Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Category: Foreign policy (Page 2 of 4)

Sanctions

14.03.2024 /

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.

Remarkably, the Maduro government has survived. According to MintPress as at March 2022:

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.

But US 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.

A word on Ukrainian history

25.02.2024 /

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.

Craig Murray: Mea Culpa on Ukraine

Military escalation

13.02.2024 /

On 2 February less than a handful of Norwegian dailies briefly reported the signing of an agreement between the USA and the Norwegian government, according to which Norway grants the USA 8 new military bases, in addition to the four granted in 2021. All the dailies used the same wording, including the non-word “omforent”, which no normal person outside law-enforcement circles would ever use. (The word merely means “agreed upon” – nothing wrong about that. What is wrong is that the word is never used by journalists. So these dailies are citing their government source verbatim.)

Indeed, since 2 February, there has been no public debate about this dramatic turn of events in any news medium. No anti-war protests. Nothing. The “left” – whatever is left of it – has been silent. The national assembly will obediently ratify the agreement.

Yet, according to the deal, the USA will store weapons and equipment in locations to which Norwegian inspectors have no right of access. Norwegian authorities will not be apprised of what is stored there, i.e. will not be informed if the USA stores nuclear weapons on Norwegian soil. The USA may attack Russia from Norway, if they find it serves their interests.

Norway has, de facto, handed itself over to the USA (not even NATO).

The idiots – pardon my French – who have been bamboozled into this hare-brained, treasonous agreement will have imagined that they are gratefully accepting US protection against the big bad bear on the other side of our northernmost border (with whom we have, by the way, until now had amicable relations. That will of course change: In future Russia will, for all practical purposes, no longer be bordering little old Norway, but the USA.)

The Norwegian public has heard, day in and day out, relentlessly and from all channels, that Russia wishes to engulf us, that all arguments to the contrary are Putin’s talking points, and that everything Biden and the New York Times say is God’s solemn truth. The ground has been carefully prepared in advance and resistance to the agreement is inconceivable because my compatriots are — alas — sleep-walking.

It is true that Norway’s long North Atlantic coastline is attractive to players in the current geopolitical contest, including our neighbour Russia.

It is also true that an arrest warrant was issued the other day against one of my favourite authors, the Russian Boris Akunin, who emigrated from Russia in 2014 and who calls Putin a Caligula. Apparently Akunin has urged Ukrainians to bomb Russian cities. If he returns to Russia, he will probably be put behind bars for years. Obviously, I strongly disapprove of keeping dissidents behind bars!! And Akunin is certainly not the only one.

On the other hand, what is our “protector” other than the most trigger-happy country in the world;
a country that specialises in murderous regime changes;
a country whose raison d’être is to wage disastrous wars;
a country that leaves a trail of failed states wherever it turns its attention;
a country that is blissfully indifferent to the plight of a greater part of its own population.

Using Europe as its now (already) enfeebled hostage, the USA wishes to see Russia reduced to the palaeolithic condition in which the country found itself under the rule of the US puppet Yeltsin.

How many vicious Latin American (e.g. Pinochet), African (e.g. Mobuto), East Asian (e.g. Suharto) and Middle Eastern (e.g. the Shah) dictators must the USA support? How many failed states must it create, and how many torture victims and corpses must it leave in its wake before my confounded compatriots understand the nature of US foreign policy since WWII? CIA-supported coups and/or military interventions and/or paralysing economic sanctions have targeted and sometimes utterly destroyed countries such as Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Congo, Cuba, Ghana, Grenada, Haiti, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Laos, Libya, Nicaragua, Niger, North Korea, Panama, Serbia, Somalia, Syria, Vietnam, Yemen. How many more countries must suffer the deadly attention of the CIA and US enforced sanctions before my disoriented compatriots as well as Five-Eye citizens realise what “rule of Law” actually means? Most recently:

  • The USA probably forced the non-confidence vote against Pakistan’s Imran Khan in 2022, and happily sees him imprisoned after Khan “leaked” the cypher exposing the source of his ouster. (Of course the USA denies any wrongdoing, as always.)
  • The USA is still making a determined effort to prevent developing countries from developing (via its instruments: the IMF, WTO and the World Bank).
  • The USA is leading a propaganda campaign that has strangled all Western mainstream media, thus ensuring that bewildered citizens have no idea of what is going on.
  • The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has found there are plausible grounds to suspect Israel is committing a genocide that the USA is actively supporting.
  • The USA has vowed to support Ukraine with “all it takes”. We see that the outcome so far is a dramatic depletion of the Ukrainian male population and a 23 % reduction in Ukrainian territory.

