I read in Reuters the other day about the annual World Happiness Report, launched in 2012 to support the United Nations’ sustainable development goals.
How, you may ask, can I even think about commenting “world happiness” when Gaza….? Yes, the mere mention of “happiness” seems a bit obscene, these days, when we – the West – are aiding and abetting unmentionable acts of horror.
But I actually believe that it is all, somehow, interconnected. What the West has been doing to the Palestinians for decades will forever be a hideous stain on the record of an era that is coming to an end. In the West, mood is affected both by an emerging awareness of the harm we have done to the rest of the world and to the growing signs that our welfare is being eroded.
People in 143 countries and territories have been asked to evaluate their life on a scale from zero to 10. Finland scored 7.7 followed closely by the Scandinavian countries (including Iceland), and Israel, while Afghanistan and Lebanon, at the bottom, scored next to nothing. Palestine, of course, wasn’t asked.
So that’s the main findings – not very heady, but the Reuters journalist David Milliken has done a good job, I think, because he took a good long look at the 52-page report, and because he pointed out a few very interesting findings, I downloaded the report too.
Findings: The United States dropped to 23rd place from 15th last year, mainly because people younger than 30 would have placed the United States in 62nd place! (See figure 2.2) Biden and Trump, beware!
And that is the very interesting part of the report. In several of the wealthiest countries there appears to be growing dissatisfaction among the young (defined as under 30). The young in Norway put the country in 20th place, those in the UK in 32nd. Rankings for Germany and France were 47 and 48, for Canada 58 (whereas for all ages the Canadian ranking was 15) Spain 55… etc.
Russia’s young at 68th, however, are slightly more positive than the average, 72, whereas Israel’s young put their country in 2nd place! Young Israelis must have been very blind, indeed.
Yes, the times they are a’changin. For the worse in the West, mostly, though Lithuania’s young put their country in first place.
The report reads: “In Western Europe, life evaluations among the young are significantly lower in 2021-2023 than they were in 2006-2010…For the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, happiness has decreased in all age groups, but especially for the young.”
“Interconnected” was the word I used above. The so-called Pax Americana, that never was a Pax at all, is in the process of being exposed. The colossal hoax to which we in the West have been blind, is unravelling. The West’s irresponsible militarisation, the preposterous US debt (and remember, the dollar is the reserve currency, so when the dollar falls, we all fall), the deepening poverty of the bottom 50 % coupled with the spiralling wealth of the top 10 %, the brazen disregard for the accelerating ecological breakdown… all of this crowned now by the shame felt by those of us who are not psychopaths (and we are, fortunately, the vast majority) about our countries’ participation in acts so horrible that I am lost for words… will continue to undermine “happiness” in the West in years to come until the USA stops being such a bloody bully.
Ms Nuland “retired” at the age of 62. I suppose she could afford it.
Few people noticed her until her famous 2014 “fuck the EU” in a dialogue with the US Ambassador in Ukraine was leaked. The dialogue exposed US involvement in Ukraine in 2014.
She was
acting Deputy Secretary of State
former CEO of the the “think tank” Center for a New American Security (CNAS) which, according to Wikipedia as at 14 March 2024, was funded by “[n]early 30 defence contractors, including Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon; NATO; several foreign governments, including Taiwan and United Arab Emirates; the oil companies BP and Chevron; investment banks including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase; technology firms, such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft; the U.S. Department of State, and two different Pentagon offices.” (cf. Glenn Diesen’s book The Think Tank Racket.)
board member of National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which is frankly funded mainly by the US government. While CIA operations used to be entirely covert, they are now to some extent conducted through innocently sounding organisations such as the” National Endowment for Democracy”.
married to Robert Kagan.
The two of them were identified, already in 2015, as a dangerous duo devoted to the Military Industrial Complex.
I suggest you take a look at Robert Wright’s article in Responsible Statecraft: A case study in American propaganda (June 12, 2022). I am going to quote a single innocuous sentence from that article, which I think is very well worth reading:
But there are two things about the Institute for the Study of War that you may not know.
