63 other countries where U.S. regime change operations have led only to long-lasting violence and chaos?”

Mexico, Uruguay, the Vatican and many other countries are committed to diplomacy to help the people of Venezuela resolve their political differences and find a peaceful way forward. The most valuable way that the U.S. can help is to stop making the Venezuelan economy and people scream (on all sides), by lifting its sanctions and abandoning its failed and catastrophic regime change operation in Venezuela.  But the only things that will force such a radical change in U.S. policy are public outrage, education and organizing, and international solidarity with the people of Venezuela.

More articles by:Medea Benjamin – Nicolas J. S. Davies

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection. Nicolas J. S. Davies is a writer for Consortium News and a researcher with CODEPINK, and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq

Finian Cunningham: The Absurd American Prize

“The Americans — at least the political class — are probably the most dumbass entity the world has ever seen. Their arrogance and ignorance, compounded by the brainwashing of self-righteousness and virtue, make them a truly irredeemable scourge on the world.”

“Mike Pompeo claimed in his Cairo speech last week that he keeps a Bible open on his desk in Washington DC so that every day he “can hear the word of God”. Presumably, Evangelical Mike takes one with him on foreign trips too.

Now that is scary. Imbeciles believing they are empowered by God.”

Source: The Absurd American Prize – Sputnik International

sputniknews.com

Finian Cunningham

Jan 18, 2019

CC BY 2.0 / Beverly & Pack / A Funeral Flag

 

It’s a crowded field with many candidates for the prize of Absurd American, but possibly the nation’s top diplomat Mike Pompeo is a leading contender.

This week, the US Secretary of State continued his psychotic vendetta against Iran by accusing the Islamic Republic of threatening Europe and North America with its space program.

Iran tried to launch a communications satellite into space. It was unsuccessful on this occasion, but that’s not the point. Pompeo said the rocket-type used for delivering the satellite could also be fitted in the future with a nuclear warhead.

Iran rebutted the speculation by saying it doesn’t have nuclear weapons nor is it endeavouring to acquire them. Iran’s claims have been verified by dozens of UN inspections. Besides, and more importantly, Tehran says it has the sovereign right to explore space and develop its own communication systems.

Pompeo accused Iran of violating a UN Security Council resolution (UNSC 2231) which forbids Tehran from developing ballistic missiles for delivering nuclear weapons. Tehran rejects that it is in breach of the resolution because the space rockets are not technically designed for its non-existent nuclear warheads.

Here’s the punchline. The UN resolution which Pompeo is referring to pertains to the international nuclear accord signed in 2015 by Iran and the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as it is formally known, was unilaterally abandoned by US President Donald Trump in May last year.

So here we have Trump’s most senior diplomat Mike Pompeo condemning Iran for breaching the JCPOA which the US itself has dishonoured by walking away from.

That’s just one reason why Pompeo is a strong contender for the Absurd American prize. There’s more.

Last week, he delivered a speech in Cairo where he enunciated a litany of falsehoods and oxymorons — all with a straight face. Among his astounding claims was his assertion that “the US is a force for good in the Middle East”. Yes, this from the former head of the CIA whose country has caused millions of deaths from illegal wars of aggression, decimated whole societies and set up torture dungeons around the world.

Pompeo added — with apparent sincerity — that “the US is a liberating force, not an occupying power… We have never dreamed of domination in the Middle East.”

This is while there are at least 2,000 US troops illegally occupying parts of Syria, and the Americans maintaining dozens of permanent military bases across the region.

But truth be told, this is not just about Pompeo. Pick almost any US politician or corporate media pundit and the prize for Absurd American is up for grabs by all of them.

Take the latest claims in America’s supposedly finest newspapers that President Trump is an agent of the Kremlin. The New York Times and Washington Post have both excelled in crassness by pushing the claim that Trump “has been working for Russia”.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was this week visibly mortified by the “stupidity” of the American media. He said the nonsense claims about Trump being an agent for the Kremlin represented an “absurd plunge in the standards of American journalism”.

Moscow said it is becoming virtually impossible to even have a dialogue with Washington, such is the deterioration in American political culture and intelligence. To try to engage in a discussion would be like trying to have a conversation with an inebriated person.

It’s just not possible. It’s futile.

Here’s another mark of American absurdity. This week, Washington reiterated it was trashing the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty because, it claimed, Russia is in violation of the treaty.

