Manuel E. Yepe 239
Trumps’s Imperialist Policy Tools
Trumps’s Imperialist Policy Tools
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Donald Trump’s foreign policy is largely based on the use of the tools at the Empire’s disposal: economic terrorism, threats of war, diplomatic pressure, trade wars, etc. But by resorting to them, Washington isolates itself internationally from its traditional allies and raises tensions on the world chessboard to an unprecedented level.
This is how Professor Federico Pieraccini sees it in an essay published on May 25 by the Strategic Foundation entitled Shielding the World From US Chaos Is No Easy Task.
The blockade against Cuba has been maintained for 60 years, with more or less intense stages of sharpening, together with threats of war against Venezuela, the Democratic Republic of Korea, Syria and Iran that are repeated daily, economic sanctions involving tariffs are, in many ways, comparable to declarations of war, and can be directed against friendly countries or allies of the United States.
China and Russia fight by diplomatic, economic and sometimes military means to promote the emergence of a multi-polar world. They offer Washington’s enemies some kind of shield with which to resist the scandalous attacks of the Trump administration. Beijing and Moscow project their resistance with a view to their long-term goals, given that in the short term they face the implacable hostility of Washington and its lackeys.
The fate of the new multipolar world order depends on how effectively China and Russia can weather the storm that Washington unleashes.
Washington’s European allies are punished for importing Iranian oil, cannot participate in Syria’s reconstruction, are induced to abandon joint projects with Russia (Nord Stream II); are asked to reduce China’s technological imports, and not to get involved in the world’s largest project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
All these demands come at a time when Donald Trump continues to undermine the current globalist world order that his allies had come to rely on to maintain the status quo. U.S. allies are obligated to comply with Washington’s requests, even if it damages their commercial interests and, in the medium and long term, has serious consequences.
This is the main reason the European countries want to diversify their trade and de-dollarize their economies.
With a US administration fragmented into several factions, constant changes in strategy and approach that end up weakening Washington’s international stature, the Pentagon’s military planners fear an open conflict with Iran or Venezuela, more than anything else, for purely propagandistic reasons.
Washington’s formidable firepower would probably be able to defeat any defense Tehran or Caracas could offer, but at what price? The myth of the invincibility of U.S. weapons is being challenged by Moscow’s defensive capabilities deployed in Syria and Venezuela. These same capabilities are readily available to Tehran should Washington decide to attack the Persian country.
But the likelihood of such a war is decreasing and Pentagon military planners fear a much worse scenario for the United States because Iran is three times bigger than Iraq and it would need about 1.2 million U.S. troops to occupy the country permanently.
Iran, moreover, is one of the world’s top 15 powers and Washington for the first time would face a high-capacity opponent, something that Americans have been trying to avoid for decades. They fear revealing the vulnerability of their weapons systems as a result of corruption and misguided strategic decisions. Pentagon planners have no intention of revealing their military vulnerabilities in a war with Iran.
The loss of U.S. military prestige would also demonstrate to countries that have hitherto been under Washington’s control that this dog barks rather than bites, making it even more difficult for the United States to intimidate countries with the threat of future military force.
What seems so difficult for Trump to understand is that his foreign policy is slowly eroding America’s superpower status. Since Trump is not really committed to any war, this will only lead to a humiliating setback.
A commitment to no more wars could be one of the last electoral promises to which Trump wants to remain true.
July 24, 2019.
This article can be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Offended Reps Respond to Trump
Offended Congresswomen Respond to Trump
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
“Despite the attempts by the occupant of the White House to marginalize and silence us, know that we are more than four people.”
“We follow the mandate to defend and represent those ignored, excluded and abandoned. Our squad is big. Our squad includes anyone who commits to building a more equitable and just world. This is the work that we want to go back to . Given the size of this squadron and this great nation, no one will be able to silence us.”
That’s how the four U.S. congressmen responded: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, to the campaign of racist epithets launched against them by President Donald Trump who has offended simultaneously with his orders to armed agents to terrorize immigrants in the United States. and communities across the country.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, paraphrasing Trump’s campaign slogan promoting his re-election, accused him of trying to “make America white again (instead of powerful)”.
Trump had tweet with irony: “How interesting to see the “progressive” Democratic congresswomen, who come from countries where the governments are a complete and total catastrophe telling us, with screams and aggressively, how we should exercise our government in the States Why don’t you go back to those places that you’ve completely come to? less and crime-ridden where they come from to help fix the situation, Trump asks them the same way.
