India lifted 271 million people out of poverty between 2006 and 2016 – UN

Source

http://www.rt.com

12 July, 2019

Residents stand in their shanties at a slum in northern suburb of Mumbai, India © Reuters / Danish Siddiqui

A new report by the United Nations shows that 1.3 billion people across 101 countries are “multidimensionally poor,” which means that poverty is defined not simply by income but by a number of indicators.

Those indicators include poor health, poor quality of work, and the threat of violence.

The report identified 10 countries, with a combined population of around two billion people, which have shown statistically significant progress in ending poverty “in all its forms, everywhere.” The 10 countries are Bangladesh, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, and Vietnam.

ALSO ON RT.COMIndia to become $5 trillion economy, doubters are just ‘professional pessimists’

In India, there were 271 million fewer people in poverty in 2016 than in 2006, the study shows. The country recorded the fastest reductions in the multidimensional poverty index values during the period with strong improvements in areas such as “assets, cooking fuel, sanitation and nutrition.”

In 2005-2006, the population in India living in multidimensional poverty was about 640 million people (55.1 percent). That number was reduced to 369 million people (27.9 percent) by 2015-16.

Deprivation in nutrition dropped from 44.3 percent in 2005-06 to 21.2 percent in 2015-16, child mortality – from 4.5 percent to 2.2 percent. The South Asian country has also significantly reduced its deprivation of cooking fuel, sanitation, and drinking water. More people gained access to housing and electricity.

ALSO ON RT.COMIndia’s economy will ‘come back with a bang,’ country’s ‘Warren Buffett’ says

“In all 10 countries, rural areas are poorer than urban areas. In Cambodia, Haiti, India and Peru poverty reduction in rural areas outpaced that in urban areas – demonstrating pro-poor development – and in Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of the Congo poverty fell at the same speed in rural and urban areas,” the UN said.

Overall, the study shows that globally, of the 1.3 billion people who are multidimensionally poor, more than two-thirds or 886 million now live in middle-income countries. A further 440 million live in low-income countries. One in three children worldwide is multidimensionally poor, compared to one in six adults. That means that nearly half of the people living in multidimensional poverty (663 million) are children, with the youngest children bearing the greatest burden.

War on Drugs Has Done Far More Harm Than Illegal Drugs, Major Report Finds

Many illegal drugs are less harmful than tobacco or alcohol yet seen as more dangerous due to biases.

“This de facto prohibition is arbitrary. the current distinction between legal and illegal substances is not unequivocally based on pharmacological research but in large part on historical and cultural precedents.

It is also distorted by and feeds into morally charged perceptions about a presumed ‘good and evil’ distinction between legal and illegal drugs.”

https://themindunleashed.com/2019/06/war-on-drugs-more-harm-illegal-drugs.html

TheMindUnleashed.com

ELIAS MARAT

June 27, 2019

 

(TMU) — Illegal drugs including cocaine, ecstasy and opiates can potentially be less harmful than tobacco or alcohol yet are seen as dangerous narcotics due to cultural biases and politics rather than actual science, according to a report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

Calling for a comprehensive review of the international system that classifies drugs, the commission—comprised of 14 former heads of states from countries including Mexico, Colombia, Portugal and New Zealand—blasted the “incoherence and inconsistencies” of laws that cherry-pick the harmful effects of certain substances using “unreliable and scientifically dubious” methods.

The group also described how the scheduling system has propped up a global drug control regime that imposes major costs on society in the form of “collateral damage,” with some substances facing strict controls and others allowed for medical purposes. This has entailed patients in low-to-middle income countries facing surgery without anesthetics, a lack of crucial medicines, and excruciating and painful deaths that were wholly unnecessary and a result of a ban on opioid pain treatment.

In 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 83 percent of the global population resides in countries where access to opioid pain relief is either inadequate or nonexistent.

