Guardian Reports More “Good News”, Kids are Dying in Venezuela
David William Pear
Carlos Becerra/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Guardian’s Tom Phillips’ article “Venezuela Crisis Takes Deadly Toll on Buckling Health System” (January 06, 2019) is more good news for US psychopaths, such as Trump, Bolton and Pompeo. Children are dying in Venezuela. Sanctions are working!
Tom is becoming the Luke Harding of Venezuela. Luke…err, Tom blames all of Venezuela’s problems on president Nicolas Maduro. Tom has piled on, repeating the Washington Consensus vilifying Maduro……that is what “repeaters” do.
If Maduro is illegally and violently removed from office, what will come after? Probably chaos, since there is no united opposition. Chaos is what the US desires, because chaos gives the US an excuse for interventions. A dysfunctional opposition then gives the US the power to be the kingmaker. The US has a self-proclaimed “right” to intervene anywhere, anytime in Latin America, according to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, and the 1904 “Big Stick” Roosevelt Corollary.
US doctrines do not become internationally laws, and instead usually violate international law. Doctrines are just a “wish-list” of US foreign policy. The main US foreign policy objective is to promote US corporate exploitation of foreign countries.
If the US gets its way in Venezuela, then Venezuela will be ruled by oligarchs, dictators or the military. The Venezuelan people overwhelmingly rejected the 40-years of oligarchy, when they elected Hugo Chavez in 1998. Chavez ran for election on a socialist platform. The US has been trying to overthrow Chavez’s socialist movement from the first moment Chavez took office.
In 2002 Bush backed a failed coup. Trump and his cronies have been planning another coup. This just in from Tom Phillips January 11th: Juan Guaido of the opposition is calling for an international intervention and a military coup. An illegal violent regime change is very likely soon.
After Chavez died of cancer at the age of 58 in 2013, his vice president Nicolás Maduro constitutionally assumed his office. Maduro has been struggling to continue Chavez’s socialist programs for the poor. Maduro is no Chavez, but he is trying to carry on Chavez’s legacy. Maduro was reelected to his second term in 2018.
Maduro faces many economic problems, much of them stem from the collapsing international oil price in 2015. There are good reasons to believe that the collapse in oil prices was a US-Saudi conspiracy, since the economic victims were Russia and Venezuela, two of the countries the US is trying to regime change. Oil is 95% of Venezuela’s revenue from exports, and 25% of its GDP.
The other major problem for Maduro is that the on top of collapsing oil prices the US imposed crushing economic sanctions. Tom’s article unwittingly exposes the lie that the sanctions were targeted, and not intended as collective punishment of the people. Children are dying! Instead of using dead children as propaganda props, economic sanctions should be immediately suspended, and foreign aid sent to save the lives of these innocent victims. Tom did not mention that in the article. All he had for the dead children was crocodile tears.
Chávez with fellow left-wing South American presidents Néstor Kirchner of Argentina and Lula da Silva of Brazil (Photo: Wikipedia
The US is stomping on Venezuela’s neck, trying to kill socialism. And vengefully killing Venezuelan kids. (Just a few weeks ago, Pompeo mocked Iran, saying “…if you want your people to eat”). The US is stomping its boot on the neck of socialism throughout Latin America, after years of a “pink tide” of elected progressive governments. It is working, as progressive governments in Latin America are becoming extinct.
Critics of Chavez and Maduro claim that socialism never works. It worked just fine under Chavez, as people were lifted out of poverty. Inequality declined dramatically. Critics blame Chavez and now Maduro for “overspending” on the poor.
As the US rebounds from one economic crisis to another, one bank bailout to the next, it is obvious to those that can see. Capitalism does not work. The US with its hyper-neoliberalism is 25th on the UN Human Development Index, adjusted for inequality. The US has its own healthcare crisis of 45,000 people dying every year because they cannot afford healthcare. Many of them children, Tom!
Sad how the critics never blame a country’s economic problems on over spending for US weapons, concentration of wealth in a few wealthy families, or austerity for the people because of crooked debt-imposed austerity by the IMF. The poor are expendable for oligarchs North and South. US healthcare and needed infrastructure suffer from overspending on the military and wars.
Socialism, even a democratic one is a dirty word to the US, because socialist governments use their country’s natural resources, and state-owned enterprises for the benefit of the people. US corporations want those resources, privatized state-owned enterprises, and to have poor people as a source of cheap labor. The driver of US foreign policy is what corporations want.
US foreign policy and US corporate exploitation in Latin America increases poverty there. The poor and indigenous people have their land stolen out from under them, and paramilitary death squads enforce their removal. Large land owners, resource corporations and monocrop plantations for export move in, often they are US corporations.
[US welcoming committee for asylum seekers on the southern border. Photo by the White House.
Ironically, the poor fleeing for their lives, seeking protection and an opportunity to earn a subsistence wage head in the direction of their abuser……to the USA. That is why the US is experiencing a sharp increase in people from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador seeking political asylum.
Trump and his xenophobic racist supporters want the US to turn asylum seekers away. They want the US to be a “gated community”, as Trump put it. When other countries such as Venezuela want to be a “gated community” and keep out US corporations and unfair trade from exploiting them, then the US sends in the jackals.
In the old days the US “opened” foreign “gated communities” with gunboats, and admitted that the purpose was commercial interests. At one time or another, over the past 200 years the US has invaded almost every Latin American and Caribbean country; some of them multiple times. US invasions haven’t been for democracy. They have been for commercial reasons, and the source of wealth for those that became elite families.
William Allen Rogers’s 1904 cartoon recreates the Big Stick Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt as an episode in Gulliver’s Travels (Photo Wikipedia)
Today foreign holdouts from the neoliberal Washington Consensus are “opened” by the CIA, Special Forces, mercenaries, terrorists, local collaborators, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, and other government-private NGO’s. NGO’s do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly to sow discontent, opposition and violence.
The US uses psychological warfare and propaganda to “open” closed foreign countries. The US uses threats, bribes, political isolation, economic sanctions and the constant reminder that “all options are on the table”. The mainstream media, such as the Guardian, are complicit by keeping up a steady drumbeat of propaganda.
The US always presents its aggression as being out of concern for democracy, human rights, or because the US is being threatened by some small country, like Cuba, Bolivia, or Venezuela. For example, Pompeo just gave a delusional lying speech in Cairo that the US is a force for good, and he praised the bloody military-coup dictator Sisi. Mentioning commercial interests, greedy banks and the military-industrial-complex is considered uncouth, even though it is the truth behind US foreign policy.
The mainstream media is a vital player and collaborator in preparing the domestic audience for US wars of aggression, interventions, and regime changes. Mockingbirds, such as Tom Phillips, and a compliant media, are very useful idiots in advancing the US agenda. The mainstream media such as the Guardian creates a circus-like atmosphere of a crisis. They sell the public that “something has to be done”.
After a US invasion the mainstream media provides the cover story. When all the lies come out as they did about the Iraq War, then the media sticks its head in the sand and denies any responsibility. When the media acts as a propagandist for war, then they have blood on their hands too.
US imperialism, neocolonialism, resource exploitation, imposed austerity, unfair trade, and the US monopolizing of the international financial system has destroyed millions of people’s lives. Trump says he does not hate US victims. Like a lot of US Americans, he just does not care. The US has no empathy for its victims, but cries crocodile tears for the alleged victims of US enemies. It is the syndrome that Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky referred to as “Worthy and Unworthy Victims”.
As Paul Jay of The Real News Network put it, for Donald Trump, Chuck Schumer, and Tony Soprano, the US is like the mafia: “it’s not personal, it’s just business”.
The Guardian used to challenge the Washington Consensus. It used to inform, instead of misinform. As the Guardian was publishing the Snowden Files the GCHQ cracked down. They smashed the Guardian’s computers, as well as freedom of the press. The Guardian said it obliged as a symbolic act. The “symbolic act” was the Guardian caving in to the GCHQ. Afterwards there was an exodus of many courageous editors and real journalists from the Guardian.
Tom Phillips is the Guardian’s Latin America mockingbird for Washington’s neocons who are trying to destroy Venezuela, and stamp out socialism in Latin America. It is not a question of pro-Maduro or against-Maduro. It is about the integrity and professionalism of journalism.
