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The United States of America has sunk to a new low in diplomacy and civilized relations between nation states with its demand that Russia close its consular missions in San Francisco, Washington and New York, quickly followed by its order that the consular staff leave the premises while the FBI conducted a search of the premises and staffers personal apartments. To order the closure of a mission, or to order the withdrawal of a member of diplomatic staff, is within its right but a search of consular property is not. It is a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961.
Article 22 of the Convention states:
1. “The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.
2.The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.
3.The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.”
Article 45 states that even
“If diplomatic relations are broken off between two States, or if a mission is permanently or temporarily recalled:
(a) The receiving State must, even in case of armed conflict, respect and protect the premises of the mission, together with its property and archives;
(b) The sending State may entrust the custody of the premises of the mission, together with its property and archives, to a third State acceptable to the receiving State;”
The Vienna Convention is one of the foundations of international relations. Without it, and the ancient customs enshrined in it, international relations cannot exist. The United States of America is a state party to the Convention and so is bound by it as part of international law and as part of American law.
The Russian Foreign Ministry correctly stated that, “the occupation of Russian diplomatic properties in the US is a blunt act of hostility and in violation of international law.” The Russians also expressed their logical concern that the only reason for such a search to be conducted, aside from bullying and intimidation of the Russian people, is to use it as an opportunity for the Americans to plant items, which they will then use in their propaganda war against Russia. This concern is valid and strong since there can be no valid reason to insist on the staff leaving the premises so a “search” can be made except that the US government does not want its FBI agents observed.
This action by the USA is not just a crime against Russia. It is a crime against all the nations of the world who depend on the articles of the Vienna Convention to protect their diplomats and properties in host nations without which international diplomacy cannot be conducted. For if the USA will do this to Russia it will do it to anyone it chooses. No nation can now regard its diplomatic missions in the United States as protected, as the Convention requires. The ramifications will take a while to sink in but in effect the United States has now declared itself to be a rogue state that has no respect for its own or international law and the rights of other nations.
It is also a profoundly stupid action that can only damage the United States itself since, by its own example, it can no longer expect other nations to respect the diplomatic immunity of its diplomatic missions around the world.
So, why has the United States undertaken such a reckless and provocative action? There is no doubt that it is part of the bizarre and clumsy propaganda theme that Russia interfered in the American elections and so the “search” is meant to raise in the minds of Americans that there is something to be searched for, some evidence of a “crime.” Why this would be found in San Francisco is a mystery but the American government and media never seem to bother about logical plot lines in their propaganda stories.
The other reason is to provoke Russia. The provocations against Russia from Ukraine, to Latvia, from Crimea to Syria, continue to escalate. The provocations on the diplomatic front have been many, but it was Obama that expelled 35 Russian diplomats just before he left office and ordered the seizure of two Russian compounds. The Russia government held off responding to that for several months, hoping that the new US administration would be more reasonable, but in vain. Things just got worse and so the Russians ordered America to cut its diplomatic presence in Russia. The American seizure of more Russian properties and the search of the San Francisco mission are in line with the American logic of hostility towards Russia.
The provocative nature of this action is revealed in the statement of Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, quoted by Tass, on Sunday the 3rd of September,
“By the way, do you know, what they were looking for – as we were told before the searches? You would not believe it – they were looking for explosives,” she said, adding ironically that it can be easily imagined how Russian diplomats are carrying explosive substances in their elegant cases.”
And,
“According to Zakharova, the US security services obviously hoped Russian diplomats would lose their nerves and here there will be ‘an image of an aggressive Russian. Just try to imagine that you are being brainwashed for a year that an enemy is living overseas and this enemy is impacting your life and everything bad that might happen – the election of a president you don’t like – has been done by the Russians,’ she said.”
There we have it, The American government has become completely unhinged. They appear to have lost all sense of reality and can be said to be suffering from a type of psychosis and for all that are becoming more dangerous. A US government spokesperson stated that President Trump ordered this latest action, once again proving that Trump, for all his narcissism and arrogance, simply follows the long line of American presidents who have stirred up trouble in the world.
So far as I can determine, no other country has conducted itself like this before, not even the United States. Even the Japanese were not treated this way after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese embassy was locked down, put under the control of a neutral country and the Japanese diplomats allowed to leave the country. That is, the United States then, even in the face of a direct military attack against it by Japan, still adhered to international law and respected diplomatic customs. So far has the United States declined into barbarity that it does not now afford to Russia, a fellow member of the United Nations, and with whom war has not broken out, the same courtesies that were applied to Japan, a nation that attacked it. In fact, by its action, it negates Russia as a sovereign nation, since it denies Russia is entitled to the respect and courtesy due to all sovereign nations.