Michel Kazatchkine, a French physician and former head of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said that 75 to 80 percent of the global population lacks access to medicines and “all of the reasons are linked to repression and prohibition-based control systems,” according to the Guardian.

Other consequences include the spread of infectious diseases, higher mortality rates and prisons around the globe that are filled to the brim with drug users.

The group wrote:

“Such drug control policies have resulted in social and economic problems not only for people who use drugs but also for the general population, including health epidemics, prison overcrowding and arbitrary enforcement of drug laws.”

Continuing to criticize the arbitrary and biased application of drug laws, the group wrote:

“This de facto prohibition is arbitrary. the current distinction between legal and illegal substances is not unequivocally based on pharmacological research but in large part on historical and cultural precedents.

It is also distorted by and feeds into morally charged perceptions about a presumed ‘good and evil’ distinction between legal and illegal drugs.”

Ruth Dreifuss, former president of Switzerland and commission chair, blasted the classification while calling for a “critical review” that centers the WHO, modern scientific research and a criteria that sufficiently takes into account the harm and benefit of substances. Dreifuss said:

“The international system to classify drugs is at the core of the drug control regime – and unfortunately the core is rotten.” 

Dreifuss also noted how some illegal drugs such as cocaine, heroin, cannabis and hashish haven’t been seriously evaluated in 30 years or weren’t evaluated at all, seriously undercutting the legitimacy of prohibitionist approaches.

Former president of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos similarly affirmed that drugs should be reclassified. Speaking to journalists in an online briefing on the report, Santos noted that “the scientific basis [of classification] is non-existent.”

Continuing, the former president explained:

“It was a political decision. According to the studies we’ve seen over past years, substances like cannabis are less harmful than alcohol … I come from Colombia, probably the country that has paid the highest price for the war on drugs.”

Instead, the country has been saddled for over 50 years with an unwinnable drug war that causes “more damage, more harm” to the world than practical approaches to regulating the sale and consumption of drugs in a “good way,” he added.

The Global Commission added the “only responsible answer to this complex topic is to regulate the market of illegal drugs, starting by establishing regulations and a new scheduling system adapted to the dangerousness of each drug and based on solid scientific assessments,” in line with the same criteria used for food, medications, and other products that could potentially pose risks to consumer health.

The group added:

“While the international community continues to struggle to find a new consensus, countries should move forward with designing and implementing a more rational policy of scheduling, controlling and regulating psychoactive drugs.”

The group also recommended that milder and less harmful drugs should have restrictions loosened, especially to include “other legitimate uses” such as traditional, religious or social use.

Anand Grover, the former special U.N. rapporteur for health, India, said:

“We need to think of these things with a fresh outlook. We can’t go with the cultural biases of the west.”

 

War on Drugs Has Done Far More Harm Than Illegal Drugs, Major Report Finds

Many illegal drugs are less harmful than tobacco or alcohol yet seen as more dangerous due to biases.

War on Drugs Has Done Far More Harm Than Illegal Drugs, Major Report Finds

TheMindUnleashed.com

ELIAS MARAT

June 29, 2019

(TMU) — Illegal drugs including cocaine, ecstasy and opiates can potentially be less harmful than tobacco or alcohol yet are seen as dangerous narcotics due to cultural biases and politics rather than actual science, according to a report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

Calling for a comprehensive review of the international system that classifies drugs, the commission—comprised of 14 former heads of states from countries including Mexico, Colombia, Portugal and New Zealand—blasted the “incoherence and inconsistencies” of laws that cherry-pick the harmful effects of certain substances using “unreliable and scientifically dubious” methods.

The group also described how the scheduling system has propped up a global drug control regime that imposes major costs on society in the form of “collateral damage,” with some substances facing strict controls and others allowed for medical purposes. This has entailed patients in low-to-middle income countries facing surgery without anesthetics, a lack of crucial medicines, and excruciating and painful deaths that were wholly unnecessary and a result of a ban on opioid pain treatment.

