by Peter Koenig for The Saker Blog
Sanctions left and sanctions right. Financial mostly, taxes, tariffs, visas, travel bans – confiscation of foreign assets, import and export prohibitions and limitations; and also punishing those who do not respect sanctions dished out by Trump, alias the US of A, against friends of their enemies. The absurdity seems endless and escalating – exponentially, as if there was a deadline to collapse the world. Looks like a last-ditch effort to bring down international trade in favor of — what? – Make America Great Again? – Prepare for US mid-term elections? – Rally the people behind an illusion? – Or what?
All looks arbitrary and destructive. All is of course totally illegal by any international law or, forget law, which is not respected anyway by the empire and its vassals, but not even by human moral standards. Sanctions are destructive. They are interfering in other countries sovereignty. They are made to punish countries, nations, that refuse to bend to a world dictatorship.
Looks like everybody accepts this new economic warfare as the new normal. Nobody objects. And the United Nations, the body created to maintain Peace, to protect our globe from other wars, to uphold human rights – this very body is silent – out of fear? Out of fear that it might be ‘sanctioned’ into oblivion by the dying empire? – Why cannot the vast majority of countries – often it is a ratio of 191 to 2 (Israel and the US) – reign-in the criminals?
Imagine Turkey – sudden massive tariffs on aluminum (20%) and steel (50%) imposed by Trump, plus central bank currency interference had the Turkish Lira drop by 40%, and that ‘only’ because Erdogan is not freeing US pastor Andrew Brunson, who faces in Turkey a jail sentence of 35 years for “terror and espionage”. An Izmir court has just turned down another US request for clemency, however, converting his jail sentence to house arrest for health reason. It is widely believed that Mr. Brunson’s alleged 23 years of ‘missionary work’ is but a smoke screen for spying.
President Erdogan has just declared he would look out for new friends, including new trading partners in the east – Russia, China, Iran, Ukraine, even the unviable EU, and that his country is planning issuing Yuan-denominated bonds to diversify Turkey’s economy, foremost the country’s reserves and gradually moving away from the dollar hegemony.
Looking out for new friends, may also include new military alliances. Is Turkey planning to exit NATO? Would turkey be ‘allowed’ to exit NATO – given its strategic position maritime and land position between east and west? – Turkey knows that having military allies that dish out punishments for acting sovereignly in internal affair – spells disaster for the future. Why continue offering your country to NATO, whose only objective it is to destroy the east – the very east which is not only Turkey’s but the world’s future? Turkey is already approaching the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and may actually accede to it within the foreseeable future. That might be the end of Turkey’s NATO alliance.
What if Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China – and many more countries not ready to bow to the empire, would jail all those spies embedded in the US Embassies or camouflaged in these countries’ national (financial) institutions, acting as Fifth Columns, undermining their host countries’ national and economic policies? – Entire cities of new jails would have to be built to accommodate the empire’s army of criminals.
Imagine Russia – more sanctions were just imposed for alleged and totally unproven (to the contrary: disproven) Russian poisoning of four UK citizens with the deadly nerve agent, Novichok – and for not admitting it. This is a total farce, a flagrant lie, that has become so ridiculous, most thinking people, even in the UK, just laugh about it. Yet, Trump and his minions in Europe and many parts of the world succumb to this lie – and out of fear of being sanctions, they also sanction Russia. What has the world become? – Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, would be proud for having taught the important lesson to the liars of the universe: “Let me control the media, and I will turn any nation into a herd of Pigs”. That’s what we have become – a herd of pigs.
Fortunately, Russia too has moved away so far already from the western dollar-controlled economy that such sanctions do no longer hurt. They serve Trump and his cronies as mere propaganda tools – show-offs, “we are still the greatest!”.
Venezuela is being sanctioned into the ground, literally, by from-abroad (Miami and Bogota) Twitter-induced manipulations of her national currency, the Bolívar, causing astronomical inflations – constant ups and downs of the value of the local currency, bringing the national economy to a virtual halt. Imported food, pharmaceuticals and other goods are being deviated at the borders and other entry points, so they will never end up on supermarket shelves, but become smuggle ware in Colombia, where these goods are being sold at manipulated dollar-exchange rates to better-off Venezuelan and Columbian citizens. These mafia type gangs are being funded by NED and other similar nefarious State Department financed “NGOs”, trained by US secret services, either within or outside Venezuela. Once infiltrated into Venezuela – overtly or covertly – they tend to boycott the local economy from within, spread violence and become part of the Fifth Column, primarily sabotaging the financial system.