My stunned compatriots have definitely forgotten about Laos and Cambodia. They have possibly not even learnt in school why North Korea became what it is? Even the RAND Corporation points out that “operations… such as those in Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere—were disappointments or outright failures”. I put to you that failures on that scale are simply indefensible.

I fear that when my discombobulated compatriots belatedly discover that the USA cares not a hoot for “international Law”, for “freedom”, or for “democracy”, it will be too late.

A conversation

25.12.2023 /

I recommend a conversation between 3 analysts about some objectives underlying the wars in Palestine and Ukraine.

1) John Mearsheimer is a prominent political scientist best known internationally for his theory of offensive realism, which describes the interaction between great powers as being primarily driven by the rational desire to achieve or maintain regional hegemony.

(2) Alexander Mercouris har proved himself an extraordinarily prescient expert on the Ukraine issue, for which he has taken a particular interest for a decade or so. His acumen and determination in finding relevant information is astounding.

(3) Glenn Diesen is a young professor of political science who has had the courage to contradict the mainstream narrative regarding the Ukraine war and has written several interesting books.

In their conversation they try to understand why Israel and the USA are making such grave strategic mistakes in Gaza. They try to predict that war’s outcome. In the second half of the conversation they compare the Palestine issue with the debacle of Ukraine. Here they do not entirely agree as Alexander has noticed a few worrying signs.

Mary had a little lamb

24.11.2023 /

I used to love The Guardian. You could find discussions about just about anything there, views right left and centre, philosophical musings, analyses of books, films and even a magnificent series in which Andras Schiff presented each and every one of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. It was a site that continued where school education left off, a newspaper that kept us informed and on our toes. You would, not least, also find plenty of articles analysing USA’s miscellaneous wars and implanted dictators.

Alas, The Guardian I knew is no more. But the Guardian is not alone in abdicating as a joyfully dissenting source of analysis. Everywhere I turn to look – Le Monde, the New York Times, El Pais – all once proud publishers of the Wikileaks documents that exposed US crimes against humanity in Iraq – are now servile minions. Since dissent is no longer recognised, as such, but is redefined as “conspiracy theory”, I shall refrain from suggesting whose minions those formerly great newspapers have become.

To my knowledge, not one of them has mentioned even the abstract of the Schulenburg report, item 3 of which reads:

Contrary to Western interpretations, Ukraine and Russia agreed at the time [March 2022] that the planned NATO expansion was the reason for the war. They therefore focused their peace negotiations on Ukraine’s neutrality and its renunciation of NATO membership. In return, Ukraine would have retained its territorial integrity except for Crimea.

https://michael-von-der-schulenburg.com/how-the-chance-was-lost-for-a-peace-settlement-of-the-ukraine-war/

The report quotes the Washington Post, from April 5 2022:

For some in NATO, it’s better for Ukrainians to keep fighting and dying than to achieve a peace that comes too soon or at too high a price for Kiev and the rest of Europe. Zelensky, [they] said, should “keep fighting until Russia is completely defeated.”

https://michael-von-der-schulenburg.com/how-the-chance-was-lost-for-a-peace-settlement-of-the-ukraine-war/

Looking back, the hubris of the USA and the European NATO states has been mind-boggling. Not only has the war NOT saved Ukraine; it has NOT weakened Russia, which was, of course, the purpose of extending NATO to Ukrainian soil.

That the mainstream press is too pusillanimous now to disclose that there actually was a peace settlement ready to be signed by both parties at the very outset of the war, would have shocked me two years ago. No more. If you follow Glenn Greenwald’s tireless razor-sharp analysis of how civil liberties in the USA have been eroded year by year by decade, you will know not only that Dog does what Master commands: (As a dog owner, I can tell you a lot about how to make your dog happily obey you.) Glenn Greenwald also tells you how and why legions of intelligent, highly educated journalists are bamboozled into systematically peddling untruths.

