As I write this news came of the attempt on President Maduro’s life, additional “sanctions” against Iran, North Korea, Syria and Russia, a ramping up of the economic warfare against China through the use of trade tariffs, threats of war against all of those nations and dangerous alarms from within the USA that the upcoming midterm elections for Congress are being threatened by Russia. The western media have spun the failed attempt on Maduro as a staged event so he can “clampdown on democracy” and so act as co-conspirators in the plot. If the attempt had succeeded they would have been jubilant that it worked but they are so corrupt we could not put it past them to claim that his murder would be justified. But what strikes me about all these circumstances is the connection between the domestic situation in the USA and its external aggression.
The defeat of the US and its NATO and Middle Eastern allies in Syria dealt them a major strategic blow. They had hoped to be able to take over the land and air space of Syria and ISIS controlled Iraq to build up forces so they could attack Iran. Now that is only possible by air attack and they know as we all know that despite the destruction they can wreak air bombardment alone does not win wars. So the US reneged on the Iran nuclear deal in order to have its pretext to impose crippling economic warfare on Iran, which has had the effect of devaluing its currency and making life difficult. Already some unrest has been provoked because of this and the actions of western agents in Iran. The Americans hope to cause enough unrest to bring down the Iranian government and impose their own puppets or direct western colonial rule but they do not understand either the will to resist nor the Persian culture and people. Nor did they expect to be frustrated by Iran’s friends who refuse to obey US diktats to reduce Iranian oil sales to zero. India, China, Russia, Turkey and some EU countries that need it will continue to by Iranian oil.
The Syria defeat, along with their defeat in Iraq and their inability to fully control Afghanistan has enraged the US ruling elite who want revenge and of course the big targets, all allies of Syria are Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. So “sanctions” orders are being issued in a steady stream. Just last week sanctions were slapped on a NATO ally Turkey because it refused to hand over one of their evangelical ministers, a Mr. Brunson, who claimed to be in Turkey for years proselytising for his dominionist church and yet after many years of being there only had 24 members in his flock. Not much of a success and certainly not enough to give him an income and so one has to ask where he gets his money from and why he would stay there with such dismal results unless of course he is exactly what Turkey claims he is, a US agent acting against the interests of Turkey. The very loud hue and cry in the US against Erdogan for refusing to release Brunson and threats from Vice president Pence that “Erdogan will pay for this” all indicate that Mr. Brunson is more than just a small time preacher. Countries do not impose sanctions on allies to save private citizens from being prosecuted for crimes in foreign countries. Turkey, which only recently lifted its emergency laws after the failed US backed coup in 2016 has defiantly responded by imposing some counter sanctions which infuriates the Americans even more, seemingly at a loss as to why nations around the world are no longer obeying them.
Their strategy to make America “great” again, meaning the dominant power in the world, therefore requires the weakening of the powers that oppose them and so the sudden trade war on China, the continual pressure on Russia, and threats of war against Iran and North Korea, despite their stated willingness to talk. Iran has kept its honour and refused to talk to these gangsters under the threat of a gun and North Korea has expressed its deep frustration that its overtures to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula have gone nowhere and resulted only in more diktats from the US to completely disarm or else. The cruel economic war being conducted against North Korea, imposed on them illegally and without any justification by the Security Council, has even backfired on Russia which inexplicably supported the “sanctions” even though it knows that North Korea is not in violation of any international law in having a nuclear weapons defence nor in violation of any valid UN resolutions and only has nuclear weapons for the same reasons Russia does, to defend itself against the American Godzilla. Just on the 3rd of August the US imposed further sanctions on Russia for allegedly violating the sanctions imposed on North Korea, and how can Russia complain when they voted for the sanctions in the first place. They are hoist on their own petard.
But, while the northern hemisphere cooks under the extreme heat caused by a rapidly warming climate that will not stabilise at a “new normal” but, left unchecked will keep accelerating exponentially, and while people die in fires, from heat stress, and crops are damaged, threatening the world food supply, the leaders of the western world squabble about dominance and money and how to save their own skins.