Venezuela is struggling to get out of this dilemma which has people suffering, by de-dollarizing her economy, partly through a newly created cryptocurrency, the Petro, based on Venezuela’s huge oil reserves and also through a new Bolivar – in the hope of putting the breaks on the spiraling bursts of inflation. This scenario reminds so much of Chile in 1973, when Henry Kissinger was Foreign Secretary (1973-1977), and inspired the CIA coup, by “disappearing” food and other goods from Chilean markets, killing legitimately elected President Allende, bringing Augusto Pinochet, a horrendous murderer and despot to power. The military dictatorship regime brought the death and disappearance of tens of thousands of people and lasted until 1990. Subjugating Venezuela might, however, not be so easy. After all, Venezuela has 19 years of revolutionary Chavista experience – and a solid sense of resistance.
Iran – is being plunged into a similar fate. For no reason at all, Trump reneged on the five-plus-one pronged so-called Nuclear Deal, signed in Vienna on 14 July 2015, after almost ten years of negotiations. Now – of course driven by the star-Zionist Netanyahu – new and ‘the most severe ever’ sanctions are being imposed on Iran, also decimating the value of their local currency, the Rial. Iran, under the Ayatollah, has already embarked on a course of “Resistance Economy”, meaning de-dollarization of their economy and moving towards food and industrial self-sufficiency, as well as increased trading with eastern countries, China, Russia, the SCO and other friendly and culturally aligned nations, like Pakistan. However, Iran too has a strong Fifth Column, engrained in the financial sector, that does not let go of forcing and propagating trading with the enemy, i.e. the west, the European Union, whose euro-monetary system is part of the dollar hegemony, hence posing similar vulnerability of sanctions as does the dollar.
China – the stellar prize of the Big Chess Game – is being ‘sanctioned’ with tariffs no end, for having become the world’s strongest economy, surpassing in real output and measured by people’s purchasing power, by far the United States of America. China also has a solid economy and gold-based currency, the Yuan – which is on a fast track to overtake the US-dollar as the number one world reserve currency. China retaliates, of course, with similar ‘sanctions’, but by and large, her dominance of Asian markets and growing economic influence in Europe, Africa and Latin America, is such that Trump’s tariff war means hardly more for China than a drop on a hot stone.
North Korea – the much-touted Trump-Kim mid-June Singapore summit – has long since become a tiny spot in the past. Alleged agreements reached then are being breached by the US, as could have been expected. All under the false and purely invented pretext of DPRK not adhering to her disarmament commitment; a reason to impose new strangulating sanctions. The world looks on. Its normal. Nobody dares questioning the self-styled Masters of the Universe. Misery keeps being dished out left and right – accepted by the brainwashed to-the-core masses around the globe. War is peace and peace is war. Literally. The west is living in a “peaceful” comfort zone. Why disturb it? – If people die from starvation or bombs – it happens far away and allows us to live in peace. Why bother? – Especially since we are continuously, drip-by-steady drip being told its right.
In a recent interview with PressTV I was asked, why does the US not adhere to any of their internationally or bilaterally concluded treaties or agreements? – Good question. – Washington is breaking all the rules, agreements, accords, treaties, is not adhering to any international law or even moral standard, simply because following such standards would mean giving up world supremacy. Being on equal keel is not in Washington’s or Tel Aviv’s interest. Yes, this symbiotic and sick relationship between the US and Zionist Israel is becoming progressively more visible; the alliance of the brute military force and the slick and treacherous financial dominion – together striving for world hegemony, for full spectrum dominance. This trend is accelerating under Trump and those who give him orders, simply because “they can”. Nobody objects. This tends to portray an image of peerless power, instilling fear and is expected to incite obedience. Will it?
What is really transpiring is that Washington is isolating itself, that the one-polar world is moving towards a multipolar world, one that increasingly disregards and disrespects the United States, despises her bullying and warmongering – killing and shedding misery over hundreds of millions of people, most of them defenseless children, women and elderly, by direct military force or by proxy-led conflicts – Yemen is just one recent examples, causing endless human suffering to people who have never done any harm to their neighbors, let alone to Americans. Who could have any respect left for such a nation, called the United States of America, for the people behind such lying monsters?
This behavior by the dying empire is driving allies and friends into the opposite camp – to the east, where the future lays, away from a globalized One-World-Order, towards a healthy and more equal multi-polar world. – It would be good, if our world body, the members of the United Nations, created in the name of Peace, would finally gather the courage and stand up against the two destroyer nations for the good of humanity, of the globe, and of Mother Earth.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog; and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
America’s trade wars, economic sanctions, and financial destabilization campaigns are nothing less than an American war by other means.
