UN and EU statements reveal their overt support for Israel
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | March 26, 2019
Predictably, the UN’s first remarks about Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip focused more on a single rocket reaching north of Tel Aviv than the Zionist state’s ongoing colonial violence against Palestinian civilians and its destruction of what remains of the enclave. Likewise, the Palestinian people themselves will be of no concern to the international body unless there is a rising death toll and images of severely wounded people splashed across social media.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, we are told, is “gravely concerned” and, again predictably, has asked for maximum restraint from “both sides”. However, his “concern” was framed thus: “Today’s firing of a rocket from Gaza towards Israel is a serious and unacceptable violation.”
Nickolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, echoed the statement from Guterres in a tweet which deplored the firing of a rocket as “absolutely unacceptable”. So far, Mladenov has not updated his concerns to describe the shelling of Gaza by Israel in the same terms, despite its bombs inflicting infinitely more damage. The EU has followed suit, emphasising its “fundamental commitment to the security of Israel.” The lives and property of Palestinians mean nothing to such people.
Even as a ceasefire was purportedly reached, Israel continued targeting the densely-populated enclave and the Gaza border was declared to be a closed military zone. It is more than likely that international institutions are waiting for further violations before they order pointless inquiries and studies, and issue conclusions and recommendations, all the while forcing Palestinians into diplomatic irrelevance by allowing Israel to exacerbate the humanitarian situation which has conveniently erased the political obligation to end colonisation.
Since Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Israel has targeted Gaza repeatedly to the point that it has now normalised air strikes and the international community has accommodated its violence and rights violations by refusing to respond and react accordingly. Both Israel and international institutions, however, need a point of reference to justify such impunity. A rocket, despite its relative insignificance, when compared with Israeli air strikes and shelling, is enough to prompt official statements that start off with concern and end with declaring the priority of Israel’s security over Palestinian lives.
An unnamed diplomatic source referred to by Israel National News has dismissed the possibility of a large-scale operation and described the reinforcements along Gaza’s nominal border as “deterrents”. Air strikes, however, are set to continue.
In line with the current General Election frenzy in Israel, several ministers and candidates, including former Israel Defence Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, have requested further action. Gantz described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who also holds the defence portfolio — as having “lost his grip on security”, while Economy Minister Eli Cohen called for targeted assassinations of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders. All this in retaliation for a rocket, as Israel would have the rest of the world believe.
As an aggressive occupier, though, Israel cannot define its actions as “retaliation” and “self-defence”. It is an instigator and has committed war crimes ever since its creation on Palestinian land in 1948.
Why, we must ask, are the UN and the EU intent on removing the distinction between possible war crimes and security when it comes to Israel? Both are trying to frame their political intent as a response to the rocket which landed north of Tel Aviv, yet the UN and the EU have clearly planned strategically for the moments when they can declare their allegiance and support for Israel without having to maintain an illusion of concern for human rights. Yet another opportunity for them to reveal their overt support for the colonial-occupation state arrived on Monday.
‘Lone Wolf’ Myth Covers Up Possible Mossad Role in New Zealand Terrorist Attack
By Max Parry • Unz Review • March 27, 2019
Ever since the news broke on March 15 of two consecutive mass shootings at the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, corporate media has been determined to establish that suspect Brenton Tarrant acted alone in the terrorist attacks that took the lives of 50 innocent Muslim worshippers and wounded 50 others. While mainstream media has been predictably eager to parade the tragedy as another chapter in the wave of rising Islamophobia and right-wing extremism globally, they have put equal effort into conscientiously avoiding any evidence that contradicts the ‘lone wolf’ theory they decided on in the initial hours following the first mass shooting in New Zealand since 1997.
