Mexico President AMLO: "The question is: is there really democracy in the world? Or is it an oligarchy that predominates with a facade of democracy? Because democracy as defined since the time of Aristotle… "demos" is people, "kratos" is power. Democracy.
— COMBATE |🇵🇷 (@upholdreality) March 29, 2023
Is it really the… pic.twitter.com/8QVCY7i1VU
Imperialism
Winter made the remarks during a webinar hosted last week by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a leading American think tank. He accused RT’s news outlets of being “just as pure a propaganda arm as you can get of the Russian government,” but said that he was “continually impressed by the quality of Russian propaganda in Latin America.” “Those guys are really good. You look at RT en Español – it has one of the biggest social media followings of any media company in the region,” Winter acknowledged, arguing that people who are not even “pro-Russia” still share content and videos from RT.
Washington’s already-tarnished image is being further damaged in the region, a vice president of policy at the Americas Society has warned
https://www.rt.com/news/573736-us-russia-latin-america/
March 28, 2023
FILE PHOTO. © Sputnik / Ilya Pitalev
Russian “propaganda” is of exceptional quality in Latin America and the US is struggling to portray itself as “the shining city on the hill,” Brian Winter, a lobbyist at Americas Society and Council of the Americas has claimed.
Washington largely has itself to blame for the situation, given its long history of displaying its “worst behaviors” in the region, the activist added.
Winter, who is also the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly magazine, made the remarks during a webinar hosted last week by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a leading American think tank.
Winter made the remarks during a webinar hosted last week by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a leading American think tank.
He accused RT’s news outlets of being “just as pure a propaganda arm as you can get of the Russian government,” but said that he was “continually impressed by the quality of Russian propaganda in Latin America.”
“Those guys are really good. You look at RT en Español – it has one of the biggest social media followings of any media company in the region,” Winter acknowledged, arguing that people who are not even “pro-Russia” still share content and videos from RT.
READ MORE: The US shouldn’t be surprised Latin America is turning to Russian news sources
Winter is vice president of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, the parent organizations of Americas Quarterly. The two influence groups were originally founded back in 1960 by David Rockefeller at the request of President John F. Kennedy to counter Communism in Latin America.
The former Reuters correspondent, who is based in New York, alleged that Moscow has a “whole network of sites that are more subtle and that push very sophisticated and sometimes not particularly obvious narratives that are designed to undermine the United States or promote the views of China and Russia.” However, he failed to offer any examples of such websites.
Sanctioned businessman Oleg Deripaska says exorbitant government spending will lead to a financial crash
“Reckless militarization, sanctions against everyone, and military adventures around the world have already cost this country almost $33 trillion,” said the billionaire, who was sanctioned by the US last year. However, he provided no details on where this figure came from. Deripaska noted that the US has never come so close to the bankruptcy of public finances.”
https://www.rt.com/business/573535-deripaska-warning-us-economy-debt/
March 25, 2023
© Global Look Press / Igor Russak
One of Russia’s richest men has warned that the American economy is currently in a very challenging situation, due to global overreach. Tycoon Oleg Deripaska made the comments using his Telegram channel on Friday.
He believes the underlying economy cannot take the weight of the country’s enormous government debt and exorbitant spending.
“Reckless militarization, sanctions against everyone, and military adventures around the world have already cost this country almost $33 trillion,” said the billionaire, who was sanctioned by the US last year. However, he provided no details on where this figure came from.
Deripaska noted that the US has never come so close to the bankruptcy of public finances.
“Printing more money is useless. Therefore, they will quietly discuss how to raise the debt ceiling in Congress,” he explained.
“Lots of heads will roll this spring in Washington,” he said, adding that this will pave the way for peace in 2025.
READ MORE: US economy heading for ‘train wreck,’ billionaire warns
According to the founder of the world’s second-largest aluminum company, Rusal, Washington also faces the problem of unsecured deposits in regional banks that amount to nearly $17 trillion.