War is the lifeblood of the American Empire.
The Americans simply cannot exist without waging war of one sort another (military, economic, political, or information war) on any obstacle to their ambitions for a unipolar American New World Order.
“The new round of sanctions this week unleashed by the United States on Russia has only one meaning: the US rulers want to crush Russia’s economy. By any definition, Washington is, in effect, declaring war on Russia.
The implemented economic measures may have a seemingly abstract or sterile quality about them: banning electronic exports to Russia, rattling financial markets, stock prices falling. But the material consequence is that American officials are intending to inflict physical damage on Russian society and Russian people.
It’s economic warfare on a sliding scale to military warfare, as the Prussian General Karl von Clausewitz would no doubt appreciate.”
US Sanctions Are Pushing Russia to War
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/08/11/us-sanctions-pushing-russia-war.html
FTASC…Free Trade Agreement of Sanctioned Countries….try it, you may like the outcome.
First the author states unequivocally that “no one objects.” Then the rest of the article is a list of the countries that are objecting.
Is it
a) Is The US is the economic king of the world to whom no one can object? or
b) Is The US is isolating itself from the large sectors of the world economy that do object? or
c) Is The author is stuck in such a euro-centric, pan-American point of view that what he really meant is that no one who counts is objecting? If CNN and the BBC aren’t objecting, did the tree fall in the woods?
To my view, the US is trying to draw a new “Sanctions Curtain” across the world to divide it. If this continues, eventually everyone ends up on the US side and dependent on trade with the US and also dependent on the whims of the current Emperor or future Emperors which might decide to cut off any country at any time based on any whim? Or they end up on the same side of the “Sanctions Curtain” as China’s billion plus people and the future economic champion of the world? Its going to be one or the other.
Anyone want to start a pool on which President in which year will go begging to China pleading to be let in on the large economic zone from which the US has voluntarily separated itself?
Peter, this is how I see this sanctions hysteria. It’s like dying convulsions. The corps does not know it’s dead yet.
Hello Peter,
Excellent presentation!
Would it be too much to request a follow up article, presenting in a chronological order”all the rules, agreements, accords, treaties… international law[s]” that Washington has violated?
Agree. More details, footnotes, etc. would be most welcome!
Excellent article. Yes, the US is isolating itself and Europe is looking towards the East. And Washington ? It cannot forget the past. More of the same from it. It’s debatable if it can change its present course.
The scariest part is that these psychotic , supremacist Jews/Zionists in Tel Aviv and their tribal brethren and lackeys in the U.S. are ideologically driven.
Domination of the world, by whatever means possible, be it genocide if need be, is simply manifest destiny.
“Domination of the world …. manifest destiny” — I am not even sure that this deserves to be called “an ideology”. It is simply “power lust” on a global scale — a lust which countless empires in the past have exhibited.
In general, an “ideology” is nothing but a convenient legal, economic and/or historical dressing given to an underlying psychological drive. Great effort is put into making such an “ideology” respectable and palatable to masses — because of the potentially great “windfall profits involved.
Question:
========
”Who could have any respect left for such a nation, called the United States of America, for the people behind such lying monsters?”
Answers:
=======
The exceptional, indispensable garbage itself
Zionist Israel
Ukronazis
The world’s most underrated Latin Christians, a.k.a. Poles
The Brown And Little Tiny Insect CountrieS
They deserve each other really.
Re: reign-in the criminals
Horses and criminals are reined in. Kings on their thrones reign.
Koenig asks the question, “…as if there was a deadline to collapse the world. Looks like a last ditch effort to bring down international trade in favour of — what? To answer this we need to understand a basic fact that all states exist to enforce the dominance of elites, the rest being propaganda, misdirection, obfuscation and/or terrorism up to an including total war. Next we need to understand that behind its smokescreen of fine rhetoric that the UN was designed and instigated by international elites and in fact does not love you but rather is running the agenda of these elites, the voting entities all controlled by these international elites.
