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Kissinger behind 3 million civilian deaths – report

RT | May 24, 2023

Henry Kissinger, the foreign policy eminence grise who has advised half a dozen presidents, has caused the deaths of over 3 million people, according to an Intercept report published Tuesday in observation of the realpolitik strategist’s 100th birthday.

While critics of the Nixon-era secretary of state and national security adviser often describe him as a war criminal for his pivotal role in numerous US-backed genocides and coups, the report argues Kissinger’s body count has been widely underestimated, particularly regarding the secretive, highly illegal expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia in the 1970s.

Between the genocides he sponsored in East Timor and Bangladesh, the continent-wide terrorism, coups and death squads of Operation Condor in Latin America, the fomenting of civil wars in Southern Africa, and his carpet-bombing of Cambodia and Laos under the guise of chasing the Vietnamese, Kissinger is believed to be responsible for over 3 million civilian deaths – more if one counts the casualties that have resulted from advice he gave the private sector.

Kissinger has ‘only’ acknowledged that his actions caused the deaths of 50,000 Cambodians and blames the Vietnamese, the supposed targets of the US’ bombing campaign (the coordinates of which were logged incorrectly so as to be recorded as legal strikes within Vietnam). Intercept reporter Nick Truse argues the number is closer to 150,000, pointing to numerous documented examples of egregious and deliberate undercounting of civilian casualties. The figure represents more than six times more civilians than the US has killed in airstrikes since 9/11.

Transcripts from the Intercept’s “exclusive archive” of declassified US military documents from a secret Pentagon war crimes task force reveal it was Kissinger’s decision to relay then-president Richard Nixon’s drunk, belligerent trash talk about Cambodia into coherent instructions to the Pentagon to begin a “massive bombing campaign” in the country in 1970.

Kissinger’s now-infamous directive to shoot “anything that flies on anything that moves” exploded the secret war, tripling the number of bombings by the end of the year. He allegedly approved all 3,875 individual bombings of the war, and the bombers dropped over 257,000 tonnes of explosives on Cambodia in 1973 alone.

The Intercept’s archive also revealed numerous brutal ground raids on Cambodian villages that have since been all but memory-holed; Truse confirmed via interviews with survivors that the raids were far deadlier than reported. While the airstrikes were frequently hushed up as “pilot error” – “errors” that were nevertheless repeated thousands of times – the US Army, in an internal investigation, actually blamed its press corps when ground troops were caught looting a village they had just raided.

Kissinger’s carpet-bombing of Cambodia paved the way for the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal dictatorship that killed 2 million Cambodians – 20% of the country’s population – which he privately (and approvingly) referred to as “murderous thugs” while helping them secure regional allies.

Kissinger has never been prosecuted – or even officially charged – with war crimes, nor has the US military made any systemic efforts to hold accountable the troops who actually did the killing.

May 24, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Worthless Naval Base at Gitmo

Tales of the American Empire | May 11, 2023

The American empire has over 1000 overseas military bases with between a dozen and 45,000 personnel. The United States spends more to operate its overseas military bases each year than China spends on its entire military. Several of these bases have become worthless yet remain open because of bureaucratic resistance. The largest unneeded base is also the oldest overseas base, the US Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, known as Gitmo. No combat forces are based there or even combat support forces. There are no ships, no aircraft, no weapons, nor munitions based at Gitmo. The lights could be shut off at expensive Gitmo tomorrow and everyone flown home and the US Navy wouldn’t notice, except that it would free manpower and resources for a dozen more warships.

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“All Bases Covered”; Tom Engelhardt, Antiwar.com; January 10, 2011; https://original.antiwar.com/engelhar…

“Overseas Base Closure List”; Carlton Meyer; G2mil; 2016; https://www.g2mil.com/OBCL.htm

Related Tale: “The Empires Cuban Colony 1898 -1959”:    • The Empire’s Cuba…  

May 13, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | 9 Comments

CIA May Be Regarded Around World as a Rogue Elephant, But Operatives Can Still Churn Out Books that Make Themselves Look Like Heroes

And the Washington foreign policy establishment still eats them up

By Rick Sterling | CovertAction Magazine | May 1, 2023

In 1975, Philip Agee published his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary. In the introduction, he wrote: “When I joined the CIA, I believed in the need for its existence. After twelve years with the agency I finally understood how much suffering it was causing, that millions of people all over the world had been killed or had their lives destroyed by the CIA and the institutions it supports. I couldn’t sit by and do nothing and so began work on this book.”

Enrique Prado’s book, Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2022), is written for the opposite purpose. Prado says, “This book is my attempt to correct the misperceptions that make the Agency one of the least understood and most mistrusted institutions in America today. The reality we faced on the ground in places from Muslim Africa to East Asia, to our own streets here at home, is one of persistent threats that must be countered to keep our people safe.”

Prado’s memoir was approved for publication by the CIA. It is self-laudatory and highly critical of restraints on the CIA. It confirms that, while the ability to assassinate at will was temporarily restricted, CIA sabotage and paramilitary operations against other nations have continued non-stop.

Background

Enrique (Ric) Prado’s father lost his business in the Cuban Revolution and Ric came to the U.S. as a youth in the early 1960s. He grew up in greater Miami. The Vietnam War was raging and his “dream was to go to Vietnam.”

After high school, Ric enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and received training in rescue operations including parachute jumping and scuba diving. Prado’s dream was dashed because the Vietnam War was winding down and the U.S. military downsizing.

Prado alludes to his involvement with Cuban-American gangs and some troubled years. Then, starting with contract work, Prado began to perform assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

A young Ric Prado in Hialeah, Florida. [Source: nypost.com]

Prado and the Contras

Prado’s timing was late for Vietnam but just right for Central America. In 1979 the Sandinista Revolution overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. As a Spanish-speaking Latino, Prado was not a typical Anglo-American. He was recruited as a CIA officer responsible for overseeing the development of the Contra army based in Honduras and conducting cross-border attacks on communities in Nicaragua.

He writes, “In these early days, there were only five CIA officers who interfaced directly with the Contras in Tegucigalpa; none were yet in the field.” There were “ten camps that lay scattered along the Honduran Nicaraguan border.” Ric Prado became the CIA officer responsible for going to the camps to coordinate support and conduct weapons training.

Prado admits the Contra leadership came from the corrupt Somoza regime: “Others who had been part of Somoza’s military…formed the core leadership of the Contras.” Initially, Washington subcontracted the job of mobilizing the Contras to Argentinian military officers who had experience from their own dirty war and death squads. Prado is extremely critical of the Argentinian military trainers, calling them a “den of snakes” and stating that, “to a man, I found them to be useless parasites.” The Argentinian military trainers were supplanted by CIA personnel, with Ric Prado playing a leading role overseeing Contra operations from Honduras and later in the “southern front” in Costa Rica.

