US Killed More Civilians in Afghanistan Than the Taliban – Shocking UN Report

“The United States has bombed and/or invaded: Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, Cuba, Panama, Pakistan, Nicaragua, Grenada, Vietnam, Laos, Guatemala and Cambodia to name just a few of the examples we are aware of. Yet mainstream media discussions about ‘threats to world peace’ never mention the trigger happy US.”

Source

sputniknews.com

Tommy Sheridan

Aug 2, 2019

© AP Photo / Sergei Grits

 

According to a fresh United Nations Report, the US and its allies in Afghanistan have been responsible for more civilian deaths in the country than the Taliban* whom they are supposed to be fighting. What a damning indictment of US Foreign policy and engagement.

Although US troops are supposed to be no longer engaged in actual combat they are on the ground and provide arms, training and logistics to the fledgeling Afghan army. The US air force also provides air support and executes deadly airstrikes regularly.

At least 3,812 civilians have been killed or wounded in the first half of 2019, the United Nations said, noting a big increase in the number of casualties caused by government and NATO-led troops.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) called the toll “shocking and unacceptable”, and urged parties to Afghanistan’s 18-year war to heed a demand from Afghan delegates at a recent peace conference in Doha, the capital city of Qatar, to reduce civilian casualties to zero.

The United Nations report said 83 percent of casualties from airstrikes were attributed to “international military forces,” essentially pointing the finger at the United States military, which is the only member of the international coalition in Afghanistan that carries out airstrikes. The Afghan Air Force was responsible for about 10 percent.

In the first six months of the year, the conflict killed nearly 1,400 civilians and wounded about 2,400 more. Afghan forces and their allies caused 52 percent of the civilian deaths compared with 39 percent attributable to militants — mostly the Taliban, but also the Islamic State* [Daesh in Arabic]. The figures do not total 100 percent because responsibility for some deaths could not be definitively established. So 717 civilians have been killed by the US and its allies compared to 531 civilians killed by the Taliban or others.

Even the mainstream US paper, The New York Times, was compelled to state:

“Afghan security forces and their American-led international allies have killed more civilians so far this year than the Taliban have, the United Nations said in a report on Tuesday, once again raising alarm that ordinary Afghans are bearing the brunt of an increasingly deadly 18-year war”.

The United States has bombed and/or invaded: Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, Cuba, Panama, Pakistan, Nicaragua, Grenada, Vietnam, Laos, Guatemala and Cambodia to name just a few of the examples we are aware of. Yet mainstream media discussions about ‘threats to world peace’ never mention the trigger happy US. Sure North Korea, Iran, Russia and Venezuela are mentioned and demonised constantly but never the country that is actually the most aggressive and dangerous on the planet. If you are looking for the single biggest threat to world peace look no further than the United States of America. A recent United Nations Report confirms that fact.

In the last few weeks the ratcheting up of hysteria and demonising of Iran has been put into full gear. A country that has not invaded another nation for 200 years and has itself been invaded twice in the last century, 1941 and 1980, is the biggest threat on the world stage according to US billionaire owned media outlets.

© AP PHOTO/ ROBERT BURNS

Shanahan Afghanistan

In 1980 Iran was attacked by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq whom the US and UK were supporting, encouraging and arming Hussein to the teeth. A bloody and brutal eight-year conflict ensued which claimed several million lives. Iran did not seek or start that war but accepted a United Nations-brokered ceasefire in 1988. They have no desire to start any new wars.

In the intervening period between 1980 and now, however, the US and UK not only switched from arming and supporting Saddam Hussein, they actually invaded Iraq in 2003 to illegally depose him and killed over one million Iraqi civilians in the process.

The Iraq war was based on a false premise of weapons of mass destruction possession. Dossiers were invented, grainy videos were created and a compliant press and media went into overdrive to propagandise on behalf of the US and UK.

President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair deliberately lied to their respective political chambers to justify an unnecessary and brutal ‘shock and awe’ strategy of carpet bombing followed by physical invasion. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and they both knew it. After all the US and UK possessed the receipts for all the weapons Saddam Hussain had. The US and UK had sold those weapons to him during his most tyrannical years in power. When he was gassing the Kurds and killing almost 5,000 mostly women and children in Halabja in March 1988 he was using US and UK supplied planes and materials. After the atrocity both the US and UK continued to supply Iraq and Saddam with arms.