The ‘what?’ that Koenig wonders on is the standardization of all world systems, from finance and law and its enforcement through a universal standard of living. Indeed even capitalism with its gross inequalities is marked for an end. Brzezinki’s Technocratic Era, as we currently inhabit his “Between Two Ages”, is the replacement as the triumph of technological advancement is put to use for these ends. Quantum computing measured in the petabytes per fraction of a nano second coupled with Strong AI along with the re appropriation and revitalization of the Technocracy movement, based in Scientism, trans humanism and eugenics is the ‘Brave New World’ that awaits whatever remains of humanity when it exists the small end of the funnel we are all being fed into. All the international elites are on board with this even as they vie for a better position at the big table where the future is decided. Chinese elites lead the world in controlling the population there with the USA playing catch up. Russian elites will integrate, eg the Rosneft 18% to Glencore sale, but want a bigger share and say in the coming economic construct while the old crowd of dominant western elites like things just the way they are, but may have given the shop away by offshoring the productive western economy to the Chinese elites. These are the problems that are being worked out among these apex elites and the “Rights of Man’ are nowhere on the list of future protocols.
i fear you are right and hope you are wrong..
Any countries with common sense still intact must do the right thing – isolate and ignore u-s-a.
us regime’s win-lose mentality cum zero-sum thinking is the reason why it’s only a waste of time trying to talk sense or cooperate with u-s-a.
A World empire could have been a good thing. China joined it, and Russia wanted to join it. But, capriciousness and selfishness on the part of the ’emperor’ is destroying it. Most of the capriciousness is at the request of Israel in the Middle East. The selfishness is part of relations with S. America and Russia. Hopefully a new multipolar World will be a more peaceful World, but there is no guarantee.
“Quantum computing measured in the petabytes per fraction of a nano second coupled with Strong AI along with the re appropriation and revitalization of the Technocracy movement, based in Scientism, trans humanism and eugenics is the ‘Brave New World’ that awaits whatever remains of humanity when it exists the small end of the funnel we are all being fed into”
BRF! care to expand a little? what in greater detail, would this Brave New World look like?
Whatever that “Strong AI” wants, since that’s who will be ruling such a system.
Well said, my thoughts exactly. Millions out there condemn the Us admin hypocrites
I start to lose interest in articles where the author does not know the difference between ‘reign’ and ‘rein’, which is unfortunate because the message might be a very worthwhile one.
DavidC
It is more than likely that Mr Koenig knows the difference between reign and rein.
It is quite common, when proof-reading one’s own work, for the brain to glide gently over such errors. Rain and rein, less pardonable.
Personally, I judge the quality of an article by the argument/information it contains, rather than its spelling/punctuation, but each to his own.
“Being on equal keel is not in Washington’s or Tel Aviv’s interest. Yes, this symbiotic and sick relationship between the US and Zionist Israel is becoming progressively more visible; the alliance of the brute military force and the slick and treacherous financial dominion – together striving for world hegemony, for full spectrum dominance. This trend is accelerating under Trump and those who give him orders, simply because “they can”.
Excellent analysis from PK.
The U.S. regime seems to think it has the clout to bully the entire world at once into submission. Perhaps what they are really trying to provoke is a hot war. The way this empire is behaving, I think they invite their own downfall. I hope this does not include a suicidal tendency, that if we can’t have the entire bone, nobody else is getting a little piece either. It could mean nuclear war.
Anti-Semitic dribble. (…) I also don’t expect this post to see the light of day.
You are right, with that kind of opening your comment does not deserve to be posted :-P
“This behavior by the dying empire is driving allies and friends into the opposite camp – to the east, where the future lays”
If in the present tense, what lies ahead. If in the past tense, what lay ahead. Lie and lay both have many definitions, but they’re most often confused where lie means to recline and lay means to put down. But the distinction is simple: Lay needs an object—something being laid—while lie cannot have an object.
It would be nice to know on which side of the political spectrum each poster here resides. It would go a long way to understanding where each opinion is coming from. I am a conservative-leaning Independent living in the US. Meaning, I’m not registered Republican, nor Democrat (our 2 parties). I think for my self. I don’t trust either party.
After watching Obama (and his tranny wife) attempt to destroy the moral fabric of this nation I’m glad Hillary didn’t win. His whole existence was a fraud. He hid his bonafides behind legalese and obfuscated his very existence. From our perspective, we dodged a bullet designed by Marxists to destroy the US. The proof is the ‘new’ Fascist AntiFa reaction to what most people would consider ‘normal’ debate. Expressing ones opinion is a dangerous activity! Never before have people been attacked for exercising their rights. Never before has an election been so contested. All because Hillary didn’t win. The media (MSM) is complicit. They distort the truth at every turn. They are the 4th Estate and supposed to be arbiters of facts and honest opinion, instead they are the propaganda arm of the left. Even the universities teach leftist ideology where students can’t handle opposing opinions without ‘safe spaces’ and needing to shut down opposing debate lest they be forced to hear the facts that challenge their beliefs. Our cherished ‘freedom of speech’ is being destroyed. Even their science is ‘settled’. Science is NEVER settled! But they will physically hurt you if you challenge it! That’s how stupid it has become!!