In 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 83 percent of the global population resides in countries where access to opioid pain relief is either inadequate or nonexistent.

Michel Kazatchkine, a French physician and former head of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, said that 75 to 80 percent of the global population lacks access to medicines and “all of the reasons are linked to repression and prohibition-based control systems,”according to the Guardian.

Other consequences include the spread of infectious diseases, higher mortality rates and prisons around the globe that are filled to the brim with drug users.

The group wrote:

“Such drug control policies have resulted in social and economic problems not only for people who use drugs but also for the general population, including health epidemics, prison overcrowding and arbitrary enforcement of drug laws.”

Continuing to criticize the arbitrary and biased application of drug laws, the group wrote:

“This de facto prohibition is arbitrary. the current distinction between legal and illegal substances is not unequivocally based on pharmacological research but in large part on historical and cultural precedents.

It is also distorted by and feeds into morally charged perceptions about a presumed ‘good and evil’ distinction between legal and illegal drugs.”

Ruth Dreifuss, former president of Switzerland and commission chair, blasted the classification while calling for a “critical review” that centers the WHO, modern scientific research and a criteria that sufficiently takes into account the harm and benefit of substances. Dreifuss said:

“The international system to classify drugs is at the core of the drug control regime – and unfortunately the core is rotten.” 

Dreifuss also noted how some illegal drugs such as cocaine, heroin, cannabis, and hashish haven’t been seriously evaluated in 30 years or weren’t evaluated at all, seriously undercutting the legitimacy of prohibitionist approaches.

Former president of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos similarly affirmed that drugs should be reclassified. Speaking to journalists in an online briefing on the report, Santos noted that “the scientific basis [of classification] is non-existent.”

Continuing, the former president explained:

“It was a political decision. According to the studies we’ve seen over past years, substances like cannabis are less harmful than alcohol … I come from Colombia, probably the country that has paid the highest price for the war on drugs.”

Instead, the country has been saddled for over 50 years with an unwinnable drug war that causes “more damage, more harm” to the world than practical approaches to regulating the sale and consumption of drugs in a “good way,” he added.

The Global Commission added the “only responsible answer to this complex topic is to regulate the market of illegal drugs, starting by establishing regulations and a new scheduling system adapted to the dangerousness of each drug and based on solid scientific assessments,” in line with the same criteria used for food, medications, and other products that could potentially pose risks to consumer health.

The group added:

“While the international community continues to struggle to find a new consensus, countries should move forward with designing and implementing a more rational policy of scheduling, controlling and regulating psychoactive drugs.”

The group also recommended that milder and less harmful drugs should have restrictions loosened, especially to include “other legitimate uses” such as traditional, religious or social use.

Anand Grover, the former special U.N. rapporteur for health, India, said:

“We need to think of these things with a fresh outlook. We can’t go with the cultural biases of the west.”

 

“Psychopath Capitalism”: US Economic Terrorism and Genocide Against the People of Venezuela

“It is agonizing to witness the mass murder of a heroic and progressive Venezuelan people, by a psychopathic capitalism which has not one iota of human decency, and wallowing in its cannibalistic behavior, desecrates the very concept of human rights.  But that is the essence of monopoly capitalism, whose “highest” stage is fascism.”

Source

April 25: Foreign Minister Arreaza Describes Excruciating Suffering of the Venezuelan People Resulting From US Sanctions; 

April 26: US Violates its Obligation as  UN Host Country and Sanctions the Foreign Minister for Speaking Truth to Power

“We are not only on the wrong side, we are the wrong side.”   Pentagon Papers Expert Daniel Elllsberg

“American sanctions are deliberately aiming to wreck Venezuela’s economy and thereby lead to regime change.  It’s a fruitless, heartless, illegal, and failed policy, causing grave harm to the Venezuelan people.”  Professor Jeffrey Sachs

US Maneuvers at the United Nations

The entire official schedule of meetings of the United Nations Commission on Disarmament – April 8 through April 29 – was forced to cancel because the United States, in violation of its obligations as host country, refused a visa to important Russian delegates.

