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xtruss · 4 years

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East Asia

The South China Sea: What’s Really at Issue

— Modern Diplomacy | September 13, 2020 | By Eric Zuesse

The South China Sea is basically China’s export waterway to Africa and to Europe (among other markets), but in order for China’s enemy (aspiring conqueror), America, to harm and weaken China maximally, and to use the United Nations assisting in that aggression, America and its allies have cast this vital trade-waterway as being instead basically just an area to be exploited for oil and gas, and minerals, and fishing. The American Government’s aggression — its effort to strangulate China’s international commerce — thus becomes ignored by the U.N., which is consequently handling the entire issue under its law which pertains to a nation’s (China’s) rights to exploit the natural resources of and under a given waterway.

The international legal issue, which is being applied, is therefore the 1982 U.N. Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This treaty (law) has been ratified, or at least signed, by all countries except the United States, whose hold-out for 12 years had blocked the Convention even from coming into effect. Then, finally (when Guyana, on 16 November 1993, did, after so much delay, become the requisite 60th country to ratify the Convention, so as to bring it into actual effect), the U.S., on 29 July 1994, went through the mere formality of signing the Agreement, because Part XI of the Convention (“to authorize seabed exploration and mining and collect and distribute the seabed mining royalty”) had, by this time, become modified, to the satisfaction of Exxon and other U.S. oil-and-gas corporations, so that U.S. President Bill Clinton had UNCLOS signed by the U.S. — but not sufficiently satisfied to have it ratified by the U.S., which nation therefore still remains the lone holdout amongst the 179 U.N. member nations that had been invited to join it. (Some countries are entirely landlocked.) So, ironically, the lone holdout-nation, U.S., is now militarily threatening China (one of the Convention’s actual member-nations), for its allegedly violating that Convention, in regard to what is, in fact, China’s essential exportation (and importation) waterway, even more important to China than its being a potential Chinese natural-resource asset.

Furthermore, China has long wanted to reduce much of its need to ship through the South China Sea, by means of building what for China would be equivalent to what the Panama Canal is for the U.S., but this new canal would be located in Thailand, which America conquered in its 1948 coup — the CIA’s first. If built, this Thai Canal would significantly reduce China’s costs of importing oil from Iran and Arabia, as well as its costs of exporting goods to India, and to Europe and Africa. Therefore, the U.S. regime is willing to pay whatever the cost might be in order to bribe Thai leaders to continue saying no to that canal-proposal. (But, will China ultimately outbid America? There is a tug-of-war in Thailand about whether to participate in China’s proposal.)

The U.S. thus blocks China, both via the UNCLOS, and via China’s main potential method of avoiding its need to rely so heavily upon its usage of the South China Sea — the Thai Canal.

This is consequently a good example of how the imperialistic U.S. Government, which is uniquely hostile toward the United Nations, nonetheless exploits the U.N., and yet still receives deferential treatment from it — so that the U.S. can actually use the U.N. as a tool to advance its own imperialistic objectives of conquering yet more territory, additional vassal-nations or ‘allies’.

The U.N. is, furthermore, exceptionally proud of its achievement in having finally passed UNCLOS into international law. As it says, “‘Possibly the most significant legal instrument of this century’ is how the United Nations Secretary-General described the treaty after its signing.”

None of this can be understood outside the context of international law itself, which is tragically corrupt, as a result of the following history, the backstory here:

Though the U.N. was invented and even named by America’s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), he died just before it started, and his successor Harry S. Truman shaped it by modifying FDR’s plan, so that the U.N. would gradually fail, and, instead, the U.S. Government would itself emerge effectively as being the global government over all other governments — America’s Government would become a global dictatorship over nations, instead of the U.N. coming into existence as the global democratic republic of nations (FDR’s U.N.) that FDR had aimed for it to be, controlling international relations after World War II, in such a manner as to prevent a WW III.

We thus live in Truman’s post-WW-II world, definitely not in FDR’s.

After World War II (in which the U.S. and UK were allied with the U.S.S.R. against the fascist powers that had invaded countries which had not even been threatening them), America soon launched a string of coups and invasions — overthrowing and replacing governments that hadn’t even posed any threat, at all, to America’s national security — and the world thereby became increasingly accustomed to the fact that America’s military and CIA are, in fact, the world’s new invading military force, replacing Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Emperor’s Japan, in that capacity, as international dictators. (That’s something which FDR had been planning to prevent any nation from being.) The first four U.S. coups were against Thailand in 1948, Syria in 1949, Iran in 1953, and Guatemala in 1954; and each American coup replaced a moderate leader with a brutal fascist regime, crushing democracy there. (The U.S. takeover in Syria lasted only a few years.) America also engaged in numerous outright military invasions, many of them using hired proxy forces (U.S.-funded mercenaries), instead of using U.S. soldiers, as being the U.S. regime’s “boots on the ground,” to do the actual killing and dying. America thereby became the invading country throughout the world, which is what the fascist powers had been in World War II.

The post-WW-II America thus emerged as standing above international law, ever since the 1945 end of WW II. In effect, America’s Government has internationally become the world’s government — by force of arms. Other countries are subject to international law, but the U.S. is not. The U.S. has emerged as the international empire, taking over, and dominating, in more and more countries, until it now openly demands compliance from all countries, and even threatens Iraq’s Government, that if Iraq tries to expel the U.S. occupying forces, the U.S. will permanently destroy Iraq.

America’s imperialist fascism has become so bold, for so long, so that news-media don’t even report it. If one lays a WW II ideological template over the world’s nations today, then today’s U.S. and its allies are much more fitting the mold and form of the Axis powers, than of the Allied powers; but, this time, instead of there being Germany and its allies as the imperialistic fascists, we today have America and its allies, as constituting the imperialistic fascist nations. America assumed this role gradually, first as that role was ‘justified’ supposedly as being an ideological contest between democracy versus communism (which, on the U.S. side, was merely an excuse, not an authentic explanation); but, then, increasingly, without any such ideological excuse, as being, simply, America’s alleged ‘superiority’ (such as the recent U.S. President, Barack Obama, repeatedly asserted, that “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation,” which means that every other nation is “dispensable”; only America is not). It is now as flagrant with America as it had been with Hitler’s Germany (“Deutschland über alles,” etc.). The gloves have finally been taken off, by today’s U.S. imperialist fascist regime. The U.S. even has the world’s highest percentage of its own population being in prisons, a higher imprisonment-rate than that of any other country. This is very appropriate for the world’s most totalitarian country. So, the dictatorship isn’t only international — it is even intranational, inside the U.S. And it very much is in control over the nation’s news media. It’s a two-Party dictatorship.

When U.S. President FDR died as WW II was ending, his dream for the future was that America and its allies in WW II would create a democratic super-nation controlled by all nations, a United Nations that would have the military force throughout the world to enforce international laws, which would be made democratically by the U.N., through its Security Council and General Assembly. But, nowadays, instead, the U.S. and its allies are free to invade anywhere they wish, and — unlike what happened to the fascist leaders during WW II — the U.S.-and-allied leaders get away with it, and they aren’t even charged by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. They stand above international law: precisely the sort of situation that FDR had aimed to prohibit.

For example, one of America’s allies — and thus immune to international law — is Israel; and, on September 3rd, the international news site South Front headlined “Israeli Forces Rain Down Missiles on Syria”, and reported that:

The Israeli Air Force conducted a second round of missiles strikes on Syria in less than a week.

Late on September 2, Israeli warplanes launched missiles at the T4 airport in the province of Homs. According to Syria’s state media, the strikes were conducted from the direction of the US-controlled zone of al-Tanf on the Syrian-Iraqi border. Syrian pro-government sources claimed that a large part of the missiles was intercepted. …

The most recent previous Israeli strike on Syria took place on August 31 targeting the countryside of Damascus city and the province of Daraa.

Syria does not invade Israel, but Israel routinely invades Syria, and long has done so — and yet Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is not being strung up and executed by an international criminal court, like the leaders of Germany and Japan were supposed to have been, after WW II. That Judgment at Nuremberg, and similar trials against some of Japan’s leaders, were actually only victors’ ‘justice’ against some of Germany’s and Japan’s leaders, but (at the time) the victorious Allies claimed it to be the start of international justice, and to be the enforcement of international law — even though the trials were held only against Germany’s and Japan’s leaders, but not also against Italy’s. (Italy had signed with the Allies the Armistice of Cassabile surrendering on 8 September 1943, and this was part of that deal — Italy’s Government wasn’t quite as horrific as the other two, which held out till the bitter end.) These trials were prosecuting against “aggressive war”: the charge was that the imperialistic fascists had invaded countries that hadn’t invaded them — exactly what the U.S. and its allies constantly and now routinely do, after WW II (overthrowing and replacing governments that had not even so much as threatened the U.S. and its allies).

The U.S. and its allies are today’s imperialistic fascists, and the U.N. can do nothing against them. The U.N. can do nothing against the leaders of America and its allies for doing what had been done by the leaders of Germany and Japan during WW II.

Hitler’s and Hirohito’s spirits thus now rule in the self-styled (but now only formally) ‘democratic’ countries, whose rulers reign with far nicer rhetoric — far more hypocrisy — than their 1930s fascist predecessors had done. And the U.N. is dead, because it became created by Harry S. Truman, instead of by FDR.

Consequently, let’s consider, in more depth here, the example of China:

China is a communist country, but its communism is drastically changed from the time when Mao Tse Tung founded it, and its Marxism is unrecognizable, no longer a “dictatorship by the proletariat,” but instead one-Party rule by a Party that anyone, of any economic class, is invited to join, and which is widely considered by the Chinese people to be a “democracy.” (A far larger percentage of Chinese consider their Government to be a “democracy” than the percentage of Americans who consider America’s Government to be a “democracy.” Chinese don’t consider the number of political parties to be any indication of whether the nation is a democracy as opposed to a dictatorship. They are correct in that. In fact: America’s own Founders had aimed to be creating a nation which would have no parties at all.)

FDR made a clear distinction between a national democracy and an international democracy. He believed that international relations should be an international democracy of independent nations that deal with each other on a cooperative instead of coercive basis, and that international laws should govern this, coming from and being enforced by the United Nations. By contrast, national democracy was to be a choice that only the people within a given nation should determine, and the U.N. should have no relevance to, or control over, that. “Human rights” are individuals’ rights, and are an internal matter within each nation, whereas the rights of nations are very different, and are the purview exclusively of the U.N., as FDR was planning it. This was how he planned for there to be a post-WW-II world which would have no World War III.