“Go back to where they came from? Let it be known that three of the congresswomen attacked by the President were born in the United States. Alexadria Ocasio-Cortez, is a native of the Bronx, in New York. She is the youngest woman elected to Congress; Ayanna Pressley, born in Cincinnati, is the first congresswoman to be born in Cincinnati. She is an African-American) representing the state of Massachusetts. Rashida Tlaib of Detroit is Palestinian-American; together with Ilhan Omar, they are the first two Muslim women to occupy seats in the Congress”.
Omar has been a U.S. citizen for more than a year. Melania, Trump’s third wife and current first lady, is a native of Slovenia.
Trump’s racist tweets have come to unite the fractured Democratic Party and quickly activated a demonstration of support for the four brand-new congresswomen, now collectively being called called “the squad.” Although it was the first formal reprimand of the House of Representatives Representatives to a president in office in more than a century, we must bear in mind that Pelosi blocked a more serious motion that tried to censure Trump.
Trump redoubled his verbal attacks against the four congresswomen whom he accused of being socialists and communists. These were typical attacks of the era of the McCarthyism. This should come as no surprise to anyone, as the first Trump’s attorney was Roy Cohn, who served as a lawyer for Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, at a time when he destroyed thousands of lives with his policies of anti-communist persecutiopn.
Probably, the use of racist rhetoric to ignite your white electoral base is one of Trump’s campaign strategies. In his book “Black History of the White House,” American University Profesor Clarence Lusane wrote, “For many Americans, the ‘white’ of the White House has implied a great deal. more than the color of the mansion; it has symbolized the tonality and the source of dehumanizing cruelty, domination and exclusion that have defined the long narrative of white people’s relationships with people of color in America.”
Last week, the four congresswomen who so clearly challenged Trump gave a press conference, in which they denounced the racism experienced by them and people of color in the United States. in general, noted the president’s policies on the detention of immigrants, family separation and the threatening raids of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A major article by journalists and activists Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan was published on the DEMOCRACY NOW website on July 19 with the title “President Trump redefines the concept of the White House”, provides important elements of analysis of the crucial racial conflict undercurrent that is resurfacing with his “cheerful” twitter and his band of jackals.
June 22, 2019.
This article can be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO as a source.
US National Pride Declines Sharply
US National Pride Declines Sharply
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
On the eve of their July 4 national holiday celebration, the national pride of the people of the United States fell this year to the lowest rate since the beginning of the 20th century.
According to an extensive Gallup survey, only 70 percent of Americans say they are proud of their nationality and less than half (45 percent) say they are extremely proud of it, marking the second consecutive year that the latter proportion is no longer in the majority.
Those who claim to be supporters of Democrats continue to lag far behind those who, being Republicans, claim extreme pride in their nationality. U.S. scientific achievements in military and cultural/artistic fields are among those of which they are the proudest, while the political system and the health and welfare system are those of which they are the least proud.
Citizens’ extreme pride in their U.S. citizenship has steadily weakened in recent years, and the current reading, according to Gallup’s June 3-16 survey, marks the lowest point to date in such indicators. The latest decline of two percentage points from last year’s 47% is not statistically significant.
The highest proportions in this aspect of the measure were 69% and 70%, respectively, between 2002 and 2004, after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when the U.S. public expressed the highest patriotic levels and mobilized in support of the U.S. government. However, since the beginning of George W. Bush’s second term in office in 2005, less than 60 percent of Americans have expressed extreme pride in being Americans.
The latest general declines in patriotism have been largely driven by Democrats, whose pride has historically been smaller and has fluctuated more than that of Republicans. The last extreme pride reading of 22% of Democrats is the lowest of the group in Gallup’s 19-year measurement, and is half of what it was several months before Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016.
Interestingly, most Republicans say they remain extremely proud of their country, and the latest reading – which was 76% – is only 10 points below the 2003 high. Even when Barack Obama held the presidency, the Republicans’ extreme pride never fell below 68%.
U.S. patriotism shows itself as another victim of the markedly polarized political climate in the United States today. For the second time in 19 years, less than half of Americans say they are extremely proud of their country. The decline reflects the collapse of pride in the Democrats since Trump took office. This is despite the fact that, among Republicans, it has increased slightly rather than decreased on the basis of nationalist and even chauvinist policies, reflected in the slogan Make America Great Again!