In the Reagan years, Ric Prado (clutching rocket launcher) trained the Contras to fight communist Sandinistas as part of the CIA’s “tip of the spear” in Nicaragua.

During the Reagan years, Ric Prado (clutching rocket launcher) trained  Contras to fight communist Sandinistas as part of the CIA’s “tip of the spear” in Nicaragua. [Source: nypost.com]

The CIA is funded by Congress and acutely aware of its public image. Whether it is creating negative press for “enemies” such as Nicaragua, Cuba or Russia, or creating positive press for itself, manipulating the media is an important part of its work. Prado talks about the political benefits of recruiting Indigenous Miskitos to the Contras: “Miskitos were popular with several U.S. political sectors. Among Native Americans and some prominent liberals, the Miskitos were considered to be the oppressed, indigenous forces untainted by association with Somoza. That political viability back in the States with elements often hostile to the Agency helped us enormously.”

Dinner in one of the Miskito camps, Prado on the right, where living conditions were primitive at best.

Dinner in one of the Miskito camps, Prado on the right, where living conditions were primitive at best. [Source: nypost.com]

The unofficial war on Nicaragua included attacks on infrastructure which echo today with the U.S. sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Prado proudly documents the attack on the Puerto Cabezas pier and underwater gas pipeline: “The dock included an integrated fuel pipeline for faster transfer of oil from tankers. If we could destroy this… we’d make a big statement by blowing up the key link between the Sandinistas and their communist allies….We received exactly what we needed: a specialized underwater demolition charge that combined compactness with tremendous blast power….The charge exploded…the blast was so large it destroyed the fuel pipeline.”

Prado documents the failed attempt to blow up a bridge at Corinto on the Pacific coast. For unknown reasons, Prado was re-assigned and left Honduras in March 1984 after four years managing the Contras. He returned to the Contra campaign in the summer of 1986. They had safe houses and secret bases in ranches along the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border. It was more difficult because the Costa Rican government did not support the Contras as Honduras did.

Prado carried all these weapons while fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Prado carried all these weapons while fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. [Source: nypost.com]

Prado briefly describes the sensational events in October 1986 when a CIA plane dropping supplies and weapons to Contras was shot down. The pilot and two others on the flight died, but ex-Marine Eugene Hasenfus survived and was captured. Unmentioned in the book, this was a sensational news event at the time. Beyond the drama of an American plane being shot down over Nicaragua and an American captured and taken prisoner, it revealed the CIA was violating the congressional Boland Amendment prohibiting U.S. military support for overthrowing the Nicaragua government.

The Reagan administration denied responsibility. Elliott Abrams, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, said:“The flight in which Mr. Hasenfus took part was a private initiative…It was not organized, directed or financed by the U.S. Government.” The counter-evidence was overwhelming and the CIA was caught red-handed violating the congressional resolution and then lying about it. This is unmentioned in the book. Instead, Prado criticizes Hasenfus for having personal identification papers in his possession.

José Fernando Canales, the Sandinista soldier who shot down Eugene Hasenfus’s plane with a surface-to-air missile, leads his hapless captive through the jungle on October 5, 1986. [Source: dailykos.com]

Prado’s Pride

In 1990, after ten years of terrorist attacks by the Contras, combined with economic and political attacks from Washington, Nicaraguans cried “Uncle” and voted the Sandinistas out of power.

Prado says, “our Contra program was a definitively successful black op carried out solely by key personnel from the CIA.” Prado stated further that “that Cuban kid who lost his native country to revolutionaries now helped cut off some of the communist tentacles that threatened to engulf Latin America.”

Ric Prado in action. [Source: cbsnews.com]

Prado believes the use of a proxy army to fight against a perceived enemy was an important victory and re-established the credibility of the CIA. He says, “The Contras resuscitated the post-Vietnam decimated CIA back to relevance.”

Prado is annoyed at negative media portrayals of the CIA Contra program. The movie American Made, depicting the story of an American pilot taking guns to the Contras and bringing cocaine back into the U.S., is especially annoying to Prado. He ignores the fact that tens of thousands of Nicaraguans died and cocaine inundated some U.S. cities as a byproduct of the Contra program.

Prado believes that the CIA were the “good guys” in Nicaragua. The International Court of Justice thought otherwise.

In 1986 the court ruled that the U.S. attacks on Nicaragua were violations of international law. The Reagan administration and media largely ignored the ruling.

Later, journalist Gary Webb documented the catastrophic social damage inside the U.S. caused by the cheap cocaine flooding some U.S. cities. Webb was attacked by establishment media. However, in 1998, the CIA Inspector General acknowledged, “There are instances where C.I.A. did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity, or take action to resolve the allegations.”

The 2014 movie Kill the Messenger, based on the true and tragic story of Gary Webb, was undoubtedly another movie that irritated Ric Prado.

A picture containing logo Description automatically generated
[Source: newamericanjournal.net]

Justifying Terrorism and Sabotage

Prado’s justification for CIA crimes against other countries is U.S. national security. He says, “The spread of communism through Central and South America became a direct threat to the security of the United States.” He compares the war against “communism” to the World War II fight against Nazi Germany. He says, “The Sandinistas quickly consolidated their power through Nazi-like pogrom and oppression.” Prado says that training the Contras was like “being an OSS officer trying to train and supply the French resistance to the Germans in WW2.”

The U.S. deployed Nicaraguans, Afghans and extremist Arab recruits in proxy wars across the globe. Prado assesses this a great success: The Mujahedin in Afghanistan and Contras in Nicaragua “played crucial roles in the Cold War’s final act.”

Prado does not mention the fact that the Sandinistas were voted back into power in Nicaragua in 2006 after 16 years of neo-liberal rule. The country was in very poor shape with privatized education, little health care, and terrible infrastructure. Since being voted back, the Sandinistas have won increasing levels of support because they have substantially improved the lives of most Nicaraguans. As in the 1980s, Nicaragua is back on the U.S. enemy list and Western media portrayals are universally negative.

Prado in Other Countries

The “CIA shadow warrior” went on to conduct operations in Peru, the Philippines, South Korea and an unnamed African country, probably the Central African Republic. “We were the leadership cadre, spearheading America’s effort against global terrorism.”

