VS wil op militaire manier ‘het gevaar China’ neutraliseren

Posted on May 16, 2020June 14, 2024 by Willem Wachtmeester

De VS is sinds het aantreden van Trump
bezig met het demoniseren van China, neem de handelsoorlog met alle haat- en angstzaaierij respectievelijk tegen en voor
China, een demonisering van China die Trump al heeft gebruikt voordat het Coronavirus in beeld
kwam….. Doordat Trump onder vuur kwam te liggen vanwege de totaal
onverantwoorde omgang met het virus, heeft deze zijn pijlen weer
gericht op China, waarbij hij de uitbraak van het Coronavirus NB
heeft aangewezen als de grootste aanval op de VS ooit….. Ofwel in
feite zegt Trump dat China de VS heeft aangevallen……

Bij het voorgaande was Trump ‘even
vergeten’ dat de witte Europeanen, van wie ook hij een nazaat is, een
genocide hebben uitgevoerd op de oorspronkelijke volkeren van de VS,
gepaard gaand met een ongelofelijk aantal doden, waarbij het aantal
Coronadoden in de VS niet eens in de schaduw kan staan….. Zo kwamen
de witte terroristen uit Europa, niet zelden streng gelovig, ‘in het bezit’ van de
VS, een land dat zij over de lijken van de oorspronkelijke bewoners hebben gestolen………. Over de grootste aanval ooit gesproken, op wat nu de VS wordt genoemd……

Niet alleen Trump maar ook de militaire
top, die door Trump aanzienlijk aan macht heeft gewonnen, maakt zich
druk om ‘het gevaar China……’* (macht: zo kan het Pentagon
naar eigen inzicht militairen toevoegen aan de militairen in landen
waartegen de VS illegaal oorlog voert….) Admiraal Philip Davidson
eist 20 miljard van de Trump administratie om een cordon met o.a. schepen en raketbases te leggen en
zo illegaal de bewegingsvrijheid van de Chinese marine in te
perken…. Een cordon dat loopt van Californië tot Japan en die
verder gaat tot alle landen en steden die grenzen aan de Grote
Oceaan (exclusief China zoals je begrijpt), ofwel de VS wil de hele Grote of Stille Oceaan tot haar
achtertuin maken (of beter gezegd: weer tot haar achtertuin maken) en
daarmee China terugwerpen op de eigen territoriale wateren……. In
feite is dit bijna een oorlogsverklaring, al wordt deze gedaan door
een hoge marine officier en niet door Trump, het is dan ook de vraag hoe lang het zal duren voor deze zijn mond of smartphone (Twitter) zal
gebruiken om hetzelfde te zeggen…… (neem hierbij zijn woorden nog eens in gedachte over de grootste aanval op de VS ooit…..)

China zou een voordeel op raketgebied
hebben t.o.v. de VS**, vandaar dat Trump zich vorig
jaar terugtrok uit het INF-verdrag voor middellangeafstandsraketten,
zogenaamd daar Rusland zich daar niet aan zou houden (bewezen
lulkoek), echter de ‘werkelijke reden’ was een door het Pentagon
opgeklopte angst voor Chinese raketten…… Echter ook dat is m.i.
een excuus om deze raketten zelf weer te kunnen gebruiken, wat wel
bleek uit het feit dat de VS in augustus 2019 al een test deed met
een dergelijke raket….. (het ontwikkelen van een dergelijke raket
doe je niet in een paar maanden tijd, kortom de VS was al lang bezig
met de illegale ontwikkeling van middellangeafstandsraketten…….

Bovendien heeft de VS een raketschild geïnstalleerd in Polen en Roemenië, zogenaamd tegen inkomende raketten uit Iran, de raketten van dit schild vallen in feite onder het INF-verdrag, maar omdat ze geen kernkoppen hebben, vallen ze er buiten, echter hier zit een hele dikke adder onder het gras: de raketten kunnen in een mum van tijd worden voorzien van meerdere kernkoppen en kunnen dan ingezet worden tegen Rusland en dan vallen deze raketten wel degelijk onder het INF-verdrag……. (en daarmee heeft Rusland kernraketten van de VS op de ‘voordeurmat…’)

Admiraal Davidson wilde al in 2018 kernraketten in alle met de VS bevriende landen plaatsen, zodat China van meerdere kanten in feite zou worden ingesloten door kernraketten van de grootste terreurentiteit op aarde, de VS…. Daarnaast heeft de VS al veel bases in de buurt van China, vergeet niet dat dit Noord-Amerikaanse land meer dan 800 militaire bases heeft over een fiks deel van de wereld………

De ‘angst voor China’ is een duidelijk
motief om dat land verder te isoleren, militair kan China niet tippen
aan de VS, ondertussen draait de wapenindustrie in de VS weer op volle
toeren…….