While supporters of both parties agree that they are not proud of the U.S. political system, this can be attributed, in both cases, to President Trump’s low approval rating.
Democrats’ awareness of Trump’s historically low rate of presidential approval in the international community may also be a contributing factor to the decline of patriotism in this latest poll. Gallup data from earlier this year found that only 31% of Americans (including 2% of Democrats) think foreign leaders have respect for Trump.
Politics is affecting Democrats’ overall pride in their country more than in Republicans. The “independents,” that is, those who are not tied to either of the two parties the system admits, have historically manifested less pride in being Americans than the Republicans. Currently, 41% of them express extreme pride, which is the lowest reading of this trend.
Several subgroups that typically identify with the Democratic Party (women, liberals, and young adults) express lower levels of extreme pride in being U.S. citizens.
American patriotism is the latest victim of the markedly polarized political climate in the United States today. For the second time in 19 years, less than half of American adults say they are extremely proud to be Americans. The decline reflects the plummeting pride of Democrats since Trump took office, contrasted with a slight rise among those who declare themselves Republicans.
July 17, 2019.
This article can be reprinted citing Por Esto! as the source.
The Effectiveness of Capitalist Propaganda
The Effectiveness of Capitalist Propaganda
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
When the propaganda of capitalism calls on third-world nations to implement or expand market policies, or to shy away from socialist policies of common benefit, no one knows whether it is a mockery that reflects how much the intelligence of peoples is undervalued or an invitation to become accomplices of the minority segment of the world’s population that exploits the majority.
The manipulation of the media by the empire -including on the Internet- has led most of the citizens of the United States, and of the countries within its sphere of influence and control, to call “democracy” a system as undemocratic as the one presided over by Washington, although Wall Street and the military and industrial complex at the Pentagon’s axis are in fact ruled by it.
The dictatorship that the United States exerts today on the world with the support of the opulent classes of the other countries of the planet, now goes through moments that denote precariousness.
Extreme poverty, marginality, the lack of opportunities for education and decent work, the disintegrating emigration of the family with its sequels of violence and drug addiction, all result from a capitalist system that has been unable to give answers to the pressing problems capitalism has created. The individualistic ethic in which capitalism is rooted is the nourishing mother of all the worst of today’s human societies: corruption, the illegal appropriation of things, speculation, banditry, the exploitation of the work of others, the privatization of social spaces and other “beautiful” things.
According to updated data from the United Nations, there are 7.545 billion people on this planet, of which more than 20 million are chronically malnourished; 2 billion do not have access to medicines; nearly 900 million do not have drinking water; more than 900 million lack housing or live in precarious housing; 1.6 billion do not have electricity; 2,500 million lack drainage systems or sewers; 770 million adults are illiterate; 18 million die each year from poverty (the majority are children under the age of 5); more than 200 million children and young people between the ages of 5 and 17 work in conditions close to slavery as soldiers, prostitutes, servants or in other dangerous or humiliating tasks.
If capitalism could exhibit a world of progress, freedom and justice, it would be easy to sell the system all over the world and have the Third World accompany it in this crisis. But with so much horror in its offerings, every day must spend more and more to sell capitalism as the system the world needs.
Only through lies and the threat of weapons, both fed with gigantic financial resources to the detriment of the real interests of humanity, does this hegemony continue…
See how, in order to obtain military domination, in the midst of the global crisis of capitalism, Washington maintains close to a thousand military bases around the planet. And it wages bloody wars to maintain its occupation of third world countries for the sake of its geopolitical objectives and the strategic interests of the big oil corporations.
But it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to understand that a system that generates so much injustice among human beings and is inept at managing their relations with nature is sustainable for much longer. It is not known if humanity has time to repair, for the sake of its survival, the disaster provoked in the environment by the voracity that moves capitalism, a system that cannot be humanized, because its intrinsic nature is inhuman.
Putting social and solidarity ahead of the greed imposed by capitalism -because it needs them to exist- is the only way humanity can save itself on the basis of its most precious aptitude, intelligence, when applied to its survival instinct.