On April 25, Venezuela’s brilliant, charismatic Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza (left) detailed, in a United Nations press briefing, the horrific suffering the Venezuelan people are enduring as a result of the dictatorship of US sanctions against his country, and US terrorization of each and every global institution and nation which the US is demanding sever all economic and diplomatic ties with Venezuela.

In a stealthy, deadly march to global dictatorship, and consistent with its attempt to subjugate the United Nations to the interests of US oligarchic power, the United States is abusing its membership in the United Nations, attempting to force regime change on Venezuela, using criminal methods in violation of the Hague Convention, the Geneva Convention, the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Charter of the Organization of American States, the Venezuelan Constitution, and in violation of U.S. law itself.

The U.S. maneuvers to destroy the Maduro government’s UN accreditation, and replace it with their puppet Guaido are horrifying and Machiavellian, and, quite realistically, since the US has absolutely no scruples, nor any respect for international law, there is an ominous possibility that they may succeed.  Numerous diplomats of many countries, with whom I have spoken, are terrified by the sanctions the US just placed on the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, recognizing the threat to their own sovereignty, and sophisticated Iranian specialists delineated the dangerous possibilities the US has to use this method to force out the Venezuelan delegation to the UN, and de facto denude the Maduro government’s access to the UN.  If the US succeeds in this criminal scheme, the credibility of the UN will be entirely and irreparably destroyed, as the many diplomats with whom I have spoken have confirmed.  Many delegates are now saying that the UN would be better based in another more reliable and respectful country.  Venezuela is Chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, an organization of 120 member states. For the US to sanction her Foreign Minister is an unconscionable and intolerable abuse of the host country status.

The US Is Orchestrating a Coup in Venezuela

The US has, furthermore, forged another mafia-style organization of flunkey Latin American “governments” which give every indication of becoming  a new Operation Condor, that systematically organized engine of murder arranged by Augusto Pinochet and Henry Kissinger, (image left) an international organized criminal plan to exterminate all progressive and humanitarian efforts throughout Latin America and beyond.

Operation Condor orchestrated the slaughter of Chilean former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in Sheridan Circle, Washington, DC in 1976. Letelier bled to death after a car bomb arranged by Anti-Castro Cuban terrorists tore off his legs. An American girl working for the Institute of Policy Studies, Ronni Moffett was also killed in that terrorist action.  In Argentina, Chilean General Carlos Prats was murdered when his Buenos Aires home was bombed;  in Rome, ChileanSenator Bernardo Leighton’s wife was crippled by an assassin’s bullet intended for him;  Operation Condor arranged the murder of former progressive Bolivian President Torres in Argentina.

Diabolic Methods Used by the US to Wreck Venezuela

In a colossal report entitled:  “Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment:  The Case of Venezuela,” and corroborating everything stated by Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, economist Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot describe the diabolic methods used by the United States to wreck Venezuela and discredit socialism, resulting in the deliberate murder of at least 40,000 Venezuelan people, including children, the elderly, the infirm and other of the most vulnerable civilians. This is a systematic and deliberate policy of the US government, a heinous plan to exterminate socialism and massacre the Venezuelan people in order to steal their oil, a spectacular act of piracy brazenly conducted with the collusion of obedient puppets in Western Europe and Canada, and craven, obsequious Latin American states whose shameful obedience to Washington is breathtaking.

Complete Blockade

Washington is now threatening to completely blockade and sanction Cuba to force that country to sever relations with Venezuela. Nicaragua is, of course, also in the crosshairs.

