WESTERN MEDDLING & HYPOCRISY

MATTHEW EHRET—As historian Anton Chaitkin recently reported: “Lemnitzer had displayed what his faction viewed as his qualifications for this role back in August 1960, when, as Army chief of staff, he announced that the Army was all ready to “restore order” in the United States after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union—to bring back normalcy just as the military does after a flood or a riot”

ALAN MACLEOD—The United States has long had a fractious relationship with the UN, constantly using its veto power to sink progressive legislation that would weaken its military, cultural or economic hegemony. In 2017, the U.S. formally pulled out of the UN’s scientific and cultural organization, UNESCO, in response to the group admitting Palestine. American sanctions are not popular at all in the world; in November, for instance, the UN voted 187-3 (U.S., Israel, Brazil) to condemn Washington’s embargo on Cuba. It was the twenty-eighth consecutive year with vote totals varying little from year to year.

RACHEL BLEVINS—The US is promising retaliation after top judges at the International Criminal Court gave the approval to move forward with the first ever war crimes investigation into the conduct of the US military and the CIA in Afghanistan.

The US is now firing back, after top judges at the International Criminal Court gave the green-light to move forward with a war crimes investigation into US conduct in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US does not recognize the ICC’s authority over American citizens, and has no plans to cooperate.

BRIAN CLOUGHLEY—Trump and his minions have gone out of their way to grossly inconvenience, denigrate and insult the European Union and China and if they think that when international affairs return to a pre-epidemic state, then there will be forgiveness on the part of the EU and the PRC they are profoundly mistaken. The resentment created by Washington’s sneering attitude and mercurial pronouncements isn’t going to disappear. There will be blowback, and the U.S. will suffer, and the blame for this will lie squarely with the White House, its Congressional hacks, and the egregious Pompeo. 

To understand the nature of the January 2019 coup unleashed against Venezuela, it is important to see it in terms of its basis in economic warfare designed to undermine the sovereignty of the Venezuelan state. Former United Nations (UN) special rapporteur, Alfred de Zayas, declared in a UN report on Venezuela, completed in August 2018, that the “economic sanctions and blockades” like those being imposed by the United States on Venezuela in defiance of international law were “comparable with medieval sieges of towns. Twenty-first century sanctions attempt to bring not just a town but sovereign countries to their knees”