I am not going to write about Syria. I have never been to Syria and know very little about the country.
I do, however, remember that I learnt and knew – with absolute certainty when it happened – that the USA (starting with NED) played a dirty game in Syria’s civil war. The US was heavily engaged there from the very start. Or before.
Like Libya and Iraq, Syria was once a country with very respectable living standards, relatively high levels of education and health services, but no free press. In 2011 people started clamouring for a free press. Protesters were imprisoned and viciously tortured.
The Syrian government claimed they were cracking down on terrorists. Of course, most of the protesters were not terrorists.
But there were terrorists, and they were being trained and financed by the USA which could not countenance that Assad was under Russian influence.
Did I already mention that Syria was once a country with very respectable living standards, relatively high levels of education and health services?
I might even mention it a third time, since the USA is not a country with very respectable living standards, availability of higher education and decent health services. Much good the free press and the circus of democratic elections have done the majority of US citizens.
Anyway, the US has since imposed “sanctions” on Syria, has stolen Syria’s oil and has occupied its most valuable and productive agricultural land. In short, the USA has done what it regularly does to countries that offer citizens outside Europe respectable living standards, relatively high levels of education and health services: It has tried to starve the country to death.
This I did not know. Not until now, when I have spent quite a lot of time and effort trying to understand why Assad’s troops simply caved in, why Turkey is playing its strange game, why Russia walked away, and why Israel is applauding a Jihadist occupation of Syria. Very confusing indeed unless you understand the background, which the corporate press painstakingly declines to do.
So rather than tell you all about Syria, I leave you with Chris Hedges, or rather with Alastair Crooke [yes, that is how the name is spelt] to whom he addresses a few questions. I must warn you: The former MI6 officer and diplomat has a weak voice but a most extraordinarily nimble mind.
When we read about a serious crime, we tend to look for a financial motive – “follow the money”. Forcing Ukraine to fight “to the last Ukrainian” is, from an ethical point of view an execrable crime. Is it merely a crime of passion – “russophobia” – as some critics have suggested?
While the blindfolded Norwegian population undoubtedly suffers from acute Russophobia, the Norwegian and other European governments may have more rational reasons for sacrificing Ukraine. After all, they know perfectly well that this war was provoked by NATO, prolonged by NATO and exacerbated by NATO.
I put to you that there may be important financial motives. Apart from Ukraine’s natural resources which US and Western European vultures are eager to get their hands on, there is the matter of the US dollar, the “reserve currency” (the stuff that central banks theoretically have stashed away in case all the country’s bank customers simultaneously demand their savings). It used to be gold, now it’s USD, the currency that has underpinned most business transactions all over the world for decades.
The Reserve Currency is being challenged by the BRICS de-dollarization movement in which Russia plays a prominent part.
We are already seeing that the price of gold has more than quadrupled since 2002. (Gold cannot be produced and exists only in very limited quantities. It is therefore considered a safe investment.) The price has risen because demand has risen. We have also seen, as you surely know, a spectacular rise in the price of Bitcoins. This tendency reflects a “loss in confidence in America’s management of the global order” and hence a perceived need to “diversify” reserves.
Meanwhile, US debt is now at 34trillion USD. That is 120 % of the country’s GDP. Of all taxes, tariffs and fees collected by the US, 23 % goes to paying interest on debt. The US runs an increase in deficits every single year, not least to invest in wars, and every year, it finances the new deficit with new loans. How long can it keep the ball rolling?
What happens if people/countries stop investing in loans to the US? Well, the US would have to raise the price it is willing to pay for the loan (interest rate). US citizens are still buying treasury bonds, but the share of US treasury securities held by foreign investors has fallen from 34 % in 2015 to 24% in 2024 although Europe and other allies are still bravely buying them. (China holds $800 billion of US debt, down from $1.3 trillion in 2014.)
This is not good news for the USA. Even Investopedia admits that
the U.S. has long depended on the dollar’s role as a reserve currency to support running large deficits on government spending and international trade. If central banks around the world no longer felt the need to stuff their coffers with dollars, then the U.S. would likely lose this flexibility.
So back to Europe’s suicidal war against Russia: To be frank, I’m not into the mechanisms of Europe’s economic reliance on the dollar, but I believe they are linked to the growing financialisation (what we used to call “speculation”) of our economies. At any rate they say that “When America sneezes, Europe dies of Covid.” Or something to that effect.
