By now it would seem that most of the world knows that it's the u.s.a. who dominate, right up to the point of who gets to live or die . People in the imperialist countries are a little more deluded, and want to blame North Korea or Iran, or whoever the amerikkkans deem to be the main enemy at any given moment.
Here's a different perspective.
The US has placed itself in charge over which nations get to eat
The imprisonment of diplomat Alex Saab is a further indication of the lengths to which US imperialism will go in imposing its starvation sanctions on Venezuela.
Reproduced from Caitlin’s Newsletter with thanks.
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The globally influential propaganda multiplier news agencies AP
and AFP have both informed their readers that a “fugitive” has
“Fugitive businessman close to Venezuela’s Maduro extradited
to US,” reads the AFP headline.
“Alex Saab, a top fugitive close to Venezuela’s socialist government,
has been put on a plane to the US to face money laundering charges,” AP announced on Twitter.
You’d be forgiven for wondering what specifically makes this man
a ‘fugitive’, and what that status has to do with his extradition
to a foreign government whose laws should have no bearing on
his life.
The Colombian-born Venezuelan citizen Alex Saab, as it happens,
is a ‘fugitive’ from the US government’s self-appointed authority
to decide which populations on our planet are permitted to have
ready access to food. His crime is working to circumvent the
crushing US sanctions which have been starving Venezuelan
civilians to death by the tens of thousands.
Saab is being extradited from the African nation of Cabo Verde
where he has been imprisoned since last year under
pressure from the US government. In an article published this
past May titled “Alex Saab v the empire: How the US is using
lawfare to punish a Venezuelan diplomat”, Roger D Harris
explains how the US uses its domination of the international
financial system to crush nations that disobey it and outlines
the real reasons for Saab’s imprisonment, which has included
torture and draconian living conditions.
Harris writes: “Special envoy and ambassador to the African
Union for Venezuela Alex Saab was on a humanitarian mission
flying from Caracas to Iran to procure food and
gasoline for the Venezuelan CLAP food assistance programme.
Saab was detained on a refueling stop in the African nation
of Cabo Verde and has been held in custody ever since 12 June
2020.
“Saab’s ‘crime’ – according to the US government, which ordered
the imprisonment – was money laundering. That is, Saab
conducted perfectly legal international trade. Still, his
circumventing of the US sanctions – which are designed to
prevent relief to the Venezuelans – is considered by
Washington to be money laundering.
“After a two-year investigation into Saab’s transactions with
Swiss banks, the Swiss government concluded on 25 March
that there was no money laundering. Saab is being prosecuted
because he is serving his country’s interest rather than that of the US.”
News agencies like AP and AFP are well aware that Saab is being
extradited not for breaking any actual law but for daring to transgress
Washington’s unilateral sanctions. As FAIR’s Joe Emersberger
“Reuters has casually reported that Saab ‘faces extradition
to the United States, which accuses him of violating US
sanctions’, and that he has been ‘repeatedly named by the US
State Department as an operator who helps Maduro
arrange trade deals that Washington is seeking to block
through sanctions’. (15 March 2021 and 18 March 2021)
“A Reuters article about Saab’s case in 2020 mentioned in
passing that ‘the United States this month seized four cargoes
of Iranian fuel bound for Venezuela, where fuel shortages
are once again worsening’.”
Critics of the US empire have had harsh words for the extradition.
“Biden, picking up Trump’s baton, has kidnapped Venezuelan
diplomat Alex Saab for the crime of trying to feed Venezuelans
in defiance of US sanctions designed to prevent that,” tweeted
journalist Aaron Maté. “Venezuelans aren’t allowed to eat so
long as the DC mafia has marked their government for regime
change.”
Yes indeed. The US government has appointed itself the
authority to unilaterally decide which of the world’s populations
get to eat and which do not, and to imprison anyone who
tries to facilitate unauthorised eating in a US-sanctioned nation.