Whenever terrorism is committed by Arabs or Muslims, the fourth estate is usually anxious to speculate whether or not the suspect is connected to a larger radical syndicate. However, the same scrutiny is seldom applied to white nationalists like Tarrant. In fact, they are even hesitant to label it ‘terrorism’ at all, with everyone from The Daily Telegraph to the fanatical Zionist Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News settling for the choice words ‘mass shooting.’ While Tarrant denies being part of any group in his public declaration, he does hint that he is part of a broader extremist network:
“I am not a direct member of any organization or group, though I have donated to many nationalist groups and have interacted with many more. No group ordered my attack, I make the decision myself. Though I did contact the reborn Knights Templar for a blessing in support of the attack, which was given.”
As many have noted, the “Knights Templar” is the name of an anti-Muslim militant group that another infamous right-wing terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik, claimed to belong to. During the 2011 Norway attacks, Breivik targeted a government building in the city of Oslo and a youth camp of the ruling Labour party on the island of Utøya in a sequential car bombing and mass shooting that killed a total of 77 people. However, the media and prosecutors in Breivik’s trial were insistent that the group was fictional and the only possibility was that he was an ‘army of one’ while suffering from a psychiatric disorder, another trait that is apparently only applicable to white-skinned terrorists. There was no serious inquiry into whether he was part of a larger nexus, even though he had direct contact with groups like the English Defense League (EDL), the British far right Islamophobic group led by neo-fascist agitator Tommy Robinson. Breivik was portrayed as a fundamentalist Christian but was curiously a member of the Norwegian Order of Freemasons, an organization with a history of ties to the espionage world and susceptible to infiltration because of its inherent secrecy. The original Knights Templar, or “Templars,” were a Christian army founded in the 10th century who initially shielded pilgrims voyaging to the Holy Land and later fought against Muslims during the Crusades while the name is drawn from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
What has been downplayed by the yellow press is the specific brand of Islamophobic extremism that was the basis of Tarrant’s attacks. His ideology is revealed in a 73-page manifesto, entitled “The Great Replacement” in reference to the ‘white genocide’ theory held by white nationalist identitarians, which he dispatched less than ten minutes prior to the ambush in emails to several media outlets and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s office. While the corporate press is correct that Tarrant and Breivik clearly follow the practices of the anti-Islam xenophobic movement on the rise in Europe, North America and now Oceania, the key element they have deliberately avoided mentioning is a strong collective affinity for the state of Israel. The coverage of Christchurch has repeated the same pattern displayed following the 2011 Norway attacks where the distinguishing characteristic of the extremism both culprits adhere to is of a staunchly pro-Zionist variety which has been decidedly overlooked. In the eight years between the two attacks, the pro-Israel European right has only augmented in size. In his manifesto, Brenton Tarrant even boasted the unverified claim to have had “brief contact with Knight Justiciar Breivik” while taking “true inspiration” from him. His Norwegian idol had his own 1,500 page manifesto where Israel was approvingly name-dropped nearly 400 times while he declared:
“So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists, against all cultural Marxists/multiculturalists.”
The combination of far right nationalism and support for Israel may seem like an unlikely combination, but it is an ideology shared by most of the Islamophobic and anti-immigrant political parties throughout Europe that have performed impressively well in European Parliament elections. These include Hungary’s Fidesz, the Italian League and Five Star Movement, the Flemish Flaams Belang, Poland’s Law and Justice, Belgian People’s Party, the Progress Party of Norway (of which Breivik was a member), True Finns Party, France’s National Rally, Alternative for Deutschland, and many others. It is likely that Tarrant, like Breivik, is not anti-semitic and actually views Jews as ‘allies’ in a civilizational crusade against Islam. Just as Israel has helped orchestrate the US wars in the Middle East against its enemies that has contributed to the mass influx of refugees seeking asylum in the West, it has fostered the Islamophobic backlash to it by supporting the growing far right movement that is ascendant.