By contrast, today’s U.S. regime claims, for example, the authority to dictate what countries should control which international waterways. This is clearly infringing on the U.N.’s area of authority; and, so, Truman’s U.N. has no control over the matter, though it does have vague laws which pertain to it. Today’s U.N.’s laws ignore one cardinal position — a cardinal geostrategic principle, the Westphalian principle — that FDR and the Soviet Union’s dictator, Joseph Stalin, agreed upon and which Winston Churchill opposed: the view that each of the major world powers should be allowed to intervene in the internal affairs of a foreign nation only if that foreign nation is on its borders or at least nearby (which was undefined). This was the Westphalian system, but enhanced so as to be explicitly anti-imperialistic, because both FDR and Stalin believed that both World Wars had resulted from imperialism. Both leaders rejected imperialism but accepted that there exists a distinction between major and minor powers, such that the nearby surrounds of a major power need to be entirely nations that are allied with that major power, or, at least not hostile toward it — not allied with any major power that is hostile toward itself. In other words: both men rejected Churchill’s demand that empires be allowed, which could extend beyond a major world power’s own “neighborhood.” Churchill wanted to continue the British Empire. Truman accepted Churchill’s view, and rejected the view of both FDR and Stalin. Consequently, Truman and Churchill agreed together to move forward toward an all-encompassing U.S.-UK Empire. (Though, nominally, the Westphalian principle had already become a part of the U.N.’s subsequent Charter — because of FDR — as being Chapter 1, Article 2, Paragraph 7, it was ignored from the outset, and the U.N. organization itself became set up so as to hide the entire Charter from the public. The numerous deficiencies in the Charter — such as its failure to include any clause describing a process by which the Charter could be amended — thus have likewise been hidden from the public, and not debated, nor discussed; and, thereby, the U.S. and UK have been able to have their way: the system for future global dictatorship was thus born.)

Consequently, geostrategic issues were prohibited by the U.S. regime from being subjects of international law. Though international law allowed vague references to “aggressive war,” simply because FDR’s U.S. had already established the system to pursue and hang German and Japanese leaders for their having done that, the concept of “aggression” became smudged in international law, instead of defined; and, so, aggression is practically absent as a topic of international law as it currently exists. This is how the South China Sea issue came to be treated only as being an issue of natural-resource rights. The U.N.’s Charter is essentially irrelevant to what is the most important. (Even its Westphalian clause — which is only the original, weaker, empire-accepting, form of Westphalianism — is irrelevant, since it’s ignored.)

China’s ability to ship its products westward via the South China Sea is crucial to China’s economy. Consequently, the imperialist fascist regime and its allies are trying to reduce that ability. Because this is Truman’s, instead of FDR’s, post-WW-II world, the existing relevant international laws lack sufficient clarity, and the U.S. and its allies can, under existing law, gradually choke-off China’s exports.

Katherine Morton’s 20 July 2016 article, “China’s ambition in the South China Sea”, in the journal International Affairs, argues that China’s ambition in the South China Sea is primarily driven by China’s thousands-of-years-old commercial policy, of being a maritime nation, a nation whose economy is based upon international trade. This is not imperialistic, but it instead concerns international rights that every nation ought to have. (Until 1912, China was ruled by imperialistic Emperors, but afterwards it was no longer imperialistic and has instead been defending itself against imperialistic powers.) Morton argues that China’s objective is not any grand design to achieve maritime hegemony — such as the U.S. regime has, and such as England, Holland, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan, previously had done. It’s not imperial rule over countries that aren’t in their own neighborhood. It’s not conquest; it is instead self-defense. America and its allies do the coups, invasions, and international economic sanctions (economic blockades, even), but China does not. That, basically, is Morton’s argument (though she doesn’t put it in those clear terms). She says that China’s “attention is primarily focused upon demonstrating political resolve to defend China’s maritime periphery. Yet conclusive evidence that the Chinese leadership is intent upon dominating the South China Sea for the broader purpose of building a Sino‐centric maritime order in east Asia is difficult to find.” (The obtuseness — if not self-contradictoriness — of her writing might be due to her desire not to offend the U.S. regime’s own imperialistic sensibilities. Such a style is common amongst international-affairs scholars in the U.S.-and-allied world.)

However, the U.S. regime claims that China, instead of America, is the imperialistic power. The U.S. regime, as usual, claims to have the international right to enforce its will in international affairs anywhere on the planet. Sometimes, today’s U.N.-based international laws are in favor of outcomes that the U.S. regime wants. Thus, we have the matter of the South China Sea, where the U.N. body, UNCLOS, ruled on 12 July 2016 that the only relevant question is which nation is the nearest to a given part of a waterway (so as to have the right to explore and exploit there). The international laws by today’s U.N. ignore geostrategic issues, such as both FDR and Stalin wanted to include in them, but Churchill and Truman wanted international laws to ignore such matters so that UK and now U.S. could jointly pursue world-conquest. Since the UNCLOS ruling in 2016 opposed China’s claims, by ignoring its major-power concerns about its self-defense, the U.S., under the hyper-aggressive ruler, Donald Trump, recently came out publicly committed to enforcing that 2016 ruling by the U.N. body. On September 1st, Reuters headlined “Special Report: Pentagon’s latest salvo against China’s growing might — Cold War bombers”, and reported that:

On July 21, two U.S Air Force B-1B bombers took off from Guam and headed west over the Pacific Ocean to the hotly contested South China Sea. The sleek jets made a low-level pass over the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its escorting fleet, which was exercising nearby in the Philippines Sea, according to images released by the U.S. military. The operation was part of the Trump administration’s intensifying challenge to China’s ruling Communist Party and its sweeping territorial claims over one of the world’s most important strategic waterways. While senior Trump officials launch diplomatic and rhetorical broadsides at Beijing, the U.S. Defense Department is turning to the firepower of its heavily armed, long-range bombers as it seeks to counter Beijing’s bid to control the seas off the Chinese coast. …

The U.S. Army also intends to spread forces through the first island chain and other outposts in the Western Pacific. It is planning a series of major exercises this year and next where troops would deploy to islands in the region, according to senior commanders and top Pentagon officials.

The U.S. regime is using, as its excuse, its backing the territorial claims of what it claims to be its ‘allies’ against China — such as Vietnam. Meanwhile, the regime is applying diplomacy and other means, in order to encourage those ‘allies’ to insist upon, and not to compromise or weaken, those claims. Vietnam quickly responded to America’s active backing, by “Vietnam Threatens China with Litigation over the South China Sea”.

What’s at issue there is underwater oil-and-gas exploration-and-development rights of the various nations’ corporations. If China truly does not place its corporations’ commercial interests above the Chinese nation’s self-defense interests, then it will sacrifice the former for the latter, and it will cede those other nations’ rights to exploit that oil and gas, and will settle with its neighbors, for an agreement by all of America’s ‘allies’ to support and endorse China’s rights to traverse unimpeded through those waterways.

If the U.S. regime then would continue its heavy military fortifications surrounding China, then China would (in accord with its agreements that it will have reached with Vietnam and those other neighboring nations) be receiving, from those nations’ endorsements of China’s rights in that regard (for China’s self-defense), and from those nations’ public requests for U.S. forces to depart from their region, support for China’s shipping rights, which would be at least as valuable to China as whatever the natural resources there are worth.

In regards to the 12 July 2016 ruling by UNCLOS, it concerned specifically the case between China and the Philippines, and it presented the Philippines’ challenging China’s claims, which claims were/are based on arguments such as (regarding “Scarborough Shoal”) that “Since the Yuan Dynasty, the Chinese people have never stopped developing and exploiting Huangyan Island and its surrounding waters and the Chinese government has exercised effective management and jurisdiction over their activities all these years.” The ruling replied to that assertion by saying, “The Tribunal’s conclusions with respect to” that area are “independent of the question of sovereignty.” But, whatever the ruling was based upon, what’s relevant here is that the U.S. Government has no right to be sending its warships and other weapons into the South China Sea in order to ‘enforce’ UNCLOS’s ruling. And whatever China’s claims are or were in this matter, they cover(ed) a very large area, which encompasses almost all of the South China Sea — it encompasses the area that’s within the “nine-dash line”, which is shown here in green. Although UNCLOS (actually the U.N.-authorized body that administers it, the International Seabed Authority) is legitimately involved in this matter; the U.S. Government is the opposite: it is instead an international-law violator and has no right to be involved, at all, and is illegally throwing its weight around where it doesn’t belong and should be expelled — and would be expelled if this were FDR’s U.N., instead of Truman’s U.N.

Another way that Truman’s U.N. helps the U.S. regime geostrategically against China is the issue of Hong Kong — an internal Chinese matter, which wouldn’t even be a U.N. concern if the U.N. had been created instead by the U.N.’s inventor, FDR. (Even the original, weaker, form of the Westphalian principle — the version that’s in the U.N.’s Charter — would prohibit outside involvement in this matter.) As Reuters headlined on September 3rd, “U.N. experts decry Hong Kong security law in open letter to China”. Any U.N. that gets involved in any nation’s internal affairs, and in such things as ‘human rights’, should be simply dissolved, because it is advancing imperialism, instead of preventing it.

Basically, today’s U.N. is just a talking-forum, a PR vehicle for its member-nations; but, actually, at the deepest level, it’s a propaganda-agency for imperialism. That’s what it was designed for.

If China can win the support of its neighbors in the region to kick America out, then the sacrifice of such assets as oil and gas there would be a relatively inconsequential price for China to pay. Unfortunately, today’s U.N. must be eliminated and replaced by one that builds upon FDR’s intentions, because today’s U.N. — Truman’s U.N. — is exactly the opposite.

America’s having its weaponry and forces on and near China’s borders is even worse than when in 1962 the Soviet Union placed its forces in Cuba — and nearly precipitated WW III. America has no right to be there. And today’s U.N. has no justification to continue its existence — a replacement of it is direly needed.

Details of the existing U.N.’s deficiency in the present situation will here be summarily stated: UNCLOS asserts: “Every State has the right to establish the breadth of its territorial sea up to a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles.” That’s the outermost limit of any coastal nation’s “sovereignty.” Furthermore: “Non-compliance by warships with the laws and regulations of the coastal State. If any warship does not comply with the laws and regulations of the coastal State concerning passage through the territorial sea and disregards any request for compliance therewith which is made to it, the coastal State may require it to leave the territorial sea immediately.” But Truman’s U.N. possesses no military force of its own and therefore that “coastal State” is provided no protection by today’s U.N. Furthermore: UNCLOS even allows an enemy nation’s naval vessels into that 12-mile limit, but “submarines and other underwater vehicles are required to navigate on the surface and to show their flag.” There is no limit upon how near the shore an enemy’s warships are allowed to come. Yet the U.S. violates UNCLOS routinely. What military force exists against its doing so? What legal tribunal exists that covers this? Furthermore: The agreement by FDR and Stalin, that any major world power needs to have some sort of right to veto or block any nearby nation from coordinating with any other major power that is hostile toward that given major world power, is entirely absent from the existing U.N. — existing international law. Consequently, for example: The U.S., under JFK in 1962, was acting in violation of the subsequent 1982 UNCLOS, when he ordered the Soviet military to depart from Cuba — that was beyond the 12-mile limit. Existing international law has to be replaced. It ignores essential geostrategic concerns to prohibit imperialism and to minimize any likelihood of a WW III. It needs to be replaced.

And that’s not the only reason why the current system of international laws needs to be replaced. The existing international dictatorship, which is the U.S. regime, is even more conservative than is Truman’s U.N. For example: As of October 2019, there are 37 “Treaties Pending in the Senate” (the U.S. Senate). These U.N.-backed treaties all are of a progressive nature, asserting the rights of workers and obligations of employers, etc.; and, in fact, the first three of these treaties deal specifically with workers’ rights. The earliest of them, activated in 1949, is the “International Labor Organization Convention No. 87 Concerning Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize, adopted by the International Labor Conference at its 31st Session held at San Francisco, June 17 – July 10, 1948 (Treaty Doc.: Ex. S, 81st Cong., 1st Sess.); submitted to Senate August 27, 1949.” President Truman could not get Republicans to back it, because they opposed workers’ rights. They still do, and the Treaty still isn’t joined by the U.S. regime. Indeed, as Roncevert Ganan Almond noted, in his 24 May 2017 article in support of “U.S. Ratification of the Law of the Sea Convention”, “Even treaties that flow from American leadership, in areas like protecting rights for persons with disabilities, are rejected.” They’re always being rejected by Senate Republicans. (Truman, of course, was a Democrat; and, on most issues, the leadership of that Party is less conservative than is the leadership of the Republican Party.) Thus, though Truman’s U.N. is conservative, it isn’t as conservative as is the U.S. regime itself, which is even more conservative than Truman himself was. Physically, Hitler and Hirohito lost WW II; but, spiritually, they turned out to have won it. The reason is that FDR tragically died too early.