Europe is joined at the hip with the USA and is very shaky now, with zero growth and huge debts. Meanwhile, the EUROzone suffers from “serious structural weaknesses”, whatever that means, and even Deutsche Bank has had liquidity problems. In short, the Euro might look defiant, but it is and has long been on life support.
There are many obstacles to de-dollarization. Nevertheless, as you can hear in this long but extremely interesting conversation between three economists, it is already well under-way, and BRICS and non-aligned countries are enthusiastically working out ways and means to overcome them.
I believe, in short, that Europe (and the US) fears that BRICS (rather than Russia) represents a financial (rather than military) threat. European leaders are prolonging and exacerbating this war not to defend Ukraine but in the hope of weakening Russia and slowing down de-dollarization.
After Israel flattened the Iranian consulate in Damascus on 1 April this year, killing seven people including two generals, the world held its breath, because obviously Iran had a right to retaliate fiercely. The USA and its European vassals would then have to defend Israel. There are rumours that CIA director Burns – an intelligent man, I have heard – intervened in private conversations with the Iranian leadership. War was at any rate evaded; this time.
Next, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s chief negotiator, and his bodyguard were assassinated on 31 July in Tehran. They were in Tehran to celebrate the inauguration of Iran’s president, Masaoud Pezeshkian, so this was not only terrorism in the highest degree; it was a de facto declaration of war against Iran. That is probably why Israel has neither denied nor admitted the assassination. Since then, the world has really been holding its breath: If Iran fails to avenge the act, Israel will be encouraged to humiliate Iran even further.
If Iran attacks, the USA will have to rush to Israel’s defence, and nobody knows where we go from there. This would be the “wider regional war” so often referred to by shuddering reporters in for instance Responsible Statecraft, But Iran is so far playing a cool hand.
As for Russia, the recent Kursk incursion, Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russia, and threatened use of long-range missiles (ATACMS and JASSMs ) against Moscow – all of which require the active foreknowledge, support and technical assistance of the USA – could easily tempt Russia to give us all a good scare. True, Russia struck the military training academy in Poltava a few days ago. The approx 300 casualties included several military instructors from NATO countries, among them – ironically – at least one Swede (cf. Battle of Poltava in 1709).
But by and large, Russia is playing a cool hand. Why?
Could it be that Russia and Iran believe that the USA is losing its grip? That Israel is its own undoing? (Europe, of course, is already a casualty of the Ukraine war.)
Or could it be that China is playing a role here? China does not want WWIII. China does not have the sort of military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about in 1961. Nobody wants WWIII, I suspect, except shareholders in the arms industry as well as elderly boys and girls who have been brought up playing war games on their computers and watching bang-bang films on their giant home screens.
Personally, I don’t think the USA is loosing its grip. Not yet. Yes, more and more people are recognising what a monster it is, with its economic sanctions, its regime change operations, its support for Zionism and with its NED, but as we all know, hating a bully is not enough. It takes more to get rid of it.
The USA does not indoctrinate its own citizens, or so they – the citizens – believe, even though they have been made to recite the pledge of allegiance every single day of their school life. Until the USA starts crumbling from within, it will continue its harassment, with military and economic interference and not least with intense internal indoctrination and external psyops.
The mainstream news is full of warfare, naturally. War is spectacularly and dramatically tragic. Economic sanctions – i.e. attempts to starve populations to death – are not as newsworthy, except in the case of Russia, because they don’t look good.
But psychological and information warfare is probably the most powerful weapon of all, and not a word do we hear about it in the mainstream media. China has decided to do something about one of the USA’s most nefarious tools, NED. In August this year the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a report that reads:
It is imperative to unmask NED and alert all countries to the need to see through its true colors, guard against and fight back its disruption and sabotage attempts.
The report should particularly be recommended to those who are upset about alleged Russian interference in the eminently “free and fair” US elections.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry report continues:
[NED] has long engaged in subverting state power in other countries, meddling in other countries’ internal affairs, inciting division and confrontation, misleading public opinion, and conducting ideological infiltration, all under the pretext of promoting democracy.
