De VS vecht niet alleen tegen China maar tegen heel Azië.......

Antony Blinken, de VS minister van buitenlandse zaken (en oorlogsmisdadiger), heeft z'n tour door Zuidoost-Azië moeten afbreken vanwege een meereizende journalist die positief werd getest op COVID-19. De tour was erop gericht de banden aan te halen met de landen in dat gebied dat strategisch belangrijk is voor de VS. Deze banden hebben niet alleen schade opgelopen door het opkomen van China als economische grootmacht, maar ook door de voorspoed van de rest van Azië op economisch gebied.  

Niet dat het afbreken van deze tour veel zou hebben veranderd daar de VS voor de landen in de regio vanwege 'bepaalde transparantie' terecht flink door de mand is gevallen als een kwaadaardige zichzelf dienende natie, terwijl de VS zich altijd verkocht als grote vriend en behartiger van de belangen die deze landen hebben..... Lullig genoeg heeft e.e.a. ook te maken met de situatie in Birma*, daar de VS de partij van Aung San Suu Kyi**, de National League for Democracy (NDL), al decennia lang steunde en ook een fikse bak geld in de verkiezingen stak die de partij en Aung San aan de macht hielp......Iets wat je wel een waanzinnig resultaat kan noemen, zeker als je bedenkt dat men in Zuidoost-Azië schoon genoeg had van de militaire dictatuur in Birma...... (ofwel door het handelen van de VS heeft de nieuwe dictatuur ondanks alle geweld krediet kunnen opbouwen in de regio.....) 

De trip van Blinken was dan ook meer gericht op het dwarsbomen van China's pogingen om meer invloed uit te kunnen oefenen in haar regio, dan een werkelijke poging om de banden en onderlinge belangenbehartiging van de landen met de VS te stimuleren.... De schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, Brian Berletic, stelt dan ook terecht dat wat Washington wil bereiken tegen China ten koste zal gaan van de landen in Zuidoost-Azië..... Logisch, daar de sancties die de VS tegen China heeft genomen, zelfs de omliggende landen (exclusief Taiwan en Japan) harder treffen dan China zelf, dit juist vanwege de economische banden met die landen...... 

Op de Salomonseilanden heeft de VS een opstand georganiseerd en geregisseerd, daar de regering nauwe banden met China heeft aangeknoopt......

In feite is de VS bezig haar op regels-gebaseerde-orde te beschermen, wat neerkomt op het beschermen van de VS hegemonie in het gebied, terwijl van die hegemonie al niet veel meer over is (hegemonie is het overwicht van een land op andere landen).

CNBC stelde over de tour van Blinken dat deze was gericht op het stimuleren van de banden met Zuidoost-Azië tijdens oplopende spanningen met China aldus een 'expert', waar Blinken zelf NB stelde dat de landen in de regio de op regels-gebaseerde-orde (van de VS!!) dienen te respecteren....... 

Waar Blinken verder stelde dat deze orde er niet is om andere landen onder de duim te houden, maar eerder om het recht te beschermen van alle landen om hun eigen pad te kiezen, vrij van dwang en intimidatie..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Waar haalt deze opperschoft het lef vandaan om zo keihard te liegen, als de  VS ergens mee bezig is is het juist het tegenovergestelde van wat hij openlijk durft te beweren: desnoods zet de VS zelfs democratische gekozen presidenten en premiers af als het betreffende land niet gehoorzaam aan de hand van de VS loopt, ofwel de VS gebruikt juist dwang en intimidatie om landen in haar gareel te krijgen, zelfs het manipuleren van democratische verkiezingen is de VS niet vreemd, bewijzen te over, terwijl deze grootste terreurentiteit ter wereld de hand niet omdraait om daar dodelijk geweld voor aan te wenden..... (alleen deze eeuw is de VS al verantwoordelijk voor 5 miljoen moorden middels illegale oorlogen, standrechtelijke executies [internationaal verboden] met drones en geheime militaire acties, zoals de VS deze af en aan uitvoert in Jemen waar deze vereniging van terreurstaten de genocide steunt die de Saoedische terreurcoalitie uitvoert op de sjiieten in dat land.....)

Dat was het uiteraard nog niet, Blinken vervolgde met te zeggen dat het niet gaat om een strijd tussen de VS en China om een door hen gecentraliseerde regio te scheppen, daar de Indo-Pacific haar eigen regio is...... ha! ha! ha! ha! Wat een leugenaar!! De VS  is daar wel degelijk op uit, sterker deze terreurentiteit had deze regio voor een fiks deel in haar macht, maar is die grotendeels kwijtgeraakt aan de economische reus die China is geworden, bovendien ligt China in de regio en ondanks dat de VS 400 militaire bases heeft vanwaar het China kan aanvallen, ligt de VS duizenden kilometers verwijderd van dat gebied!!

Voorts heeft Blinken kritiek geuit op 'China's agressie' in de Zuid-Chinese Zee, waarbij dat land een bedreiging is voor de meer dan 3 biljoen dollar aan handel die via deze zee loopt..... ha! ha! ha! ha! Een groot deel van die handel komt en gaat NB van en naar China!! Ook de handel van andere Aziatische naties met China gaan door die zee en zijn belangrijk voor zowel die landen als China en de meeste van die landen rekenen China dan ook tot hun top handelspartner...... Als er één land is, is het de VS wel dat een gevaar vormt voor het gebied van de Zuid-Chinese Zee waar het met haar NAVO-partners uitermate gevaarlijke maritiem militaire spelletjes speelt en dat in een gebied waar de VS niets, maar dan ook helemaal niets heeft te zoeken!!!

De VS is in weerwil van eigen zeggen met haar militaire troepen verdeeld over de regio en met haar varend oorlogstuig een echt gevaar voor de handelsroute door de Zuid-Chinese Zee, het is dan ook op zeker de bedoeling van de VS om de Chinese handel plat te leggen, zelfs als dat haar eigen economie zal schaden....... Berletic wijst hierbij ook op de in 2016 door RAND Corporation in opdracht van het VS leger gemaakte plan met de titel: 'War with China, Thinking Through the Unthinkable......'

In dit plan wordt o.a. gesteld dat een oorlog met China  kan worden beslist met niet-militaire factoren, die de VS moeten dienen niet alleen nu maar ook in de toekomst, daarbij  wordt verder gezegd dat een oorlog zowel de Chinese als de VS economie hard zal treffen, maar dat de economische klap voor China veel harder zal zijn, volgens RAND zou de economie van China door oorlog een vermindering geven van 25 tot 35% op het bruto binnenlands product en dat deze voor de VS zal liggen in de orde van 5 tot 10%...... ('dus de moeite van het oorlogvoeren waard.....')

Het RAND plan stelt voorts dat een intensieve en uitgebreide oorlog in het westen van de Stille Oceaan bijna de gehele de Chinese handel zal treffen, daar deze voor 95% wordt uitgevoerd via de zeeroutes, terwijl de handel van de VS alleen zal worden getroffen door juist de handel met China en in mindere mate met de rest van Zuidoost-Azië......

Gezien het voorgaande kan je dan ook niet anders concluderen dan dat de VS weliswaar zegt de landen in de regio te willen beschermen, terwijl de VS nota bene het grootste gevaar is voor die landen!!!

Berletic merkt (nogmaals volkomen terecht) op dat wat betreft de op regels-gebaseerde-orde van de VS misschien (daar had Berletic 'zeker' moeten schrijven) deze eeuw (en wat mij betreft het grootste deel van de vorige) de meest agressieve natie is op aarde. De VS heeft met haar serie-oorlogsvoering (zonder uitzondering illegaal), regime veranderende campagnes, verregaande politieke bemoeienis in diverse buitenlanden en misdaden tegen de menselijkheid, een pad van dood, vernietiging en destabilisatie getrokken over de wereld >> van Latijns America over Afrika, het hele Midden-Oosten opslokkend en reikend tot centraal Azië en zelfs daar voorbij........ 

Gezien het voorgaand is de conclusie van Berletic volkomen logisch: China is in hoge mate afhankelijk van handel door de Zuid-Chinese Zee, een verstoring van die handel zou catastrofaal zijn voor China..... De bemoeienis en propaganda van de VS met/over de Zuid-Chinese Zee, respectievelijk China is erop gericht de militaire aanwezigheid van de VS in dat gebied te rechtvaardigen en mogelijk de handel te schaden en daarmee China een fatale klap toe te brengen, anders gezegd; De VS heeft werkelijk plannen om aan te vallen en dat beste bezoeker betekent maar één ding: een Derde Wereldoorlog (WOIII), immers het is zedker dat Rusland China zal steunen en de VS en haar NAVO-partners zijn dan ook niet voor niets op eenzelfde manier bezig langs de grenzen en territoriale wateren van Rusland.....