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jesseturri · 7 years

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A society that values success over fairness is a society that that values brutality.

“In other words: The only type of culture that can thrive is one in which there is prevalent trust, and in which there is also prevalent contempt and rejection of cheaters.

But what happens when the person who is held in contempt is not the cheater, but the cheater is instead more often admired because cheaters (by definition) avoid the barrier, to their personal success, of adhering to the rules of decency and fairness – the rules against frauds and against all other types of theft from others? It’s by avoiding those barriers that cheaters win.

When success itself is admired, regardless of how it is won, then the result becomes what the philosopher Thomas Hobbes called “the state of nature,” in which there is “continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

This is what results when everyone places success above fairness or any other ethical objective. Some people call this “state of nature” “libertarianism,” or “anarchy,” and they think that this might-makes-right society is the ideal form of “government” (no government at all), towards which the world should strive.

However, the recent studies in evolutionary biology show that there is actually evolutionary benefit in “the state of nature” only if the culture happens to be one of trust of strangers, and of contempt for cheaters. But how can there continue to exist trust of strangers, and contempt for cheaters, in any “state of nature”?

It’s too dangerous to trust strangers in such a society. Furthermore, contempt for cheaters imposes ethical rules that remove the state of nature, and that replace it with the imposed ethical order.

This is the problem that libertarian believers must wrestle with, if they are at all serious, instead of just ideological kooks.

So, rejecting government solves nothing. It’s like rejecting food: The real issue isn’t to reject food, it’s to eat healthful food, and to avoid poisonous food. Similarly, the real issue isn’t to reject government, it’s to support good government, and to oppose bad government.

And so, too, the issue isn’t whether government should be “small,” or “big,” but rather that it should be the best size to serve the public, who must bear its costs.”

The passage above comes from an article written by investigative historian, Eric Zuesse, for Business Insider on why libertarianism is a flawed ideology. He makes a great point, one that I make with libertarians over and over; namely, that there really isn’t much difference between someone who uses unethical methods and cheats to get ahead and someone who may be very ethical, super ambitious and motivated (to create beautiful, meaningful things, for example, that may contribute to society in great ways) BUT who simultaneously feels that they’re intrinsically “better” and more deserving to rule (economically and/or politically) because they do great things; they’re both assholes in different ways!

I also resonate with the anthropological point Zuesse is hitting on: yes if we think humans are morally stained and un-trustable, then our “state of nature” is one that is very close to what Hobbes and Augustine think it is. But as I’ve written before, this is a deranged, distorted, and unnecessarily pessimistic view of human nature.

Zuesse also comments on the ridiculous notion of having no government at all, and again I largely agree with him here (although he includes anarchy in his list, liking it to libertarianism, which is completely ridiculous; we all know ((or should know)) that anarchism is not about chaos or “no government” but about relentlessly pursuing the end of destructive, oppressive power hierarchies. Even the most hardcore anarcho-primitivists will admit it’s impossible to NOT have some form of regulatory relational dynamic). I think governments can be viewed positively (although always with a skeptical eye of course) and their purpose should be to provide freedom to be able to pursue and achieve goods: better social conditions, better education, better health, more just distribution of resources, higher overall quality of life, etc., etc., etc.

Evolutionarily speaking, the best way for humans to flourish is to encourage cooperation and trustworthiness, not competition, deceit, and the lauding of “success” (and debasing of “losers”). Natural systems certainly do create greater abundance as they develop, but they do not hoard it; rather they use it to sustain more life, and this is what we need to do as well if we are to adapt and survive as a species.

…

Painting above by Bill Allen

A society that values success over fairness is a society that that values brutality. was originally published on TURRI

#economics #Eric Zuesse #libertarianism #political philosophy #politics #socialism #society

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newsnigeria · 5 years

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Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/u-s-uk-deep-state/

U.S.-UK Deep State Tries to Grab Hong Kong, China.

by Eric Zuesse for The Saker Blog

What can explain these recent instances, proven by Agence France-Press, in which outright frauds — lies (in the form of faked photos and videos) — are being spread online to support the agenda of breaking off, from China, Hong Kong (which has historically always a part of China), so as to make Hong Kong an ‘independent’ nation?:

——

https://factcheck.afp.com/ This video actually shows Chinese tanks in Hong Kong in June 2012 26 July 2019 https://factcheck.afp.com/old- This is an old video of a training exercise by South Korean riot police 29 July 2019 https://factcheck.afp.com/ The press pass in this doctored photo is from Apple Daily’s Taiwan bureau, not Hong Kong 30 July 2019 https://factcheck.afp.com/all- All crime legal in Hong Kong for 12 hours? No, the ’emergency broadcast’ is fictional 5 August 2019 https://factcheck.afp.com/ This photo shows a different cat — the owner of Hong Kong’s Brother Cream says he is unharmed 8 August 2019 https://factcheck.afp.com/its- It’s an old photo of an actor on a Hong Kong TV show 9 August 2019 https://factcheck.afp.com/ This video shows Hong Kong police firing tear gas at Kwai Fong station in August 2019 14 August 2019 https://factcheck.afp.com/ Gangsters beat up Hong Kong protester? The video was actually filmed in Taiwan in 2018 and shows a man being attacked over debts 16 August 2019 https://factcheck.afp.com/ Hong Kong airport has said ‘all lighting operated as normal’ 20 August 2019 https://factcheck.afp.com/ These pictures are from protests in France and Spain, not recent demonstrations in Hong Kong 21 August 2019

——

The context might explain it:

On August 14th, Toronto lawyer Christopher Black, who is an expert on U.S.-UK Deep State efforts to grab back Hong Kong for the British Empire, headlined at Global Research “America’s ‘Hybrid War’ against China has Entered a New Phase”, and he described a six-phase “hybrid war” by the U.S.-UK Deep State against China in Hong Kong:

The first stage involved the massive shift of US air and naval forces to the Pacific. …

The second stage was the creation of disinformation about China’s treatment of minority groups, especially in Tibet and west China. …

[The third stage is] the propaganda was extended to China’s economic development, its international trade, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, its Silk and Belt Road Initiative, its development bank, and other facilities and trade initiatives, through which China is accused of trying to control the world. …

The fourth phase is the US attempt to degrade the Chinese economy with punitive “tariffs,” …

A fifth phase [is] the kidnapping and illegal detention of Meng Wanzhou, the Chief Financial Officer of China’s leading technology company Huawei, …

[The sixth phase] in this hybrid warfare is the insurrection being provoked by the US, UK, Canada and the rest in Hong Kong, …

Also on August 14th, the anonymous “Moon of Alabama” blogger (a German intelligence-analyst), headlined “Violent Protests In Hong Kong Reach Their Last Stage”, and he opened:

The riots in Hong Kong are about to end.

The protests, as originally started in June, were against a law that would have allowed criminal extraditions to Taiwan, Macao and mainland China. The law was retracted and the large protests have since died down. What is left are a few thousand students who, as advertised in a New York Times op-ed, intentionally seek to provoke the police with “marginal violence”:

“Such actions are a way to make noise and gain attention. And if they prompt the police to respond with unnecessary force, as happened on June 12, then the public will feel disapproval and disgust for the authorities. The protesters should thoughtfully escalate nonviolence, maybe even resort to mild force, to push the government to the edge. That was the goal of many people who surrounded and barricaded police headquarters for hours on June 21.”

The protesters now use the same violent methods that were used in the Maidan protests in the Ukraine. The U.S. seems to hope that China will intervene and create a second Tianamen scene. That U.S. color revolution attemptfailed but was an excellent instrument to demonize China. A repeat in Hong Kong would allow to declare a “clash of civilization” and increase ‘western’ hostility against China. But while China is prepared to intervene it is unlikely to do the U.S. that favor. Its government expressed its confidence that the local authorities will be able to handle the issue.

There are rumors that some Hong Kong oligarchs were originally behind the protests to prevent their extradition for shady deals they made in China. There may be some truth to that. China’s president Xi Jingpin is waging a fierce campaign against corruption and Hong Kong is a target-rich environment for fighting that crime.

The former British colony is ruled by a handful of oligarchs who have monopolies in the housing, electricity, trade and transport markets: …

Then there was this from him, after the Sunday, August 18th, demonstration:

——

https://www.moonofalabama.org/

August 19, 2019

Which Hong Kong Protest Size Estimate is Right?

The New York Times further promotes the protests in Hong Kong by quoting an extravagant crowd size estimate of yesterday’s march.

… So what is it? 128,000 or the 13 times bigger 1.7 million? With the mood set in the first paragraphs the Times is clearly promoting the larger estimate.

But that estimate is definitely false. (As was my own early estimate of 15-20,000 based on early pictures of the event.) It is impossible that 1.7 million people took part in the gathering and march. There is no way that the 1.7 million people would physically fit in or near the protest venue.

——

He demonstrated there, beyond question, that the NYT’s allegation that the crowd was 1,700,000 was at least 13 times too large.

Consequently, since all of those matters are documented facts — not mere conjectures — the rational conclusion would be that the same Deep State that overthrew Iran’s democracy in 1954, and that overthrew Guatemala’s democracy in 1954, and that overthrew Chile’s democracy in 1973, and that overthrew Ukraine’s democracy in 2014, and that installed brutal military regimes in each one of those places, and that also in many other instances has installed dictatorial U.S.-controlled vassal-states, and that has been trying to do similar things to Libya, and to Syria, and to Venezuela, and to Russia (“color revolutions” they are called) is trying to do that also in Hong Kong. And, as has always been the case in the past, the U.S.-and-allied Deep State regime’s propaganda is that this is being done for ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’. This would explain those hoaxes that AFP has been documenting against Hong Kong’s government.

The lying continues on, at all U.S. mainstream (and most of its non-mainstream) ‘news’-media, such as:

——

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/

A Guide To What’s Happening In Hong Kong

August 20, 2019 12:38 PM ET COLIN DWYER

Organizers say more than a million demonstrators gathered Sunday in Hong Kong … carrying umbrellas that have come to signify resistance. …

Janis Mackey Frayer@janisfrayer

Pouring rain in #HongKong but tens of thousands still protesting today… chanting ‘Hong Kong people, keep going’. The rally is seen as a measure of public support for the protest movement, after 11 consecutive weekends and increasingly violence. @NBCNews @NBCNightlyNews @MSNBC

5:26 AM – Sun. Aug 18, 2019 …

“We demand that the bill be formally withdrawn now,” said Alvin Yeung, a member of the region’s Legislative Council and leader of the pro-democracy Civic Party. He also told All Things Considered that protesters are demanding “an independent inquiry to look into police misconduct and brutality.”