Following the tragedy in Christchurch, it was revealed that 28-year old Tarrant had traveled extensively throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia, including to Afghanistan, Pakistan and even North Korea. The year prior, he also visited Israel for nine days, just as his fellow Christian Zionist Breivik had done several times prior to 2011. Tarrant’s journey in Europe included a stop in Ukraine, a hotbed of neo-Nazi activity and as it happens during the massacre he donned the SS wolf’s hook symbol used by the right wing paramilitary group Azov Battalion to which Israel has provided weapons support in its fight against pro-Russian separatists. The blend of such considerable travel activity while stockpiling a cache of semi-automatic firearms with a digital footprint espousing his extremist views online makes the likelihood that Tarrant managed to remain under the radar of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (SIS) difficult to believe. It is especially doubtful they would be unable to detect him considering he was reportedly interviewed by New Zealand police prior to obtaining his firearms license in 2017.
Judging by the Facebook live-streamed video of the massacre shot by the suspect himself wearing a GoPro head-mounted camera that resembled first-person shooter video game shows he was no amateur and possibly professionally trained as a militant. Given his extensive travel and the apparent expertise used to carry out the attacks, there are many legitimate questions about how his ventures were sponsored and whether he had accomplices. Police found undetonated car bombs in addition to his arsenal and believe he was planning on carrying out a third attack with them. What was he doing in his travels? Was he really able to finance everything alone using crypto-currency investments as purported by the media? He could very well have been a patsy in a larger plot or received support from abroad. For instance, from a certain national intelligence service whose notorious motto is “for by cunning stratagems, you wage war.”
Mossad covert operations have been exposed several times over the years violating New Zealand’s sovereignty and international law which caused a series of diplomatic rows between the two countries. Most recently was in 2011 following a 6.2 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch which caused significant damage to the city and killed 185 people, coincidentally the very same week as the attacks in Norway by Anders Breivik. Incredibly, a stone structure of a building collapsed onto a van during the earthquake which killed a man inside who turned out to be an Israeli national. His death accidentally unearthed a ring of Mossad agents after the man was discovered with multiple fake passports and USB flash drives which contained confidential data believed to have been illegally downloaded from the New Zealand police’s national computer system. The other agents in the Israeli sleeper cell were able to flee the country less than a day after his body was discovered, probably to avoid the fallout that occurred after an earlier incident in the country just a few years prior. In 2004, two Israeli men who turned out to be Mossad agents were arrested trying to obtain fraudulent passports and travel documentation that included stealing the identity of a quadriplegic. The two men were subsequently jailed for six months for engaging in criminal enterprise.
Pictured: Uriel Zosha Kelman, an Israeli spy, arrives in court in disguise in 2004 (left)) / Zev Barkan, another spy (right).
Mossad seemed to have developed a habit of revealing themselves in light of the infamous arrest of five of its agents in Secaucus, New Jersey on the morning of September 11th, 2001 by the FBI who were tipped off that a group of men were observed suspiciously dancing and celebrating while watching the WTC towers ablaze and collapsing across the Hudson River. The “dancing Israelis” were found with $5,000 in cash which raised suspicions while their vehicle was traced to a shady moving company called Urban Moving Systems that was suspected to be a front for an intelligence operation after their headquarters was abandoned and its owner, Dominick Suter, immediately fled to Israel following their apprehension. During their two month detention, the CIA intervened and halted the probe while the agents were subsequently deported in a deal with the Israeli government for overstaying their visas but not before it was confirmed that at least two of the men were intelligence officers and no ordinary moving company employees.
The world was briefly reminded of this mysterious case when Donald Trump as a presidential candidate in 2016 made the wild exaggeration that on 9/11 he had personally observed “thousands of Muslims” celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers across the river in New Jersey. It is likely that Trump mixed up two different reports from 9/11, one of Reuters footage widely circulated by major networks of a small group of Arabs in East Jerusalem celebrating the attacks and the reports about the Israelis arrested in New Jersey who were initially believed to have been of “Middle Eastern appearance” and descent. One wonders if Trump would accurately recall his other observations that morning now that he is in the service of his Saudi and Israeli masters. Needless to say, this widely suppressed story which should have been front page news led many to rightly suspect there was prior knowledge and even direct involvement among Israeli intelligence in the 9/11 attacks, along with a trove of other evidence.