What Glenn Greenwald does not tell you is how that same Dog versus Master relationship applies also here in Europe. Take, for instance, the UK, where the Guardian, presumably at somebody’s orders, recently removed – physically erased, stamped out – Bin Laden’s historic 2002 “Letter to America”, which in the wake of the ongoing genocide, has attracted enormous interest.

It is true that the letter seems disagreeably dogmatic and religiously authoritarian. I had to resort to self-discipline to even get past the first paragraphs. But once you do get through them, you are served a whole litany of accusations against our way of life that are thought-provoking. I put to you that “thought” is healthy, i.e. not “bad”, noxious or harmful…. (I find I need to stress the point under the assumption that the Guardian now appears to disapprove of “thought”.)

Although Bin Laden’s Letter to America (or here) is anything but an enjoyable read, much of his criticism of the USA is distressingly on the mark. It should have been published on the first page of every Western newspaper as soon as it was addressed to the US population in 2002. Had US voters been able to read that letter back then, they might have demanded a change to their country’s destructive foreign policy, hence also to the growing (and well-deserved) hatred against the West.

Allow me to quote an old nursery rhyme:

Mary had a little lamb,
Little lamb, little lamb.
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow.

And everywhere that Mary went,
Mary went, Mary went,
Everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go.

“Why does the lamb love Mary so?
Mary so, Mary so?
Why does the lamb love Mary so?”
The eager children cry.

“Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know,
Lamb, you know, lamb, you know,
Mary loves the lamb, you know,”
The teacher did reply.

It’s actually a US American nursery rhyme. I sometimes find myself humming to myself.

Everywhere the US went,
the US went, the US went
Everywhere the US went,
doom was sure to go.

In any case, it is safe to say that I no longer seek wisdom from any of the above-mentioned formerly outstanding newspapers, although I am sure they still provide interesting reviews about films and books. Somehow, in view of what sort of future is in store for us, I no longer care for their reviews.

I do, still, however care very much about the mess superpowers are making of the world. At the moment, the USA is still the hegemon, albeit a hegemon in its death-throes, hence all the more desperate and very dangerous. You may not agree with me that US hegemony is in its “death throes”. If so, I can only hope that you are mistaken and that I am not, because nothing good ever seems to come of US interventions.

It is quite possible, even probable, that if and when the USA is incapacitated, I shall be more critical of China and Russia. Obviously, they, too, want to exploit foreign lands for natural resources and cheep labour, but so far they are making a point of promising far better returns for the countries in which they “invest” than the collective west ever did.

I think the moral of this story is multi-polar: If there are three or more Masters, Dog can at all times obey the one who gives the most juicy reward.

This is not the time to make babies

03.09.2023 /

The Norwegian bellicose foreign minister Huitfelt has just been exposed in what appears to be a case of serious corruption. Her husband made some strikingly lucrative investments after she became a Cabinet member. I have seen no proof that decisions she has made as a foreign minister has contributed to their joint wealth. Yet, there is no doubting that her decisions as a foreign minister contributed to an abrupt hike in the value of stock in the arms industry, in which he invested. We all assume that, at the very least, his investments were based on information that was not immediately available to the general public, information she certainly possessed.

You should see her puckered cocker spaniel face as she denies he received the information from her, denies having the slightest idea, even, that he had invested a big lump of their money in stock that would prove extremely valuable just a few days later. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this sort of thing is called insider trading.

When Bill Clinton earnestly looked into the eyes of the US-American public and stated, enunciating slowly and very clearly, that he had never had sex with … etc., I thought he looked like a playful, slightly abashed dog, never mind what kind of dog. When our blond foreign minister is caught being bad, she definitely looks like a cocker spaniel. I hasten to add that cocker spaniels are anything but as angelic as they look. They can be very, very (and joyfully) naughty. Moreover, they can be very strong.