Tom Phillips, Luke Harding and the Guardian are enablers of US regime change projects, from Russia, Iran, and North Korea to Venezuela. They have abandoned their responsibility to the public and freedom. Tom’s anti-Maduro articles are appearing almost daily. Here is another one on January 9th:“Venezuela’s Neighbours Turn Up Heat as Nicolás Maduro Begins Second Term”; (the Guardian left out the adjective “rightwing” in neighbours).
Anyway, in Tom’s “unfriendly neighbours” article he quotes generously from the rightwing Lima Group. The Lima Group was formed in 2017 for the specific purpose of ousting Maduro and socialism. Washington’s fingerprints are all over the Lima Group. As Tom repeated, the Lima Group voted on January 4th to put crushing regional sanctions on Venezuela……more children will die……and declared Maduro’s democratic election illegitimate.
Before the Lima Group voted, which the US is not a member of, the CIA directo…err, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a video presentation to the group. Pompeo’s message of “carrots” for those voting correctly, and “sticks” for those voting incorrectly was clear. How shameful to see the US bully its tiny neighbors, and watch them humiliate themselves.
The Lima Group’s members are Argentina, Brazil, Canada (?), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and Peru. Most of the members of the Lima Group are disqualified from judging anybody else, because of their own miserable records on democracy and human rights. Most of the members of the group are rightwing governments. Leftwing governments were left out purposely, except by accident. Canada should not even be a member. The Lima Group is for the most part mafia states, and they are doing the enforcement work for their USA godfather.
The US has 79 military bases in Latin America. The supposed purpose of these US bases in Latin America is to counter the threats of:
Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia; the struggle against drug trafficking; regional and transnational criminal networks; the greater presence of China, Russia, and Iran in Latin America and the Caribbean; disaster response [remember the “aid” given Haiti after the earthquake – DWP]; as well as the role assigned to security forces in every country in terms of internal, regional, and international order.”
What a bunch of crapola. Tiny Cuba with 10 million people is a threat? Venezuela with a military budget of $6 billion is a threat? Bolivia with 11 million people, a military budget of $659 million, and its mild-mannered president Evo Morales, the first Indigenous Native president……he is a threat? The aid to Haiti that went into the Clinton Foundation, and never reached the people? Ridiculous!
As with all US foreign policy, the real reason for US military foreign bases and the raison is to promote the interests of US corporations. As General Smedley Butler said in his little classic, “War is a Racket”:
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Bussiness, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.
I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903……Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints.”
In the 100 years since Butler’s book was written, nothing has changed about US foreign policy and US interventions. It is still a money-making racket for the rich, corporations, banks, oligarchs, and their servants.
The Lima Group, Tom Phillips, and the Guardian are the servants of warmongers that Butler wrote about. They scramble for the crumbs of war profiteers. They eat well enough, if they can stomach the taste of blood.
With the exception of Costa Rica’s center-left Carlos Alvarado Quesada and Mexico’s historically elected left-wing Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known affectionately as AMLO), the members of the Lima Group are Washington stooges, right-wing governments, and dictatorships. Canada shouldn’t even be in the group, much less vote, because of its extensive, environmentally destructive, and exploitative mining activities in Latin America.
Mexico was the only country to vote not to go along with the Washington consensus of the Lima Group. He sided with the international principles of non-intervention, sovereignty, self-determination, and respect for the internal affairs of other countries.
Lopez Obrador is courageous. It is up to the Venezuelan people to determine their own destiny without illegal economic sanctions, threats and subversion by outsiders. Obrador also stood up to Trump on the humanitarian crisis that the US has created on the US southern border.
Obrador is calling on the US for “reparations” (i.e. US investment) to make amends for its neoliberal-neocon exploitation and invasions. US exploitation has been a driver of poverty in Central America. Obrador has hinted that if the US will not invest to create jobs in Central America, then he might turn to the Chinese. Obrador’s “bad behavior” is pushing the US envelope. We should all cheer and pray for him, because he is putting himself in the crosshairs of Washington.
As for Tom Phillips, his articles further shred his integrity and credibility. His article on “Venezuela’s neighbours” mostly just quoted the Lima Group. In other words, Tom is a stenographer, and the Guardian regurgitates it.
The US purposely creates chaos and crisis as an excuse for intervention. That is what the US is doing to Venezuela. US regime change artists and their mockingbirds in the media never consider what might come after. They really don’t care about the people, except as props for regime change. If and when Maduro’s socialist government falls, then Venezuela will be turned over to rightwing oligarchs, whom will do Washington’s bidding.
Venezuelans can then say “Hello” to neoliberalism, privatization, ExxonMobil, austerity, and neglected social programs. And, “Good-bye” to state-owned enterprises, universal healthcare, free education, and a voice speaking up for the poor.
David William Pear’s previous article about The Guardian’s coverage of Venezuela can be read here.
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No. No. I don’t think so.
The President of Mexico,AMLO , speaks well and with common sense and this will go a long way in creating peace in his country which desperately needs it .
I wish them well .I do believe that he will not be a US puppet but will try and work with all countries of good will.
,,, and it was he who last week – along with the Vatican – commendably stood up and called for the issues to be resolved peacefully through dialogue and not confrontation. He offered his country’s services as mediators. As I mentioned elsewhere, for unexplained reasons, the idea of peaceful dialogue was anathema to all the warmongering ‘liberals’ on the BBC’s Question Time panel on Thursday,,,Labour MP Richard Burgon was mocked for even suggesting it as an option. Strange times we live in.
Because the Vietnamese are all speaking English since they have been saddled with IMF loans and kissing Uncle Sam’s butt to rebuild their country after the US destroyed it. The US never gives up once it has a victim in its clutches.
It is obvious that socialism does work. Look at what it did to England after WW2, and the rise of Russia from a backward country to an industrial state, and China where 1/2 billion have been lifted out of poverty. No wonder the US keeps trying to destroy it.
When I see such propaganda pieces from the Grauniad I think back to the 2+ years when Viner was their US correspondent, I wonder if she received CIA disinfo training then.
@ rtj1211. Not always. The wealthy start up charities as a tax scam. They get to keep the money tax free, spend it on boondoggles, pay themselves, family and friends salaries, buy jets and boats and all sorts of good stuff. All tax free.
That’s very true, DWP. The archetypal scam must be the mega slush fund Clinton Foundation. They take in billions as bribes that are used for worthy causes like paying for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. The rest goes in fees and expenses to the Clinton Clan and their cronies. A tiny amount goes to things that could be remotely described as genuine charity.
It’s the same with people like Gates and Buffett. They “gave away 90% of their wealth” to charitable foundations. The strange thing is, their wealth is never diminished as a result. One year, they are worth £50 billion. The next year £60 billion. The year after that £70 billion. “Giving away 90%” never has any effect. surprisingly enough. Strange. Still, nothing like feathering your own nest whilst simultaneously preening yourself as a great benefactor of humanity.
Mark, I like, indeed enjoy your stance and for the most part your text. But you have the Gates story completely wrong. I have addressed this before here. Gates has revolutionized philanthropy in Africa. I’m sorry but don’t have time to repeat myself now but the wild rumpus usually begins now. Hating someone because they are rich has many parallels among the uninformed, if you don’t mind me saying.
I don’t hate anyone because they’re rich. Really. I’ve known quite a few rich people and take them as I find them. Old aristocratic money or new money, some are very nice people. I do hate all the tax dodging of Google/ Amazon/ Starbucks/ Boots/ Boeing/ the Philip Greens/ the looting Russian Jewish oligarchs who contribute nothing/ the Wall Street parasites etc etc etc. These people contribute very little or nothing for the most part. I have a grudging respect for the robber barons of the past – Ford, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller. They did at least help create something worthwhile like steel mills, car factories, oil wells, railroads.
Gates is just a tax dodging monopolist who has done all he can to suppress competition and innovation. I’ve been following his (and Buffett’s) foundations with interest. Supposedly they gave away virtually all their money to charitable foundations. But 50 billion becomes 60 the following year, then 70 then 80. Much of the work of the supposed charities is opening up Africa for Monsanto and similar vultures. They are just vehicles serving his own and globalist agendas. I think if you look more closely behind all the hype and PR you’ll find this is true.