“The extradition of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab
is a clear signal the Biden administration has made no break
with Trump’s all out assault on international law,” tweeted
journalist Anya Parampil. “Also a worrying sign for the
case of Julian Assange – another foreign citizen the US
has essentially kidnapped and held hostage.”
This is true. It would seem that the primary difference
between Assange’s case and Saab’s is that the US empire
is working to extradite Assange because he transgressed its
self-appointed authority over the world’s access to
information, whereas Saab transgressed its self-appointed
authority over the world’s access to food.
“The US rogue state just ripped up every international law,
after imprisoning and now extraditing Venezuelan diplomat
Alex Saab. Diplomatic immunity is dead; the US empire
killed it. Now all foreign diplomats are fair game to be
kidnapped and imprisoned, if Washington wants to,”
tweeted journalist Ben Norton, adding: “The US
accusations of ‘money laundering’ are absurd and
politically motivated. The US claims anyone who
violates its illegal sanctions is a ‘criminal’.”
Indeed, ‘money laundering’ is a vague charge which
basically just means trying to conceal the source or
destination of money that is deemed to have been obtained
illegally, and since the US government considers itself the
arbiter of which financial transactions are lawful in the
nations it is sanctioning, it can apply that claim to anyone who
tries to get around US sanctions financially.
The US government does not deny that its sanctions hurt
Venezuelans by attacking the economy they rely on to feed
themselves. In fact, it has openly admitted that “sanctions,
particularly on the state oil company in 2019, likely contributed to
the steeper decline of the Venezuelan economy”.
The US government also does not deny that the starvation
sanctions it has inflicted upon Iran are directed at its civilian
population, with then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo
openly admitting in 2019 that Washington’s economic
warfare against that nation is designed to pressure
Iranian civilians to “change the government” – ie, to
make them so miserable that they launch a domestic
uprising to topple Tehran.
The US government also does not deny that the starvation
sanctions it has inflicted upon Syria are designed to hurt its
civilian population, with current secretary of state Tony
Blinken reaffirming just this past Wednesday that it is
the Biden administration’s policy to “oppose the
reconstruction of Syria” as long as Assad remains in power.
In other words, the US will not allow Syria the funds to help
rebuild itself from the devastating regime-change proxy war
that the US and its allies waged against it, even as the UN reports
that 60 percent of the nation’s population is close to starvation.
And of course there’s the US power alliance’s
horrific blockade on Yemen which is murdering people
by the hundreds of thousands via starvation and disease,
with the UN reporting that a further 16 million people
are “marching towards starvation”.
Starvation is the only kind of warfare where, because of
the continual reframing of mass media propaganda,
it is considered perfectly normal and acceptable to
deliberately target a civilian population with deadly force.
The US empire is entirely open about the fact that it sees
itself as the gatekeeper of the world’s food supply.
If a population disobeys the empire its people will starve,
and anyone who tries to obtain food for them will be
arrested by US proxies and extradited to a US jail cell.
This is the imperialists’ vision of heaven on earth:
a world where the US’s stranglehold over global financial
systems allows it to choke off entire populations if their
governments disobey imperial decrees, without even firing
a shot. A world where the PR nightmares of bombed
civilians and destroyed nations are a thing of the past,
where disobedient nations can simply be squeezed to
death by modern siege warfare tactics while imperial
propaganda firms like AP and AFP blame their starvation
on their nations’ leaders.
That’s ultimate power right there. That’s total control.
Having the world so bent to the will of the almighty
dollar and the massive military force with which it is
inextricably intertwined to such an extent that
disobedience becomes impossible. That’s what’s being
fought for in the slow motion third world war that
the empire is waging against
and China. And that’s why those unabsorbed governments
are fast at work moving away from the dollar in response.
It should really go without saying, but a power structure
that would openly starve civilians to death to ensure global
domination is not the sort of power structure that humanity
should want dominating the globe.
The willingness to do such monstrous things exposes a
depravity and a lack of wisdom which has no business
determining what direction our world should take into
the future.