© Sputnik / Vladimir Rodionov

Trump’s INF Pull-Out: Why Germany’s Arms Race Fears May Come True

The INF signed in 1987 bans the installation of land-based ballistic missiles with the range of 500-5,500 kilometres. The American side accuses Russia of breaching the treaty, but has steadfastly refused to provide any evidence or details to back up its claim. Meanwhile, the US has actually installed missile systems in Poland and Romania which could potentially launch nuclear warheads on Moscow within minutes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is correct when he says that the real agenda of the US side is to unilaterally rip up the INF. It does not have a genuine case against Russia. Thus, accusing Russia of violation is a pretext for the Americans to dishonour their legal obligations.

The purpose is to give themselves a license to encroach offensive missiles against Russia. In that way, Washington calculates it will be able to pressure Moscow into submitting to its political and economic ambitions for global hegemony.

The Americans — at least the political class — are probably the most dumbass entity the world has ever seen. Their arrogance and ignorance, compounded by the brainwashing of self-righteousness and virtue, make them a truly irredeemable scourge on the world.

Mike Pompeo claimed in his Cairo speech last week that he keeps a Bible open on his desk in Washington DC so that every day he “can hear the word of God”. Presumably, Evangelical Mike takes one with him on foreign trips too.

Now that is scary. Imbeciles believing they are empowered by God.

US genuinely wants to ‘starve’ Iranians: Ron Paul

Pompeo’s threat to starve Iranian people was a genuine reflection of Washington’s true intentions about Iran, says American politician Ron Paul.

Source: PressTV-US genuinely wants to ‘starve’ Iranians: Ron Paul

http://www.presstv.com

Tue Nov 13, 2018

Former US presidential candidate Ron Paul (file photo)

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent threat to “starve” Iranian people through economic pressure was a rare instance of truthfulness in America’s foreign policy, prominent American thinker Ron Paul says.

Last week, the US secretary of state told BBC Persian that Iranian officials must listen to Washington “if they want their people to eat.”

The administration of US President Donald Trump announced on November 5 the re-imposition of the “toughest” sanctions ever against Iran’s banking and energy sectors with the aim of cutting off its oil sales and crucial exports. The bans had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The first round of the anti-Iran bans — which had been lifted under the accord — was re-imposed in August.

Pompeo also said in his interview that since the re-introduction of the sanctions, there was no sign yet that Iranian officials would return to the table for talks.

In the latest episode of his online show “Liberty Report,” Paul said the top US diplomat’s remarks were important because not often American leaders tend to reveal Washington’s true intentions.

“It’s not often that US government officials are honest when they talk about our foreign policy,” the former congressman and presidential candidate said in his weekly update video posted on Monday.

“The unprovoked 2003 attack on Iraq was called a liberation, the 2011 US-led destruction of Libya was a humanitarian intervention and so on,” he explained.

 

Referring to Pompeo’s last week remarks, where the US foreign secretary threatened the Iranian people with starvation, Paul said Pompeo meant that the new US sanctions imposed against Iran sought to “starve Iranian unless the Iranian leadership accepts US demands.”

“His statement also reveals the length to which the neocons are willing to go to get regime change in Iran,” Paul added.

He said Washington had in the past starved Iraqi children to death for political purposes and Pompeo more or less viewed the situation with Iran as the same.

Paul said the US only wanted Iran’s economy to crumble and it wouldn’t mind if a few million lives were lost in the process.

“How twisted is US foreign policy that Washington considers it normal to impose sanctions specifically designed to make life miserable or worse for civilians,” he asked.

He said the US had no reason to sanction Iran because Tehran was not threatening to starve millions of Americans or attack them.

‘Saudi genocide in Yemen’

He added that the sanctions would have made sense if like Saudi Arabia, Iran was also supporting al-Qaeda or waging war against the people of Yemen.

“So what is normal?” Paul asked, before saying, “the continued Saudi genocide in Yemen does not bother Washington a bit.”

“In fact, Saudi aggression in Yemen is viewed as just another opportunity to strike out at Iran,” he said. “By making phony claims that Yemen’s Houthis are Iran-backed, the US government justifies literally handing Saudis the bombs to drop on Yemeni school buses while claiming it is fighting Iranian-backed terrorism, is that normal?”

He blasted Pompeo for blaming Yemen’s humanitarian crisis on Iran and pushing to blacklist the Houthi Ansarullah Movement as a terror group “for the crime of fighting back against Saudi and US aggression.”