Yesterday there was a failed coup, provoked by the Quisling Juan Guaido, (image right with Lopez) who incited a military revolt to violently overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicholas Maduro.  If Joseph Biden or Bernie Sanders, or any American citizen advocated the violent overthrow of the US government, they would be imprisoned and/or executed.  It is astounding that the Manchurian candidate Juan Guaido, advocating the violent overthrow of the Venezuelan government, is allowed to roam free, throughout Venezuela.  This is incontestable proof of the impeccably democratic character of the Maduro government. And perhaps it is proof of Maduro’s strength and trust in the Venezuelan people.  But Maduro’s life is at risk for his country. During yesterday’s emergency, Venezuelan Ambassador Samuel Moncada convened a UN press conference, and skillfully replied to often slanted and biased questions  for which Moncada was well prepared, and had no doubt anticipated.

The US government is disintegrating, and has been for many years, with the current administration rife with internecine warfare.  The French government is confronting an incipient popular revolution of the Yellow Jackets, the British government stymied by Brexit and separatist movements threatening the survival of the “United Kingdom.”  It is only with the most flagrant arrogance that they criticize Venezuela.

It is agonizing to witness the mass murder of a heroic and progressive Venezuelan people, by a psychopathic capitalism which has not one iota of human decency, and wallowing in its cannibalistic behavior, desecrates the very concept of human rights.  But that is the essence of monopoly capitalism, whose “highest” stage is fascism. One can only hope that Russia and China will recognize the future menace to their own survival, and will not indulge in the wishful thinking of a “win-win” arrangement with Washington. One can only hope that the crucible of Venezuela will prove to be the Stalingrad of this de facto World War III, and it will be on the battlefield of Venezuela, with its transgenerational legacy of Simon Bolivar, that fascism is defeated, and the future progressive destiny of humanity will be forged.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Carla Stea, Global Research, 2019

Unilateral US sanctions violate human rights: UN expert

A UN rights expert expresses concerns about the negative impacts of unilateral US sanctions against people in Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.

Source: PressTV-Unilateral US sanctions violate human rights: UN expert

http://www.presstv.com

May 7, 2019

Idriss Jazairy, UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures

A UN rights expert has slammed unilateral US sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, saying the use of economic measures for political purposes violates human rights and international law.

In a statement released on Monday, Idriss Jazairy, UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures, warned that the US bans against the trio might precipitate man-made humanitarian catastrophes.

“Regime change through economic measures likely to lead to the denial of basic human rights and indeed possibly to starvation has never been an accepted practice of international relations,” he said.

“Real concerns and serious political differences between governments must never be resolved by precipitating economic and humanitarian disasters, making ordinary people pawns and hostages thereof,” he added.

Jazairy also voiced worries about Washington’s termination of sanctions waivers for major Iranian crude buyers, saying the move harms not only the Iranian nation, but also their trade partners.

“The extraterritorial application of unilateral sanctions is clearly contrary to international law,” he said. 

“I am deeply concerned that one State can use its dominant position in international finance to harm not only the Iranian people, who have followed their obligations under the UN-approved nuclear deal to this day, but also everyone in the world who trades with them,” he noted, referring to the landmark 2015 agreement — officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Recently, the US ended six months of waivers which allowed Tehran’s eight largest customers to continue importing limited volumes. It also threatened the buyers of Iranian oil with sanctions if they fail to stop their purchases.

The anti-Iran American sanctions had been lifted under the JCPOA, but they returned in place last year when the US abandoned the multilateral accord.

Elsewhere in his statement, the UN rights expert denounced the economic hardship caused by the US sanctions in Cuba and questioned Washington’s claim that its sanctions against Venezuela were aimed at “helping” its people.

US unveils new sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela

US National Security Adviser John Bolton announced a series of new sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela on Wednesday.

He further called on the international community to “challenge” Washington’s restrictive measures against sovereign countries which amount to “a threat to world peace and security.”

“I call on the international community to engage in constructive dialogue with Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and the United States to find a peaceful resolution in compliance with the spirit and letter of the Charter of the United Nations before the arbitrary use of economic starvation becomes the new ‘normal’,” Jazairy said.

