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Pence threatens war in Venezuela at Colombia summit: “There is no turning back”
Pence threatens war in Venezuela at Colombia summit: “There is no turning back”
February 26, 2019 “Information Clearing House” -US Vice President Mike Pence delivered a bellicose speech before representatives of 14 Latin American countries at a meeting of the Lima Group in Bogotá, Colombia, yesterday. The remarks were timed to coincide with the US-orchestrated provocations at the Venezuelan border over the weekend, resulting in clashes that left several people dead.
Pence rehashed phrases plagiarized from speeches given by George W. Bush in the run-up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, combining them with denunciations of socialism.
“There is no turning back,” Pence said. “All options are on the table.”
“A new day is coming in Latin America,” he continued. “In Venezuela and across the Western hemisphere, socialism is dying and liberty, prosperity and democracy are being reborn before our eyes.” Pence issued an ultimatum to the Venezuelan military, threatening that if it did not overthrow Maduro, “You will find no safe harbor, no easy exit, no way out. You will lose everything.”
Pence announced that the US would place added sanctions on officials in the Venezuelan government and called on the right-wing governments of Latin America to “transfer ownership of Venezuelan assets in your country” to the government of US puppet Juan Guaidó.
In other words, the US is conducting cross-hemispheric highway robbery.
In his speech, Pence gave several justifications for intensifying US war threats against Venezuela. Venezuela exploits indigenous tribes, damages the environment through oil exploration and impoverishes its population, Pence said.
These claims would be laughable were it not for the seriousness of the threats. The United States is the world’s worst offender in each of these departments.
Particularly disgusting was Pence’s attack on Venezuela for refusing “shelter for those displaced” immigrants along its border.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why Must Venezuela Be Destroyed?
Why Must Venezuela Be Destroyed?
February 01, 2019 “Information Clearing House” – Last week Trump, his VP Mike Pence, US State Dept. director Mike Pompeo and Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton, plus a bunch of Central American countries that are pretty much US colonies and don’t have foreign policies of their own, synchronously announced that Venezuela has a new president: a virtual non-entity named Juan Guaidó, who was never even a candidate for that office, but who was sorta-kinda trained for this job in the US. Guaidó appeared at a rally in Caracas, flanked by a tiny claque of highly compensated sycophants. He looked very frightened as he self-appointed himself president of Venezuela and set about discharging his presidential duties by immediately going into hiding.
His whereabouts remained unknown until much later, when he surfaced at a press conference, at which he gave a wishy-washy non-answer to the question of whether he had been pressured to declare himself president or had done so of his own volition. There is much to this story that is at once tragic and comic, so let’s take it apart piece by piece. Then we’ll move on to answering the question of Why Venezuela must be destroyed (from the US establishment’s perspective).
What stands out immediately is the combination of incompetence and desperation exhibited by all of the above-mentioned public and not-so-public figures. Pompeo, in voicing his recognition of Guaidó, called him “guido,” which is an ethnic slur against Italians, while Bolton did one better and called him “guiado” which could be Spanish for “remote-controlled.” (Was that a Freudian slip or just another one of Bolton’s senior moments?) Not to be outdone, Pence gave an entire little speech on Venezuela—a sort of address to the Venezuelan people—which was laced with some truly atrocious pseudo-Spanish gibberish and ended with an utterly incongruous “¡Vaya con Dios!” straight out of a hammy 1950s Western.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
UN Court Orders United States to Lift Iran Sanctions Linked to Humanitarian Goods, Civil Aviation
UN Court Orders United States to Lift Iran Sanctions Linked to Humanitarian Goods, Civil Aviation
October 03, 2018 “Information Clearing House“ – THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) – The United Nations’ highest court on Wednesday ordered the United States to lift sanctions on Iran that affect imports of humanitarian goods and products and services linked to civil aviation safety.
The ruling by the International Court of Justice is legally binding, but it remains to be seen if the administration of President Donald Trump will comply.
Trump moved to restore tough U.S. sanctions in May after withdrawing from Tehran’s nuclear accord with world powers. Iran challenged the sanctions in a case filed in July at the International Court of Justice.