“So yes… Pompeo said one wicked truth last week but before demands that countries like Iran start acting normal or face starvation perhaps he should look at the mirror,” Paul said.

“Are Pompeo and the neocons normal? I don’t think so,” he concluded.

Nations the World Over Disapprove of US Foreign Policy, Except for Israel

Polls show a majority of countries dislike United States foreign policy – including targeting Iran, Cuba, with one exception, Israel.

Source link

http://www.mintpressnews.com

Source | This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

By Vijay Prashad

November 08th, 2018

Last week, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to condemn the US embargo against Cuba. A total of 189 member-nations said Cuba did not deserve this embargo, which began in 1961 and has continued unabated to this day. Only two countries – the United States and Israel – voted against the motion. No country abstained.

Cuba’s minister for foreign affairs, Bruno Eduardo Rodríguez Parrilla, has said the US embargo has cost the small socialist island state upwards of US$933.678 billion, with the losses in the past year amounting to $4.3 billion (twice the amount of foreign direct investment into the island). This embargo, Rodríguez Parrilla said as he put the resolution forward, is an “act of genocide” against Cuba and its people.

The Group of 77 and the Non-Aligned Movement – both important groupings of the Global South – as well as regional groupings from Africa to Latin America backed the resolution. China’s representative to the UN, Ma Zhaoxu, made the case that the US embargo on Cuba prevented the island from meeting its obligations to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Last year, the United States strengthened the embargo with an attack on the tourism sector (83 hotels were placed on the banned list). It is likely that President Donald Trump’s administration will deepen its assault on Cuba.

Threats by the United States did not convert the vote of otherwise reliable US allies. Each year since 1992 a resolution of this kind has come before the UN General Assembly. Each year the world has overwhelmingly voted against the US embargo. This year was no different.

World worried about the United States

You don’t need a Pew poll to know which way the world thinks.

But it is useful. Last month, Pew Research Center released a poll that looked at the image of Donald Trump and the United States in 25 countries around the world. In most countries, neither Trump nor the United States come off well. Seventy percent of the populations in these countries have no confidence in Trump. The same proportion of people believe that the United States does not take the interests of other countries into consideration when moving policies forward. This is evident with the US embargo on Cuba.

Neither the people of Canada nor Mexico – the closest neighbors of the United States – have a favorable view of either Trump or the United States. Only Israel, which voted with the United States over the embargo on Cuba, has a high opinion of Trump and of the US.

Beyond the Pew poll, it is evident from the atmosphere in the United Nations that the countries of the world – even close US allies – fear US policy on a number of issues. Cuba is a canary in the coal mine. But even clearer is the US policy of ramping up sanctions against Iran.

World does not want to strangle Iran

At the debate over the US embargo on Cuba, Iran’s representative to the UN, Gholamali Khoshroo, detailed how the US had withdrawn from several international agreements and how it had failed to implement UN Security Council resolutions that it did not like.

Behind Khoshroo’s comments lay the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal agreed upon by Iran and the UN Security Council members, the United Nations and the European Union. This deal was sanctified by a Security Council resolution. Trump’s unilateral move to scuttle the nuclear deal and the return of sanctions against Iran this week replicates, Khoshroo intimated, the long-standing and unpopular sanctions against Cuba. The United States, he said, should “sincerely apologize” to the people of Cuba and Iran.

As the new US sanctions regime went into place against Iran, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Ankara, “US sanctions on Iran are wrong. For us, they are steps aimed at unbalancing the world. We don’t want to live in an imperialist world.”

Erdogan is not alone here. Even countries with close ties to the United States, such as India and Japan, are against the sanctions. They may not use words like “imperialist,” but their actions clearly bristle at the heavy-handedness of the US government when it comes to its use of instruments such as financial sanctions.

It was clear that China was never going to honor the new US sanctions on Iran. Nor were Turkey and Iraq, and nor were the three large economies of Asia that rely on Iranian oil (India, Japan and South Korea). No wonder the United States gave these countries waivers to the sanctions.

Some countries, including India and Japan, have been discussing the need for an alternative financial system so that they can do trade with countries that are sanctioned by the United States. They do not believe that the US should be allowed to suffocate world trade through its control over banking systems and through the world’s reliance on the dollar. Pressure to build alternatives no longer comes from the margins; it comes from Tokyo and New Delhi, from Frankfurt and Seoul.