Lees het artikel over het gevaarlijke
spel dat de VS speelt, geschreven door Vijay Prashad en gepubliceerd
op CounterPunch:

May
14, 2020

The
U.S. Military is Hell-Bent on Trying to Overpower China

by Vijay
Prashad

On April 1, Admiral Philip
Davidson—the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command—told the U.S.
Congress that he would like $20 billion to create a robust military
cordon that runs from California to Japan and down the Pacific Rim of
Asia. His proposal—titled
“Regain the Advantage”—pointed to the “renewed threat we face
from Great Power Competition. … Without a valid and convincing
conventional deterrent, China and Russia will be emboldened to take
action in the region to supplant U.S. interests.”

The real focus is China. In January
2019, Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told
U.S. military officials that the problem is “China, China, China.”
This has been the key focus of all U.S. President Donald Trump’s
nominees for the Defense Department, whether it be Shanahan or the
current chief Mark Esper. Esper cannot open his mouth without blaming
China; he recently told
the Italian paper La Stampa that China is using the coronavirus
emergency to push its advantage through “malign” forces such as
Huawei and by sending aid to Italy. As far as Trump and Esper are
concerned, China and—to a lesser extent—Russia are to be
contained by the United States with armed force.

The Missile Gap?

Senator Tom Cotton (Republican from
Arkansas) has pushed the view that China’s military modernization
program has created a missile gap in China’s favor. In March 2018,
Cotton asked Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the U.S. Pacific
Command (now U.S. ambassador to South Korea) about China’s
missiles. “We are at a disadvantage with regard to China today in
the sense that China has ground-based ballistic missiles that
threaten our basing in the western Pacific and our ships,” Harris
told
Congress. To remedy this, Harris suggested that the United States
exit from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which
Trump did
in early 2019 (Trump blamed Russian non-compliance, but it was clear
that the real target was this fear of a Chinese missile advantage).
In August 2019, the U.S. tested an intermediate-range missile,
signaling that its intentions long preceded its withdrawal from the
INF.

In March 2019, Cotton went to the
Heritage Foundation to say that the United States should start
production of medium-range ballistic missiles, which should be
deployed on bases at the U.S. territory of Guam and on the
territories of U.S. allies; these missiles should directly threaten
China. “Beijing has stockpiled thousands of missiles that can
target our allies, our bases, our ships, and our citizens throughout
the Pacific,” Cotton said
in characteristic hyperbole. Exaggeration is central to people like
Cotton; for them, fear-mongering is the way to produce policy, and
facts are inconvenient.

The United States has used the
concept of the “missile gap” before. John F. Kennedy used it for
his 1958 presidential campaign, even though it is likely he knew
that it was false to say that the USSR had more missiles than the
United States. Little has changed since then.

In November 2018, before the U.S.
left the INF, Admiral Davidson spoke at a think tank in Washington on
“China’s Power.” In 2015, Davidson said,
his predecessor Harry Harris had joked that the islands off the coast
of the People’s Republic of China were a “Great Wall of Sand”;
now, said Davidson, these had become a “Great Wall of SAMs,”
referring to Surface-to-Air Missiles. Davidson, from the military
side, and Cotton, from the civilian side, began to say over and over
again that China had a military advantage by the “missile gap,” a
concept that required no careful investigation.

The United States has the largest
military force in the world. In April, the Stockholm

International
Peace Research Institute found
that the United States military budget rose by 5.3 percent over the
previous year to total $732 billion; the increase over one year was
by itself the entire military budget of Germany. China, meanwhile,
spent $261 billion on its military, lifting its budget by 5.1
percent. The United States has
6,185 nuclear warheads, while China
has 290 nuclear warheads. Only five
countries in the world have missiles that can strike any country
on the earth: the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom,
and France. Whether it be in terms of intercontinental weapons or
through U.S. air power, there is no doubt that China simply does not
possess a military advantage over the United States.

Every known inventory of weapons
shows that the United States has a much greater capacity to wreak
havoc in a military confrontation against anyone—including China;
but the U.S. now understands that while it can bomb a country to
smithereens, it can no longer subordinate all countries.

Withdrawal

The United States Navy is both
overstretched and threatened. The two U.S. Pacific-based carriers—USS
Ronald Reagan
and USS Theodore
Roosevelt—are in trouble;
USS Reagan
is in Japan, where it is being repaired, while USS Roosevelt
is in Guam, with its crew devastated by COVID-19. Meanwhile, the U.S.
has sent
an aircraft carrier group to threaten Venezuela using the excuse of
counter-narcotics. Threatening several countries far apart from each
other makes it difficult for the U.S. to focus its superior military
power against any one country.