NED, as we know, is anything but non-governmental, as the report explains. It spends a great deal of US taxpayers’ money to finance opposition groups in various countries, including Iran and Russia (and,not least – mind! – Georgia).
The report’s conclusion:
Under the guise of democracy, freedom, and human rights, the United States has used NED for infiltration, interference and subversion against other countries. This has grossly violated other countries’ sovereignty, security and development interests, blatantly breached international law and basic norms of international relations, and severely jeopardized world peace…
Of course, you need not trust the Chinese, or the Russians, but can you trust the USA? Are the N.Y. Times and WaPo free to write what they please?
A couple of days ago, I wrote about watching a horse-drawn carriage in which my children are riding. Alas, the horses have been stung by something and have gone bananas. They are careening towards a precipice. Is there nothing that can stop them, no horse whisperer who can soothe them and halt their flight?
You may think I’m too pessimistic. After all, things have looked bad in the past, too, but humankind always survived.
And it it is indeed true that WWI was not the end of the world, it only killed around 15–22 million. Even WWII was not the end of the world (“70–85 million people perished, or about 3% of the estimated global population”). We didn’t have the bomb yet, except at the very end, and of course then we used it.
I’m not into wars, but it seems to me that WWI was an utterly senseless affair, pointless and basically unnecessary. WWII, however, was a different matter: The Nazis’ policies regarding what they considered the “untermensch”, and their determination to realise said policies, could simply not be allowed to prevail.
My reading is that Israel’s policies regarding non-Jews and their determination to realise said policies … I say no more.
Only the USA can stop the Israelis now. Will the USA stop the Israelis?
Listen to US Colonel Wilkerson here.He knows a thing or two, is a good talker, and he has a sense of humour too. “Fortunately …,” he said, among other things, “the mood is changing.” He meant the mood among the constituents, not the mood in Congress, yet.
A Global Affairs study conducted in 2023 indicates that 58 % of US Americans view China’s development “as a critical threat to the vital interest of the United States”, and only 19 % “believe that China will deal responsibly with world problems.”
For a generation, the United States bet that robust economic engagement would lead the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to open its economy and financial markets and in turn to liberalize its political system and abide by the rule of law. Those reforms did not occur. … the CCP has pursued a multidecade campaign of … decoupling the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from the global economy, making the PRC less dependent on the United States in critical sectors, while making the United States more dependent on the PRC.
(There is no disputing that China seeks to become less dependent of the US economy.)
On page 8, the report’s list of recommendations ends thus:
Taken together [the recommendations] would level the economic playing field, reduce the PRC’s hold on U.S. and allied critical supply chains, and invest in a future of continued economic and technological leadership for the United States and its likeminded alliesand partners. [My highlight]
ibid
The term “leadership” occurs 25 times in the report, as for example here: “… thereby undermining American global leadership”.
What the report calls “continued global leadership”, the Chinese refer to as “continued hegemony”. Are the expressions synonymous?
We don’t often encounter the word “hegemony” in the daily news. It sounds foreign and has an unpleasant aftertaste. Nevertheless, a Google search for “USA” AND “hegemony” will return an avalanche of links to sites that either predict an end to US hegemony or, on the contrary, hotly dismiss such a prognosis.
Britannica on hegemony:
… the dominance of one group over another, often supported by legitimating norms and ideas. The term hegemony is today often used as shorthand to describe the relatively dominant position of a particular set of ideas and their associated tendency to become commonsensical and intuitive, thereby inhibiting the dissemination or even the articulation of alternative ideas.
Britannica’s subtle definition would perhaps be reworded by a less highly educated person as: “hegemony” is power exercised by persons who are bossy, domineering – in short bullies.
I’m taking pains to stress this fine distinction between (good) “leadership”, which we admire in a sports team, a military unit or a well-run workplace, and hegemony, which tends to be resented or, at best, tolerated because there is no alternative.
I believe that US Americans are being mislead by their leaders – Democrats and Republicans alike – as to what the rest of the world feels about their country’s economic, military and political control over much of the world. If you read Rogue State by the indefatigable late William Blum (whom I have eulogised in post after post) you will understand that grievances are not without cause.