Prado says, “Radical Islamic terrorism at the turn of the century morphed into a deadly new enemy.” With the attacks of 9/11, the U.S. homeland was suddenly the victim of a real attack. The timing was very convenient for war hawks and those who wanted a “new American Century.” From being a president who took office under highly contested circumstances, Bush became a “war President.” The 9/11 attack provided a Pearl Harbor moment justifying U.S. military aggression in the Middle East.

Prado describes the fervor and intensity with which the CIA responded: CIA agents worked long hours to identify, capture and sometimes kill those deemed to be “enemy combatants.” Some of these suspects were tortured in violation of the UN Convention Against Torture, to which the U.S. is a signatory. The “CIA shadow warrior” is dismissive of the critics. The “much maligned enhanced interrogations [were] sparingly performed on known terrorists.”

“Jungle of Criminality”

Prado views the world as “a jungle of criminality, corruption, betrayals, and atrocious human rights abuses we were determined to help eradicate.” There are numerous allusions to the “good guys” fighting the “bad guys.”

Prado does not attempt to argue with critics who say some CIA actions are violations of international law and human rights. It is estimated that 30,000 Nicaraguans died in the Contra War. This is ten times more than died in the attacks of 9/11 in a country that only had 3.3 million people at the time.

Prado’s claim that Sandinista Nicaragua posed a threat to U.S. “national security” stretches credulity. The CIA actions not only violated international law; they violated U.S. law. … Full review

May 5, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

West’s efforts to isolate Russia have failed – Lavrov

RT | April 29, 2023

The West has failed to isolate Russia, with the majority of the world still interested in maintaining good relations with Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. He also argued that the trend toward multipolarity is irreversible, whether former colonial powers like it or not.

Addressing the World Online Conference on Multipolarity on Saturday, Lavrov said that “Washington’s and its satellites’ efforts to reverse history, to force the international community to live by the invented ‘rules-based order’” are proving to be a fiasco, citing the “total failure” of the West “to isolate Russia.”

According to the foreign minister, a number of countries, which combined are home to 85% of the world’s population, have made it clear that they will not do the bidding of the former colonial powers.

The Russian diplomat said the fact that delegates from several dozen nations “from nearly every continent” attended the online forum shows just how much traction the idea of multipolarity has gained.

Lavrov noted that new global centers are emerging in Eurasia, the Indo-Pacific region, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, and that these nations are pursuing independent policies guided by national interests.

According to the foreign minister, developing nations have been steadily expanding their share in the global economy over the past three decades, while the role of the G7 nations has been diminishing.

He also hailed the fact that more and more countries have expressed interest in joining international groups “of the new kind,” such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Russia, Lavrov explained, champions a multipolar world order based on respect for the UN charter, and a “balance of interests” as opposed to a “balance of fear.”

President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow will not abide by the “so-called rules” invented and imposed by “certain countries.”

Also on Friday, while addressing members of the SCO, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu claimed that the West is putting “unprecedented pressure” on independent countries to pit them against Russia and China, and undermine the rise of the multipolar world.

On Monday, Lavrov called for the expansion of Asian, African, and Latin American representation in the UN Security Council, arguing that the West is over-represented in the international body.

April 29, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russian fuel exports surge despite sanctions – Bloomberg

RT | April 27, 2023

Russia is on course to record its highest seasonal export rate of petroleum products in seven years despite Western oil sanctions that took effect in February, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing tanker tracking data from Vortexa.

According to the report, shipments of clean petroleum products, including diesel-type fuel, amounted to 1.9 million barrels a day during the first three weeks of April. If that rate continues for the remainder of the month, it will be the highest for this time of the year since at least 2016, calculations show.

The new data follows multi-year highs reached in March, when shipments were at their highest since the start of 2016.

Russian diesel-type fuel exports were targeted by an EU embargo on seaborne petroleum products that came into force in early February, along with a G7 price cap on the same products. In response, Moscow announced it will cut output by 500,000 barrels a day between March and December.

Despite the sanctions, data shows that Russia has successfully redirected fuel shipments. Most of the country’s petroleum products in April have been shipped to Türkiye as well as North African countries, including Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya.

Russia has also boosted exports to South American countries, most notably Brazil. According to a recent report by Reuters, Russia’s share of Brazilian diesel fuel imports is set to reach 53% in April, compared to just 0.2% a year ago.

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , | 1 Comment

Lula supports de-dollarization on his trip to China, but that is not enough

By Lucas Leiroz | April 18, 2023

Lula’s trip to China was marked by several signals about what may be his foreign policy in his third term. In his speeches, Lula suggested that he will continue to bet on partnerships with the global south and emphasized his criticism of organizations linked to or controlled by the US. Lula’s trip was well received by Chinese partners and brought new hope to bilateral and intra-BRICS relations.

Undoubtedly, the most prominent point in his pronouncements was his support for the de-dollarization of international economic relations. Lula questioned the need to use the dollar as a global commercial currency and expressed his support for the “idea” of creating a currency for the BRICS – or starting to trade in national currencies.

“Why can’t we do trade based on our own currencies? (…) Who was it that decided that the dollar was the currency after the disappearance of the gold standard? (…) Why can’t a bank like that of the BRICS have a currency to finance trade relations between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other countries? It’s difficult because we are unaccustomed [to the idea]. Everyone depends on just one currency”, he said during a press conference.

With this, Lula reiterated what he had mentioned previously, during a trip to Argentina, in which he proposed the creation of a currency for Mercosur and another for the BRICS, both with the aim of advancing economic de-dollarization. To his supporters, this sounds like a big sign that Lula is distancing himself from the US and turning towards greater participation in building a multipolar world. However, this seems like an overly optimistic analysis.

De-dollarization is part of the multipolar world, but it is not its essence. Many countries, even US allies, have been seeking to de-dollarize their international transactions in recent years. Japan, for example, has traded with Beijing without the dollar since 2011, as well as Australia since 2013. Also, the EU has traded with Iran without the dollar since 2020. France recently started its de-dollarization process and Switzerland will certainly start this process soon, as it began to get rid of some of its dollar reserves.

In fact, economic de-dollarization is a technical and pragmatic measure, whose purpose is much more to generate economic benefits than to operate any geopolitical transition. In Brazil, the measure has even been supported on a large scale by businessmen and parliamentarians linked to the agribusiness sector, which is the main segment of the Brazilian economy and whose biggest partner is precisely China. Recognizing the Chinese interest in de-dollarization, there is internal pressure from the Brazilian business community for Lula to de-dollarize the economy. Therefore, it is a technical and pragmatic issue that does not mean much for Lula’s foreign policy agenda.