The NATO axis refuses President Putin’s continual offers to resolve differences amicably, they sabotage President Xi’s win-win trade and foreign policies. They refuse any possibility of peace and continue their preparations for war. Not only are they increasing their forces on Russia’s borders, they are now shifting more forces to regions around China and are again supporting the renegade Chinese province of Taiwan. They are increasing the number of US Marines in Australia to engage in sea patrols, ready to cut the Straights of Malacca through which the bulk of Chinese trade flows going west and through which China receives most of its oil. At the same time the US increases its presence in Africa to threaten China’s supply of resources. The whole world has become a tinderbox ready to blow. But it is the situation inside the US that is alarming many.
The canard put out by the US intelligence services in service of the Democratic Party that the Russians somehow, and for reasons no one can explain, “influenced” the vote in the US presidential election is now amplified by the new claims that the Russians are intent on “influencing” the vote in the US midterm elections for Congress this summer. The television networks are working nonstop to foster this myth from the self-styled “progressive” media such as PBS and National Public Radio to the lunatic CNN whose only reason for being these days to is pump this anti-Russian propaganda out 24 hours a day. Many believe it.
But the danger the American republic faces is not from Russian interference in its sorry excuse for a democracy, its two party system which the American writer, Gore Vidal, rightly described as a one party system, run by the business party that has two factions. The danger is from the forces behind the propaganda about Russian influence. They are now claiming that votes for the Republican Party, Trump’s party, will be illegitimate, gained through Russian tricks whereas votes for the Democrats will be considered legitimate. They are in reality setting up the conditions for one party rule, for a dictatorship.
Hilary Clinton began to arrange the stage set when, in the presidential campaign she labelled all the Trump supporters the “deplorables” at one and the same time devaluing their votes and opinions as less than worthless, and feeding into the idea that they can be ignored in determining national policies. Millions of people have been reduced, in this propaganda paradigm to subhumans who do not deserve to have their opinions considered. It seems to me this was a carefully considered word and not chosen by her. It was the opening curtain in the drama unfolding in which the forces in and behind the Democratic Party now claim that only they have the legitimacy to rule.
That Mr. Trump seems to go along with this charade and this attack on what is left of American democracy is puzzling. He is constantly under attack as “soft on Russia” and “Putin’s agent” yet no coup has been mounted, no impeachment proceedings begun and he carries on the Obama, Bush, Clinton policies of beggaring the people while attacking the world. One can think that he is a knowing foil in this plot and dutifully plays his role to provide the set-up for a move towards one party rule. Why the economic powers in the US that control the government want to harass a man who is acting in their favour by encouraging the use of oil, by allowing more oil drilling in banned areas, by imposing trade wars on everyone in the world to force them to buy American products, and by threatening every country that poses a threat to US markets and resources, is a bit of a mystery. Capital should be happy with him. So, what is going on? It seems to this writer that everything in this scenario is geared towards world war.
The campaign against Trump is a campaign against Russia. American capital thought it had control of Russian capital and resources when the US backed Russian capitalist took power. They lost it when Russian nationalists took back that control for themselves and the Americans will not be happy until they take it back again or destroy their competitor. The “Russia influenced the elections propaganda” is a device to generate so much fear and hatred against Russia that the people will tolerate and support a major war against Russia. The anti-Russian campaign is a precursor to a major war and its own logic demands a continual escalation of that propaganda. So, following their logic we can expect serious trouble inside the US around the elections, and a disruption of them by these forces to justify even more fear and hatred, and, if I am correct, to essentially establish one party rule to make it easier to engage in war without political opposition. For that is the road down which they are headed and to adopt a phrase the great American social critic and writer, Hunter S. Thompson, used for the tile of his book on the American election that brought Nixon to power, we can only sit back in fear and loathing of these people who, to increase their power, threaten to destroy democracy in America and all of us along with it.
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
