Month: April 2022

U.S.-and-allied governments are unimaginably corrupt. Can their ‘enemies’ be any worse?

Eric Zuesse

One of the facts that are effectively banned from being made public in any mainstream, and in almost all non-mainstream, ‘news’-media in U.S.-and-allied countries, is that their governments are far more corrupt than any of those media report.

An outstanding recent example of this governmental depravity was published on April 28th by the great investigative journalist (and former UK Ambassador) Craig Murray, at his blog, and was titled there “Donziger: A Tale For Our Times”. Reading that will make the point to any open-minded person. Consequently, reading that article is a prerequisite to reading any further here. As he says at the close of his article: “I really cannot think of any individual story that better incorporates so many aspects of the dreadful corruption of modern western society. We are all, in a sense, the prisoners of corporations which dictate the terms on which we live, work and share knowledge. Justice against the powerful appears impossible. It is profoundly disturbing, and I recommend everyone to take a few minutes to reflect about the full meaning of the Donziger story in all its many tangents.” Nobody surpasses Craig Murray at what he does; so, I won’t try to do that here. (Incidentally, he was imprisoned by The Queen’s Government for eight months on a frame-up of him for his having supposedly been responsible for The Queen’s Government having been unable to convict, on likewise a framed-up charge, a leader of the Scottish Independence Movement, Alex Salmond.) 

Another example is the far better-known case of the U.S. and UK and Swedish and Australian Governments’ jointly having imprisoned the Australian citizen Julian Assange already for more than ten years while never having convicted him of anything at all (other than of his once having violated a non-jury court’s allowed procedures on a made-up case against him).

Assange has been in various forms of imprisonment by UK for the last ten years without his ever having been convicted of anything except that in 2012 he was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for jumping bail (on sexual charges against him that even the alleged accusers themselves denied were true). And yet he remains now in solitary confinement (“23 hours a day locked in their cells”) in a super-max British prison, because the U.S. Government won’t stop its demand that he be extradited to the U.S. (and killed here, instead of in Britain). His only ‘crime’ was his publishing only truths, especially truths that cut to the core of exposing the regime’s constant lying. So, this blatant and illegal injustice against an international hero (virtually everywhere except in the United States) is today one prominent disproof of the U.S. and UK lies to the effect that they are democracies. These and many other such examples in ‘the land of the free’, and in America’s and Britain’s ‘democracies’, during the post-1945 period, display the lie. On 26 September 2021, Yahoo News reported (based  largely on reporting in Madrid’s El Pais on 5 January 2021) that the Trump Administration felt so embarrassed by some information that had been Wikileaked, they drew up detailed plans to kidnap Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to “rendition” him for possible execution by America. The plans, including “meetings with authorities or approvals signed by the president,” were finally stopped at the National Security Council, as being too risky. “Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred ‘at the highest levels’ of the Trump administration”, even without any legal basis to try him in the United States. So: the Trump Administration prepared an indictment against Assange (to legalize their extradition-request), and the indictment became unsealed or made public on the same day, 11 April 2019, when Ecuador’s Government allowed UK’s Government to drag Assange out into UK super-max solitary-confinement imprisonment, and this subsequently produced lie-based U.S. & UK tussles over how to prevent Assange from ever again being able to reach the public, either by continuing his solitary confinement, or else by, perhaps, poisoning him, or else convicting him of something and then executing him. On 4 January 2021, a British judge nixed Assange’s defense case: “I reject the defence submissions concerning staying extradition [to U.S.] as an abuse of the process of this court.” Earlier, her handling of Assange’s only ‘trial’, which was his extradition hearing, was a travesty, which would have been expected in Hitler’s courts, and which makes clear that UK’s courts can be just as bad as Nazi courts had been. However, the U.S. regime’s efforts to grab Assange continued on. Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and the overwhelmingly compliant U.S. Congress, are all to blame for that dictatorial regime’s pursuit against that champion of truth-telling; and the same blame applies to the leadership in UK. On 10 December 2021, BBC bannered “Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules”. Blatantly, both America and England lie in order to refer to themselves as being democracies. In fact, America has the world’s highest percentage of its residents in prisons. It’s the world’s #1 police-state. Is that because Americans are worse than the people in other countries, or is it instead because the thousand or so individuals who collectively control the nation’s Government are, themselves, especially psychopathic? Evidence will be linked-to on that question. America has been scientifically examined more than any other country has, in regards to whether it is an aristocracy, or instead a democracy, and the clear and consistent finding is that it’s an aristocracy. And it clearly is that at the federal level. (Here is a video summarizing the best single study of that, and it finds America to be an aristocracy, because it’s controlled by the richest few; and here is a much more popular video, declaring America to be a democracy, because it’s capitalist and no capitalist nation can even possibly be a dictatorship.) And even Norway’s aristocracy had been part of this scandal. If Jesus was crucified as an example of what happens to anyone who declares himself to be a “king” in a land where the Emperor in Rome insists that only he himself possesses the power and authority to choose whom will be and whom won’t be a “king” anywhere in his empire, then Assange is being crucified for violating the UK/U.S. empire’s power and authority to dictate what is and what is not true about themselves. He is being crucified for saying (and showing): The Emperor has no clothes. 