Missile capacities shown by Iran
and by China have meant that the U.S. continuous bomber presence at
al-Udeid Air Base (Qatar) and at Andersen Air Force Base (Guam) has
been withdrawn. These bombers are now at Minot Air Force Base (North
Dakota) and Barksdale Air Force Base (Louisiana). General Timothy Ray
of the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command put a brave face on these
withdrawals, saying
that it gives the U.S. greater flexibility. The real reason for the
bombers leaving Qatar and Guam is that the U.S. military fears that
these strategic assets are in harm’s way.

Neither Iran nor China has the
capacity to defeat the U.S. in a military confrontation. But
alongside both of their borders, Iran and China have the capacity to
strike U.S. targets and U.S. allies. This capacity hampers the U.S.
ability to establish the complete subordination of these countries.
It is this local power developed by China and Iran that the United
States wants to extinguish.

Regain the Advantage

Admiral Davidson’s April report
calls for “Forward-based, rotational joint forces” as the “most
credible way to demonstrate U.S. commitment and resolve to potential
adversaries.” What the Indo-Pacific Command means is that rather
than have a fixed base that is vulnerable to attack, the U.S. will
fly its bombers into bases on the soil of its allies in the
Indo-Pacific network (Australia, India, and Japan) as well as others
in the region (South Korea, for instance); the bombers, he suggests,
will be better protected there. China will still be threatened, but
Chinese missiles will—so the theory goes—find it more difficult
to threaten mobile U.S. assets.

Davidson’s report has a stunning
science-fiction quality to it. There is a desire for the creation of
“highly
survivable, precision-strike networks” that run along the
Pacific Rim, including missiles of various kinds and radars in Palau,
Hawaii, and in space. He asks for vast amounts of money to develop a
military that is already very powerful.

Furthermore, the U.S. is committed
to the development of anti-space weapons, autonomous weapons, glide
vehicles, hypersonic missiles, and offensive cyber weapons—all
meant to destabilize missile defense techniques and to overpower any
adversary. Such developments presage a new arms race that will be
very expensive and that will further destabilize the world order.

The United States has unilaterally
increased a buildup around China and has ramped up threatening
rhetoric against Beijing. Anxiety about a possible war against China
imposed by the United States is growing
within China; although sober voices are asking the Chinese government
not to get drawn into an arms race with the United States.
Nonetheless, the threats are credible, and the desire to build some
form of deterrence is growing.

The absence of a strong world peace
movement with the capacity to prevent this buildup by the United
States is of considerable concern for the planet. The need for such a
movement could not
be greater.

This article was produced by
Globetrotter,
a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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the debate on Facebook

Bolivia: de coup heeft alles te maken met grondstoffen

Posted on December 17, 2019June 14, 2024 by Willem Wachtmeester

Het
is meer dan duidelijk dat de coup in Bolivia alles te maken heeft met
grondstoffen, daar president Evo Morales de delving van o.a. indium
en lithium heeft genationaliseerd, de eerste, dus indium is van groot belang voor de
LCD schermen van smartphones enz. en lithium voor accu’s van deze
telefoons en andere toepassingen zoals accu’s voor elektrische fietsen
en auto’s………

(mijnwerker met hamer en beitel……)

Ook
de olie en gaswinning werd door Morales genationaliseerd, waar
eerdere protesten in bloed werden gesmoord, protesten om meer
inkomsten uit de grondstoffen ten goede te laten komen van het hele
volk, dus ook voorde meerderheid van de oorspronkelijke
bevolking….. Bij protesten in 2003 kwamen tenminste 70
Bolivianen van de oorspronkelijke bevolking om het leven, ofwel die
werden vermoord door politie en leger…….

Nationaliseringen
werken als een rode lap op een stier als het om de VS gaat en om die
reden heeft de VS al vele keren ingegrepen in Latijjns-Amerika, niet
alleen door militaire campagnes, ofwel illegale oorlogen, maar ook
door het organiseren van opstanden die dan moeten uitmonden in een
staatsgreep….. Mocht dat niet lukken zet de CIA het leger en
politie van een dergelijk land onder druk een staatsgreep te
forceren, uiteraard met de hulp van de VS, die e.e.a. organiseert en
regisseert….. Als ook dat niet lukt zoekt de VS op basis van leugens (false flag operaties) een oorzaak om een (illegale) oorlog tegen zo’n land te beginnen….

In Bolivia heeft de VS een combinatie van voornoemde zaken gebruikt, ofwel een coup door leger en politie, die vooraf werd gegaan door protesten….. Deze zogenaamde opstand tegen de
democratisch gekozen president Morales zou door het hele volk
gesteund zijn. Althans zo berichtten de westerse reguliere media,
gelul van een dronken aardbei daar het grootste deel van het volk tot
de oorspronkelijke bevolking behoort en deze bevolking heeft Morales,
die zelf tot deze oorspronkelijke bevolking behoort (‘indianen’), voor
meer dan 95% gesteund…….