“That is something so simple that any open and civil society would do,�� he added. “But then this government has been refusing to set up a commission to look into that. And more importantly, of course, is a democratic system.” …

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/

Twitter And Facebook Shut Down Fake Propaganda Accounts Run By Chinese Government

August 20, 20194:23 PM ET

Heard on All Things Considered

NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Adam Segal, at the Council on Foreign Relations, about Facebook and Twitter shutting down hundreds of fake accounts run by the Chinese government.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

We have heard a lot about Russia creating fake social media accounts to influence political discourse in other countries. Now Facebook and Twitter say they have shut down hundreds of fake accounts created and run by the Chinese government. These pages are mainly spreading messages against the Hong Kong protests.

Adam Segal is the director of digital and cyberspace policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has studied China’s use of disinformation, and he joins us now. Hi, there.

ADAM SEGAL: Thanks for having me.

KELLY: So help us understand what exactly China stands accused of doing. Give me an example of one of these fake accounts and what it’s been tweeting or posting.

SEGAL: Twitter and Facebook have said that the Chinese have created fake accounts or inauthentic accounts and that they’ve spread disinformation about the protests in Hong Kong. Some of the accounts have compared the protesters to cockroaches or to ISIS and have suggested that they’ve taken money from either foreigners or what one of the accounts called bad guys.

KELLY: What is the scope of this operation, as far as we can tell? …

——

#China

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foursprout-blog · 6 years

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Zuesse: America's News Media Foment Hate

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/zuesse-americas-news-media-foment-hate/

Zuesse: America's News Media Foment Hate

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Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Mimiccing the movie 1984, in its two-minute section “Two Minutes of Hate,”…

…the US-installed Ukrainian regime on Russia’s doorstep, will soon be debating a bill to make hate of Russia obligatory to be inculcated into all Ukrainian children.

The Hill, on 9 November 2017, had the extraordinary courage to publish an opinion-piece that condemned the mainstream news-media’s charges that reports of widespread “neo-Nazi formations in Ukraine” are nothing but “Russian propaganda.” An editor who would accept a submission like that at such media as the Washington Post, New York Times, New Yorker, The Atlantic, or just about any other in America, would probably be fired or else re-assigned, so as to prevent a repeat.

It’s the way to achieve mass-indoctrination, which the Ministry of Truth specializes in. Thus, among the reader-comments to that bold article, the top-listed one under “sort by best” (in other words, the most popular) was the anti-Russian “Have you counted how many neo-Nazis are in the Russian army as well?”

But there is actually nothing at all in Russia which even begins to approach the outright nazi displays and rallies that are routine in today’s Ukraine, and some of which Ukrainian marches are publicly displaying symbols from Hitler’s regime — in fact, it’s all outright illegal in Russia, which had lost (by far) more of its citizens to Germany’s Nazis (13,950,000, or 12.7% of its population) than did any other country (except Belarus — another state within the Soviet Union — which lost 25.3% of its population). (The US, which might be where the obvious bigot who wrote that reader-comment resides, lost 419,400, or 0.32% of its population.) Metaphorically spitting like that, onto such millions of victims’ corpses, is to be expected from bigots, and from the fools who “up-vote” them. Furthermore, the US CIA provided protection and employment in Germany for top members of Hitler’s equivalent to the CIA, the Gehlen Organization. (America’s CIA continues flagrantly to violate the law and hide from Congress and the American people crucial details of its relationship with the Gehlen Organization.) By contrast, the Soviet Union was unremitting in killing Nazis whom it captured. Understandably, Hitler is admired far less in Russia than in today’s far-right United States, despite any lie such as “Have you counted how many neo-Nazis are in the Russian army as well?”

Stupid indoctrinated readers can’t change the facts about the post-coup Ukraine, which are documented not only in that excellent opinion-piece at The Hill, but by innumerable thousands of uploaded videos and other evidences of the nazism of the US-imposed Ukrainian regime. In fact, under US President Barack Obama, whose Administration imposed this nazi government upon Ukraine, the US Government was one of only 3 in the entire world who stood up publicly for nazism at the U.N. The other two nations were Ukraine itself (this vote having occurred after the coup) and Canada. Then, under the current US President Donald Trump, the US was again one of this time the only 2 nations in the entire world who stood up publicly for nazism at the U.N. The other country on that occasion was Ukraine itself. Thereby, Trump took upon himself, Obama’s nazi mantle. And, under Trump, there’s now supply of US weaponry directly to proudly and publicly nazi battalions in Ukraine. Even Obama wasn’t so bold as to do that. FDR would cry, but the Ministry of Truth has prohibited the public even to know about the reality.

Even UK’s supposedly anti-nazi BBC routinely states such baldfaced lies as “Ukraine is emphatically not run by fascists”, though clearly it is run by the worst type, racist fascists, ideological nazis, and they do typically nazi and outright horrendous things, which the Government that the US imposed refuses to punish anyone for having done. That’s because what was done is what the US Government itself had wanted them to do. It had put these people into power.

Here are yet further evidences, that the silence about this fact – silence by virtually all US and allied ‘news’ media, about Ukraine’s US-imposed nazism – is a scandalous proof of the utter corruptness of the US-and-allied ‘news’ media: “Nazism of Ukraine’s Western-Backed Government Is Hidden by Western ‘News’ Media”

The US regime foisted nazi rule on Ukraine, and backs the ethnic-cleansing program there to kill or else cause to flee from Ukraine into Russia the residents in Ukraine’s far-eastern Donbass region, in which over 90% of the people had voted for the democratically elected Ukrainian President that the US regime overthrew and replaced by fascists and nazis, in February 2014. Obama needed to get rid of those intensely anti-nazi voters, because otherwise the regime that he installed wouldn’t have lasted beyond the first post-coup election. That’s the purpose of ethnic cleansing – to get rid of unwanted voters. Western ‘news’ media portray it (when they do) simply as mass bigotry, but the installed political thugs have actually organized and armed it, in order to retain their power by getting rid of their political opponents’ voters. (Obama required it, in this case, because Ukraine has Europe’s longest border with Russia, and is thus ideal for posting US missiles).

But instead of The West’s recognizing publicly that the ethnic-cleansing program exists, The West’s propaganda-vehicles (called ‘news’ media by Big Brother) accuse Russia of ‘aggression’ for arming Donbass’s residents and bringing in food and medicine so that these people can stay there instead of emigrating into Russia. Russia is doing what it can to help them, but turned down the residents’ pleas to become admitted as a new region into Russia. Russia had gotten hit badly enough with America’s sanctions which resulted from Russia’s taking on the burden of protecting and allowing to become Russians again (as had been the case until the Soviet dictator in 1954 transferred them to Ukraine) Crimeans.

So: this ugly mindless and misinformed hate, which America’s ‘news’ media foment by constant lies and distortions against Russia, is being fomented for a reason: conquest. Conquering Ukraine wasn’t enough — the US regime wants, ultimately, to conquer Russia; and, so, that’s what all of this hate build-up is actually about. It’s the prelude to an invasion. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be done, at all. Invasion of Russia, is the sole sensible ultimate reason.

The American people would not tolerate, even for just ten seconds, Russia overthrowing Canada’s Government – our next-door neighbor – in order to place missiles on our border, but people who say such things as “Have you counted how many neo-Nazis are in the Russian army as well?” are, in effect, approving of our country doing that to the Russian people.

Ukraine is Russia’s equivalent to our Canada. And, America’s media constantly feed this stupidity and hate, by Americans against Russia, and blindly ignore the hate that the US regime has already unleashed in Ukraine, against Ukraine’s next-door neighbor, in preparation for an invasion of Russia. Never has the US sunk so low, at least not in modern times, but the direction in which we are heading is toward even worse, even lower than now, even more like Hitler’s Germany. Candidate Trump had promised to be the non-Obama, but turns out, on the most important matter of all, to be instead the super-Obama. This is playing with fire — a global fire. And the US Government is doing it with the most-evil intent imaginable. And the media play right along with it, and they whip the hatred even higher than they already have done.

Things aren’t looking good. There are too many lies, for any intelligent person to be able to feel at all comfortable about where we’re headed.

The sound of those two minutes of hate is becoming unbearable, for anyone with the ears and brain to hear it. It’s now all around us.

#Wealth

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foursproutwealth-blog · 6 years

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The Three Global Super-Powers & The End Of M.A.D.

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/the-three-global-super-powers-the-end-of-m-a-d/

The Three Global Super-Powers & The End Of M.A.D.

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Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

There are currently three global super-powers, three nations that lead the world: China, Russia, and US.

After World War II, until recently, the US clearly dominated the world, not only culturally, with more influence over the world’s other cultures than any other single nation possessed, but also economically, with product-dominance throughout the world, and also militarily tied with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and, then, after the Cold War, still possessing such military dominance, so that in 2006, America’s billionaires — as represented by the most-prestigious two agencies that represent their collective interests against the public, the Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard University — were actively promoting, broadly amongst foreign-policy academics, the idea that the US should seek to occupy a position of such extreme military superiority over Russia, so that since 2006 the concept of “Nuclear Primacy” is reflected, by America’s power-centers, as being the correct goal for America, going forward, replacing the prior nuclear-strategic paradigm (since the 1950s) of “Mutually Assured Destruction,” or “M.A.D.,” in which nuclear weapons were (and, by Russia, still are) seen as purely defensive strategic military assets between the two nuclear superpowers, weapons whose only actual purpose, for either country, is to ward off a WW III — no usefulness at all in an actual aggressive military context.

Thus, M.A.D. became replaced in America by Nuclear Primacy, nuclear weapons that are put in place to serve not only to ward off a nuclear attack, but also, ultimately, to win a nuclear war against the other nuclear super-power, Russia — nukes as aggressive weapons, by which the US will (it has been expected, ever since 2006) soon be able to demand, and to receive, Russia’s capitulation, surrender, or else Russia will be destroyed by a US nuclear first-strike, while US casualties, from any presumably few Russian weapons that might make it through this ABM-BMD shield, will be kept to an “acceptably low” level, by virtue of that then-functioning ABM-BMD system, combined with increases in US nuclear striking-power. This nuclear-primacy paradigm aims for America (its billionaires) to take over the entire world, including ultimately the world’s largest land-mass: Russia.

But, now, twelve years later, America’s presumed early lead in such ‘defensive’ strategic weaponry has become, instead, ever more clearly, just a figment of America’s military-industrial complex’s (MIC’s) fervid marketing-campaign for the development and sale of such weapons, ever since US President Ronald Reagan’s promised “Star Wars” program during the 1980s got the effort, toward a winnable nuclear war, started, as an alleged ‘defensive’ measure — not yet overtly the end of M.A.D.

Soon after Reagan, the Soviet Union, and its communism, and its Warsaw Pact counter to America’s NATO military alliance, all simultaneously ended, in 1991, as a consequence of which, the US military-industrial complex (MIC), and especially the large US manufacturers of nuclear-weapons systems, the companies that dominate the MIC, were becoming stranded, because the market for their costliest wares was now in limbo. Though elimination of the Cold War wouldn’t have been an existential threat to these manufacturers, an end to the Cold War on the US side would have threatened the market-values of those US companies, which are controlled by US billionaires, who have lots of clout in Congress. Thus, though the Cold War ended in 1991 on the Russian side, it secretly continued on the US side (that is, amongst America’s super-wealthy, the people who control the US Government — the main market for the MIC); and America’s strategic switch, away from M.A.D. to Nuclear Primacy (so as to unshackle their market from the prior politically imposed demand to maintain a nuclear balance between the two sides), has been a significant part of this secret continuation, by America, of the Cold War, while Russia’s Government continued instead to think in terms of the M.A.D. paradigm. (Russia’s weapons-manufacturers are still owned by the Government — socialized — so, there’s no need to grow their ‘market value’.)