The activities of the participants of the last election border on treason and sedition at the highest levels in our government. The US Constitution specifically states how elections occur. There was a plan set in motion (fake Russian dossier) by the left to remove Trump from office should he win. Trump is dismantling the old guard. That’s why they hate him. From here I see the corrupt deep state (the elite) fighting to retain control. They are losing control over the world.
His tariffs are designed to equal the playing field. No tariffs on each side and fair and honest dealings would be preferable. Why do other nations charge the US a tariff and the US does not? The result is all of our manufacturing has left for ‘cheaper’ labor while leaving the middle class jobless. Homeless people are everywhere (I never saw that before and I’m age 66). The reason China is a ‘market’ at all is because of the US. The US is losing because of corrupt politicians and poor business practices. Trump is putting an end to all that. Read his book “The Art Of the Deal” and understand what he is doing for the nation is what he has done for his business.
From my perspective we are getting back on track as a leading nation. George Washington advised to ‘…avoid foreign entanglements…’, i.e., trade with, but don’t get involved in their politics. Trump brokering peace with North Korea (getting the CIA out and their control over Kim) and his communications with Putin in Russia are pointing toward that end. The adverse reaction to that achievement by the MSM and politicians here is telling. The US Military Industrial Complex needs a perennial enemy (your nation may be next!) and if Hillary would have won we’d be in a world war with Russia already. I see Trump attempting to trade with the world and the opposition call it treason!
Needless to say it’s difficult to define here what is really going on in the US unless you have an open mind and look at all sides. It’s more difficult when the MSM reports fake news and distorts what is really going on. I hope this all makes sense as it is such a HUGE ball of everything jumbled together. There is no easy solution and perhaps there is no solution at all. We didn’t even touch on world debt levels which are capable of bringing the world economy down to its knees – i.e., world wide depression!!
PS “MSM” means ‘main stream media’ as there is the ‘old guard media’ we are expected to trust because of ‘tradition’ and there is the new ‘opposing viewpoints online’ because the internet destroyed the old ways of disseminating information. It’s a struggle for control of the narrative. Control the narrative and you control the world.
-His tariffs are designed to equal the playing field. No tariffs on each side and fair and honest dealings would be preferable. Why do other nations charge the US a tariff and the US does not?-
Funny how a post WW2 trading, finance, and economic system that was designed and operated by the American Empire now needs to be equaled (leveled) because a population which ranks in the mid-twenties in academic performance and survives on importing genius isn’t doing so well anymore. For the last seventy years, the Imperial Administrators allowed client states. or ‘allies’ (snicker) to eat out the guts of the American economy in order to hold absolute power in the world (tagged national security) and the cost of maintaining the Empire is at least 300 billion dollars for the hundreds of bases and hundreds of thousands of troops overseas, ready to do the bidding of those ‘allies’ (snort!) who pay out the most cash and manage reelection of the most sevile lackey parliament in the history of the world…or duly elected representatives of the shee…um people. Either/or. Yep, let’s go overseas in search of scapegoats because we ain’t gonna take it no more. Wait! no need! The enemy is crossing the border as we speak!
Watch this video from “In Pursuit of Truth” on youtube and learn what has gone on in the US and what Trump is dealing with.
The Trilogy Begins: FISA = Start In Pursuit of Truth Presents – 8.20.18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NfjlzU9WoQ
It’s an automatic credibility gap whenever Venezuela is mentioned in the list of sanctioned countries as if the goofy sanctions the USA finally threw on the Chamos is soley and directly responsible for the near-starvation conditions there. As everyone in Central and South America is aware, those with talent and cash fled Caracas and environs when Chavez was confiscating and nationalizing everything that hard-working people had accumulated, all in the name of the scum of the ghettos. ‘Gimee dat!’ is what tanked Venezuela. Siphoning off PDVSA profits scheduled for capital reinvestment/increased petroleum production in order to buy big screen TV’s for ‘la gente’ is where you might want to start looking if you’re looking for blame. A foreign policy of giving away the nation’s natural resources at deep discounts to prop up other authoritarian socialist dictatorships like Cuba and Nicaragua didn’t help the national mood nor the national finances. It’s Maduro that owns the Venezuelan nightmare, not the buffoon in the White House.