De
regering Morales heeft het als eerste regering (en voor het eerst
sinds de witte kolonisator haar genocide begon in Latijns-Amerika), opgenomen voor het grootste deel van het volk, zoals gezegd de oorspronkelijke
bevolking. Door het beleid van Morales en zijn regering is de armoede
onder die bevolkingsgroep aanmerkelijk afgenomen en hij voerde daarnaast een prima economisch beleid…. Natuurlijk hebben de bedrijven,
die genationaliseerd werden (en toch nog dikke winsten mochten maken), een
grote verantwoording voor de coup die Morales aan de kant zette……

In
Washington (DC) is een arbitrage rechtbank gesitueerd,
de International Center for the Settlement
of Investment Disputes (ICSID), NB een onderdeel van de
Wereldbank….. Deze organisatie en de Wereldbank werken bepaald niet
in het belang van arme bevolkingsgroepen en veroordelen
dergelijke nationaliseringen…… ICSID heeft Bolivia gelast meer
rekening te houden met de internationale bedrijven als de
mijnbedrijven en die van de olie- en gassector….. Bolivia, Cuba,
Nicaragua en Venezuela hebben zich intussen teruggetrokken uit het ICSID en een zelfde soort arbitrage
opgezet, echter met één groot verschil, deze organisatie houdt wel
rekening met het volk en niet met de grote bedrijven die landen als
Bolivia voor een deel hebben leeggezogen……

Salon
bracht op 22 november jl. een artikel van Globetrotter (Naked Kapitalism) waarin e.e.a. aangaande de
grondstoffen wordt verduidelijkt, jammer dat men niet lithium noemde,
daar Bolivia ook de grootste voorraad lithium zou hebben….

NOVEMBER
20, 2019

The
Coup in Bolivia Has Everything to Do With the Screen You’re Using
to Read This

Photograph
Source: Senado Federal – CC
BY 2.0

by VIJAY
PRASHAD

iPhone XS (AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

When
you look at your computer screen, or the screen on your smartphone or
the screen of your television set, it is a liquid crystal display
(LCD). An important component of the LCD screen is indium, a rare
metallic element that is processed out of zinc concentrate.

The two
largest sources of indium can
be found in eastern Canada (Mount Pleasant) and in Bolivia (Malku
Khota). Canada’s deposits have the potential to produce 38.5 tons
of indium per year, while Bolivia’s considerable mines would be
able to produce 80 tons per year.

Canada’s
South American Silver Corporation—now TriMetals Mining—had signed
a concession to explore and eventually mine Malku Khota. Work began
in 2003, two years before Evo Morales and the Movement for Socialism
(MAS) won their first presidential election in Bolivia. South
American Silver conducted several studies of the region, all of which
found substantial deposits that were poised to make this Canadian
firm one of the major players in the mining industry.

A
study done by Allan Armitage and others for South American Silver,
and delivered to the company in 2011, showed that the Malku Khota
mine would produce substantial amounts of silver, indium, lead, zinc,
copper, and gallium. “The indium and gallium,” the study
noted,
“are regarded as strategic metals that give the project future
upside potential.” Gallium is used for thermometers and barometers,
as well as in the testing side of the pharmaceutical industry. There
is Fort Knox level treasure to be made from these minerals.

Resource
Nationalism

Evo
Morales rode to victory in 2006 with the promise of a new day for
Bolivia. Key to his agenda was to take control of the country’s
resources and use them to improve the quality of life of Bolivia’s
deprived populations. One of the great tragedies of Bolivia has been
that since the mid-16th century, the indigenous populations have had
to work to remove precious wealth from underneath their lands and
send that wealth to enrich the people of Europe and later North
America. They did not benefit from those riches.

Millions
died in the mines of Potosí to bring the silver, and later tin, out
of the ground. For the indigenous people who live near and on the
hill, everything is upside down—one of the most lucrative hills is
known as Cerro Rico (Rich Hill), while in Spanish there is a phrase
that toys with the idea that wealth is equivalent to Potosí (vale
un Potosí).
Morales’ message during his campaign was framed around the concept
of resource nationalism—use our resources to better the lives of
those who live in deprivation and indignity.

Morales
first went after the oil and gas industry. It is important to recall
that his opponent in this year’s election—Carlos Mesa—was the
president right before Morales won the election in December 2005.
Mesa had come to power when his predecessor Sánchez de Lozada
resigned in disgrace over the mass demonstrations in 2003 when
Bolivians demanded more control over their gas reserves (the state
repression was severe, with at least 70 people killed in the
demonstrations). In May 2006—just over three months after being
sworn in as president—Morales announced that the oil and gas
industry had been nationalized. It is important to recall that his
approval rating was well above 80 percent.