Of course, domestically within any one of these countries, the corruption is instead local, not international; and, for example, within the United States, there are even semi-mainstream blogs which are allowed to expose such corruptions. One such blog is “The Lever”, which was founded by David Sirota, who had previously been a domestic-policy advisor to the U.S. Presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders, who was supported by no billionaire and therefore has always been unable to win the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination. However, that blog avoids reporting on international relations because that’s the field where America’s billionaires are especially obsessive to control the public’s viewpoints and therefore do so very effectively in order to be able to expand their corporations’ control over foreign governments until they will control the entire world.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

Liz Truss’s militant rhetoric is another sign that post-Brexit Britain is dangerously delusional

The Foreign Secretary’s campaign against China and Russia indicates that London has lost the plot

A fanatical Neoconservative, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss presents world affairs in an uncompromising ideological struggle between “democracy” and “authoritarianism.”

She also seems to be addicted to the fervour of Cold War.

Her address on Wednesday night in London bordered on showing desire for war against Russia and China simultaneously. By first calling to “push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine,” Truss described the conflict as “our war,” then proceeded to turn to China and taunt Beijing that its rise “was not inevitable.” demanding that they “play by the rules” and even arguing that NATO should defend Taiwan in a potential contingency. Truss once again called for a “a network of liberty” and urged to avoid economic dependencies on undesirable countries (again a reference to Russia and China).

But, unfortunately for Truss and despite the climate we now exist in, none of this huffed-up rhetoric has any serious basis in reality. Yet, if she gets her way, the potential dangers are existential: The British Foreign Secretary’s rhetoric is spoiling for direct conflict not just against one but two nuclear  superpower adversaries. To try and oust Russia from Crimea and to prevent China from taking Taiwan if it moves to do so are both scenarios which could result in a military response, potentially even a nuclear one. This doesn’t seem to faze Truss, and European leaders will probably not be happy with this, even if her masters in Washington will be delighted to hear it. However, it ultimately speaks to a wider truth that the hubris and nostalgic vigour of Brexit is driving Britain off a cliff edge, deposing its foreign policy of any kind of reason, restraint, moderation or realism about its current place in the world.

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This tiny island nation proves that the West only believes in its own ‘spheres of influence’

The story of Britain’s foreign policy since 1945 might be summarized as that of a declining Empire going through stages of grief. If the Suez Crisis represented anger and denial, then Britain’s bid to join the European Economic Community in the 1970s represented bargaining and acceptance. Yet, it didn’t last. Britain’s Anglophone exceptionalist identity, compounded of course by the geographic conditioning of separation from mainland Europe, produced a very different historical experience from that of its neighbours. While France and Germany have recent memories of widespread devastation from centuries of wars, Britain, unscathed and undefeated, sees its history as that of triumph and lacks the pragmatism of its counterparts.

As a result, the British Empire faded away as opposed to facing a “reckoning” of sorts, meaning British public opinion was never “reset” and continues to believe it was a force for good, allowing the political right to continue to iconize it, and it is precisely this nostalgia of Imperialism which has manifested itself in the form of Brexit amongst many in the Conservative Party. Given in reality that Brexit itself has brought no economic benefits whatsoever, the Johnson government has sought to compensate for this by doubling down on nationalistic rhetoric and the euphoria of “Britannia rules the waves”. The slogan of “Global Britain” is essentially a code word for Empire, the connotation of a country aloof from the internal squabbling of European politics that instead pursues ambitious trade ventures all over the world and seeks to militarily dominate all in the name of moral and ideological exceptionalism.

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It appears that the West doesn’t want peace in Ukraine

It should be no surprise that this rhetoric is getting worse as the UK economic environment deteriorates. Inflation is at a 30-year high, energy prices are out of control, Covid-19 has scuppered the economy and, worse still, Boris’s own government is deeply unpopular after being rocked by an ever-recurring series of scandals, and is looking for whatever distractions it can muster. Against this backdrop, and with the conflict in Ukraine, is it really surprising that Liz Truss is being allowed to thunderously call for Cold War and, potentially, even a hot one? This is not a manifestation of Britain’s strength, as dangerous as these comments may be, but a display of Britain’s weaknesses. The current government has nothing else going for it than to appeal to nationalist and Imperialist sentiment by entertaining the possibility of war with other great powers and invoking the historically offensive Opium-wars-style rhetoric against China. But reality of course is different. Truss won’t admit it, but the UK needs China as a critical post-Brexit economic partner, and of course we all know there is no chance Russia will be driven out of Ukraine. It seems implausible that despite her position and given not even Boris himself is so staunchly anti-China, that she has the actual influence to singlehandedly achieve her vision.

