vrijdag 13 maart 2015

Glenn Greenwald 40

Maybe Obama’s Sanctions on Venezuela are Not Really About His “Deep Concern” Over Suppression of Political Rights
By Glenn Greenwald

March 12, 2015 "
ICH" - "The Intercept" - The White House on Monday announced the imposition of new sanctions on various Venezuelan officials, pronouncing itself “deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government’s efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents”: deeply concerned. President Obama also, reportedly with a straight face, officially declared that Venezuela poses “an extraordinary threat to the national security” of the U.S. — a declaration necessary to legally justify the sanctions.
Today, one of the Obama administration’s closest allies on the planet, Saudi Arabia, sentenced one of that country’s few independent human rights activists, Mohammed al-Bajad, to 10 years in prison on “terrorism” charges. That is completely consistent with that regime’s systematic and extreme repression, which includes gruesome state beheadings at a record-setting rate, floggings and long prison terms for anti-regime bloggers, executions of those with minority religious views, andexploitation of terror laws to imprison even the mildest regime critics.
Absolutely nobody expects the “deeply concerned” President Obama to impose sanctions on the Saudis — nor on any of the other loyal U.S. allies from Egypt to the UAE whose repression is far worse than Venezuela’s. Perhaps those who actually believe U.S. proclamations about imposing sanctions on Venezuela in objection to suppression of political opposition might spend some time thinking about what accounts for that disparity.
That nothing is more insincere than purported U.S. concerns over political repression is too self-evident to debate. Supporting the most repressive regimes on the planet in order to suppress and control their populations is and long has been a staple of U.S. (and British) foreign policy. “Human rights” is the weapon invoked by the U.S. Government and its loyal media to cynically demonize regimes that refuse to follow U.S. dictates, while far worse tyranny is steadfastly overlooked, or expressly cheered, when undertaken by compliant regimes, such as those in Riyadh and Cairo (seethis USA Today article, one of many, recently hailing the Saudis as one of the “moderate” countries in the region). This is exactly the tactic that leads neocons to feign concern for Afghan women or the plight of Iranian gays when doing so helps to gin up war-rage against those regimes, while they snuggle up to far worse but far more compliant regimes.
Any rational person who watched the entire top echelon of the U.S. government drop what they were doing to make a pilgrimage to Riyadh to pay homage to the Saudi monarchs (Obama cut short a state visit to India to do so), or who watches the mountain of arms and money flow to the regime in Cairo, would do nothing other than cackle when hearing U.S. officials announce that they are imposing sanctions to punish repression of political opposition. And indeed, that’s what most of the world outside of the U.S. and Europe do when they hear such claims. But from the perspective of U.S. officials, that’s fine, because such pretenses to noble intentions are primarily intended for domestic consumption.
As for Obama’s decree that Venezuela now poses an “extraordinary threat to the national security” of the United States, is there anyone, anywhere, that wants to defend the reasonability of that claim? Think about what it says about our discourse that Obama officials know they can issue such insultingly false tripe with no consequences.
But what’s not too obvious to point out is what the U.S is actually doing in Venezuela. It’s truly remarkable how the very same people who demand U.S. actions against the democratically elected government in Caracas are the ones who most aggressively mock Venezuelan leaders when they point out that the U.S. is working to undermine their government.
The worst media offender in this regard is The New York Times, which explicitly celebrated the 2002U.S.-supported coup of Hugo Chavez as a victory for democracy, but which now regularly deridesthe notion that the U.S. would ever do something as untoward as undermine the Venezuelan government. Watch this short video from Monday where the always-excellent Matt Lee of Associated Press questions a State Department spokesperson this week after she said it was “ludicrous” to think that the U.S. would ever do such a thing:
The real question is this: if concern over suppression of political rights is not the real reason the U.S. is imposing new sanctions on Venezuela (perish the thought!), what is? Among the most insightful commentators on U.S. policy in Latin America is Mark Weisbrot of Just Foreign Policy. Read his excellent article for Al Jazeera on the recent Obama decree on Venezuela.
In essence, Venezuela is one of the very few countries with significant oil reserves which does not submit to U.S. dictates, and this simply cannot be permitted (such countries are always at the top of the U.S. government and media list of Countries To Be Demonized). Beyond that, the popularity of Chavez and the relative improvement of Venezuela’s poor under his redistributionist policies petrifies neoliberal institutions for its ability to serve as an example; just as the Cuban economy was choked by decades of U.S. sanctions and then held up by the U.S. as a failure of Communism, subverting the Venezuelan economy is crucial to destroying this success.
As Weisbrot notes, every country in the hemisphere except for the U.S. and Canada have united to oppose U.S. sanctions on Venezuela. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) issued a statement in February in response to the prior round of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela that “reiterates its strong repudiation of the application of unilateral coercive measures that are contrary to international law.” This week, the chief of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) issued a statement announcing that “UNASUR rejects any external or internal attempt at interference that seeks to disrupt the democratic process in Venezuela.” Weisbrot compares Obama’s decree this week on Venezuela to President Reagan’s quite similar 1985 decree that Nicaragua was a national security threat to the U.S., and notes: “The Obama administration is more isolated today in Latin America than even George W. Bush’s administration was.”
If Obama and supporters want the government of Venezuela to be punished and/or toppled because they refuse to comply with U.S. dictates, they should at least be honest about their beliefs so that their true character can be seen. Pretending that any of this has to do with the U.S. Government’s anger over suppression of political opponents — when their closest allies are the world champions at that — should be too insulting of everyone’s intelligence to even be an option.