Earlier this week, unnamed sources told Bloomberg that the US Treasury Department is reviewing whether federal regulators have sufficient emergency authority to temporarily insure deposits greater than the current $250,000 cap on most accounts. The measure is reportedly being sought by the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America, which includes banks with assets of as much as $100 billion.
The US banking sector has recently been hit by a wave of failures after the collapses earlier this month of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. The turmoil has spread to Europe, engulfing Switzerland’s second-largest lender Credit Suisse, which was forced to merge with rival investment bank UBS.
According to Deripaska, the emergency rescue won’t stop the crisis, which will derail UBS Group as well.
According to him, such countries as China and India, many states of the Eurasian continent, the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America “understand perfectly well what this is all about.” “And they do not want to compromise their legitimate national interests for the sake of helping the Anglo-Saxons and their associates maintain their hegemony or, to be more precise, try to retain their hegemony in the global arena,” Lavrov stressed.
https://tass.com/politics/1594883
March 27, 2023
According to the top diplomat, such countries as China and India, many states of the Eurasian continent, the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America “understand perfectly well what this is all about”
© Russian Foreign Ministry/TASS
MOSCOW, March 27. /TASS/. China and India, as well as a number of other states on the Eurasian continent, in the Asia-Pacific region, in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, do not intend to help the West maintain hegemony in the global arena, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a meeting of the board of guardians of the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund on Monday.
Today’s world is multipolar and “few want to pull chestnuts out of the fire for former parent states in the current conditions,” to the detriment of their national interests, the top diplomat noted. “It is therefore quite natural that about three-quarters of the world’s states have not joined the anti-Russian sanctions. All of them have taken a balanced position on the situation in and around Ukraine,” Lavrov said.
According to him, such countries as China and India, many states of the Eurasian continent, the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America “understand perfectly well what this is all about.” “And they do not want to compromise their legitimate national interests for the sake of helping the Anglo-Saxons and their associates maintain their hegemony or, to be more precise, try to retain their hegemony in the global arena,” Lavrov stressed.
With this in mind, Lavrov focused on President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow, which “demonstrated to the entire international community that attempts ‘to divide and conquer’ are doomed to fail.” “Despite the dirty campaign to cancel everything connected with Russia, we still have many friends in every country in the world, including in the West. We know that they like our multinational country, love Russian culture, and share the traditional moral and family values we promote,” the top diplomat summed up.
Russia’s Security Council Secretary Patrushev: Russia has weapons to destroy any enemy if it faces a risk to its existence.
The western world is solemnly commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion by blindly following the US into more conflict and militarism while repeating all the same kinds of mass media malpractice.
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If you think it’s a coincidence that the western world suddenly got super–duper interested in China’s human rights record right when China began threatening US planetary domination, then you’re a bootlicking moron who deserves to be shamed in public.
A leaked 2017 State Department memo explicitly acknowledged that it’s US government policy to ignore the human rights violations of US-aligned nations while attacking them in nations like China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. Stop buying into this performance.
China has been sorting out China’s internal affairs for thousands of years; they don’t suddenly need help from a bunch of white stuffed shirts in Washington, London and Canberra just because a few sociopathic think tankers say so. Leave China’s issues to the Chinese to address.
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People who live in the Middle East have every right to attack the occupying forces there whose presence they oppose, and those occupying forces do not have any legitimate right to retaliate.
Every American who is killed or injured by those opposing US military occupations was killed or injured because the US empire put them there. What happens to them is the empire’s fault, not the fault of those rightfully resisting a hostile occupation.
Claims that attacks on US occupiers in Syria are “backed” by Iran should never be taken on blind faith, but to be clear it is entirely legitimate for Iran to involve itself in this conflict. Iran is an ally of Syria and is in Syria with the Syrian government’s permission; neither of these things are true of the US. Perhaps more importantly, Iran is in the Middle East, and therefore has infinitely more legitimacy than the US in making the Middle East its business.