Since the 2003 invasion, Iraq has been a basket case nation. Infrastructure decimated, political structures destroyed and over one million civilian lives extinguished. American media duped many Americans into believing Iraq was behind the horrible 9/11 attacks which devastated New York. They had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 and al Qaeda or ISIS* Islamic terrorists had no presence or base in Iraq prior to 2003. Now the country is riven with ISIS sponsored terror attacks and religious and tribal civil wars. Only weeks ago the capital Baghdad witnessed a suicide bomb attack that claimed 250 civilian lives, the largest single civilian loss of life since 2003. American invasion and intervention has been a disaster for Iraq and its population.

The civilised world has to unite and muster the courage to expose the dastardly role of the US in destabilising so much of the world through deadly bombings and invasions and the economic terrorism of sanctions designed to cripple countries abilities to produce enough food to feed their populations and build the sanitary infrastructures to keep them safe from disease. The brutal economic sanctions imposed on Iran, Venezuela and Cuba right now are not only illegal they are also immoral. Despite scores of United Nations condemnations for such unilateral and illegal actions the US persists in its deadly cowboy actions.

America has now been informed it is killing more civilians in Afghanistan than the Taliban or other supposed terrorists. If facts like that don’t convince them to change tack and stop interfering militarily and economically in other countries uninvited what the hell will?

*al Qaeda, Taliban and Daesh (Islamic State, ISIL, ISIS, IS) are terrorist organisations banned in Russia and many other countries.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.

Duterte ‘Will Not Answer’ To White People Amid UN Human Rights Investigation

Source

http://www.zerohedge.com

Thu, 07/18/2019

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte says he won’t answer to white people over alleged human rights violations – insisting that he will “only face, be tried or face a trial in a Philippine court, presided by a Filipino judge, [and] prosecuted by a Filipino,” adding “maybe they can reimpose the death penalty, [so I can] die in Filipino land.”

“I will not answer a Caucasian… You must be stupid. Who are you? I am a Filipino,” said Duterte. “We have our courts here. You have to bring me somewhere else? I would not like that. I have my country. It’s working, I know it’s working, justice is working here.”

Duterte comments follow a vote by the United Nations Human Rights Council on a resolution brought by Iceland to investigate alleged abuses. He is accused of overseeing thousands of extrajudicial killings, according to Newsweek. His administration is also accused of arbitrary arrests, detentions, kidnappings, and other measures amid an anti-drug crackdown.

Duterte had already suggested he could cut diplomatic ties with Iceland over its resolution, which passed the U.N. Human Rights Council by 18 to 14 votes, with 15 countries abstaining.

Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the U.N. Human Rights Office, told Newsweek: “The HRC resolution on the human rights situation in the Philippines and its request for a comprehensive written report is an opportunity for all stakeholders, including the government to assess the current state of human rights in the country and in particular to get clarity around the contested facts, figures and circumstances.” –Newsweek

The ‘formerly gay‘ Duterte, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, has claimed everything from throwing drug dealers out of helicopters to molesting his maid as a teenager.

The Human Rights Council expressed “concern at the allegations of human rights violations in the Philippines, particularly those involving killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrest and detention, the intimidation and persecution of or violence against members of civil society, human rights defenders, indigenous peoples, journalists, lawyers and members of the political opposition, and restrictions on the freedoms of opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association.”

Recently, Philippines Senator Ronald dela Rosa, the former police chief responsible for running Duterte’s war on drugs and an ally of the president, downplayed the death of a toddler during a police raid, saying “s*** happens.”

Myka Ulpina, 3, died in crossfire during a drugs raid by armed police in Rodriguez, Rizal. Ulpina’s father Renato also died in the shootout. Police reportedly accused him of using the girl as a shield, which her mother denied. An undercover officer was killed too. –Newsweek

“We are living in an imperfect world,” said former police chief Dela Rosa during a news conference, adding “Would a police officer want to shoot a child? Never, because they have children as well. But shit happens during operations.”

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.

*

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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.