It is also necessary to emphasize that before traveling to China, Lula repeatedly stated that the main subject of his meeting with Xi would be to discuss the Ukrainian crisis. He planned to show his “peace club” proposal to the Chinese president and garner support, but apparently this was not a relevant topic in the talks. Both presidents limited themselves to generic declarations of support for peace and negotiations, without any more emphatic mention of Lula’s “peace club” project.

Considering that Lula planned the terms of his project in advance with American and European politicians, having even signed a joint statement with Biden condemning the Russian special military operation, it is most likely that Xi has refrained from giving any deep support to the Brazilian president. China and Russia are at their closest moment in history, with unlimited cooperation in all areas. Certainly, Xi would not agree to participate in a “peace club” supported precisely by the states that are waging war against Russia. Therefore, the Ukrainian subject ceased to be the main topic of the tour.

Furthermore, Lula signed interesting agreements with China in the field of space cooperation. A memorandum of understanding was also made in the semiconductor sector. The balance of the trip was positive for Brazil and advanced the de-dollarization agenda, but it did not significantly change the analyses that point out that Lula is closer to the West in this third term. In the same sense, Lula also did not revoke his support for prioritizing the EU-Mercosur agreement over the China-Mercosur agreement, which shows that his position of ambiguity remains.

It seems that Lula plans to continue maintaining this ambiguity. He develops his foreign policy based on a merely multilateralist, not a multipolar, mentality. Lula and his team are acting as if the current world scenario were the same as in his first terms, when there was no possibility of contesting the US unipolar geopolitical order, with the emerging countries only seeking greater economic development through multilateralism.

This reality has absolutely changed, and it is now possible to build a really polycentric system, where emerging countries also have a political role, not merely focused on economic and commercial development through multilateral cooperation. It is hoped that Lula’s team will realize this in time and take more relevant measures towards multipolarity, ignoring American pressure.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

April 18, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Invading Mexico in the Name of the Drug War Is a Really Bad Idea

By Weimin Chen – Mises Wire – 04/10/2023

Following the violent attack on Americans in the Mexican border city of Matamoros in early March, South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham stated that he was prepared to get tough and introduce legislation to set the stage for US military intervention in Mexico. The move would be a significant escalation in the long-running war on drugs that has been raging under the auspices of the United States for many decades to the dismay of many Latin American countries.

Graham continues to ignore the disastrous results of the use of force in US foreign policy as he eyes adding Mexico to his growing bucket list of interventionist missions. If previous interventions serve as examples, a US military intervention in Mexico would be just another excuse to expand national security interests and mire the country in another costly conflict.

Matamoros Attack

Graham’s comments on using military force in Mexico were sparked when four Americans were kidnapped in Matamoros on the Mexican side of the border with Texas. The area is known for having a heavy drug cartel presence due to its proximity to the US-Mexico border. The four Americans have been identified as Latavia “Tay” McGee, Shaeed Woodard, Zindell Brown, and Eric James Williams.

McGee’s mother told reporters that her daughter was traveling to undergo a cosmetic surgical procedure with the other three. They were fired on in downtown Matamoros and loaded into a pickup truck. A local woman, Areli Pablo Servando, was also killed by a stray bullet in the attack. Brown and Woodard were eventually found dead, while Williams and McGee survived.

Later, a letter of apology along with five men found with their hands tied were turned over to authorities of the Tamaulipas state law enforcement purportedly by the Scorpion faction of the Gulf Cartel. The organization extended its apology to the families of the victims and to the people of Matamoros in general for the poor decision-making and discipline of its affiliated associates.

This public relations move indicated that the cartel was alarmed by the outcry following the attack and wanted to frame it as an unusual incident outside of the ordinary rules under which it operates. Chances are that the cartel wanted to do anything they could to avoid direct US military confrontation.

Policymakers against the Cartels

Graham told Fox News that he would introduce legislation “to make certain Mexican drug cartels foreign terrorist organizations under US law and set the stage to use military force if necessary to protect America from being poisoned by things coming out of Mexico.” This highlights the concern surrounding the trafficking of fentanyl into the US from Mexico and the deadly toll it has been having on the population, and there is a growing sentiment, especially among Republican leaders, for more to be done about it.

Former attorney general Bill Barr concurred with the notion of US military action against cartels and recommended declaring the groups as “foreign terrorist organizations.” Texas representative Dan Crenshaw and Florida representative Michael Waltz have expressed their desires to authorize the president to use military force against “those responsible for trafficking fentanyl or a fentanyl-related substance into the United States or carrying out other related activities that cause regional destabilization in the Western Hemisphere.” Seventeen Republicans have cosponsored that resolution.

Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on Twitter that the US “should strategically strike and take out the Mexican Cartels, not the Mexican government or their people, but the Mexican Cartels which control them all.” This common assurance that America’s execution of military plans will simply target the right people and nobody else has been used in virtually every instance of the US using force in foreign conflicts. It shows either the hubris of US foreign policy or its indifference to the lives of its innocent victims abroad.

Roots of Violence

These calls for military intervention would serve as another layer of policies and actions already implemented by the US that have had disastrous consequences. After all, the violence in Mexico is an extension of the war on drugs started by American policy. In just the last decade, the US Drug Enforcement Administration has been found laundering millions of dollars in cash and delivering drugs for Mexican traffickers, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives was found to have illegally proliferated nearly two thousand firearms with the intention of tracking criminal elements. These firearms were subsequently lost and used in cartel violence on both sides of the border.

Meanwhile, US-trained Mexican troops and federal police officers have committed widespread human rights violations. If these are the policies that have already been implemented, sending the military would be adding fuel to the fire.

Graham followed up with his statements on military force and clarified that he did not mean sending the US Army to invade Mexico but to destroy drug labs. This is reminiscent of the beginning of the US missions in the war on terror in Afghanistan, when special forces under the Joint Special Operations Command were implemented in secret raids that were highly controversial in their lack of accountability in causing collateral damage and civilian casualties. Without any clear definition of success and with the dubious effectiveness of using military force, this kind of endeavor would be susceptible to mission creep and expansions of the scope and spending, just as it did in the many interventions of the war on terror.

Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has already responded to the remarks by Republican lawmakers, saying that any US military intervention in his country would represent an unacceptable infringement of Mexican sovereignty. If the US military’s track record provides any indication, the direct use of force in Mexico would likely cause more pain and suffering in a country with a population already plagued by violence.

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | 3 Comments

The Taliban did in one year what Washington couldn’t in 20, sparking new panic

The ban on Afghan poppy cultivation is set to hit Europe’s heroin supplies

By Rachel Marsden | RT | April 11, 2023

It’s been nearly a year since the Taliban banned Afghan poppy farming used for the production of opioids. The impact of the move is set to hit global markets sometime soon, given the delay from farm to customer.