Over dat laatste gesproken: het is ronduit schandalig dat de VS en haar oorlogshond de NAVO Rusland beschuldigen troepen samen te trekken langs de grens met Oekraïne, terwijl dat land al is afgeladen met NAVO troepen, de modernste wapens uit de VS en training voor het grotendeels neonazi-leger van dat land..... Verder zijn die NAVO troepen bijna het jaarrond bezig met grootschalige militaire oefeningen langs de grenzen en territoriale wateren van Rusland, waarbij men NB traint op het binnenvallen van Russisch grondgebied..... Daarbij zijn grote aantallen militairen betrokken, meer dan Rusland er aan de grens met Oekraïne heeft staan..... Vergeet daarbij niet dat de VS een raketschild heeft gebouwd in Polen en Roemenië, zogenaamd tegen raketten uit Iran, terwijl de raketten van dat schild in 'no time' kunnen worden uitgerust met meerdere kernkoppen en dan kunnen worden gebruikt voor het aanvallen van Rusland (de VS heeft met dat schild dan ook het INF-verdrag geschonden, immers die raketten kunnen doelen treffen op een afstand die verboden is in dat verdrag.....)

Overigens is AUKUS, het verdrag dat de VS sloot met Groot-Brittannië (GB) en Australië, gekeerd tegen China, nogmaals een teken dat de VS inderdaad uit is op oorlog met China......

Lees het artikel van Berletic, die nog verder op deze zaak ingaat en zegt het voort, het is de hoogste tijd dat men weer massaal de straat opgaat om te demonstreren tegen het westerse oorlog zoeken met China en Rusland!! WOIII zal onherroepelijk leiden tot het gebruik van kernwapens en de VS heeft zelfs de idee zo'n oorlog te kunnen winnen >> al onder Obama heeft de VS haar beleid tot het gebruik van kernwapens veranderd, van een afschrikkingswapen (als wij worden aangevallen met kernwapens slaan we terug met kernwapens) tot een eerste aanvalswapen, deze beleidsverandering werd gevolgd door GB en na een paar maanden door Rusland, waar de reguliere media aan de beleidsverandering van de VS en GB amper aandacht besteedden, ging men collectief de plaat uit toen Rusland ook bekend maakte het kernwapen als eerste aanvalswapen te kunnen inzetten, terwijl Rusland in feite niet anders kon na de meer dan misdadige beslissing van de VS en GB........

(On the top right hand side of this page you can choose for a translation in the language of your choice, first choose 'Engels' [English] so you can recognise your own language [the Google translation is first in Dutch, a language most people don't understand, while on the other hand most people recognise there language translated in English])

(als je het Engels niet machtig bent, kopieer dan de Engelse tekst en plak die in deze vertaalapp, de app werkt snel en de vertaling is van een redelijk goede kwaliteit)

 

The US Fights Asia, Not Just China

By New Atlas

December 22, 2021

 

December 22, 2021 (Brian Berletic – NEO) – US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken cut short his tour of Southeast Asia due to concerns over COVID-19, the New York Times would report. The aborted trip comes at a time when the US finds itself struggling for relevance in a region it had once held considerably more sway over. This most recent turn for the worse from America’s perspective is owed not only to the rise of China, but also the rise of Asia as a whole.

 

The trip was Blinken’s first visit to the region since US President Joe Biden took office. The tour likely wouldn’t have accomplished much even if it wasn’t cut short. Washington’s agenda in the region has become increasingly transparent in terms of its self-serving and malignant nature.

Perhaps lost on many still consuming Western media is the fact that the trip was organized more as an effort by Washington to thwart China rather than any sort of genuine effort to boost constructive and mutually beneficial ties with the actual nations of Southeast Asia. Much of what Washington seeks to accomplish versus China will, by design, be done at Southeast Asia’s expense.

Protecting the “Rules-Based Order” Means Protecting US Hegemony

American media outlet CNBC in its article, “Blinken’s trip aims to boost US ties with Southeast Asia amid rising tensions with China, says expert,” would note Secretary Blinken’s reasoning behind the trip, claiming:

“Let me be clear: the goal of defending the rules-based order is not to keep any country down. Rather, it’s to protect the right of all countries to choose their own path, free from coercion and intimidation, ” said Blinken, who will also visit Malaysia and Thailand this week. 

“It’s not about a contest between a US-centric region or a China-centric region – the Indo-Pacific is its own region,” he added.

The Secretary of State also criticized China’s aggression in the South China Sea, noting it threatened more than $3 trillion in annual trade and is a cause of growing concern.

In terms of an actual “rules based order,” the United States is perhaps the most abusive nation on Earth this century. Its serial wars of aggression, regime change campaigns, political interference, and crimes against humanity have cut a swath of death, destruction, and destabilization from Latin America, across Africa, swallowing the entire Middle East, reaching as far east as Central Asia, and even beyond.

Myanmar, located in Southeast Asia, neighboring Thailand where Secretary Blinken was supposed to visit, is currently suffering internal armed conflict between the US-sponsored opposition and Myanmar’s military-led government. The conflict began after Myanmar’s military removed the government of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NDL) – a party built and backed by the US for decades before it was finally installed into power through elections heavily influenced by US government financing.

The conflict has since strained relations within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), threatens a humanitarian crisis as refugees flee the fighting between government forces and heavily armed militants, and is impacting the regional economy. It also – without coincidence – has impacted China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) taking shape across the region.

From Venezuela to Myanmar and everywhere in between the US demonstrates what “rules-based order” actually translates to – US hegemony under which the rules apply to everyone else to maintain US hegemony at the cost of everyone else.

The US Seeks to “Protect” a Region it itself Deliberately Threatens 

Even in the South China Sea where Secretary Blinken accuses China of threatening more than $3 trillion in annual trade – the only actual threat is posed by the US Navy’s own presence and a policy of taking ordinary maritime disputes and attempting to transform them into a regional or global crisis.

Trade through the South China Sea primarily and overwhelmingly benefits China. “China Power,” a project of the US government-funded Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), even provides a map quite literally illustrating just how much trade through the South China Sea benefits China.

Chinese trade through these waters eclipses trade through the same waters of all G7 nations combined. Other nations in the Indo-Pacific region with significant trade through the South China Sea count China as their top trading partner. China clearly isn’t going to threaten its own trade nor the trade of nations that count it as a key economic partner.

The US, however, by claiming otherwise, is able to justify positioning its military forces across the region and thus pose an actual threat to maritime trade. In fact, disrupting maritime trade for China is a key objective of a potential US war waged on China as laid out by the RAND Corporation in a 2016 paper commissioned by the US military aptly titled, “War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable.”

The paper makes particular note of the “importance of nonmilitary factors” stating:

The prospect of a military standoff means that war could eventually be decided by nonmilitary factors. These should favor the United States now and in the future. Although war would harm both economies, damage to China’s could be catastrophic and lasting: on the order of a 25–35 percent reduction in Chinese gross domestic product (GDP) in a yearlong war, compared with a reduction in US GDP on the order of 5–10 percent. 

The paper also notes:

In considering the economic costs of war, perhaps the most significant asymmetry is that intensive and extensive combat in the Western Pacific would disrupt nearly all Chinese trade (95 percent of it being seaborne), whereas the United States would mainly suffer the loss of bilateral trade with China and, to a much lesser extent than China, trade with the rest of East Asia. 

It is abundantly clear that China depends on trade and on trade through the South China Sea in particular. Its disruption would be catastrophic for China. The US has fabricated its current narrative regarding the South China Sea specifically to justify maintaining a US military presence in the region to potentially disrupt trade and deliver a fatal blow to China’s economy.

Free to Decide (as long as you Choose the US) 

Efforts to encircle, contain, and possibly even collapse China would impact all of Asia negatively. Secretary Blinken predicating his agenda in Southeast Asia on deliberately dishonest narratives like China’s supposed “threat” to its own trade in the South China Sea – trade done mainly with the nations Blinken is attempting to win over – makes it abundantly clear that not only is the US solely serving its own interests in such diplomatic exercises, it does so with minimum to no respect at all for the parties met during such regional tours.

The very nations Blinken visited or was supposed to visit count China as their largest trading partner. China also represents one of the largest if not the largest investor across ASEAN, a key partner in developing essential infrastructure, and increasingly a trusted partner in defense exports. China’s rise has tangibly lifted up the rest of the region with it over the last decade in ways many decades of US primacy in the region have failed to.

The United States, besides a large export market, has very little to offer the region. It finds itself increasingly relying on a combination of empty promises and coercion through its extensive sponsorship of opposition groups across the region. The so-called “Milk Tea Alliance” (MTA) represents a US-backed pan-Asian movement openly anti-China and intent on undermining the governments of nations with close and growing ties with Beijing. These mobs have resulted in deadly conflict in Myanmar, political instability in Thailand, and threaten to do so in Malaysia. Even if they were successful in overthrowing their respective China-friendly governments, there is no viable alternative being offered to the region if it cooperates with Washington in isolating Beijing.

Secretary Blinken’s recent comments about America’s self-appointed role in protecting “the right of all countries to choose their own path, free from coercion and intimidation,” is an extreme  irony. Nations “choosing” China do not do so at the cost of excluding the United States. On the contrary, many nations deeply desire to do business with both China and the US. However, Washington insists that nations either choose between doing business with America or with China. Not both. Those choosing the latter face visible and extreme consequences.