I have looked behind and I defer to no one in cynicism. Gates and his wife are motivated by sincere desires to help Africa and Gates concluded he would get the most impact for his charitable aims there. And he has made the recipients accountable.There are very simple and obvious explanations for the numbers you find suspicious. I have been in medical research for nearly 50 years. I have seen the worst of human nature in it. These people are the real article.
Gates is a humanitarian, my arse.
Another eloquent contribution from jag, well done mate.
Gates didn’t have to do what he did, but he chose to make poor people’s lives easier and hopefully stop them dropping like flies.
Trots apparently don’t like a rich man’s help even if it saves lives. No different to Taliban thinking really.
Gates has likely given more donations to Africa than all of your ancestors have given to others, dating back to the beginning of time. His vaccination programs have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and those numbers swell each year. How many lives have you saved, jag? His advisors and there are many, are the best and most able people in medical research. By the way, did you get a perfect 800 on your SAT? What gets into the grotesquely uninformed that causes them to snipe so piteously? Is it just the usual incel status of belligerent, abusive, carping Internet warriors?
Well said George.
Hey Mark,
Are you aware that Microsoft has been repeatedly judged the best employer in the US and employees love working there. Does that fit with your take on Gates? As for the numbers, which you should have asked about if you were not here for abusive purposes? Ask yourself why Bezos’ fortune, and Buffet’s have recently skyrocketed. It’s real easy.
You are obviously a bright guy and frequently make good sense. Don’t spoil it by silly nonsense.
@ Mark. Agreed
Please do, the US is isolating itself more and more from the decent international community.
@ Maggie, it is hopeless to try and educate someone such as Royal D. They are so mentally blocked that nothing that causes them cognitive dissonance can penetrate their mind.
Thanks for the links thought for the rest of us.
Thank you David…I have just re read the Guardian article again and scanned down to the comments, 747 of them… all completely brainwashed by Establishment propaganda. There are only 15 READERS ON HERE!!!!
I know it is an uphill struggle but I feel compelled to try.
Exactly the same fate as Venezuela awaits us and him if we DARE to vote Jeremy Corbyn our leader… who is one of only a handfull of morally sound men who ever stood for parliament. His principals have remained the same since day one. So we all have a responsibility to inform one another and hold back the evil cancer.
I want to apologise in advance for the length of the next article I am going to post.
I could have just posted the link, but know from past experience that too many people can’t be bothered to open them.
>>>
”Why the Establishment want Jeremy Corbyn Buried.
By Graham Vanbergen – originally posted 30th September 2015:
The term “The Establishment” refers to leading Politicians, senior Civil Servants, senior Barristers and Judges, Aristocrats, Oxbridge Academics, senior Clergy, the most important Financiers and Industrialists, Governors of the BBC, members of and Top Aides to the ROYAL FAMILY to mention most, but not all….
The term in this sense is sometimes mistakenly believed to have been coined by the British journalist Henry Fairlie, who in September 1955 in the London magazine ‘The Spectator’ defined that network of prominent, well-connected people as “the Establishment”, explaining: “By the Establishment, I do not only mean the centres of official power—though they are certainly part of it—but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised”.
Following that, the term, the Establishment, was quickly picked up in newspapers and magazines all over London, making Fairlie famous. Today, the term ‘the establishment’ is used generally in a negative sense and it’s easy to understand why.
“The British public has become deeply cynical about the political class at Westminster”, states a recent Financial Times editorial.
“Bankers feel they have an ethical duty to steal from taxpayers” – another reads
“Why are we subsidising the Royal Family at a time of gross inequality” says another headline.
There has been a rising tide of contempt and anger towards bankers, property speculators, hedge fund bosses, politicians and even religious leaders and the royal family.
For instance, membership of Britain’s unelected upper house, the House of Lords has soared from 666 peers in 1999 to nearly 850 today, well in excess of the House of Commons.
The Lords is now the second largest parliamentary chamber in the world behind only the Chinese Peoples Congress. Whilst their chamber is 3.5 times larger, it’s population is 18 times the size of ours. The House of Lords is clearly an expanding repository of political patronage for the prime minister and is no longer fit for purpose or for a modern democracy.
It appears that those who lecture the working and middle classes about financial and moral belt-tightening are the very ones up to their necks in Corruption and Scandals of all kinds, including Sex and Paedophile rings to name but a few. The Establishment is now under fire.
In the past, these scandals were kept under wraps. They closed ranks to protect themselves. Top Judges and Police Chiefs covered up for wealthy and powerful friends, including Politicians. After all, they were from the same ”social class;;, shared the same clubs and sent their children to the same private schools, a grotesque example highlighted recently with David Cameron and Lord Ashcroft’s ‘Pig-gate‘ revelations.
In recent times, the rich have become much wealthier and everyone else poorer. Tories, Liberal Democrats and New Labour (Blair and friends) fell over themselves to please their friends in the City of London, a gang of speculators who stripped the nation of its prosperity and then paid themselves huge bonuses for having got away with it.
David Cameron is currently at the centre of this group, financed by the rich and super rich who was described in the commons “a dodgy Prime Minister surrounded by Dodgy Donors”, who turned a blind eye to tax avoidance by the rich and big business.
In order to keep the reigns of power, the establishment is frightened of one thing and one thing only – DEMOCRACY.
Extending real voting options to the poor would obviously present risks to their position. For instance, Conservative statesman Lord Salisbury told parliament in 1866, – Giving working-class people the vote would tempt them to pass “laws with respect to taxation and property especially favourable to them, and therefore dangerous to all other classes”.
Today, you can hear exactly the same narrative against the new labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a scathing attack by Media Barons and Corporate Executives along with Politicians and even Military Generals.
The Establishment is characterised by those with ideas that legitimise and protect the concentration of wealth and power in very few hands. The establishment do not want democracy at all but a veneer of democracy must be provided.
It is because the Establishment is made up of Politicians who devise our laws, Police to enforce those laws, Corporate entities who are increasingly dominating economic performance (unpaid taxes for instance) and a smaller band of Media Barons who also set the terms of debate and the result of that debate that we see a closed shop network construct itself.
A conflict of interest of epic proportions. It is here that we find a common psychology and shared understanding.
The scandal surrounding the money laundering and tax evasion operations at HSBC exposes the links between a corrupt banking elite and a rotten political establishment. Lord Green, former head of HSBC, was at the centre of this tax dodgers’ row. He chaired HSBC until December 2010, when he became a Conservative Trade Minister and was ‘given a peerage’ by David Cameron.
You can see a major conflict of interest here unless afflicted with total sensory deprivation.
Lord Green was then given staunch backing by the Church of England. Needless to say, these preachers of great moral fortitude have a long tradition in protecting their own. Lord Green, a millionaire banker is a devout Christian and ordained Anglican priest. The archbishops of Canterbury and York said they were grateful to the former HSBC boss for his “contribution and expertise”. One could easily assume this to be a clan of hypocrites that have attacked politicians for failing to provide a “fresh moral vision”, but then act no differently.
Another religious entity, The Vatican, has large investments with the Rothschilds of Britain, France and America, with Credit Suisse in London and Zurich with Morgan Bank and Chase-Manhattan Bank and others in the US and UK.
ALL of these organisations have been involved in global, anti-social criminality adopting fraud as the basis of its profit centres, especially in London.
The Catholic Church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches (such as property and gold bullion) than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe. With covering up sex crimes, inappropriate behaviour among Prelates, political infighting and the existence of a clandestine Gay Cabal at the highest levels, the Catholic Church has a long shameful history and is the epitome of the Establishment.
The crimes of Establishment are racking up at an alarming rate. However, if you get caught without paying your TV licence fee, ‘laws designed to catch terrorists are used by the BBC to ensure your good behaviour.’
In the meantime, one can take the example of how the Establishment works when it blames society for all it’s troubles as a diversionary tactic… The Media have managed to make the British population believe that 27% of social security money has been fraudulently gained when the figure is actually 0.7%. The Media Barons, and there are only FIVE of them in Britain who own 80% of printed media outlets, don’t live in Britain and NONE pay tax in Britain. but they want to continue pillaging Britain and get away with it.
This same tactic provides cover for the Government to impose austerity that has caused the biggest transfer of wealth from the vulnerable, the poor, working class and middle classes directly in a route north.