ABC News Friday 06/21/2002 05:42:40 pm-05:46:50 pm (Studio: Elizabeth Vargas) Report introduced. (Studio: John Miller) Exclusive ABC News investigation into what five Israelis were doing on …
The New Jersey cell were also in possession of foreign passports. Mossad has typically used fake passports, including that of Australians and Kiwis, regularly for its clandestine operations and carrying out assassinations like the 2010 targeted killing of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai which one of the spies apprehended in New Zealand, Zev Barkan, was involved in. After the arrest of the two spooks in New Zealand in 2004, the government imposed diplomatic sanctions against Israel and temporarily severed high-level contacts between the two countries in what became a significant diplomatic rift. WikiLeaks diplomatic cables revealed that the U.S. was not at all pleased.
Relations had returned to normal between the countries until December 2016 when along with Malaysia, Senegal, Venezuela and others, New Zealand co-sponsored the controversial United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 which condemned Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories during the last months of the Obama administration. The same motion briefly became mired in the Trump-Russia investigation when former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI about lobbying activities related to the resolution during the transition between administrations on behalf of Israel. The Trump White House has since proven to be the most fanatically Zionist presidency since the foundation of the Jewish state in 1948. Over the years, New Zealand has shown a willingness to stand up to Jerusalem and its brazen disregard for international law that other nations could learn from. Despite being a small nation, it has played an important role in pro-Palestinian activism and the prospect of Palestinian statehood just as it did in protesting South African Apartheid in the 1980s. In 2018, when New Zealand-born popular musician Lorde canceled a concert in Tel Aviv in solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, she became the target of vicious Zionist smear campaign which saw right-wing Trumpist Rabbi Schmuley Boteach take out a full-page ad in The Washington Post denouncing her as a bigot while a $13,000 lawsuit was filed by the Mossad-linked Shurat HaDin lawfare NGO. Meanwhile, unlike Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Jacinda Ardern has been critical of the Trump administration’s move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, stating it undermines the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
New Zealand’s relatively even-handed foreign policy has likely rattled the Zionists and their far right Islamophobic counterparts in the West and it is possible that it is viewed as a threat to the interests of Israel and the U.S. The feasibly manufactured terrorist attack against New Zealand has greatly disrupted the small country, a state which in 2018 had its lowest homicide rate in 40 years and averages well below 100 murders per year, making this attack an extremely rare occurrence for the peaceful country. In light of the attacks on the mosques in Christchurch, it could now end up acquiring the police state model of the U.S. and Israel as part of the global ‘War on Terror.’ The country immediately issued a ban on semiautomatic weapons following the tragedy in a disturbing rollback of civil liberties while engaging in an unprecedented censorship effort to criminalize sharing and possession of Tarrant’s manifesto and video. Prior to Breivik’s perpetration of the attacks in Norway, there had been significant political tensions between Oslo and Jerusalem in the months leading up to the violence due to Norway’s intent to recognize a Palestinian state and the circumstances in relations between New Zealand and Israel prior to Christchurch is eerily reminiscent.
Israel has a storied history of being a state sponsor of international terrorism as well as the use of ‘false flag’ operations to achieve its political objectives, most notably in the 1954 Lavon Affair, codenamed Operation Susannah, where the Aman branch of its military intelligence services recruited Egyptian nationals to commit bombings to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood in order to maintain desired British military presence in Egypt. It continues such cloak-and-dagger tactics to this day with the use of terror proxies such as the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) and Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) to undermine Iran, as well as the arming and funding of al-Qaeda affiliated Syrian jihadist groups against the Assad government. If it is willing to co-sponsor radical Islamists with its ally Saudi Arabia to attack their mutual regional enemies, now that the ruling Likud Party has made strange bedfellows with far right Islamophobes in the West it is within the realm of possibility it would continue to do the same especially when the victims are Arab or Muslim.