You’d think that would bring a welcome sigh of relief. Apparently not. Reports are now suggesting that a lack of Afghan heroin on the global market and a reduction of available natural opioids like heroin could lead to increased use of synthetic opioids like fentanyl. If that’s the case, then it’s only because Washington and the West are about as competent at curtailing skyrocketing drug overdose deaths as they were at tackling the cultivation of Afghan opioids back when they had control of the country. Synthetic opioids from China and Mexico are increasingly being used, as are those procured through prescriptions within America’s own healthcare system.

Over the course of the US-led Global War on Terror that kicked off in Afghanistan in 2001, heroin overdoses in the US and elsewhere spiked. Despite having control over the country and its government for two decades, Washington not only failed to curtail farming and exports of Afghan opium, but oversaw an increase.

In February 2004, then US Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Robert Charles, outlined a new policy for countering “narcoterrorism” in Afghanistan before Congress. He cited a desire to assist the US-backed Afghan government with its objective “to eliminate opium poppy cultivation and trade in 10 years.” The project would involve deploying CIA-linked USAID to poppy-growing areas to help find alternative farming solutions. But there have always been strong doubts over the sincerity of such efforts. A US Department of Justice policy paper from 1991 accused the CIA of “complicity in the narcotics trade” in Afghanistan, underscoring that “covert CIA operations in Afghanistan, for example, have transformed South Asia from a self-contained opium zone into a major supplier of heroin for the world market.”

The CIA would certainly be in a position to know, having backed Mujahideen jihadist fighters against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the Cold War while the trafficking occurred right under its nose. Apparently old habits die hard.

In 2010, Former Director of the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia, Viktor Ivanov, met with NATO officials to request a mandate for destroying the poppy fields, citing 30,000 opium-related deaths in Russia. “We cannot be in a situation where we remove the only source of income of people who live in the second poorest country in the world without being able to provide them with an alternative,” NATO spokesman James Appathurai replied, according to Reuters.

Clearly, they just weren’t that interested. It now seems that the US and NATO counter insurgency mission served in part as cover for safeguarding and protecting the opium fields from destruction – which the Taliban had already gone about doing before the 2001 US invasion. Propping up Western proxies doesn’t come cheap, and some things simply aren’t fit for the accounting books back home. It’s no secret that the CIA has a history of using narcotic trafficking to support US interests abroad while simultaneously accusing the local opposition of doing just that – from Nicaragua and Haiti to Southeast Asia, Indochina, and even France.

According to a State Department fact sheet from the pre-2001 archives, Taliban poppy cultivation bans “lacked credibility.” Yet it was Washington’s public proclamations of eradication that never came to fruition. Similarly, Washington laughably charged Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with “narco-terrorism partnership with the FARC for the past 20 years,” in March 2020. This was despite Washington’s unconditional backing of South American ally, Colombia – an actual narco-state whose cocaine production exploded under the leadership of former President Ivan Duque even as President Joe Biden introduced him at the White House in 2022 as “my friend.” Biden added: “We’ve known each other for a long while, and we were reminiscing about how far back we go… I’ve been deeply engaged with the relationship with Colombia for a long time, going back more than 20 years to that old Plan Colombia.”

Funny that Biden should mention Plan Colombia – a US-backed multi-billion dollar program to fight drugs and insurgency in the country, which is largely considered to be a counter narcotics failure. It didn’t even really provide lasting counterinsurgency results, according to members of former President Barack Obama’s own administration, concluding that “our collective failure to control either drug abuse or drug trafficking has exacted an enormous human toll.”

Washington has historically been both disingenuous and incompetent when it comes to fighting illicit drug use. The fact that the Taliban finally has an opportunity to do what Washington was never able or willing to do – despite claims to the contrary – closes one spigot. However, it won’t save Washington from its own failures on the drug front.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

US once again turning sword to Latin America as its global power wanes

By Drago Bosnic | April 11, 2023

The political West is always “shocked” by how deeply unpopular it is in the Global South and cannot comprehend why it “dares” to refuse to side with them against Russia and/or China. This lesson is something the political elites of the United States and its numerous satellite states need to be reminded of from time to time. On the other hand, the political West never stopped treating the Global South as a fief that just so happens to be populated by several billion people, all of whom are seen as “fair game”. Needless to say, this has left disastrous consequences for the vast majority of those living in the targeted countries.

While some were attacked directly, such as Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, former Yugoslavia/Serbia, etc. others were being exploited “peacefully”. Luckily for the world, the power of the globe’s most imperialist bloc is gradually fading away. This is certainly not to say that it has already collapsed, but the process is well underway. The political West is also perfectly aware of this, so it now needs to prioritize which areas of the Global South it can target. Its days of waging war on the millions of unfortunate people of the Middle East will soon be over, very likely forever.

However, as the US power projection capabilities dwindle, it’s once again turning its sword toward the immediate neighborhood. And it’s not even trying to be at least somewhat subtle about it, as the people of Mexico are being threatened to find out because many in Washington DC believe it is the Mexicans’ “fault” that America is getting flooded with drugs smuggled in by the cartels. Ironically (or should we say hypocritically) enough, it was precisely the US intelligence services that essentially created these hideously violent organizations and also made sure the connection is kept under the rug.

Last month, after two US citizens were killed, presumably by members of the CDC (otherwise known as the Golf Cartel), Washington DC warhawks threatened to bomb Mexico, a country whose law enforcement works closely with the US to fight the cartels. Earlier, in January, Republicans Mike Waltz and Dan Crenshaw called for an Authorization for Use of Military Force against Mexican cartels for drug trafficking “that has caused destabilization in the Western Hemisphere.” Infamous Lindsey Graham, along with 16 Republican cosponsors, supported the bill and criticized the Biden administration for the deteriorating situation at the southern border, claiming that “up to 100,000 people have died from fentanyl poisoning coming from Mexico and China, and this administration has done nothing about it.”

While it could be argued that fighting cartels is certainly not a bad cause, we should not forget that somewhat similar “altruistic” motives were cited as the reason for virtually any war the US started. Blaming Mexico and China for the drug abuse “pandemic” in America will certainly not resolve this issue or any of the resulting violence across the country. If the establishment in Washington DC had the interests of regular Americans in mind, they would introduce bills allocating at least 10% of their massive $858 billion military budget to the improvement of healthcare, for instance.