Search, please do, for the numerous occurrences of the word “Kagan” in that article. I have no insight into how much they have invested in the “military industrial complex” or how much money is paid out to them every time the USA engages in a new military project. I leave that to your imagination. Anyway, Victoria is gone.
Alas, neocon delusions of US global supremacy are not, so do not count our chickens …
She has been replaced by Kurt M. Campbell who,
for a time, was a vice president of the “think-tank” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) which, according to Wikipedia as at 19.03.2024, has received major funding from defence contractors such as Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon Company and General Atomics, etc., etc….
co-founded and was CEO of the “think tank” Center for a New American Security (CNAS) which, as we know, was funded by “[n]early 30 defence contractors, including Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon; NATO; several foreign governments, including Taiwan and United Arab Emirates; the oil companies BP and Chevron; investment banks including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase; technology firms, such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft; the U.S. Department of State, and two different Pentagon offices.”
The Wikipedia article about him suggests he might be more interested in China than in Russia. We shall soon see, I fear, when they step up the military pressure around Taiwan.
We are speaking, by the way, of the assistant, or “deputy” if you will, Foreign Minister, not the “Defence” Minister.
I definitely don’t like the way women are treated in Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. And I most emphatically do not approve of putting dissidents in prison, either. And as for torture… no! no! no! (If you tortured me to force me to endorse torture, I would probably give in, but those who love me, and their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren – and there may be many of them – would make sure that you and your lot (and offspring) never sleep easy.)
Nevertheless, the idea that a pompous king or emperor and his court should stride through the corridors of the world, passing judgements and rigorous sentences on “misbehaving” members of the global community is repugnant. All the more so, if said king or emperor is himself decadent and given to all sorts of vices (including torture!)
Vice President Harris is reputed to have been “tough on crime” in her past. (I gather she is not popular in her current position either.) Anybody who has had anything to do with miscreants will know that harsh punishments stimulate, rather than diminish, destructive urges. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are not the rule. Rather than tell you what you know – about US criminal justice, that is – I shall simply refer you to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report:
In the United Kingdom, reoffending rates also topped 70 per cent in some prisons, according to statistics from the Ministry of Justice. Many offenders, even after severe sentences of imprisonment, repeatedly fail to desist from crime and reintegrate into the community as law-abiding citizens. Imprisonment, in itself, is incapable of addressing the offenders’ social integration issues. [highlighted by me]
…
… In addition to the costs of law enforcement and investigating and prosecuting crimes, there are the costs of imprisonment, as well as the costs to the victims and the community.
Consider also the effects of prison overcrowding and smouldering community anger. Look at Haiti now!
So it is, not only with individual delinquents, but also with nations.
The US should know that patriotic sentiment – nationalism, if you will – is something to be reckoned with. In spite of the near civil-war-situation in the USA, US Americans love their country passionately. Iranians do too. Iran was, after all, practically the cradle of civilisation. Iranians have a history and cultural heritage compared to which US history and cultural heritage is still in kindergarten. The same applies to China and even to Russia, where historical awareness and pride is a force that ignorant US politicians have disregarded. (That the US establishment is so unbelievably ignorant should terrify US voters.)
As for Cuba and Venezuela, relatively new countries, they have been heroic in the extreme: Like the USA they stood up to the colonial power, but they have since also stood up to the North American bully! And they are proud of their heroism. (Note, by the way, how many US Americans and Europeans have loved Cuba.)
By the time it was Venezuela’s turn to suffer the tightening of the sanction screws, the Western press was better prepared than they had been after the Cuban revolution to unleash defamation campaigns against Hugo Chavez. Even John Pilger could not save Chavez’ reputation in the West. But Venezuelans, and a very large (probably growing) proportion of Latin Americans warmly revere the late Hugo Chavez, which is one reason why Maduro is still comfortably seated.
Unfortunately, the USA has no respect for Democracy in Venezuela, or for that matter in any other country that resists US political and economic control, which is why they have applied sanctions that more or less kill off Venezuelans.