One Million Species Poised to Go Extinct Soon Because of Humans: UN

Humans have pushed a million plant and animal species to the brink of extinction—with potentially devastating implications for the future of civilization.

Source: One Million Species Poised to Go Extinct Soon Because of Humans: UN

Common Dreams

By Jake Johnson

May 6, 2019

A United Nations report described as the most authoritative and comprehensive assessment of global biodiversity ever published found that human exploitation of the natural world has pushed a million plant and animal species to the brink of extinction—with potentially devastating implications for the future of civilization.

Conducted by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and released Monday, the report warned that species extinction rates are “accelerating” at an “unprecedented” rate due to the human-caused climate crisis and economic activity.

“The overwhelming evidence of the IPBES Global Assessment, from a wide range of different fields of knowledge, presents an ominous picture,” Sir Robert Watson, chair of the IPBES, said in a statement. “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health, and quality of life worldwide.”

While the report’s findings—compiled by a team of hundreds of experts from 50 nations—are dire and cause for serious alarm, Watson said, there is still a window for action.

“It is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global,” said Watson. “Through ‘transformative change,’ nature can still be conserved, restored, and used sustainably—this is also key to meeting most other global goals. By transformative change, we mean a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic, and social factors, including paradigms, goals, and values.”

Eduardo Brondizio, co-chair of the IPBES, echoed Watson, saying “business as usual has to end.”

The IPBES report comes as youth-led movements across the globe are organizing and taking to the streets en masse to pressure political leaders to take climate action in line with the urgency demanded by the scientific evidence.

Andrew Wetzler, managing director of the nature program for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), told the Washington Post that the IPBES assessment shows “that nature is collapsing around us and it’s a real wake-up call to humanity.”

According to the report:

• The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent, mostly since 1900;
• More than 40 percent of amphibian species, almost 33 percent of reef forming corals, and more than a third of all marine mammals are threatened;
• The picture is less clear for insect species, but available evidence supports a tentative estimate of 10 percent being threatened;
• At least 680 vertebrate species had been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than 9 percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals used for food and agriculture had become extinct by 2016, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

Andy Purvis, professor at the Natural History Museum in London and one of the report’s main authors, said the findings show that the “society we would like our children and grandchildren to live in is in real jeopardy.”

“This is the most thorough, the most detailed and most extensive planetary health check. The take home message is that we should have gone to the doctor sooner. We are in a bad way,” Purvis said. “I cannot overstate it. If we leave it to later generations to clear up the mess, I don’t think they will forgive us.”

---

 

70 years of NATO charts 70 years of brute force and hard power

“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist – McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

Thomas Friedman

Source link

http://www.rt.com

John Wight

April 4, 2019

John Wight has written for a variety of newspapers and websites, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal.

© Global Look Press / Martin Poole

The existence of NATO 70 years on from its creation is an insult to the millions who died so that the UN Charter could be born.

The most significant and enduring testament to those who perished in the struggle to defeat fascism in WWII remains the UN Charter, the foundational document of the United Nations upon its birth in October 1945. The Charter arose from the ashes of that epic struggle as a tangible symbol of hope. Enshrined within its articles was a solemn promise that henceforth justice, international law and tolerance would reign in place of brute power, force and intolerance.

Consider for a moment the first section of the Charter’s preamble:

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

• to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
• to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
• to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
• to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom

It is impossible to read those words and not lament the gaping disjuncture between the noble ideals they embrace and the grim reality that arrived in their wake. For rather than mankind being saved from the scourge of war, the scourge of war and conflict has grown to become a near-everyday reality across the globe.

Read more

US lecturing Russia to ‘keep out of Western Hemisphere’ is hubris & hypocrisy on steroids

The pressing question we are required to grapple with today is: Why? What lies at the root and what is the common denominator responsible for mankind’s abject failure to achieve the vision set out in the UN Charter?