So far the Russian response has been muted, simply calling in the American deputy ambassador to hand him a note of protest. The First deputy chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Duma stated, “The US authorities may rest assured that the searches will not go unanswered.” But how? It is clear the Americans don’t give a tinker’s dam about law or custom or civilized behavior and are intent on provoking Russia. So what can an appropriate response be? I can only recall, once again, something my friend, Harold Pinter, the Nobel Laureate for Literature said in his acceptance speech. He stated,
“The United States quite simply doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant.”
“How to make them give a damn,” he once asked me, “before they kill us all?”
How indeed? I do not know but I do know that the nations of the world, including Russia, should pay heed to what Harold Pinter said, to think about it, to understand what the American action means at a deep level, and only then to respond accordingly.
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
https://journal-neo.org/2017/09/06/international-law-the-americans-don-t-give-a-damn/
source: https://journal-neo.org/2017/09/06/international-law-the-americans-don-t-give-a-damn/
An Enemy Is Not A Partner
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/09/06/dear-russia-enemy-not-partner/
[…]
Russia can’t do anything about her designation as Enemy Number One.
So, what can Russia do?
All Russia can do is to turn her back to the West, while watching very closely for the coming suprise attack. There is nothing in America for Russia. Any American investment in Russia will be used to damage Russia. Russia does not need any American capital. The Russian central bank’s belief in Russia’s need for foreign capital is proof of the successful brainwashing of Russian economists by American neoliberalism during the Yeltsin era. The Russian central bank is so brainwashed that it is incapable of understanding that the Russian central bank can finance Russian development without any foreign loans. The Russian government still doesn’t seem to understand that the only reason sanctions can be imposed on Russia is because Russia is ensnared in the Western financial system. The economic advice that the Russian government gets from its brainwashed neoliberal economists serves Washington’s interests, not Russia’s.
Russia should not be using Western financial clearing mechanisms that serve Washington’s interests.
When will the Russian government cease pretending that its enemy is its partner?
[…]
Good question.
When the RF is strong enough and self-sufficient enough to stand apart.
Meanwhile, it has partners in the West that serve well in various sectors.
French and German companies, Italian companies and others from the EU are good partners. Long historical relationships. Stable.
Russia was dying when Putin saved it. Look back at the condition of the society and economy and military and sci-tech and education and medical sectors in 1999. See how many obstacles and threats and attacks have been thrown at Mother Russia since 1999.
Now cound the years. Very short period of time with virtually not a three-year block of tranquility through that spate of time.
Look ahead ten years. Maybe then, maybe not.
Sounds easy. Putin knows his country like no other person.
With the deep corruption, criminality and alcoholism, Liberal undermining and NGO duplicity, Russia is still growing and improving. And much of those maladies are greatly reduced since 1999.
Putin, Rogozin and Shoigu have worked miracles for Russia manufacturing.
The sanctions have worked miracles for agricultural development and import replacement with native content.
Could someone have done more or better?
Laughable. Putin, while handling all the problems and challenges, has won the Middle East, stopped NATO, CENTCOM and the Hegemon, destroyed ISIS as a Caliphate, saved Syria, helped save Iraq, saved Turkey and is extracting it from NATO, will save Egypt and Libya in the coming years.
His partners who worked against him are losers, big losers.
His partners who worked with him are winners, big winners.
And he has customers for more old and new Russian exports than ever before.
Not perfect. Just very astoundingly successful.
“Partner” is just a term for “those we still talk to”. Some are cooperative or strategic, and others are just otherwise. Not an enemy, maybe a threat, maybe an annoyance, maybe nothing. Like an acquaintance. In diplomacy, they use the word “partner”.
‘When will the Russian government cease pretending that its enemy is its partner?
[…]’
when they decide they want war – they will never do that
Speaking in Jungian terms, Russia is PCR’s anima, his repressed, and therefore unconscious, ‘better half’.
When we hear PCR moaning and whining about what Russia should or shouldn’t do – as he is regularly doing – PCR is always talking about himself without knowing it, about his regrets in his life, about the trials and tribulations little Paul had to go through, the heart-breaking compromises he had to make in order to survive the brutal initiation by conditioning and socialization into the dubious grandiosity of modern society.