The Solomon Islands off Australia’s east coast recently switched diplomatic recognition of the US-backed administration in Taiwan to Beijing. As a result the US has dumped millions of dollars into opposition parties now seeking violent separatism. Just recently, violent mobs travelled from Malaita island to the nation’s capital of Honiara where they rampaged through the city’s Chinatown, killing several and destroying a large number of businesses.

Myanmar – for not cutting off its ties with China and participating in the BRI – now faces a similar scenario but on a much larger and more dangerous scale. Thailand’s ongoing and violent street protests are also the “price” paid for “choosing” China over the United States. Thailand, which counts US markets as their second largest destination for exports, would ideally prefer to do business with both the US and China. China’s massive population, growing economy, expertise in infrastructure, and obvious proximity to Thailand means Thailand will obviously do more business with its regional neighbor than the US. Any attempt to resist this otherwise obvious reality would clearly serve Washington’s interests but entirely at Thailand’s own expense.

Choosing America: Damned if You Don’t, Damned if you Do

Nations that have entirely subordinated themselves to Washington do not prosper. The Baltic states, Poland, and Ukraine in Eastern Europe, all pulled into Washington’s orbit over the course of US-sponsored color revolutions, are now stagnant, destabilized, and declining. Afghanistan under 20 years of absolute US domination has been left destitute, destabilized, and divided by conflict. The Solomon Islands, despite years of obedience to Washington and the US-backed administration in Taiwan, is one of the most impoverished and underdeveloped nations on Earth.

Conversely, nations working closely with China, including in Southeast Asia, after decades of chronic poverty and stagnant development are now beginning to enjoy first world infrastructure and economic opportunities. Telling these nations to “choose” between China and progress, or the US and continued poverty results in a very predictable geopolitical trend – a trend that does not favor US ambitions in Asia.

Secretary Blinken’s comments represent an increasingly irrational US foreign policy resisting otherwise obvious realities for the nations in Southeast Asia and Asia as a whole (if not throughout the world). The US, by demanding Asian nations join it in its attempts to encircle, contain, and collapse China – the engine of Asia’s rise – is the US in essence attempting to encircle and contain the rise of all of Asia, not just China.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

==================================

*  Birma of Myanmar, de laatste is de naam die de psychopathisch fascistische militaire dictatuur het land gaf......

** Aung San Suu Kyi wordt weer geëerd als mensenrechtenactivist en Nobelprijs voor de Vrede winnaar door de westerse reguliere media en politici, terwijl deze ploert ook als adviseur van staat (te vergelijken met de functie minister-president) achter de gencoide stond die door het Birmaanse leger en een deel van de rest van de bevolking werd en wordt uitgevoerd op de Rohingya, een islamitsche minderheid die al eeuwen aanwezig was in Birma....... (voor meer berichten over Birma, klik op dat label direct onder dit bericht)

---------------------------------------

Voorts zie: 'Niet China is een probleem maar de VS' (en zie de links in dat bericht!!)

'Biden zet een verdere stap richting oorlog met China ofwel naar WOIII'

En zie: 

 

De wereld moet zich uitspreken tegen de fascistische psychopaat Duterte, president van de Filipijnen

Gisteren ontving ik een petitie van het Care 2 team. Deze petitie is gericht aan de wereldleiders, met de oproep zich uit te spreken tegen de fascistische psychopaat Duterte, de huidige president van de Filipijnen.

Deze Duterte is verantwoordelijk voor duizenden standrechtelijke executies op mensen die 'drugs' gebruiken of verhandelen en nee daartoe rekent dit leeghoofd niet de harddrug alcohol, de harddrug die verreweg de meeste doden eist, plus de meeste schade aanricht, zowel direct als indirect........ Al heeft hij even de idee gehad ook alcohol te verbieden, echter dit zou ongetwijfeld tot een enorme opstand hebben geleid......

Massamoordenaar Duterte kan je gerust knettergek noemen, daarvoor zijn bewijzen te over met zijn meer dan achterlijke uitspraken. Zo durfde hij te stellen dat Hitler 3 miljoen joden vermoordde, terwijl er 3 miljoen drugsverslaafden zijn in de Filipijnen, die hij graag allemaal zou afslachten...... (bovendien een president die niet eens op de hoogte is van het feit dat onder Hitler 6 miljoen joden werden afgeslacht......)

Onder Duterte zijn volgens ngo's intussen meer dan 10.000 mensen vermoord, die werden verdacht van drugsgebruik en/of handel in drugs.......

In plaats van Duterte zwaar te veroordelen, schudden wereldleiders de hand van deze opperschoft en legitimeren daarmee zijn moorddadig regime.........

Hier de petitie van Care2, lees en teken de petitie ajb en geeft deze door!

World Leaders: Speak Out Against
Murderous Duterte Presidency!

"Hitler massacred three million Jews ... there's three million drug addicts [in the Philippines]..... I'd be happy to slaughter them." Those are the words of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.


Links zelfs 2 handenschuddende psychopaten...........

Tell world leaders they must speak out against Duterte and his criminal regime now!

Duterte rose to power by professing to take a hard line against drugs and crime in his country. But to him, that means murder. In the 16 months since he has taken office, he has presided over the extrajudicial killings of nearly 4,000 people. And that's a low estimate: some human rights organizations think he's killed as many as 12,000 people.

These slaughtered human beings were never given a chance to prove their innocence. Instead, they were murdered by death squads operating under the orders of Duterte himself. Family members and neighbors describe the squads arriving in the dead of night, crashing into homes and dragging individuals away, never to be seen again.

But instead of shunning Duterte and his campaign of death, world leaders actually opted to reward him by attending the 2017 ASEAN Summit held in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines. Leaders from Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to U.S. President Donald Trump shook Duterte's hand, posing for smiling photos. These greetings and photo ops give him the legitimacy he craves. But his massacre of his own people is anything but legitimate.

Our leaders represent us — or at least, they're supposed to. We must demand that they speak out against these crimes against humanity.

Add your name to the list and urge world leaders to stop turning a blind eye to the slaughter. Sign to implore our leaders to demand that the killings stop now.

Thank you for all that you do,

Miranda B.
The Care2 Petitions Team.
================================

Zie ook: 'Duterte, de Filipijnse neonazi-president heeft de jacht op Filipijnen met een Chinese achtergrond geopend...........'

       en: 'Trump prijst Duterte die op zijn beurt verkrachtingen aanprijst........'

       en: 'Mensenrechtenschendingen aangejaagd na inzet VS militairen in de Filipijnen.........'

       en: 'Koenders en Rutte, waar blijft jullie commentaar op de standrechtelijke executies in de Filipijnen? Iets teveel Nederlandse handelsbelangen in dat fascistische geregeerde land??'

       en: 'Duterte (massamoordenaar en president Filipijnen) wordt ongemoeid gelaten door Paus Franciscus........'

       en: 'De wereld moet zich uitspreken tegen de fascistische psychopaat Duterte, president van de Filipijnen'

Noord-Korea een agressor? Hier de feiten!

Noord-Korea wordt door de regering van Trump en daarmee door de rest van de westerse landen gezien als een bedreiging...... Niet dat Noord-Korea, zoals de VS, de ene na de andere illegale oorlog begint, of illegale geheime militaire missies uitvoert in landen waar het haar maar uitkomt, zoals de VS al meer dan 100 jaar doet en nee N-K organiseert geen staatsgrepen, of opstanden die tot staatsgrepen moeten leiden, zoals de VS keer op keer doet...... Ondanks dat wordt Noord-Korea niet alleen gezien als een bedreiging voor de VS en andere landen, maar wordt het land zelfs gezien als een bedreiging voor de wereldvrede.........

Ondanks alle 'mooie praatjes' van het beest Trump, de huidige president van de VS, ten spijt, wenst dit 'land' niet in gesprek te gaan met Noord-Korea, zoals een woordvoerder van Tillerson, de VS minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, op 5 augustus jl. in Manilla liet weten........

Het is niet vreemd dat Noord-Korea een eigen atoomwapen wil hebben, immers de VS heeft zoals gezegd al zoveel landen aangevallen, dat het bewind serieus moet vrezen voor een VS aanval op haar grondgebied....... Vergeet daarnaast niet dat de VS maar liefst 15 militaire bases in Zuid-Korea heeft, waarvan er 1 direct aan de grens (gedemilitariseerde zone) van N-K staat en een andere dichtbij die grens. Deze bases zijn voorzien van het modernste militaire moordwapentuig en meerdere massavernietigingswapens.......

Beste bezoeker, lees het volgende artikel waarin nog veel meer feiten op een rij worden gezet, dit artikel werd vorige week donderdag op Information Clearing House gepubliceerd en werd overgenomen van Global Research. Onder het artikel kan u klikken voor een vertaling (neemt wel enige tijd in beslag):

North Korea, An Aggressor? A Reality Check

By Felicity Arbuthnot

“ … war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.”(Howard Zinn, 1922-2010.)

“All war represents a failure of diplomacy.” (Tony Benn, MP. 1925-2014.)

“No country too poor, too small, too far away, not to be threat, a threat to the American way of life.” (William Blum, “Rogue State.”)   