Unfortunately, as Abraham Maslow famously wrote in 1966, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.” The case of Mexico is quite telling that no country (unless heavily armed) can hope to feel safe, no matter how closely it worked with the US authorities. For decades, Mexico has been ravaged by drug cartels deeply connected to the infamous CIA and other US intelligence agencies. And despite even allowing American law enforcement to operate in the country, thus undermining its own sovereignty, it’s still faced with the prospect of being attacked.

And Mexico is far from being the only target, as Washington DC is increasingly turning to Nicaragua, a small country in Central America that has already been virtually destroyed by Washington DC during the (First) Cold War when it funded the infamous Contras. Just like then, this time the US is once again “worried about human rights” in Nicaragua. As if that wasn’t laughable enough, Washington DC also officially designated the small country “a strategic threat”. Apparently, the “sole superpower” is endangered by a country roughly the size of New York State, but with the population of Maryland. And the US is also using so-called “international institutions” to target Nicaragua.

The Organization of American States (OAS) and the UN, both largely financed by Washington DC, are being used for this purpose, according to former UN rapporteur for human rights Richard Falk. If one is to believe the “human rights reports” about Nicaragua are true, President Daniel Ortega supposedly ordered 40 people to be “executed”, while conveniently leaving out the part about violent opposition attacks using firearms. The reports also claimed that Ortega ordered hospitals not to treat wounded demonstrators, although the then-health minister had made clear that anyone injured would receive treatment. US-backed “experts” also compared Nicaragua to Nazi Germany.

The glaring hypocrisy in this regard indicates that there is no “international law” for Washington DC. If a country is part of the “rules-based world order“, it can openly embrace Nazism, and it will still be considered “a beacon of freedom and democracy”, while the “Nazi analogies” are reserved for everyone else. Nicaragua should certainly be worried, as should the rest of Latin America. With the US’ ability to project power globally going down faster than most people could’ve imagined just ten years ago, the belligerent thalassocracy might try to revive the infamous Monroe Doctrine, leaving well over 600 million people in Latin America exposed to “freedom and democracy”.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.jj

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

China is the Rock Upon Which the U.S. World Order Breaks

By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | April 4, 2023

In March, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, where they not only “reaffirm[ed] the special nature of the Russia-China partnership,” but “signed a statement on deepening the strategic partnership and bilateral ties which are entering a new era.” As Xi was leaving the Kremlin, he told Putin that “Together, we should push forward these changes that have not happened for 100 years.” That goodbye was Xi’s not so coded call for the end of the American century.

In his February 7 State of the Union Address, U.S. President Joe Biden got carried away by his excitement and arrogantly and ineptly went off script and called out, “Name me a world leader who’d change places with Xi Jinping. Name me one. Name me one.”

But the deflating truth is that the world is lining up behind China and Russia’s vision of a multipolar world no longer exclusively led by the United States. From Africa and its unanimous attendance at the recent Russia-Africa in a Multipolar World conference, to the Middle East and its long list of countries lining up to join the Chinese and Russian led multipolar organizations BRICS and the SCO, to Latin America and most of Eurasia and Asia, including India, the weight of the world is going to Xi’s place to balance American hegemony and support a multipolar world.

Biden’s outburst was an insult and confrontation that was a personal microcosm of U.S. provocation and confrontation of China on a global level. And it has had a corrosive and dangerous effect. An angry China is not answering America’s phone calls. Biden had hoped to talk to Xi on the phone in mid-March, but Chinese officials are not responding to U.S. requests to arrange the call. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s calls to set up talks with his Chinese counterpart have also not been answered.

China is emerging as the rock upon which the U.S.-led alliance breaks.

China’s growing economic, diplomatic, and political influence is beginning to be more powerfully felt on the world stage. The rapid growth of international organizations that support China and Russia’s multipolar world vision is just one piece of evidence. China’s emergence as an influential broker is another.

Beijing has become a power that can shape the world, leaving Washington out of the process. They shocked the world in March by brokering a region transforming agreement between archrivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. And they upset the U.S. in February by initiating a peace process for the war in Ukraine. Both initiatives left the U.S. out in the cold.

The world is no longer unipolar: a world with multiple poles of power is emerging. China’s foreign policy seeks economic growth that demands the fostering of stability in the world; U.S. foreign policy seeks hegemony that demands hostility and schisms that punish and isolate resisters. The problem with China’s emergence as a broker is that it breaks U.S. hegemony. But it is also that China’s peace plans get in the way of America’s war plans.

The U.S. is not ready for peace in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Though peace plans may serve a devastated Ukraine, they do not serve the larger U.S. goals being served by the devastated Ukraine. The United States is not ready for Ukraine to go to the table and end the war before their larger goals are accomplished. As State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in March 2022, “This is a war that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine.”

Biden rejected China’s potential role as a broker in the war, insisting that “the idea that China is going to be negotiating the outcome of a war that’s a totally unjust war for Ukraine is just not rational.” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that the U.S. does not believe that a Chinese peace proposal “is a step towards a just and durable peace.” He claims that “We all want to see the war end… And a ceasefire, at this time, while that may sound good, we do not believe would have that effect.” Kirby then added that “we don’t support calls for a ceasefire right now. We certainly don’t support calls for a ceasefire that would be called for by the [People’s Republic of China] in a meeting in Moscow that would simply benefit Russia.”

The U.S. has long insisted that no decisions will be made without Ukraine. But if a Chinese-brokered peace were to succeed, it would be because Ukraine has agreed to it. It is remarkable that it is up to Ukraine to continue the war but not up to Ukraine to end it.

China’s peace plans for the Middle East also get in the way of America’s war plans. A U.S.-led unipolar world demands the isolation of Iran. A key piece of that plan is the establishment and maintenance of a regional coalition against Iran. At the heart of that coalition is Saudi Arabia firmly in the anti-Iran camp. The recent Chinese brokered Saudi-Iran agreement breaks that coalition and mends that schism.

The Saudi-Iran agreement has had immediate effects in the region that further challenge American efforts to shape it in their own way. Fast in the wake of the agreement, Saudi Arabia and Iranian ally Syria agreed to reopen their embassies. And the shift in shape is not just bilateral, but regional. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister is reported to be on his way to Damascus to formally invite Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to this May’s Arab League summit in Riyadh. The invitation, Syria’s first since 2011, would “formally end Syria’s regional isolation.” On April 1, Syria’s foreign minister went to Cairo for the first official visit in twelve years to begin the process of reinstating Syria in the Arab League.