3 opmerkingen:

Anoniem zei

NO POLITICAL COMMENTS! Just cry?

Anoniem zei

No political comment!... the people that had no choice... Argentina 1982, vraag je af waarom. Kippenvel...

"En el año 1979 en plena dictadura militar durante un concierto de Mercedes Sosa en La Plata se la llevaron detenida a ella y a todo el público que estaba allí escuchándola cantar, después de esto se vió obligada a abandonar el país y se exilió en Francia y España.
En teoría, Mercedes Sosa podía entrar y salir del país, no tenía causa judicial alguna, pero fué acusada de comunista, trotskista y subversiva por el gobierno militar de Jorge Videla, imposibilitada de cantar su repertorio ya no podía cantar. En un país en que la vida humana no tenía valor alguno y cientos de ellas se perdían en la oscuridad de las mazmorras, los usurpadores del poder pensaban que la canción con contenido era peligrosa. Había que acallar a los cantores, como una manera de silenciar a la población."

In 1979 during the military dictatorship during a concert by Mercedes Sosa in La Plata they arrested her and all the people who were there listening to singing, after which she was forced to leave the country and went into exile in France and Spain .
In theory, Mercedes Sosa could enter and leave the country, did not cause any court, but was accused of communist, Trotskyist and subversive by the military government of Jorge Videla, unable to sing her repertoire and could not sing. In a country where human life was worthless and hundreds of them were lost in the darkness of the dungeon, the usurpers of power thought the song was dangerous content. You had to silence the singers, as a way to silence the people.

Anoniem zei

Ik kan mij vergissen maar op 30 April gaat vast, hoogstwaarschijnlijk, onze Argentijnse koningin Maxima de nationale folklore gestalte geven door ergens hier in een of ander dorp spontaan te gaan klompendansen, ons nationale muzikale choreografische erfgoed in gedachten, onze klompendans muziek en de daarbij behorende bewegingen. Nu heb ik niets tegen klompen, integendeel, maar Willem Alexander als gaucho met zwemvliezen dansend om te laten zien dat hij waterhuishouding heeft gestudeerd is plotseling nog niet eens zo gek, als voorstelling. En lucky tv gaat er grappig over doen, iedereen deelt in de vreugde. Wat zijn we toch een ruimdenkend land! Daarna vertrekken ze voor de zomervakantie naar Griekenland, Angola, of was het Mozambique? is afgevallen, dat lag politiek iets te gevoelig. Heerlijke televisie!

Peter Flik en Chuck Berry-Promised Land

mijn unieke collega Peter Flik, die de vrijzinnig protestantse radio omroep de VPRO maakte is niet meer. ik koester duizenden herinneringen ...