COUNTERPUNCH
Anxiety about the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) toward the Russian border is one of the causes of the current war in Ukraine. But this is not the only attempt at expansion by NATO, a treaty organization created in 1949 by the United States to project its military and political power over Europe. In 2001, NATO conducted an “out of area” military operation in Afghanistan, which lasted 20 years, and in 2011, NATO—at the urging of France—bombed Libya and overthrew its government. NATO military operations in Afghanistan and Libya were the prelude to discussions of a “Global NATO,” a project to use the NATO military alliance beyond its own charter obligations from the South China Sea to the Caribbean Sea.........
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/27/the-rise-of-nato-in-africa/
Read moreIt was, Plato, in his book “The Republic” who first used the phrase, “necessity is the mother of invention”, that whenever problems arise, we must find creative and innovative solutions for them. This phrase comes handy today when the Western world, led by the US is slapping sanctions on Russia, China, and other countries they disagree with, and is causing global turmoil, all because the grandchildren of former slave owners seek to maintain global hegemony. The US has weaponised world trade, energy, and the dollar which many analysts argue could lead to its faster decline than ever thought.
By this week, the US and allies had slapped 6000 sanctions on Russia because of Ukraine and other issues. Venezuela has 632 sanctions. Some world economists have postulated that the US dollar is an inflated currency printed whenever its economy is in trouble. Considering that the US injected its Black population with syphilis under a public health program for forty-two years from 1932 to 1972, accusations that it prints the dollar whenever convenient may not, entirely be unfounded. Accusations that US, the only country to have used atomic bombs on another, has twenty five biological weapon laboratories in Ukraine, becomes difficult to ignore.
With hindsight, pundits argue that the world has been too timid, stupid or compromised to let US run against established rules whenever its interests come to odds with them. Too much mistaken trust was placed in the US and allies, and they have taken full advantage to our collective detriment. Wealth stolen when Soviet Union collapsed, and stored in the US and Europe are now being seized arbitrarily under the guise of punishing ‘oligarchs’ linked to Vladimir Putin.
It’s never too late for countries to begin gradual repudiation of the dollar and shift to rupees, Yuan, yen or rubble for global payment. The BRICS group, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and countries under the Road and Belt Initiative could provide an international payment system similar to Swift. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict should engender a new global re-alignment and we shouldn’t take anymore crap from bullies who fear direct war with Russia, but instead prefer to wreck their client, Ukraine.
China is buying Saudi Arabia oil in Yuan, not dollars. India is buying oil, gas and arms from Russia in rupees, and Russia is its major arms supplier. NATO and EU members so dependent on Russian oil, gas and wheat are buying through third parties at higher prices because if they don’t, they will freeze and starve. OPEC should repudiate the dollar monopoly in settling oil transactions. In 2015 many talking heads in the US urged Obama to impose unilateral sanctions and seize Iranian reserves but he declined. However last year Biden seized Afghanistan reserves of 7bn dollars of regular savings that have nothing to do with the Taliban which has now been liquidated.
These acts of desperation in times when US and its leaders no longer command unquestioned respect, loyalty or trepidation of its military might, hitherto considered invincible, signals decline. With the recent multiple humiliating defeats since Somalia in 1993, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Afghanistan, US leaders ought to demonstrate some humility. The last five years of trade war and sanctions against China failed to provide improvements to its respectability or exceptional economic performance over China. Even with a lot of wealth from the failed USSR stolen and transferred to the US and Europe, they remain on tenterhooks.
It should be noted that small Cuba, only 90 miles away, but with valiant peoples has withstood 64 years of US military, trade, business, investment, economic, technological transfer, diplomatic and political blockade. Iran, has rebuffed sanction regimes since its 1979 revolution which overthrew a US puppet monarchy. Venezuela has survived US terrorism, political intrigue, blackmail and direct sabotage including the confiscation of its huge oil dollar reserves kept or invested in the US because late president, Hugo Chavez canceled US monopoly over its oil.
These countries economically outperformed many US clientele states in Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Other countries too can, and the dollar can decline, after-all, the glorious Roman, Greek, and British Empires collapsed under their own weight. Unlike the Soviets, who had cheap health, education, food and housing support from government when the USSR collapsed, the US would blow up in a social upheaval because fifteen million Americans don’t have social safety nets.
UN agency reports show that in Afghanistan five million children are fleeing insecurity and looking for food yet remain so unimportant perhaps because they are not White while their country is being destroyed and wealth robbed by despotic White men. The same Whites have been shouting around the world that wars are evil and victims deserve support, yet barely mention that by March 2005, the US military had killed 24,865 civilians and 500,000 more died due to the illegal sanctions they imposed. It’s happening in Afghanistan today. For this hypocrisy, Europeans lose any credibility left from slave trade, slavery, and colonial legacy.
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
Originally posted May 26, 2019
May 29, 2022
The U.S. Army tweeted a harmless rah-rah tweet and got hit with a burst of reality never encountered on corporate-controlled media. Score one for the internet.
The Army asked: “How has serving impacted you?”
Here’s a tiny sample of the responses:
https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2022/05/29/u-s-army-0-internet-1-by-swanson/
U.S. Militarism and Climate Catastrophe
Black Alliance for Peace
Putin Has Given the Masters of War Exactly What They Wanted
This is a recipe for global war. CHRIS HEDGES March 15, 2022 by Scheerpost
The Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, was a wild Bacchanalia for arms manufacturers, the Pentagon, the CIA, the diplomats who played one country off another on the world’s chess board, and the global corporations able to loot and pillage by equating predatory capitalism with freedom. In the name of national security, the Cold Warriors, many of them self-identified liberals, demonized labor, independent media, human rights organizations, and those who opposed the permanent war economy and the militarization of American society as soft on communism....
Peace has been sacrificed for US global hegemony. It has been sacrificed for the billions in profits made by the arms industry. Peace could have seen state resources invested in people rather than systems of control. It could have allowed us to address the climate emergency. But we cry peace, peace, and there is no peace. Nations frantically rearm, threatening nuclear war. They prepare for the worst, ensuring that the worst will happen....