It has already been announced that the next U.S. crisis will be caused by the health gap between rich and poor. This has widened in the last two decades, according to a study by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) that shows a “dramatically alarming” lack of progress in health equity in the last 25 years in the USA. Income inequality is the root cause of health inequality, as the costs of health care and a healthy lifestyle are high. The more than five million people examined make this study meaningful.
The root cause of income inequality has been the result of the extreme monetary policies of central banks, which have fuelled asset price bubbles that only enrich those who own them. With home ownership at 1960s levels, and more than 50% of citizens not owning shares, this research suggests that failed policies have led to the implosion of the middle class.
July 5, 2019
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Palestinians Reject Trump’s Bribe
Palestinians Reject Trump’s Bribe
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s advisor and son-in-law offered $50 billion in future investments as a bribe to obtain Palestinian surrender. That was his mysterious and hyper-publicized “deal of the century.”
For decades, U.S. diplomacy has failed completely to resolve this bitter dispute. It was therefore naïve to hope that the Trump administration could succeed. Most likely, its errors and biases would only worsen this historic conflict. So it has been that Jared Kushner, son-in-law and chief adviser to President Donald Trump on Middle East affairs, attempted last week to sell his “Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement” project.
The core of the proposal turned out to be an alleged foreign investment plan for that amount in exchange for Palestine’s acceptance of permanent occupation of its ancestral lands. Kushner renamed it such an offer as the “opportunity of the century.”
In his bid formulation speech at a conference in Bahrain, Kushner claimed that political peace depends on a viable economic plan and prosperity depends on a political solution to decades of injustice against the Palestinians.
Prominent Irish international affairs expert Finian Cunningham (b. 1963) has revealed in an essay published by the Strategic Culture Foundation that, like his father-in-law in the White House, Kushner comes from a real estate environment before Trump named him his chief assistant on the Palestinian-Israeli question. For the past two years, Kushner has been working on a “master plan” to end the eight-decade conflict. Trump has described his son-in-law’s peace plan as the “deal of the century.”
In Bahrain, the Trump administration took the first step in advancing its peace plans. The childlike Kushner presented his vision of business and investment as the supposed key to peace. He invited the audience to “imagine” the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza full of business and commerce. If the Palestinians accepted Kushner’s vision, that corporate “promised land” would become real.
What this boils down to is for Palestinians to accept the current status quo of Israel’s illegal occupation and renounce their historic claims to state sovereignty. In addition, the $50 billion in investments Kushner had in mind are not existing funds but only promises of potential investment, which may never materialize.
Like his father-in-law in the White House, Kushner comes from a real estate environment. Before Trump named him principal advisor on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, for the past two years, Kushner has been working on a “master plan” to end the eight-decade old conflict. That conflict has been at the heart of most other disputes and tensions in the region. It was Trump who called his son-in-law’s peace plan the “deal of the century.
In Bahrain, the Trump administration made the first advance of its peace plans. Kushner invited the audience to “imagine” the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza full of businesses and commerce. The corporate “promised land” would come if the Palestinians accepted Kushner’s vision.
What this boils down to is for Palestinians to accept the current status quo of Israel’s illegal occupation and renounce their historic claims to state sovereignty. Add to that that the $50 billion in investments Kushner has in mind are not existing funds but promises of potential investment that may never be fulfilled.
Nowhere in the Trump administration’s “deal of the century” is there any attempt to redress historical violations of Palestinian national rights. There is no mention of the right of return of millions of Palestinians displaced by the 1948 war established by the state of Israel. Nor does it mention the right to return land annexed during the 1967 war. The illegal occupation is simply a fact on the ground that must be officially recognized as Israeli territory, according to the Trump administration.
During a recent interview in the United States, Kushner stated that “the Palestinians were not yet ready for self-government. The alleged mediator predicts that there will be no Palestinian state, Palestinians must accept their status as an occupied people while allowing the State of Israel to continue annexing more and more Palestinian ancestral lands.
Kushner is believed to have personal investments in the construction of new Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. It is not surprising, therefore, that his so-called “deal of the century” is a shallow business plan, devoid of deep historical and political considerations, while Palestinians are expected to give up their historic rights to the land.
July 5, 2019
Originally published in the newspaper ¡POR ESTO! of Mérida, Mexico.
Three-Pointed Cross Over Haiti
The Three-pointed Cross that Weighs on Haiti
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
At the head of a protest march against the president of Haiti last week, a demonstrator carried a large wooden cross bearing the flags of Canada, France and the United States, the three nations that the demonstrators identify as underpinnings of support for President Jovenel Moise’s regime, in recognition of his role in the 2004 coup.