One major casualty of the US sanctions on Iran will be Afghanistan, already ripped apart by almost two decades of war. Afghanistan relies on Iranian oil and, during this year, non-oil trade rose by 30%. India’s project to help build a port in Chabahar is linked to opening new land routes into Afghanistan.

Just as the US sanctions went into place against Iran, Ahmad Reshad Popal, director general of Afghanistan’s Customs Department, opened the Farah crossing to Iranian goods – a snub to US policy. Even Afghanistan, virtually under US occupation, cannot abide by the US policy on Iran. Nor even can the NATO troops in Afghanistan, whose trucks are fueled in part by Iranian oil.

World does not want ‘Iraq war’ in Latin America

George W Bush used the term “axis of evil” to lump together Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Of the three, the US was only able to go to war against Iraq, in 2003. Pressure for regime change in North Korea was held back by its nuclear-weapons program, while pressure for regime change in Iran continues.

Donald Trump has now come up with a new term – “troika of tyranny,” which comprises Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. In Miami, Trump’s close adviser John Bolton gave a speech where he inaugurated this term.

He spoke of the right-wing turn in Latin America and the isolation – as far as he was concerned – of socialist governments. Bolton celebrated the election of men such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Ivan Duque in Colombia, men who he said were committed to “free-market principles and open, transparent, and accountable governance.” No mention here of the grotesque views of Bolsonaro or the militarism of both men.

Bolton called the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela “strongmen.” But there is no more “clownish, pitiful” figure – to borrow from Bolton – than Bolsonaro, no more authoritarian heads of government than Bolsonaro, Duque and Trump. Duque has taken Colombia into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a sign that the Colombian military will now answer more to Washington than to the Colombian people.

In his speech, Bolton threatened the governments in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Trump’s administration, he said, “is taking direct action against all three regimes” – “direct action” a key phrase here.

Such actions against these countries are not new.

The United States invaded Cuba in 1898 and held it as a virtual colony until the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Pressure on the Cuban Revolution intensified by 1961, with the US forcing an embargo on the island, attempting an invasion of the country and attempting to assassinate the leadership of the revolution.

US marines entered Nicaragua in 1909 and occupied the country until 1933. When the marines left, the national liberation forces under Augusto César Sandino attempted to free the country. Sandino was assassinated, and a US-backed dictatorship by the Somoza family ruled the country until 1979. That year, the Sandinistas – named after Sandino – overthrew the dictatorship. In response, the US funded the Contras (short form for counter-revolutionary forces), who prosecuted a bloody war against the small country.

Ever since Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela, the US has tried to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution that he inaugurated. A failed coup in 2002 was followed up by various forms of intimidation and sanctions. In 2015, US president Barack Obama declared that Venezuela was an “extraordinary threat to US security” and slapped sanctions on the country. It is this policy that Trump has since continued.

Itchy fingers in the Trump administration are eager to start a shooting war somewhere in Latin America – either Cuba, Nicaragua or Venezuela. The appetite for this is not there in the United Nations. Nor is it shared in Latin America. But that has never stopped the United States.

Disregard for world opinion as well as the opinion of the US citizenry defines the US government. Thirty-six million people around the world, half a million of them in New York City, protested on February 15, 2003, in an attempt to prevent the US war on Iraq. George W Bush did not pay attention to them. Nor will Trump.

Last August, Trump asked his advisers why the US couldn’t just invade Venezuela. The next day, on August 11, 2017, he said he was considering the “military option” for Venezuela. At a private dinner with four Latin American allies, Trump asked if they wanted the US to invade Venezuela. Each of them said no.

Not sure if their opinions count.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, journalist, commentator, and a Marxist intellectual. He is the Executive Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and the Chief Editor of LeftWord Books

 

Citizens’ Petition to Lift All Sanctions Against Venezuela Is Rejected by Canadian Parliament

Dear Canada, you are being a patsy for US interventionism. Why not address the issues confronting your country instead of being the poodle of the USA?

Shut up oh Canada, and deal with your natives, your poor, your housing crisis, the crumbling infrastructure, etc.

Last November 27 of 2017 Alan Freeman who is a Canadian economist co-director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group based at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, initiated an E-Petition to the Government of Canada.

Last November 27 of 2017 Alan Freeman who is a Canadian economist co-director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group [1] based at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, initiated an E-Petition to the Government of Canada. The petition was about lifting all sanctions against Venezuela.