That “leap forward in Damascus’s return to the Arab fold” frustrates U.S. plans to continue the isolation of Assad and Syria. The U.S. has opposed normalization of relations with Syria by countries in the Middle East. The State Department says their “stance on normalization remains unchanged” despite Saudi Arabia’s new stance and the changes in the region.

China has emerged as a diplomatic force that can broker agreements and shape the world in a way that shatters U.S. hegemony in a unipolar world. Some countries are willing to break with the United States and work with China.

France has communicated to China its “appreciation for China’s positive role in promoting peace talks.” Macron’s Diplomatic Advisor, Emmanuel Bonne, told Wang Yi, China’s Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, that “France is ready to make joint efforts with China to facilitate cessation of hostilities and seek a peaceful solution.”

France is a major European NATO ally. China’s emergence as a diplomatic superpower has created a crack in the structure of the U.S.-led alliance.

France is not alone in its willingness to work with China. Where France’s independent position reveals a rift within the U.S.-led alliance, Brazil’s independent position reveals the emergence of other poles in the newly emergent multipolar world.

The independent course charted by Brazil and its willingness to work with America’s rival reveals, not only the loss of U.S. hegemony in its own hemisphere, but the loss of U.S. hegemony globally because partnering with China is partnering with BRICS, the large international organization whose goal is to balance U.S. hegemony of a unipolar world.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has supported China’s efforts at negotiating a peace proposal and criticized the United States for speaking “very few words about peace.” But he has also proposed a joint effort, or a “peace club” that could include BRICS members China, India and Brazil and possibly Indonesia. Indonesia has been a leader in the nonaligned world and was recently welcomed as a guest at the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.

China’s diplomatic entry into the war in Ukraine highlights a multipolar world that could shape a post world war and sideline the United States.

As China’s economy and the gravitational pull of its multipolar world grow, and as its force is further felt, not only economically but politically and diplomatically, the U.S. stance may stiffen, and Washington may more solidly confront China, not only by increasing sanctions, but by calling on its allies to do the same.

That call could be a challenging one for America’s European allies to answer. If Seymour Hersh’s reporting is correct, it took cutting Germany off from their Russian oil supply by a historic act of sabotage—an act of war—to keep Germany fully on board in America’s sanction regime on Russia. China has been Germany’s most important trading partner for seven consecutive years. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany has only increased its investments in and economic dependence on China. It will be more difficult to pressure Germany to cut economic ties with China than it was to pressure it to cut ties with Russia. And it will be asking a lot of Germany to ask it to cut ties with both.

Dr. Suzanne Loftus, Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute Eurasia Program, told me that, “China is Germany’s most important trading partner. Having to sanction China would put Germany in a very difficult position seeing as how it has already had to sanction another one of its significant trading partners (Russia) and is also struggling with U.S. protectionist policies (Inflation Reduction Act).” Loftus continued “[f]acing difficulties at home, Germany will most likely opt out of having to sanction China if the U.S. started to put pressure on Germany to do so. It would otherwise face too much of an economic shock and increased domestic turmoil as a result.”

A hint of that potential split with the United States was provided in November when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s defied Washington by going to Beijing, accompanied by the CEOs of Volkswagen, BMW, BASF, Bayer and Deutsche Bank, in part to discuss trade.

On the eve of his trip, Scholz wrote that “new centers of power are emerging in a multipolar world, and we aim to establish and expand partnerships with all of them.” He said that, though China is an economic power that will “play a key role on the world stage in the future,” this does not “justif[y]… calls by some to isolate China.” Scholz then wrote clearly that “even in changed circumstances, China remains an important business and trading partner for Germany and Europe—we don’t want to decouple from it.”

Future American calls to sanction China could force Europe into a choice between solidity with the U.S.-led alliance and continued economic partnership with China. For the U.S., there is a hazardous forecast that that choice could weaken that solidity.

The growing reality of China’s multipolar world vision, China’s emergence as a broker of peace plans that interfere with American war plans, the world’s shifting of shape that sees important countries willing to work with China, and the need for countries to strengthen trade ties with Beijing all suggest that China could be the rock upon which the U.S.-led alliance breaks.

April 5, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , | 2 Comments

OPEC: Saudis aren’t afraid of US anymore

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | APRIL 4, 2023 

The shock oil production cuts from May outlined by the OPEC+ on Sunday essentially means that eight key OPEC countries decided to join hands with Russia to reduce oil production, messaging that OPEC and OPEC+ are now back in control of the oil market.

No single oil producing country is acting as the Pied Piper here. The great beauty about it is that Saudi Arabia and seven other major OPEC countries have unexpectedly decided to support Russia’s efforts and unilaterally reduce production. 

While the 8 OPEC countries are talking about a reduction of one million b/d from May to the end of the year, Russia will extend for the same period its voluntary adjustment that already started in March, by 500,000 barrels.

Now, add to this the production adjustments already decided by the OPEC+ previously, and the total additional voluntary production adjustments touch a whopping 1.6 million b/d. 

What has led to this? Fundamentally, as many analysts had forewarned, the Western sanctions against Russian oil created distortions and anomalies in the oil market and upset the delicate ecosystem of supply and demand, which were compounded by the incredibly risky decision by the G7, at the behest of the US Treasury, to impose a price cap on Russia’s oil sales abroad. 

On top of it, the Biden administration’s provocative moves to release oil regularly from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve in attempts to micromanage the oil prices and keep them abnormally low in the interests of the American consumer as well as to keep the inflationary pressures under check turned out to be an affront to the oil-producing countries whose economies critically depend on income from oil exports.   

The OPEC+ calls the production cuts “a precautionary measure aimed at supporting the stability of the oil market.” In the downstream of the OPEC+ decision, analysts expect the oil prices to rise in the short term and pressure on Western central banks to increase due to the possible spike in inflation. 

What stands out in the OPEC+ decision is that Russia’s decision to reduce oil production by the end of the year has been unanimously supported by the main Arab producers. Independent but time-coordinated statements were made by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, Algeria, Oman and Kazakhstan, while Russia confirmed its intention to extend until the end of the year its own production reduction by 500,000 barrels per day, which began in March. 

Significantly, these statements have been made precisely by those largest oil producers in OPEC, who have a record of fully utilising their existing quota. Put differently, the reduction in production is going to be real, not just on paper.

Partly at least, the banking crisis in the US and Europe prompted the OPEC+ to intervene. Although Washington will downplay it, in March, Brent oil prices fell to $70 per barrel for the first time since 2021 amid the bankruptcy of several banks in the US and the near-death experience of Credit Suisse, one of the largest banks in Switzerland. The events sparked concern about the stability of the Western banking system and fear of a recession that would affect oil demand.

