CRIMINAL FOREIGN POLICY

RAINER SHEA—In Chile, the people just voted by more than two-thirds to throw out the constitution which was created for them during the Pinochet dictatorship. This means that the era of dictatorship can now honestly be considered over, and that the neoliberal policies which the old constitution enforced are vulnerable to being eliminated by the democratic will of the population-which has suffered on a unique scale from Covid-19 due to these policies.

BEN NORTON—A far-right Bolivian activist and coup supporter, Nadia Beller, published photos on Facebook and Twitter of The Grayzone electoral observers. The images make it clear that we were being closely monitored while in the airport in Chile. Photos of Blumenthal as he boarded the airplane in Santiago were also published online.

Beller shared the itinerary of when our flight was due to arrive in Santa Cruz, implicitly encouraging her followers to come to the airport to threaten election monitors.

She also falsely smeared Max Blumenthal as a “disinformation expert from RT.”

These stalker photos were subsequently amplified by prominent right-wing Bolivian media personalities, such as Agustín Zambrana Arze.

MoA—That the ‘rules based international order’ is supposed to include vague concepts of ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’, ‘fundamental freedoms’, ‘diversity’ and more makes it easy to claim that this or that violation of the ‘rules based international order’ has occurred. Such violations can then be used to impose punishment in the form of sanctions or war. That the above definition was given by a minority of a few rich nations makes it already clear that it can not be a global concept for a multilateral world.

THE SAKER—The West has clearly taken a consolidated, common, position towards this crisis.  {As usual] The West does not recognize the outcome of the elections and the West has now thrown its full weight behind the so-called “opposition”.
Western leaders have called Putin, apparently to demand that Russia not intervene in Belarus.  Putin apparently told them that what is taking place is Belarus is none of their business, thank you.
It is now clear that the West will accept nothing short of what we could call a “Ukronazi outcome” and that the Empire will use all its resources short of military action to try to seize control of Belarus.

PHILIP WEISS—One way to understand the donations is BDS. Ilhan Omar is for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) targeting Israel. Melton-Meaux is against it.

This is now a fault-line in the Democratic Party. The rank-and-file clearly are favorable to BDS. Polling data show that 44 percent of Democrats support BDS; while only 15 percent oppose it. Yet 92 percent of House Democrats vote for a bill that characterizes BDS as antisemitic.