The Establishment are largely responsible for a neoliberal ideology that is so damaging to society as a whole – It’s the business model that fits. They use the term ‘economic freedom’ as if this is to somehow benefit us all, which it rarely does. For example, almost universally, this philosophy is used to transfer State Assets to profit driven business (Privatisation) that has enriched the FEW and made everyone else pay.
If the political system remains committed to the type of capitalism that exists in Britain today, it will always end up justifying a system that produces a mega-rich and privileged elite.
Hence, why Jeremy Corbyn is such a threat to the establishment.
Jeremy Corbyn looks like the first senior politician who will NOT be corrupted by the Establishment.
Bankers will NOT be funding the party.
He will not support war.
He doesn’t support Israel,
He is not religious and doesn’t believe in the Monarchy.
He will be the first prime minister (if elected) for decades that does not, and probably will not support the Eestablishment.
So frightened of Corbyn, the Establishment is now mobilising their entire resourcefulness at him…evidenced by a threatened Military Coup – not quite akin to Chile in the 1970’s but an extreme tactic to say the least, one spawned from desperation for sure.
The crisis of extreme, out of control ‘Capitalism’ simply exposes the rottenness of the system.
British Capitalism has become Casino Capitalism, based upon Property speculation, Banking and Financial services. In fact, the Services Sector now provides 80% of business activity in Britain leaving millions ”without meaningful work or income”.
Extreme Capitalism means a concentration of wealth at one pole, and poverty and degradation at the other, with the bit in the middle being eviscerated.
This is where the Establishment languish.
Jeremy Corbyn does not fit in.
The stakes are very high.
@Maggie: Thank you so much for this article. I am already taking quotes from it for another article I am working on. Especially the coining of the phrase “the Establishment” which is what we in the US call the Deep State. It is the same thing—the unelected powers that really run the government. Regards,
@ Bob: The US only interferes for “only for a very good causes”—James Woolsey on the Russians’ efforts to disrupt elections, go to about 4 min, 30 sec: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpWai3kZ-gM&t=10s
With the US ability to spy on everybody all the time, then they are going to focus on their “enemies” and try to get something on them—-even if they have to plant it.
The Guardian today appears to be doing something unusually sleazy, even for it .
There is a big march in Caracas today , the anniversary of a coup attempt. Among those marching are thousands of government supporters, recalling the way that the last coup was ended by popular action, and members of the various democratic opposition parties.
The Guardian however is reporting this pro Maduro march as an anti-government thing. the photos on the telesur site look very much like those on The Guardian.
Business as usual to me. Nothing to see, move along? Trumpolini just announced that the US will recognise the opposition leader as president. More democracy exporting?
@ Bevan.
De ja vu or what?
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iran-protests-donald-trump-michael-dandrea-us-opposition-hassan-rouhani-reform-violence-riots-a8141271.html
Unfortunately this is ten a penny in the MSM. There was a huge rally in Damascus in support of Bashar Assad. Naturally the BBC reported this as an anti government protest. They showed footage of Iraqi civilians killed in the bombing and invasion of Iraq in 2003 as “Syrians butchered by the evil tyrant Assad.” They are caught out doing this all the time. It’s not even very slick. You’d think the state controlled BBC could do better with the £4 billion a year of taxpayer’s money.
Targeted parties[edit]
See also: Office of Foreign Assets Control § Sanctions_Programs
As of May 2018, the United States has introduced sanctions against:
Iran
1979 (Lifted 1981), Reintroduced 1987 United States sanctions against Iran
Near total economic embargo on all economic activities, including a ban on all Iranian imports, sanctions on Iranian financial institutions as well as restriction on the sale of aircraft and repair parts as well as arms embargoes. This policy began in 1979 as a response to the Iranian Revolution, but has been rapidly expanded over recent years due to the Iranian Nuclear Program and Iran’s poor human rights record. Iran and the US have no diplomatic relations. Listed as state sponsor of terrorism.
Sudan
1993 Sudan-United States relations
Reasons cited for sanctions include Sudan’s poor human rights record, the present War in Darfur, and being listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. Most US sanctions on Sudan were lifted in October 2017 by Executive Order of the President of the United States, Donald Trump.
Syria
1986 Syria–United States relations
Reasons cited for sanctions include Syria’s poor human rights record, the present Civil War, and being listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. Syria and the US currently have no diplomatic relations as of 2012.
Venezuela
2018 United States-Venezuela relations
Reasons cited for sanctions includes Venezuela’s poor human rights record, links with illegal drug trade, high levels of state corruptionand electoral rigging
Cuba
1958 United States embargo against Cuba
Reasons cited for the embargo include Cuba’s poor human rights record. Since 1992, the UN General Assembly has passed annual resolutions criticizing the ongoing impact of the embargo imposed by the United States.
North Korea
1950 North Korea–United States relations
Severe sanctions justified by extreme human rights abuses by North Korea and the North Korean nuclear program. North Korea and the US currently have no diplomatic relations.
As you can see, the excuses are all too familiar being equally applicable to the US and many of the EU countries as well as the ME monarchies. It’s just like “Do as I say, not as I do”.
An excerpt from “US Lawfare in action”:
The leader of the French left, Jean Luc Melenchon, recently condemned the use of lawfare against former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula, as he is popularly known, has been imprisoned since April 2018 on trumped up charges of corruption. Melenchon told the Brazilian press that “lawfare is now used in all countries to get rid of progressive leaders. This is what they did with Lula.” Melenchon added, “the judge [Sergio Moro] who condemned Lula is now a minister [minister of justice and public security] of Jair Bolsonaro, the new president of Brazil.” Lula was sentenced to 12 years in prison on politically-motivated money-laundering charges ginned up by Moro and other neo-fascists in the Brazilian judiciary. Bolsonaro, a champion of Brazil’s former military dictatorship and an admirer of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Donald Trump, has vowed to keep Lula in prison. Lula would have defeated Bolsonaro for the presidency had he been released from prison and allowed to run for political office. However, Moro and his fellow lawfare practitioners ensured that appeals to the Brazilian Supreme Court for Lula’s release were all dead-on-arrival.
Melenchon also stated “Lula has been a direct victim of accusations to destroy his work and image, built in more than 40 years of public life.” British human rights attorney Geoffrey Robertson QC echoed Melenchon in comments made to the “New Internationalist” in January 2018. Robertson cited the “extraordinarily aggressive measures” taken to imprison Lula and prevent him from running for president. Robertson cited as Lula’s enemies the judiciary, media, and “the great sinews of wealth and power in Brazil.”
Our MSM can no longer be trusted to provide genuine news stories, and they constantly feed us biased reports which make no mention of the negative aspects of US/UK foreign policy.
Both Venezuela and Iran are suffering badly because of illegal US sanctions, but the coverage of Venezuela is nothing short of disgusting, where every news item refers to Chavez or Maduro and the problems of Socialism, when in truth it is the interventionism of capitalism which is killing people.
I am ashamed at my country, Canada. Twinkletoes JT had the temerity to advise a Venezuelan questioner at a town hall gathering last week that anyone who supported Maduro’s “illegitimate” government was badly misinformed. Dismissed. No further questions on that topic, thanks.
The CBC just this morning repeats the government line, and shows Venezuelan citizens demonstrating, living poorly and also the inside of an abandoned hospital. The clear implication given is that these are the poor of Venezuela, when in fact it’s the former middle class people shown. The former, shall we say, mercantilist class, those who haven’t fled already to “sunnier” situations. Those who formerly had no problem lording it over the masses.
Junior, as some progressives like to label Trudeau, is a two-faced SOB on many issues, including the environment and First Nations. He seems to delight in juggling issues constantly, so that none are ever resolved but go on forever until everyone forgets from sheer exhaustion. A man of promises that never happen.
But he loves the middle class, yes sirree. They got an income tax break in our tiered system. Not the poor though – the rate never changed.
The Syrians we imported as refugees were solidly anti-Assad middle class. The Venezuelans swanning about Toronto urging our government to invade are not your average Venezuelans but in-self-exile middle class, barring a few like the questioner Trudeau dismissed.
So, in order to restore Venezuela to the point where “things” work, Trudeau obviously thinks the well-off middle class in exile are just the people to do it. Only then will trade in toilet paper and veggies return to normal. And of course, oil exports to pay for it all allowed to occur again in real quantity. Our Conservative Party politicians, currently out of power, would of course have already sent our toy armed forces in biplanes and rowboats to sort those Maduro socialists out.