August 24, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - The mention of one tiny country appears to strike at the rationality and sanity of those who should know far better. On Sunday, 6^th August, for example, The Guardian headed an editorial: “The Guardian view on sanctions: an essential tool.” Clearly the average of five thousands souls a month, the majority children, dying of “embargo related causes” in Iraq, year after grinding year – genocide in the name of the UN – for over a decade has long been forgotten by the broadsheet of the left.

This time of course, the target is North Korea upon whom the United Nations Security Council has voted unanimously to freeze, strangulate and deny essentials, normality, humanity. Diplomacy as ever, not even a consideration. The Guardian, however, incredibly, declared the decimating sanctions: “A rare triumph of diplomacy …” (Guardian 6^th August 2017.)

As US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, the US’ top “diplomat” and his North Korean counterpart Ri Yong-ho headed for the annual Ministerial meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Manila on 5^th August, a State Department spokesperson said of Tillerson:

“The Secretary has no plans to meet the North Korean Foreign Minister in Manila, and I don’t expect to see that happen”

Pathetic. In April, approaching his hundredth day in office, Trump said of North Korea:

“We’d love to solve things diplomatically but it’s very difficult.”

No it is not. Talk, walk in the other’s psychological shoes. Then, there they were at the same venue but the Trump Administration clearly does not alone live in a land of missed opportunities, but of opportunities deliberately buried in landfill miles deep. This in spite of his having said in the same statement:

“There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely.”

A bit of perspective: 27^th July 2017 marked sixty four years since the armistice agreement that ended the devastating three year Korean war, however there has never been a peace treaty, thus technically the Korean war has never ended. Given that and American’s penchant for wiping out countries with small populations which pose them no threat (think most recently, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya) no wonder North Korea wishes to look as if it has some heavy protective gear behind the front door, so to speak.

Tiny North Korea has a population of just 25.37 million and landmass of 120,540 km² (square kilometres.) The US has a population of 323.1 million and a landmass of 9.834 MILLION km² (square kilometres.) Further, since 1945, the US is believed to have produced some 70,000 nuclear weapons – though now down to a “mere” near 7,000 – but North Korea is a threat?  

America has fifteen military bases in South Korea – down from a staggering fifty four – bristling with every kind of weapons of mass destruction. Two bases are right on the North Korean border and another nearly as close. See full details of each, with map at (1.)

North Korea also has the collective memory of the horror wrought by the US in the three year conflict on a country then with a population of just 9.6 million souls. US General Curtis Lemay in the aftermath stated: “After destroying North Korea’s seventy eight cities and thousands of her villages, and killing countless numbers of her civilians … Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population.”

“It is now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th Parallel lost nearly a third its population of 8 – 9 million people during the 37-month long ‘hot’ war, 1950 – 1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerence of another.” (2) 

In context:

“During The Second World War the United Kingdom lost 0.94% of its population, France lost 1.35%, China lost 1.89% and the US lost 0.32%. During the Korean war, North Korea lost close to 30 % of its population.” (Emphasis added.)

“We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another …”, boasted Lemay.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur said during a Congressional hearing in 1951 that he had never seen such devastation.

“I shrink with horror that I cannot express in words … at this continuous slaughter of men in Korea,” MacArthur said. “I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man, and it just curdled my stomach, the last time I was there.” (CNN, 28^th July 2017.)

Horrified as he was, he did not mention the incinerated women, children, infants in the same breath.

Moreover, as Robert M. Neer wrote in “Napalm, an American Biography”:

‘“Practically every U.S. fighter plane that has flown into Korean air carried at least two napalm bombs,” Chemical Officer Townsend wrote in January 1951. About 21,000 gallons of napalm hit Korea every day in 1950. As combat intensified after China’s intervention, that number more than tripled (…) a total of 32,357 tons of napalm fell on Korea, about double that dropped on Japan in 1945. Not only did the allies drop more bombs on Korea than in the Pacific theater during World War II – 635,000 tons, versus 503,000 tons – more of what fell was napalm …’

In the North Korean capitol, Pyongyang, just two buildings were reported as still standing.

In the unending history of US warmongering, North Korea is surely the smallest population they had ever attacked until their assault on tiny Grenada in October 1983, population then just 91,000 (compulsory silly name: “Operation Urgent Fury.)

North Korea has been taunted by the US since it lay in ruins after the armistice sixty five years ago, yet as ever, the US Administration paints the vast, self appointed “leader of the free world” as the victim.

As Fort-Russ pointed out succinctly (7^th August 2017):

“The Korean Peninsula is in a state of crisis not only due to constant US threats towards North Korea, but also due to various provocative actions, such as Washington conducting joint military exercises with Seoul amid tensions, and which Pyongyang considered a threat to its national security.”

This month “massive land, sea and air exercises” involving “tens of thousands of troops” from the US and South Korea began on 21^st  of August and continue until 31st.

‘In the past, the practices are believed to have included “decapitation strikes” – trial operations for an attempt to kill Kim Jong-un and his top Generals …’, according to the Guardian (11^th August 2017.)

The obligatory stupid name chosen for this dangerous, belligerent, money burning, sabre rattling nonsense is Ulchi-Freedom Guardian. It is an annual occurrence since first initiated back in 1976.

US B-1B bombers flying from Guam recently carried out exercises in South Korea and “practiced attack capabilities by releasing inert weapons at the Pilsung Range.” In a further provocative (and illegal) move, US bombers were again reported to overfly North Korea, another of many such bullying, threatening actions, reportedly eleven just since May this year.

Yet in spite of all, North Korea is the “aggressor.”

“The nuclear warheads of United States of America are stored in some twenty one locations, which include thirteen U.S. states and five European countries … some are on board U.S. submarines. There are some “zombie” nuclear warheads as well, and they are kept in reserve, and as many as 3,000 of these are still awaiting their dismantlement. (The US) also extends its “nuclear umbrella” to such other countries as South Korea, Japan, and Australia.” (worldatlas.com)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who also attended the ASEAN meeting in Manila, did of course, do what proper diplomats do and talked with his North Korean counterpart Ri Yong-ho. Minister Lavrov’s opinion was summed up by a Fort Russ News observer as:

“The Korean Peninsula is in a state of crisis not only due to constant US threats towards North Korea, but also due to various provocative actions, such as Washington conducting joint military exercises with Seoul amid tensions, and which Pyongyang considered a threat to its national security.”

The “provocative actions” also include the threatening over-flights by US ‘planes flying from Guam. However when North Korea said if this continued they would consider firing missiles in to the ocean near Guam – not as was reported by some hystericals as threatening to bomb Guam – Agent Orange who occasionally pops in to the White House between golf rounds and eating chocolate cake whilst muddling up which country he has dropped fifty nine Tomahawk Cruise missiles on, responded that tiny North Korea will again be: “… met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which the world has never seen before.”

It was barely noticed that North Korea qualified the threat of a shot across the bows by stating pretty reasonably:

(The US) “should immediately stop its reckless military provocation against the State of the DPRK so that the latter would not be forced to make an unavoidable military choice.” (3)

As Cheryl Rofer (see 3) continued, instead of endless threats, US diplomacy could have many routes:

“We could have sent a message to North Korea via the recent Canadian visit to free one of their citizens. We could send a message through the Swedish embassy to North Korea, which often represents US interests. We could arrange some diplomatic action on which China might take the lead. There are many possibilities, any of which might show North Korea that we are willing to back off from practices that scare them if they will consider backing off on some of their actions. That would not include their nuclear program explicitly at this time, but it would leave the way open for later.”

are in fact, twenty four diplomatic missions in all, in North Korea through which the US could request to communicate – or Trump could even behave like a grown up and pick up the telephone.

Siegfried Hecker is the last known American official to inspect North Korea’s nuclear facilities. He says that treating Kim Jong-un as though he is on the verge of attacking the U.S. is both inaccurate and dangerous.

“Some like to depict Kim as being crazy – a madman – and that makes the public believe that the guy is undeterrable. He’s not crazy and he’s not suicidal. And he’s not even unpredictable. The real threat is we’re going to stumble into a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.” (5)

Trump made his crass “fire and fury” threat on the eve of the sixty second commemoration of the US nuclear attack on Nagasaki, the nauseating irony seemingly un-noticed by him.

Will some adults pitch up on Capitol Hill before it is too late?

Notes

1. https://militarybases.com/ south-korea/
2. http://www.globalresearch.ca/ know-the-facts-north-korea- lost-close-to-30-of-its- population-as-a-result-of-us- bombings-in-the-1950s/22131
3. https://nucleardiner. wordpress.com/2017/08/11/ north-korea-reaches-out/
4. https://www.commondreams.org/ news/2017/08/08/sane-voices- urge-diplomacy-after-lunatic- trump-threatens-fire-and-fury
Featured image is from Socialist Project.

This article was first published by Global Research -

Copyright © Felicity Arbuthnot

Click for Spanish, German, Dutch, Danish, French, translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load.