Nationalization
was not easy, since the Bolivian government could not expropriate
assets but only raise taxes and renegotiate contracts. Even here, the
government faced problems since it lacked enough technical skills to
understand the opaque energy sector. Furthermore, the problem with
the energy sector is that even nationalized oil and gas must be sold
to the transnational firms that then process them and market them;
they remain in control of the value chain. What Morales’ government
was able to do was to ensure that the State controlled 51 percent of
all private energy firms that operated in Bolivia, which allowed the
State’s coffers to fill rapidly. It was this money that was
invested to go after poverty, hunger, and illiteracy.

Revenge
of the Mining Companies

Canada’s
Fraser Institute—a libertarian think tank that is heavily funded by
the energy and mining sector—publishes an annual survey of mining
companies. This survey is conducted by asking mining executives their
opinions on a range of issues. The 2007–08
survey said
that Bolivia is the second-worst country for investment; the worst
was Ecuador. In 2010, the World
Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index rated
Bolivia at 161 of 183 countries. Heads of mining firms—from
Barrick’s Peter Munk to Repsol’s Antonio Brufau—made
disparaging comments about the nationalization program. “If Bolivia
keeps on this path,” a Wall Street banker told me at that time,
“these companies will make sure that Bolivian natural gas remains
underground.” Bolivia might be embargoed; Morales might be
assassinated.

Pressure
mounted daily on the MAS government, which began a process to write a
new Constitution that would both protect nature and insist on
resource wealth being used for the people. There was an immediate
contradiction here: if the MAS government was going to undo centuries
of deprivation, it would have to mine the earth to bring out the
wealth. A tragic choice befell the government—it could not both
conserve nature and transform the wretched conditions of everyday
life at the same level of caution. At the same time, to get its
minerals and energy to market, it had to continue to negotiate with
these transnational firms; no immediate alternative was present.

Nationalization

Despite
the constraints on it, the MAS government continued to nationalize
resources, and insist on State firms being partners in resource
extraction. Transnational firms immediately took Bolivia to the
International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes
(ICSID), a part of the World Bank system. The ICSID—formed in
1966—is based in Washington, D.C., and shares an outlook toward
business that mirrors that of the U.S. Treasury Department.

On
April 29, 2007, the leaders of Bolivia (Evo Morales), Cuba (Carlos
Lage), Nicaragua (Daniel Ortega), and Venezuela (Hugo Chávez) signed
a declaration to create an alternative to the investor-government
system institutionalized in the ICSID. Bolivia and Ecuador formally
withdrew from this U.S.-dominated system, while Venezuela’s Supreme
Court declared that it did not have the power to intervene in
Venezuelan sovereign affairs.

On
July 10, 2012, Morales’ government nationalized the Malku Khota
property of South American Silver. Company CEO Greg Johnson said he
was “really shocked” at the decision. South American Silver’s
shares dropped immediately; it had been trading at $1.02 on July 6,
and it fell to $0.37 on July 11.

The
immediate spur for the nationalization was the protest around the
mine by indigenous artisanal miners who did not want this
mega-project to undermine their livelihood. South American Silver had
spent a great deal of money to convince 43 of the 46 neighboring
communities to accept the mine; but they could not convince the
artisanal miners. “Nationalization is our
obligation,” said Morales.

All
that indium would not make its way in significant quantities to the
factories to produce LCDs for television sets, computer monitors, and
cell phones.

South
American Silver took the Bolivian government to the Permanent Court
of Arbitration at The Hague. In November last year, the Court ordered
Bolivia to pay South American Silver $27.7 million rather than the
$385.7 million that TriMetals (the new name for South American
Silver) had demanded.

Coup

In
July 2007, U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg sent a cable to Washington
in which he pointed out that U.S. mining firms had approached his
embassy to ask about the investment climate in Bolivia. Goldberg felt
that the situation for mining firms was not good. When asked if he
could organize a meeting with Vice President Álvaro García Linera,
he said,
“Sadly, without dynamite in the streets, it is uncertain whether
the Embassy or the international mining companies will be able to
attain even this minimal goal.”

“Without
dynamite in the streets” is a phrase worth dwelling upon. A year
later, Morales expelled Goldberg from Bolivia, accusing him of aiding
the protests in the town of Santa Cruz. Just over a decade later, it
was the “dynamite” that removed Morales from power.