In a preliminary ruling, the court said that Washington must “remove, by means of its choosing, any impediments arising from” the re-imposition of sanctions to the export to Iran of medicine and medical devices, food and agricultural commodities and spare parts and equipment necessary to ensure the safety of civil aviation.
By limiting the order to sanctions covering humanitarian goods and the civil aviation industry, the ruling did not go as far as Iran had requested.
The U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, Peter Hoekstra, pointed that out in a tweet.
“This is a meritless case over which the court has no jurisdiction,” the ambassador tweeted. “Even so, it is worth noting that the Court declined today to grant the sweeping measures requested by Iran. Instead, the Court issued a narrow decision on a very limited range of sectors.”
While imposing the so-called “provisional measures,” the court’s president, Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, stressed that the case will continue and the United States could still challenge the court’s jurisdiction.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Freeing Julian Assange: The Last Chapter
Freeing Julian Assange: The Last Chapter
Assange is now closer to justice and vindication, and perhaps freedom, than at any time since he was arrested.
One of the epic miscarriages of justice of our time is unravelling. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention – an international tribunal that adjudicates and decides whether governments comply with their human rights obligations – has ruled that Julian Assange has been detained unlawfully by Britain and Sweden.
After five years of fighting to clear his name – having been smeared relentlessly yet charged with no crime – Assange is closer to justice and vindication, and perhaps freedom, than at any time since he was arrested and held in London under a European Extradition Warrant, itself now discredited by Parliament.
The U.N. Working Group bases its judgements on the European Convention on Human Rights and three other treaties that are binding on all its signatories. Both Britain and Sweden participated in the 16-month long U.N. investigation and submitted evidence and defended their position before the tribunal. It would fly contemptuously in the face of international law if they did not comply with the judgement and allow Assange to leave the refuge granted him by the Ecuadorean government in its London embassy.
Previous celebrated cases ruled upon by the Working Group include: Aung Sang Suu Kyi in Burma, imprisoned opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, detained Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian in Iran, for which both Britain and Sweden have given support to the tribunal. The difference now is that Assange’s persecution and confinement endures in the heart of London.
The Assange case has never been primarily about allegations of sexual misconduct in Sweden – where the Stockholm Chief Prosecutor, Eva Finne, dismissed the case, saying, “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Spain has Fallen – not like Greece – but Fallen all the Same
Spain has Fallen – not like Greece – but Fallen all the Same
The Spanish elections – 20 December – were a deceit and a farce. Nobody seems to notice. At least not those concerned, the ignorant electorate, those who will suffer again possibly under a new neoliberal Rajoy leadership.
People forget and are vulnerable to propaganda and lies and manipulations through the bought media in Europe as much as in the US. And this in Spain of all places, where unemployment is still hovering around the 20% – 25% mark, with youth unemployment around 50%, and where an average grad student coming out of university earns on average 1,000 euros or less per month, if he can find a job; hardly a liveable wage.
Others have to survive on monthly incomes in the 500 to 800 euro range. Spain, a country like Greece, where neoliberal troika policies cut minimum wages, pensions, increased retirement age, privatized the health system – and are at the verge of privatizing education. Spain, a country where the ruling Partido Popular (PP) was and still is involved in horrendous corruption scandals all the way to the top, as was widely divulged earlier this year even by the mainstream media. Does it not seem absurd that in this miserably down-trodden Spain, the largest single block of people are no more awake than voting again for their hangman?
Maybe they are awake, but stunned of the results and are too tired from working for peanuts than ‘wasting’ their scarce spare-time to investigate election results, analysing how elections could have turned out the way they did: The arch-conservative neoliberal PP winning a majority of parliamentary seats – 123 (28.7% of votes), though a far cry from the absolute majority (176) and a drop of 64 seats from 2011; the PSOE (Socialist Party) coming in with 22% and 90 seats (down 20), its worst result ever; the up-and-coming PODEMOS – gaining 69 seats (20.7%); and the new center-right Ciudadanos Party winning 40 seats (13.9%), the latter two from basically zero in 2011.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