============================

Zie ook: 'Noord-Korea heeft meermaals aangeboden haar kernwapenprogramma te stoppen, ofwel wat de media verzwijgen......'

       en: 'Putin waarschuwt voor een planetaire nucleaire catastrofe en roept om vreedzame diplomatie met Noord-Korea'

       en: 'Noord-Koreaanse raket zorgt voor belachelijke massahysterie.......'

       en: 'VS buitenlandbeleid sinds WOII: een lange lijst van staatsgrepen en oorlogen..........'

       en: 'Noord-Korea verkeerd begrepen: het land wordt bedreigd door de VS, dat alleen deze eeuw al minstens 4 illegale oorlogen begon........'

       en: 'Raketwetenschappers over Noord-Korea's kernraketten bluf en angstzaaierij in de VS......'

       en: 'North Korea: Killer Sanctions Imposed By The UN Security Council'

       en: 'North Korea Does Not Trust America for a Pretty Good Reason'

       en: 'Only Morons Believe What The US Government Says About North Korea'

       en: 'Noord-Korea een gevaar voor de VS? Daar is N-K niet voor nodig: de VS besmet haar eigen burgers met radioactieve straling!'

       en: 'VS dreigt Noord-Korea met wat je niet anders dan een nucleaire aanval kan noemen........'

       en: 'Noord-Korea: VS negeert de waarschuwing van China niet door te gaan, met voorgenomen militaire oefening tegen N-K.......'

       en: 'NBC presentator geeft toe dat het de taak van NBC is de mensen doodsbang te maken voor Noord-Korea....... Ofwel: 'fake news' op en top!!'

       en: 'Noord-Koreaanse raketten zijn waardeloos, aldus VS generaal Selva.......'

       en: 'Noord-Korea en de VS: de planning van de VS om Rusland en China aan te vallen met kernraketten........'

      en:  'Korea, Afghanistan and the Never Ending War Trap' (met ook daaronder een mogelijkheid tot vertaling)

VS dwarsboomt Rusland en China via het IMF en de Wereldbank, terreur op een ander niveau......

De VS dwarsboomt Rusland en China: Oekraïne is het eerste land, dat zegt een lening van Rusland niet terug te betalen, ook al was één van de condities voor die lening 5% rente, veel gunstiger dan die van het IMF en de Wereldbank..... Oekraïne was het eerste land, dat stelde een schuld van 3 miljard dollar aan de Russen niet terug te betalen..... China en Rusland varen een steeds onafhankelijker koers op financieel gebied, als tegenhangers van het uiterst asociale, inhumane, neoliberale aandelenkapitalisme, dat in feite wordt geleid vanuit de VS, via het IMF en de Wereldbank, waarbij de belangen van de VS en haar munt altijd voorop gaan......

Daar de VS feitelijk aan de touwen trekt bij het IMF en de Wereldbank, besloot het IMF niet langer garant te staan voor leningen, die bijvoorbeeld Rusland aan andere landen heeft verstrekt, zoals de hiervoor aangeduide lening van 3 miljard dollar aan Oekraïne. Met andere woorden maande het IMF deze landen en in dit voorbeeld Oekraïne, de lening van Rusland simpelweg niet terug te betalen!! Sterker nog: voorwaarde voor een lening van het IMF, is het niet terugbetalen van schulden aan Rusland of China....... Hiervoor  moest het IMF de regels tijdens het spel aanpassen, een schoftenstreek van enorme grootte!! Oekraïne was normaal gesproken niet zo maar in aanmerking gekomen voor een lening van het IMF of de Wereldbank, vanwege de bestaande schuld aan Rusland, maar kan nu gewoon miljarden extra lenen en het eerder geleende geld in de zak steken.

Voor een lening van het IMF en de Wereldbank moet wel een fiks deel van de soevereiniteit worden ingeleverd en zal het land het neoliberale systeem moeten invoeren, waarbij de bevolking uiteraard de klos is, zoals de Grieken dat nu dagelijks merken: leven in armoede en zelfs met een baan, zullen velen in armoede blijven steken, daar de salarissen gigantisch naar beneden werden bijgesteld........ Uiteraard moeten zoveel mogelijk staatseigendommen worden verkocht, zoals openbare nutsvoorzieningen, waar mensen bijvoorbeeld veel meer zullen moeten betalen voor water, de gezondheidszorg en scholing........

Hier het artikel van Information Clearing House, waarin e.e.a. uit de doeken wordt gedaan, een lang artikel, maar uiterst verhelderend:

The IMF Changes its Rules to Isolate China and Russia

By Michael Hudson - Guns and Butter

Dr. Hudson discusses his paper, The IMF Changes Its Rules To Isolate China and Russia; implications of the four policy changes at the International Monetary Fund in its role as enforcer of inter-government debts; the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an alternative military alliance to NATO; the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) threatens to replace the IMF and World Bank; the Trans Pacific Partnership Treaty; the China International Payments System (CIPS); WTO investment treaties; Ukraine and Greece; different philosophies of development between east and west; break up of the post WWII dollarized global financial system; the world dividing into two camps.

Posted February 05, 2016

A New Global Financial Cold War

By Michael Hudson

A nightmare scenario of U.S. geopolitical strategists is coming true: foreign independence from U.S.-centered financial and diplomatic control. China and Russia are investing in neighboring economies on terms that cement Eurasian integration on the basis of financing in their own currencies and favoring their own exports. They also have created the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an alternative military alliance to NATO.[1] And the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) threatens to replace the IMF and World Bank tandem in which the United States holds unique veto power.

More than just a disparity of voting rights in the IMF and World Bank is at stake. At issue is a philosophy of development. U.S. and other foreign investment in infrastructure (or buyouts and takeovers on credit) adds interest rates and other financial charges to the cost structure, while charging prices as high as the market can bear (think of Carlos Slim’s telephone monopoly in Mexico, or the high costs of America’s health care system), and making their profits and monopoly rents tax-exempt by paying them out as interest.

By contrast, government-owned infrastructure provides basic services at low cost, on a subsidized basis, or freely. That is what has made the United States, Germany and other industrial lead nations so competitive over the past few centuries. But this positive role of government is no longer possible under World Bank/IMF policy. The U.S. promotion of neoliberalism and austerity is a major reason propelling China, Russia and other nations out of the U.S. diplomatic and banking orbit.

On December 3, 2015, Prime Minister Putin proposed that Russia “and other Eurasian Economic Union countries should kick-off consultations with members of the SCO and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on a possible economic partnership.”[2]Russia also is seeking to build pipelines to Europe through friendly secular countries instead of Sunni jihadist U.S.-backed countries locked into America’s increasingly confrontational orbit.

Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov points out that when Russia’s 2013 loan to Ukraine was made, at the request of Ukraine’s elected government, Ukraine’s “international reserves were barely enough to cover three months’ imports, and no other creditor was prepared to lend on terms acceptable to Kiev. Yet Russia provided $3 billion of much-needed funding at a 5 per cent interest rate, when Ukraine’s bonds were yielding nearly 12 per cent.”[3]

What especially annoys U.S. financial strategists is that this loan by Russia’s National Wealth Fund was protected by IMF lending practice, which at that time ensured collectability by withholding credit from countries in default of foreign official debts, or at least not bargaining in good faith to pay. To cap matters, the bonds are registered under London’s creditor-oriented rules and courts.

Most worrisome to U.S. strategists is that China and Russia are denominating their trade and investment in their own currencies instead of dollars. After U.S. officials threatened to derange Russia’s banking linkages by cutting it off from the SWIFT interbank clearing system, China accelerated its creation of the alternative China International Payments System (CIPS), and its own credit card system to protect Eurasian economies from the threats made by U.S. unilateralists.

Russia and China are simply doing what the United States has long done: using trade and credit linkages to cement their diplomacy. This tectonic geopolitical shift is a Copernican threat to New Cold War ideology: Instead of the world economy revolving around the United States (the Ptolemaic idea of America as “the indispensible nation”), it may revolve around Eurasia. As long as global financial control remains grounded in Washington at the offices of the IMF and World Bank, such a shift in the center of gravity will be fought with all the power of an American Century (and would-be American Millennium) inquisition.

Any inquisition needs a court system and enforcement vehicles. So does resistance to such a system. That is what today’s global financial, legal and trade maneuvering is all about. And that is why today’s world system is in the process of breaking apart. Differences in economic philosophy call for different institutions.

To U.S. neocons the specter of AIIB government-to-government investment creates fear of nations minting their own money and holding each other’s debt in their international reserves instead of borrowing dollars, paying interest in dollars and subordinating their financial planning to the U.S. Treasury and IMF. Foreign governments would have less need to finance their budget deficits by selling off key infrastructure. And instead of dismantling public spending, a broad Eurasian economic union would do what the United States itself practices, and seek self-sufficiency in banking and monetary policy.

Imagine the following scenario five years from now. China will have spent half a decade building high-speed railroads, ports, power systems and other construction for Asian and African countries, enabling them to grow and export more. These exports will be coming online to repay the infrastructure loans. Also, suppose that Russia has been supplying the oil and gas energy for these projects on credit.

To avert this prospect, suppose an American diplomat makes the following proposal to the leaders of countries in debt to China, Russia and the AIIB: “Now that you’ve got your increased production in place, why repay? We’ll make you rich if you stiff our adversaries and turn back to the West. We and our European allies will support your assigning your nations’ public infrastructure to yourselves and your supporters at insider prices, and then give these assets market value by selling shares in New York and London. Then, you can keep the money and spend it in the West.”