Resource
nationalism is no longer on the agenda in Bolivia. The fate of Malku
Khota is unknown. The fate of your screen is guaranteed—it will be
replaced with indium from the Potosí deposits. And the benefits of
that sale will not go to improving the well-being of Bolivia’s
indigenous population; they will enrich the transnational firms and
the old oligarchy of Bolivia.

This
article was produced by Globetrotter,
a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Venezuela >> regime change: ‘de 12 stappen methode’ die de VS gebruikt

Posted on February 9, 2019June 14, 2024 by Willem Wachtmeester

Hoe
de VS te werk gaat als het een haar onwelgevallig regime wil laten
vallen, is op deze plek meermaals aangehaald: organiseer een opstand
onder het volk, het liefst middels een economische oorlog, die
aanvankelijk in het geniep wordt gevoerd: VS bedrijven onder druk
zetten, bedrijven die in bijvoorbeeld Venezuela levensmiddelen
verkopen, hun voorraden niet of onvoldoende te bevoorraden,
hetzelfde geldt voor farmaceutische bedrijven. Hierdoor ontstaat
ontevredenheid onder het volk, een situatie die kan leiden tot een
volledige opstand……

Een
opstand die uiteraard wordt georganiseerd en geregisseerd door de
VS >> CIA), waarbij men het liefst gewelddadige figuren inzet die middels
zwaar geweld als het doodschieten van demonstranten, het bewuste
bewind zoals dat in Venezuela in een kwaad daglicht stelt, ofwel: de
doden zouden te danken zijn aan het bewind, dit noemt men een false flag operatie en is een specialiteit van de CIA en het Pentagon…….

Met
een opstand in het land ligt de weg naar een staatsgreep open. Immers
op het punt dat er sprake is van een opstand, die ‘met geweld wordt
onderdrukt’, stappen de reguliere westerse media in de zaak en middels het
schreeuwen van moord en brand en de eis sancties in te stellen…..
Met sancties zoals in het geval van Venezuela, wordt het leven voor
de bevolking nog zwaarder, waarna men in diezelfde media in de
westerse politiek ingrijpen eist…… Zie hier in het kort de
werkwijze van de VS.

De VS heeft in Venezuela een tekort aan voedsel en medicijnen veroorzaakt, waar dezelfde VS nu de door haar naar voren geschoven kandidaat Guaidó wil voorzien van….. levensmiddelen en medicijnen!!

Op dit moment, even na 12.00 u. is er een Duitse correspondent in Venezuela aan het woord op WDR 5, en stap voor stap herhaalt zij de leugens die tot de door de VS georganiseerde opstand in Venezuela hebben geleid, zo herhaalt ze de leugen dat er geen economische oorlog is gevoerd tegen het land en dat de tekorten aan Maduro’s beleid zijn te danken…… Terwijl er aantoonbaar een economische oorlog is gevoerd tegen Venezuela en dat deze de grote tekorten heeft veroorzaakt……

De correspondent spreekt alsof de toestand van het Venezolaanse volk hetzelfde is als die voor de Palestijnen in de Gazastrook en op de West Bank, of sterker nog: of deze te vergelijken is met de genocide die de Saoedische terreurcoalitie uitvoert in Jemen (met grote steun van de VS en GB…) en waarbij dagelijks grote aantallen mensen omkomen…. (opvallend is het volgende onderwerp op WDR 5: fake news [nepnieuws] en de betrouwbaarheid van de reguliere media…..)

Het hieronder opgenomen artikel van de
schrijver Vijay
Prashad, werd op 5 februari jl. gepubliceerd op CounterPunch. Prashad haalt nog een aantal extra punten aan die in het stappenplan
van de VS worden gebruikt om te komen tot een verandering van regime. Prashad doet dit o.a. door zaken uit het verleden aan te halen, zoals de coup van
de VS tegen de socialistische president Allende in Chili op 11
september 1973 (de eerste 9/11, als de tweede, onder regie van de CIA….)

FEBRUARY
5, 2019

The
12-Step Method of Regime Change

by VIJAY
PRASHAD

On
15 September 1970, US President Richard Nixon and National Security
Advisor Henry Kissinger authorised the US government to do everything
possible to undermine the incoming government of the socialist
president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Nixon and Kissinger, according
to the notes kept by CIA Director Richard Helms, wanted to ‘make
the economy scream’ in Chile; they were ‘not concerned [about
the] risks involved’. War was acceptable to them as long as
Allende’s government was removed from power. The CIA started
Project FUBELT, with $10 million as a first instalment to begin the
covert destabilisation of the country.

CIA
memorandum on Project FUBELT, 16 September 1970.