In a strictly capitalist country, weapons-manufacturing is a major area of investment for billionaires, whose fortunes there rise to the extent that governments are buying their planes and bombs and missiles, especially those of the most sophisticated types, which are strategic weaponry, such as nuclear systems, which are the most profitable ones of all. Growth-at-all-costs has meant (and means) that the MIC is a cancer upon the entire world. (Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, on 17 January 1961, understated the problem.) Either the entire military will be a public entity, or else there will be (because of its privatized weapons-manufacturing) a tendency for the military to destroy everything else in order to continue to grow, like investors expect and demand — grow like cancer.

A major source of America’s decline was US President George W. Bush, who came into office in 2001 when the Cold War could no longer excite the American public as being a threat (since the Soviet Union and its communism and its military alliance were now long gone), and a new demon thus needed to be brought before the American people, as warranting increased ‘defense’ expenditures. 9/11 came along just in time to fill this interim lack of a cause de guerre, to attack now Al Qaeda and other (as today’s US President famously tags it) “radical Islamic terrorists.”However, America’s spending on strategic weaponry requires instead focus against the other nuclear super-power as being the ‘enemy’, and this is what the end of M.A.D. and the start of Nuclear Primacy (which is manna from heaven for the ‘Defense’ contractors) have been all about: re-defining ‘the enemy’, from being a country with which peace must be maintained (M.A.D.), to becoming instead a country that should be outright conquered. And, amongst the lies which are necessary in order to sustain this switch (from M.A.D. to Nuclear Primacy), is the lie that ABMs have no aggressive function, but are ‘purely for defense’. This lie will enable the public to accept the spending of trillions of dollars of federal money on weapons whose sole real use will be conquering Russia — or, at least, the attempt to do so.

Nobody makes public the identities of the individuals, in the US and in its allied countries, who comprise the suddenly booming market for luxurious nuclear-proof deep-underground bunkers. But whomever these owners are, three things about them are obvious: they’ve got lots of money; they think that the prospect of a nuclear war is very real — worth their pre-paying for suitably luxurious long-term temporary accommodations deep underground; and they aren’t themselves one of the high government officials for whom the government’s taxpayers have already built such bunkers. (Or, perhaps, some of them do belong to the last of those three categories, but they’ve got so much extra money that they can easily afford to pay for more luxurious quarters than the taxpayers have already supplied them with.)

Quite similar to Donald Trump, but far more overtly faith-based than the hyper-secular former Miss Universe Pageant owner, George W. Bush had a confidence like the Taliban and Al Qaeda do, that “God is on our side”, and so Bush acted as if he had no reason to test-out America’s ABM weapons before ordering and buying them (at the public taxpayer’s expense, and private billionaires’ profits, of course). Or, perhaps alternatively, Bush didn’t even care whether these weapons would work, but only whether the owners of the companies that would be manufacturing them would be satisfied with their profits, from the decisions that he was making, which so powerfully affected their profits. In any case, Bush’s focus on rushing forward with a US ABM system demonstrated his strong commitment to the replacement of M.A.D., by Nuclear Primacy. The whole idea of Nuclear Primacy rests upon there being an effective US ABM system installed so as to make the enemy’s retaliatory weapons ineffective. Bush pushed the ABM into production even before there was any indication that it would work. He did this even before the very concept of “Nuclear Primacy” was publicly introduced by the two chief agents for America’s aristocracy in 2006. What Harvard and the CFR promoted, was already the Government’s policy. While there were criticisms of Bush’s execution of the plan, there was no significant scholarly opposition against the Nuclear Primacy concept itself.

All subject-areas of expertise (and this refers to scientists, not to scholars) despised the religious faith-based President George W. Bush, much like they despise the secular faith-based President Donald Trump. For example, everyone knows that Trump has great difficulty finding experts who are willing to serve in his Administration. Similarly, in the October 2004 “Poll of Academic Economists” by the Economist, 59% of them answered “no” when asked “If you had a chance to work in a policy job in Washington, would you take it?” And when queried “For whom would you rather work?” Bush or his then electoral opponent Senator John Kerry, 81% chose Kerry — notwithstanding that, as a predominantly conservative lot, the economists did like one thing about George W. Bush: “Outsourcing of jobs overseas,” which 86% of them rated to be either good or very good. (Of course, Trump claims to oppose that; so, in this regard, he’s even less acceptable to economists than Bush was.)

Under Bush, experts were even trying, with no success, to inform this conservative faith-based President about areas in the federal budget where substantial funds were being simply wasted, but his blind faith caused him to ignore such scientific warnings, and enormous federal waste resulted. For example, the science reporter William Broad headlined in The New York Times on 24 September 2003, “Report Sees Risks in Push for Missile Defense”, and opened, “The Bush administration’s push to deploy a $22 billion missile defense system by this time next year could lead to unforeseen cost increases and technical failures that will have to be fixed before it can hope to stop enemy warheads, Congressional investigators said yesterday. The General Accounting Office, in a 40-page report, said the Pentagon was combining 10 crucial technologies into a missile defense system without knowing if they can handle the task [and subsequently the same thing happened in order to produce the scandalously overpriced and insanely multi-functional F-35 jets], often described as trying to hit a bullet with a bullet.” The article quoted a former Pentagon weapons testing chief, who said that to deploy such an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system just a year hence as planned, would be to deploy “no more than a scarecrow, not a real defense” — in other words, a system that would almost certainly fail in any actual use — because so many parts of the system wouldn’t have been tested sufficiently to be designed functionally that soon. The prior (Bill Clinton) Administration, more attentive to such concerns, had established a schedule for testing the various parts of this complex system prior to any possible deployment. However, one of G.W. Bush’s first actions coming into office was to deploy an ABM system, even if it might not work, and to do the testing afterward. Bush, it seems, possessed the faith that if science were to fail to supply the system’s functionality, then God would certainly do so, for the benefit of “God’s People.”

Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post thus headlined on 26 April 2004, “Dubious Threat, Expensive Defense” and closed: “Bush would spend twice as much on missile defense as on customs and border protection,” yet gain only “a rudimentary and uncertain defense against an unlikely long-range missile attack.” Diehl opined that, despite the transformed defense needs after 9/11, “The president who never admits error will stay the course.”

Bush did stay the course: by the time of 14 February 2005, as The New York Times reported the next day, “The nation’s fledgling missile defense system suffered its third straight test failure.” Commented one scientist there, “It’s as if Henry Ford started up his automobile production line and began selling cars without ever taking one for a test drive.” But not quite: Bush had now taken his third ‘test drive’ — and all three failed.

On 4 April 2005, the AP reported, “Congress is weighing how much to invest in the fledgling ballistic missile defense system, which has suffered setbacks and whose cost could easily top the $150 billion partial price tag the Bush administration has estimated.” Some congressional proponents of the ABM system were even quoted as saying that it had to be deployed in order to prevent future terrorist attacks, such as had occurred on 9/11. Of course, that allegation is absurd — 9/11 couldn’t have been stopped by an anti-missile defense system. But members of Congress aren’s so stupid as not to know this. That allegation was probably just a marketing-ploy sponsored in back-rooms by corporations such as Lockheed Martin, who might reflect their satisfaction with the statement, by donating to the ‘appropriate’ PACS.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress were financially shortchanging many of the nation’s authentic anti-terrorist needs. This $150 billion+ could have gone a long way toward achieving real protection (and/or toward serving non-defense needs), if it had been scientifically allocated.

Were Al Qaeda to have been voting directly in the US Congress, the ABM system would have had an easier time passing unchanged, exactly as Bush wanted. Al Qaeda would have been fervent Republicans — they were just as religious, and just as faith-obsessed, though in a different ‘inerrant Scripture’. If Donald Trump has faith in any ‘inerrant Scripture’, nobody knows what it is. But, he seems to have lots of faith in himself, even if experts in the respective subject-fields don’t.

By the present time, the failure of America’s entire ABM-BMD gamble — which was started under Reagan, begun being operationalized under G.W. Bush, and finally being installed by Barack Obama and now under Trump — is painfully clear. But success was never its actual goal: restoring the government’s growth in ‘defense’ spending (even while cutting now the government’s non-‘defense’ spending) is its real purpose. Those billionaires and centi-millionaires must be served, or else Congress-members will lose their seats to well-funded competitors in their own Party’s next primary. The system succeeds marvelously at doing what it’s intended to do: to serve the people who buy the Government — to serve the actual patrons of this ‘democracy’. Instead of being a democracy, it’s a government that’s bought and sold.

While America thus spends itself into becoming increasingly a third-world country, China and Russia pursue different objectives. Specifically in the case of Russia, its military spending is one-tenth of America’s, but, because Russia cannot afford to allow billionaires’ demands for private profit to constitute the incentive-system that drives the Russian Government’s military decisions, Russia has gone militarily from strength to strength, while post-WW-II America (spending ten times as much) has gone from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria, and yet America’s ‘news’-media have cheered all of these evil billionaires’ invasions of those countries we wrecked, as if companies such as General Dynamics owned companies such as the Washington Post, and thus (with all that propaganda) the American public continue to respect America’s military higher than any other US institution — despite such a long string of military failures by this country, despite spending ten times what Russia does on its military, and despite America’s military being the most corrupt part of the US federal Government.

But, actually, America’s military spending is probably much higher than just ten times Russia’s, because America’s official figures — what SIPRI and others use, which is just the ‘Defense’ Department — excludes much of America’s military expenses, as a consequence of which, America’s official $617.1 billion FY 2019 expenditure for the Department of ‘Defense’ masks an actual annual military expense of $1,135.7 billion. That’s $1.36 trillion per year, to do things such as destroy Afghanistan, destroy Iraq, destroy Syria, destroy Libya, perpetrate coups such as in Ukraine, assist coups such as in Honduras, etc. But even that’s not the total ‘defense’ expenditure which taxpayers have bought for the billionaires, because, throughout its existence, the US CIA has been getting unrecorded off-the-books billions from the international narcotics trade, starting in 1948, when it perpetrated a coup in Thailand and installed there a brutal regime that helped establish the CIA’s off-the-books funding-system, as I had mentioned in a prior article, where I discussed US relations with Syria, in broader histrical context,

starting in 1949, when the US CIA, under President Harry S. Truman, did its second coup d’etat, overthrowing a democratically elected progressive Government (the first having been Thailand 1948, where the CIA had installed an extremely barbaric dictator replacing the democratically elected government that had been headed by a staunch anti-fascist, and simultaneously set up the CIA’s off-the-books supplementary funding mechanism from the international narcotics-trade — a CIA practice which has continued till perhaps the present; and, furthermore, the infamous Nugan-Hand affair, which involved Thailand, definitely involved the CIA’s Michael Hand and William Colby; so, clearly, the CIA is funded off-the-books from the narcotics business, and America’s anti-narcotics laws thus are actually keeping narcotics-drug prices and resultant burglaries and CIA profits artificially high, funneling that illicit money into CIA coffers; and any method to defund the CIA down to its core intelligence-gathering function and to eliminate its coup-function, which is the function that took control in Thailand and Syria and then Iran and many more, would need to regulate — instead of to continue outlawing — drugs, which might be the main reason why it hasn’t yet been done: illegal drugs provide wealth to the CIA and other gang-lords, including some US Government officials).