Almost completely ignored by the mainstream media, the Haitian people are constantly criticizing the Canadian government for this unobjective stance on their country’s political reality. Repeatedly, since Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s government was overthrown in 2004, demonstrators have carried posters reproaching Canadian policy or have gathered in front of the Canadian Embassy in Port-au-Prince. The newspapers Haiti Progrès and Haiti Liberté of the Caribbean nation describe Canada as an “occupying force,” a “coup supporter” or simply an “imperialist” nation.
During months of popular protests, Canada continues to be hostile to the demonstrators, who represent the majority of an impoverished population. A recent investigation by the Haitian High Court of Accounts looking into corruption and administrative disputes has revived the popular movement fighting for the overthrow of Haiti’s “Canadian-backed” president.
In the current year, there have been numerous protests – including a week-long general strike in February – demanding accountability of public officials. It is alleged that the main reason Moise remains in power is that he has the support of the Core Group of Friends of Haiti, made up of the ambassadors of Canada, USA, France, Brazil, and Germany, as well as representatives of Spain, the European Union, and the discredited OAS.
The Core Group had issued a brief statement of support for Moise calling for “a broad national discussion, without preconditions,” which was the position that Canadian officials had repeatedly expressed in recent weeks. The opposition had rejected such a negotiation with Moise on the grounds that it would amount to abandoning protests to negotiate with a corrupt and illegitimate president that few Haitians supported.
Another indication of the Core Group’s political orientation has been its May 30 statement “condemning acts of degradation committed against the Senate,” referring to a group of opposition senators earlier that day removing some furniture and placing it on the lawn of Parliament in order to block the ratification of the interim prime minister.
Canada’s ambassador, André Frenette, for his part, tweeted that “Canada condemns acts of vandalism in the Senate… because they go against democratic principles.
But it was noted that Frenette and the Core Group had not tweeted or published any statement against the recent murder of journalist Pétion Rospide, who had been reporting on police corruption and violence. Nor did they refer to the outcome of the commission that held President Moise responsible for the theft of public funds as well as the recent UN report confirming the country’s government’s involvement in a terrible massacre that took place in Port-au-Prince’s La Saline neighborhood in mid-November.
Recent statements by the Canadian government and the Core Group completely ignore arguments about Moise’s electoral illegitimacy and minimize the magnitude of corruption and violence against demonstrators.
Worse still, it is argued that Canadian officials promoted and often applauded the police forces responsible for many abuses. To the delight of the country’s most class-conscious elite, Ottawa had taken the lead in strengthening the repressive arm of the Haitian state following the expulsion of former President Aristide.
An RCMP officer heads the police component of the 1,200-strong United Nations Mission for Justice in Haiti (MINUJUSTH).
At the end of May, Canada’s ambassador to the UN, Marc-André Blanchard, led a delegation from the United Nations Economic and Social Council in Haiti. On his return to New York, he proposed creating a “robust” mission to continue the work of MINUJUSTH after its scheduled conclusion in October. Canadian officials lead the campaign to extend the 15-year United Nations occupation that took over the troops of the United States, France and Canada that overthrew the Aristide government and, among other horrors, were responsible for the introduction of cholera into Haiti, which has killed more than a million people from the glorious but suffering Caribbean country.
The Extraditions of Pinochet and Assange
The Extraditions of Pinochet and Assange
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
With Julian Assange in Britain facing possible extradition to the United States for publishing classified secrets, Consortium News reporter Elizabeth Vos reflects on the divergent but notorious parallelism of that case with that of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. In eight months time, one of the most important extradition hearings in recent history will take place in Britain. There a British court and the Home Secretary will decide whether WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange will be extradited to the United States to face charges of espionage for the crime of journalism. Twenty-one years ago, in another historic extradition case, Britain had to decide whether to send former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to Spain to be tried for the crime of mass murder.
In October 1998, Pinochet, whose regime became synonymous with political assassinations, “disappearances” and torture, was arrested in London where he had traveled for medical treatment. A Madrid judge, Baltasar Garzón, had requested his extradition in connection with the death of Spanish citizens in Chile. Alleging it inappropriate to try Pinochet, the United Kingdom prevented him from being extradited to Spain in 2000, where he was allegedly prosecuted for repeated human rights violations. The lawyer’s immunity argument was overturned by the House of Lords. But the extradition court ruled that the poor health of Pinochet, a friend of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, would prevent him from being sent to Spain.