So what do we do about it? Well, the Norwegian papers are pondering whether she is telling the truth. The truth!!! Since when do politicians tell the truth? I add, for the record, that Foreign Minister Huitfeldt famously expressed, a couple of years ago, her confidence that the British authorities were adhering, and would continue to so, to international Human-rights treaties in their ongoing persecution of Julian Assange, something the British authorities notoriously failed to do, then as now, as Huitfeldt well knew. So much for “the truth.

“Should she be dismissed?”, a few of our dailies ask timorously. “No,” she replies earnestly. “I want to repair my mistake.” A heading reads: “I am deeply sorry that I made a mistake”, with sub-headings to the tune of “- that I did not check the rules.” Rules? In this country, every child older than 5 years knows that insider trading is against the rules, is bad, is evil, is the stuff that Hell is made of. (We were, after all, a deeply religious country until fairly recently.) But she, poor dear, was not aware of “the rules”!

Anybody who reads the international news, knows there is corruption everywhere. Corruption is the stuff the “accelerating ecological breakdown” is made of. But Norway has come a long way by marketing itself as a country that is almost devoid of corruption, that is “peaceful”, that is benign in every sense.

Huitfeldt and her husband were caught, if not not prosecuted. My question now is: What about our prime minister? Regardless of what political views Norwegians have, he is generally regarded as an earnest and relatively devout Christian, a “good man”. But he is also said to be enormously rich. What do we know about the source of his wealth? And what about his friend and political comrade, the warlord Jens Stoltenberg? Has he invested in the “industrial military complex”? For the record, some of that military industrial complex sits right here in Norway

We have just had a period of deluge here in Norway. Tens of thousands of people have lost their homes, many of them permanently. In June, we had a drought that nearly halved the grain harvest. The August deluge ruined much of what was left. France and Spain have seen their harvests crippled by drought year after year. Will Europe be able to even feed itself in coming years? We are in for a long run of droughts and deluges, unprepared as we are to replace Russian gas, and unprepared to meet, not to mention prevent, the climate disasters that have been forecast for decades. The only thing we are prepared for is war. War is always the solution of choice when the powers-that-be have made a mess of thing: War to divert attention from real and, in this case, existential threat.

The Norwegian foreign minister may be suffering some humiliating moments, but she will be fine in the long run, and wealthy, as opposed to those of us who work for median or less wages. I must remind you that median income is “the amount of income that divides a population into two equal groups, half having an income above that amount, and half having an income below that amount” (source: Wikipedia” as at 1/9/2023.) I should add that in Norway, the income of 60% of the population is less than the “average”.

What do you do when you see that you will not be able to pay the rent at the end of the month? I, for one, have not been in that situation for very many years, but I remember. So I know that what you do is to eat cheap and unhealthy food, freeze in winter, have your teeth and those of your children pulled rather than pay regular visits to the dentist, and when your bronchitis makes you too miserable, you splurge on a baby elephant.

We all divert attention away from real – “existential” – threats. The powers-that-be do so by tricking us into hating “the enemy”. As individuals, we trick ourselves into purchasing what we definitely cannot afford.

Let me tell you a secret. When I was as desperately poor as I hope none of my readers will ever be, I almost took a bank loan – in those days, bank loans were thrown at you – to buy a glass piano. Would you believe it? A glass piano! I wasn’t even a half-decent pianist, but an instrument of glass would surely have been the most beautiful object imaginable. Or so I thought, because I had limited recourse to beauty.

Fortunately, I took to my senses. After all, I knew I would someday become an academic of sorts, if not a good pianist, and would be able to lead a “normal” life.

And now, as an academic, I have learnt that foreign affairs are just as business affairs. Please take note, because this is important:

If you are a businessman, your job is to beat your competitors, preferably to take over their customers and suppliers.

  • If you are a nation, your business is to beat competing nations, take over their trade and trading partners.

If you are a businessman you should prevent your employees from unioniising You do so either by firing them or by offering attractive conditions, wages etc.

  • If you are a nation, you should prevent your population from revolting. You do so either by subjecting it to police terror or by providing decent living conditions.

What I’m saying is that neither business nor foreign affairs are based on lofty ideals.

In short, this is definitely not the time to bring babies into the world.