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Even if everything US pundits and politicians are saying about TikTok is true (and of course it isn’t), it’s still far less scary than what the US government does to us with American apps, and it’s still far less scary than giving the White House massive new censorship powers. If you live anywhere under the thumb of the US empire, then any information-gathering or censorship policies the US government sets for itself have real relevance to your life, because the US government has actual power over you. The Chinese government does not. This is obvious to anyone who doesn’t have soup for brains.
It’s crazy how the First Amendment explicitly says “Congress shall make no law” abridging freedom of speech or freedom of the press, and yet congress is preparing to do literally exactly that with all American TikTok users.
It’s also crazy that US congressmen who don’t understand any technology more advanced than a shovel and think the internet comes from magic beans are making decisions about online platforms that affect everyone.
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The problem is not that Australia’s corrupt media are saying the nation will have to follow the US into war with China, the problem is that they’re almost certainly correct. This means Australians must demand we immediately exit our alliances with the US that would lead to this. They’re not being dishonest when they say we’ll have to follow if the US goes to war against China, they’re being dishonest in their failure to immediately begin asking “Okay, so how do we GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS BAT SHIT INSANE SITUATION RIGHT THIS VERY INSTANT?”
Because that’s the only sane response to finding out that your nation will have to go to war with its primary trading partner to facilitate some dopey agendas cooked up in Washington, Arlington and Langley: asking how the fuck do we get ourselves the fuck out of this situation? What do we need to do? What alliances need to be shredded? Whose offices do we need to storm and whose desks do we need to pound on? Failure to ask these questions is malpractice. Because going to war with China will destroy our country. Absolutely destroy it. It cannot happen.
The Australian media aren’t criminal in telling us the US is going to drag us into a war of unimaginable horror, the Australian media are criminal for telling us we just need to accept that and get comfortable with the idea. Fuck you. No. Get us out of this World War III trap immediately.
Never in history has hard-hitting, adversarial journalism been so urgently needed in Australia as it is right now, and never in history have the Australian media been less fit for the job.
If you’re wondering why I’ve been writing so much about my home country lately instead of focusing on the hub of the empire in the US like I usually do, that’s why. It’s because our worthless, bootlicking press aren’t doing their fucking jobs right when it’s most urgently important that they do.
Washington keeps meddling in the affairs of ‘its hemisphere’ and deploying propaganda to paint its interventions as benevolent
https://www.rt.com/news/573139-latin-america-russian-news/
Again, the people of Latin America and the Caribbean, forced to endure the brutality of the US in their daily lives, are not so fooled, and they are quite understandably looking elsewhere for their news, and even for help. Thus, people protesting US intervention in such countries as Haiti and Peru are even waving Russian flags and asking for Russian help against this intervention.
FILE PHOTO: Haitians take to the streets to protest over the increasing insecurity in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, on March 29, 2022. © Valerie Baeriswyl / AFP
In his 2005 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Harold Pinter spent a good deal of his time detailing the crimes of the US in the world, but especially in Latin America. He spoke about how most people have been lulled into forgetting about these crimes, if they ever knew about them at all, thanks to Washington’s sophisticated propaganda machine:
“The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
READ MORE: Russia and Cuba working to counter US sanctions – ambassador
Of course, the people who suffered from the relentless US attacks have not forgotten them. And as might be expected, these attacks have not stopped, or even slowed down, with the US supporting right-wing coups in Latin America and the Caribbean in recent years – for example, in Honduras in 2009; Bolivia in 2019; and most recently the ongoing unrest in Peru. The US also helped instigate a very violent coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018, though it ultimately failed. Moreover, in addition to forcibly kidnapping Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and flying him to the Central African Republic in 2004, it appears that the US had some role in the recent murder of Haitian President Jovenel Moise.