Montgomery reappeared in the Assange case to defend the right of a Swedish prosecutor to demand a European arrest warrant for Assange. His argument failed because a Swedish court denied the European arrest warrant. As in the Pinochet case, Montgomery helped buy time, this time allowing Swedish sexual accusations to persist and tarnish Assange’s reputation. Garzón, the Spanish judge who had requested Pinochet’s extradition, also reappears in Assange’s case. He is a well-known human rights defender, “considered by many to be Spain’s bravest legal guardian and the scourge of corrupt politicians and drug warlords around the world. But now he leads Assange’s legal team.
The question is whether the British legal system will let a famous dictator like Pinochet go and send an editor like Assange to the United States to face life in prison. Few elected officials have defended Assange (because of his image tainted by unproven Swedish accusations and criticisms of the 2016 U.S. elections that have nothing to do with the extradition request).
Pinochet, on the other hand, had friends in high places. Margaret Thatcher openly asked for his release.
Just two weeks before his arrest, General Pinochet visited the Thatchers at their Chester Square residence, according to the BBC. CNN reported on a “famous close relationship. A similar affection between Pinochet and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was also documented. Pinochet came to power after a violent U.S.-backed coup d’état on Sept. 11, 1973, which overthrew the country’s democratically elected president, socialist Salvador Allende. The coup has been described as “one of the most brutal in the modern history of Latin America.
The CIA financed operations in Chile with millions of dollars of U.S. taxes before and after Allende’s election, a U.S. Senate Committee reported in 1975. More than 40,000 people, many only tangentially linked to dissidents, were “disappeared,” tortured or killed during Pinochet’s 17 years of terror.
Pinochet’s Chile almost immediately after the coup became the laboratory of the Chicago School’s economic theory of neoliberalism, or a new laissez-faire, imposed at gunpoint. Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan defended a system of privatization, free trade, cuts to social services, and deregulation of banking and business that led the U.S. to the greatest inequality in a century.
In contrast to these crimes and corruption, Assange has published thousands of classified documents showing the U.S. and other nations’ officials involved in similar crime and corruption.
However, Assange is not expected to receive the leniency of the British extradition process enjoyed by Pinochet.
July 1, 2019
Originally published in the newspaper ¡POR ESTO! of Mérida, Mexico.
Bolton Controls Trump
John Bolton Controls the Government and Trump
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Donald Trump’s government has been, for U.S. foreign policy, something like an elephant in a china shop. It’s not only because he concentrated on achieving benefits and privileges for his nation to the detriment of the rest of the world, however. It’s also thanks to the economic and military power they have achieved on the basis of the unjust global economic relations imposed by the current capitalist system.
Jeff Bezos, is founder and executive director of the Amazon emporium. In 2015 Bezos was the fifth richest man in the world and in 2017 reached the top of Forbes magazine’s list of multimillionaires. On his blog, Bezos published information on the struggles and internal discussions within Trump’s team around the inexorable march of the US towards war against Iran and the danger of John Bolton in the swarm that has developed. From them, I extract much of this data.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned Iranian leaders that any attack by Tehran or its people that results in the death of one member of the U.S. military will be met with a military counterattack by Washington. Such a warning was made from Baghdad in May, when he was visiting Iraq. The issue could become critical very soon as in recent days there were rocket attacks in Iraq against targets in which there are American personnel.
Some of these attacks came from areas where there are still clandestine ISIS (Islamic State) groups with improvised and imprecise weapons that could accidentally kill a US soldier.
Concern about an escalation is particularly intense in the Pentagon, where the absence of a confirmed Secretary of Defense has fuelled concern that White House and State Department hawks may push the military beyond its specific mission of destroying remnants of the Islamic state in Iraq and Syria, which, in the current circumstances, increases the potential for conflict with Iran.
It has been reported on several occasions and by different means that Trump is somewhat isolated from anti-war views within his own regime. Government officials interviewed by the Washington Post said National Security Advisor John Bolton has dominated Iranian policy, maintaining strict control over the information that reaches the president and drastically reducing the meetings in which senior officials meet in the White House Situation Room to discuss policy.