Another significant milestone in the development of the American elite’s plan to conquer Russia has been the overwhelming — more than 90% of the votes in both the US Senate and House — support for the imposition in 2012 of economic sanctions against Russia, to punish the Russian Government for the alleged 2009 murder of one alleged anti-corruption whistleblower in a Russian prison, Sergei Magnitsky — the Magnitsky Act was passed, and was the first set of economic sanctions against Russia. (The evidence that Magnitsky had been a ‘whistleblower’, and the evidence that he was ‘tortured’ in prison, and the evidence that he wasn’t instead the American Bill Browder’s tax-accountant who had helped Browder in a complex tax-evasion scheme that had defrauded the Russian Government of $232 million, are all themselves fraudulent, and even are easily verified as being fraudulent, but both the US Government, and the EU, ignored and continue to ignore all of it.) In order to have a ‘justification’ to attack Russia, an excuse is needed; and, since the ideological one — communism — ended in 1991, Russia needs to be at least a ‘dictatorship’; so, something such as the Magnitsky Act was necessary in order to get the military-industrial complex’s (MIC’s) PR ball rolling toward even-higher annual US ’defense’ spending. However, that excuse, being a ‘dictatorship’ (with elections that are at least as honest as America’s are), isn’t enough. Russia also needs to be officially declared to be an ‘aggressor’ — an aggressive dictatorship — such as to have grabbed portions of its adjoining country, Ukraine. So, America’s Obama regime secretly started in 2011 planning, and then in February 2014 it carried out, a coup against and overthrowing the democratically elected and Russia-friendly Government of Ukraine, and installed there a fascist regime to replace the one that had received 75% of the vote in the Crimean region of Ukraine, and 90% of the vote in the Donbass region of Ukraine, so that both regions refused to be ruled by the Obama-installed rabidly anti-Russian Ukrainian regime, and Russia helped both of those two separatist regions on its borders, and even protected and accepted Crimea’s referendum-vote of over 90% to rejoin Russia, of which Crimea had historically been a part until the Soviet dictator in 1954 arbitrarily transferred it to Ukraine. So, now, the US MIC has the excuses it wants, in order to place — and thus did place — its weapons and troops onto and near Russia’s borders, just a ten-minute missile flight-time to Moscow.

This plan is moving forward, but nobody can yet say whether, or even when, the US regime will invade. However, the US regime and its NATO allies now also have the excuses that Russia has been holding ‘aggressive’ military exercises near its borders ‘threatening’ NATO countries on its border that might invade Russia, and Western ‘news’media have alarmed their publics against Russia’s ‘aggressive’ moves after its having ‘stolen’ Crimea and ‘attacked’ Ukraine in Donbass. And then there is yet more Russian ‘aggression’ when Syria requested and received Russia’s military assistance against the US-backed jihadists who, since 2012, have poured, by the tens of thousands, from around the world, into Syria, to be led by the US-backed Al Qaeda there, to overthrow the Syrian Government, which is allied with Russia. So, that too (the Syrian war) could produce a war between the US and Russia; it could start over Syrian territory, where the US insists on regime-change, but claims only to be ‘fighting terrorists’ there. Of course, regardless of whether the invader of Syria (the US), or else the defender of Syria (Russia), wins, the loser in Syria, especially if it turns out to be the US invader (i.e., if Syria remains one country instead of breaking apart, and if Assad becomes re-elected as President there), could then use that superpower-defeat in Syria, as constituting an excuse to invade the winning superpower there.

This would be WW III, starting in Syria, instead of in Ukraine. The US regime has set up those two scenarios.

1984 has come in the real world, but the declining and former leading superpower, America (“Oceania” in George Orwell’s uncannily prophetic description of the future that he prematurely set to occur in 1984), is apparently determined to stay ‘on top’, even if it’s the last thing that anybody does.

Can it really be that if the world of the future won’t be led by America’s billionaires, then it won’t exist at all? Do they really demand “My way, or the highway” — really? Are America’s billionaires (despite any ‘humanitarian’ pretenses they individually so often hypocritically express, both in the fictionalized and in the real version) so stunningly united in their actual psychopathy (likewise in both versions — “Big Brother,” and today’s reality)? Thus far, it seems that they are. None of them — not a one of these people who have the financial resources to bring the world’s most pressing issue honestly to the American public — is speaking out against the others on it, and devoting major funds to exposing the others for their pumping lies against Russia, and to exposing the truths about such things as ABMs and the MIC. And collectively they’ve got the American public fooled into admiring the MIC (“the Military”) above all other US institutions. But whether America’s billionaires will carry their collective evil to the extreme, isn’t yet clear. They are the actual decision-makers regarding US Government policy, but they are playing their cards — as usual — privately and secretly, until their game (whatever it may turn out to be) will already be finished.

Meanwhile, Russia and China each proceeds forward on its own priorities, which aren’t necessarily similar to those of the conquest-obsessed American Government.

#Wealth

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politicalfilth-blog · 7 years

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Russia and Iran Remind U.S. that Syria has Allies Who Will Respond with Force if Further Provoked

We Are Change

Article via ZeroHedge

A statement issued on Sunday by a joint command centre consisting of forces of Russian, Iran and allied militia alliance supporting Syrian President Bashar al Assad said that Friday’s US strike on the Syrian air base crossed “red lines” and it would “respond with force” to any new aggression while increasing their level of support to their ally.

In the statement published by the group on media outlet Ilam al Harbi, the pro-Assad alliances says that “what America waged in an aggression on Syria is a crossing of red lines. From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is and America knows our ability to respond well.”

Earlier on Sunday the UK’s Defence Secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, demanded Russia rein in Mr Assad (by which he really meant be willing to accept a new Syrian regime with a pro-western puppet leader, and one who is willing to allow the Qatar gas pipeline to cross the country on its way to Europe.

Fallon also claimed that Moscow is “responsible for every civilian death” in the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhun and said Putin was responsible for the brutal killings “by proxy”, because it was the Syrian president’s “principal backer.” The defense minister said the attack had happened “on their watch” and that Vladimir Putin must now live up to previous promises that Mr Assad’s chemical weapons had been destroyed. His comments came after Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson pulled out of a Moscow visit hours before he was due to fly. * * *

Finally, for those who are unclear about the core geopolitical tensions that are at the base of the long-running Syrian proxy war, the answer is – as so often tends to be – commodities and specifically natural gas, as we first explained in 2013, and as summarized in the following October 2016 article courtesy of Eric Zuesse (see also “Competing Gas Pipelines Are Fueling The Syrian War & Migrant Crisis“)

The Oil-Gas War Over Syria (In 4 Maps)

Turkey’s Anadolu News Agency, though government-run, is providing remarkably clear and reliable diagrammatic descriptions of the current status of the U.S – and – fundamentalist – Sunni, versus Russia – and – Shia – and – NON – fundamentalist – Sunni, sides, in the current oil-and-gas war in the Middle East, for control over territory in Syria, for construction of oil-and-gas pipelines through Syria supplying fuel into the world’s largest energy-market: Europe. Russia is now the dominant supplier of both oil and gas, but its ally Iran is a Shiite gas-powerhouse that wants to share the market there, and Russia has no objection.

Qatar is a Sunni gas-powerhouse and wants to become the main supplier of gas there, and Saudi Arabia is a Sunni oil-powerhouse, which wants to become the major supplier of oil, but Saudi oil and Qatari gas would be pipelined through secular-controlled (Assad’s) Syria, and this is why the U.S. and its fundamentalist-Sunni allies, the Sauds, and Qataris, are using Al Qaeda and other jihadists to conquer enough of a strip through Syria so that U.S. companies such as Halliburton will be able safely to place pipelines there, to be marketed in Europe by U.S. firms such as Exxon. Iran also wants to pipeline its gas through Syria, and this is one reason why Iran is defending Syria’s government, against the U.S.-Saudi-Qatari-jihadist invasion, which is trying to overthrow and replace Assad.

Here are the most-informative of Anadolu’s war-maps:

The first presents the effort by many countries to eliminate ISIS control over the large Iraqi city of Mosul. A remarkably frank remark made in this map is “An escape corridor into Syria will be left for Daesh [ISIS] so they can vacate Mosul” – an admission that the U.S. – Saudi – Qatari team want the ISIS jihadists who are in Mosul to relocate into Syria to assist the U.S. – Saudi – Qatari effort there to overthrow and replace the Assad government:

The second is about the Egyptian government’s trying to assist the Syrian government’s defense against the Saudi – U.S. – Qatari invasion of Syria, at Aleppo, where Syria’s Al Qaeda branch is trying to retain its current control over part of that large city. The Saud family are punishing the Egyptian government for that:

Here is Russia’s proposed gas-pipeline, which would enable Russia to reduce its dependence upon Ukraine (through which Russia currently pipes its gas into Europe). Obama conquered and took over Ukraine in February 2014 via his coup that overthrew the democratically elected neutralist Ukrainian President there:

In addition, there is the following map from oil-price.com:

That map shows the competing Shiia (Russia-backed) and Sunni (U.S.-backed) gas-pipelines into Europe — the central issue in the invasion and defense of Syria.

On 21 September 2016, Gareth Porter headlined “The War Against the Assad Regime Is Not a ‘Pipeline War’”, and he pointed out some errors in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s account that had been published under the headline “Syria: Another Pipeline War”. Porter argued: “It’s easy to understand why that explanation would be accepted by many anti-war activists: it is in line with the widely accepted theory that all the US wars in the Middle East have been ‘oil wars’ — about getting control of the petroleum resources of the region and denying them to America’s enemies.”

But the ‘pipeline war’ theory is based on false history and it represents a distraction from the real problem of US policy in the Middle East — the US war state’s determination to hold onto its military posture in the region. Porter ignored the key question there, as to why the US war state has a determination to hold onto its military posture in the region. Opening and protecting potential oil-gas-pipeline routes are important reasons why. Clearly, Kennedy’s documentation that the CIA was trying as early as 1949 to overthrow Syria’s secular government so as to allow to the Sauds a means of cheaply transporting their oil through Syria into Europe, remains unaffected by any of the objections that Porter raised to Kennedy’s article. The recent portion of Kennedy’s timeline is affected, but not his basic argument.

Furthermore, any military strategist knows that the US war state is intimately connected to the U.S. oil-and-gas industries, including pipelines (oilfield services) as well as marketing (Exxon etc.). And Porter got entirely wrong what that connection (which he ignored) actually consists of: it consists of U.S. government taxpayer-funded killers for those U.S. international corporations. Here is how Barack Obama put it, when addressing graduating cadets at West Point, America’s premier military-training institution:

Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. And even as developing nations embrace democracy and market economies, 24-hour news and social media makes it impossible to ignore the continuation of sectarian conflicts and failing states and popular uprisings that might have received only passing notice a generation ago.

It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world. The question we face, the question each of you will face, is not whether America will lead, but how we will lead – not just to secure our peace and prosperity, but also extend peace and prosperity around the globe.