Canada is as neoliberal in business and neocon in foreign policy as any US Dept of State official wandering around in the haze of Foggy Bottom could possibly hope for.
Trudeau is better than Harper and like his father sees the US for what they are. Listen to the CBC, an reliable mine shaft canary for government methane. First Nations news and attitudes to them are heavy on their agenda but yes, it will take a long time of overdosing to compensate, even in part. I think you are being too harsh on Trudeau, and what is your alternative? He Looks good next to Harper who continues to be financially rewarded by the phony lecture tours he gives to bored stiff American neocons. Those poor benighted neocons, having to sit through Blair and Harper. All they had to do for that was to send innocent soldiers to die in Afghanistan. Blair’s personal worth is now well in excess of £60 million. Your comment that Canada is as neocon as the US is ridiculous. And who exactly have they invaded? Who have they cheated and stolen from?
Freeland is more loyal to her Nazi grandfather than Trudeau is to his father’s politics, which, for all their faults, included a real sense of dignity.
Judging people for who their grandfather was, acceptable as it is in racist and other circles means you want to judge the unborn, the yet to be conceived, and parents who have yet to meet. That is a very retro notion, worthy of Britannica’s ninth edition.
And are you sure my grandparent and yours were not horse thieves or might have behaved badly under extraordinary circumstances? And who will decide when to lift the taint of having a notorious ancestor? You? The reality imo is when moral dilemmas arise, expediency decides for the vast majority, morality being trumped and beaten like a rented mule by personal advantage.
Take the reverse direction, if you wish to be consistent. So you want the grandchildren of men who were heroic Spitfire pilots to have ‘get out of jail’ cards? I doubt those grandfathers would have liked that.
The difference between Chrystia Freeland and the rest of us with ancestors who committed mass slaughter (and that would be 99.9% of us if we pursued our family histories far back enough) is that Freeland knowingly lied about her grandfather’s history, claiming that he, his wife and their children were refugees fleeing Russian persecution and was compelled to write Nazi propaganda, while hiding the fact that he volunteered his services to the Nazis.
John Helmer, “Chrystia Freeland’s family lie grows bigger: Michael Chomiak volunteered for Hitler before German invasion of Ukraine and was hunted by Polish police until the 1980s” (June 2017)
https://www.newcoldwar.org/chrystia-freelands-family-lie-grows-bigger-michael-chomiak-volunteered-hitler-german-invasion-ukraine-hunted-polish-police-1980s/
Freeland accuses the Russians of stirring up her grandfather’s past but it has been the Polish government (no friend of Russia) that exposed the truth of Michael Chomiak’s activities during World War II.
Before pursuing politics, Freeland was a journalist, as her maternal grandfather was. She must have been motivated by his example to become a journalist. Surely, if she had researched his background thoroughly, she must have come across information and evidence suggesting that he had not been forced to work for the Nazis.
Maybe maybe the family narrative as in from her parents was the one she gave. She may have liked her grandfather and respected him. What he did is something that that vast majority might do under the circumstances, based on my life experience with how people deal with moral dilemmas. Was it admirable? No. But it was not a hanging offense. But you want to obliterate Freeland’s career. How many more generations do you want to hate?
George, the issues you cite are telling. Completely under the radar, for listeners of the CBC, is the fact that we are supporting the murderous sanctions that the Benighted Snakes apply against Venezuela and other progressive governments. Listening to the CBC, you would blame a failing economy on the victim, and never be aware of the deliberate criminal sabotage committed by the Benighted Snakes, Saudi family, Anglophone Kingdom, and ourselves.
As for whether we are neocons, perhaps it would be fair to suggest that we, like the vast majority in those “allied” nations, are dupes. Nevertheless, passage of another abhomination such as the Magnitsky Act, would be a fair indicator, that in effect, we are neocons.
The poodling to the US is embarrassing. I am embarrassed. But if you check what I said, it was in comparison to the peerless US to which we were equated by Bill Malcolm, and when it comes to jingoism, which we eschew, and to neocon stature we cannot hold a candle to the filthier bastards.
The CBC mention specifically applied to the First Nations issues that Malcolm was slating Trudeau for.
But the reality comes when Canadians are asked or prepared to stand on principle, at a cost. Jean Chrétien was not. Neither was Pierre who loathed the Americans. Castro was a pallbearer at his funeral, I think.
I meant Trudeau aine, pas fils and Chrétien did stand on principle.
Trudeau can’t even see himself for what he is…
@Bill; does anyone think it has to do with oil?
Yet another fine example of the USA regime NOT interfering in another country
“Tom Phillips, Luke Harding and the Guardian are enablers of US regime change projects”. Just as Lindsey Hilsum is for Ch4 News.
America’s southern border crosses into failed Narco states of Mexico and other neighboring socialist shittholes. Places where drug cartels dictate terms of use with unrelenting power via abuse and slaughter. Over 30 million illegals have crossed the southern border and now reside throughout the United States, overwhelming schools, welfare, health and employment opportunities for her citizens. A majority of violent crimes are committed by Hispanics now incarcerated on the tax payers dime. America not only should have picked her own cotton two hundred years ago, but she should have picked her own fields, cleaned her own house, cooked her own food, and mowed her own grass the last fifty years.
It may be to late to build a wall to stop the hordes pouring in.
The fall of the Roman Empire experienced a similar fate.
”Narco states of Mexico and other socialist s***holes???”
Watch; Confessions of an Economic Hitman
or better still read the book, and your eyes will be well and truly opened.
”Places where the drug cartels dictate the terms” (controlled by the CIA)
The New US and British Oil Imperialism by Norman Levegoed.
https://www.oilcompanies.net/oil1.htm
”It may be to late to build a wall to stop the hordes pouring in”
What? Like the great wall of China?
What an expensive pointless exercise that was in human life and resources.
But a fantastic tourist attraction.
200 years of conflict, clearly explained,t in one numerical article.
Open this most important link and scroll down
”All Wars are Bankers Wars”
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwars.php#axzz5dLCaV6PV
I am hoping that you will open watch and read these three links.
You will never again wonder, who, what or why, and be able to speak from a place of knowledge..
I am presuming that you visit off Guardian to learn the truth and speak to others who are like minded.
Some of whom have information to share.. So here is my contribution.
Thank you for the links and insightful critique. I’ll keep an open mind and continue my search for truth. 🍻
Dear RD,
There may be a lot of truth in what you say. Maybe these countries are s***holes, as the Orange Man helpfully explained. But why is that? Could Uncle Sam have something to do with it? Guatemala had a population of 4 million in the 1980s. 200,000 mainly indigenous people were slaughtered by right wing death squads in the 1980s. Created, armed, trained and bankrolled by Uncle Sam. Ditto El Salvador. Ditto Nicaragua. That charming old buffer Reagan unleashed one of the most protracted and vicious terrorist campaigns in history against tiny Nicaragua for the crime of kicking out Uncle Sam’s corrupt puppet dictator Somoza. At that time it had a population of 3 million and an air force with 3 planes. But “Nicaragua could threaten Texas if we don’t stop them.” You could go through the list of Central and South American countries and say something very similar about each one. It would take hundreds of pages to do justice to US aggression, exploitation, invasions, regime changes, economic warfare, election meddling, assassinations of elected leaders and overthrow of elected governments.
Like the Middle East, where the depredations of Daddy Bush, Dubya, Obongo, and now the Orange Man, have cost 4 million lives. I actually agree with a lot of what you say. Maybe those countries weren’t brilliant to begin with, but they were a hell of a lot worse after Uncle Sam’s rampages through them. Most people are happy to stay in their s***holes. Their normal attitude is, “This place may be a s***hole, but it’s our s***hole.” That’s where they were born, that’s where their families are, that’s where they feel at home. They’re normally content to stay there. It takes a lot to get them moving. Like a destroyed and devastated country with no electricity, no drinking water, no food, no work, and no hope, with Uncle Sam’s cannibal terrorist proxies turning the whole place into a Mad Max hellhole where people are executed because their beards aren’t long enough.