How can China or Russia collect in such a situation? They can sue. But what court in the West will accept their jurisdiction?

That is the kind of scenario U.S. State Department and Treasury officials have been discussing for more than a year. Implementing it became more pressing in light of Ukraine’s $3 billion debt to Russia falling due by December 20, 2015. Ukraine’s U.S.-backed regime has announced its intention to default. To support their position, the IMF has just changed its rules to remove a critical lever on which Russia and other governments have long relied to ensure payment of their loans.

The IMF’s role as enforcer of inter-government debts
When it comes to enforcing nations to pay inter-government debts, the IMF is able to withhold not only its own credit but also that of governments and global bank consortia participating when debtor countries need “stabilization” loans (the neoliberal euphemism for imposing austerity and destabilizing debtor economies, as in Greece this year). Countries that do not privatize their infrastructure and sell it to Western buyers are threatened with sanctions, backed by U.S.-sponsored “regime change” and “democracy promotion” Maidan-style. The Fund’s creditor leverage has been that if a nation is in financial arrears to any government, it cannot qualify for an IMF loan – and hence, for packages involving other governments. That is how the dollarized global financial system has worked for half a century. But until now, the beneficiaries have been U.S. and NATO lenders, not been China or Russia.

The focus on a mixed public/private economy sets the AIIB at odds with the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s aim of relinquishing government planning power to the financial and corporate sector, and the neoliberal aim of blocking governments from creating their own money and implementing their own financial, economic and environmental regulation. Chief Nomura economist Richard Koo, explained the logic of viewing the AIIB as a threat to the U.S.-controlled IMF: “If the IMF’s rival is heavily under China’s influence, countries receiving its support will rebuild their economies under what is effectively Chinese guidance, increasing the likelihood they will fall directly or indirectly under that country’s influence.”[4]

This was the setting on December 8, when Chief IMF Spokesman Gerry Rice announced: “The IMF’s Executive Board met today and agreed to change the current policy on non-toleration of arrears to official creditors.” Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov accused the IMF decision of being “hasty and biased.”[5] But it had been discussed all year long, calculating a range of scenarios for a sea change in international law. Anders Aslund, senior fellow at the NATO-oriented Atlantic Council, points out:

The IMF staff started contemplating a rule change in the spring of 2013 because nontraditional creditors, such as China, had started providing developing countries with large loans. One issue was that these loans were issued on conditions out of line with IMF practice. China wasn’t a member of the Paris Club, where loan restructuring is usually discussed, so it was time to update the rules.

The IMF intended to adopt a new policy in the spring of 2016, but the dispute over Russia’s $3 billion loan to Ukraine has accelerated an otherwise slow decision-making process.[6]

The target was not only Russia and its ability to collect on its sovereign loan to Ukraine, but China even more, in its prospective role as creditor to African countries and prospective AIIB borrowers, planning for a New Silk Road to integrate a Eurasian economy independent of U.S. financial and trade control. The Wall Street Journal concurred that the main motive for changing the rules was the threat that China would provide an alternative to IMF lending and its demands for crushing austerity. “IMF-watchers said the fund was originally thinking of ensuring China wouldn’t be able to foil IMF lending to member countries seeking bailouts as Beijing ramped up loans to developing economies around the world.”[7] So U.S. officials walked into the IMF headquarters in Washington with the legal equivalent of suicide vests. Their aim was a last-ditch attempt to block trade and financial agreements organized outside of U.S. control and that of the IMF and World Bank.

The plan is simple enough. Trade follows finance, and the creditor usually calls the tune. That is how the United States has used the Dollar Standard to steer Third World trade and investment since World War II along lines benefiting the U.S. economy. The cement of trade credit and bank lending is the ability of creditors to collect on the international debts being negotiated. That is why the United States and other creditor nations have used the IMF as an intermediary to act as “honest broker” for loan consortia. (“Honest broker” means being subject to U.S. veto power.) To enforce its financial leverage, the IMF has long followed the rule that it will not sponsor any loan agreement or refinancing for governments that are in default of debts owed to other governments. However, as the afore-mentioned Aslund explains, the IMF could easily

change its practice of not lending into [countries in official] arrears … because it is not incorporated into the IMF Articles of Agreement, that is, the IMF statutes. The IMF Executive Board can decide to change this policy with a simple board majority. The IMF has lent to Afghanistan, Georgia, and Iraq in the midst of war, and Russia has no veto right, holding only 2.39 percent of the votes in the IMF. When the IMF has lent to Georgia and Ukraine, the other members of its Executive Board have overruled Russia.[8]

After the rules change, Aslund later noted, “the IMF can continue to give Ukraine loans regardless of what Ukraine does about its credit from Russia, which falls due on December 20.[9]

The IMF rule that no country can borrow if it is in default to a foreign government was created in the post-1945 world. Since then, the U.S. Government, Treasury and/or U.S. bank consortia have been party to nearly every major loan agreement. But inasmuch as Ukraine’s official debt to Russia’s National Wealth Fund was not to the U.S. Government, the IMF announced its rules change simply as a “clarification.” What its rule really meant was that it would not provide credit to countries in arrears to the U.S. government, not that of Russia or China.

It remains up to the IMF board – and in the end, its managing director – whether or not to deem a country creditworthy. The U.S. representative can block any foreign leaders not beholden to the United States. Mikhail Delyagin, Director of the Institute of Globalization Problems, explained the double standard at work: “The Fund will give Kiev a new loan tranche on one condition: that Ukraine should not pay Russia a dollar under its $3 billion debt. … they will oblige Ukraine to pay only to western creditors for political reasons.”[10]

The post-2010 loan packages to Greece are a case in point. The IMF staff saw that Greece could not possibly pay the sums needed to bail out French, German and other foreign banks and bondholders. Many Board members agreed, and have gone public with their whistle blowing. Their protests didn’t matter. President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner pointed out that U.S. banks had written credit default swaps betting that Greece could pay, and would lose money if there were a debt writedown). Dominique Strauss-Kahn backed the hard line US- European Central Bank position. So did Christine Lagarde in 2015, overriding staff protests.[11]

Regarding Ukraine, IMF executive board member Otaviano Canuto, representing Brazil, noted that the logic that “conditions on IMF lending to a country that fell behind on payments [was to] make sure it kept negotiating in good faith to reach agreement with creditors.”[12]Dropping this condition, he said, would open the door for other countries to insist on a similar waiver and avoid making serious and sincere efforts to reach payment agreement with creditor governments.

A more binding IMF rule is Article I of its 1944-45 founding charter, prohibiting the Fund from lending to a member state engaged in civil war or at war with another member state, or for military purposes in general. But when IMF head Lagarde made the last loan to Ukraine, in spring 2015, she merely expressed a vapid token hope there might be peace. Withholding IMF credit could have been a lever to force peace and adherence to the Minsk agreements, but U.S. diplomatic pressure led that opportunity to be rejected. President Porochenko immediately announced that he would step up the civil war with the Russian-speaking population in the eastern Donbass region.

The most important IMF condition being violated is that continued warfare with the East prevents a realistic prospect of Ukraine paying back new loans. The Donbas is where most Ukrainian exports were made, mainly to Russia. That market is being lost by the junta’s belligerence toward Russia. This should have blocked Ukraine from receiving IMF aid. Aslund himself points to the internal contradiction at work: Ukraine has achieved budget balance because the inflation and steep currency depreciation has drastically eroded its pension costs. But the resulting decline in the purchasing power of pension benefits has led to growing opposition to Ukraine’s post-Maidan junta. So how can the IMF’s austerity budget be followed without a political backlash? “Leading representatives from President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc are insisting on massive tax cuts, but no more expenditure cuts; that would cause a vast budget deficit that the IMF assesses at 9-10 percent of GDP, that could not possibly be financed.”[13]

By welcoming and financing Ukraine instead of treating as an outcast, the IMF thus is breaking four of its rules:

1. Not to lend to a country that has no visible means to pay back the loan. This breaks the “No More Argentinas” rule, adopted after the IMF’s disastrous 2001 loan.
2. Not to lend to a country that repudiates its debt to official creditors. This goes against the IMF’s role as enforcer for the global creditor cartel.
3. Not to lend to a borrower at war – and indeed, to one that is destroying its export capacity and hence its balance-of-payments ability to pay back the loan.
4. Finally, not to lend to a country that is not likely to carry out the IMF’s austerity “conditionalities,” at least without crushing democratic opposition in a totalitarian manner.

The upshot – and new basic guideline for IMF lending – is to split the world into pro-U.S. economies going neoliberal, and economies maintaining public investment in infrastructure n and what used to be viewed as progressive capitalism. Russia and China may lend as much as they want to other governments, but there is no global vehicle to help secure their ability to be paid back under international law. Having refused to roll back its own (and ECB) claims on Greece, the IMF is willing to see countries not on the list approved by U.S. neocons repudiate their official debts to Russia or China. Changing its rules to clear the path for making loans to Ukraine is rightly seen as an escalation of America’s New Cold War against Russia and China.