E-Petitions are a novel method that allows any citizen to circulate electronically and introduce a petition to the government provided the petition is sponsored by a Member of Parliament. In this case the sponsoring MP was Robert-Falcon Ouellette of the Liberal Party. [2]

The following is the full text of the petition:

“Whereas:

• On September 22, 2017, the Government of Canada imposed new sanctions against Venezuela, Venezuelan officials, and other individuals under the Special Economic Measures Act in violation of the sovereignty of Venezuela;
• Such sanctions impede dialogue and peace-building in Venezuela and in the region more generally;
• These sanctions impede the normal operation of Venezuela’s duly constituted political processes including elections;
• The Government of Canada has supported the U.S. government’s sanctions against Venezuela
• The Government of Canada has met with, supported, and continues to echo the demands of Venezuela’s violent anti-government opposition;
• The Government of Canada refuses to recognize the legitimacy of Venezuela’s democratically elected government and falsely refers to it as dictatorial; and
• The government of Canada seeks to promote foreign intervention in the internal affairs of Venezuela.

We, the undersigned, residents of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to immediately lift all sanctions against Venezuela, Venezuelan officials, and other individuals, retract all statements in support of US sanctions against Venezuela, immediately cease its support for the efforts of the US and other right wing governments in the Organization of American States (OAS) that violate the sovereignty and self-determination of another member-state and immediately cease all intervention against Venezuela.”

The petition was circulated over a period of four months and I personally signed it together with 581 other Canadians. The relatively low number of signatures should not be interpreted as a reflection on the relevance of, and support for the petition, but rather on the novel electronic process used. Any petition introduced in Parliament should be valued by its relevance and content.

Trudeau Endorses Trump: Canadian Sanctions against Venezuela Violate ‘International Law’

The petition was presented to the House of Commons on September 24, 2018 (Petition No. 421-02649) and the Government response was tabled on November 6, 2018 (Sessional Paper No. 8545-421-02) [3]

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, who has been a vocal opponent to the Venezuelan government, signed the Canadian government response. Therefore it was not a surprise to read the same old ideologically motivated arguments against the petition.

Canadians find it quite disturbing that the response would start with a worn out statement such as “The promotion of democracy and democratic governance, as well as human rights and the rule of law, lie at the heart of Canada’s values and foreign policy.” This comes precisely at a time when Canadian foreign policy is being openly questioned for Canada’s sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia that is conducting indiscriminate bombings of Yemen. [4] The UN reported that 14 million Yemenis face imminent big famine and the consequent death by starvation of thousands of children. Canada is regarded as being complicit in those crimes.

While Canada chooses to speak of the “dire human rights and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela” – where there is none – it ignores, condones and rather endorses Saudi Arabia in the making of one of the worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen. That is the most vicious double standard that a “democratic” country can demonstrate.

Many of the arguments in the response to the petition have been questioned and rejected in a long-standing rebuttal to the government’s position on Venezuela in other venues.

For instance, Canada continues “condemning” the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), that it claims was “established in contravention of the Venezuelan constitution.” That is a blatant lie. We (Canadians) have often stated that Venezuela has acted in its full constitutional right (Article 348 of the Constitution) to establish the ANC, which has achieved the major accomplishment of ending the violence promoted by some foreign-endorsed opposition groups, and is today democratically proceeding with its mandate according to reports. [5]

Likewise Canadians have strongly objected to the absurd serious accusation by the government of Canada against Venezuela of “crimes against humanity”. The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has taken the unprecedented action of signing a letter to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) last September 26 requesting an investigation. We can only state again the hypocritical double standard vis-à-vis Canada’s reported involvement in serious crimes in the Middle East.

Finally, confronted by the uncompromising politically motivated position of the Canadian government, Canadians are actively organizing and are not showing any signs of giving up on their request “to immediately lift all sanctions against Venezuela” and “immediately cease all intervention against Venezuela.”

 

Nino Pagliccia is an activist and writer based in Vancouver, Canada. He is a Venezuelan-Canadian who writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas. He is editor of the book “Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations” http://www.cubasolidarityincanada.ca. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] https://geopoliticaleconomy.org

[2] http://www.ourcommons.ca/Parliamentarians/en/members/Robert-Falcon-Ouellette(89466)

[3] http://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/ePetitions/Responses/421/e-1353/421-02649_GAC_E.pdf

[4] https://thevarsity.ca/2018/09/10/yemeni-community-stages-protest-against-canadas-arms-deal-with-saudi-arabia/

[5] https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14138

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Nino Pagliccia, Global Research, 2018