Uncle Sam is now threatening to invade Venezuela, after doing everything possible to destabilise the country for the past 20 years. Suppose they actually do that, or use their Colombia proxy to do it, and that creates millions more refugees, like the 7 million internally displaced in Colombia the MSM never talks about. Wouldn’t it be in Uncle Sam’s own interests to mind his own business a bit and stop destroying these countries? .
Excellent post Mark..
Nice to see the CIA sock puppets here at OffG. OffG has arrived.
Maybe Tom Phillips should look at the recent report out of the UN human right watch that 2 months ago gave the UK an F grade on their austerity economics since the Tories and the third way Blairite not so Labour party have been in power. If I am not mistaken 1in 5 children are living below the poverty line. Homelessness the highest in the Europe.Largest wealth gap since the Gilded age.
UNO:Since the PSVD has been in power literacy rates have tripled. More people are being schooled and educated from birth , apprenticeship have quadrupled.
DUE:Health care is offered to everybody Universal healthcare was one of the first statutes that was passed by Hugo Chavez
TRE:Minimum wage was legislated .
Conclusion Since Bush Jr the US foreign policy is basically the Wolfawitz doctrine perpetual war and destabilasitaion of the rest of the world minus the Washington consensus mob western so called civilisation.You know the ESTABLISHED ORDER OF THINGS THAT WE KEEP HEARING FROM THE M AND M AND M CLUB(Merkle,May and Macron) and all those wonderful SJW and so called liberal western intellectuals.
Gramscian theory of Hegemony was written for us poor working class slobs and peasants and voila post modern society has perfected it to the modern day fascistic nitemare of Corporatocracy.
It looks like the regime change operation against Venezuela is being ratcheted up and coming to a head.
America has done everything it can to wreck the Venezuelan economy for over 20 years, and foment violence and unrest from the opposition, which has never been very good at winning elections. There will be howls of outrage about “repression” and “dictatorship” from Trump, Pompeo and Pence, shedding oceans of tears for the poor Venezuelans, echoed in the Guardian and the rest of the MSM. Of course, the US oil majors will be all too ready to lend a hand, along with USAID, the armies of bogus NGOs, and all the puppets of the comprador elite. Perhaps we will see mysterious snipers on rooftops firing into crowds again, like at Maidan and Deraa. Maybe Trump will just invade the country, as he has repeatedly threatened. No doubt May would send British troops along as well to lend a helping hand. They have done everything else – assassinated Chavez, tried to assassinate Maduro, manipulated the oil price and tried to wreck the economy with sanctions, bankrolled opposition violence, run an international smear campaign, and now recognised an unelected opposition coup outfit. All bog standard CIA/ NED/ USAID/ State Department handiwork. Our American friends are nothing if not predictable.
Lies, walls, spin, propaganda, obfuscation, posturing, pandering, fear mongering and war mongering.
Meanwhile, massive strike action all around the world.
The ONE PER CENT are running scared.
Here in Europe we can all start by removing politicians who follow and support this criminal behaviour by America. It has gone on for far too long. Their malign government, controlled and paid for by low life greedy capitalist bastards, needs to be exposed to those who remain ignorant of their ongoing crimes. In France a small flame has been lit. We need to turn that into a raging fire until political change comes about in favour of the majority. Only then will we have a voice and power to change direction away from the poison of American corporate greed.
Significantly of the three gentlemen holding hands in that photograph accompanying David William Pear’s article, Hugo Chavez is dead from cancer (as already mentioned in the article), Nestor Kirchner died at age 60 from a heart attack and Lula da Silva is in jail for money laundering and having received a bribe.
Kirchner’s widow Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, after serving as President of Argentina for two terms herself, is currently a sitting senator and as such currently enjoys immunity from being arrested for supposedly obstructing an investigation into the 1994 bomb attack (allegedly carried out by Iranians) on a synagogue in Buenos Aires. But that immunity could be removed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristina_Fern%C3%A1ndez_de_Kirchner
Rumours abound that Chavez’s cancer was induced by his being unknowingly exposed to a hidden source of radiation arranged by both people in Venezuela opposed to his government and outsiders.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11959
The CIA itself won’t say if it has or does not have documents on assassinating Chavez.
http://www.justiceonline.org/cia_refuses_to_say_chavez_assassination
That is exactly why I chose that photo. The suspicion that Chavez was assassinated are well founded. Years after Arafat’s death it was revealed that he did not die of natural causes.
It’s almost certain Chavez was assassinated – just like Yasser Arafat. By the same people.
If you watch footage of Chavez, he used to tear round with someone following him with a flask of coffee. He drank 30 cups of coffee a day. I thought then – that’s how they’ll get him. Slip something in his coffee. There have been at least 5 assassination attempts on Putin. There were 600 on Castro. Judith Kirchner fell ill with a mystery illness and it was suspected she had been targeted as well. Maybe they need to bring back the medieval style food tasters.
They probably slipped Aspartame in his coffee instead of sugar. Look what it has done to Trump’s brain.
Significantly of the three gentlemen holding hands in that photograph accompanying David William Pear’s article, Hugo Chavez is dead from cancer (as already mentioned in the article), Nestor Kirchner died at age 60 from a heart attack and Lula da Silva is in jail for money laundering and having received a bribe.
Kirchner’s widow Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, after serving as President of Argentina for two terms herself, is currently a sitting senator and as such currently enjoys immunity from being arrested for supposedly obstructing an investigation into the 1994 bomb attack (allegedly carried out by Iranians) on a synagogue in Buenos Aires. But that immunity could be removed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristina_Fern%C3%A1ndez_de_Kirchner
Rumours abound that Chavez’s cancer was induced by his being unknowingly exposed to a hidden source of radiation arranged by both people in Venezuela opposed to his government and outsiders.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11959
The CIA itself won’t say if it has or does not have documents on assassinating Chavez.
http://www.justiceonline.org/cia_refuses_to_say_chavez_assassination
I can’t decide which is the more ridiculous: the Guardian article or the one above. Let’s call it a draw. Objectively speaking, the policies of the last two governments of Venezuela brought the country to ruin and the recent US sanctions are just stupid – it just gives the government some external reason to bring blame, something most socialist governments are particularly adept at.
Better to let the whole mess just continue to collapse and let Venezuela solve it themselves, if they can.
“let Venezuela solve it themselves”…..
My thoughts exactly. Why is the US afraid to leave a socialist country alone? Since the US doesn’t leave any socialist country alone it must have something to do with the US business-class fear that despite all their fuming that “socialism never works”, it actually works quite well when left alone.
The thought of all those natural and human resources being used for the people instead of lining the pockets of corporations and elites is just too much for them to “leave it alone”. Call it greed.
US foreign policy and meddling is all about looking out for US corporate interests.
@ Roberto
The reason that we can’t get our heads around the global problems is because we are bombarded daily with confusing propaganda designed specifically to have us running in circles, and distracted by false flag events and the pantomime of politics. When we realise that Politicians are nothing more than puppets/actors standing on a stage reciting lines, then and only then will we he able to begin to understand….
The two Venezuelan Governments did not bring the country to ruin. They were trying to hold back the flood and prevent the Banks from taking over and stealing the resources for their own profit, not to benefit the Venezuelans. Only when all the people are completely and totally desolate and prepared to accept anyone that promises them respite, will the banks send in the hitmen and their designated puppet who will miraculously restore the infrastructure, after first promising the Cabal absolute access and ownership of all resources…In this case the OIL, which should rightfully benefit the Venezuelan people.
PLEASE -, open the link and scroll down to this article….
ALL WARS ARE BANKER’S WARS.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwars.php#axzz5dLCaV6PV
@Maggie….thank you. My thoughts exactly.
Interesting, in an unpleasant way, how oil is rarely mentioned. Rex Tillerson’s old company ExxonMobile is still sore about losing control and $billions. The claim that the proceeds from nationalization were inadequate. They steal Venezuela’s oil and then when Venezuela takes it back the thieves want ransom. It is an old trick that colonial powers have used for centuries.
.”Objectively speaking, the policies of the last two governments of Venezuela brought the country to ruin.”
That may or may not be true, although outside powers (guess who) might have had something to do with it, but in any event the argument is irrelevant. Waging a covert war in an attempt to force regime change on a country that is no threat to the US, is not at war with the US and does not meddle in the internal affairs of the US, is a gross violation of International law. Economic mismanagement is not a sufficient criterion for covert intervention into the internal affairs of a non-threatening sovereign state.