The intensification of the “maximum pressure” campaign has triggered internal debates about how best to carry out the President’s orders. At the State Department, a discussion about how difficult it is to pressure Iran through sanctions ended with those with the harshest possible approach prevailing.
While State Department officials were cunningly trying to find the “weak spot” that would weaken Iran through sanctions, without putting so much pressure on Iran that it would withdraw from the nuclear deal. Others argued that Trump’s goal was to destroy the agreement at any price in order to pursue a more expansive policy that would paralyze Iran’s forces throughout the region.
However, Pentagon and State Department officials have complained of the difficulty of getting a presidential hearing for it under Bolton. As a result, arguments about policy do not reach the president.
Regional military commanders always ask for more troops and more ships, which increases the possibility of “accidents” and makes war more likely. John Bolton uses each and every small incident to send more troops!
Unlike his advisors, Trump always seems to minimize the importance of Iran’s actions. So the other scenario is to claim that Trump is a fool and the war hawks use him as a tool to implement their preferred policies.
Former high-ranking British espionage (MI6) official Alastair Crooke asserts that this second scenario is the real one. He says this is not because Trump consciously wants war, but because the hawks around him, particularly Bolton, corner him. Trump’s main mistake may be that he believes that Iran will ultimately seek an agreement.
Crooke argues that Bolton, and Netanyahu behind him, outperform U.S. intelligence on Iran. They transmit “intelligence” to the president and the media, just as Vice President Dick Cheney did in the run-up to the war against Iraq.
Bolton chairs strategic dialogue meetings with Israel (NSC) whose intention is to develop a joint action plan against Iran. This means that Israeli intelligence assessments are being sent directly to Bolton without going through US intelligence for assessment. In other words, Bolton holds the reins in his hands.
June 26, 2019.
This article can be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO
US Preparing Something Against Iran
US Preparing Something Against Iran
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
“Until now,” says journalist Philip Giraldi, “June has been a lively month in light of the apparent diligence with which the United States intends to remake the world in its own image and likeness.
In an article published on June 20, 2019 on the website Unz.com (in Spanish it is identified as El Ojo Digital), Giraldi, who is also has a doctorate in European history and was a specialist in counterterrorism and a veteran officer in CIA operations in Europe and the Middle East, comments that there is an expectation that the White House is preparing to “do something” against Iran in the military field.
Recent incidents involving alleged attacks on Norwegian and Japanese oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman were immediately attributed to Iran by the Secretary of State of the Trump regime, Mike Pompeo. It had so little regard for the evidence that even conventional US media that are invariably compliant with the standards set for them were left speechless. In its initial coverage of the situation, the New York Times echoed the government’s assertions but, if one reads the readers’ comments on what was published, one appreciates that 90% of those who bothered to express an opinion considered that the version disseminated is not credible.
Several commentators have recalled the entirely false Gulf of Tonkin incident that led to the escalation of U.S. participation in Vietnam in 1964. This fact that was frequently expressed in readers’ comments in both conventional and alternative media. Others recalled, instead, the false intelligence reports linking Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to the September 11, 2001 terrorists, as well as false reports about a secret Iraqi nuclear program and the existence of giant guiders capable of launching biological weapons over the Atlantic Ocean that proliferated in those days.
The final story dates back to early June, when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met privately with American Jewish leaders who expressed concern about the possibility of British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister. (Corbyn had been targeted by British Jews for being the first high-ranking politician in the UK to speak with sympathy or pity about the plight of the Palestinians.)
Pompeo was asked if, should Corbyn be elected, the United States would be willing to work with them to act against any inconvenience that might arise for Jews in the United Kingdom. The US Secretary of State replied: “It could be that Mr. Corbyn manages to be elected… It’s possible. But you should know that we will not wait for you to do those things before we start to reject them. We will do everything in our power to avoid going to that extreme. It would be too risky, too important and too difficult to do anything after your choice has occurred.
There are some ambiguities in both the question and the answer, but it seems that American Jews want to join their British counterparts in overthrowing or containing such a high-level politician elected to such a high office because Corbyn is not pro-Israeli enough.
Secretary of State Pompeo agrees with them that something has to be done, including quite possibly taking some measures – probably covert – to ensure that Corbyn does not become Prime Minister. But as Pompeo might be thinking of subverting the institutions of America’s closest ally, it is, to some extent, good news that he is being ignored by the media.