US
business firms, such as the telecommunication giant ITT, the soft
drink maker Pepsi Cola and copper monopolies such as Anaconda and
Kennecott, put pressure on the US government once Allende
nationalised the copper sector on 11 July 1971. Chileans celebrated
this day as the Day of National Dignity (Dia de la Dignidad
Nacional). The CIA began to make contact with sections of the
military seen to be against Allende. Three years later, on 11
September 1973, these military men moved against Allende, who died in
the regime change operation. The US ‘created the conditions’ as
US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger put it, to which US
President Richard Nixon answered, ‘that is the way it is going to
be played’. Such is the mood of international gangsterism.

Phone
Call between Richard Nixon (P) and Henry Kissinger (K) on 16
September 1973.

Chile
entered the dark night of a military dictatorship that turned over
the country to US monopoly firms. US advisors rushed in to strengthen
the nerve of General Augusto Pinochet’s cabinet.

What
happened to Chile in 1973 is precisely what the United States has
attempted to do in many other countries of the Global South. The most
recent target for the US government – and Western big business –
is Venezuela. But what is happening to Venezuela is nothing unique.
It faces an onslaught from the United States and its allies that is
familiar to countries as far afield as Indonesia and the Democratic
Republic of Congo. The formula is clichéd. It is commonplace, a
twelve-step plan to produce a coup climate, to create a world under
the heel of the West and of Western big business.

Step
One: Colonialism’s Traps.

Most
of the Global South remains trapped by the structures put in place by
colonialism. Colonial boundaries encircled states that had the
misfortune of being single commodity producers – either sugar for
Cuba or oil for Venezuela. The inability to diversify their economies
meant that these countries earned the bulk of their export revenues
from their singular commodities (98% of Venezuela’s export revenues
come from oil). As long as the prices of the commodities remained
high, the export revenues were secure. When the prices fell, revenue
suffered. This was a legacy of colonialism. Oil prices dropped from
$160.72 per barrel (June 2008) to $51.99 per barrel (January 2019).
Venezuela’s export revenues collapsed in this decade.

Step
Two: The Defeat of the New International Economic Order.

In
1974, the countries of the Global South attempted to redo the
architecture of the world economy. They called for the creation of a
New International Economic Order (NIEO) that would allow them to
pivot away from the colonial reliance upon one commodity and
diversify their economies. Cartels of raw materials – such as oil
and bauxite – were to be built so that the one-commodity country
could have some control over prices of the products that they relied
upon. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC),
founded in 1960, was a pioneer of these commodity cartels. Others
were not permitted to be formed. With the defeat of OPEC over the
past three decades, its members – such as Venezuela (which has the
world’s largest proven oil reserves) – have not been able to
control oil prices. They are at the mercy of the powerful countries
of the world.

Step
Three: The Death of Southern Agriculture.

In
November 2001, there were about three billion small farmers and
landless peasants in the world. That month, the World Trade
Organisation met in Doha (Qatar) to unleash the productivity of
Northern agri-business against the billions of small farmers and
landless peasants of the Global South. Mechanisation and large,
industrial-scale farms in North America and Europe had raised
productivity to about 1 to 2 million kilogrammes of cereals per
farmer. The small farmers and landless peasants in the rest of the
world struggled to grow 1,000 kilogrammes of cereals per farmer. They
were nowhere near as productive. The Doha decision, as Samir
Amin wrote,
presages the annihilation of the small farmer and landless peasant.
What are these men and women to do? The production per hectare is
higher in the West, but the corporate take-over of agriculture (as
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research Senior Fellow P.
Sainath shows) leads to increased hunger as it pushes peasants off
their land and leaves them to starve.

Step
Four: Culture of Plunder.

Emboldened
by Western domination, monopoly firms act with disregard for the law.
As Kambale
Musavuli and I write of
the Democratic Republic of Congo, its annual budget of $6 billion is
routinely robbed of at least $500 by monopoly mining firms, mostly
from Canada – the country now leading the charge against Venezuela.
Mispricing and tax avoidance schemes allow these large firms
(Canada’s Agrium, Barrick and Suncor) to routinely steal billions
of dollars from impoverished states.

Step
Five: Debt as a Way of Life.

Unable
to raise money from commodity sales, hemmed in by a broken world
agricultural system and victim of a culture of plunder, countries of
the Global South have been forced to go hat in hand to commercial
lenders for finance. Over the past decade, debt held by the Global
South states has increased, while debt payments have ballooned by
60%. When commodity prices rose between 2000 and 2010, debt in the
Global South decreased. As commodity prices began to fall from 2010,
debts have risen. The IMF points out that of the 67 impoverished
countries that they follow, 30 are in debt distress, a number that
has doubled since 2013. More than 55.4% of Angola’s export revenue
is paid to service its debt. And Angola, like Venezuela, is an oil
exporter. Other oil exporters such as Ghana, Chad, Gabon and
Venezuela suffer high debt to GDP ratios. Two out of five low-income
countries are in deep financial distress.