How about we (the West, NATO, EU) promote regime change in ‘obviously speaking’ neoliberal shitholes like Latvia or Colombia because of their failed economic policies and their repressive governments?
I suppose we can expect these Orwellian-type double standards from the spokespersons of the Anglo-Zionist Empire.
Before he jumped ship, Rex Tillerson was crowing how sanctions against North Korea were forcing fishermen to take risks while fishing and some of them had drowned with their bodies washed ashore in Japan.
US sanctions against Iraq killed 500,000 children under 5 from 1991-2003, to the delight of that great statesperson and feminist icon Allbright.
The United Snakes is like Nazi Germany on steroids. An utterly vile, psychopathic, sadistic terrorist regime. 40% of humanity is currently subject to US economic warfare and US economic strangulation. I hope that one day Americans are forced to endure similar suffering to that which has been meted out to so many millions of others in their name for so long. That they have to watch their children starve or die for lack of basic medicine in front of them. That is what it will take to finally make them clean up their act, like Germans starving and freezing in the rubble of their cities in 1945.
How surprising that the US and their Guardian propagandist scum like Phillips should be worrying all night and shedding gallons of tears over democracy and human rights in the country with the largest oil reserves in the world.
And strange too, that they have no such concerns over neighbouring Colombia (now our best mates in NATO) where there are 7 million internal refugees (more than in Syria.) And where tens of thousands of peasant farmers, trade union leaders and indigenous people have been slaughtered by right wing US trained death squads in a 50 year civil war bankrolled by Uncle Sam.
Economic sanctions are warfare. Just like the old siege warfare where the barbarians would surround a city-fort, catapult in rotting corpses, filth and garbage to spread disease, cut off food and water and starve the victims into surrendering. Nothing has changed except that somehow it became fashionable to consider economic sanction a humane alternative to bombs and bullets.
The US public and the measly mainstream media have become so desensitized to the US killing millions of people that their psychopathic leaders can even gloat over dead fishermen and make comments that for all the US cares their people can starve to death.
People such as Tom Phillips are “useful idiots” that rub salt in the wound for the benefit of the western empires.
They are scum. Utter filth. Like everyone else working for the Guardian.
If not for America, you would be speaking German and working in a coal mine.
In one sentence, Royal Doulton’s ignorance of the history of World War II is plain to see.
Maybe Doulton is not to blame for his profound ignorance but his comment was daily fare among the blue collar classes of the US. One only occasionally hears this kind of crap anymore.
But American history books used in secondary school education remain cartoon-like jingoistic misrepresentations of America’s role in just about anything. Do Americans all think they won the war? Does Berlusconi live in a bunga-bungalow? Are the Americans trying to get the IOC to create more swimming “events” in the Olympic Games?
How can one not be deeply touched by America’s deep concern for Venezuela. It is purely coincidence they have oil.
I don’t really blame Doulton or people who share his outlook. For most of my life I swallowed whole all the garbage that was put out by the MSM and believed Russia was plotting to murder us all in our beds. It was only after Iraq that I finally began to wake up and realised I’d been had.
SO WHAT? 1600’s 5 year old kids were shoved up chimneys to clean them here in Britain…Eventually, an Act of 1788 specified a minimum age of eight years old for apprentices, but this and other regulations were never enforced.
Fortunately, things move on.. as has Germany.
And if you believe all the propaganda spouted about them without first researching, then there is NO HOPE what so ever for you.
Research is the KEY to knowledge.. that doesn’t come from watching the babysitter in the corner or reading the Presstitue MSM.
I left a link earlier, clearly you couldn’t be bothered to open it, so here it is again, just for you:
It covers ALL wars, including WWl and WWll.
ALL WARS ARE BANKER’S WARS.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwars.php#axzz5dLCaV6PV
@ Royal. We can thank the Russians for that—-they are the ones that won WW2. And they didn’t even make us speak Russian and work in the gulag archipelago.
In that case, why aren’t Americans all speaking Vietnamese?
You’ll find that was Russia. And as an Englishman, I’ll always be grateful for the enormous sacrifices they made for us all.
You yanks needed bribing (magnetron, jet engine etc.) And even then it took a svaftins from the Japanese for you to “help”
It would be hilarious if wasn’t so depressing – the Guardian cosying up to real fascists while producing portentous warnings about UKIP and Tommy Robinson.
For me Venezuela is a key geopolitical fault line dividing those who see one sort of future not dictated by the banks, corporations and security apparatus and those who don’t.
History and context are everything when analysing events in Latin America and the Guardian appears to be profoundly ignorant of both.
Sadly for the past few hundred years the banks always get the money.
Cut&Paste from SyrPer: Richest 26 people own same amount of wealth as poorest half of the world – Oxfam – Link to RT
Excerpt: “The new report, titled “Public Good or Private Wealth,” sheds light on the continued accumulation of wealth by the richest, as well as the reverse trend for the poorest half of the word, which grew some 11 percent poorer last year. During the same period, the assets of those at the top of the wealth pyramid, the billionaires, have skyrocketed, increasing by $900 billion in 2018, or by a whopping $2.5 billion a day. Between 2017 and 2018, a new billionaire was created every two days, the report says.”
Gates, Buffett and Bezos own more than 160 million Americans.
Mind you, I wouldn’t take too much notice of anything Oxfam says. They are just one of the army of bogus NGOs and charities with a revolving door to the State Department and serving the interests of the US Empire, smearing target countries, producing propaganda and calling for humanitarian bombings and regime changes. Like the Red Cross, Save The Children and Amnesty International. Though Oxfam is sometimes too busy organising sex parties and forcing poor black kids to have sex with animals instead. Nice to know all that charity money is being well spent.
“bogus NGOs and charities”….is there anybody who has not sold out?
They are all corrupt, politicised and generally CIA fronts.
Save The Children gave a “Humanitarian Of The Year” Award to Blair. They ran a bogus polio vaccination campaign in Pakistan, where they were really collecting DNA samples and intelligence for CIA drone strikes that wiped out entire villages. When the locals realised what they were doing, they tended to shoot first and ask questions later when any genuine health workers turned up. As a result, polio, which was virtually eradicated, is making a comeback. So what, the bigots say, they’re only sand ni**ers. The trouble is, polio doesn’t recognise international borders. The NHS may have to go back to a comprehensive vaccination campaign for it here, like in the past. Which will cost billions it doesn’t have. Nice one , STC, give you a really big round of applause for that one.
The Red Cross received $500 million to provide relief after the Haiti Earthquake. They were supposed to have a programme to provide housing for the victims. All there was to show for this $500 million was SEVEN scruffy little prefab huts. Where the money went to is one of life’s great mysteries. A lot of it seems to have ended up in the Clinton Foundation, which had a lucrative sideline in child trafficking from Haiti.
Amnesty International’s Bernard Henri Levy was the prime mover in the propaganda campaign to justify the bombing of Libya. He came up with the stories of Gaddafi giving Viagra to hordes of black Africans to rape women. As a result, a lot of African migrant workers were lynched from lamp posts. The others found themselves up for sale in the Libyan slave markets. Well done, AI.
Of course, Human Rights Watch also ran PR campaigns praising NATO’s war in Afghanistan. Apparently, this was “a war for women’s rights.” Maybe for those women who weren’t killed in drone strikes. Roth at HRW was constantly parroting jihadi propaganda and calling for humanitarian bombing and regime change in Syria.
Oxfam’s party piece is forcing poor black children to have sex with animals.
It’s nice to know all that charity money and £17 billion foreign aid budget is being put to such good use.
That’s not the same Bernard Henri Levy who caterwauled about the “horrendous abuse” suffered by the uber-weasel Roman Polanski? After all he did was to rape and sodomise a 13 year old girl after drugging her with alcohol and quaalude, and run from justice. The rabid anti-Semites who wagged their tongues so uncharitably against poor Roman! Had he not suffered enough in his harrowing but completely unverified ordeals during the war? Should he not be forgiven under a general amnesty for all Jewish criminals, in perpetuity?
(Sigh) … I wish this irrelevancy about Roman Polanski had not surfaced but it has.