Regardless of whether or not there turns out to be any Mossad fingerprints discovered on the Christchurch shootings, if the world is serious about confronting the emerging far right internationally it must be willing to accurately diagnose the phenomenon. One of its most distinctive attributes is its Christian Zionism and a shared belief that the Bible gives Israel evidential right to Palestinian land and that Jews are inherently non-indigenous to Europe. The ever-expanding colonization of the West Bank and Gaza has solidified Israel’s nationalist foundations, especially now that Arabic has been removed as a second official language and the passing of the 2018 Nationality Law defining Israel as an ethno-nationalist state with Arabs officially second-class citizens. If Israel did not directly participate in the 9/11 attacks by infiltrating the al-Qaeda cell in Hamburg, Germany and directing the airplane hijackings as many legitimately suspect, it has certainly facilitated the U.S. wars in the Middle East against its regional enemies and now it is nurturing the Islamophobic far right in the West hostile to the flood of displaced refugees fleeing them. Israeli policy has principally benefited from all this but one can only expect the hasbaric retaliation of ‘anti-Semitism’ smears like those against UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota for pointing this out. In the meantime, the Russiagate hoax has deflected attention away from Jerusalem toward Moscow in regards to foreign cultivation of the growing far right nationalist movement in the West. One hopes the recent bust of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report will put some of the distraction to rest and shift the speculation toward Israel where it belongs.
Finally, the political confusion of zealots like Tarrant needs to be addressed as entirely predictable instead of as unintended consequences of the War on Terror and the financial crisis. Recently, 2020 Democratic U.S. Presidential candidate Andrew Yang became the subject of establishment-led smears simply for acknowledging verifiable facts about declining birth-rates of white Americans where he was vilified as adjoining with the views of those like Tarrant. Yet these statistics designated by race that Yang recognized are expressions of the results of class conflict while genuine anger is being misdirected toward immigrants instead of capital and its never-ending changes in labor demands. This is the cycle which must be broken if this holy war between the West and Islam stirred up by Zionists or what the orientialist Samuel Huntington called the ‘clash of civilizations’ is to end. If not, we cannot only expect the U.S. empire to continue its downward slide and its fear of a multipolar world to culminate in an internecine that will turn the whole world into a tragedy like Christchurch.
The « American Party » within the institutions of the European Union
By Manlio Dinucci | Voltairnet | March 20, 2019
« Russia can no longer be considered as a strategic partner, and the European Union must be ready to impose further sanctions if it continues to violate international law » – this is the resolution approved by the European Parliament on 12 Mars with 402 votes for, 163 against, and 89 abstentions [1]. The resolution, presented by Latvian parliamentarian Sandra Kalniete, denies above all any legitimacy for the Presidential elections in Russia, qualifying them as « non-democratic », and therefore presenting President Putin as a usurper.
She accuses Russia not only of « violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine and Georgia », but also the « intervention in Syria and interference in countries such as Libya », and, in Europe, of « interference intended to influence elections and increase tensions ». She accuses Russia of « violation of the arms control agreements », and shackles it with the responsibility of having buried the INF Treaty. Besides this, she accuses Russia of « important violations of human rights in Russia, including torture and extra-judicial executions », and « assassinations perpetrated by Russian Intelligence agents by means of chemical weapons on European soil ».
After these and other accusations, the European Parliament declared that Nord Stream 2 – the gas pipeline designed to double the supply of Russian gas to Germany across the Baltic Sea – « increases European dependence on Russian gas, threatens the European interior market and its strategic interests […] and must therefore be ended ».
The resolution of the European Parliament is a faithful repetition, not only in its content but even in its wording, of the accusations that the USA and NATO aim at Russia, and more importantly, it faithfully parrots their demand to block Nord Stream 2 – the object of Washington’s strategy, aimed at reducing the supply of Russian energy to the European Union, in order to replace them with supplies coming from the United States, or at least, from US companies. In the same context, certain communications were addressed by the European Commission to those of its members [2], including Italy, who harboured the intention to join the Chinese initiative of the New Silk Road. The Commission alleges that China is a partner but also an economic competitor and, what is of capital importance, « a systemic rival which promotes alternative forms of governance », in other words alternative models of governance which so far have been dominated by the Western powers.