John Mearsheimer

18.08.2023 /

Mr. Mearsheimer, who is a prominent expert on international relations, cf. Britannica, has been relatively uncommunicative since 2022, after the war he had warned about ever since 2014, started. Maybe he did not want to tell us “I told you so”. Or was his case perhaps one of not being allowed to tell us?

Like Jeffrey Sachs, Patrick Lawrence, Chris Hedges and other noted independent journalists, he has been forced to turn to the alternative media.

Here I merely wish to direct your attention to the Aaron Maté of the Greyzone’s interview with him on July 30 2023: The interview bears the title
“John Mearsheimer: Ukraine war is a long-term danger“.

John Mearsheimer was right in 2014. He was right in early 2022. I think he may be right now. So I think we should listen to him. (There is a transcript of the text under the video link.)

Quoting Kissinger

15.08.2023 /

To be an enemy of the United States is dangerous. To be a friend of the United States is fatal”

Henry Kissinger

Indeed. In the wake of the Ukraine debacle, many of us are beginning to understand the statement. Here in Europe, all states, including Ukraine, are seeing an unprecedented rise in the cost of living due, mainly, to the sanctions regime, which is hitting us harder than it is hitting Russia.

Meanwhile, US hawks are starting to panic. True, the Ukraine war has consolidated NATO in a big way, and entrenched Russophobia in the West. But as several mainstream foreign policy commentators have warned, the US is loosing its grip on much of the rest of the world. Third world countries no longer take kindly to US and European bullying, financially or otherwise. They resent coercive methods aimed at ensuring support for the US in its conflict with Russia/China. They resent an intricate network of sanctions. In short: The Ukraine debacle is turning into a tectonic shift, as fault lines spread in new and unexpected directions. All of which will not be news to you, I am sure.

Moreover, African states have long suspected that what was denominated “aid” by Western Powers wasn’t really aid at all, rather the opposite.

Again I urge you to listen to (or read) a discussion between three economists about the causes of third world debt here and here. Only if we understand how deliberately imposed financial impediments are hampering development in third-world countries, can we understand the growing anger.

Niger, however is not tied to the dollar, but to the CFA frank, a freak frank as it were. See in this article from Greyzone, under the last sub-heading “ECOWAS as a neocolonial weapon”, how CFA has a stranglehold on Nigerien economy.

What interests me today, however, is how the US is responding to this growing resentment and assertiveness on the part of third-world countries.

There is, for instance, ongoing US pressure

Meanwhile:

There is growing awareness, in alternative media, of USA’s noxious interference in other countries’ affairs. Mainstream media’s grip is starting to slip a little even in the West. We are seeing a mushrooming of alternative online media that are challenging the virulently belligerent pro-US narrative. Even film makers are starting to grumble, e.g. David Bradbury with his “Road to War“.

What particularly raises concerns in the West, in spite of the Russo/Sino-phobia that is so eagerly fanned by mainstream media, is the massive, ongoing military build-up, and its seemingly inevitable corollary: nuclear war. People, for instance in Australia, are beginning to ponder the following question: If the mainstream media in the USA and EU hate Russia and China that much, do we not have more to fear from the USA and EU than from Russia and China?

And if protecting a “rules-based” order is so costly, in terms of the dent made in tax paying households’ economies and, not least, for our environment and hence future generations, is the “rules-based order” really worth fighting for?

… quite apart from the fact that the said order is anything but rules-based. It is based, inter alia, on diplomacy which is a euphemism for coercion. I hasten to add, that while tact and good manners – the essence of diplomacy, we were told – certainly are assets in the upper echelons of the Corps Diplomatique, they are not indispensable. Bribes, however, are indispensable and threats, and the means to effectuate them. Besides, diplomacy relies not only on well-dressed patricians: Anyone who has seen a reasonably decent Hollywood spy film, will know that part of the game is carried out by professional killers and their ilk.

So yes: to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous. To be a friend of the United States is fatal

Five minutes of foreign policy

01.08.2023 /

What’s going on in Niger? I wonder. My next thought is: How strange the press is! Today, I’ve checked AP, Reuters and Al Jazeera – these are the most common sources that feed local papers in the West about situations in places to which a news outlet may not be able to send its own correspondents. Naturally, I have also checked my own country’s national broadcasting company, and the one daily paper I tend to follow.