Back to China. For the USA, the “threat” from China is primarily economic and technological. Do please note the word “threat”. Not even the above-quoted angry report maintains that China seeks to harm the USA with economic sanctions, lethal viruses or AI attacks on banks. According to the report, the only reason China represents a “threat” is that it’s doing well although (or perhaps because) it deliberately fails to follow the US neoliberal playbook. China designs its’s economic policies in such a way that economic growth also improves living conditions for its population. The US hasn’t been doing anything of the kind for several decades.
In 2023 Chinese GNP grew by 5.2 %. Even the IMF expects it to grow by 4.6 % in 2024. China is doing well in spite of Covid, and in spite of a serious real estate crisis. That is certainly not the case for EU states, and the US is so debt-ridden that many people are transferring their savings to expensive cryptocurrencies.
So China represents no military threat to the USA, yet. But in view of recent US provocations (Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and the gift to Taiwan in April this year of 8 billion USD in military aid) China will surely be preparing itself.
What is Taiwan, by the way? It is not a country recognised by the UN. It was always part of China until after Chiang Kai-Shek lost the civil war and fled to Taiwan which subsequently suffered a murderous 38-year dictatorship. You will not find much about this on the internet, alas. Yet, it was only in 2016 that his Kuomintang party was voted out of power. At best you might get an idea with a search for “Taiwan 228”. History is written, after all, by the victors. USA has been the victor since WWII.
After WWII the USA was one of very few countries in the world that wasn’t destroyed. Russia, China, Germany, England, France, Japan… all in ruins because of the war, and the third world was in ruins because of colonialism. The USA was determined to call the shots, and has done just that ever since.
When US policy makers use the word “hegemon” they prefix it with the epithet “benevolent”. The “benevolent hegemon”. Words have power and US citizens have been deluded into thinking that their country has spawned democracy and justice throughout its sphere of influence.
The benevolent hegemon’s malignant foreign policy choices are now being countered, and the USA is desperately trying to pull its chestnuts out of the fire. Desperate situations call for desperate action. Trying to provoke a war with China may be one of them.
If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and impoverished, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism.
Then I would announce, in all sincerity, to every corner of the world, that America’s global interventions have come to an end, and inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the USA but henceforth—oddly enough—a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims.
There would be more than enough money. One year’s military budget of $330 billion is equal to more than $18,000 an hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.
That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I’d be assassinated.
You will find this passage in “Author’s Foreword: Concerning September 11, 2001” in a book written by William Blum: Rogue State – a Guide to the World’s only Superpower.
The author is not particularly well known, despite his impressive erudition. Whatever fame has befallen him is due largely to praise he received from Osama Bin Laden, who allegedly quoted the above paragraph and recommended the book.
Surprisingly, William Blum (1933-2018) is not vilified in Wikipedia’s brief article about him, in spite of his sharp and detailed criticism of the long line of scandalous US military, economic and media interventions – all of which have had disastrous humanitarian consequences – all over the world. Judging from the article, he grew up in fairly modest circumstances. His education as an accountant will have seemed sensible rather than glamorous. He must have been very bright, because rather than work as an accountant, he became a computer programmer with IBM and was subsequently employed by the foreign service. A patriot, it would seem if we read between the lines, who subsequently was “disillusioned” by the Vietnam war.
Many others, of course, were also disillusioned by the Vietnam war. Many young US Americans were badly beaten by the police. Most of them recovered and went on to lead so-called “normal” lives.
But William Blum lost his cherished job with the State Department, something that did not deflate his interest in foreign affairs: He devoted the rest of his life to the solitary task of studying and writing about US foreign policy. Apart from the books he wrote, he also kept a blog that is still available to us. (By the way, I suggest you run a search in his blog for NED. William Blum knew very well what sort of sinister apparatus NED was and is.)
Reading Blum’s books, one cannot help being dumbfounded by the callousness, ignorance and recklessness of the entire string of presidential administrations since WWII. All the more reason, Blum must have thought, for him to try to tell his fellow citizens what was going on, and what – by the way – is still going on, though William Blum has been spared having to witness the latest consequences of US policies in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Several of his books, including The Rogue State are available on, for instance, Amazon. I should point out, though, that you can also download that particular book from, of all places, the CIA library.
Killing Hope, U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II was the book Noam Chomsky referred to with the words: “far and away the best book on the topic.” It is rather expensive, but I see that a free pdf version can be found.