Meanwhile, Washington is leading NATO’s expansion of its forward-operating capacity in Latin America and the Caribbean. According to Popular Resistance, at the end of 2022, the US had “12 military bases in Panama, 12 in Puerto Rico, 9 in Colombia, 8 in Peru, 3 in Honduras, 2 in Paraguay, as well as installations of this type in Aruba, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Cuba (Guantanamo), and Peru among other countries.” Washington is seeking to control the entire “land and maritime surface of the region”, including a network of NATO bases on islands in Argentina’s territorial waters “usurped by the United Kingdom.”
In light of all this activity and history, the people of Latin America and the Caribbean can be forgiven for doubting the claims that the US is helping to spread democracy, peace and truth in the region. The people of this region are simply tired of being bullied by the US, and they are equally tired of being blatantly lied to by the US government and its corporate media mouthpieces. As such, it should come as little surprise to anyone paying attention that the people of this region are increasingly looking to non-US sources like Russia’s RT to get their information, much to the chagrin of the US.
READ MORE: Cuba accepts Russian payment system
As CNN laments, “Russian propaganda has long exploited simmering resentments against the West’s imperialistic past and recent foreign policy interventions, now promoting the view that Ukraine is a puppet of the West. The narrative is particularly powerful in Latin America, where Kremlin-controlled media outlets such as RT have big audiences.” Similarly, POLITICO complains, “When it comes to Russian state media, the Kremlin’s Spanish-language services – most notably RT en Español – are a juggernaut, particularly in Latin America. Its glitzy television studios, anti-gringo editorial line and ability to tap into locals’ desire for outside news sources have made the outlet by far the largest proponent of Moscow’s talking points.”
There is much to unpack in these alarmist statements. First of all, in its very assertion about “Russian propaganda,” CNN itself engages in its own, quite typical pro-US propaganda, attempting to claim that the West’s imperialism is in the “past” and reducing its recent, anti-constitutional coups in Latin America to mere “foreign policy interventions.” For its part, POLITICO acknowledges that the appeal of RT to Latin American viewers is its “anti-gringoeditorial line” without explaining why Latin Americans would be attracted to that – that is, without acknowledging it is the cruel US actions which have driven Latin Americans away from American sources and towards those like RT.
Of course, the problem is that the US government and its compliant propaganda outlets like CNN and POLITICO have gotten high on their own supply. They believe their own line about the nature of US imperialism in the region and cannot seem to fathom that they themselves are some of the biggest purveyors of false news in the world, including about Washington’s role in the world.
READ MORE: Russian security chief addresses foreign-backed ‘revolutions’
Again, the people of Latin America and the Caribbean, forced to endure the brutality of the US in their daily lives, are not so fooled, and they are quite understandably looking elsewhere for their news, and even for help. Thus, people protesting US intervention in such countries as Haiti and Peru are even waving Russian flags and asking for Russian help against this intervention.
There is an easy solution to this. If the US wants the people of the region to look to it and its media outlets for news and information, it might be honest about its interventionist past and present conduct in this hemisphere, and it can start treating the people of this hemisphere and their countries with respect and as equals. As long as the US continues to treat Latin America and the Caribbean as its “backyard” in which it is free to meddle for its own gain, it will only continue to alienate the people and to push them towards Russia and other points eastward. This should be an obvious point, but it seems to be lost on those policymakers in the US who seem incapable of seeing past their own self-interest, all the while believing that they are somehow the good guys.
“To tell the truth, we no longer have any illusions about converging with Europe, being accepted as part of the “common European home,” or creating a “common space” with the EU. All these declarations made in European capitals have turned out to be a myth and a false-flag operation.”