He was saying there that America’s military is in service to U.S.-based international corporations in their competition against those of Russia, Brazil, China, India, and anywhere else in which “rising middle classes compete with us”. Those places are what Gareth Porter referred to as “America’s enemies”.

Economic competitors are “enemies”. Obama thinks that way, and even a progressive journalist such as Porter doesn’t place into a skeptical single – quotation – mark – surround, the phrase ‘America’s enemies’ when that phrase is used in this equational context. On both the right (Obama) and the left (Porter), the equation of a government and of the international corporations that headquarter in its nation — the treatment of the military as being an enforcement-arm for the nation’s international corporations — is simply taken for granted, not questioned, not challenged.

RFK Jr. was correct, notwithstanding some recent timeline-errors. Syria is “Another Pipeline War”, and Obama is merely intensifying it. (On 9 November 2015, I offered a different account than RFK Jr. provided of the recent history — the Obama portion — of the longstanding U.S. aggression against Syria; and it links back to Jonathan Marshall’s excellent articles on that, and to other well-sourced articles, in addition to primary sources, none of which contradict RFK Jr.’s basic view, “Syria: Another Pipeline War”).

Another portion of Porter’s commentary is, however, quite accurate: America’s ‘Defense’ (or mass-killing-abroad) industries (such as Lockheed Martin) are not merely servants of the U.S. government, but are also served by the U.S. government: “the US war state’s determination to hold onto its military posture in the region” is protection of the major market — the Middle Eastern market — for U.S. ‘Defense’ products and services. It’s not only America’s firms in the oil, gas, and pipelines, industries, which benefit from America’s military; it is also America’s firms in the mass-killing industries, that do.

To the extent that the public (here including Barack Obama and Gareth Porter) do not condemn the presumption that “the business of America is business”, or that a valid function of U.S. – taxpayer – funded military and other foreign-affairs operations is to serve the stockholders of U.S. international corporations, the hell (such as in Syria) will continue. Gareth Porter got lost among the trees because he failed to see (and to point to) that forest.

This article was originally seen at ZeroHedge.com and was authored by Tyler Durden.

The post Russia and Iran Remind U.S. that Syria has Allies Who Will Respond with Force if Further Provoked appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change https://wearechange.org/russia-iran-remind-u-s-syria-allies-will-respond-force-provoked/

#We are Change #We Are Change

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newsnigeria · 6 years

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Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on https://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/vladimir-putin-andthewest/

Vladimir Putin’s Basic Disagreement with The West

by Eric Zuesse

Vladimir Putin’s basic view has been expressed so many times, in so many different contexts, and it’s always the same: that the only people who have a sovereign right to any land, are the people who live on that land — nobody who lives outside that land does. In other words, his basic view is a repudiation — a total rejection — of the very concept of empire: it’s a rejection of the right of foreigners to control any country, anywhere, anytime. Residence is determinative. According to Putin, the only justification that a country can ever have for invading another country is if and when that invasion is in direct and immediate response to that other country’s having invaded their land — purely defensive. Other than this, no invasion of any land by foreigners is acceptable.

The U.S. and its allies endorse empires — endorse conquest. This view was first extensively promoted during 1877-1902 by the founder of the Rhodes Trust, Cecil Rhodes, a self-avowed racist who passionately advocated that all “races” be subordinated to “the first race”: the British. However, he was willing that, if necessary, this empire would fly the U.S. flag instead of the English flag.

In more recent times, George Soros has championed this view, but giving different (non-racialist) words to it. Soros has stated his view of this important matter in mainly two places, and both times he has opposed national sovereignty and asserted instead “the people’s sovereignty” as being something that can justify a foreign invasion into a country by “the international community” in order to protect “the people’s sovereignty” there. He argues for a (what he claims would be) beneficent empire of “the international community,” which fights around the world ‘protecting’ “the people’s sovereignty,” wherever and whenever “the international community” decides that the local government is violating “the people’s sovereignty.”

That’s the basic difference between their views — Putin asserting no foreigner has any right to invade, versus Soros asserting that “the international community” has an obligation to invade (to protect “the people’s sovereignty” there), whenever and wherever it decides to invade and gives some ‘reason’ (truthful or not) ‘justifying’ this ‘protection’ of ‘the people’s sovereignty’, over that land.

At least two separate academic studies have been done (both by Americans) of what Soros’s proposal comes down to in actual practice; and both conclude that what it does in actual practice is to polarize and maybe ultimately destroy (make irrelevant) the U.N., and to enhance international imperialism. (Neither of the two studies connects the issue to the international armanents business, which relies almost exclusively upon imperialism in order to grow its profits — scholars try to avoid motivation and present purely statutory analyses, so as to be inoffensive to extremely wealthy people, who might have non-statutory motives and who heavily endow scholarly institutions in order to have control over the careers of their relevant ‘experts’.)

So, first: here will be statements by Soros, in which he defends his view; and then will be statements by the two scholarly studies finding that Soros’s view is actually just a veiled support for might-makes-right international imperialism — grabbing of one country by other countries. Then, the original systematic statement of the modern imperialist view will be presented, from Rhodes himself, along with sympathetic interpretation of it by Rhodes’s transcriber and close personal friend, W.T. Stead. And, to close here, will be presented the cardinal issue alleged to be the basis for most of the economic sanctions against Russia and for virtually all of NATO’s war games in preparation for a possible ‘defensive’ invasion of Russia: Russia’s reintegrating the briefly Ukrainian land Crimea back into Russia. The West calls that a ‘seizure’ and an ‘invasion,’ and Russia calls it not anything like that, and not even a topic that’s relevant in international law, but purely a matter that the residents of Crimea have the right to decide, on their own — relevant only to law within nations not between nations. So, that issue will be included as a practical application of this basic ideological difference regarding the good or evil of imperialism. Closing this cardinal issue will be Mr. Soros’s personal funding and propagandizing for this coup that he had helped to fund in Ukraine.

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SOROS

George Soros, 2003 The Bubble of American Supremacy.

p. 100: “Sovereignty is a historic[al] concept born of an era when society consisted of rulers and subjects, not citizens. It became the cornerstone of international relations with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, after thirty years of religious wars.”

p. 101: “Anachronistic or not, sovereignty remains the basis of the current international order.”

p. 102: “The principle of sovereignty needs to be reconsidered. Sovereignty belongs to the people: the people are supposed to delegate it to the government through the electoral process. But not all governments are democratically elected and even democratic governments may abuse the authority thus entrusted to them. If the abuses of power are severe enough and the people are deprived of opportunities to correct them, outside interference is justified. International intervention is often the only lifeline available to the oppressed.”

p. 112: “I have no right to call the promotion of open societies the Soros Doctrine. The idea was endorsed in a little-known document, the Warsaw Declaration. [“The Warsaw Declaration Toward a Community of Democracies”, 27 June 2000, listing 16 human “rights” and the obligations of governments to fill them] This document proclaimed that it is in the interest of all democratic countries taken as a group to foster the development of democracy in all other countries. The declaration was signed by 107 states (a greater number than the number of democracies in the world), including the United States, at a conference held in Warsaw in 2000. The conference was sponsored by Madeleine Albright’s State Department.”

p. 118: “The Community of Democracies established by the Warsaw Declaration in 2000 could offer a source of legitimacy for intervening in the internal affairs of nondemocratic states.”

p. 146: “There is another major area where the principle of the people’s sovereignty has important implications: revenues from the exploitation of naturel resources. … The naturel resources of a country ought to belong to the people, but the rulers often exploit the resources for their own personal benefit. This violates the sovereignty of the people and calls for external intervention.”

p. 167: “To regain the identity it enjoyed during the Cold War, the United States ought to become the leader of a community of democracies and change its behavior accordingly. It ought to lead by building genuine partnerships and abiding by the rules that it seeks to impose on others. Since peaceful cooperative efforts do not necessarily succeed, the United States would still need to retain its military might, but this strength would serve to protect a just world order and would be seen as such by the rest of the world. This vision goes against the grain of the Bush administration’s ideology, which I have described as a crude form of social Darwinism: the survival of the fittest as determined by competition, not cooperation.”

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https://foreignpolicy.com/

http://archive.is/xx6bb

http://web.archive.org/web/

The People’s Sovereignty

How a new twist on an old idea can protect the world’s most vulnerable populations.

BY GEORGE SOROS | OCTOBER 28, 2009, 6:33 PM

Sovereignty is an anachronistic concept originating in bygone times when society consisted of rulers and subjects, not citizens. It became the cornerstone of international relations with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. During the French Revolution, the king was overthrown and the people assumed sovereignty. But a nationalist concept of sovereignty soon superseded the dynastic version. Today, though not all nation-states are democratically accountable to their citizens, the principle of sovereignty stands in the way of outside intervention in the internal affairs of nation-states.

But true sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments. If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified. By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states’ borders to protect the rights of citizens. In particular, the principle of the people’s sovereignty can help solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid effectively to sovereign states, and the obstacles to global collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict.

… the rulers of a sovereign state have a responsibility to protect the state’s citizens. When they fail to do so, the responsibility is transferred to the international community. Global attention is often the only lifeline available to the oppressed.

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http://scholarship.law.unc.

NORTH CAROLINA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND COMMERCIAL REGULATION

Volume 40, Number 1 (Fall 2014)

“No Responsibility for the Responsibility to Protect: How Powerful States Abuse the Doctrine, and Why Misuse Will Lead to Disuse”

Brighton Haslett

http://scholarship.law.unc.

I. Introduction

… the decision whether or not to intervene and the way in which intervention itself is carried out do not truly turn on humanitarian concerns, but rather are guided by strategic and economic interests. While the doctrine does not preclude weighing of strategic and economic interests,12 it does require that the primary purpose of intervention be to end human suffering.1 …

VI. Conclusion

The inconsistent application of responsibility-to-protect principles in the thirteen years since its inception shows that responsibility-to-protect intervention does not, in fact, turn on humanitarian principles, but on some combination of power dynamics, political strategy, and economic gain.

In the past, the doctrine has been abused and misapplied.354 Unjustified attacks have been launched in violation of the U.N. Charter; interventions justified by the responsibility to protect at the outset have been executed in violation of the principles underlying the doctrine; and situations warranting international action have been ignored due to the economic and strategic interests of states with the power to prevent intervention.355

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https://sites.temple.edu/

TEMPLE INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW JOURNAL

Volume 26, Number 2 (Fall 2012)

“Responsibility to Protect: Moral Triumph or Gateway to Allowing Powerful States to Invade Weaker States in Violation of the U.N. Charter?”

Jamie Herron

https://sites.temple.edu/

[In 2011,] NATO forces helped the rebel Libyan army overthrow Colonel Muammar Gadhafi’s regime.13 This Note will argue that, as shown by the intervention in Libya, the standard that the [U.N.] General Assembly created to determine when humanitarian interventions are authorized is too flexible, allowing states to invade sovereign nations under the pretext that the invasion is a humanitarian intervention.