The Commission warns that above all, it is necessary to « safeguard the critical digital infrastructures from the potentially serious threats to security » posed by the 5G networks furnished by Chinese companies like Huawei, and banned by the United States. The European Commission faithfully echoes the US warning to its allies. The Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, US General Scaparrotti, specified that these fifth generation ultra-rapid mobile networks will play an increasingly important role in the war-making capacities of NATO – consequently no « amateurism » by the allies will be allowed.
All this confirms the influence brought to bear by the « American Party », a powerful transversal camp which is orienting the policies of the EU along the strategic lines of the USA and NATO.
By creating the false image of a dangerous Russia and China, the institutions of the European Union are preparing public opinion to accept what the United States are now preparing for the « defence » of Europe. The United States – declared a Pentagon spokesperson on CNN – are getting ready to test ground-based ballistic missiles (forbidden by the INF Treaty buried by Washington), that is to say new Euromissiles which will once again make Europe the base and at the same time, the target of a nuclear war.
The new EU copyright law closes the book on free speech online. That’s a feature, not a bug.
By Helen Buyniski | RT | March 26, 2019
The controversial copyright law facing a final vote in the EU parliament is less about copyright than it is about hammering a final nail in the coffin of the freedoms the internet once promised. Yes, Article 13 is that bad.
Most laws address themselves toward tangible, human-sized problems. Article 13, the sweeping European copyright legislation that proposes to filter all content on its way to the web to ensure no rights are being violated, isn’t interested in such prosaic stuff. It seeks to defy the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Physics? In my internet? The web operates according to the laws of entropy. It trends toward decentralization – of ideas, of social groups, but most importantly of power. Authority looks at this delightful disorder and sees only malevolent chaos that needs to be reined in. Legislators and the corporations that run their countries have spent a lot of time brainstorming on how to put the cat back in the bag, and Article 13 is the result.
This is not just a European problem. Like a catastrophic nuclear meltdown, there is no containing the fallout from this kind of measure, designed to effectively destroy the internet as we know it. Companies and platforms may start by leaving Europe, or refusing to serve European customers, but the internet has no borders, and the big platforms will embrace whatever filters are required to maintain their hold on their users – no matter what country they inhabit. One need only witness the absurdity when Canadian, American and Australian Twitter users are sanctioned for violating Pakistani blasphemy laws to understand the willingness of these platforms to cater to the most oppressive common denominator.
It’s almost surprising that the EU isn’t trying to sell this law as the killer weapon in the ongoing War on Fake News, given its member countries’ use of that trendy adversary to justify increasingly draconian speech restrictions – from the proposed end of anonymity in France to criminal charges for platforms that don’t take down “problematic” speech quickly enough in the UK. But then, EU leaders aren’t actually elected, so they don’t have to sell the people anything. Like the monopolies Article 13 enables, the EU gives its users no choice – accept this degraded, deliberately-hobbled, entropically-eviscerated parody of the internet, or stay offline (by the time they’re done with it, you’ll hardly be able to tell the difference, anyway).
Google spent $100 million to develop a filter capable of screening uploaded content in real time in order to prevent wrong-think from seeping into YouTube livestreams. There are few feelings as unsettling as livestreaming to an audience only to find one’s mic cut after broaching a topic that has been declared off-limits. For now, those who would resist the jackbooted march of “progress” can join another platform, but under Article 13’s restrictions, will that other platform be able to afford a $100 million content filter of its own?
Algorithms are dumb – dumber than even the most clueless human forum moderator – and automated filters cannot tell the difference between fair use, parody, and straight-up rip-offs any more than they can tell the difference between real and fake news. Collateral censorship will tear a hole in casual communication – forget memes and similar forms of humor. AI doesn’t laugh.