Step
Six: Public Finances Go to Hell.

With
little incoming revenue and low tax collection rates, public finances
in the Global South has gone into crisis. As the UN Conference on
Trade and Development points out, ‘public finances have continued
to be suffocated’. States simply cannot put together the funds
needed to maintain basic state functions. Balanced budget rules make
borrowing difficult, which is compounded by the fact that banks
charge high rates for money, citing the risks of lending to indebted
countries.

Step
Seven: Deep Cuts in Social Spending.

Impossible
to raise funds, trapped by the fickleness of international finance,
governments are forced to make deep cuts in social spending.
Education and health, food sovereignty and economic diversification –
all this goes by the wayside. International agencies such as the IMF
force countries to conduct ‘reforms’, a word that means
extermination of independence. Those countries that hold out face
immense international pressure to submit under pain of extinction, as
the Communist Manifesto (1848) put it.

Step
Eight: Social Distress Leads to Migration.

The
total number of migrants in the world is now at least 68.5 million.
That makes the country called Migration the 21st largest country in
the world after Thailand and ahead of the United Kingdom. Migration
has become a global reaction to the collapse of countries from one
end of the planet to the other. The migration out of Venezuela is not
unique to that country but is now merely the normal reaction to the
global crisis. Migrants from Honduras who go northward to the United
States or migrants from West Africa who go towards Europe through
Libya are part of this global exodus.

Step
Nine: Who Controls the Narrative?

The
monopoly corporate media takes its orders from the elite. There is no
sympathy for the structural crisis faced by governments from
Afghanistan to Venezuela. Those leaders who cave to Western pressure
are given a free pass by the media. As long as they conduct
‘reforms’, they are safe. Those countries that argue against the
‘reforms’ are vulnerable to being attacked. Their leaders become
‘dictators’, their people hostages. A contested election in
Bangladesh or in the Democratic Republic of Congo or in the United
States is not cause for regime change. That special treatment is left
for Venezuela.

Step
Ten: Who’s the Real President?

Regime
change operations begin when the imperialists question the legitimacy
of the government in power: by putting the weight of the United
States behind an unelected person, calling him the new president and
creating a situation where the elected leader’s authority is
undermined. The coup takes place when a powerful country decides –
without an election – to anoint its own proxy. That person – in
Venezuela’s case Juan Guaidó – rapidly has to make it clear that
he will bend to the authority of the United States. His kitchen
cabinet – made up of former government officials with intimate ties
to the US (such as Harvard University’s Ricardo Hausmann and
Carnegie’s Moisés Naím) – will make it clear that they want to
privatise everything and sell out the Venezuelan people in the name
of the Venezuelan people.

Step
Eleven: Make the Economy Scream.

Venezuela
has faced harsh US sanctions since 2014, when the US Congress started
down this road. The next year, US President Barack Obama declared
Venezuela a ‘threat to national security’. The economy started to
scream. In recent days, the United States and the United Kingdom
brazenly stole billions of dollars of Venezuelan money, placed the
shackles of sanctions on its only revenue generating sector (oil) and
watched the pain flood through the country. This is what the US did
to Iran and this is what they did to Cuba. The UN says that the US
sanctions on Cuba have cost the small island $130 billion. Venezuela
lost $6 billion for the first year of Trump’s sanctions, since they
began in August 2017. More is to be lost as the days unfold. No
wonder that the United Nations Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy says
that ‘sanctions which can lead to starvation and medical shortages
are not the answer to the crisis in Venezuela’. He said that
sanctions are ‘not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of
disputes’. Further, Jazairy said, ‘I am especially concerned to
hear reports that these sanctions are aimed at changing the
government of Venezuela’. He called for ‘compassion’ for the
people of Venezuela.

Step
Twelve: Go to War.

US
National Security Advisor John Bolton held a yellow pad with the
words 5,000 troops in Colombia written on it. These are US troops,
already deployed in Venezuela’s neighbour. The US Southern Command
is ready. They are egging on Colombia and Brazil to do their bit. As
the coup climate is created, a nudge will be necessary. They will go
to war.

None
of this is inevitable. It was not inevitable to Titina Silá, a
commander of the Partido Africano para a Independència da Guiné e
Cabo Verde (PAIGC) who was murdered on 30 January 1973. She fought to
free her country. It is not inevitable to the people of Venezuela,
who continue to fight to defend their revolution. It is not
inevitable to our friends at CodePink: Women for Peace, whose Medea
Benjamin walked into a meeting of the Organisation of American States
and said – No!

It
is time to say No to regime change intervention. There is no middle
ground.

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the debate on Facebook

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