June isn’t over yet, but it’s good that the U.S. hasn’t invaded Venezuela yet, despite the claims of opportunist and phony Senator Marco Rubio and the demented Senator Lindsey Graham, says journalist Philip Giraldi.
There were a number of questionable aspects to Pompeo’s version, not least because of the improbability of Iran attacking a Japanese ship while the Japanese Prime Minister was in Tehran making a visit. The attack itself, attributed to Iranian mines, also did not coincide with the damage suffered by the ships. These were well above the waterline, a detail that was pointed out by the captain of the Japanese ship, among others. The ship’s crew also saw flying objects, suggesting that missiles or other projectiles were the culprits, the kind fired by almost everyone in the area.
And then there is the question of motive: the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates want a war with Iran while the Iranians try to avoid a B-52 attack. So why would Iran do something that would practically guarantee a B-52 attack? Why would Iran do something that would virtually guarantee a devastating response from Washington?
June 24, 2019.
This article can be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Trump Backs Full Spectrum Dominance
Trump Backs Full Spectrum Dominance
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The United States is formally committed to dominating the world by 2020. President Trump’s Space Directive-4, on the production of laser-armed combat aircraft as possible precursors to space weapons and the possibility of nuclear warheads being placed in orbit, moves the clock forward.
An interesting and credible paper by T.J. Coles in Counterpunch recently reported that in 1997, the re-established U.S. Space Command announced its commitment to full spectrum dominance by 2020, which means military control over land, sea, air and space to protect U.S. interests and investments.
Protecting means guaranteeing the operational freedom of U.S. investments, which in turn means “corporate profits.”
The journalistic work explains that, in the past, the Army was deployed based on the interests of settlers who stole land from Native Americans in the genocidal birth of the United States as a nation.
A National Defense University report recognizes that, by the 19th century, the Navy had evolved to protect the newly formulated “grand strategy” of the United States. In addition to the supposed protection of citizens and the constitution, the guiding principle was, and continues to be, “the protection of American territory … and our economic well-being.
According to the Air Force’s Strategic Study Guide, by the 20th century, the Air Force had been established, ensuring energy supply and freedom of action to protect vital interests, such as trade. In the 21st century, these pillars of power were reinforced by the Cyber Command and the future Space Force.
The use of the Army, Navy and Air Force – the three dimensions of power – means that the United States is already close to achieving “full spectrum dominance”. Brown University’s Cost of War project documents current U.S. military involvement in 80 countries, or 40 percent of the world’s nations.
This includes 65 so-called counterterrorism training operations and 40 military bases. According to this measure, “full spectrum dominance” is almost halfway there, although it leaves out U.S. and NATO bases, training programs and operations in Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Ukraine.
As the United States expands its space operations – the fourth dimension of the war – the race for “full spectrum dominance” accelerates. Space has long been militarized in the sense that the United States uses satellites to guide missiles and aircraft. But the new doctrine tries to turn space into a weapon, for example by blurring the boundaries between high-altitude military aircraft and space itself.
Today’s space energy will be harnessed by the United States to ensure mastery of the satellite infrastructure allowed by the modern world of the Internet, e-commerce, GPS, telecommunications, surveillance and the fight against war. Since the 1950s, the United Nations has introduced several treaties to prohibit militarization and the placement of weapons in space. The most famous of these is the Outer Space Treaty (1967). These treaties aim to preserve space as a common good for all humanity. The creation of the United States Space Force is a flagrant violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of these treaties.
In more recent decades, successive U.S. governments have unilaterally rejected treaties to strengthen and expand existing agreements for peace in Space. In 2002, the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (1972), allowing it to expand its long-range missile systems. In 2008, China and Russia submitted to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament the proposed Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space and the Threat or Use of Force against Outer Space Objects. “Full Spectrum Dominance” is not only a danger to the world, but also to American citizens, who would suffer the consequences if something goes wrong with the complicated space weapons of their leaders.
Coles concludes his work by pointing out that “the catastrophic scenarios that arise in relation to these and other areas of development present the possibility of other, no less calamitous impacts, including ultimately the end of the world, or at least of humanity. June 21, 2019.
This article may be reproduced by citing PORESTO newspaper as the source.
You must be logged in to post a comment.