Quoting a CEPR (Center for Economic and Policy Research) report:
According to the National Survey on Living Conditions (ENCOVI by its acronym in Spanish), an annual survey of living conditions administered by three Venezuelan universities, there was a 31 percent increase in general mortality from 2017 to 2018. This would imply an increase of more than 40,000 deaths. This would be a large loss of civilian life even in an armed conflict, and it is virtually certain that the US economic sanctions made a substantial contribution to these deaths. … As noted above, the impact of the August 2017 sanctions on the collapse of oil production and therefore access to imports was quite immediate…[highlighted by me]
The United States first imposed sanctions targeting the Venezuelan government in 2015.
Since then, sanctions have multiplied to the point that millions of ragged Venezuelans have turned into unwelcome itinerant paupers roaming the rest of the South American continent where they constitute as seriously a destabilising demographic force as the Central American immigrants to the USA. Decades of US regime change operations and support for vicious dictatorships in all of Latin America are the root cause of all of this displacement.
Sanctions particularly affect health care (medicines and gear), cf. The Lancet
Soon after imposing economic sanctions on a country, many essential life-saving drugs become unavailable. Even production of some drugs being manufactured in a country is decreased, or even stopped, because of a shortage in basic ingredients or spare machine parts that are necessary for drug production. The price of drugs increases to a level that people with low income can barely afford. …Lack of spare parts affects not only medical devices but also other necessary infrastructures such as electric generators; frequent power cuts cause serious problems (loss of vaccines, drugs, ventilators, monitors, etc). Hundreds of thousands of people die in silence from diseases.
Have those who approve of sanctioning a country considered the surviving victims’ hatred, accumulated incrementally year by year? Have those who design US foreign policy any idea of the growing global contempt for the US “rules-based order”?
What rules?
Who made the rules?
And why do the so-called “rules” – whatever they are – not apply to the USA?
Why do NO rules apply to the USA?
Listen to this angry but extraordinarily knowledgeable young man, Ben Norton, explain Latin American anger.
The government in Caracas, however, somehow survived for reasons that differ, depending on the political position of the analysts. In Venezuela, much credence is being given to the country’s socialist values, the resilience of the people and to the Bolivarian movement. The anti-Maduro forces in the US, centred mostly in Florida, blame Maduro’s survival on Washington’s lack of resolve. A third factor, which is often overlooked, is Russia.
I would like to add, though, a detail that does not seem to interest the mainstream media or even Mintpress: The Venezuelan authorities prioritised food imports and food subsidies according to another CEPR report.
Food imports in 2020 are similar to those in 2017 ($2.0 billion in 2017, $1.8 billion in 2020) despite total imports and GDP falling by around 50 percent during that period. The decline in import capacity that occurred after 2016 did not lead to lower food import levels because the government found a way to prioritize food imports. An overhaul of public sector food assistance policies, and in particular the launch of a system of nationwide distribution of food packages (known by the acronym CLAP, for Local Committees of Supply and Production) to families in need in 2016, appears to have played an important role in addressing food insecurity. In 2020, the subsidy received by families through the CLAP system was $855 million, or almost 50 percent of the country’s total food imports. [highlighted by me]
Venezuela is not the only country whose population is being castigated by the USA. The above CEPR report which examines the effect of “sanctions”, includes three detailed “case studies”: Iran, Afghanistan and Venezuela.
The so-called “Democratic” USA arrogantly disregards the global majority of countries that condemn the imposition of sanctions all over the place.
Yes, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was in contravention of International Law. Yes, yes and yes.
ButUS unilateral sanctions are also in contravention of International Law!
Articles 39 and 41 of the United Nations Charter empower the UN Security Council to adopt “measures not involving the use of armed force” in response to the existence of “any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression”:
Article 39: The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.
Venezuela represented no “threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression”. Ever. The USA just didn’t like the Venezuelan administration.
I have been, and am still, stunned by the sadism of the Israeli government and its military — as well as by the US, UK, and German governments’ enthusiastic endorsement of genocide. Good heavens, what a bunch of psychopaths makes up the top echelons of our western societies! The events in Gaza recently prompted Craig Murray to write that he had now understood that his “belief in some kind of inherent decency in the Western political Establishment was naive.”