Polanski’s victim did not wish to testify against him in court so both the prosecuting lawyers and Polanski’s lawyers worked out a plea bargain deal – entirely legal under Californian law at the time (late 1970s) – in which Polanski would undergo psychiatric evaluation, spend up to 90 days in jail and do community service for a year. Polanski passed the psychiatric evaluation and was in jail for 45 days.
However, after an incident in which Polanski was allowed to fly to Europe and was later photographed at a party with two young women on either side of him (and who knows if that party invitation and the photograph might have been staged?), the judge presiding over Polanski’s trial decided to jettison the plea bargain deal and send Polanski to jail for 50 years.
Polanski, on being notified of what the judge had in store for him, understandably fled the US.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/10/pola-o08.html
Both the prosecuting lawyers and Polanski’s lawyers later filed complaints against the judge and the judge was taken off the case.
The French have offered to retry Polanski (because France does not have an extradition treaty with the US but has a law that allows courts to try people who have committed crimes in other countries for those crimes) but the US has rejected the French offer.
Switzerland put Polanski under house arrest for 10 months in 2009, pending extradition to the US while Swiss authorities examined the rape case against him; Poland questioned him about the rape case in 2014. Both the Swiss and the Poles later released Polanski.
“… A judge in Krakow ruled last month that Polanski’s extradition is inadmissible, arguing that the U.S. trial was not fair and that Polanski would not face fair treatment there, something that violate Europe’s convention on human rights.
The Krakow prosecutors said in a statement they agreed with the court’s reasoning.
Among the irregularities, the court and the prosecutors cited a violation of Polanski’s right to defend himself decades ago in the United States, “unethical” discussions between the judge and only one side in the case without all parties involved, informal instructions to the judges, intentional destruction of some of the documents in the case and loss of some others and excessive sensitivity of the judges to criticism in the media …”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/polanski-polish-court-appeal-1.3339463
Polanski’s victim sued him in a civil court case alleging sexual violation in 1988 and the case was settled out of court in 1993. He took ages to pay in full and he had to be thumped about paying but he did pay in full by 1997.
Jen, you talk about process as if the rape + of the young girl did not matter. I am surprised at you. Even the version of the events you cite is heavily slanted. So you are comfortable with essentially no punishment are you?
Please read my comment carefully again, several times again if necessary. For reasons of her own, the victim (Samantha Gailey, later Geimer) did not wish to testify in court against Polanski so both the prosecuting lawyers and the defending lawyers had to settle for the lesser charge of statutory rape and on that basis, they worked out the plea bargain deal. This was legal under Californian law at the time.
If there was any miscarriage of justice, this was on the judge’s part in deciding to throw out the plea bargain deal and sentence Polanski to a prison term of up to 50 years or a shorter prison term conditional on Polanski waiving his rights to a deportation hearing.
If you are concerned about the victim, Samantha Geimer is on record as saying that she has forgiven Polanski, that she has moved on with her life, that she has not been traumatised by the rape and that the legal system has abused her and Polanski, almost from the start when she and her mother reported the rape.
“Samantha Geimer, Victim In Roman Polanski Sex Case, Strongly Defends Him Inside And Outside Of Court”
https://deadline.com/2017/06/samantha-geimer-roman-polanski-victim-defends-director-hearing-1202109259/
“Nobody’s Victim: An Interview with Samantha Geimer”
https://quillette.com/2018/01/31/nobodys-victim-interview-samantha-geimer/
Where do you live? Attitudes like you express have largely disappeared in NA. I find your take on this shocking. I am guessing you have no children
Here there are systems in place to protect children, and women who are too scared or embarrassed to testify. You seem to be saying that if a child is raped, what happens is up to her. Good God! Have you heard of protecting the public? Punishment fitting the crime? Minors having surrogates in legal matters? Child protection? Are you aware of the evidence of Polanski’s pedophile tendencies and the other complainants?
Once the police are made aware, it is out of the victim’s control, although refusal to testify makes it awkward.
You seem to be saying this sex offender was treated fairly. The mind boggles. Her views now are understandable after the media circus and irrelevant to my point about Levy which is where this started. You are condoning sex offenders who have them, like the weasel in question, using connections in the media to make it so unpleasant for the victim that they refuse to participate. Shame on you.
What she says now is irrelevant. I think she wants it behind her and that is why there was a financial settlement which the weasel repeatedly reneged on, despite signed agreements. He had to be forced. He was not in the slightest way repentant and told the world that all judges want to f,,, young girls, which is essentially giving them the finger.
Are you sure the sources you cite are objective and not more tiresome tribal support, like Meryl Streep giving him a standing ovation? Of course it is. This has been a rerun of the Jonathan Pollard case.
Quoting Geimer to say the justice system abused Polanski from the beginning is outrageous. These are the barriers he crossed.
1) a vulnerable child with an irresponsible mother
2) drugged her
3) gave her alcohol
4) raped her
5) sodomised her
6) fled from justice
A real sweetie. You would just take him into your home and have him babysit your daughters? 50 years may have been too light a sentence.
Well, you should have not made that earlier comment about Bernard Henri Levy defending Roman Polanski. I did note that it was irrelevant to the discussion on the comments forum.
Although it is just as well that you have because we can now see that, elsewhere in the same comments forum where you have practically gone off your brain making assumptions about Polanski and Geimer and their thinking, and make references to legal remedies that might not have been available to Geimer and her mother in the late 1970s – and completely overlooked the fact that the whole legal system in California then was open to abuse by a potentially corrupt judge – you have also tried to exonerate a politician who lied about her grandfather’s past in collaborating with Nazi Germany in order to be elected to parliament and who is now using her position as Canada’s foreign minister to spread disinformation about her origins, blaming Russia for exposing her grandfather’s past (when in fact it was the Polish government that called attention to it) and using that disinformation to push for more Canadian and Western confrontation against Russia, with the potential for ruining and endangering people’s lives.
I am sorry that my attitude no longer exists in North America, seeing that the attitude that has replaced it has become prone to accepting rumour and witch-hunts as the norm, and is hell-bent on pursuing vengeance against someone for actions both real and imagined; while at the same time is prepared to condone the real actions and lies of another person.
Excellent Mark, but don’t forget the bespoke army of disenfranchised, psychopathic terrorists recruited by ex SAS mercenary John le Mesurier’s, THE WHITE HELMETS, previously ISIS/Daesh, funded by $24 million in USAID.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Helmets_(Syrian_Civil_War)
According to a new report by Bloomberg, the wealth of the 12 richest Davos attendees soared by a combined 04175 billion, as the overall wealth of the world’s billionaires grew, in the same period, from $3.4 trillion to $8.9 trillion.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/01/22/pers-j22.html who were referring to the Oxfam report
Just do not give them any money. Charities without donors go bust very, very quickly. They are always using other peoples money, that heinous charge always cast against socialists lol.
Unfortunately Soros pumped billions into his co-opted and corrupt charities like Avaaz etc.Who needs are pathetic tenner a month?
Mark, I would suggest that you need to consider whether you can back up any significant portion of what you have written there. Also noteworthy, is that several of the named NGOs have US branches which admittedly do not share the ethics of their international counterparts. This is somewhat analogous, though not entirely, to what happened to the Guardian, immediately after introducing an American edition. I would suggest that unlike the Guardian, the international NGOs did not all cave in to gross political manipulation.
Unfortunately I do have to conceed that Amnesty and HRW have lost credibility in allowing their names to be hijacked in the incitement of wars. OXFAM has been deeply humiliated through a very poorly handled misconduct scandal, but this does not invalidate decades of humanitarian relief and development work, nor its periodic exposees of the underlying causes of suffering in the world.
Dear S.,
What I have said does not even scratch the surface. These are hopelessly corrupt, criminal, compromised organisations and nobody should give them a penny. The Red Cross was actively involved in terrorist atrocities in Syria, for example. They are NOT a force for good in the world. And I do give money and get involved with GENUINE charities.
US psychopaths is the right wording to use as the sanctions take their toll on the people of Venezuela.
In a sane world , this would be labelled as criminal and the perps brought to justice , the US ,UK and their vassal states .
At least shamed in the eyes of the world .Of course the perps presently control the narrative ,the media .
@summitflyer
Economic sanctions are a war crime and a crime against humanity, even when authorized by the UNSC. Maybe not officially but certainly morally.