Timing is everything in such ploys. Georgetown University Law professor and Treasury consultant Anna Gelpern warned that before the “IMF staff and executive board [had] enough time to change the policy on arrears to official creditors,” Russia might use “its notorious debt/GDP clause to accelerate the bonds at any time before December, or simply gum up the process of reforming the IMF’s arrears policy.”[14] According to this clause, if Ukraine’s foreign debt rose above 60 percent of GDP, Russia’s government would have the right to demand immediate payment. But President Putin, no doubt anticipating the bitter fight to come over its attempts to collect on its loan, refrained from exercising this option. He is playing the long game, bending over backward to behave in a way that cannot be criticized as “odious.”

A more immediate reason deterring the United States from pressing earlier to change IMF rules was the need to use the old set of rules against Greece before changing them for Ukraine. A waiver for Ukraine would have provided a precedent for Greece to ask for a similar waiver on paying the “troika” – the European Central Bank (ECB), EU commission and the IMF itself – for the post-2010 loans that have pushed it into a worse depression than the 1930s. Only after Greece capitulated to eurozone austerity was the path clear for U.S. officials to change the IMF rules to isolate Russia. But their victory has come at the cost of changing the IMF’s rules and those of the global financial system irreversibly. Other countries henceforth may reject conditionalities, as Ukraine has done, as well as asking for write-downs on foreign official debts.

That was the great fear of neoliberal U.S. and Eurozone strategists last summer, after all. The reason for smashing Greece’s economy was to deter Podemos in Spain and similar movements in Italy and Portugal from pursuing national prosperity instead of eurozone austerity. “Imagine the Greek government had insisted that EU institutions accept the same haircut as the country’s private creditors,” Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov asked. “The reaction in European capitals would have been frosty. Yet this is the position now taken by Kiev with respect to Ukraine’s $3 billion eurobond held by Russia.”[15]

The consequences of America’s tactics to make a financial hit on Russia while its balance of payments is down (as a result of collapsing oil and gas prices) go far beyond just the IMF. These tactics are driving other countries to defend their own economies in the legal and political spheres, in ways that are breaking apart the post-1945 global order.

Countering Russia’s ability to collect in Britain’s law courts
Over the past year the U.S. Treasury and State Departments have discussed ploys to block Russia from collecting by suing in the London Court of International Arbitration, under whose rules Russia’s bonds issued to Ukraine are registered. Reviewing the excuses Ukraine might use to avoid paying Russia, Prof. Gelpern noted that it might declare the debt “odious,” made under duress or corruptly. In a paper for the Peterson Institute of International Economics (the banking lobby in Washington) she suggested that Britain should deny Russia the use of its courts as a means of reinforcing the financial, energy and trade sanctions passed after Crimea voted to join Russia as protection against the ethnic cleansing from the Right Sector, Azov Battalion and other paramilitary groups descending on the region.[16]

A kindred ploy might be for Ukraine to countersue Russia for reparations for “invading” it and taking Crimea. Such a claim would seem to have little chance of success (without showing the court to be an arm of NATO politics), but it might delay Russia’ ability to collect by tying the loan up in a long nuisance lawsuit. But the British court would lose credibility if it permits frivolous legal claims (called barratry in English) such as President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk have threatened.

To claim that Ukraine’s debt to Russia was “odious” or otherwise illegitimate, “President Petro Poroshenko said the money was intended to ensure Yanukovych’s loyalty to Moscow, and called the payment a ‘bribe,’ according to an interview with Bloomberg in June this year.”[17]The legal and moral problem with such arguments is that they would apply equally to IMF and U.S. loans. They would open the floodgates for other countries to repudiate debts taken on by dictatorships supported by IMF and U.S. lenders.

As Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted, the IMF’s change of rules, “designed to suit Ukraine only, could plant a time bomb under all other IMF programs.” The new rules showed the extent to which the IMF is subordinate to U.S. aggressive New Cold Warriors: “since Ukraine is politically important – and it is only important because it is opposed to Russia – the IMF is ready to do for Ukraine everything it has not done for anyone else.”[18]

In a similar vein, Andrei Klimov, deputy chairman of the Committee for International Affairs at the Federation Council (the upper house of Russia’s parliament) accused the United States of playing “the role of the main violin in the IMF while the role of the second violin is played by the European Union, [the] two basic sponsors of the Maidan – the … coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014.”[19]

Putin’s counter-strategy and the blowback on U.S.-European relations
Having anticipated that Ukraine would seek excuses to not pay Russia, President Putin refrained from exercising Russia’s right to demand immediate payment when Ukraine’s foreign debt rose above 60 percent of GDP. In November he even offered to defer any payment at all this year, stretching payments out to “$1 billion next year, $1 billion in 2017, and $1 billion in 2018,” if “the United States government, the European Union, or one of the big international financial institutions” guaranteed payment.[20] Based on their assurances “that Ukraine’s solvency will grow,” he added, they should be willing to put their money where their mouth was. If they did not provide guarantees, Putin pointed out, “this means that they do not believe in the Ukrainian economy’s future.”

Implicit was that if the West continued encouraging Ukraine to fight against the East, its government would not be in a position to pay. The Minsk agreement was expiring and Ukraine was receiving new arms support from the United States, Canada and other NATO members to intensify hostilities against Donbas and Crimea.

But the IMF, European Union and United States refused to back up the Fund’s optimistic forecast of Ukraine’s ability to pay in the face of its continued civil war against the East. Foreign Minister Lavrov concluded that, “By having refused to guarantee Ukraine’s debt as part of Russia’s proposal to restructure it, the United States effectively admitted the absence of prospects of restoring its solvency.”[21]

In an exasperated tone, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Russian television: “I have a feeling that they won’t give us the money back because they are crooks … and our Western partners not only refuse to help, but they also make it difficult for us.” Accusing that “the international financial system is unjustly structured,” he nonetheless promised to “go to court. We’ll push for default on the loan and we’ll push for default on all Ukrainian debts,” based on the fact that the loan

was a request from the Ukrainian Government to the Russian Government. If two governments reach an agreement this is obviously a sovereign loan…. Surprisingly, however, international financial organisations started saying that this is not exactly a sovereign loan. This is utter bull. Evidently, it’s just an absolutely brazen, cynical lie. … This seriously erodes trust in IMF decisions. I believe that now there will be a lot of pleas from different borrower states to the IMF to grant them the same terms as Ukraine. How will the IMF possibly refuse them?[22]

And there the matter stands. On December 16, 2015, the IMF’s Executive Board ruled that “the bond should be treated as official debt, rather than a commercial bond.”[23] Forbes quipped: “Russia apparently is not always blowing smoke. Sometimes they’re actually telling it like it is.”[24]

Reflecting the degree of hatred fanned by U.S. diplomacy, U.S.-backed Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie A. Jaresko expressed an arrogant confidence that the IMF would back the Ukrainian cabinet’s announcement on Friday, December 18, of its intention to default on the debt to Russia falling due two days later. “If we were to repay this bond in full, it would mean we failed to meet the terms of the I.M.F. and the obligations we made under our restructuring.”[25]

Adding his own bluster, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk announced his intention to tie up Russia’s claim for payment by filing a multibillion-dollar counter claim “over Russia’s occupation of Crimea and intervention in east Ukraine.” To cap matters, he added that “several hundred million dollars of debt owed by two state enterprises to Russian banks would also not be paid.”[26] This makes trade between Ukraine and Russia impossible to continue. Evidently Ukraine’s authorities had received assurance from IMF and U.S. officials that no real “good faith” bargaining would be required to gain ongoing support. Ukraine’s Parliament did not even find it necessary to enact the new tax code and budget conditionalities that the IMF loan had demanded.

The world is now at war financially, and all that seems to matter is whether, as U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had put matters, “you are for us or against us.” As President Putin remarked at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly regarding America’s support of Al Qaeda, Al Nusra and other allegedly “moderate” ISIS allies in Syria: “I cannot help asking those who have caused this situation: Do you realize now what you have done? … I am afraid the question will hang in the air, because policies based on self-confidence and belief in one’s exceptionality and impunity have never been abandoned.”[27]

The blowback
America’s unilateralist geopolitics are tearing up the world’s economic linkages that were put in place in the heady days after World War II, when Europe and other countries were so disillusioned that they believed the United States was acting out of idealism rather than national self-interest. Today the question is how long Western Europe will be willing to forego its trade and investment interests by accepting U.S.-sponsored sanctions against Russia, Iran and other economies. Germany, Italy and France already are feeling the strains.

The oil and pipeline war designed to bypass Russian energy exports is flooding Europe with refugees, as well as spreading terrorism. Although the leading issue in America’s Republican presidential debate on December 15, 2015, was safety from Islamic jihadists, no candidate thought to explain the source of this terrorism in America’s alliance with Wahabist Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and hence with Al Qaeda and ISIS/Daish as a means of destabilizing secular regimes in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and earlier in Afghanistan. Going back to the original sin of CIA hubris – overthrowing the secular Iranian Prime Minister leader Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 – U.S. foreign policy has been based on the assumption that secular regimes tend to be nationalist and resist privatization and neoliberal austerity.