Upon due consideration, we are left in no doubt that, fundamentally, the series of conflicts that have come to define our existence are a consequence of the drive by one ideological bloc to dominate and impose a particular political, economic and value system onto a world defined by its diversity of languages, cultures, histories and traditions.

The result is the normalization of war and the apotheosis of hard power, rather than war and hard power being regarded as grotesque perversions in a world cured of the moral sickness of might is right.

Seventy years ago, NATO, a military alliance whose entire existence and ethos is predicated on might is right, emerged from the womb of the Cold War objectives devised by a Truman administration of fanatical hawks, consumed with the goal of full-spectrum dominance at the close of WWII.

In his 1997 essay, ‘The Last Empire,’ Gore Vidal savages the official history proffered by Western ideologues when it comes to the sudden shift that took place from Moscow being viewed as an indispensable ally in the war against Nazi Germany in the eyes of the Roosevelt administration, to implacable foe when Truman entered the White House upon Roosevelt’s death in April 1945.

Gore Vidal: “The National Security State, the NATO alliance, the forty-year Cold War were all created without the consent, much less advice, of the American people… The impetus behind NATO was the United States… We were now hell bent on the permanent division of Germany between our western zone (plus the British and French zones) and the Soviet zone to the east. Serenely, we broke every agreement that we had made with our former ally, now horrendous Communist enemy.”

ALSO ON RT.COMIf Trump wants to disarm Russia, he should un-recognize Kosovo

Moving things forward, it is by now no secret that US Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in a meeting on February 9, 1990, that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward” upon the reunification of Germany. According to declassified documents, Baker’s pledge was made as part of a “cascade of assurances” over Soviet security given by Western leaders at that time and on into 1991, when the Soviet Union came to an end. It is the breaking of those assurances that lies at the heart of the deterioration in relations between East and West that has taken place from then to now.

Flush with triumphalism over the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, NATO was loosed upon the world not in name of democracy but in the cause of imperialism. Neocon scribe Thomas Friedman, more than any of his ilk, has written openly of the driving ethos of Western foreign policy after the Soviet Union’s demise: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist – McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

Friedman’s gleeful celebration of the economic opportunities lying open to the US in the post-Soviet world was shared by powerbrokers in Washington on both sides of the aisle. Intoxicated with a misplaced sense of exceptionalism and virtue, the world now lay before them like a vast banquet upon which they were invited to feast. And the first course in this feast was the former Yugoslavia with its abundant human and natural resources, not to mention strategic location in the Balkans, ripe for the taking.

Read more

In 1999, it was Yugoslavia in the crosshairs of the imperialists, now it’s Venezuela

Michael Parenti, in his definitive work on the destruction of Yugoslavia, ‘To Kill A Nation,’ reminds us that after the fall of communism in eastern Europe, “the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) remained the only nation in that region that would not voluntarily discard what remained of its socialism and install an unalloyed free market system. It also proudly had no interest in joining NATO.” Later, Parenti also reveals: “The ultimate goal has been the complete privatization and Third Worldization of Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe… It is to replace the social wage with a neoliberal global free market, a process that would deliver still greater wealth and power into the hands of those at the top.”

The role of NATO in achieving the West’s objectives in Yugoslavia need not detain us; they have been set out in powerfully in a series of articles commemorating the 20th anniversary of the start of the Western military alliance’s 78-day air war against FRY with them in mind. Here, specifically, I refer you to the work of RT columnist Neil Clark.

The point is that today – bearing in mind NATO’s role in destroying Yugoslavia, helping to turn Afghanistan into a failed state rather than democratic state, destroying Libya, and in threatening Russia – it is no longer feasible or possible to harbor any lingering belief that NATO is anything other than a snarling beast of US hard power, deployed not to protect and defend, but destroy and dominate.

The 70th anniversary of the birth of NATO is a cause for lamentation, not celebration. The only fitting way to mark it is with a minute’s silence in solemn remembrance of its countless victims.

 

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.