He emphasized that European nations “are no longer an independent subject of international law as they have simply become a cash cow for the United States at the expense of their taxpayers.” “And they are doing it not even for ideological reasons, but out of stupidity and cowardice,” Medvedev concluded.
https://tass.com/politics/1593325
March 23, 2023
“What I can’t understand is the position of European leaders who are unable to make decisions that benefit Europeans. All of their decisions benefit either certain rival political groups or the Americans,” the politician said
Russian Presidential First Deputy in Military-Industrial Commission and Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev
© Ekaterina Shtukina/POOL/TASS
MOSCOW, March 23. /TASS/. The United States is currently a hostile country that seeks to cause as much damage to Russia as possible, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said.
“They are our rivals, and today – let’s put it bluntly-they are our enemy. The United States of America is our enemy,” Medvedev pointed out in an interview with Russian media outlets, including TASS, and users of the VKontakte social media network.
However, he pointed out that, unlike EU nations, the US holds “a consistent stance.” “They are trying to cause us as much damage as possible, and, where feasible, even tear our country apart and put Europe under their spell in the worst way so that it is unable to move at all,” the Russian Security Council deputy chairman noted, adding: “The reason is that sometimes, the leaders that come to power there start getting clever, either withdrawing from NATO or suspending membership or doing something else.”
The Americans have now achieved their goal, Medvedev went on to say, pointing out that the US position “is perfectly logical.” “What I can’t understand is the position of European leaders who are unable to make decisions that benefit Europeans. All of their decisions benefit either certain rival political groups or the Americans,” the deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council said.
He emphasized that European nations “are no longer an independent subject of international law as they have simply become a cash cow for the United States at the expense of their taxpayers.” “And they are doing it not even for ideological reasons, but out of stupidity and cowardice,” Medvedev concluded.
The US and Japan are the real security threat to the Asia-Pacific, Beijing insists
“They claim to uphold the rules-based international order, but what they do is trampling on international law and the basic norms governing international relations and grossly interfering in other countries’ internal affairs,” Wang told reporters.
https://www.rt.com/news/569826-china-us-japan-imaginary-enemies/
Jan 13, 2023
“We urge the US and Japan to abandon the Cold-War mentality and ideological bias, stop creating imaginary enemies and stop trying to sow the seeds of a new Cold War in the Asia-Pacific,” Wang told reporters at a regular briefing in Beijing.
FILE PHOTO. US and Japanese soldiers conduct a joint training exercise in Kisarazu, Japan, June 16, 2022. © David Mareuil/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Washington and Tokyo need to abandon their Cold War mentality and stop inventing enemies in the Asia-Pacific region, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Friday. He described a recent joint statement by American and Japanese foreign and defense ministers as containing “groundless smears and attacks” on China.
“We urge the US and Japan to abandon the Cold-War mentality and ideological bias, stop creating imaginary enemies and stop trying to sow the seeds of a new Cold War in the Asia-Pacific,” Wang told reporters at a regular briefing in Beijing.
Wang’s declaration came in response to the joint statement by the US-Japan Security Consultative Committee issued on Wednesday, which declared the alliance between Washington and Tokyo as “the cornerstone of regional peace, security, and prosperity.”
The document states that China represents “the greatest strategic challenge in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond,” and is signed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, and Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada.
Western sanctions reshaping global energy markets – WSJ
According to Wang, however, the US and Japan are instead “finding pretexts for military build-up and wilful use of force,” creating division and confrontation.
“They claim to uphold the rules-based international order, but what they do is trampling on international law and the basic norms governing international relations and grossly interfering in other countries’ internal affairs,” Wang told reporters.
The Asia-Pacific is “an anchor for peace and development, not a wrestling ground for geopolitical competition,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman insisted, adding that most of the countries in the world are “for justice and against hegemonism,” preferring cooperation to confrontation.
Asked about Washington’s publicly announced plans to restrict Beijing’s access to semiconductor technology, Wang said China will “resolutely safeguard our own interests.”
He accused the US of abusing export controls and weaponizing trade “in order to perpetuate its hegemony and selfish interests.” This not only “severely violates market rules” but also disrupts international trade, he insisted.
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