More than 20 years have passed since the above-mentioned two books appeared. A long time, you might say. Many people will maintain that the USA has changed over the past two decades and is more observant of human rights, more humane. I’m afraid that such a view will seem doubtful in light of the ongoing genocide in which USA is deeply complicit. Insisting that Ukraine must be a member of NATO (most recently two days ago), at the expense of the vast and growing number of Ukrainian widows, is not very humane. (I mention the widows rather than the men, of whom relatively few remain, since dead soldiers no longer feel pain.)
A systematic US mistake identified by William Blum (e.g. in Vietnam in 1952, according to Graham Green in the novel The Quiet American) – a mistake made again, and again, and again – was to fail to understand the “adversary”. With blissfully arrogant ignorance, the US very recently set about using Ukraine to destroy or at least weaken Russia. The result was of course the decimation of the male Ukrainian population, while Russia has never been stronger.
Chapter 34 of Killing Hope is, I find, particularly illuminating. Here Blum discusses the details of the US-directed propaganda war in the run-up to the coup in Chile – 9/11, by the way, 1973. The population had to be prepared for the coup, had to be convinced that it was a necessary step to save the country from cutthroat Communists and from a Russian and/or Cuban invasion. The details are fascinating because I see some of the same tactics being employed in Norway today.
***
Alas, yes, my country, Norway, is a US vassal. Norway’s propaganda blitzkrieg these past two years has been staggering. Here nobody in his or her right mind dares dispute the official narrative that Russia’s military operation was “unprovoked”. Nobody dares call the war a US proxy war. There is no discussion, no debate, nothing, in a country that used to relish fierce political discussions!
I sent a couple of articles to one of the couple of independent websites that do actually dispute the official narrative, and I was warned not to reveal my name, as I might then lose my job and my friends.
To “defence”! Not to countering climate change; not even to green-washing, not to reduction of inequality, not to humanitarian aid.
No. To “defence”, i.e. to asist USA in its efforts to maintain global hegemony. To war. To a bellicose march under the US flag. Do we, Norwegians, want this? Do we even know that this is in store for us?
I am shattered. I am desperately ashamed of my country. This is how William Blum must have felt when he discovered what the Vietnam war was all about.
I’ve been reading a lot about Haiti lately, largely inspired by what I learnt a year or so ago, about the slaves who fought for and won their freedom from arrogant French landlords supported by French warships. Yes, the slaves were actually able to defeat Napoleon’s forces (20,000 soldiers and as many sailors) and to declare Haiti a sovereign Republic in 1804. That is a remarkable achievement.
[I]n August 1791 the first slave armies were established in northern Haiti under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture. …
Ultimately more than 50,000 French troops died in an attempt to retake the colony, including 18 generals. The French managed to capture Louverture, transporting him to France for trial. He was imprisoned at Fort de Joux, where he died in 1803 of exposure and possibly tuberculosis.
Wikipedia as at 31.01.2024
Napoleon is said to have explained in the midst of the war in Haiti: “My decision to destroy the authority of the Blacks in Saint Domingue (Haiti) is not so much based on considerations of commerce and money…as on the need to block forever the forward march of Blacks in the world.”
We can well imagine US slave owners’ horror at the success of the slave rebellion. So Thomas Jefferson refused to recognise Haiti. Other nations, too, imposed diplomatic and economic sanctions on the newly formed Republic. These embargoes froze Haiti out of the global economic market, and denied the burgeoning nation diplomatic participation in the international political scene. I’ll repeat two words here: “economic sanctions”. What would the goal of those sanctions have been, I wonder, if not the same as that of current sanctions: to punish, to starve and to cause suffering to the population. Back then when they had no internet, an additional aim will have been to reduce access to science and literature and hence to perpetuate ignorance.
What was new to me a year or two ago was not the slave rebellion as such, but that the French demanded that the slaves who had won their freedom in battle, pay compensation for their freedom! I assume the former slaves accepted these terms, partly to avoid being regularly revisited by the French army, and partly because payment for liberation was still the norm at the time. When the Russian serfs were liberated more than 50 years later, in 1861, the landlords had to be compensated, while the former serfs were left without roofs over their heads.