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RHODES

https://ia802706.us.archive.

www.archive.org/details/

THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF CECIL JOHN RHODES WITH ELUCIDATORY NOTES TO WHICH ARE ADDED SOME CHAPTERS DESCRIBING THE POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF THE TESTATOR, Edited by W.T. Stead, 1902

p. 52: Mr. Rhodes’s last Will and Testament reveals him to the world as the first distinguished British statesman whose Imperialism was that of Race and not that of Empire. The one specific object defined in the Will as that to which his wealth is to be applied proclaims with the simple eloquence of a deed that Mr. Rhodes was colour-blind between the British Empire and the American Republic. His fatherland, like that of the poet Arndt, is coterminous with the use of the tongue of his native land. In his Will he aimed at making Oxford University the educational centre of the English-speaking race. He did this of set purpose, and in providing the funds necessary for the achievement of this great idea he specifically prescribed that every American State and Territory shall share with the British Colonies in his patriotic benefaction. Once every year “Founder’s Day” will be celebrated at Oxford; and not at Oxford only, but wherever on the broad world’s surface half-a-dozen old “Rhodes scholars” come together they will celebrate the great ideal of Cecil Rhodes the first of modern statesmen to grasp the sublime conception of the essential unity of the race. Thirty years hereafter there will be between two and three thousand men in the prime of life scattered all over the world, each one of whom will have had impressed upon his mind in the most susceptible period of his life the dream of the Founder. It is, therefore, well to put on record in accessible form all available evidence as to the nature of his dream. What manner of man was this Cecil Rhodes.

p. 59 [“His Writings” at around 1877] “I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. I contend that every acre added to our territory means the birth of more of the English race who otherwise would not be brought into existence. Added to this, the absorption of the greater portion of the world under our rule simply means the end of all wars. … [He then discusses his main goals:] The furtherance of the British Empire, for the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire. What a dream! but yet it is probable. It is possible. … I once heard it argued, so low have we fallen in my own college [Oxford], I am sorry to own it, by Englishmen, that it was a good thing for us that we have lost the United States. There are some subjects on which there can be no argument, and to an Englishman this is one of them. But even from an American’s point of view just picture what they have lost. All this we have lost and that country has lost owing to whom? Owing to two or three ignorant, pigheaded statesmen in the last century [1700s]. At their door is the blame. Do you ever feel mad, do you ever feel murderous? I think I do with these men [supporters of the U.S. Constitution].”

pp. 73-74 [“His Writings” date unclear] “What an awful thought it is that if we had not lost America, or if even now we could arrange with the present members of the United States Assembly and our House of Commons, the peace of the world is secured for all eternity! We could hold your federal parliament five years at Washington and five at London. The only thing feasible to carry this idea out is a secret one (society) gradually absorbing the wealth of the world to be devoted to such an object. There is Hirsch with twenty millions, very soon to cross the unknown border, and struggling in the dark to know what to do with his money; and so one might go on ad infinitum … a scheme to take the government of the whole world!”

pp. 147-149 [“Political and Religious Ideas” dated 1884] “The proposed settlement of Bechuanaland is based on the exclusion of colonists of Dutch descent. I raise my voice in most solemn protest against such a course, and it is the duty of every Englishman in the House to record his solemn protest against it. In conclusion, I wish to say that the breach of solemn pledges and the introduction of race distinctions must result in bringing calamity on this country; and if such a policy is pursued it will endanger the whole of our social relationships with colonists of Dutch descent, and endanger the supremacy of Her Majesty in this country. … I have made up my mind that there must be class legislation, that there must be Pass Laws and Peace Preservation Acts, and that we have got to treat natives, where they are in a state of barbarism, in a different way to ourselves. We are to be lords over them. These are my politics on native affairs, and these are the politics of South Africa. Treat the natives as a subject people as long as they continue in a state of barbarism and communal tenure; be the lords over them, and let them be a subject race and keep the liquor from them.”

p. 114 — Stead, the friend of Rhodes, sums up Rhodes’s view as: “To be a Rhodesian, then, of the true stamp, you must be a Home Ruler [a proponent of federated republic, like in the U.S.] and something more. You must be an Imperialist, not from mere lust of dominion or pride of race, but because you believe the Empire is the best available instrument for diffusing the principles of Justice, Liberty, and Peace throughout the world. Whenever Imperialism involves the perpetration of Injustice, the suppression of Freedom, and the waging of wars other than those of self-defence, the true Rhodesian must cease to be an Imperialist [must cease fighting for more land, and instead fight only for principles]. But a Home Ruler and Federalist, according to the principles of the American Constitution, he can never cease to be [Stead accepted the republicanism of the U.S. Constitution, though his hero had condemned America’s Founders], for Home Rule is a fundamental principle, whereas the maintenance and extension of the Empire are only means to an end, and may be changed, as Mr. Rhodes was willing to change them. If, for instance, the realisation of the greater ideal of Race Unity could only be brought about by merging the British Empire in the American Republic, Mr. Rhodes was prepared to advocate that radical measure. The question that now arises is whether in the Englishs-speaking world there are to be found men of faith adequate to furnish forth materials for the Society of which Mr. Rhodes dreamed: ‘Still through our paltry stir and strife Glows down the wished Ideal. And Longing moulds in clay what Life Carves in the marble Real.’ We have the clay mould of Mr. Rhodes’s longed-for Society. Have we got the stuff, in the Empire and the Republic, to carve it in marble?”

UKRAINE & CRIMEA

——

https://www.academia.edu/

“Crimea Crisis before International Law”

Riccardo Murgia, Università degli Studi di Cagliari

http://www.unica.it/pub/

https://unica-it.academia.edu/

CONCLUSION:

p. 8: The Russia-Ukraine conflict is a conflict between two of the most important principles of International Law: the principle of self-determination statuted by Article 1, paragraph 2 of the UN Charter, which can bring justification to the Russian actions, and the principle of respecting each state’s territorial integrity and political independence, statuted by Article 2, paragraph 4 of the same charter.

A precedent for Russia’s actions in Crimea can be found in relation with NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1998.

[His study doesn’t mention the coup, which preceded the separation of Crimea from Ukraine. Nor its illegality — the fact that Obama had seized Ukraine via a bloody and thoroughly illegal coup, and that this seizure sparkedCrimea’s breaking away from Ukraine and seeking Russia’s protection. Also, Murgia’s study fails to note here that by saying “A precedent for Russia’s actions in Crimea can be found in relation with NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1998” Murgia is validating Putin’s repeated assertions that this “precedent” was introduced by the U.S. itself, and was accepted by the Court, and is now being disowned by the U.S. in order for the U.S. to be able to argue that ‘Putin seized Crimea’ and that therefore the U.S.-imposed sanctions and NATO buildup are somehow justified, instead of being simply aggressive acts against Russia.]

——

https://www.academia.edu/

International Law 341

“Research Thesis: Validity of the Russian Annexation of Crimea in terms of International Law”

JJ Arries [student at Stellenbosch University School of Law]

The second ground on which Ukraine’s argument is flawed relating to the validity of the referendum is that in terms of international law, and as far as it is concerned, no prohibitions exists on unilateral declarations of independence by sub-divisions of a state, and this position is supported by the advisory opinion of the ICJ on the matter Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008. The Russian President quoted submissions made by the United States to the ICJ, that repeat their position, “declarations of independence may and often do, violate domestic legislation. However, this does not make them violations of international law.”

Conclusion

Given the arguments made by both parties to the matter, it is clear that in some aspects, Russia did violate international law with regards to the annexation of the Crimean territory. Their arguments on the use of force do not fall in line with the international standards, and thus are invalid. They are however correct in quoting precedents, such as the Kosovo independence matter, as grounds for acting in defence of minorities. The validity of the referendum may be invalid in terms of the domestic law in Ukraine; however, in terms of international law, no prohibition currently exists with regards to declaration of independence by sub-divisions of a state.

——

http://www.icj-cij.org/files/

“Written Statement of the United States of America”

April 2009

[argues that international law does not pertain to revolutions or to declarations of independence, but that all acts forming new nations, including breaking away from any existing nation, are purely internal matters pertaining to the people who live there, nobody else’s business]

United States Department of State Washington, D.C. 20520 www.state.gov April 17, 2009 Pursuant to the Court’s Order of 17 October 2008, I have the honor to enclose thirty copies of the Written Statement of the United States of America concerning the request of the United Nations General Assembly for an advisory opinion on the question of the Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government of Kosovo. I have also enclosed a diskette containing the text of the Statement. Accept, sir, the assurances of my highest consideration. Joan E. Donoghue [“an American jurist, and a Judge on the International Court of Justice. She was elected to that post in 2010 and re-elected in 2014.”], Acting Legal Adviser. Enclosures: As stated Mr. Philippe Couvreur, Registrar, International Court of Justice, Peace Palace, The Hague

“Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government of Kosovo” …

Statement of the United States of America [17] April 2009 …

pages 50-52:

Section I. International Law Does Not As A General Matter Regulate Declarations Of Independence

lt is widely accepted that declarations of independence, standing alone, present matters of fact, which are neither authorized nor prohibited by international law.202 Neither the United Nations Charter, nor other general international afeements, nor customary international law regulate the act of declaring independence. 20 The fact that international law does not address declarations of independence is not surprising. As a general rule, international law governs the relations between States, not the conduct of entities within States.204 There are certain exceptions, such as those found in international humanitarian law,205 but declarations of independence do not by themselves fall into these exceptions. “Events leading to the creation of a new State generally entail matters within the domestic jurisdiction of a State.”206 [not matters within the jurisdiction of international law]

It is certainly the case that declarations of independence may — and in their nature often do — violate domestic law. However, that does not mean that there has been a violation of international law.207 As Oppenheim has observed in the context of rebellion: “Although a rebellion will involve a breach of the law of the state concerned, no breach of international law occurs through the mere fact of a rebel regime attempting to overthrow the govemment of the state or to secede from the state.”208 Thus, it is widely accepted that, from the standpoint of international law, the process of State formation presents a matter of fact.209 A declaration of independence is an expression of a will or desire by an entity to be accepted as a State by the members of the international community. There may be other events associated with a particular declaration of independence that can be regulated by international law, but as one commentator has remarked:

[T]he State in the contemplation of international law is not a mere legal or ‘juristic’ person (personne morale), whose process of coming into being is prescribed by law. lt is rather a ‘primary fact’, i.e. a fact that precedes the law, and which the law acknowledges only once it has materialised, by attributing certain effects to it, including a certain legal status.210

In this case, the question before the Court is not whether any of these associated events — such as the subsequent recognitions of Kosovo’ s statehood by other States — are permissible under international law, but rather whether the declaration itself was consistent with international law. The fact that international law does not generally seek to regulate the act of declaring independence means that this declaration must be deemed to be in accordance with international law.211

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George Soros helped to fund this coup in Ukraine, and afterward he propagandized for the U.S. and its allies to spend $50 billion more in order to help to defeat (and to kill as many as possible of) the residents in the portion of Ukraine where the Ukrainian President whom Obama overthrew had won 90% of the vote. This is how much Soros supports “the people’s sovereignty” and “human rights.” He wanted $50B more of Western taxpayers’ money spent on killing these people.

And that’s the difference of opinion, between Vladimir Putin and The West.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

#russia #Ukraine

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foursprout-blog · 6 years

Text

The Three Global Super-Powers & The End Of M.A.D.

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/the-three-global-super-powers-the-end-of-m-a-d/

The Three Global Super-Powers & The End Of M.A.D.

youtube

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

There are currently three global super-powers, three nations that lead the world: China, Russia, and US.

This would be WW III, starting in Syria, instead of in Ukraine. The US regime has set up those two scenarios.

Meanwhile, Russia and China each proceeds forward on its own priorities, which aren’t necessarily similar to those of the conquest-obsessed American Government.

#Wealth

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