Bush was once the laughing stock of the world when he ranted about the potentially “nukiller” country, Iran’s, being part of “the axis of evil”. I’m afraid I’m tempted to backslide to that particular Bushism. No adjectives in any dictionary I know of can adequately describe the depravity of the acts being carried out in Gaza with energetic western support.
Meanwhile, however, many other issues go unheeded. Take for instance the current troubles in Haiti, a failed state since the USA finally broke that country’s back in 2004.
The extraordinary idea nurtured by successive US governments that they may – indeed must – play the role of Global Top Gun is absolutely mind-boggling. The oddest thing of all is that most citizens in NATO countries don’t seem to mind. Not for nothing are US citizens taught the US catechism: “We are the biggest and the best.” Not for nothing have the rest of us been force-fed Hollywood films night after night, decade after decade.
Most US Americans don’t know, of course, what damage their country wrecks everywhere it goes, and are therefore completely innocent, because corporate media is not “free” to tell them. Nor is the UK mainstream media (MSM) free to tell its citizens. Or the Norwegian MSM, for that matter. There are, admittedly, a few independent sources of journalism, but we are instructed to consider them Russian propaganda outlets and their journalists are – we are told – conspiracy theorists.
So aggressively opposed are our governments to freedom of information, that they are even willing to dismantle fundamental principles of Democracy (with, e.g., the Patriot Act in the US and, in the UK, the National Security Act of 2023 and the updated Official Secrets Act.) Moreover, the Julian Assange case illustrates just how far the UK is willing to go in order to block exposure of UK/US crimes against their own and other countries’ citizens. His case is, from a legal point of view, a travesty of the British legal system, which turns out to be no more committed to justice than judiciaries in countries with which Western countries do not care to be likened.
So that was the good news, not that the dying people of Gaza will know of it, I’m afraid.
The bad news is that Galloway’s party, which could in theory rally quite a large proportion of badly deceived British voters, will be hounded by the MSM and government spokespersons and will be the butt of ceaseless defamation campaigns, the first of which started the moment his victory was announced.
As for Haiti, the US is not the only country to have defiled what must once have been a land of milk and honey. The French economist Thomas Piketty writes in Chapter 6 of Capitalism and Ideology about the blood money exacted by the French Government from its former Haitian slaves between 1849 and 1915, after which the “debt” was taken over by the USA which occupied (and virtually again enslaved) Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and continued to demand payment from its victims until 1950! (My translation of the titles of the two relevant sections in Piketty’s book is France: the double abolition of 1794-1848 and Haiti: When slavery is converted into public debt,) They explain the background of Haitian demands towards the French government.
Actually, you don’t have to read those two sections (though I do recommend that you read the entire book), but you really should read the excellent article in Responsible Statecraft: “From couptochaos: 20 years after the US ousted Haiti’s president”. It explains how the US with its visceral loathing of Articles 25 and 26 in the Declaration of Humans Rights plotted and organised the demise of the extremely popular and democratically elected Aristide.
In the article you will also find a link to the story of how the Haitian slaves heroically defeated and drove away their French owners and how they, the former slaves, subsequently had to pay the former owners (and later also the USA) compensation for loss of property, i.e. them – the former slaves.
For many countries all over the planet, the USA has been and is still the serpent in Paradise (I’m expanding on the above referenced Bushism). USA does believe in some human rights, such as the right to chose between Scylla and Charybdis during elections, provided, of course, the voters chose the candidate previously groomed for them by the USA (e.g. Guaido in Venezuela). This last proviso does not, admittedly, apply to NATO countries (on which the USA occasionally has to rely for its nefarious military operations all over the planet, currently off the coast of Yemen). USA also believes in the right to carry a gun, though I’m uncertain as to where in the Declaration of Human Rights that right is enshrined.
So you see, there has never really been any reason to suspect the upper echelons of society of even a sliver of what Craig Murray calls “decency”. We have just been docilely led by the nose.
PELSHVAL
Hva vi gjør, hva vi ikke gjør, hvordan og hvorfor
SONGS OF THE FURRY WHALE
The furry whale (cetacea paellicius) is not yet extinct, which is why it is sometimes heard to sing.