We all know the score, and we all have our own stories to tell (without projecting them on Putin and Russia, hopefully.)
: )
i would agree with you _smr if PCR was a simple man, out of the “volk”
but he isnt.
PCR is just a fake dissident, you can notice this because he always
gives advice “Russia/Putin/China/Xi/Iran should do this .. do that… etc”
but never EVER has he said what the American people should do,
and that is arrest the swamp, starting with McCain and Hillary for
warcrimes and treason.
this is a clear giveaway: PCR is fake dissident.
and btw, dont you think he would have been already “suicided” if he was
against the deep state for real.
No, I don’t think PCR is a fake dissident. And it is definitely not true that he only criticises Russia. On many, many occasions he has very explicitly stated his utter contempt for the Washington establishment, referring to them as the most criminal murderous thieving entity on the planet.
You complain that he has never said that Americans should “arrest the swamp”. So what?
One reason he hasn’t said such a thing is that it sounds silly. Another reason is that he counts on the fact that any reader with a couple of functioning neurons will have no difficulty interpreting the fact that he repeatedly has referred to Washington (“the swamp”) in terms of the most criminal murderous thieving gang on earth, as containing the very clear *implication* that they should “be arrested”. Would you refer to someone in those terms if you didn’t think they should, at the very least, “be arrested”?
It is true that PCR sounds a bit naive in his eagerness for Russia and China to show more resolve against the endlessly outrageous behavior exhibited by the criminal imperial gang. We are all guilty of that. We are all in a sense in the position of a schoolyard observer who keeps hoping someone will stand up to the abusive bully.
I interpret his impatience towards Russia’s appeasing and measured replies, as gauge of the complete disgust he feels towards the bully. Again, he gives voice to our collective frustrated impotence, being himself part of that impotence.
In any case, what difference would you think it would make if he had said to Americans: “arrest the swamp!” ? Give me a break!
In one of his articles, back in January, when he was still naively enthusiastic about Trump (right after Trump’s inaugural speech) he wrote the following:
“If he is assassinated, we need to take up our weapons, burn Langley to the ground and kill every one of them.” http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/01/20/trumps-declaration-war/
Is that sufficiently close to your “arrest the swamp” requirement, or what do you need?
Well, Trump has not been assassinated. He has simply been painlessly castrated under the sweet anesthesia of offers he could not refuse. There is no need to assassinate a eunuch to protect your harem from him, is there?
Or maybe (much more likely) Trump was a fake all along.
I do think PCR is often too naive, emotional and prone to simplified wishful thinking in his understandable indignation. But then so is Saker sometimes. Neither of them comes across as fakes in their dissidence. Not to me at least.
You might want to think about it like this:
If they search the Russian consulate in SF for explosives, there is a definite possibility that the US is carrying explosive materials in a consulate in the Russian Federation.
It is called immunization.
Any reaction to the latter scenario then just looks like tit-for-tat.
Or at least, the US is pissed at being openly rumbled, now, for sitting on pallets of $100 bills in their embassy during the Yeltsin campaign in the 1990s.
Also: Just because somebody says Trump ordered it, doesn’t mean Trump ordered it. It just means that Trump can’t deny it and survive.
– Regards, Shyaku.
The zionazis are closing the diplomacy door deliberately here. The message is: “we don’t give a damn about the colonials’ rep or how our use of them will affect them personally any more. They are mere tools to effect our rule.”
The sods see they are losing their power and are going all out now.
actually I think this rape of Russian property is a follow of Russiagate – its the DNC secret power in Washington DC – doing this – I wonder if Trump even knew it was going to happen before it was happening –
The country is turning from a covert police state to an overt police state.
Fourth Amendment Freedoms are Being Choked, “Guilty until Proven Innocent”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/fourth-amendment-freedoms-are-being-choked-guilty-until-proven-innocent/5608005
“The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official.”—Herman Schwartz, The Nation
Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—are being choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, shoot, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.
Such is life in America today that Americans are being made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States: we are now guilty until proven innocent.
Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans are being forced to accept that we have no control over our bodies, our lives and our property, especially when it comes to interactions with the government.”
Americans have been so dumbed-down and brainwashed they believe anything and everything the US Government does is fine. It is a disgusting situation and all Americans should be outraged and ashamed!