They all say the same thing: The army has deposed the president of Niger, who is now a prisoner in his palace. The new president is a general. In other words a coup. There is some uncertainty as to whether the French are planning military intervention. There is universal condemnation of the coup. Some countries are evacuating their citizens from Niger. Most countries are suspending aid to Niger and even contemplating sanctions.

Period.

What they don’t explain is: Why has there been a military coup in Niger? Well, yes, of course the military is dissatisfied, but why?

By the way, in case you were wondering, the demonym for Niger is Nigerien, as opposed to Nigerian. Hear the pronunciation here. And you might look up the pronunciation of Niger, while you’re at it. No, I did not know it, not until just now, which just goes to show, not only how ignorant I am, but also how forlornly anonymous Niger is.

So how come many sources fail to explain why western leaders are worried about an imprisoned president whose name they probably don’t even remember? After all, he’s imprisoned in a palace. Julian Assange’s plight in Belmarsh Prison is far, far worse.

Take a look at this LA Times article of 31 July, for instance: Not a word – NOT ONE WORD – about the uranium deposits tersely mentioned in Britannica:

Niger’s known reserves of uranium rank among the most important in the world, and the country is one of the world’s top 10 leading producers of uranium.

https://www.britannica.com/place/Niger/Economy

 Or the oil deposits.

There were intensive exploration activities on the Agadem block between 2008 and 2017, when the CNPC drilled 166 exploration wells, enabling the discovery of 106 new oil deposits containing 2P recoverable reserves of 815m barrels. The petroleum is high quality with an API gravity of 30 degrees and a very low sulphur content.

https://african.business/2021/11/energy-resources/niger-an-attractive-nation-with-an-emerging-oil-industry

CNPC, by the way is China. China has found that Niger’s oil reserves are so important that they are building a pipeline to export 90,000 barrels pr day.

The Niger–Benin pipeline, measuring 1950km and connecting the Agadem block in eastern Niger to the Beninese side of Sèmé, will be the longest pipeline in Africa. The construction work began on 5 July 2021.

Ibid

The Nigerians must be filthy rich. Actually, uranium isn’t all that expensive, but still.

So I can just imagine why there has been a coup. I guess you can too. And I can just imagine why France already has at least 1,500 troops and a drone base in Niger, and why the US has at least 1,100 troops and two drone bases in Niger. Why, surely everybody understands that it’s the most natural thing in the world for the US to protect people from themselves here there and everywhere, and for French troops to be just casually hanging around in former colonies. After all, the US and France are democracies, i.e. rule-of-law and can-do-no-harm-countries, as opposed, of course, to China and Russia that are both do-no-good-countries.

All for now.

Addendum on 2 August 2023:
An article by Vijay Prashad and Kambale Musavuli answers my questions.

Rødt

21.04.2023 /

Rødt is the name of a Norwegian left-wing political party. It is the only political party that still advocates leaving NATO. The party maintains that NATO is not a defence alliance, but an alliance of nations vindicating US global hegemony. The party avers that NATO not so much solves as creates problems.

It is the only political party that has been, until now, opposed to Norway’s sending weapons to Ukraine – on the grounds that more weapons will not solve the underlying issues that lead to the war.

However, Rødt is at a crossroads. As we should all know by now, the mainstream media is anything but free, and its Manichean approach to the Ukraine war has been so consistent that few can resist what is, in point of fact, a NATO narrative. Who can fail to shudder, for instance, at a barrage such as the one in Guardian on 4 April 2022 regarding the Bucha massacre?

Now there have been some doubts about that massacre. For one thing the timeline seems dubious. Quite another matter is that the press and hence also the general public always immediately assume that if an atrocity has been committed, it must have been committed by the Russians or Jihadists.

Alas, even the last Norwegian holdout against NATO propaganda is folding. This weekend, a national Rødt conference may possibly decide to approve sending weapons to Ukraine.

In the event, this will have no practical consequences for Ukraine or the war. Norway sends weapons to Ukraine, with or without the approval of a relatively small political party. But it will have consequences for Norway, in that there will no longer be any Norwegian political opposition to the NATO narrative.

That would be very unfortunate.

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