There is every likelihood that tensions may increase between the US and Saudi Arabia as higher oil prices will push inflation and make it even more difficult for the US Federal Reserve to find a balance between raising the key rate and maintaining financial and economic stability. Equally, the Biden administration must be furious that practical cooperation is still continuing between Russia and the OPEC countries, especially Saudi Arabia, notwithstanding the West’s price cap on Russian oil and Moscow’s decision to unilaterally cut production in March. 

However, the Biden administration has only a limited range of options to respond to the OPEC+’s surprise move: one, go for another release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; two, pressure US producers to increase domestic oil output; three, back legislation that would allow the US to take the dramatic step of suing OPEC nations; or, four, curb the US’ export of gasoline and diesel. 

To be sure, the OPEC+ production cut goes against the Western demand to increase oil output even as sanctions were imposed against Russian oil and gas exports. On the other hand, the disruption in oil supplies from Russia contributed to the rising inflation in the EU countries.

The US wanted the Gulf Arab states to step in and step up oil production. But the latter did not oblige because they felt that there wasn’t enough economic activity in the West and there were clear signs of recession contrary to expectation. 

Thus, as a result of the sanctions against Russia, Europe is facing the complex situation of inflation and near-recession known as stagflation. In reality, the adaptive and agile OPEC + read the situation correctly and has shown that it is willing to act ahead of the curve. At a time when the world economy is struggling to grow at a healthy rate, the demand for oil would be relatively less, and it makes sense to cut oil production to maintain the price balance. 

All that the Western leaders can complain about is that the OPEC+ cut in oil output has come at an inappropriate time. But the woes of Western economies cannot be laid at the door of OPEC+ as there are inherent problems which are now coming to the surface. For instance, the large scale protests in France against pension reform or the widespread strikes in Britain for higher wages show that there are deep structural problems in these economies, and the governments seem helpless in tackling them.

In geopolitical terms, the OPEC+ move came after a meeting between Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman in Riyadh on March 16 that focused on oil market cooperation. Therefore, it is widely seen as the tightening of the bond between Russia and Saudi Arabia. In fact, in May, as the largest members of OPEC join Russia in its unilateral reduction, the balance of quotas and the ratio of market shares between and amongst the participants in the OPEC + deal will return to the level set when it was concluded in April 2020. 

The big question is, how Moscow might profit from the OPEC+ decision. The rise in crude oil prices particularly benefits Russia. Simply put, the production cuts will tighten up the oil market and thus help Russia to secure better prices for the crude oil it sells. Second, the new cuts also confirm that Russia is still an integral and important part of the group of oil producing countries, despite the western attempts to isolate it. 

Third, the consequences of Sunday’s decision are all the greater because, unlike the previous cuts by the OPEC+ group at the height of the pandemic or last October, today, the momentum for global oil demand is up, not down — what with a strong recovery by China expected. 

That is to say, the surprise OPEC+ reduction further consolidates the Saudi-Russian energy alliance, by aligning their production levels, thus placing them on equal footing. It is a slap in the face for Washington. 

Make no mistake, this is another signal regarding a new era where the Saudis are not afraid of the US anymore, as the OPEC “leverage” is on Riyadh’s side. The Saudis are only doing what they need to do, and the White House has no say in the matter. Clearly, a recasting of the regional and global dynamics that has been set in motion lately is gathering momentum. The future of petrodollar seems increasingly uncertain. 

April 4, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | 2 Comments

The US’ Rejection Of China’s Peace Plan For Ukraine Exposes Its Warmongering Intentions

By Andrew Korybko | March 24, 2023

Bloomberg cited an unnamed Biden Administration official on Thursday to report that “the US is worried about being backed into a corner over the Chinese proposal. Regardless of the US reservations, dismissing it outright could let China argue to other nations that are weary of the war — and of the economic damage it’s wreaking — that Washington isn’t interested in peace.” Alas, that’s precisely what America has done by acting as if China isn’t a serious mediator and that its peace plan is unrealistic.

By rejecting Beijing’s 12-step proposal, Washington exposed its warmongering intentions for the rest of the world to see and vindicated Moscow’s criticism that it wants to fight this proxy war “to the last Ukrainian”. The majority of the international community that resides in the Global South and which is most adversely affected by the systemic consequences of this conflict, particularly the food and fuel crises catalyzed by Western sanctions, had their perceptions of US soft power shattered once and for all.

Prior to the onset of Russia’s special operation last year that it was forced to commence in defense of its national security red lines in Ukraine after NATO clandestinely crossed them there, a significant share of folks in developing countries still generally had a favorable view of that declining unipolar hegemon. They might not have endorsed every one of its foreign policy moves, but these people still thought that its worldview had some redeeming factors that made it worthy of being listened to at the very least.

The allure of its soft power, particularly in the socio-cultural sphere as propagated by the mass media over the decades, still had a powerful hold over their hearts and minds. Now, however, these same people are directly suffering from the food and fuel crises catalyzed by the West’s unilateral sanctions. To make matters worse, the US signaled through its rejection of China’s peace plan for Ukraine that relief won’t be forthcoming, thus indefinitely perpetuating and thus exacerbating these problems.

It’s one thing for US-inclined folks in the Global South who’ve fallen under the sway of its soft power to oppose some part of its foreign policy regarding a faraway country and another entirely for that same foreign policy to directly affect them and their family. They might still enjoy consuming some of its socio-cultural products and perhaps still cling to believing in the so-called “American Dream” despite the odds of them ever benefiting from it, but their views of the US as a whole will certainly change.

This rapidly emerging outcome represents a latent crisis of the highest importance for the US’ grand strategic interests since the loss of such a critical mass of supporters will hamstring its goals across the Global South. These same people will be less susceptible to its information warfare products against their multipolar governments, thus reducing the chances that forthcoming Color Revolution plots will succeed, to say nothing of them tuning out the US’ fake news about the Sino-Russo Entente.

The combination of hunger pains and rising costs, which are the direct result of the food and fuel crises respectively that the US’ unilateral sanctions are responsible for, can turn anyone against anything even if they were previously the most fervent of believers. This is especially so when it worsens the living conditions of one’s own family, including their children. The arrogance of American policymakers, deluded by the supremacist belief in their system’s supposed “exceptionalism”, blinds them to this.

The aforesaid oversight, which could easily have been foreseen and thus avoided had groupthink not been in effect, is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and turned the Global South against the US en masse. There’s now no credible possibility of America advancing its interests there by information warfare-driven attraction ever again, thus leading to it doubling down on subversion and force out of desperation instead of accepting the loss of its influence in those countries.

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

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