To their credit, many of the early architects of the internet see this legislation for the threat that it is and have spoken passionately against it. They understand the threat posed to innovation and the free exchange of ideas, but they naively believe those who wrote the legislation do not. “Indeed, if Article 13 had been in place when the Internet’s core protocols and applications were developed, it is unlikely that it would exist today as we know it,” warned a letter signed by 70 web pioneers in opposition to the law.
The way the web developed the first time was not ideal for centralized power structures. Only a nuclear option like Article 13 could ever hope to rein in the human potential unleashed by the web and give them a second chance to get it right.
Article 13, the internet’s founding fathers warn, means the “transformation of the Internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users.” That’s a feature, not a bug. Keeping out small platforms that could challenge the monopolies that have shown they’re willing to work with governments certainly makes life easier for those governments. The internet once held the promise to liberate humanity. The European Parliament believes that’s too big a risk to take.
Trump’s Sanctions Kill Venezuelan People. Why Can’t UN Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet ‘Fully Acknowledge’ That?
By Joe Emersberger | The Canary | March 25, 2019
On 20 March, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet made a statement about Venezuela. Unfortunately, her statement contained factual inaccuracies and failed to take into full account the deadly impact sanctions are having on the country.
Her words should also be contrasted with UN special rapporteur Alfred De Zayas who visited Venezuela. De Zayas said that the sanctions are “economic warfare.”
Factually incorrect
But Bachelet’s statement about US sanctions failed to echo De Zayas’ damning analysis:
Although this pervasive and devastating economic and social crisis began before the imposition of the first economic sanctions in 2017, I am concerned that the recent sanctions on financial transfers related to the sale of Venezuelan oil within the United States may contribute to aggravating the economic crisis, with possible repercussions on people’s basic rights and wellbeing.
Firstly, economic sanctions were first imposed in March 2015 by the Obama administration, not in 2017. Obama declared a fraudulent “national emergency” that claimed Venezuela was an “extraordinary threat” to the United States. Obama sold the sanctions as being “targeted” by making it illegal to deal with high ranking Venezuelan government officials. As US economist Mark Weisbrot pointed out, there is no way to “target” such officials without making investors afraid to deal with the entire government.
Donald Trump extended Obama’s “national emergency” to dramatically intensify the sanctions in August 2017. In the first year after Trump’s sanctions were imposed, they cost Venezuela’s government at least $6bn in oil revenues. Venezuela was importing $2bn per year in medicines while the economy was still growing.
Bachelet in denial about deadly sanctions
Trump’s sanctions are therefore killing people. But Bachelet failed to denounce them – only expressing “concern” that the most “recent” escalation of US sanctions “may” aggravate the crisis.
It’s therefore hypocritical of Bachelet to deny the impact of Trump’s sanctions while criticizing Nicolas Maduro’s government for failing to “fully acknowledge” the scale of Venezuela’s crisis.
Bachelet’s statement alluded to the argument, commonly used by US apologists, that the economic crisis preceded the sanctions. But US support for an insurrectionary opposition – going back all the way to 2002 – was a big factor in causing the crisis. Although it does not excuse the blunders that were made by the Venezuelan government, it is important to recognize and remember this.
Where is Bachelet’s “dissent”?
Bachelet also failed to condemn repeated threats against Venezuela’s government that have been made by US officials. Threats are illegal under Article 2 of the UN Charter. Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton has openly “joked” about Maduro being sent to a US-run torture camp in Cuba. Again, Bachelet’s hypocrisy is striking. She professed concern about dissent in Venezuela while it is threatened and sabotaged by a superpower.
The world’s most dangerous criminals have nothing to fear from Bachelet and similar “human rights defenders”. De Zayas, on the other hand, refused to pull any punches in his criticism. In an interview with the Independent, he stated:
“Sanctions kill,” he told The Independent, adding that they fall most heavily on the poorest people in society, demonstrably cause death through food and medicine shortages, lead to violations of human rights and are aimed at coercing economic change in a “sister democracy”.
Some of Bachelet’s critique of Venezuela’s record is valid. But by not “fully acknowledging” the role that US sanctions and threats play in the crisis, her credibility is undermined.