So Haiti was saddled from the start with colossal debts and had to take bank loans at exorbitant interest rates. Not until 1947 were they able to pay off the slave debt. Take a look at that sentence. Former slaves were paying for their freedom until 1947! From 1915 on, they were not even paying France, but the USA that had purchased the debt.
Yes, from the 20th century on, Haiti’s biggest problem (apart from earthquakes) has been its proximity to the USA. The USA has pretended that it is “helping” Haiti get back on its feet. Alas! To quote Kenan Malik’s very brief but wonderfully succinct article “Plundered and corrupted for 200 years, Haiti was doomed to end in anarchy :
“I helped make Haiti… a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues,” Maj Gen Smedley Butler, a leader of the American forces in Haiti, wrote in 1935.
I need to stop here and stress that I strongly recommend Kenan Malik’s article, because Haiti’s woes have been, throughout, so overwhelming, that most of us, give up trying to get our head around them. Malik’s article summarises things very neatly. But even Wikipedia admits that:
[t]he [US] invasion and subsequent occupation [1915-1934] was promoted by growing American business interests in Haiti, especially the National City Bank of New York, which had withheld funds from Haiti and paid rebels to destabilise the nation through the Bank of the Republic of Haiti with an aim at inducing American intervention.
Wikipedia as at 31/03/24 (my emphasis)
What soon followed was almost 29 years (1959 to 1986) of dynastic Duvalier dictatorship (Papa and Baby Doc) and death squads, which the U.S. unconditionally supported by providing economic and military assistance. Graham Greene explores this ghastly period in his depressing novel “the Comedians.”
Finally, Jean-Bertrand Aristide became the first democratically (and jubilantly) elected president in 1990 (with 92 % of the votes). But the US orchestrated no less than two coups d’etat against him and finally trucked him off to central Africa.
What has happened since is fairly chaotic, it is true. The key, however, is summed up by Kenan Malik in the above cited article:
The suppression of democratic movements became the constant thread of the nation’s history.
Of course, Haiti is not alone in this respect, but the country’s class differences have been exacerbated by the involvement of foreign governments, particularly the USA and more recently Canada. The US still runs Haiti one way or another, nominally through the so-called “core group” of ambassadors, and with the aid of its creation RNDDH, aka Orange DDH, a so-called human rights group (in reality a typical NED scam).
What is also clear is that the mission of Haiti’s police and military is to protect the comprador bourgeoisie and the elite,not the overwhelming majority.
Mainstream media is absolutely useless with regard to Haiti. What they describe, apart from effects of the earthquakes, is “gang violence”. Gang violence sounds bad, of course, but what do the gangs represent?
Are the gangs paid? If so by whom/why?
Are the gangs politically motivated? If so, how/why?
Who are the beneficiaries of the violence?
How have the funds disbursed by the USA and other countries been used? Is there any accountability?
Why is most of the population so desperately poor and uneducated despite considerable “aid” from the USA and allies?
No, mainstream media is mostly pretty useless. So do please visit Responsible Statecraft’sfresh article US should let Haiti reclaim its democracy which goes a long way in answering the above questions, and more. (Notice, for instance, President Biden’s attempt to persuade Kenyans to do the killing, and Kenya’s reluctance to do so.) Notice, finally, the article’s conclusion that the USA has to finally leave Haiti alone.
I think Haiti has served as a template for the very concept “failed state”. Let’s hope that Biden’s fear of loosing the looming US presidential election will dissuade him from enforcing another reign of terror on the island country.
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.
The events immediately preceding Russia’s entry into Ukraine have been the subject of furious debate (not in my country, true enough, where any scepticism regarding the dominant narrative is fiercely cancelled.)
I think those events have been made sufficiently clear, by now, for us to understand what happened and why it happened.
What has not been discussed much is: Just what is Ukraine? What is the history of Ukraine? Putin tried to give Tucker Carlson a crash course on the subject, but of course the powers-that-be define “whatever Putin says” as intrinsically wrong.
Now I happen to have read quite a lot of Russian history these past months, but rather than share my views with you, I warmly recommend an article by Craig Murrey who cogently explains a few salient points. In addition to touching upon historical aspects, he also has some refreshing advice regarding a solution to the conflict. I think some of us — myself included — have what you might call an attitude problem. So having read his article, I stand chastened.