Based on this assumption, U.S. Cold Warriors have aligned themselves against democratic regimes seeking to promote their own prosperity and resist neoliberalism in favor of maintaining their own traditional mixed public/private economies. That is the back-story of the U.S. fight to control the rest of the world. Tearing apart the IMF’s rules is only the most recent chapter. Arena by arena, the core values of what used to be American and European social democratic ideology are being uprooted by the tactics being used to hurt Russia, China and their prospective Eurasian allies.

The Enlightenment’s ideals were of secular democracy and the rule of international law applied equally to all nations, classical free market theory (of markets free from unearned income and rent extraction by special interests), and public investment in infrastructure to hold down the cost of living and doing business. These are all now to be sacrificed to a militant U.S. unilateralism. Putting their “indispensable nation” above the rule of law and parity of national interests (the 1648 Westphalia treaty, not to mention the Geneva Convention and Nuremburg laws), U.S. neocons proclaim that America’s destiny is to prevent foreign secular democracy from acting in ways other than in submission to U.S. diplomacy. Behind this lie the special U.S. financial and corporate interests that control American foreign policy.

This is not how the Enlightenment was supposed to turn out. Industrial capitalism a century ago was expected to evolve into an economy of abundance worldwide. Instead, we have American Pentagon capitalism, with financial bubbles deteriorating into a polarized rentier economy and a resurgence of old-fashioned imperialism. If and when a break comes, it will not be marginal but a seismic geopolitical shift.

The Dollar Bloc’s Financial Curtain 
By treating Ukraine’s repudiation of its official debt to Russia’s National Wealth Fund as the new norm, the IMF has blessed its default. President Putin and foreign minister Lavrov have said that they will sue in British courts. The open question is whether any court exist in the West not under the thumb of U.S. veto?

America’s New Cold War maneuvering has shown that the two Bretton Woods institutions are unreformable. It is easier to create new institutions such as the AIIB than to retrofit the IMF and World Bank, NATO and behind it, the dollar standard – all burdened with the legacy of their vested interests.

U.S. geostrategists evidently thought that excluding Russia, China and other Eurasian countries from the U.S.-based financial and trade system would isolate them in a similar economic box to Cuba, Iran and other sanctioned adversaries. The idea was to force countries to choose between being impoverished by such exclusion, or acquiescing in U.S. neoliberal drives to financialize their economies under U.S. control.

What is lacking here is the idea of critical mass. The United States may arm-twist Europe to impose trade and financial sanctions on Russia, and may use the IMF and World Bank to exclude countries not under U.S. hegemony from participating in dollarized global trade and finance. But this diplomatic action is producing an equal and opposite reaction. That is the Newtonian law of geopolitics. It is propelling other countries to survive by avoiding demands to impose austerity on their government budgets and labor, by creating their own international financial organization as an alternative to the IMF, and by juxtaposing their own “aid” lending to that of the U.S.-centered World Bank.

This blowback requires an international court to handle disputes free from U.S. arm-twisting. The Eurasian Economic Union accordingly has created its own court to adjudicate disputes. This may provide an alternative to Judge Griesa’s New York federal kangaroo court ruling in favor of vulture funds derailing Argentina’s debt settlements and excluding that country from world financial markets.

The more nakedly self-serving U.S. policy is – from backing radical fundamentalist outgrowths of Al Qaeda throughout the Near East to right-wing nationalists in Ukraine and the Baltics – then the greater the pressure will grow for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, AIIB and related institutions to break free of the post-1945 Bretton Woods system run by the U.S. State, Defense and Treasury Departments and their NATO superstructure of coercive military bases. As Paul Craig Roberts recently summarized the dynamic, we are back with George Orwell’s 1984 global fracture between Oceania (the United States, Britain and its northern European NATO allies as the sea and air power) vs. Eurasia as the consolidated land power.

Footnotes:

[1] The SCO was created in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan are scheduled to join, along with Iran, Afghanistan and Belarus as observers, and other east and Central Asian countries as “dialogue partners.”

[2] “Putin Seeks Alliance to Rival TPP,” RT.com (December 04 2015). The Eurasian Economic Union was created in 2014 by Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, soon joined by Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. ASEAN was formed in 1967, originally by Indonesia, Malaysia the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. It subsequently has been expanded. China and the AIIB are reaching out to replace World Bank. The U.S. refused to join the AIIB, opposing it from the outset.

[3] Anton Siluanov, “Russia wants fair rules on sovereign debt,” Financial Times, December 10, 2015.

[4] Richard Koo, “EU refuses to acknowledge mistakes made in Greek bailout,” Nomura, July 14, 2015.

[5] Ian Talley, “IMF Tweaks Lending Rules in Boost for Ukraine,” Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2015.

[6] Anders Aslund, “The IMF Outfoxes Putin: Policy Change Means Ukraine Can Receive More Loans,” Atlantic Council, December 8, 2015. On Johnson’s Russia List, December 9, 2015, #13. Aslund was a major defender of neoliberal shock treatment and austerity in Russia, and has held up Latvian austerity as a success story rather than a disaster.

[7] Ian Talley, op. cit.

[8] Anders Åslund, “Ukraine Must Not Pay Russia Back,” Atlantic Council, November 2, 2015 (from Johnson’s Russia List, November 3, 2015, #50).

[9] Anders Aslund, “The IMF Outfoxes Putin,” op. cit.

[10] Quoted in Tamara Zamyantina, “IMF’s dilemma: to help or not to help Ukraine, if Kiev defaults,” TASS, translated on Johnson’s Russia List, December 9, 2015, #9.

[11] I provide a narrative of the Greek disaster in Killing the Host (2015).

[12] Reuters, “IMF rule change keeps Ukraine support; Russia complains,” December 8, 2015.

[13] Anders Aslund, “The IMF Outfoxes Putin,” op. cit.

[14] Anna Gelpern, “Russia’s Bond: It’s Official! (… and Private … and Anything Else It Wants to Be …),” Credit Slips, April 17, 2015.

[15] Anton Siluanov, “Russia wants fair rules on sovereign debt,” Financial Times, op. cit.. He added: “Russia’s financing was not made for commercial gain. Just as America and Britain regularly do, it provided assistance to a country whose policies it supported. The US is now supporting the current Ukrainian government through its USAID guarantee programme.”

[16] John Helmer, “IMF Makes Ukraine War-Fighting Loan, Allows US to Fund Military Operations Against Russia, May Repay Gazprom Bill,” Naked Capitalism, March 16, 2015 (from his site Dances with Bears).

[17] “Ukraine Rebuffs Putin’s Offer to Restructure Russian Debt,” Moscow Times, November 20, 2015, from Johnson’s Russia List, November 20, 2015, #32.

[18] “Lavrov: U.S. admits lack of prospects of restoring Ukrainian solvency,” Interfax, November 7, 2015, translated on Johnson’s Russia List, December 7, 2015, #38.

[19] Quoted by Tamara Zamyantina, “IMF’s dilemma,” op. cit.

[20] Vladimir Putin, “Responses to journalists’ questions following the G20 summit,” Kremlin.ru, November 16, 2015. From Johnson’s Russia List, November 17, 2015,  #7.

“Lavrov: U.S. admits lack of prospects of restoring Ukrainian solvency,” November 7, 2015, translated on Johnson’s Russia List, December 7, 2015, #38.[21]

“In Conversation with Dmitry Medvedev: Interview with five television channels,” Government.ru, December 9, 2015, from Johnson’s Russia List, December 10, 2015,  #2[22]

[23] Andrew Mayeda, “IMF Says Ukraine Bond Owned by Russia Is Official Sovereign Debt,” Bloomberg, December 17, 2015.

[24] Kenneth Rapoza, “IMF Says Russia Right About Ukraine $3 Billion Loan,” Forbes.com, December 16, 2015. The article added: “the Russian government confirmed to Euroclear, at the request of the Ukrainian authorities at the time, that the Eurobond was fully owned by the Russian government.”

[25] Andrew E. Kramer, “Ukraine Halts Repayments on $3.5 Billion It Owes Russia,” The New York Times, December 19, 2015.

[26] Roman Olearchyk, “Ukraine tensions with Russia mount after debt moratorium,” Financial Times, December 19, 2015.

[27] “Violence instead of democracy: Putin slams ‘policies of exceptionalism and impunity’ in UN speech,” www.rt.com, September 29, 2015. From Johnson’s Russia List, September 29, 2015, #2.

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Zet dit eens af tegen de enorme berg VS propagandafilms (die Goebbels jaloers zouden maken) waarin de VS altijd de goede partij en het slachtoffer is, neem de film; 'Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit', hierin wordt de VS bijna het slachtoffer van o.a. financiële manipulaties door Rusland.... Uiteraard een belachelijk scenario, zoals in al deze films het geval is, maar wel met de bedoeling de kijkers te hersenspoelen met de idee, dat de de uiterst agressieve VS, dat in een flink deel van de wereld ongekende terreur brengt, de goede partij is, die continu het slachtoffer is van kwade manipulaties door landen als Rusland en China............

Voor meer berichten n.a.v. het voorgaande, klik op één van de labels,die u onder dit bericht aantreft, dit geldt niet voor de labels: AIIB, ASEAN, Aslund, CIPS, G. Rice, Hudson, Lavrov, SCO en Siluanov. Helaas kan ik maar een beperkt aantal labels plaatsen (maximaal 200 tekens.....).