So, while this rhetoric may be dangerous, it’s also empty talk at best from an increasingly unpopular government that wants to create as much noise as possible before the local elections, but that isn’t stopping Truss from doing as much damage as possible to Britain’s standing in the world as she can in her own aspirations for leadership first. Yet the fact the Foreign Secretary has been reduced to this kind of talk is emblematic of the broader problems Britain is facing, a country whose identity and aspirations are chronically out of touch with reality. It is no longer a projection of triumph, but one of woes.

Germany takes Italy to UN’s highest court

In the latest round of a dispute over Nazi compensation claims, Germany wants to protect its properties in Rome from seizure

Germany is suing Italy in the top UN court in the latest round of long-standing dispute over Nazi compensation claims, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) revealed on Friday.

In its application Germany claims that Rome has continued to allow Nazi war crime victims to file requests for compensation from Berlin, even though in 2012 the ICJ ruled that it is illegal. In the claimant’s view, by doing so Italy “has violated, and continues to violate, its obligation to respect Germany’s sovereign immunity.”

Germany therefore argues that Rome must “take effective steps” to prevent such “violations” from happening in the future, to provide all relevant guarantees, “to make full reparation” for any injury caused, and to cover “any financially assessable injury resulting from proceedings conducted.”

Berlin says that it is aware of at least 25 Third Reich crimes-related cases which have been brought against Germany in Italian domestic courts since the 2012 court decision. Some of the proceedings resulted in rulings ordering Germany to pay compensation. To enforce the rulings, Italian authorities have been trying to seize four German state-owned properties in Rome, including buildings housing the German Archaeological Institute and the Goethe Institute.

Read more

Russia reveals details of Hitler’s last hours

Germany explained that despite confirmation of the non-commercial status of these properties by the Italian government, the Court of Rome has proceeded with the enforcement process and on 25 May 2022 will announce its decision on whether to put the buildings up for sale at a public auction.

“Under the circumstances, and as further detailed below, Germany is now compelled to seek provisional measures from the Court in order to safeguard its rights against irreparable harm,” Germany’s application states.

The dispute between Germany and Italy over compensation claims for Nazi crimes started in 2008 when Berlin was ordered by the highest Italian court to pay approximately 1 million euros to the families of nine victims, killed by the Germans in 1944 in Tuscany. Germany argues that since the end of the World War Two and Nazi regime’s defeat it has paid billions of euros to the countries affected in accordance with peace and reparation treaties.

No date was immediately set for hearings at the ICJ. Rulings by the United Nations court, which normally considers cases for years, are final and legally binding.

Serbia promises decision on Russia sanctions

Previously opposed to sanctioning Moscow, President Aleksandar Vucic has come under intense pressure from Washington to relent

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said that he will issue a statement on possible anti-Russia sanctions early next month, but will be guided by “the interests of Serbia” alone. Vucic has vehemently opposed penalizing Moscow for its offensive in Ukraine, but has come under pressure from the US to change his stance.

“As for us and the imposition of sanctions, I will talk about this more and more thoroughly on May 6,” Vucic told reporters at a military expo near Belgrade on Saturday, according to RIA Novosti. While acknowledging that he has been under pressure from unnamed politicians to acquiesce to the West’s sanctions regime, Vucic added that “our policy should be a policy of responsibility, a policy of development for Serbia, which will think about the interests of Serbia at every moment.”

From the outset of the conflict in Ukraine, Vucic has sought to maintain relations with both the West and Russia. Although Serbia voted for a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s military operation, Vucic later said that he was blackmailed into doing so, with his country threatened with energy sanctions if it refused.

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Serbia explains refusal to join anti-Russia sanctions

However, Vucic has since categorically refused to sanction Moscow. After being re-elected with 58% of the vote earlier this month, he stated that banning the import of Russian oil and gas would cripple the Serbian economy, and imposing sanctions would be “immoral and inefficient,” citing the hardship his own country suffered under EU, UN and US sanctions in the 1990s.

However, shortly after Vucic’s electoral victory, a trio of US senators visited Belgrade in a bid to win the president over to the West’s side. “We understand Serbia has a long cultural and economic history with Russia,” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, told reporters after meeting with Vucic. “But this is a moment where there is great risk if we…don’t send a united message about the consequences of Russia’s behavior in Ukraine.”

Murphy added that the US would continue to support Serbia’s path to joining the European Union, a path that likely depends on siding with the West against Moscow.

Serbia is a traditional ally of Russia, and anti-Western and particularly anti-NATO sentiment runs high in the country. NATO forces waged an air war against Serbia on behalf of Kosovan separatists in 1999, paving the way for UN peacekeepers to occupy Kosovo, severing the province from Serbia. 

As such, even Vucic’s decision to join the UN vote condemning Russia in February led to a thousands-strong pro-Russia protest on the streets of Belgrade.

“I don’t care about either Western or Eastern embassies. I don’t care about the Americans, or the Russians, or the Europeans, or anyone else. I will make decisions in accordance with the interests of the Republic of Serbia,” Vucic said on Saturday.